Some Rejections

I received two rejection emails from two different sites about poetry I submitted.  I think the overall problem was that it wasn’t the right genre for their magazine.  The magazines were general fiction with some fantasy and my poems were more normal poetry.  Between the two magazines they only had five spots for poetry submissions so I’m not too heartbroken.  After waiting for a few weeks though you hope that the email you receive is positive.  I’ve still got the poems submitted to one other magazine that I really wanted them to belong too, a purely poetry magazine.  So we’ll see what happens.

As for my fantasy works, I got to work a little more on “An Act of War” which is a short story set in ancient Etherea (Etherea is the setting for my novel The Shadowborn General) that goes into depth about the start of the Minotaur and Panterran wars.  I’ve got a little over 2.4k words right now on the story and have it fleshed out pretty well, it has a good direction and will just require sit down time to finish it.

I’m almost ready to jump back on the “novel” horse and go back to editing “The Shadowborn General.”  I left off editing it at chapter 10.  I wanted to take some time away from it to soak in all that I learned from the critiques, re-approach the novel, and go over all the chapters again.  Once I finish going through everything I’ll submit the last chapters for editing, rinse, and repeat.  Hopefully by taking some time from the novel and applying what I learned from the first half to the last half, I’ll be able to push out a much better novel.  Of course the goal is to publish it, but as I’ve said before I love writing for me.  The story is something I want to be able to read and enjoy and continue to imagine about.  Finishing it correctly will allow me to do that.
Good luck with your own writings!

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Finished Editing “An Inevitable War”

I wrote a short story awhile ago titled “An Inevitable War” that tells of a group of Humans and what happens after Elves enter their lands.  Today I revisited the short story to make edits on it, polish it up, and take a fresh look at it.  I was pleased with what I found and the corrections I made.

I wrote about my short story previously in this blog but now that it is finished I figured it was due a second post.  The story is the first story in the series “Shadows of Etherea” which takes place a long, long time before the novel “The Shadowborn General.”

I already have 2k words written on the second short story, unrelated to the first outside of it taking place in Etherea, titled “An Act of War.”  Notice a theme?  These two short stories are the beginning of the wars that take place in Etherea each telling a different view.  “An Inevitable War” is the Human vs Elf viewpoint and “An Act of War” is the Minotaur vs. Panterran viewpoint of their war.  “An Inevitable War” comes in just over 3k and I imagine “An Act of War” will be about the same, if not around 4k.

Maybe I’ll get lucky with one of them and have an accepted submission to boast about later.

 

Best of luck to you all and your writings

Robert

Back in the Swing of Things

I was able to sit down for two hours tonight without being interrupted or having to work on papers/projects.  It was nice.  I tackled two long critiques waiting on two of my book chapters.  I changed a lot for the better, changed a thousand words or so in those chapters and a lot of the structure.  Which is great.  I’ve found that stepping away from your book for awhile can really help, you get a new perspective and a fresh view on it when you come back to it.  The danger is stepping away for so long that you fall out of the routine of writing/editing.  It took a lot of effort to get to those two critiques tonight, but I was sure glad to do so.

Poetry Submissions

I love fantasy and I like dabbling in writing sci fi, but I originally starting writing with poetry.  From the time I was around fourteen I was writing poetry of all types from rejection to love to darker thoughts.  I found my old thumb drive and figured I’d check through it.  Some of the poems I wrote were pretty terrible and typical teenager stuff, but four really stuck out to me as something I was proud of.  I submitted those four tonight to three different poetry magazines.  It’s not my normal element, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I’m committed to getting back to writing my fantasy short stories and working on my novel.  I figured this last night of “deviation” would be good for me.  Starting tomorrow (after a War Crimes and Genocide paper) I’ll give it a go.

Lesson here:  Don’t be afraid to be proud of your writing, if it’s quality work.  Branching out can’t hurt you and having publishing credits to your name in any genre can really benefit you.  Don’t expect a publisher to care a considerable amount, but in this industry anything can help.

A Non-Genre Piece

I finished a 1,200 word short story tonight. It’s fiction but has no particular genre. It’s a sad piece about a man’s life that has lost all meaning. It was just one of those nights for me and it came out without even thinking what direction the story would take.

I proofread it a few times but don’t see myself making a big deal out of it. I submitted it to a online magazine to see if they want to use it. There’s not very many non-genre fiction short story publications to be found even on duotrope.com

Hopefully it gets picked up, but if it doesn’t I still feel pretty good about it. It was more therapeutic writing than anything. I just found myself in a down day where I couldn’t write what I normally love to write, fantasy. It was almost like I was not allowing myself to have fun with my writing. Luckily for me though, this writing turned out to be entertaining for me in at least the “healing” way.

This week the goal is to edit The Shadowborn General’s chapters that have critiques on them, over two weeks old now, and to write a few new short stories.

Best of luck to everyone out there!

What a Week

I had to take the last part of last week and the first half of this week off.  I’ll pick up writing/editing again later this week but so far my time has been sucked up with academics.  It seems every class I have wanted to throw a project, paper, and/or test at me these two weeks.
I have a major AstroPhysics test tomorrow, going to a three hour study session in about 20 minutes…so there goes my time to write tonight.

I’ll have to write a paper and do a project tomorrow, but maybe Wednesday time will free up for me to write.  Again, I have that exciting news that I will share later when it all becomes polished.

I hope everyone out there reading this finds the time to write this week, but if not I definitely understand.  Writing is the drug which reality prescribes us to take our mind off of daily tasks.  However, I am unable to find time to get my “fix” and will suffer for it.  Best of luck to everyone though!

 

Robert

Reworked Chapter 1

I reworked chapter 1 heavily to add more action to it while still retaining the connection between Alysia and Vespasian.  Mainly the first three paragraphs have changed.  The rest of the changes were very minor.

It’s an interesting point to change your first chapter, the one that generally sets up the book.  I found that I was very hesitant to change the chapter.  It was my first piece done for the book and was very close and dear to me in terms of what direction I wanted to take the book.  It took many critiques on the first chapter to finally overcome my hesitance and give it some more action.  However, I wouldn’t have been able to make the changes work as well as I did if I was quick to change it early on.

Lesson learned: Be hesitant but open to changing your book.  If you are getting consistent critiques on an area or section of your book spend extra time reading over it.  Determine how you can make it better, but don’t be too quick or rash.