I’m blogging over at VisionWriters.net again today. This time it’s a writing prompt for Valentines day that encourages you to match a pair of personal ads with hilarious results.
Page 14 of 37
There should be a ‘belated’ in brackets at the start of that title ;p
As mentioned yesterday I not only went on a writers retreat but organised the whole damn thing(including lunches and dinners), so the end week of January was a crazy rush for me – hence utterly forgetting to do my goals round-up.
I sent out only a couple of stories (most of my polished ones were sent out at the end of last year so are still awaitng acceptance/rejection), but I did do a crazy massive edit on Glass Bones to make it an acceptable word count for a particular magazine running a theme I thought it very apt for. I took Glass Bones from 8,400 words to 6,000. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but somehow I did(I might post about that more soon).
I wrote a new short story ‘Tubby’ based on the writing prompt I created for the Vision Writers website. Tubby came in at 2,300 words and I submitted it to my writers group for critique. I also got back to work on Couples Counselling(an idea I had last year) and wrote an additional 1,800 words in it. So goal #4 is chugging along quite nicely.
As far as goal #1, being a good president to my writers group I think I’ve been doing well. This is based on a lack of hate mail and no one throwing rocks at the back of my head ;p . No, really, I’ve based that on me getting to work on the Vision Writers website, updating pages, getting the start of a regular blogging schedule underway – including making up (what I hope are) new and original writing prompts. Not to mention the writers retreat (despite it not being an official group event I’m sure it fostered happiness within the group), lots of organising for that!
While I didn’t touch #2 or #3, number three did get a thorough going through at the retreat, but since this is a January round up we can’t count work done in February.
All up, a good, but very busy start to the year 🙂
This weekend just passed I enjoyed going on a writers retreat.
The view from the whale watching tower atop the house we rented.
We rented a house on Stradbroke Island within walking distance of the beach – because that never distracted any writer ever… and now I may or may not have slight sunburn on the top of my bump(but nowhere else).
There was writing and editing, there was voting for funny awards (like ‘most likely to give the rest of us a complex’ and ‘most distracting’) and math used to calculate our best achievers, there was tasting of medieval themed drinks like mead (which was actually what started the whole idea last in June last year), there was a party house across the road(who won the aforementioned ‘most distracting’ award), and many new in-jokes created.
While all the attendees were members of Vision Writers it wasn’t an official Vision Writers retreat(I was not president when I started organising it, only vice president(nor was I pregnant when I STARTED organising it ;p )).
Let me assure you there is more to organising and wrangling such a large number of people than you’d think. However I set myself an editing goal and both achieved and exceeded it, plus this morning (though not officially part of the retreat but rather an extra day of camping I tacked on the end of it so I could enjoy some time with Xander and T-J on the island as well) I wrote a 500 word flash fiction piece I’m currently calling Ella’s Baby. So productivity was enjoyed.
We had a lot of fun and I hope to do it again, but I don’t see the future letting me arrange another one until next year at least.
– my mind tries to distract me.
I have just finished writing what may have been the toughest scene to write in my life thus far.
It wasn’t tough because I had no idea what to write. I knew EXACTLY what to write. It was the content, how close it is to my own life, that made it hard.
My mind kept trying to twist away from it. Hey Kirstie, check out what’s happening on Facebook. Oh, you should totally look at baby monitors for the new baby instead. No, write a blog post about this. You should go read that book you started yesterday. No wait, you should email that magazine you think might not have correctly removed you from their subscription list and is sending you copies you haven’t paid for yet.
Sometimes I could barely get a whole sentence out without my brain trying to disengage.
Foxworth is a schnauzer
This is all Talitha’s fault ;p No actually, going back far enough it’s my own. I made a writing prompt on the Vision Writer’s website and it inspired me to write ‘Foxworth’, the story of a family of five who adopt a dog with mismatched eyes and a creepy reason why he keeps being returned to the animal shelter.
I submitted Foxworth to my group for feedback, knowing it was a rather selfishly written story with an ending written to satisfy my own real life worries. I wanted to see if the story could appeal to anyone but me and maybe a few parents in similar situations to me.
Foxworth was well received, mostly with minor corrections, but the deeply talented Talitha pointed out something very important my story was missing. I had shied away from the distressing side of my life which the story was trying to appease. I wasn’t admitting to how bad things can be sometimes. I needed to show that to make the ending satisfying for more readers, to make those who haven’t lived this understand why the ending is cathartic. (You can read a bit more about Talitha’s feedback on the Vision Writer’s site)
I don’t know yet if what I’ve written will connect with people deeply enough. People who have experienced it will understand, but I think they would have understood even with the early version which didn’t flat out put it in your face.
I do know however, that Foxworth is becoming the story I’m most deeply invested in out of all my works.
There’s a particular market I really want to submit it to, but if they reject the story I’m not sure I have the strength to keep sending it to other traditional markets like I do with all my other short stories. Not due to the pain of rejection (I’m pretty numb to that after the last few years and being aware that sometimes there’s only 4-5 story slots and well over a hundred submissions makes it less painful) but because I want it out there now. I have a deep urge to get Foxworth into the hands of others. So perhaps you’ll be reading Foxworth soon…
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schnauzer image sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
Today I’m blogging over on the Vision Writers website about wish fulfillment and the journey, some lessons learned at yesterday’s Vision Writers meeting. I hope you’ll head over and check it out.
Long time readers are already well aware of my obsession with the screaming woman bird, proper name: Bush-stone curlew. For those less familiar check out this post, this one, this one, and this one . I even found one in Sydney.
I love the haunting cry and there’s something I find visually appealing about them too.
To get on with the story, our family went to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on Sunday afternoon for a friend’s farewell party. We’d barely walked through the gates when I spotted these two lovelies.
While we walked around we saw three others too. Being in the CBD they were a little more tolerant of people and didn’t run before I managed to get a few quick snaps with my phone. Well, actually they didn’t run at all, but that’s because I didn’t try to get so close as to disturb them – just close enough for a good shot!
Why is it that I never actually have my good camera on me when I find these guys! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
And no, you will never hear the end of me talking about and sharing my photos of bush-stone curlews, not until I stop finding them 🙂
Today I’m blogging over on the Vision Writers website. I’ve posted a writing prompt and I’d love it if you’re inspired by it.
a salute to the dearly departed DTL
Some of you have been following (probably not with much interest) my posts about my duct-taped together laptop. I got a few messages expressing surprise that it was still working even a year later!
Unfortunately around the time of my anniversary poor old DTL(Duct Taped Laptop) decided that was it, he’d limped across the finish line at long last and could sleep in heavenly peace.
And he was promptly replaced with SNL(Shiny New Laptop) as an anniversary present.
There were discussions before the purchase of SNL about what to get. We’d been keeping our eyes out for quite a while, knowing DTL could pass away any day. My husband was convinced a tablet was the best idea, but a lack of storage (anything less that 500gb is just, pffft, right?) and my weird issue about typing without a real keyboard made that unappealing to me.
We compromised and bought a laptop with a flip around screen so it can be a tablet, then transform back into a laptop. My storage, my keyboard, his desire for a tablet (BTW, he has his own tablet, so I have no idea why he was trying to ‘bowling ball for Marge’ me). Everyone’s happy.
But let us all shed a tear for the passing of DTL.
Most of you know I’m the kind of person who gets straight to it – and you’re right.
You can see me blogging as the new president of Vision Writers over on their official site! The copy is a teeny bit cheesy, but hey, I’m a gouda kinda gal ;p
Keep an eye on that blog for writing prompts and meeting recaps. I hope you’ll subscribe to see what the group’s doing.
2014 has been a bit of a turbulent year, my vertigo returned(and fortunately left as well), our family went on it’s first fly-away trip, I took off a fabulous birthday weekend to go to Canberra for the Aurealis Awards ceremony, I’m pregnant and had a rough first trimester. More good than bad, but certainly life did it’s best to get in the way of my dreams ;p Never forget, good things can get in the way as much as bad.
I wrote a reasonable amount of short fiction this year, some of it sold, some of it is out looking for homes and a few are still in need of a bit more TLC before making their way out into the world. For those curious my 2014 stories were: Look Skyward (11,000), God’s Chosen(5,000), Princess Paladin(not quite finished and in need of a solid revision, currently written 8,500), Motherhood(900), The Ashes(1,700), Gaps(5,000), Anything To Fit In(500), Back To Work(400) and a couple more which at this stage will probably never see the light of day (some stories are great ideas, but don’t quite live up to your expectations when they make it to the page). I’ve totaled about 45,100 new words in short fiction for this year.
I was published twice this year, Anything To Fit In on the website 365 Tomorrows, and Nightfall in 18. I also have received an acceptance letter for a story that will be published next year(assuming all goes well, you will be reading Gaps in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine this June), and one of my unpublished stories (Charming) received an honourable mention in the Q4 Writers Of The Future contest(as soon as I receive the certificate you can be sure I’ll show it off ;p ).
In regards to Key, Clocks, Quests I only scraped in a few thousand extra words, I kept prioritising other work because this was my stretch goal.
I decided to give NaNoWriMo a go again, so have 51,900 words in a new novel: Tuuca of the Tides. It wasn’t one of my original goals, but I do have the first third/half of a new novel at least. I enjoyed it, but sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have directed that energy towards Key, Clocks, Quests instead.
So my word count for the year comes in at 97,000. Not bad, but compared to last year’s 146,400 and 2012’s 159,800 a drop in new words (though a lot more editing and revision happened this year – not to mention vertigo – so I’m not beating myself up over it).
My goals for 2015 may seem a little on the light side, but considering the due date for baby #2 is in June and anyone who has had an infant knows nothing is really going to get done in that first three months or so, I’m going a bit light on myself.
In 2015 I’ll be president of Vision Writers too, so I’ll be losing a small amount of my writing energy to helping the group. I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, but that’s for the group to hear, so if you want to know, you need to come to our meetings ;p
I am determined to try and get both Storybook Perfect and Written By The Stars completely revised and ready to go out to a short list of agents before my due date. Depending on how busy life is I’m not certain this can be achieved, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.
So goals are:
#1 Be a great President of my critique group Vision Writers (this will help new writers as well as myself)
#2 Complete final revision of Storybook Perfect
#3 Complete final revision of Written By The Stars
#4 Continue to write and publish short fiction
#5 Start a mailing list
#6 Keep learning
Really, keep learning is pretty easy, and will be easily bolstered by #1 and #4(4 because good rejections come back with feedback you can learn from), but if needs to be in there because I’m not a master yet ;p
Anyway, got any big (or little) goals for 2015? Who’s ready to muck up written dates by still putting down ’14’ instead of ’15’ for the next four weeks or so?
Kirstie Olley
Kirstie Olley is an award-winning speculative fiction author and the full-time wrangler of her children Xander and Harlequin.
Books
Read The Troll's Toll: A Retailored Fairy Tales Novella now.
Read 'Charming' (Honorable Mention in the Writers of The Future contest Q4 2014) in Leading Edge Magazine issue 68.
Read 'Short Circuit' (finalist in the 2013 Aurealis Awards Best Fantasy Short Fiction category) in Oomph: A Little Super Goes A Long Way from Crossed Genres.
Read ‘Hanabi to Kitsune'(Fireworks and Foxes) now in Tales of the Sunrise Lands from Guardbridge Books.
Read ‘Glass Bones’ now in WARRIOR an anthology choc-full of LGBTQIA warriors all across space, time, and imagination.
Read 'Gaps' in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #63. Click the cover to buy.
Read The Beauty of the Dance(Honorable Mention in the Writers of The Future contest Q41 2015) in Myriad Lands vol 1: Around the World.
Read 'Nightfall' for free now in 18. Click the picture to decide where to download it from.
Read ‘God’s Chosen’ for free now in Darkest Depths – the Vision Writers 20th Anniversary anthology. Click the picture to decide where to download it from.
Free Story Sign-Up
Want to grab a free copy of the out-of-print, Redlitzer Writing Competition winning 'Stolen Hearts' AND get emails whenever I release new fiction and offer discounts and new freebies? Click the book to sign up for my newsletter and have it all!
