Sunday, April 1

Another story in the mail this weekend. And that's no April fool.


Monday, April 2

What a sorry excuse for a journal entry yesterday. To elaborate, I sent a 1000 word story, "Love's Atmosphere," (and right now that title makes me cringe) to Writers of The Future. I hate sending a short-short to that contest. I'd rather send something with more structure, but at least I got one in this quarter.

The TOC of the new Sff.Net anthology has been posted. Jay Lake, a new member of The Wordos, has made his first professional sale to that anthology. He's one of the Portland people who drive down each week. And he's been handing in a story almost every week.

Speaking of stories handed in to the workshop, a quarter just ended. Last quarter, Jan-March, 45 stories critiqued. That's about 3.46 stories a week (math by Eric Witchey), down from 55 the quarter previously. Still not bad.

The calander promises more stories to be handed in. Some of them from me.


Sunday, April 8

Got a rejection over the weekend. Realms said no on "Eternity Serves Fate." Now I gotta pick a new market for this one. They even apologized for the long response time, although I didn't think it was long at all. Can't compare everyone to Gordon Van Gelder.

What else happened this weekend? I got another car. Last night, as a matter of fact. Again, a Toyota Tercel. This time a '92. Blue and not that seafoam green. I'll watch out for semi-trucks with this one. :-)

And I turned 32 today. I don't feel like I'm in my thirties. Maybe that's a good thing. Then again, what did I expect? It certainly isn't old. What is old? Is it all state of mind? Oh my, I have no idea where I'm going with this . . .

Cheers.


Thursday, April 12

We had a special guest visit the workshop on Tuesday. Agent Don Maass, one of the bigger agents out there, I think. He's at least professional and knowledgeable. He seems to know publishing. Take a look in Locus and see how many times his agency is mentioned in People & Publishing. I bet the Donald Maass Agency is mentioned once in every issue. His first non-fiction book: The Career Novelist is a valuable book. He has a new one coming out this summer. It's called: Writing The Breakout Novel.

Don watched us do our thing. We did the news portion of the workshop and then jumped into the round-robin critiquing. On a night when we have a guest (which really isn't often) we have more attendees than usual. I didn't take count, but I bet we had thrity or more. Lately we've been getting close to twenty people a workshop, so on the night with Don Maas we also had the people that don't make it so often.

After the critique, Don talked about Writing The Breakout Novel and took questions. I'm going to get this book when it comes out. Sounds like it's loaded with pointers and good advice.

Here's some tidbits from my notes: Breakout novels have 30, 40, or 50 things in common. Strength is in the character. Layered plotting--many things going on at once. Doesn't have to be grand scale, world-hangs-in-the-balance stakes. Characters have inner conflicts that aren't easily resolved and are emotionally invested in the situation.

50 things! That's a lot of stuff. Perhaps some of this stuff is obvious, but I bet it could be one of the best writing how-to books ever written. I'm not spreading it too thick, am I?

One nice piece of advice I heard Don say: Write with commitment and deep passion. That's the only way to get beyond rejections and problems in the publishing world. That and, I suppose, faith in oneself. Think persistence. Think perserverance.
He also talked briefly about query letters. In brief, shorter the better. I think he covers that in his book as well.

So it was a good night. I even went out afterwards. And so did almost everyone else, including Don. I didn't get a chance to thank him personally for coming. If I had a novel currently in the works I might have tried harder to talk to him, however just talking to us was educational enough. That's all I need for the moment.
I enjoyed talking to everyone else at the bar.

We've been graced with the presence of NAW's Tamela Viglione for the last couple of weeks. She'll be back for one more workshop before she goes back east. She'll also be going to NorWesCon this weekend.

Speaking of which, that will be my destination this weekend. I wouldn't be going to NorWesCon (it's not a big Con and poorly organized by most accounts) but Mike Moscoe had e-mailed me in February to ask if I wanted to be on a panel about first short story and first novel sales. I said yes. It should be good practice for WesterCon this summer. It will also be my first convention panel ever.

Too bad the organization committee didn't read the form I filled out. I wrote down I couldn't do any panels or readings until late Friday. What does NorWesCon do? They book my reading for 10:30 am Friday and I'm not leaving Eugene until 11:00 am. Also, sounds like the schedules have gone out to each participant, but I never got one. I found out my reading by going to the web site.
Enough ranting and raving about that. This Con is good to see people like Ken Rand, the Swensons of Talebones, and former Wordos and other people I don't see too often.

I head up to Seattle after a short day at work tomorrow. Leslie and Ray will be heading up at 7 in the morning. I would be going with them If I didn't get that car last Saturday. I would still go with them except working a few extra hours will help with the bills since I have another car payment to deal with. First road trip in the new (used) car!

Oh, if NorWesCon didn't put me on any other panels, it looks like my first panel (on first sales) will be on Sunday morning at ten. Should be fun. Should be interesting.

Have a good weekend.


Sunday, April 15

NorWesCon was more social than educational.

Great to see the Swensons of Talebones, including some of the people from their writing group. Tale Bones Live!--where some of the authors who have appeared in the magazine read short stories to the audiance, and where Patrick Swenson would draw a name for a door prize before each reader. They had seven readers that night. The last name drawn out of the bag was mine. They'll be sending me a copy of Patrick O Leary's collection printed by Fairwood Press.

That's cool. Ray Vukcevich, who I shared a room with, had been reading that same collection and he recommended one of his novels too.

It would be nice to get back up to Seattle for World Horror Con at the end of May, but I don't think I can affoard to do so. I told the Swensons I'd reconsider and I also said I'd remind everyone in my workshop about World Horror.

Man, I also gotta get a subscription to Talebones.
Good, fun people. Reminds me of the writing community in Eugene.

The panel on first sales went well. Syne Mitchell was the moderator and I gotta check out her first novel Murphy's Gambit. She gave a reading at Talebones: Live! from her second novel soon to be published and that one sounds good too.
Anyhoo, Ken Rand was also on the panel and
Thomas Hopp. I got to describe the details of my first sale--the grinning, the desire for another, etc.

One highlight was when we were open for questions from the audiance. Ray was in the audiance and he had the clever idea to ask me how do I pronounce my last name. Now I did say my name in the introduction portion of the panel, but answering Ray's question put the spotlight on it. If nobody noticed the pronounciation during the introduction (and I don't think anyone did) they took note with Ray's question (and Ray knows the answer.)

It's pronounced "Vog-Lee" "Vog" as in "fog". And the "Lee" is where everyone gets it wrong. They want to pronounce the "Le" like the end of the word TABLE. So it's Vog-Lee (Vagle). The audiance responded with "oh" s and someone even said, "I bet you have to correct people all the time." I don't correct people all the time. Depends on the situation. If it's a casual, perhaps one time exchange with a person, I won't do it. I might as well have people pronounce my name right at conventions and such.

I enjoyed doing the panel and I look forward to doing more panels at WesterCon this summer. I was a little nervous and I did notice a couple of things I need to work on. For example, I would look out at the crowd while someone else was talking, but when I had the attention of the audiance while speaking, I would actually make less eye-contact with them. That shouldn't be a problem after I do a few more panels. I'll get less nervous and self-concious.

I have some e-mailing to catch up on after this weekend. And some fiction writing too.
More Later . . .


Tuesday, April 24

I wrote one page of fiction today. Otherwise, writing has been slow and infrequent. . .
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It's warming up here and feels like spring. Things are turning emerald green. And when the sun shines the green is even more astonishing.
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www.wordos.com

We have an official dot com. Thanks to Wordo member Marshall Moseley for putting the site together.

There's growing room and much potential to that site.
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Congrats to Devon Monk for selling another story to Realms Of Fantasy! I asked Devon, jokingly, if she had a submission-sell ratio to Realms yet. This has been her third sale there and seems to be one sale per year.

Makes me wonder if I can grab the editors at Realms with another story good enough for them to buy it. Two rejections so far. Two more stories currently on Shawna's desk.

If I may refer to that panel at Norwescon, there was talk about wanting that next sale. Talk about being addicted to making sales. Well, asking Devon about her sales to Realms makes me realize how much I want that second sale. If I didn't realize how strong that felling was two weeks ago, I know it now. It may not be to Realms. It might be to a different publication. It's just I already have the editor's attention at one big professional magazine. The hope is easier to focus there.

Wherever that sale may be, I still need to be
reminded of the work and the need to sit down to write everyday and to keep the stories out there. Also to finish new stories. It's the only sure way to get that next sale.



Sunday, April 29

Here's a quote from someone famous:

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
--Albert Einstein

I've seen the second sentence of that quote on bumper stickers and buttons. In fact, I have a little button quoting that sentence. I stumbled upon the rest of the quote above by reading it in someone else's e-mail signature line.

Now I find I love the whole quote and not just that one fragment. When I considered only "Imagination is more important than knowledge," I wasn't in total agreement with it. I've wondered if imagination and knowledge work together, stronger than each one alone.

The whole quote sheds a different light on it. The reason is because of the third sentence--"Knowledge is limited." This says to me the imagination stretches your world view and helps you move beyond the preconceived parameters of your life and the world. The human minds seems to be designed to put things in compartments. This is the way this thing works. Those types of people act this way. It's easy to get caught up in compartmentalization. The imagination helps move beyond that.

The imagination is more important than knowledge because it speaks of the open mind. It sees hundreds, thousands, millions of possiblities and always seeking more. Imagination is also where hope dwells, I think.

That quote touches on a universal truth.