Small Update

Another small update before we head to bed. Showing up at the hospital at 5:30 tomorrow.

Did some more outlining today on Dragon Lords. Reminded me why I loved this story so much. Five good interweaving plot lines looking at different aspects of the same problem. Also realized how little of it I had typed up in my files and how much was still in notebooks. So I will spend some time working out the rest of the outline and getting everything organized before pushing on into new territory. Looking forward to it.

Outlining and such

I spent much of my writing time outlining yesterday (2 pages). Outlining will probably be the bulk of my writing for the next week or two. I am not sure where I plan to go with the previous story I was working on (outling) and I would also like a break.

My interests have always been more with dragons and wizards and such than aliens and space marines. The bulk of my longer works are almost all fantasy related. I have one that I want to get back to (tentatively titled Dragon Lords) but that needs some outlining too.

Mostly though, my wife is having a surgery on Thursday, so I don't expect I will have much time for traipsing around my imagination anyway. Rest assured, I will be back shortly.

Back out the door

Received a rejection from Clarkesworld, sending it back out to Abyss & Apex.

Hammer of Had Smiting, +5

I had a real problem here. Some really passive prose featuring my apparent favorite word, *had*. I use it alot. I don't know why, it just crops up in there all the time. Today and yesterday's editing jobs had me knocking out the word had all over the place. But hey, I know what I had better look for in the future, so spotting it will be easy. Right? Like my buddy Duke always says, "Knowing is half the battle!" I wish I knew what the other half was.

Submission #2

Two stories out in two days. That is good in my book. This one is off to Asimov's. I feel good about it. My application is strong this year.

Bringing it all together

Like most of us, I'm not writing full time. I write when I have time, when I can squeeze it in. Most days I get some writing in on my lunch at werk. Some days it is while I'm waiting in the parking lot for my wife. Some days it is on the iPod Touch while at home because I may need to set it down quickly to help one of our children.

The point here is that I'm not always at my main computer. This can of course cause a lot of problems. Some of the folders on my computer are a real mess with ver 1, 2, and 3 files of stories I typed up at different times. I have multiple different notebooks. That can make it very tough to bring things together into one coherent piece of work.

Chuck at Terrible Minds turned me on to DropBox. They provide 2 gigs of space for free (you can pay for additional space) and it will automatically upload to their servers anything in your DropBox folder. This also solved the problem of making sure that my files are backed up for the inevitable computer crash.

DropBox also has an iPod app that will let you view the files that are on their servers but not edit them.

I had been using a nice free app on my iPod Touch called WritePad. It was simple and allowed me to email myself the files. And hey, it was free. Can't knock that at all. Emailing yourself the files though can cause all kinds of formatting issues when you copy and paste that into the document you are using. I wanted something with a little more power behind it.

After some research, I came across QuickOffice. At $10 you can get QuickOffice Mobile Connect which allows you to connect directly with DropBox (and a few other similar services) to view AND edit the files that are stored on DropBox. If you're working offline without a WiFi connection, QuickOffice also allows you to copy your files to your iPod and then copy them back later once you're connected again.

Now I am happy to say I am editing the same file regardless of where I happen to be writing. It has really saved me a lot of time and headache and really simplified writing anywhere and everywhere. If you're in a similar position, I highly recommend DropBox and QuickOffice.

With a Sledgehammer

Well, after knocking out a lot of the passive sentences out of my story yesterday, I sent it off to Clarkesworld. Different story to edit today and then I will send that one off too. Not sure where yet, but aiming high.

XXX Words

Three pages of outlining yesterday and answering Why questions. Why are they doing this? Why did this happen? etc. Clarified a lot of the details for myself.

Today I don't expect to get much of a word count as I am going to go through and edit two stories that I've sent out a few times. I'm going to try and get some freelance work and use those as my samples. Hopefully they are well recieved.

1462 Words

Yesterday, 5/17, saw 1462 words. A pretty good day. It also saw the end of that particular story. When I started writing this series, each section was its own contained story with its own beginning middle and end. This most recent story is more of a chapter though, because it certainly isn't the end of the characters story. Unfortunately, I hadn't plotted anything past this point. I'm not sure how far the rabbit hole will go. So it is likely that I will spend today plotting either the end of that story or plotting a different story. I am really ready for a break from this story. I want to get back to writing about dragons. At the same time, I really should just finish that story. I can't do anything with a story that is half finished. So that is where I'm at.

1056 + 106 Words

Friday, 5/14 saw 1056 words. Pretty good day. Sunday 5/16 saw only 106 words. Which was about it for the weekend. Could lay out some excuses here, but they would be just that, excuses. Excuses don't change the situation at large.

XXX Words

As mentioned, no tech devices with me yesterday, so I'm not sure of my exact word count.

What I did do though was outline a new story in a notebook. It was great! Really enjoyed getting a fresh story down. Not sure on the word count for yesterday, but 5 pages of my unreadable scrawling penmanship that would make an elementry teacher shudder... Now I just need to wrap up the short story I'm working on, hopefully today.

130 Words

I wrote something yesterday. But as I left my ipod at home, I can't check the count. It wasn't much. Probably under 500. I just wasn't feeling it yesterday. On the plus side of things, I did bring a notebook with me today, so some small part of my brain must have been working.

Edit 5/14: Worse than I thought. Blah.

848 words

848 words yesterday, 5/11/10. Will see if I can make up the difference today.

1092 Words

1092 words. Back at it today.

Story is nearly finished. Just have to wrap it up the right way. Though really, this should be a novel and not a series of short stories. Where I would be ending it now would be after the protag really finds out the truth of the situation, which really isn't much of an "end" if you look at it that way.

Ghost hunt went well. As well as such things can be expected. Well, we didn't see anything. There were a few areas that were a bit creepy. Mostly though, just some feelings and strange noises. The infirmary/pysch ward was probably the worst of it. Some cool photos though taken by a professional photographer, Jason Furda. If you're on facebook, you can check them out here.

493+428 Words

Words have dipped the last few days. 5/5 was 493, today was 428. Finals week for my college classes. This must be what it feels like to go down the brain drain on BrainSurge. I'm going to do my last test tomorrow. Very glad for summer break.

This weekend will likely not have much word count either. My wife and I are heading for a haunted tour of West Virginia State Pen on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Talk about an awesome mother's day gift, eh? I will uh... be counting it as experience for possible novel inclusion. Yeah. We'll call it research! So who knows, may have some interesting stories out of that.

1020 words

1020 words. A good day today. That puts this particular story close to 10k, maybe 12k or so by the time I finish it. Later I'll have to go back and get a count for the entire series.

3098 Words

3098 Words.

Well, as you can see, no posting happened over the weekend. That would be because there was no writing. I'll admitting to slacking off Saturday evening, Sunday ended up being full.

So, on the bad side, no writing over the weekend.

On the plus side of things, cranked out 3k today. Not a bad little number. Good to know I'm capable of achieving that kind of output. I was considering upping my word goal once this semester of classes is over. But probably not 3k worth.

Also on the bad side of things, think my IEM is all tapped out. Around 2500 words, I was really dragging. Can't say how good or bad the quality is around that point. But hey, made the goal.

Kind of wraps around to the reason I'm not a fan of NaNoWriMo. In order to crank out that number of words, I would just have to fill pages with utter crap. And that seems rather pointless to me. But that is just me. Glad it works for some people.

The story is nearing completion. Rather excited about that. Things are really getting tied together. Kind of like a rug that ties the room together. Yeah, I'm done.