Thursday, August 3

Tomorrow I'm off to the coast again. It's another Rockaway Beach weekend. There's only going to be six of us this time: the Oltions, Nina, Eric, Alan, and I. Small group, but there will be more room in that house. I'll be working on a new story and finishing the rewrite I failed to hand in last Tuesday :(

I'll be driving to coast after work tomorrow in my '93 Toyota Tercel. What a way to break in my new (used) car! This car has only 57,000 miles on it and it's the cleanest used car I've ever seen. The loan from the bank was taking so long to process I was starting to think I wouldn't have the car by Friday. Even though I could have gotten a ride with someone else going to Rockaway, it's still nice to have the car sitiuation fixed and the freedom of wheels back.

I'll write here again on Monday.

Have a great weekend.


Tuesday, August 8

Tonight I handed in a story to the workshop. 1200 words. It's a new story and not the rewrite of a previous story. I really don't know what I'm going to do with that rewrite. Probably recast it.
Rockaway was fun, just as all Rockaways are. I wrote a hundred words on Saturday. Yuck. I was in such a apathetic mood for most of the weekend.

Eric Witchey reminded me of my progress from the last two months. Sunday I wrote closer to a thousand words. Eric even showed me an excercise on finding the story on piece I'm working on. All of that was good.

I'd like to write about my charts and graphs in here soon. I've been keeping track of things. I've been slow, but better (if you can believe that ) than I've been for a long time.

More later.


Thursday, August 10

My first sale happened today!

Assistant editor, Rebecca McCabe, of Realms Of Fantasy sent me an e-mail to tell me Realms will send me a contract next week. My story was one that went missing back in February, hence the e-mail instead of an acceptance letter.

And let me tell you I'd like to see hard copy of this sale. It almost doesn't seem real yet. I read the e-mail once, stood up, and then had to read it again. My vision got blurry because of a mysterious moisture. I paced the room for a second and then jumped up and down. I screamed "yes!"

My neighbor and fellow Wordo/writer, Ray Vukcevich, came out of his apartment because of the noise. Had to tell him about it. Had to tell someone.

This news is still sinking in.

I'll write more in here after I reflect on this some more. :)


Sunday, August 13

On Thursday night I told a few people about my first sale. On Tuesday I'll tell the rest of the workshop. When we start at seven o' clock every Tuesday night, the first thing asked is "Does anyone have any news?" I've always wanted to report something. Now I can. :)

Several of us met at the cafe in Borders on Thursday. Moon (that's his last name, his first name is Dustan, but his friends call him Moon) bought me my coffee and cake. Moon is a new writer too. He sold to Strange New Worlds II and he is working on a fantasy novel right now. He encourages me a lot. His wife, Jewel, was also happy to hear about my sale.

I still need to e-mail Dean and Kris about my sale.
A few things about my story, "Messages." This is or was the oldest thing I had circulating through the markets. It was written in a college fiction writing class in '92 or '93. When I went to Clarion in '93 I rewrote it there---and I would not suggest to anyone to rewrite old stuff at Clarion, you want to write new stuff, but this is what I did for this story. The rewrite got a great response at Clarion. It is the story I am remembered for.

After Clarion when I moved to Eugene, I had it workshopped at the Tuesday night workshop. Then yet again at Damon and Kate's once-a-month workshop.

You know, I've never workshopped a story so much. I'll never workshop a story that much again. The main problem with the story was on the micro level, the line by line, the sentence by sentence writing. I'm a daydreaming perfectionalist, meaning I wish everything I do would come out beautiful and flawless. If it doesn't, subconciously (and as a defense mechanism) I want to close up shop. I was stubborn to learn how to rewrite and revise.

"Messages" has been to a total of fourteen markets. Early on when the story would get rejected, I would go through it line by line again before sending it to the next market. This also wouldn't be something I would do today. "Messages" has been to F & SF twice because of the change in editors. I even sent it to Writers Of The Future a second time last winter because Algis Budrys was back as head judge.
So this story was rejected thirteen times. Fourteen is a lucky number. AND this my FIRST submission EVER to Realms Of Fantasy.

Readers of this journal may remember "Messages" got a nice personal rejection letter from Darkling Plain late October of last year. I had Bruce Holland Rogers take a look at it, because the editors thought it could be developed more. Bruce thought the story was fine as is. He asked why I was sending to genre markets when it could be considered a literary piece.

His advice sounded right. I thought the fantasy element was slight, so I sent it to Rosebud. It was rejected. That's when I decided to send it to Realms of Fantasy. It was the one last genre market I wanted to try, even if the fantasy element was slight. I wasn't happy with the pay rates at some of the literary magazines, so I decided to give Realms a try.

The rest is history. :)

What is "Messages" about? It's a story about children dealing with mortality. It may sound like a downer story, but you'd have to read it to find out. For two boys on a lake dock, a bottle comes to them with messages from beyond. The messages come in the form of a voice sounding like wind blown across a pop bottle rim. While it's tragic, I don't call it a downer story. I look at it from the writer's perspective and there's some things I'm proud of in this story. I thought I nailed the characterization of their friendship. I thought I nailed the carefree childhood summer days. I thought I handled tough subject matter well.

What does selling my first story mean? It is a milestone. I can be in Good News From The Ego Shelf at Speculations. I can get the check framed with a note saying, "My first dollar," like Jerry Oltion did when he made his first sale. When I say I'm a writer, I can say I sold something. It doesn't mean the second story will be easy, but that remains to be seen. It means I should send more stories to Realms since editors usually like to build an audiance with a particular writer so they can sell more magazines. Once published it starts the ticking clock of the Cambell award for best new writer. I can read reviews of my story. I can start a brag shelf.

It doesn't mean the day to day writing will get any easier. In fact, I've been holding back on doing affirmations. Not quite in the style of Stuart Smally, the Saturday Night Live reoccuring character played my Al Franken, gosh darn it. :) I guess I'm thinking more of meditation and visualization before I write. Nothing succeeds like success and I could use this sale to remind myself that I can do it, that I can write a story and sell it. I just have to keep going and make progress. I need to maximize this sale, so that it gives me the fuel to keep going a long ways.

I now need to get some writing done today. I have another story to hand in on Tuesday.

More later.


Tuesday, August 22

Bruce Holland Rogers is quite a guy. I had told him about my sale last Monday. At the workshop the next night Bruce sat at one end of the table with a collection of plastic champagne glasses. I gave my news and received applause and then a champagne toast. Yeah, Bruce is quite a guy:)

Devon Monk's story is in the October issue of Realms of Fantasy. She brought contributor copies last Tuesday. "River Woman" is a workshop story and I look forward to reading it in print. The artwork for the story looks great.

The contract for my story says my story should be in the December 2000 issue or the Feburary 2001 issue. When I get my contributor copies I'll know which issue.

More later. And maybe, just maybe, I'll write about something else besides this sale! :)


Tuesday, August 29

Perhaps you're wondering about my story a week, Clarion style goal. I did hand in two stories in the last month. One was for the Hartwell workshop on the coast. The other was for the Tuesday night workshop--got that critqued two weeks ago.

I just had a long stretch of no writing, the longest since I started writing at least a page a day in June. From August 8 to the 27th (20 days!), no writing. Even after my sale! A sale still doesn't guarentee me writing. It still makes me smile, but that doesn't get the work done.

As I was saying, I must begin again. I felt so much better when I was writing. The anxiousness I'm feeling now just won't do.

I'd like to update this journal more often as well. I have a lot of entries to archive. August is almost over and I haven't even taken care of the July entries. I've never allowed this much to pile up before.

But I digress and back to the topic of a story a week. I'm working towards that goal. I'm just gathering up that discipline and training those muscles.

One last thing. It was fourteen rejections for "Messages." I had a rejection from Omni early in the submission stage of that story.

More later.