Recently in Writing Category
If you've ever done your grocery shopping online (as is increasingly common in the UK) - and have been left baffled at the produce that actually turns up - then this one is for you.
To: CustomerService@EveryonesSupermarket.co.uk
Subject: Order query
I am mailing you to query my recent order with reference number 1394691346193. This morning at breakfast I was disheartened to discover that the eggs delivered to my fridge were free range. I always refrain from buying free range eggs, as I believe them to be an obvious pricing scam. I've seen the documentaries - a barn sitting in a large field, doors wide open. In the field totter five brave chickens, whilst inside the barn the remaining three thousand sit squashed side by side thinking, "I'm not going out there. It's cold." So I would never allow you, the supermarket, to tempt me into paying disproportionate prices just to have those barn doors open. I would be grateful if you could please send me a carton of barn eggs and compensate me for the inconvenience caused.
Thank you,
Joe Bollingsworth.
...continue reading A Letter Of Complaint
I'm trying to write a story every week this year...
Stories written this year = 29
Target for end of June= 26
Words written = about 78,000
All going well. The only thing I need to work on is speeding up my first draft to submisison time, which at the moment is very slow. But I'm not worried, the idea of this challenge was to produce stories, and I'm doing that.
Stories written this year = 25
Target for end of May = 21
If you're a writer you should really be reading Jay Lake's LiveJournal, over the last few weeks and months he's posted some fantastic advice and tips and thoughts to keep you sane and motivated. His latest is about Rejection, Acceptance, and Publication
Brilliant stuff.
Okay, Jay Lakes Year-End Stats make my measley number of rejections look insignificant: 144 submissions, 101 rejections, 25 stories sold, in one year!
Update:
Jay makes a note of his acceptance ratio here, 1:5-1/2 and says "When people look at my wide bibliography, it's not because I'm *that* good, well-connected or lucky. It's because, as you said, I never stop working the chain"
and finishes up with some good advice...
"There's only two successes you can directly control: successfully finishing a story and successfully mailing it. Sale, publication, critical acceptance, award nominations -- that's all in someone else's control, and you can fail all over the god damned place with those all your life. But you can write, and you can mail."
Normally my new years resolutions are something like "read more" or "write more". However this coming year I've decided to undertake a specific task, somewhat akin to John@SFSignals one story a day. But instead of reading, it's about writing. I got the idea from Jay Lake, he suggests writing one short story a week, and I'm going to try it.
I haven't talked much about my writing here, because there's not much to talk about yet, plenty written (about ten shorts and three novels ) but no sales yet (although the novels haven't been sent out yet, that's resolution number two). However if I can find time to write 52 stories in one year then I'm hopeful that a sale will not be too far away.
