Today a list came out announcing Finalists and Semi-Finalists for the Writers of the Future Contest, and I’ve known my status for over a month now. My finalist call actually came on Thanksgiving Day, however, that call went to my voicemail at work. I dragged my butt into work that Friday (I almost took the day off), and there in my voicemail was the message that my story was a finalist! I was so glad that I’d gone to work that day. It’s been very difficult to not blurt it out to people, but now that the coordinating judge let the names loose, I’m free to at least talk about being a finalist!

So, what does all this mean? The Writers of the Future Contest (WotF) is the best known contest for writers in the science fiction and fantasy genre looking to turn Pro. The contest is judged blind (meaning only the contest administrator knows which manuscript is yours, the judges do not). The manuscripts (I’ve heard that over 1,000 entries are submitted each quarter) are read by the coordinating judge who chooses 8 finalists. Those 8 stories are then sent on to 4 judges who rank them. The top 3 out of those 8 stories are called “winners” and definitely published in the yearly anthology. If there is room in the anthology there is a chance that a “non-winning” story could be published in the anthology.

So, my finalist story is now being looked at by four more judges (these judges are all huge names in the sci-fi/fantasy world) and I just have to hope that they like it enough so that I place in the top 3.

What does winning the contest mean besides the obvious professional publication?

1. Money. WotF pays more than almost any other short story publication, and even more if you’re the Gold Award winner. The Gold Award is about the same as many advances for a full novel!

2. Workshop. The contest pays for all its winners to attend a week long workshop followed by an awards ceremony usually held in Hollywood. They pay for the airfare, limo from the airport, hotel, and the workshop.

3. Networking. Not only the other winners, but one-on-one time with professionals during the workshop and I’ve heard at the bar after hours.

4. A wonderful professional writing credit that will help when I submit other short stories and novels to publishers.

So, at this point I have to wait and see if my story made top 3, hopefully I’ll know soon. And one more thing: I can’t thank Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith enough, since I wrote my finalist story after taking their short story workshop!

This post is way easier to write than the life goals I just posted. Here I can really put some numbers down, and shoot for some quantifiable results.

Production:

1. Write daily with an average word count of 2,000 words. This isn’t too difficult for me, but may be ambitious depending on how crazy the day job gets. Other factors include those days when I’m trying to plot, or life happens. Maybe I’ll go for this then: 2,000 words/day, or 10,000 words/week. I know they aren’t the same, but at least with 10,000 words a week it gives me some leeway.

2. Short Stories – complete 12 short stories. This should be workable, and I would have set it higher if I didn’t want to concentrate on novels this year. In 2011 I stopped working on novels (the closest I came was a novella, but a short one really).

3. Novels – complete 3 novels. This too, shouldn’t be too difficult as I already have the ideas put together in my head or already somewhat plotted out. This gives me 3 months to write the novel, and 1/2 month planning in the beginning, and a 1/2 month for revisions at the end. This may be ambitious, but it’s something to aim for.

General:

4. Workshops and Conventions. I almost feel like I’m cheating here. I’m already signed up for World Con in Chicago as well as World Fantasy in Toronto. I’d love to attend the Kris and Dean Character Voice and Setting Workshop in March, but depending on how something else works out I may need to axe that one. Hopefully I’ll know soon if that work shop will be feasible for me this year. So, I think this goal is attainable one way or another, meaning: attend at least 1 workshop and 2 conventions.

5. Submit. Everything I start I must finish and then submit until the appropriate markets are exhausted. At that point, I’ll dive into e-publishing, but only once I’m satisfied the pro markets and select semi-pro markets are done.

6. Social Networking. Keep the website, blog, and Facebook up to date as well as Tweet a little more. This also means that I need to link these things so they update each other. I will also comment on other people’s blogs a little more. This is more of an ambiguous goal, but I’ll try to be better!

So, these are the writing goals I can think of right now, but it’s a starting point and now it’s been written down so I’m stuck!

I like the way Dean Wesley Smith discusses goals on his blog. He further breaks down goals by pointing out what should seem obvious regarding goals you can’t control. Things such as: I’ll sell a book to a publisher. That is more of a dream than a goal. A goal is something more concrete (at least in my writing world), something like: I will write and submit 20 short stories this year.

Anyway, I’m going to post two more times on goals: Life goals and then writing goals.

There are two things in my life that, if I am unable to perform or take part in them on a daily basis, I become increasingly (one or more of the following things):  dick-ish, depressed, anxious, short, sarcastic, and probably a few other choice words. I know, if anyone who actually knows me reads this, they’ll say, so how is it different than how you are on a daily basis? Ha. Ha.

What are these activities?

1) Writing.  This I have to perform each day or I really become a jerk. Yes, I think about writing–plotting, characters, scenes, dialogue, etc. almost all the time.  And ideas?  Shoot, they are a constant flood.  What needs to get done each day is new words of fiction.  Word count? At least 500 words.  My most recent example of this was when we had family over and for three days straight did zero writing. I became detached and a little depressed. Finally, I had to back out of a trip they made to town so I could get in some quality writing time. While they were gone I managed to crank out 2,000 words–not bad, and I felt a lot better!

2)  Working out/exercise.  This doesn’t have to be every day, but if I allow it to go beyond one day off I start feeling gross and out of shape.  People at the day job always laugh when I tell them I got fat at one point in my life, but it’s true. I’m very comfortable between the weights of 145 – 155, but during my year of being overweight I bulked up to over 185 pounds.  I didn’t have a huge belly, but when I saw a photo of myself I realized right then I had a problem.  I’d always been slender, but in my mid to late twenties I let myself go a bit once my Navy stint was over and I wasn’t exercising and I ate really bad stuff.  Once I saw the problem, I fixed it and haven’t looked back.  I dropped all the weight and then some to become the (somewhat) average looking person I am today.

I hesitate to call writing and exercising addictions, since I feel that would be somewhat disrespectful to those who actually are addicts.  I kind of liken it to people who claim an allergy or some malady, but don’t truly have anything wrong with them.  Oh, I’m ADD, or I can’t have gluten (whatever the crap that is), etc., etc.  I could go on and on about this particular topic, but that has to be for another post I suppose.  Anyway…

Writing and exercise relieve stress and are very therapeutic.  Boy, I’ve written a few pieces that will never see the light of day because they disturb me, but did those pieces help get a few things out of my system? Yes. Did lifting weights and running for miles help drain stress? Yes.  I’ve also noticed that running is a great time for me to work out writing problems and roadblocks. I mentioned that in a much earlier post.

So, if I am to be addicted, in the every day sense, not the clinical sense, I could choose worse things than writing and working out.  In fact, I’ll probably get quite a bit of both done today being that it’s a day off from the day job, and it’s Thanksgiving!  I know that if I don’t work out that I will feel like a bloated out of shape monster later.  So P90X it is!

Anyway, have a great Thanksgiving!

Okay, so when I first meet people I tend to hang back and take things in, and learn my audience.  I have always thought this to be a wise approach, but when I start laying in the zingers and quick one-liners, people are always amazed.  It seems that I also take this approach to social networking online.  I’m not the type of person who spews forth everything I’m doing all the time.  If I don’t have anything to say, or I don’t think I have anything to add that is worthwhile, I don’t.  Some people post non-stop about what they’re doing, where they are, who they’re doing it with, etc.  I’m simply not like that.

If I post an update it’s usually in reaction to something I saw or read, something that has moved or touched me, or it’ll be some long overdue update on my life.  Once in a while I’ll even try to post something humorous.

As this is a life and writing blog, I shy away from politics, economy, and folderol of that nature.  I don’t think it serves me well to spout off my opinions on those topics.  If people are reading this they probably don’t care to read my opinions, or if they already know me well, then, I guess they already know my views on politics, etc.

I have stopped following blogs I really enjoyed because of the political bullshit they sling around.  I originally followed those blogs because I was interested in their lives and their writing. Go push your agenda somewhere else, or here is something:  go do something about it rather than just bitch online.

So, back to social networking (strange interlude complete).  I need a process, much as I have with writing.  Social networking for me is an afterthought.  My first thought is to write new words of fiction each day.  I mean, do people really care what I think or do on a daily basis? Probably not.  I often wonder how people who claim to be writers get any actual writing done other than blogging, tweeting, emailing, etc.

I work a full time job that consists of basically 12 hour days (commute time is included, 1 hour each way), 5 days a week. I get home, work out for an hour, clean up, eat, spend time with my wife, and then write the rest of the evening.  How many hours are there in a day?  Now, many other “writers” work full time jobs, but they also are quite prolific on the social networking front.  How do they do it?  Even if they were speedy writers, I find it hard to believe they write new fiction each day. What, 250 words maybe?  That is one page. Not bad, but not prolific. I keep veering off topic a bit, but my point remains, when it comes to social networking, I simply run out of steam for it.  The fact that I’m wasting so many words on this makes me wonder if my fiction writing today will suffer.

Now, if I were to tweet, Facebook, Google+, blog, email, update my website, etc. how much time would that consume? It would have to be two hours or so, and I simply don’t have that kind of time each day. Perhaps one day once I retire from the day job (about 10 years out) I’ll be able to tackle all this stuff, but for now sitting in the chair writing new words of fiction each day suits me just fine.  I’ll simply social network here and there, but probably more than I’ve done in the past.

Now it’s time to get some real writing done.

What do I expect from the convention?

1) Well, the list of panels is also very impressive and it seems as if I’ll be spending a lot of time with those. I’m trying not to think about the person who will no doubt be annoying everybody else at these panels. But, despite any annoyances, I know I’ll learn a lot from the panels. These sound good to me as well as a host of others: “The Tension Between Art & Commerce” and “Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy.”

2) I want to make contacts. I’ll pitch my work to editors and agents if it feels right, but I’m not going to push it. I’d really just like to get to know people in the industry, and who knows, if they think I’m interesting maybe an agent will want me to send them some of my work, or offer representation, or maybe an editor will want me to send them something.

3) I want to have a good time. It’d be really easy to turn this into a stressful event, but like I wrote above, I’m not there to push or peddle anything. I’m looking forward to hanging around other writers and sharing conversation and drinks.

I hope to make some new friends and contacts at World Fantasy, so what am I prepping? Nothing really, just myself and my expectations. I also figure the con is a good impetus for me to blog a little more and if I manage to have time perhaps give a small daily update while I’m there. We’ll see though, I’m not always great at updating the blog!

I had a short story (novelette really) receive Honorable Mention at the Writers of the Future Contest for the 3rd 2nd quarter, and I just got back from David Farland’s Professional Writers Workshop in Dallas, Texas. I met many wonderful people and had a great time–and learned a great deal!

I’ll write more on my experiences during the workshop this week. But now it’s back to the manuscript and major overhauling/revisions.

I’m hoping to attend one of those workshops in the near future, but this year I’ll probably have to just try for the week long Orson Scott Card workshop. Maybe next year I’ll have enough time off saved up to go to the six week Clarion workshop. Of course, I’d have to be accepted to these workshops, so I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m hoping my writing is decent enough, or has at least improved enough by application time to be accepted!

I was never attracted to short stories growing up. Maybe I was one of the few who didn’t have a short attention span and preferred novels. <shrug> Now though, I see the merit in pursuing this form of story. So, I’ve submitted a story to the Writers of the Future Contest and as I mentioned in a previous post didn’t even receive an honorable mention. I’ve re-examined the story and identified why a reader may not have wanted to go beyond the first couple of pages. Heck, maybe not even the first page. I’ve fixed those problems, but before I was able to identify them, I had ordered a couple of books that really helped me.

I was excited when Creating Short Fiction, by Damon Knight, Storyteller, by Kate Wilhelm, and Reading Like A Writer, by Francine Prose showed up on my doorstep. Knight and Wilhelm helped to found the Clarion workshop, so I was very interested in what they had to say. After reading their books I knew exactly what was wrong with my short story and have a much improved opening and complete story.

After having written a couple of novel length stories, tackling my first short story was difficult, and forced me to write more efficiently. I believe the short story is much more difficult to get right than a novel. In a novel, the writer has time to let things develop over the course of many chapters, and indulge in minor characters and side plots. In a short story there is little or no room for any of that.

Well, off to read a little Stephen Baxter, Manifold Time, before I hit the hay.

Advantages:  Learning economy of words–short of poetry, I can’t think of a better way to learn to be succinct and get the most across in the shortest amount of words. Also, the aforementioned complete story in the space of maybe 5k words. The short story doesn’t allow boredom. One can simply finish a story and move on to a nice new shiny idea and then another, and another. The blood, sweat, and tears just isn’t there in a short story as it is in a novel.  Just the sheer number of words the novel requires makes the short story very satisfying to get ideas out.

Disadvantages:  Developing multiple characters and stretching out. There are times I just want to keep going on a certain topic, and then I realize I need to keep it going or the short story will turn into a novelette, and morph into a novella, or novel. I love to write from multiple POVs, meaning: I like to have multiple POV characters and write chapters based on their POV. Similar to George R R Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, but of course I could only hope to write half as well as GRRM.

On the surface, it may seem there are more advantages to the Short Story, but the chance to fully develop characters and be able to live with them for thousands and thousands of words in a novel is very appealing to me. I find it very hard to get in the mind of a character in a short story, and maybe I’m just missing the point in that form. I’ve read that in Science Fiction short stories it’s more the gimmick that the story evolves from, and in the end the character learns something meaningful. I know that is a simplification, but I’m just too lazy to quote from the actual text.

Well, I’m going to keep plugging away on the short stories. I do feel they are a great way to break into writing–at least into Science Fiction and Fantasy. On a related note, I got notification back from the Writers of the Future Contest that I did not win, and in fact, I didn’t even place in the competition. The good news is that I submitted the first short story I had ever written and the coordinating judge for the contest, K.D. Wentworth (a past winner and published writer of fantasy and sci-fi) submitted stories five (5) times before she won. So, I don’t feel bad, I’m still learning and with each story I can only get better.

So for now, I’m busy writing short stories, and revising the ones I’ve finished. I still need to finish revisions on my novel Progeny, which I’m becoming more excited about revisiting.

I’ve become fascinated (after writing some sci-fi short stories) with writing a Science Fiction novel. I’ve been tossing some ideas around in my head, but decided I needed to re-educate myself on modern physics. It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve taken a college level physics class and I’m quite sure there have been major advances since then….

For some light reading I chose Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku. Very easy read so far, it’s definitely written for the layman, and at times I find myself wanting a little more number crunching and pure science. Overall I’d recommend the book if you are at all interested in cosmology but are afraid to pick up a book on it for fear it will be over your head.

Alistair

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted to the blog, but I’ve been updating my word counts daily on the main webpage. I’ve been working on another science fiction short story to enter into the Writers of the Future Contest. I submitted a story back in September for the same contest, and should be hearing within the next month whether or not my story has been chosen. I’m a little nervous, but I know that either way I’ll continue to learn the craft of writing, and improve with each story I write. For those who are not aware, this contest has been discovering new writers for over 25 years now, and is judged by well-known and respected names in the Science Fiction and Fantasy communities. To be a finalist in the competition opens quite a few doors, not to mention publication in an annual anthology.

Once I’m finished with the current short story, I’ll be working on the revisions for the Progeny novel. I completely rewrote the beginning a couple months back and I think it has provided some grit and immediacy to the entire story. I’ve learned that revising is difficult. It isn’t hard for me to chop off words, or make subtle changes.  The hard part for me is the macro editing: looking at the entire story and seeing how all the pieces fit, and if they’re all doing what they are supposed to be doing, as well as knowing when to add or subtract big pieces from the story.  I thought I’d be able to have the first revision to Progeny done by the New Year, but….

Life happens, and it has happened in good ways for me:

I got married to my long time girlfriend on November 1st, 2009 in Washington, D.C., which was an amazing event in my life. We then took a transatlantic voyage on the Queen Mary 2 from New York to England, and spent a few days in London. An incredible honeymoon, and an absolutely awesome way to begin our marriage.

The month leading up to the wedding was full of stress however, as our day job didn’t see fit to cooperate with our carefully laid plans for her to move down to Northern Virginia.  In the end it all worked out, but getting to that point was pure hell. So, with my personal life at an all time high, I’m poised now to enter a very creative phase, and I’ve even felt an itch to compose some music again, but we’ll see.  I don’t want other creative endeavors to take away from my writing, so the music just may need to take a back seat until a few things are completed.

So, now that my life has somewhat settled down again, I believe I can find the time to blog on a more regular basis!

Alistair