A Week of Writing: 1/11/21 to 1/17/21

Another week of writing in the books. Have a look.

Words to Write By

This week, we’re going back a couple hundred years for a great quote from Jane Austen.

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.”

— Jane Austen

My take on this quote is that it’s essentially how to deal with writers block, or more specifically how I deal with it. For me, writer’s block generally manifests in an inability to get started. I sit down at my computer filled with fear and apprehension that I won’t be able to write or what I do write won’t be any good. Not the greatest way to get into a creative headspace. So I do what Jane Austen did: I write through it. It’s not foolproof, but it has allowed me to finish half a dozen novels and hundreds of short stories and flash. What usually happens is the first couple of paragraphs are garbage because I’m forcing the words, and then something will click, usually on the turn of a good sentence or bit of dialogue. Then the words come faster and better, and I can usually hit my word count goal and achieve something good or at least something with potential. So when you’re not in a humor for writing, try to remember what Jane Austen said and keep going.

The Novel

I worked a bit on the revision of Late Risers last week, though I wouldn’t say I made much progress. Part of the problem is I got distracted with another novel that’s about a third of the way done. It’s one I started writing in 2017 and then put on the back burner. That book easily has the best concept of just about anything I’ve written, but the amount of research required to finish it is, well, daunting. So I stopped at about 33,000 words and wrote two other novels instead. I will return to it–I think it’s actually pretty good–but for the moment, I shouldn’t let it distract me from the task at hand. It’s just testament to how much I hate revising, and that I’ll do just about anything, up to an including writing another novel, to avoid it. 🙂

Short Story Submissions

Little bit slow in submission land last week.

• Submissions Sent: 1
• Rejections: 0
• Acceptances: 0
• Publications: 0
• Shortlist: 0
• Pending: 7

Well, only one submission went out last week. That’s not great, but it does give me five for the month, and I only need four more to hit my quota for January. I just finished a new piece that’ll go out today, so there’s one, and I’m waiting for a couple of markets to open so I can send a few more. I do need to finish/revise more pieces so I’ll have some submission fodder. No rejections last week, though some of the pending subs are getting a little crusty, so I suspect some rejections will arrive soon.

Super Secret Project

More progress was made on this project, and I am definitely getting excited about it. Shouldn’t be long before I can talk about it . . . and then talk about it constantly. 🙂

Goals

Let’s keep it simple: write, submit, revise.

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And that was my week. How was yours?