Writing Stuff
New Words:
• 700 on The Stupid Novel.
The spreadsheet informs me that I’m around 800 words away from the ever-so-elusive 40K. It needs to be longer than that, since the story won’t be finished in 800 words—I’m thinking maybe another 10K—but 40K has been a huge ole wall that I haven’t been able to get past before. And I’m actually beginning to believe I will this time. Ooo.
Received:
• 3-day pass from PodCastle on a reprint with invite to submit again.
• 11-day cordial pass from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, ditto invite to submit again.
• 5-day sale of “Gifts Not Asked For” to Bards and Sages Quarterly.
They’re going to serialize it in five parts, starting with their April ’09 issue. I’ve never had a story serialized before (although I do have a two-parter slated for publication in a couple forthcoming and yet-to-be-announced issues of Cricket), and I hadn’t originally written this story to be a serial. But as I was perusing the B&SQ guidelines—which indicate that they’re only looking for fiction 1.5K words or less—I saw that they were also interested in serials, with each part around that 1.5K-word mark. And I remembered that “Gifts” is broken into four or five distinct scenes of about that length. Quick tweak to change the scene breaks to part breaks, and voila, five-part story ready to be serialized. Shiny serendipity.
Congrats on the serial.
Congrats on the serial sale!
(or perhaps I should continue this in the next comment).
SQUEEE! Congrats on the sale!
Woohoo on the sale and getting past old barriers. You can do it! Just cross your Indestructible Bracelets and deflect all distractor beams that might keep you from finishing this novel.