My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
Writing
I am gearing up to write my story for the Raconteur Press anthology, “Or All Will Burn…” Due at the end of the month. Fortunately, I work well under pressure.
I am also continuing to work on the outline for An Understanding. Life does get in the way, though, so it’s not been as quick as I would like. I took some time over the past week to sit down and write down some information on my characters, the setting, etc. I would eventually like to present the outline itself for critique, and I need that information both for myself, and for any potential reviewers.
Reviewers? Yes. I am hoping to expand the outline to the point where it is a complete story in and of itself (albeit a very simple and direct one). If there are structural issues with it, I would like to identify them now, not after I’ve got the first draft complete.
Speaking of which…
Editing
I had a two and a half hour manuscript evaluation call with Alice Sudlow last night. She’s a wonderful person and a terrific editor - very easy to work with. I hired her to help do developmental edits for Sigils, and I am glad I did. She identified several issues that I knew were issues, and plenty of other things I need to pay attention to when I dive into my next draft. I'm looking forward to going through her detailed notes and using them to create a better story - both for Sigils and for future novels.
I’ve got the recording of the meeting, she’s working up notes to send me, and in the meantime, I am not thinking about Sigils. I need to get back to looking at reviews and spending time in a few other short stories, both writing my own and reviewing work by others.
And for the record: doing critique for others on their work has definitely helped me improve my own writing. I have a half-completed story - “Oden’s Lie” - about a scholar finding a magical sword. I set it aside last year because while I liked the characters and the premise, it just wasn’t going in a direction that felt right to me, but I couldn’t explain why it felt wrong.
I was thinking about it on the way home from vacation, and I realized that it has the exact same problem that I pointed out in a critique I did for someone else. In that case, the author had a great character and a fantastic setup - but while interesting things were happening to the MC, the MC wasn’t demonstrating agency. They were not making any decisions or influencing the story at all. A small change led to a much more emotionally satisfying story.
Boom! “Hey, Sam. Does your character in ‘Oden’s Lie’ lack agency, perhaps? Hmm? Maybe you’re missing something important, like, oh, I don’t know. Maybe a decision that he has to make?” Yep. That was it. Took about 30 seconds to sketch out a new idea for the midpoint of the story that I’m confident will make it much more engagine.
Find a writer’s group. Do critiques. They’ll help you.
Reading
I’m reading Ghost Stories of the Appalachians now. Not quite what I was expecting. It’s less about the stories themselves, and more about sightings, reports, investigations, etc. Still interesting, but I was hoping for good legends and lore. C’est la vie.
I’m queueing up a bunch of reading about mid-19th century Pittsburgh as well, to help prepare myself to write An Understanding. That’s research, though, not entertainment. I still want to check out Dragonesque once I finish my ghost stories.
Other
Back from vacation, as I said, which means back to the grind. We’re seeing our two youngest off to college in the next two weeks, which means my wife and I will be “empty nesters” on training wheels. All three of our kids are within an hour of home, though, so it’s not like they’re really gone… but it will be a huge adjustment for all of us.
Aside from that, it’s the usual melange of work, non-profit stuff, church, and politics. Hopefully we’ll settle into a new routine by the end of the month, because all this day-to-day changes and decision making wears me down quickly. It’s a lot easier to handle the inevitable disruptions to your life when you at least have a core of stability to fall back on.
Good stuff. A good editor like that is gold. As an editor, I strive to be that. As a writer, I cherish those golden editors.
You should check out the FoxFire books. They are all created by highschool student interviewing relatives and other elder folk in the Appalachian area. Recipes, ghost stories, how they did things, all in story form. There are 11 books that we have, there may be more. But some awesome stories and research material "Straight from the horse's mouth."