Killing Sacred Cows: Agents

Dean Wesley Smith is a very successful writer who is trying to kill the sacred cows--as he calls the harmful myths--of writing. The article below is about agents. Be SURE to read the comments, especially those by Laura Resnick.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=720

Enjoy!

maren

2009 reflection, 2010 planning

Such a transformative year! One year ago last Friday, I began this blog to keep myself honest. It was a second step in me becoming a more serious writer (I count NaNoWriMo 2008 as the first step). I am hopeful that the next twelve months will be even more so.

Here's a recap of my writing year, 2009:

2009 new words

18 K LSCTS
+50 K Something
_____
=68 K new novel words
+15K Short stories
+150+ pages of scripts (at 100 wds/page or less)
----------------------------
about 100K = total new words in 2009

To qualify this paltry number, I do want to point out that the fire wasn't really lit under my ass until September, thanks to Kris and Dean. Still, I don't remember the last time I had a 100,000 word year...probably not since graduate school, and almost none of those words were fiction.

In the mail:
4 short story queries (with 4-5 needing to be re-submitted)
6 Novel queries for LSCTS.

Here are my 2010 goals:

1. 20 novel pages or one short story a week (about 5K)
2. Stories and finished novels in the mail same week finished.
3. Script Frenzy in April (with class?)
   
4. NaNoWriMo in November (with class!)
5. 48-hour Film Project in August
6. One blog post a week. I need to at least post my wordcount, but I am considering posting excerpts, etc., too. Of course, once something sells, it will be all over this baby. :)
   

That's all for now! Wish me luck. I wish all of you, happy readers, a fully creative new year!
maren

Kris and Dean Show

I spent a weekend in Lincoln City with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch at their workshop, colloquially known as the "Kris and Dean Show."

Eye-opening workshop.

The point of the whole weekend was discussing how to be a working fiction writer...that is, how to make a living at it.

I said in a facebook post that the workshop not only showed that it was possible to make a very comfortable living as a fiction writer, but that I'd be a fool not to try.

I want to share a couple things that might help other writers.

The first are Heinlein's Rules which are simply this:

1. Write
2. Finish what you write
3. Do NOT revise (unless a paying editor tells you to)
4. Mail what you write to someone who will pay you for it
5. Keep it in the mail until someone buys it.
6. Start working on something new.

Simple, right? Well for the past fifteen years, I've only done the first two, and ignored #3 entirely, lustily revising short stories until they were limp and fraying. Three or four years ago I started #4, but quickly became discouraged, mostly because I wasn't following #6.

As a result of these rules, here's what I propose to do:

• I will write and finish one story or 20 pages of a novel a week.
• I will put the stories into the mail the same week I finish them.
  
• I will put the novels into the mail as soon as I have a first reader copy-edit them.
• I will endeavor to write more than one story a week eventually.

As always, I'm posting this on the Interwebs so that I can be held accountable.

So, in the 12 days since the end of the workshop I have mailed five stories (four of which were laying around from years prior), written two stories (one finished last night...need to find a market for it), and just today, I put the novel Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store into the mail to four publishers. I may even mail it to one more.

And, today is my 36th birthday, so it will be easy to remember when this all happened.

Wish me good fortune, mon amis!
m

Surprisingly productive

I have nearly revised the whole of Liz Stratton Closes the Store! I'm amazed that I am working on the last chapter now.

Of course, this final chapter needs some serious work because the parts of it were written months apart. Now I'm trying to stitch together the parts into some kind of cohesive whole. Plus, I have a Hollywood ending, which fits, but...it is a little cute-sy. So, I'm conflicted by the last pages. I have some holes to fill in, too.

However, the upshot is that I am making serious progress on the text, and it looks like I will finish this revision well before my self-imposed September 12 deadline.

I'm stunned.

I even have up to chapter 13 to my first readers, who ROCK. They have given me such insightful and helpful comments.

So, this frees up time between now and school starting for the Kris and Dean show and other projects, notably the "Library Quest" web movies I hope to film with a friend during Fall Quarter.

I did write a "script" for the 48 Hour Film Project this year, too. I'll post a link and write an entry about it once the film is online.

That's all for now. I wish it were summer all year so I could be this focused on writing all the time!

m