Quiet night. Hobkin has shown no signs of tummy upset these last couple nights, thankfully. Although he has insisted upon me lying on the couch, serving as his own personal cushion, and he sulks if I don’t comply. He is so spoiled. But when he sprawls with his belly up and all four paws in the air, I go all gushy and can’t put him down. At least last night I had the foresight to get myself organized with my laptop so I was able to get some work done as he flopped on me.
Writing stuff:
Got five more critiques from Critters before my story rolled off this week’s queue. I was feeling pretty confident with my rewrite and actually thinking of packaging it up last night to send out, but thought “I might get a few more crits trickling in. I can wait another day.” Boy, am I glad I did. One of the last crits to come in pointed out a typo that I, Matthew, and twenty-four other readers had missed. Yikes. But now, really and truly, it’s ready. I think. Out it goes!
Received an “open letter to our authors” from the Phobos Books editor. I don’t know what information contained in that email is supposed to be public, so I’m not going into details here, but the upshot is that they’re releasing a bunch of manuscripts they’ve been holding, including a novelette of mine they’ve sat on for over a year. I don’t think I’ve done more than glance at that story in two years. I opened it up to see if I wanted to do anything to it before sending it out again.
Holy Mother of Bob!
I lopped off three hundred words in the first pass alone. Apparently I’ve learned a lot about writing tighter in the last couple years. So, yay, I’ve got proof that I’m improving as a writer. But there’s a certain trepidation I have about opening files of older stories to read through again, especially the ones I’ve sold that are waiting for publication. Will I cringe when I see them? I hope not.
Anyhoo, did several more passes and the novelette, now at short story length (barely), is ready to go out again. *shove*
And finally, here’s a bit of blurbage from C. Dennis Moore’s review of Ascendancy of Blood from The Swamp:
“Foster’s got this style, this way of phrasing that makes you forget that you know what’s going to happen, and instead get lost in the flow of her words . . . . She’s a very good writer and I hope we start to hear a lot more from her.”
La!
Nice review. 🙂
Received an “open letter to our authors” from the Phobos Books editor. I don’t know what information contained in that email is supposed to be public, so I’m not going into details here, but the upshot is that they’re releasing a bunch of manuscripts they’ve been holding, including a novelette of mine they’ve sat on for over a year.
::frown:: They’ve got one of my manuscripts & have had it for nearly a year, but I haven’t heard anything. Can you say whether this is an across-the-board thing?
“Can you say whether this is an across-the-board thing?“
I sent you an email to the address listed in your LJ user info regarding this. Let me know if you don’t get it or if that isn’t the right account to reach you at.
Progress and production of the novellette sounds great!
man, you are one talented skunk pillow! 😉
Think I should put on my resume? “Good communication skills, Proficient with MS Office Suite, Talented skunk pillow.”
“Holy Mother of Bob! I lopped off three hundred words in the first pass alone. Apparently I’ve learned a lot about writing tighter in the last couple years. So, yay, I’ve got proof that I’m improving as a writer. “
Yeah I’m f*cking hoping that that’s what it is! I got to the end of the first draft of my story and it was 99.9K. I’ve now edited half of it and it’s down to 95K, and that’s including the new scenes that I wrote in! I’m just having faith in the fact that the story will find its own length and that its the sign of a skilled writer that they don’t say in 100 words what they can say in 10 – or even better, what they don’t need to say at all.
i always kind of appreciated Stephen King’s criticism of what he called the current trend of literary anaemia but to be honest at the same time I read his stuff and thought he could easily chop it in half and not lose anything.