A Week of Writing: 4/22/19 to 4/28/19

Seven more days down. Here’s the writing week that was.

Words to Write By

The quote this week comes from Louis L’Amour.

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

— Louis L’Amour

I come back to this quote a lot when I’m struggling with a story, a novel, or especially a novel revision. You see, the hardest thing for me is getting started. I have a tendency to build up whatever project I’m working on into this terrifying monolith of impossible work that I psyche myself out before I even start. So, what I have to do is grit my teeth, open that Word document, and just START. Sometimes that’s as simple as rereading and revising what I worked on the day prior, and almost always the fear fades away, the goal becomes clearer, and I can get to it. It’s not exactly writer’s block, but I think it stems from the same place: fear. I’ve found that fear is kind of like fire; it’ll spread if you give it more fuel. So I take Mr. L’Amour’s advice, turn on the faucet, and put out that fire.

The Novel

The revision of Late Risers continues, and last week I again made good progress. I’m about a third of the way through, but I expect my pace to accelerate once I get past the first act where the bulk of the revision is happening. My focus remains on adding new material and then making everything downstream fit that new material. Last week this meant completely removing some chapters and moving others around (with slight adjustments). The result, so far, is a first act that moves quicker and gets to important plot elements as they are happening instead of the characters finding out about them second hand. Anyway, I hope to get to at least the halfway point this week.

Short Stories

Still lagging a bit with submissions, but I did manage to get one out last week.

• Submissions Sent: 1
• Rejections: 0
• Acceptances: 1
• Publications: 2
• Shortlist: 0

Though I only managed one submission, an acceptance and two publications kind of makes up for the lack of activity. The acceptance was my second microfiction acceptance, and the publications were the aforementioned microfiction and a reprint flash piece. You can check out both publications below.

The Blog

Two blog posts last week.

4/22/19: Weeks of Writing: 4/15/19 to 4/21/19

The usual weekly writing update.

4/26/19: The Random Rejection Generator v1.0

This is just a bit of fun rejectomancy where you randomly generate your own form rejections.

Goals

Still chugging along on the novel revision and trying to get short story submission out. The focus remains on the former.

Publications

Two publications last week. A microfiction piece called “His True Name” at 50-Word Stories and a flash fiction story called “Big Problems” at Jersey Devil Press. You can read both by clicking the links below.

“His True Name”

Published by 50-Word Stories (free to read)

“Big Problems”

Published by Jersey Devil Press (free to read)

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And that was my week. How was yours?