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.

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.

Bingo Story - Done

Well, re-writes are done. Need to do a pass or two of edits. Get a ride from a cop friend of mine to check out his car and run some stuff by him. Then this story is out the door. I'm liking it a lot better this time. The ending feels right. Hopefully editors agree. I'll keep you posted.

Updates

I must start by first thanking my wife. Thanks babe. Thanks for watching the kids. I totally wasn't expecting any quiet time right now, I promise I'll make the best of it. So, no blowing off the morning playing WoW.

Of the 7 stories in the short story cycle, I finished 2. That's not very good. They have probably both come in around 5000 words, so extrapolating that would give me 35,000 words which is considerable. Nice little novellette going for me. Toward the end of the second story, I was rushing it. I don't think it came out good at all, and need considerable work. But the story is done. I got my hero to the point that he needs to be. And the rest of the crew hungering for revenge. Sorry for blowing that deadline Mike, I'm just not a fast writer. It seemed so doable when I started. We all write at different paces. Mine, a bit slower than most I'd bet.

I still need to edit Lost Pages. I want to get that out to the markets, see if it can find a home. I like the story. I think too in writing this last story for the Cycle, I've decided I like writing fantasy a lot more than sci-fi. I love reading sci-fi, but I'm not so good with writing the science side of things. Mostly just ends up an adventure in space. Not that there is anything wrong with that, other franchises have seemed to pull that off pretty well (Star Wars?). I have a lot of themes in the Cycle that I'm trying to tackle at the same time. Maybe too much.

I still want to tell the story of the Vhor (my aliens in the Cycle), but I think for the immediate future I'm going to take a break from that, and write the follow-up story to Lost Pages.

I've also decided I write much better when I have some kind of outline before me. It gave my cycle a lot more direction. I have a loose outline for the Lost Pages stories. Once I finish both (Lost Pages, and Cycle) I need to look seriously at writing up an outline for the novel. It's still rolling around in the back of my head, but I haven't worked on it in a few months.

So, that's where I am. Time to get to writing.

Lost Pages

Finished the first draft for Lost Pages last night. Once I got to the middle of the story, it was flowing pretty well. As I mentioned earlier, I already wrote this story once. The climax came pretty easily, with only a few minor adjustments from last time. So now I just need to edit it, then out the door it goes. There is a polish challenge coming up at Liberty Hall soon, so I may post it there too.

My wife got me Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird for Christmas. I'm really enjoying the book. The best thing I've taken from it is she mentioned ABDCE.

A - Action

B - Background

D - Development

C - Climax

E - Ending

I hadn't heard of this before, but it really crystallized the project for me. I saw a clear delineation for each section. I'll be keeping it in mind for the future.

So now to edit the story. It definitely needs to be cleaned up. I'd like to have it submitted by the end of this week, but I think next week is a much more realistic goal. I'll keep you posted.