Read My Diorama Story at DSF & Writing Process Blog Tour

The outline on the window

Today you get two blog posts for the price of one!

First, the end of summer is in sight, and soon the kids will be returning to school. It’s in that spirit that I hope you enjoy my diorama story. I really enjoyed writing it. Be sure and stick around Daily Science Fiction to check out some of the other great stories on this site. This fine venue has been reliably publishing fantastic writing for years. I am so proud to be published by them!

Second, Patrice Sarath tagged me for a Writing Process blog tour, which is tricky as my process is almost certainly still evolving. The best I can do is give you a snapshot of what my process is today.

What am I working on?

My first novel! Well, technically no. I’ve made a couple attempts before this one including a couple NaNoWriMo novels. But, I won’t be inflicting those on anyone else’s eyeballs. Those early attempts taught me a lot about the craft. It’s good to have a couple novels to line the bottom desk drawer where they can live out their days in dark and quiet solitude.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I dunno. I love reading both literary and genre fiction, so I guess my work sits at the crossroads of those two. I’ve always liked being hard to categorize, except when I’m asked to describe myself.

Why do I write what I do?

I love exploring our world in all its gorgeous complexity. For me, both reading and writing is a way to slip the surly bonds of reality, to travel places that can only exist in our dreams and imaginations.

I’m devoted to science fiction and fantasy, but animal stories were my first love: Call of the Wild, Watership Down, Black Beauty, The Incredible Journey, Charlotte’s Web. You get the idea. I find that animals often show up in my stories. I am intensely interested in how we go about defining ourselves from the natural world around us.

How does my writing process work?

Since I’m working out how to go about writing a novel, I’ll speak to that. Frankly, right now, it’s a journey of discovery with all its pleasures and frustrations. I put up a word counter on the side bar, but haven’t added any new words yet, because I had to stop drafting and go back create a better outline. I’m pretty sure I’m not a pantser (someone who writes a draft by the seat of their pants). Outlining helps me develop the story as a whole, and I need that in order to have the confidence to wade in. I don’t think I can just cast off into open water. I guess I’ll find out more about myself as a writer as I work through this project.

Now, I’ve got a card for each major scene. I’m journaling to work through the many questions that have presented themselves as I worked on the outline. Next, I’ll start going card by card, scene by scene with some time in the evening devoted to working out “meta” thoughts and story problems in my journal. This way, with a rough road map and solving problems as I go, I hope to make steady progress.

So, that’s my process. Today…

D.L. Young and Aaron DaMommio tag you’re it!

Here's a cheetah and a dog playing tag.

The Art of Waiting

Waiting for the Mail by Grant Wright Christian (WPA mural)

Waiting is hard.

Any writer that is submitting stories is in a constant state of waiting to hear back. That's just life. Some markets are quick (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Daily Science Fiction to name a few), but once I've collected my rejections from them, it's time to get on the slow boat and submit to the markets that take 30, 60, even 90 days -or more- to respond to that precious story I worked and slaved over.

For me, the only way to stay sane about this process is to keep stuffing stories into the machine.

One thing about writing more stories is that each story becomes a little less precious, which helps. Sure, it's the most important thing while I'm writing it (you know, love the one you're with), but then it's on to the next.
In order to keep the hopper full, I can't just focus on writing things, I have to finish them. The key here is to know when you are finished.

In the introduction to her book Two Worlds and In Between, Caitlin Kiernan describes looking back at her earlier stories and seeing a kind of snapshot of herself at a certain point in time. Saying that, in her stories,

 "I see the procession of me."

I love that! After I've taken a story though drafting, revision, critique, final changes and proofing, I have to be able to look at it and say, this is the very best story I can write today. 

One of the most important skills for anyone making any kind of art is the ability to really see what you've made. To be able to make a clear-eyed critical self-assessment of a story not only allows me to write the best story I can, it also gives me an understanding of my current skills and talents that will allow me to improve. Since I'm an optimist, I am going to assume that, with hard work, I will  be a better writer next year than I am today. 

But, I'm not going to go back to a finished story and rework it because it is what it is. My job is to write better NEW stories. Reworking old ones is chasing a kind of perfection that is not only impossible but, I believe, irrelevant. 

When I'm constantly working on something new, striving to write my best story, waiting on my submitted stories is still hard, but just the business that goes on in the background. I keep my focus on making today's story the best it can be.