Dragon Dancing
About a month ago I started working on that short story that I intended to submit to my hopeful publisher. Well, I have finished the first draft and sent it out to some suckers... I mean good friends who are kind enough to look at my first draft and tell me how much it sucks. Not really. So far so good on the responses on the short story, which is frankly surprising since I suck so much at writing short stories. My strength in writing, I like to think, is my characters and their dialogue. Short stories don't have nearly enough time to really let anyone get to know the main character in any meaningful way and too much dialogue cuts into the space I am able to write so there's not enough of that.
Still, if the feedback so far has been "you don't suck" then I guess all that time spent writing novels came in handy somewhere. I've heard from some places that a good way to get your name known in the writing world is to write a bunch of short stories before trying to do any novels. That, obviously, won't exactly work for me having already done the novels, but I think that if I've cut my teeth on novels, perhaps coming back to short stories will make them easier for me.
I'm not letting my ego get out of control here and make me think I'm going to be some kind of short story genius now, but I think that planning a ten or twenty page story is slightly easier to me since I've planned books up to nearly 350 pages written and planned one book far longer than that. Ten or twenty pages is a chapter really, so considering how much experience I have in chapters, like fifty or more, then perhaps that is what is giving me the ability to do short stories a tid bit easier.
Anyway, my plan is to try to come up with some short stories and start submitting them to magazines and such (for money if at all possible). There are some short story contests I have been examining as well. I will, of course, pass all this past my favorite bookstore owner ever to make sure I'm not doing something silly, but I imagine he'll tell me, "yes, do that", so I'm not too worried that I'm wasting my time looking around.
I vaugely wonder if my chances for getting shit published isn't somehow weakened by the fact that I am in no way an English major, minor, or even, you know, really something I'm all that good at. Computer Scientists aren't normally known for thier English skills. Then again, most CS people haven't written three books for fun, so I might just be weird. Who knows?
Back to work.
Still, if the feedback so far has been "you don't suck" then I guess all that time spent writing novels came in handy somewhere. I've heard from some places that a good way to get your name known in the writing world is to write a bunch of short stories before trying to do any novels. That, obviously, won't exactly work for me having already done the novels, but I think that if I've cut my teeth on novels, perhaps coming back to short stories will make them easier for me.
I'm not letting my ego get out of control here and make me think I'm going to be some kind of short story genius now, but I think that planning a ten or twenty page story is slightly easier to me since I've planned books up to nearly 350 pages written and planned one book far longer than that. Ten or twenty pages is a chapter really, so considering how much experience I have in chapters, like fifty or more, then perhaps that is what is giving me the ability to do short stories a tid bit easier.
Anyway, my plan is to try to come up with some short stories and start submitting them to magazines and such (for money if at all possible). There are some short story contests I have been examining as well. I will, of course, pass all this past my favorite bookstore owner ever to make sure I'm not doing something silly, but I imagine he'll tell me, "yes, do that", so I'm not too worried that I'm wasting my time looking around.
I vaugely wonder if my chances for getting shit published isn't somehow weakened by the fact that I am in no way an English major, minor, or even, you know, really something I'm all that good at. Computer Scientists aren't normally known for thier English skills. Then again, most CS people haven't written three books for fun, so I might just be weird. Who knows?
Back to work.
posted by Ethyachk | 1:29 PM
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