Tag Archives: writing

My personal writing odyssey: part 1

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts

This idea started rattling around in my head earlier today, when I had more pressing things to focus on and couldn’t get away from them long enough to actually start writing it.  Now that I’ve been whipped into a murderous frenzy by student loan-related affairs, here goes nothing.

I’ve been thinking about writing.  How I got into it, where I’d like to end up with it at some point (realistically and unrealistically), and what I’m doing to see what I can make possible with it.  Of course this also means I’m making the ballsy assumption people will be interested in reading about my life, but I’m also taking the liberty of applying the “this is my blog so I’ll post whatever I want within reasonable parameters because it does have a theme and that theme is not pictures of cats doing silly things” (even if I do love me some wacky cat antics).  I’ll probably even just use the cut feature on these posts so it doesn’t show up as a freaking mountain of text.

Naturally, I’m going to start this series of posts with when I started writing (because this isn’t an episode of Doctor Who, people, and so you’re getting things in a relatively poorly-remembered chronological order).

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I want these because of so many reasons

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

I happened upon this on Tumblr, and felt it fit the point of this blog well enough (read as “it does not, but I said it does so it now does”) to share.  I also feel like anyone who reads Misadventures In Fiction would be missing out if they didn’t know about these.

An entire book on a t-shirt?  Or a poster?  Yes, please.  That’s just way too freaking cool to pass up.  Since it’s an independent endeavor on Kickstarter, it’s also a good opportunity to help promote artsy-type things by donating.  I can now add having a copy of “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a poster to my bucket list, I think.

First proper rejection, and more

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff, Short Stories

I took a short, unexpected vacation from a lot of the Internet, and an actual, scheduled vacation to Edinboro this past week, and both of those things proved tremendously helpful.  The latter more so than the former, of course, but that’s because it involved good times with friends (and, of course, shitty fast food and some alcohol consumption).

The week also involved a good deal of editing on “Death at Teatime” because it received its first proper letter of rejection.  I sent it to a magazine titled Bartleby Snopes (absolutely, definitely check out their page and read some of the stories they’ve published, because it’s really enjoyable), and within twenty-four hours I received a detailed, polite, and very nice rejection.  Despite my anxiety over the whole affair, this ended up really giving me a boost to get this story fixed up more and sent out again.  The only major issue I could fix without a total rewrite involved a few odd point of view shifts.  A couple other little tweaks were made, thanks to the very helpful editorial eyes of a handful of people, and I looked around on Duotrope again on Thursday night.  Sent it out for its second go at getting published, and I’m hopeful so far.

Regardless, I’m going to keep at this until I get published, or die of old age; whichever one happens first.

Speaking of Thursday, or Thor’s Day perhaps, I did get accosted by a drunk man who I only know as Thor.  That’s a story I won’t be sharing, mind you, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of a few things that helped make this past weekend a memorable one.

Writing and whatnot will resume tomorrow, once I feel less dead from staying up far too late.

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

Submitting a work for publication reminds me a lot of what it felt like to ride my first real roller coaster, which, by the way, was Millennium Force at Cedar Point and, frankly, it scared the hell out of me.

As did submitting this story.  There was the choice: I picked, from the search results Duotrope spat out (a really handy web site, by the way, should you find yourself looking for places to send writing to).  In the case of Cedar Point, my friend chose Millennium Force because he was a weaselly little bastard and knew I’m afraid of heights.  The anticipation and, let’s face it, fear while in the queue, so to speak.  Finally, the thrill of hitting send and knowing, acceptance or rejection, I’ve finally grown enough of a backbone to get this far with something that wasn’t my school’s literary magazine.

Millenium Force actually just made me scream noiselessly for about half a minute before I though I was going to black out, but that’s really where the comparison falls apart (except not really, because I’m actually losing my mind over whether or not it’ll get accepted).

However, after much panicking and worrying over specifics and editing the absolute crap out of it, I’ve finally sent “Death at Teatime” off for publication consideration.  Something I should have probably done sooner, based on the choruses of “It’s about damn time” the news was met with over on Facebook.  Updates on how that goes will follow, naturally.

More importantly, I have ideas for writing, which is awesome since I haven’t had ideas I liked in weeks.  Weeks, people.  That’s way too freaking long for me not to be able to get writing done, because then I start considering what weird possibilities could happen in real life and that’s not good for anyone.

Rolling with the punches

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

Or writing with the punches?

It’s been an oddly hectic time in my life, which is terribly frustrating since I’ve been all “Huzzah, graduation!  Goals goals goals ideas plans” and then life responds with, “Hey, Phil.  I see you have goals, ideas, and plans there.  Let me piss all over them.”  The big issue of sorting out student loans has really punched me in the face, and then there’s other things that don’t bear mentioning here (It’s my misadventures in fiction, folks, not my misadventures in sorting out life; that’s far, far less interesting, and you should all be grateful I’m not making those posts here).

I’m reconsidering my plans for NaNoWriMo, if only because it’s not entirely conducive to what I’m aiming for (I need to try getting my work out there for publication consideration, and though the challenge is totally awesome and horrifying, it’s not really jiving with everything else at the moment; I’ll probably keep with it in some way or another because I’m terribly bull-headed).

Right now the biggest plan is to get “Death at Teatime” out there.  I’m thinking I might dust off some of the things from early-summer, fix them up, and then share them because I realized I have no actual samples of my fiction on here and that goes against one of the major points of this blog.

Thanks to my followers, and anyone who happens upon this blog otherwise, for your patience and sticking with what’s been relatively erratic updating and an unfortunate lack of content.  Also, sorry that I’m sort of not sorry for the post that’s to follow.

NaNoWriMo’s here.

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of us who aren’t particularly fond of acronyms (Hi, my name is Phil and I take issue with abbreviating shit down to silly little phrases), has arrived like it does every year.  I mean, November does show up around the same time, generally speaking, and it’s not only marked by the turning of a calendar page.  As a mildly unrelated side-note, calendars in question should be on November, not December, and so I’ve got to very politely, but very directly, ask you all to shut the hell up with your Christmas cheer and wait one more month.  Much appreciated.  Moving on.

There’s that deep, unshakable feeling of dread everyone who has ever participated in NaNoWriMo feels as it approaches.  It should be noted, by the way, that it’s already almost November 3rd, and I’ve made slightly less progress on this year’s NaNoWriMo than I have on working out my income tax-related business.  I wish I were joking.  However, have I lost hope?  Slightly.  Will I let that be the slaying of my writery-dragon-beast-nonfunctional-metaphor?  No, absolutely not.  I will use that as fuel to kick ass, take names, and write what I assume will be really slap-dash fiction in the name of testing myself and seeing just how close to the edge of madness I can get without falling in (short answer: I’ve already been there and back; got the t-shirt, had souvenir photos taken, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone).

Here is my challenge to fellow writers: if you’ve never, ever tried National Novel Writing Month, give it a try.  Go for it.  I’m not saying hit the 50,000 word mark, as I’m well aware that life is full of unexpected impediments that leave us swearing and cleaning up messes and swearing some more (my life can, at times, be one long series of should-be bleeped expletives).  See where it takes you.  Maybe you’ll end up with something you look at and think, “Man, with the right editing this could be pretty neat.”

People who have been through NaNoWriMo before: join me in returning to it!  If you got to 25k words last time, go for 30k.  Or 40k.  Or maybe even the whole 50k.  Just give it another go, really, because misery loves company, writing loves company, and the two can be oddly synonymous with one another at times (except when there is bourbon involved in writing, in which case the only things suffering are grammar, spelling, and Microsoft Word’s spellcheck feature).

To those of you who started on time and are well into their National Novel Writing Month experience, I wish you the best of luck (with a side of “I hate you” because I totally should be where you all are at but I am instead sitting at the starting line with my metaphorical thumbs up my metaphorical nose).  To those of you who are in the same spot as me: let’s do this!  Updates will occur as possible, and I’m totally going to hit at least 35k this year because of reasons.

Edit, because I am le dumb: click here to visit the NaNoWriMo site for all the shiny information and encouragement you’ll need to get started.

To say “to hell with tonight’s goal” or not, that is the question.

Posted on by under Joshua's Nightmare Updates

And it’s a difficult question to answer, I’ve found, because it’s the sort of mentality that leads me into my weird, non-writing funks which get me nowhere but bored.

A bored Phil is not a good sort of Phil to have around.

However, the trouble, I think, comes largely from this: I have a short story floating around in my brain from a couple weeks ago that needs some love.  I may say that’s my five pages for the night and just see what happens with “Joshua’s Nightmare” (which will get love regardless because I had what I feel are some pretty cool ideas at work).  I’ve got another short story title idea in mind and I may just make it

Also, just taking a moment to say “hi” to the new followers, because I totally didn’t expect to log on and see new followers.

First day of actual writing.

Posted on by under Joshua's Nightmare Updates

I started work on Massive, Daunting, Unnamed Project today only to remind myself of the following things (which I suppose should have been obvious):

  • Moving from the planning stages to the actual writing stages is a giant pain when it comes to details
  • I’m *still* terrible at coming up with character names I like
  • Working retail really kicks my brain in its squishy grey-matter ass, so to speak.

Those things considered, I still managed to get a solid start going on this story (which, for the sake of brevity, will be referred to as “Joshua’s Nightmares” from now until a proper title happens into existence).  Not as much as I’d have liked to get written compared to the time I lost to the near-pneumonia nonsense of last week, but a start’s a start.

On another front, I’m starting to consider places to possibly submit “Death at Teatime” to.  I’ve spent the bulk of the summer working on it in some regard or another.  I really need to move past the whole fearing rejection bit, because it’s bound to happen again.  Doesn’t make it any easier, of course.

So tomorrow’s goal, writing-wise, is to at least get five more pages of work done on this.  Just really write and not worry about how it reads or looks.  That’s going to be after a lovely 7 to 3 shift, so we’ll see how that pans out.

And maybe a short-story to throw on here.  I definitely need to organize this thing a little better, so as to not post everything Uncategorized.

Ending this with a guilt-trip to myself: it’s time to sit down, focus, and get this thing going.

So this deserves a proper beginning.

Posted on by under Joshua's Nightmare Updates

And I’d really like to start this blog right-proper.

My name’s Phil, and I’m a writer.  Or I’m someone who moonlights, quite convincingly, as a writer.  I’ve had misadventures into blogging and many misadventures in writing, with the tiny, unfinished graves of many a story occupying a few hard drives over the course of my life.

Ultimately, my goal is to become a published writer.  I mean, ideally I’d like to become a semi-partially-somewhat known published writer, but I’d be cool with a published work at this point.  I’m two rejections into my life as a writer, which means I need to get my ass moving.

That’s where this blog comes in.  After attending Interventioncon 2012 (the best geek culture convention on the east coast, obviously), I set the following lofty goal: that I would complete a written work of novel-length by next Interventioncon, under the threat of receiving horrifying pictures from the depths of the Internet.

I’ll chronicle my misadventures in writing, which may or may not feature original pieces (like Christmas for readers, right?  Right.  You had better have agreed) and use this as a means to hold myself accountable for making progress on Giant, Daunting Unnamed Project, which is still only in the planning stages because naming characters gives me a giant, horrible headache.

Comments featuring encouragement, snide remarks, advice, or anything more generalized are all sorts of appreciated.  Let’s see where this long, windy, and, in all likelihood, sleep-deprived road will take me.