The Empirical Strikes Back.

Over at the Writers of the Future forums, there seems to be quite a discussion on what kind of stories have had success in the competition. Not only do I mean the genre, such as hard SF vs. yet another vampire story, but the form of the writing, such as first person vs. third person, past tense vs present tense, how many words winning stories have had, titles and structure.

While it appears as though the judges do prefer particular styles of stories and formats, attempting to quantify and create a formula for your writing isn't the way to go.

Yes, some stories are going to suit WOTF more than others will (And don't forget that although it is treated as a competition, it is ultimately a market trying to fill an anthology) but the truth is they do reward well written, well told stories.

You should be writing your stories in the tense and POV that best serves the story. And use as many words as it takes.

If Only I'd Hung A Mirror In The Corner Of The Story.

It's back to school tomorrow, but in the meantime I've had a fantastic vacation.

The writing continued well from last week, with another rewrite, and another story pouring out of me. This is another one that's been developing in my brain for a while, but it just seemed to coalesce into existence without too much effort from me. I even drafted it a good three or four times, and then decided it was the one I would send off to Writers of the Future for this quarter.

Of course, with the new online submission process they now have (Yay!) I was able to keep it until almost the last minute, and even received confirmation it was received in time.

Now K.D. just has to recognise it for the piece of brilliance it is. (hehehe)

Above and beyond that, I subbed another story elsewhere.  Things are all go here at the plush Cameron writing studios.

One thing I've been intrigued by recently is what I refer to as the 'Feng Shui' of writing. Like if you hang a mirror in the corner of your room you'll suddenly become rich because the money won't pour out - or something like that. As you can probably gather, I'm not really into it. But writers do something similar after a rejection. "If only I'd added another character in the last scene, or written another couple of metaphors in the opening, or if I'd called him Mike instead of John." That sort of thing, as if a single change would push the story from a reject to an acceptance, or, in the case of WOTF, up to a finalist.

From all accounts, WOTF receives over 2,000 submissions each quarter, with approximately 8 of those becoming finalists, another 8 or so being semi finalists, and forty of those being honourable mentions.  Receiving any of those awards means you're doing pretty well.  I'm not convinced that there is a simple 'fix' in most cases. The story I received an HM for needed a major rewrite, not just a change of name. And even now I'm not convinced the new version would have fared a whole lot better.  I don't know where my HM sat in the imagined HM rankings. Near the top? Near the bottom? If one of the finalists was withdrawn, would mine have been the next in line and pushed up to Semi finalist?

Still, I was pleased that story did as well as it did there. And now it's out on submission and will hopefully be bought at some point. But there were potentially somewhere between 16 and 40 stories better than it. And each quarter I try to write the best story I can. And, hopefully, improve as a writer. One of these days I'll make finalist.

But that will only be the beginning.

An Hour A Day.

And so I'm back in the wonderful world of Jonathan Carroll. He's a magic realist (with a dark underbelly) and he reminds me of Murakami (I love Murakami too - but I've heard Carroll doesn't like his work) with touches of John Irving in there too. 

He's an author I've never really heard people mention, and for the longest time I figured I was the only one who read his stuff. Recently I shared one of his books with a friend, and discovered that he loved his work too - and couldn't understand why he'd never heard of him. I fell into his work. Way back in the mid to late 80s, I picked up two of his books from a discount bin - simply because I liked the covers.  From then on I was hooked, and read as much of his stuff as I could.  When I lived in Japan during the 90s, I kind of lost track of his publishing, but about a year ago (when I was finally able to sort out my library and unpack many boxes) I worked out what I was missing and started picking up those books. Which is where I am now - reading a Jonathan Carroll I've never read before.  And, as usual, I'm loving it.

I haven't spent too much time over at the Writer of the Future forums recently. But I did notice the other day that Brennan Harvey is a current finalist. I don't know the full history, but Brennan no longer hangs out at the forums - which is a bit of a shame.  I quite enjoyed his posts. But he has a pretty cool website happening, and I wish him well with the final judging.

I'm still entering WOTF, but reading Carroll this week, and scrolling through some of Brennan's blog entries, has inspired me and spurred me on.  I realise I need to write more often - and write more words. So I've decided that as of this week I'm devoting a certain amount of time every night to get more work done.

And yes, I still have two stories on hold out there with publishers. One of those has told me when he'll get back to me (which is very very fair - it's for an anthology and the reading period is still open), the other (after many months) isn't even responding to my (extremely polite) emails.  Grrrrr.

It's frustrating, and brings you down at times. Someone told me about an editor who gets annoyed when writers query before six months, even though his magazine has a policy of a two month turnaround.

I guess he doesn't write and submit. I know I don't submit to him anymore.

What? Back For More Punishment?

My second quarter entry for the Writers of the Future competition is almost complete.  I've been working on it, and it's shaping up really well.

I actually started it last year, but due to a number of reasons I wasn't able to complete it before the close of the first quarter.  Rather than rush the story to submit it, I reluctantly sat out that quarter. Which is just as well.  I ended up rewriting large chunks of the story and as a result it's a much better narrative.  It has better flow, the characters interact more realistically and the resolution works better.

It's about twice as long as any other story I've written, and I'm finding it's a much better length to work with. At least in this case.  As to whether it has any chance with the judges or not, I really don't know.  If my past experience is any indication, then this one won't even make it to the contest offices.  Two of my previously submitted stories I thought would do rather well ended up being rejected outright. while the one I thought wouldn't do anything at all was awarded an Honorable Mention.

So either I'm no judge of my own work, or the co-ordinating judge has absolutely no clue whatsoever.

Wish me luck with this one. (and here I was going to make a joke about hoping the judge finally gets it right - but, um, that might work against me...)