Hurry Up and Wait

Last night I submitted my entry for the third quarter of the Writers of the Future contest for 2012.  The deadline isn't until the end of the month, but since I had a story ready that I felt good about, I decided it wasn't going to serve any purpose just letting it sit on my hard drive.  Besides, last quarter's heart-attack-on-a-stick of not finishing my submission until there were only four hours left before the deadline isn't something I'm keen on revisiting.

That said, my quarter two entry is still waiting in the slush pile there, so I now have two stories waiting at the same market.  And, there are people still waiting for results in quarter one!  Normally, this contest is much faster with its turn-around time, but the sad passing of K.D. Wentworth, the coordinating judge, near the end of the first quarter has caused a backlog.  The new coordinating judge, David Farland (Dave Wolverton), is now on the job and I'm sure we'll start seeing results soon.

It got me thinking, however, about how much of this writing world is a hurry up and wait proposition.  Admittedly, most short story markets don't have the same deadline system that the WotF contest does, but we work hard, write the best stories we can, send them out into the big world and wait.  Some markets, notably Lightspeed and Clarkesworld, have very quick return times.  I really appreciate hearing back within the week, as tends to happen in these markets, but most are much longer.

I decided to add up how long all of the stories I have currently under submission have been waiting.  Answer--one-hundred fifty-nine days.  That's for five total stories.  I'm not a speed demon writer, and I know there are many people who have significantly higher numbers, both of stories at markets and total days waiting.

So here's my challenge to myself--get more stories at market and increase that total wait time!  I wonder how quickly I can bring my wait time up to 365 days?  As I hear back from my current submissions, I'll lose days, so I'll need to get more stories out there in decent numbers to make that goal.

Time to get writing!

How many stories do you have at markets?  What is your combined wait time?

Outlining Update

I promised to update my adventures in outlining in my last post, so here you go:

Wow, this outlining thing is difficult!

I've spent a lot of time with a notepad and a pencil jotting down ideas and the questions those ideas bring to mind.  Instead of starting into the story, I'm making myself contemplate different directions the story can take and evaluating them to see which would be best.  As of now, I do not have an outline, but I do have a much more developed idea than the seed that I began with.  A sprout, I guess you could call it.

I've been playing "What If?" in a much more formalized way than I've done it before.  One of my first writer friends, Suzie Quint, was the person who introduced me to "What If?"  Basically, it involves asking that question over and over.  It helps jog your brain to come up with answers that are in there, but don't want to leap forth of their own accord.  You have to ask the question to get the answer.

So I now have a partially developed plot, which started its seed life as a short story idea and now has grown towards novel-length.  I have characters and a setting that didn't exist in the beginning.  I have an idea of where I want the story to end.  It's not where I'd hoped to be by now--I'd hoped to already have a fully realized outline and be ready to start writing--but it's something, and it hasn't hit a dead end yet.

How do you feel about outlining?  Is it a way of life for you, or is it more like pulling teeth?

The Importance of Voice

As I have been making my way through my October Madness, I've had some things I've suspected about myself as a writer clarified.  One, I deeply underestimate my ability to be creative and have allowed that to be a roadblock towards producing.  Two, voice is vitally important.

What is voice?  Voice is the language and cadence used when you tell a story.  In first-person or close third-person it is often the voice the viewpoint character.  The way voice is used can significantly add to the believability and realism of the character as well as letting the reader feel like they know this character.  They can hear the way they think.  If you do it right, they can begin to guess at what a character might say, or see, or notice.

There is also authorial voice.  I don't feel comfortable to address authorial voice, beyond saying that with some authors you can tell their writing any time, anywhere.  I do not believe that I have mastered authorial voice, nor am I entirely sure that I want to.  But character voice--narrative voice--is what makes the difference in my work between what is pedestrian and what is compelling.

When I am writing, if I can fall into a voice, it will draw me forward into the story in a way that straightforward telling does not.  It's almost like theater--the difference between performing the words of a script and becoming the person behind them.

I've done a decent amount of theater in my day, mostly musicals.  I have often had major roles, because I am a good singer.  When I've had those roles, I have certainly done my best.  I've tried to be the character, and I've done a good approximation of it.  What taught me the difference between that and what actually being a character can be was when I was in a non-musical play, cast into a small role that was on stage, not speaking, for nearly the entirety of an act.  What would this person do when standing around not really doing anything for half an hour?  What would she notice?  What would draw her eye?  What would she think about?

In that time, I was deeper inside my character than I ever was in a lead role.  I think that's what I need to transport to my writing.  The author is not the lead role.  The author doesn't need to twinkle and shine.  The author needs to step back and let the characters talk.  That's where the magic happens.

The Wonders of Microsoft Anna

So I've heard off and on for several years now that when you're editing, it really helps to read your work aloud.  For some reason, I am incredibly shy about hearing my own voice reading my own work.  I have no explanation for this, as I am a performer and love being on stage, but within the confines of my own room, I simply can't do it.  So, I never did.

Then, I heard about getting your computer to read it to you.  Odd concept, I thought.  Well, yesterday I tried it.  I downloaded a free program that gets this crazy lady called Microsoft Anna to read to me.  (There's probably a way to do this that's already on my computer, but I couldn't figure it out.)

She reads like, well, a computer.  It's not pretty.  There's no inflection.  Actually, worse, there's completely inappropriate inflection.  However, by listening with my eyes closed and not following on the screen, I found four separate places where my brain had simply either added a word it knew should be there, or ignored the extra word that shouldn't have been.

They were little words: the, to, her, but even though I'd read through the work numerous times, I never caught them.

I am totally sold.  I can't recommend either reading aloud yourself or getting your computer to do it for you enough.  I had no idea how much I was missing.

Review: "The 10% Solution: Self-editing for the Modern Writer" by Ken Rand

One of my most problematic tendencies as an author is to overwrite.  When I'm starting into a new piece, if there's a way to say something with four words instead of one, I'm likely to do it.  This is something I developed as a fledgling author back when I thought that if one adjective was good, then WOW, I could use EVEN MORE!!!  As I evolved--though practice, workshopping (both online and in-person), and study of how-to writing books--I learned the error of my ways.

Simply put, more is not better.  Precision is powerful.

Ken Rand's book, "The 10% Solution: Self-Editing for the Modern Writer," provides a framework to take your prose from verbose to streamlined in a direct, easy to follow format.  Let me be clear--this is not a book about plot, or characterization, or new ways to get in contact with your muse.  This is a book designed to clean up and polish your writing until it glows.

I wish I had found this book years ago.  I have learned, through lots of hitting and missing, many of the fundamentals, but seeing them laid out in front of me so clearly helped me to internalize them in a more concrete way than sort of hazily "knowing" them.

The title refers to the idea that your prose will be better if you can manage to cut 10% from your original draft.  It's not a specific goal, but an illustration of what you might achieve.  It also specifies that this is self-editing for the modern writer.  This is important, because the process involves using the "find" tool in your word processor so while it will work for the pen-and-paper types, it will be a lot more cumbersome.

There are a number of problem words that signal places where prose might not be strong.  This book helps you work through them in an organized fashion.  Mr. Rand also points out that it is up to the author to think through each instance, to be sure that changing the text will actually make things clearer, more immediate and active.

Another benefit of the 10% Solution is that it frees me up to be as overwrought as I want in my first draft.  I can write down many different images as I go and know that my editing process will allow me to go back and think about which is the right one to use in a given place.  Knowing that lets me move quickly without my internal editor shrieking obscenities as I go.  It will get its turn later.

I decided to try the 10% Solution on a piece of my own work from back when I was starting out.  I believe the piece is fatally flawed and unlikely to see the light of publication, but I wanted to see what happened when it had been edited using the 10% Solution.

The original piece was 5,000 words long.  When I was done, it clocked in at 3,400.  Obviously, 32% is a lot higher than the projected 10%, but, as I've previously mentioned, I'm quite wordy, especially my older work.

Below, I've included two examples of a scene section where the hero flees from an inn.  (Elia, for what it's worth, is the harp.)  The first version ran 126 words:

He quickly gathered what little was left of his supper: a crust of bread, a cube of pungent cheese, and an apple.  He laced Elia tightly into her case, grabbed up his sack, and slipped into the silent hallway.

With barely enough stealth as not to disturb the innkeeper, Bryon fled, down the stairs, through the common, and out to the stables.  Wingfala was awake, his eyes rolling, stamping at the muddy floor.  Bryon set the harp against the outside of the stall before entering to saddle the horse.

The darkness posed only small hindrance, for his hands knew their work, even without benefit of sight.  He moved quickly, and as he coaxed the bit between Wingfala's grinding teeth, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

The edited version of the same scene is 71 words long.

He stuffed the remains of supper into his sack, laced Elia into her case and slipped into the silent hallway.

Bryon fled down the stairs, through the common room, to the stables.  Wingfala stamped at the muddy floor, eyes rolling.  Bryon set the harp outside the stall before entering to saddle the horse.

The darkness posed small hindrance.  His hands knew their work.  He coaxed the bit between Wingfala's grinding teeth.

I am convinced that Ken Rand's "The 10% Solution" is a tool that would be useful to anyone wanting to clean up their writing, if they are just beginning or have been receiving positive comments from editors without any sales--even if they are already selling.  It never hurts to revisit those things we "know" in a new way.