First submissions

Well now what a day. Submitted a Flash Fiction piece of precisely 1000 words to two different online publishers. I also submitted my first Drabble to The Drabble. Apparently the ritual is to wait now and see what happens.

In the mean time, I won’t be waiting passively. NaNoWriMo starts Wednesday so I’m beginning prepare for that marathon. The goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November in an effort to produce some or all of a novel. That’s 1667 words per day. I’ve got an idea I like and a bit of a framework for the story. I hope to attend some write-ins around town, too.

It’s been a good week. I’ve got my Twitter feed up and running with a decent number of followers already. I built this blog site (still some work to do). I am attending a local writer’s group (CSWriters). I’ve learned a lot about editing trying to trim the above-mentioned pieces down to size. Great exercise.

Sanderson’s “Writing Excuses”

Some time back a buddy of mine (visit him at An Old Guy Gaming) reminded me about Brandon Sanderson’s “Writing Excuses” podcasts. A month or so ago I random selected a couple and listened. They are part of what re-ignited my desire to really take a serious stab at writing again. It’s always been something I’ve dabbled with and something I’ve wanted to do, but I found the podcast to be somehow empowering.

In the course of getting myself organized I bought Scrivener and Scapple. I haven’t used Scapple much but Scrivener is very helpful. Maybe I’ll do more on that later. I also started researching local writing groups. In fact, I’m going to my first critique session tonight armed with a Flash Fiction attempt (1000 words) and a Drabble (100 words). Pretty excited.

Anyway, back to Writing Excuses. I now plan to work my through a bunch of the podcasts, mainly focused on small scale writing – short stories, flash fiction, etc. I do think, however, that I will try November’s nanowrimo challenge. I believe I have a good novel idea to work with there.

So for those folks in a motivational slump, take a listen to the podcast. It’s funny, insightful and it provides useful information. Give this one a try: “12.39 Q&A n Short(er) Fiction.“

First drabble

Yeah. Drabble. Google it – or better yet I’ll just tell you. It’s a full story in 100 words. Depending on the site it could be fewer than 100 or exactly 100. Mine’s currently at 98. I’m still doing some work on it and no one has read it yet. I’ll definitely submit it at some point soon – maybe to 100 Word Story or to Drablr.

Anyway, much harder than I would have thought. It started out at 270 words and I thought it was decent. Trimming it back to 100 was an exercise in editing and word choice, but it was really a great experience. Even if the story doesn’t end up anywhere, it was time well spent. I will certainly look at all my writing differently from this point forward.

Ha – I’ve actually used more words to describe the drabble than it actually contains!