Tag Archives: publishing

Busy by Choice

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Happy Sunday, all (unless it’s been a shit day, in which case I’m sorry that tomorrow is Monday, a day of inevitable suffering).

Installment #3 of Follow the Ashes is drafted and now ready for editing. Still on schedule. Thank god for small miracles. Book 3 in the Dissonance trilogy, which I haven’t quite settled on a name for, is coming along nicely. This is in no small part thanks to my wife and her unyielding support of my writing, which is only matched by her patience with my bouts of writing-related moping.

Speaking of Dissonance in Harmony, some news on that front. It isn’t exactly some secret that I want to get another book published. That’s a rather crucial step towards my goal of writing for a living, which in turn is a step towards my masterful plan for global domination. Obviously. I’ve gotten good, over the years, at starting new stories. I’m improving at finishing first drafts, and I’m slowly getting better at editing and proofreading my work. An abundance of gratitude towards Lindsey Vath, my dear friend and beta reader, for all of the help she has provided with Dissonance in Harmony.

However, all of the above falls a bit flat if I don’t look into querying publishers. I could have the most well-polished, well-written story on the planet and it would be positively worthless without trying to find it a home. Spoilers: I don’t have that story, but Dissonance in Harmony is a fantastic story all the same. I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and submitted it to a publisher. Then I submitted it to another recently. And two literary agencies. Because when it rains, it pours? Because good things happen in threes…er, fours?

I’m playing the waiting game, focusing on Follow the Ashes (share the installments to show your love, please – it’s a tremendously fun series to write). Wish me luck?

Oh, and I’m on Vero now. New social media sites mystify and confuse me, but feel free to follow me at Philip Wesley Gorski.

PS: When choosing categories, I never fail to cringe at my Hundred Days of Blogging self-inflicted challenges. I may take another crack at that some day, but those were rough.

Current Goings-On

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction

“Happy Sunday,” said nearly no one ever. Hopefully, wherever you, the weather is pleasant, the day is not dominated by busy work, and Monday isn’t creeping in too fast. If it is, send Garfield after it.

He hates Mondays.

Fridays are much nicer. Without giving away too much, I should suggest there might be something new happening on Friday. Some sort of writing, perhaps? Maybe I’ll give away more details around Wednesday. Continue reading →

New Year, New U(niverse)

Posted on by under Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Same bad puns. Honestly, it sounded better in my head than it reads in the header, but I also originally planned to write it as “You(niverse)”…until that looked dumb, also. So here we are.

Happy New Year to you all, since it is now late enough that everyone has crossed the arbitrary boundary between 2017 and the three weeks of incorrectly writing 2017 on things. I’m sure I will be among those people. I hope you all had a lovely night and didn’t wake up with hangovers today, or if you did wake up feeling hungover I hope it didn’t linger too long. Like many, many, many other people, I am using the new year as a means of setting goals for myself in an effort to talk less and do more. I still refuse to call them New Year’s Resolutions, as the moment that label touches something it transforms into an impossible goal for most people. Continue reading →

Writing, and gloom-induced gloom

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts, Misadventures in Fiction, Uncategorized

I love rainy days, but only so long as I can spend them at home. I realize that’s a bit of a tall order as I have to be at work on most-such days. That said: I love laying on the couch in the back room of my mom’s house and listen to the rain fall against the two skylights. Really dislodges the bullshit from my brain.

That said, I’m tired of the sky being a joyless gray as of late. I could easily attribute that to the dark days of a Trump Presidency (and, Hell, I am really, because he’s a thin-skinned, orange-faced puppet with a bad habit of taking to Twitter). They’re bringing me down.

Something more cheerful, however: I completed the first draft of Babel, Restored – the sequel to Dissonance in Harmony and what I wrote for NaNoWriMo. I’ve returned to working on Dissonance. It’s fun, but I can’t help but smile at the realization I’m probably unintentionally shitting up continuity without realizing it. The editing process should be…interesting.  Continue reading →

My world is slightly askew

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts, Misadventures in Fiction, SRS BSNS BLAHGING

I had to Google “askew” because my brain kept telling me it’s pretty sure there’s an i in there somewhere, to which I (and Google) called bullshit. Joke’s on you, brain.

Today is an appropriately dreary day, as I just got back from vacation in the Outer Banks yesterday and my impending return to business-as-usual tomorrow has me feeling gloomy and out-of-sorts. It’s like waking up to discover everything shifted ever-so-slightly to the left with no explanation as to why, and I feel like I’m bouncing into every single wall there is to be bounced into. Something like that. If you’re reading this expecting poetic nuances, you’ll want to navigate elsewhere. The most thinking I’m doing at the moment is the standard focus on  writing (and my lack of discipline in regards to writing)…and if I should finally get off of my ass and either start unpacking or go to the store to pick up some of the essentials. The milk in my fridge isn’t technically expired, but the aroma it gives off when opened suggests otherwise.  Continue reading →

(Pity) Party’s Over

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts

Real talk, brought to you in part thanks to having a serious, much-needed discussion with the lovely lady in my life.

One day, I dream of being a moderately well-known published author, with at least one work available for sale at Barnes & Noble. I’m aware that this may seem, or in fact may be, shallow. The big, shiny, and seemingly-unattainable goal: to write for a living, or at least make some of my living from writing.

Here’s the real talk: I need to stop being so down and out about making a living from my writing, convincing myself it’s never going to happen, and double up my efforts on making it happen. That means I need to stop comparing myself to established authors. I need to stop looking at my peers and feeling like a failure by comparison. (You guys keep doing you, though; awesome work all around.)

I need to stop whining and making excuses. I am most certainly far too guilty of doing both of those things.

Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King happened at a breakneck pace not because of the job I worked providing me with time to write nor the fact that I had a specific publishing goal in mind. It happened because I said I was going to write, and then I wrote. Constantly, and without concerns for what I would one day do with that book.

And so I will write.

Not dead, just busy

Posted on by under Shameless Shilling

Some people wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and certain they are forgetting something important in their daily routine. I don’t exactly experience that, but I do recall, from time to time, I have been neglecting Misadventures In Writing. Again.

Admittedly, that’s a bit stupid of me since I do pay for the domain name and all, but…Right. Moving along.

I’ve been busy lately. There are a few factors to this, ranging from my new job (hooray!), being in a great relationship (hooray!), and some personal crises (the opposite of hooray), but I’m happy to report I’ve been finding time for writing. Not as much as I should be, but I’m still managing to get some writing done on most days. I’d call that a success.

In that regards, I’d like to direct attention to my latest Misadventure: my project on Inkshares, which is also the current novel I’m working on (and the product of the world-building I posted here). The novel’s working title is Dissonance in Harmony, and it’s receiving a fair bit of praise.

The project can be seen here. Now, this is where I need help. In order for a project on Inkshares to see publication, it needs to meet, at the very least, a light publishing goal of 250 pre-orders. That’s any pre-orders a project receives, including eReader-only ones. All support–sharing the link to my project, following along, or pre-ordering in any way–is greatly appreciated.

What I really like about Inkshares is that it allows me to post chapters as I like. It sweetens the deal a bit, I think, to have a chance to read some of what you might be supporting. The first four chapters are available for perusal; if you like what you see, please consider a pre-order?

On that note: it’s Easter, and dinner is almost ready. Om nom nom.

Phil’s Official Writing Challenge Guidelines

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

I would have titled this “How to Write In Ways That Will Make You Feel Like Your Soul is Dying”, but I realized that might be a hair melodramatic. Special thanks go to my college pal Andrew Webb for texting me last night with the following texts, as he was inadvertently responsible for this topic.

Phil, I have done a terrible job with writing since I stared working full time, how do you do it?”

I responded by saying I force myself to find time every day to write, even if it’s just a little. If I get stuck working on one thing, I focus on something else. Above all else, it’s important to find time for writing. That resulted in this response:

Do you force yourself to a genre or anything goes including journaling?

My phone had conveniently been switched to Do Not Disturb mode by that point, however, because I had to be awake at 6a.m. and those texts first arrived after 12:30 last night. Feeling somewhat guilty for not answering, and finding this to be a good blogging opportunity, I decided to give a long-form answer in the form of a proper writing challenge anyone can hold themselves to (for the sake of self-destruction, really). Keep in mind that I may be a subject matter expert of sorts, but I am by no means a be-all, end-all source of wisdom on writing and so this is mostly just issuing a challenge to help writing in the same way I’ve been keeping up with my writing. Feel free to adjust it in ways, and let me know what works best for you in the comments below. It can be a sort of note-comparing among creative folks who also like finding their limits and then using those limits to inflict torment upon themselves. I’m joking, mostly.

Also, I really should note how much of a gigantic ego-boost it is to have people asking me advice on writing. Holy shit, folks, that is awesome. Right. Moving on… Continue reading →

Equal parts determination and madness

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Or “I’m hitting all of the walls today so I’m going to rant a bit while still being positive about writing”.

Writing, on some days, is a completely magical experience. Those are the days I get completely lost in the words, not focusing on time or making sure I’m eating or anything else. Since becoming the joint-owner of three cats, I’ve gotten used to ignoring the occasional glimpse of cat anus as one of the two cats who don’t hate me will wander between my laptop and my line-of-sight. I lead a magical life.

Other days–days like today, for instance–are less productive. I have an idea of where I want to go with my writing, and then I proceed to flop around without any real progress. It feels like the cartoon depiction of falling down an up escalator, complete with irate people-as-obstacles and all. Days like this make me have serious doubts I could ever become a proper writing-for-a-living sort of writer. They’re not particularly enjoyable days, and I could probably chalk a lot of it up to the hilarious constellation of neuroses I have.

Fortunately for me, I happen to have a tremendous support system of friends and family, a spectacular girlfriend who tolerates my particular brand of crazy that shows up from time-to-time (don’t ask her, though, or she’ll say it’s around all of the time). I acknowledge that goals like being able to write for a living or becoming a best-selling author are lofty, and that’s putting it mildly, but I can also say I will never stop writing. Even on my worst days, I still add at least a couple words to something, or I tweak and adjust something I’ve worked on, because I need to keep at it. I am far from perfect at what I do, as evidenced by the proofread-and-commented copies I get back, but I have my strong points and my weak points. The ultimate goal, above all else, is to continue improving upon the weak points while refining the strong ones.

This post started off as feeling down and out, but I feel rejuvenated and ready to take on the entire world again. I’d throw together a shitty metaphor about feeling victorious, but I’m going to focus on fixing up Cordelia’s as much as I can so it can be that much closer to being publication-ready.

Happy Sunday, folks. I hope you all have a kickass week, devoid of doubts and frustration.