Sorry for the silence yesterday.  Kindle Fire has shipped but sometimes things still get busy at work.

...apparently.

Computer problems last night, took hours trying to fix.  I think the battery is about shot in that laptop.  That's my best guess. I hope it holds, I really can't afford to buy another computer right now.

I received another rejection, this time for a flash fiction piece. I'm disappointed, of course, but not shocked.  I'm still trying to get my head around flash fiction as a format.  I guess the same could be said about my short stories, none of them have sold yet, either :)

Managing discouragement -in other words, growing a thicker skin- is an important part of being a writer.  The reasons for rejection are leigon but they are rarely personal.  Sometimes, they aren't even related to the quality of the work, so far as I can tell.

Then there is the normal shocks of life that come to everyone, writer or not: money problems, job problems, relationship problems.  It can be tempting to forget writing. To accept that you're not good enough. To stop trying. To curl up with a book or a movie instead of staying up and trying to rewrite something for the sixth time.

I don't know how to tell anyone how to get published. But I have had a lifetime of rejection and I might be able to help other writers deal with it.

1.  Do the work.  That means, write as best you can.  Proofread, catch all the typos you are able to see.  Learn how to form sentences and paragraphs.  Study great writers of the past and the present.  Write from your heart, write the things you love, not what people tell you is hot.

2.  Try again.  Send your work out. As soon as you get a reject, while the sinking feeling is in your chest, while the stinging pain is still alive, send that manuscript somewhere else.  Duotrope.com is the best resource I've found for finding markets.  Ideally, you've picked out all the pro markets for your book or short story.  When you get rejected by one, immediately send it out again.

3.  It's not about you.  If you've done the work, written as best as you can, if you used complete sentences and punctuated the way Strunk and White said...then it's not about you. It's about THEM. What they were looking for, what their mood was, what their personal tastes are.  You're not likely to get a Hunter S. Thompson rejection letter strewn with expletitives and insults. No one has time anymore.  So it's not personal.  That doesn't mean THEY are stupid or wrong, either.  It just was the wrong story for the wrong market or for the wrong person. See step 2, try again.

4.  Write something you love. If you get rejected after writing something you were 'supposed' to write, this is critical.  But you should be writing what you love all along.  Don't try to be literary if you don't like literary fiction.  Don't write mysteries if you don't love mysteries.  Write a poem, create a bad ass character and have him/her kick some righteous ass, write something for yourself.  Reward yourself. Remind yourself that you love writing.  Then, send it out.  Who knows?

5.  There are no consequences for failing except the ones you put on yourself.  This may not apply to full-time writers. But I suspect, even for them, they can't afford to think about consequences when they write or submit.  So you submittted a story or novel and it got turned down.  Big deal.  No one is going to curse your name and automatically throw your next work in the trash as soon as they see your by line.  You didn't waste your time, no time spent writing honestly and the best you could is wasted.  You wrote.  You learned. You will get better.  You tried, you failed. Big deal.  See point 2, try again.

6.  Write something upbeat.  It can be cathartic to immediately write something dark and emo.  Do it if you have to but immediately CHOOSE to write something brighter right afterwards.  Optimism is a choice, it doesn't come naturally to everyone.  It can be a bold choice, a revolutionary choice.  A happy ending isn't a cliche, it is defiance.  Defy your failure, defy your mood, defy your pain.  Write the world the way it should be, not the way it is.  What you write can affect your mood just as surely as the other way around.

Well, that's all I have for now. I hope it helps.

I used to have a great memory.  I mean, just amazing. I ruled at trivia contests.  I think I still hold a 'Quiz Bowl' record at my old high school. Which is kind of cool. I like to think of my brain as being a huge CD player, with one heck of a random play feature. But now I'm older. I have more stuff in my head and it gets lost sometimes.

Just a quick note. I got a rejection back from Clarkesworld.  (Man, they were fast. They said no but they said it quickly. For that I'm grateful).  I'm not sure where that story should end up but I'll send it out again this week.

I finished another short story, Baby Sitting and I'm sending it out to my critique group.  I enjoyed writing it and the world that exists around it.  If it goes over well, I may write more in that milieu. 

I'm also inching closer to the one month mark. I said I wasn't going to do any editing on Mageborn Mechanic until a month had gone by.  I'm guessing around Thanksgiving, I'll be able to pull it out and give it a read-through.

All that aside, I still have a friend's novel to get through and critique so I'll be doing that tonight and tomorrow.

A combination of factors is poking me to changing my plans for November.  I'm still committed to applying to Clarion West and I still plan on writing short stories this month but I'm thinking this might be the right month to self publish Smooth Running and possibly a few other items (like some short stories I believe in, as Kindle Singles).

I don't yammer about it here but right now I'm working on the Kindle Fire.  I'm biased but I think this is the best reader/video/game player on the market.  But more than that, Amazon is selling a Kindle for $79. That's only $20 more than a new video game like, say, Knights of the Old Republic MMO.  I think this cheap Kindle and the Kindle Fire are going to be everywhere.

But that's not all.  Barnes and Noble is also going to be selling new Nooks. I haven't played with them but I'm sure they're going to sell well as well.  Not to mention the iPad 2.  My wife is wild for one and I'm sure she's not going to be the only person.  In addition to Apple's own eReader, the Kindle application runs like a dream on the iPad.

All of this means, to me, that this holiday season we're going to see an explosion of new ebook consumers.  

In addition, stories aren't flowing out of me as fast and as easily as they did in April. I'm not worried about it, far from it...I've got story and novel ideas coming out my ears...but since nothing's burning a hole in my brain saying 'write me', I'm going to use my time to edit a couple novels and some longer short stories.

When I'm satisfied with them and after an editor I hire looks them over, I'm going to publish them on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. (Possibly Apple as well, if they're not jerks about it).  I have cover art commissioned for two novels and I'm setting up a business account to handle payments, once they come in.

This is the moment, this is the now for any writer who's got work done that they believe in but they haven't been able to sell.  Go now, get your best story or best book and get it published yourself.  Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing is user friendly. So is Smashwords and Lightning Source.

Now, to see if I can follow my own advice :)  Wish me luck.

Not a lot to report today. I got a few more pages done on a new Mageborn short story. I'm going to write a bunch of these, I think. I like the magic and modern day mix.  It should be good practice and expand the world I've made.  Who knows, maybe one of these stories will make it into my Clarion West application.

Well, this is starting to be a series: Learn from Mark's mistakes.  :)

Last night I was going along pretty well with my new short story. (I'll update the page count tab when I get back to the Throne of Writing(tm) tonight.)  Then I came to a section where my protagonist slapped a female co-worker on the butt.  And I immediately went into a dither of political correctness.  I don't know why.  I suspect I envisioned readers who might be offended by it or who I THOUGHT would be offended.  But I went back and changed the line so he merely imagined spanking her.

As soon as I did that, my brain shut off. My subconscious said, basically, 'ok, fine. If you don't like what I'm coming up with, I'll go do something else. See ya.'  And that was it. Everything I tried to write after changing that line came out crappy and strained.

What did I do?*  I censored myself. I second-guessed my own instincts for what was appropriate for those two characters.  I basically slapped my own creativity across the face. No wonder it slunk off.

The best (worst?) part is that after thinking about it and talking about it with my wife, I realized what I'd done and what I needed to do to fix it. (Her reaction and her next line of dialog put their relationship in perspective beautifully)

Look, I say a lot 'just write' but I sometime find it easier to know the answer than to do the answer.  So, here's some more advice that hopefully I'll take myself: Don't censor your characters.  Especially during the first draft. Let them be rude, slutty, drunken, violent, sarcastic...whatever is right for them.  Those first impulses may not be pretty but they're real.  And we want to create characters and situations that are real.

With Angel Odyssey, I workshopped the first few chapters to three different groups.  Most of the women in them disliked the crudity of Jacob's brothers, the passivity of his mother and the casual violence of his father.  I listened to their critiques instead of to my own voice of who and what they were.  I softened their characters and weakened the story as a result.  Now I have to go back and re-write from my second draft and hope I can recapture what I was trying to say.  

Listen, these are your stories. Not anyone else's.  And the one thing we have to sell that no one else is bringing to the market is ourselves. Our voice, our ideas, our unique, quirky and occasionally politically incorrect subconsious.

Don't censor your work.  Let your editor do that. That's what he gets paid for. :)





*Apart from creating a character who sleeps with co-workers and gives them surprise spankings at work.

Got a rejection for an anthology I submitted to, but it was a 'good rejection', he liked my story but there were other stories he liked better.  Sokay.  I sent two more short stories out into the wild. And I'll re-submit the rejected story to Fantasy magazine, see what they say. Such is the aspiring author's life. :)

I struggled last night with starting a new short story.  I'm probably getting in my own way. What I should be doing is just sitting down and writing, letting the story flow out of me instead of trying to summon it out of nothing.  I know this but still...  

Part of it comes from pressure I'm putting on myself.  I'm writing with an eye towards submitting my three best short stories as part of my Clarion West application.  I REALLY want to get in this year.  The competition is going to be intense but I want this so much I can taste blood when I write.  Which is an icky thought, now that I said that out loud.  Anyway, that's why I'm clamping down on myself. I'm not just writing to entertain myself (and hopefully readers), I'm trying to impress people and that's got to be a recipie for failure.

So what do I do?  Well, I'll spend my commute time thinking about themes and plots that might catch a reviewer's eye but when it comes 7pm and I go sit in my Throne of Writing(tm), I need to stop thinking.  I need to just write and trust in my ability.  Otherwise I'll end up like the centipede who can't walk because he started worrying about how to avoid tripping on all his feet.

If you're like me, more of an exploratory writer than an outliner, just write.  Worry about what to write before you sit down, let your subconscious work on the problems. When your seat his the chair, stop worrying. Just write.

That's how I got out of my little mini-block. I couldn't decide on what I SHOULD write, so instead, I wrote a scene what I'd want to read myself if I was browsing through Asimov's.  Lo and behold, I got a character, a conflict and a hook that might just turn into something cool.

Oh and one PS, if you get a story idea, write it down. No matter where you are or what your'e doing. I spent a hour last night trying to recapture an idea I had last week.  Maybe it will come back, maybe it won't.  Don't let that happen to you, if you think of something, jot it down.  

I had a nice post half written about my trip to San Diego for World Fantasy and for a little vacation.  The stupid ipage weebly site refreshed itself halfway through and I really don't know if I'll have the time to re-create it.

Stupid, stupid ipage.

Ok, short version:  San Diego is awesome at the end of October/Early November. Go. There's lots to see, great weather and not a lot of tourists.

World Fantasy is also awesome, though I remain painfully inept at putting myself forward to established authors and I am also still very uncomfortable at parties.  This is a pity, since those are the two best reasons to attend World Fantasy Con.  Seriously, if you want to meet other authors -not to mention agents, publishers and editors- you owe it to yourself to go.  The attendance cap is low, so you can actually talk to your favorite author...unless he's Neil Gaiman.  Poor bastard.

I spent most of the Con attending author readings, which avoided my crippling fears of large crowds. It also let me show support for other new writers, since most of the readings were by less-established writers for some reason.  The readings by Peter Beagle and Connie Willis were wonderful (and Neil Gaiman's reading was both massively attended and deservedly so) but for me the breakout stars of World Fantasy were the inkpunks. (http://www.inkpunks.com/)  All of them were great, but Sandra Wickham's story made me laugh, both of Christie Yant's stories blew me away and Wendy Wagner brought down the house with one of the best Lovecraft stories since H.P. was a lonely shut in.  Great, great stuff.

I did get to meet a few people I knew and reconnect with a few friends. That was nice.  I also got to chat a bit with the funny and surprisingly deep David Maliki (of www.wondermark.com and the Machine of Death antholoy fame), I was able to express my appreciation to Kate Elliot and Michael Stackpole and bump fists with Sam Sykes and Dan Wells...didn't get to spend enough time with those guys, they're great people and great writers.

Will I go next year?  Probably not.  I don't feel like going to Toronto in late October and I remain painfully shy, despite my stunning sartorial style and my acting ability (I can pretend to be fun, funny and charming. Honest, I can. I just can't maintain it for long) I had a rough time of it...though it was easier than last year.  I hope it will get better the more I attend, we'll see.  I may go to 2013, if the world is still around, since I've never been to England.  I expect I'll be at WorldCon next year instead.

But seriously, go checkout the inkpunks site and the authors there.