Oct

30

NaNoWriMo Starts In 2 Days.

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As you can see from the logo in the right-hand column of the page, I’m participating in the National Novel Writing Month. There’s a link below the logo that says “Check My Progress”. If you click on that link, it will take you to a page that’ll show you my progress.

Wish me luck!

Oct

27

On Rejection

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I’m almost ready to get my first short story ready for submission to a publisher, so I’ve been thinking about rejection a lot. I have a little bit of advice for all of you:

The worst they can do is say no.

And that’s the truth. The worst they can do is send you a rejection slip. And don’t let it get you down. There’s any number of reasons why they rejected your manuscript. Don’t take it personally.

Oct

26

It’s one of those days.

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It’s one of those weird days. I’m feeling inspired, but trying to actually do something it feels off. I did get a meager number of words for Chapter 7 of SKE. I’m happy wth them, though. It’s letting me bring out more background of the characters involved, and setting things up for future events. I hope to get a bunch more written tonight. I really need to save this chapter done by the end of the month, so I kind of have a blank slate for next month. I may actually cut back on the number of words I want to write for The Morgan Affair, so I can continue to work on SKE. I don’t want to completely set it aside, for fear of losing my momentum. Trying to get that back is a real pain.

Oct

23

More NaNoWriMo Progress

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It’s October 23, and I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do. I’ve finished the outline/synopsis for my NaNo novel. I doubt I’m going to be perfectly faithful to it, given how things change while you write. However, it gives me a place to start, and a path to follow.

I have to say I disagree with some of the things that NaNoWriMo promotes to get you to write. They say not to care about your characters, because if you do, you’ll never get your 50k words written. I don’t think that’s true. If you don’t care about your characters, then you’re not going to be writing as well as you can. If you’re writing simply to say “I’m a NaNoWriMo winner”, then that’s one thing. But if you want to do something with the words you wrote, you gotta care about your characters. If you don’t, why should your readers?

Oct

23

When Inspiration Strikes, Don’t Let It Miss!

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You can get inspiration from the most unusual things. An idea just hit me while listening to today’s episode of 60 Second Science, a podcast from Scientific American. It’s about a new species of bateria they found about a mile or so underground, near some uranium deposits. Basically, this bacteria feeds off stuff the uranium produces, and other species of bacteria feed of that bacteria’s byproducts. Photosynthesis plays no part in that ecosystem at all.

Why is this important? Because it shows that it might be possible for this kind of life to exist in other planets.

And then the writer in me kicked in. That could be the basis for an entirely new ecosystem. What kinds of creatures could have evolved from that? What would the food chain be like?

I doubt I’m ever going to use this idea myself, but there’s no way I could let it pass me by, so I’ve posted it here. Maybe one of you could take it and run.

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