Category: writing

There was an article on NPR recently that cited a study showing that scientists with anglo names are more likely to be cited in news stories. My sense is that I tend to go with Slavic or Italian names for most of my characters, but I decided to dig a bit deeper and see what…

The novel is finished and I’ve started the querying process with the first round of ten queries, including my first rejection from a query. I guess my depression is catching up with me a bit here. While going through old queries, I found myself wondering whether what I thought were personalized queries saying close but…

At the end of last month, I ordered a spiral bound copy of the printed manuscript and once it arrived, I set out to read and annotate everything for editing. I managed to finish that read today and start editing draft4.docx on my Mac. Based on my own read, comments from other readers and some…

January was a low-writing month. At some point last year, I managed to mess up my submissions spread sheet so that a lot of old submissions got attached to the wrong journals. Because I use past submission history as part of my determining where I’ll submit new things, this turns out to be something that…

I’m in that weird point in my writing practice where a major project is nearly out of my hands, and may or may not begin demanding my time depending on factors beyond my control. So, with that in mind, here are my goals for 2024: Get final draft of the novel finished Query query query…

So my goals for 2023 were: Finish the last of the research reading (only 6½ books right now). Character bios for major characters Do a highlighter read (per Matt Bell, pp. 128–133)  Read and annotate the printed manuscript based on bios, research notes and fresh eyes. Weasel word check (Bell, p. 141–4) Draft three to…

My submission pace picked up a little in 2023 but acceptances have remained low. Acceptance and personal rejection rate are down even more than last year so apparently, I just suck. Poetry had a bigger uptick in submissions this year with a lot more acceptances. In fact, I had a long streak of poetry acceptances…

Finally got out of the first chapter and began moving more quickly through the manuscript. I only have two chapters left before I do the weasel-word check and then send the whole damn thing off to some people to read it end to end. I got another post-workshop story out into submission along with a…