WRITERSoftheFUTURE.com

disgruntledpeony wrote:I understand. In past quarters when I had it rough like that, I'd pick a story I'd sent a year or more previously to polish and resubmit.

I may do that, if I can't get it together in the next week. I have a candidate story on standby, just in case.

Ugh, I'm struggling so much this quarter. If I get a story in at all it'll be the product of sheer bloody mindedness.

My last one I did a lot of rewriting. Cut like 7k. Took me over a year to write it. 18 months for an R. I could see that happening here, to be honest, as there's definitely a risk of a story losing its sparkle if it's on the table for too long, but this is one of those hills I just have to climb no...

Could be you need to write something new. Possibly your subconscious is telling you the story is no good and that's why you're having so many problems. No, not in this case--even the last draft is pretty good, actually, and I was just getting into my stride editing it for submission. This was more ...

I'm rewriting mine, again, after realising that I could make a single key change and greatly improve the story's weight. Fourth time of writing now, and I get to keep about fifteen percent of what I wrote previously. This doesn't even count the the three times I tried to write this story before. Hon...

I like the way Mark Forsyth talks about Shakespeare developing in 'The Elements of Eloquence.' But, for me, a big part of writing is getting the 'winning idea'. Wulf's notion of entering with new stories applies here. I do think creativity breeds creativity. Keep writing, keep coming up with ideas ...

I'm always most optimistic about the story I'm currently writing. Then for a week or two after, I stay optimistic, and then after that I assume the story is probably just trash and keep on going. This works fine with short fiction, but poses more of a problem with novels, because I tend to reach the...

Could knock me over with a feather. This one had such a dark ending I figured it would die quietly in the shadows. Congratulations! I always wondered about the darkness thing, too -- my only SHM was also the darkest story I submitted to WotF to date. I suspect that while Dave may not go for the dar...

Well, my first quarter was a quick-at-the-end, write-without-too-much-revising, push-out-the-door job. A lot of fun! Didn't take me any farther than the more revised things I've done in the past, but it DID put a spark back into my somewhat seized writing engine. I figure that might be worth more th...

I had about 9k of story, and realised I could improve it. At first I thought it'd mostly be additions, but after looking closer, I realised I have to scrap a large part of the latter half. I think that's good overall, at least I have time to be able to do so.

HM for me.

I need to revise what I said about mine -- I seem to have checked my dates all wrong, I have a Monday, a Tuesday, a Thursday, and a Friday in my list. The first time I checked, I thought I had two Sundays, which seemed weird, because I didn't remember getting any on a Sunday...I just put it down to ...

I find curse words work well, but only if they're the perfect word -- which is similar to other words, but with one magnified caveat. Sometimes, they're perfectly timed, or delivered for perfect impact -- but more often they seem lazy and heavy-handed, and serve no purpose. And curse words are parti...

Well, my wildly unscientific assessment of when I got my own responses produced two Sundays, a Monday, and a Tuesday. Nary a Thursday in sight -- and yet, I have come to think of them all as Thursdays.

I think SFWA qualifies a market at 1,000 or more readers / issues / what-have-you. So it could well be that they qualify a story for SFWA membership more leniently than WotF considers one to count towards excluding you as being eligible to enter the contest.

Or if it's not anonymous. The contest entry form is very clear on that point too.

...with so much time ahead, why write only one? Why not push yourself and say I'll write both? Why not pick from the best of your fresh best each quarter? If I do this challenge for the next volume, that's how I would up the game. We are capable of much more than we believe, and must push our bound...

I'm in as well, now -- a new story for Q2 to go with my new one for Q1. This year is feeling awesome to me, I've worked more, read more, and written more in the last six months than I have in a great while. I feel like either this year will end up being tremendous, or I'll end up keeling over from t...

I've got that Q2 entry in now, with today's final read-through complete. I have a sense of when my revisions mean I'm starting to get pedantic, which is generally speaking my stopping point -- I reached that today. And thanks to being pushed aside, I already have my second draft for Q3 ready -- all ...

And I'm in for the quarter.

The real thing you want from F&SF--aside from an acceptance letter--is for the editor to write "Charlie" on your rejection. Look for that. When you get it, do "Dear Charlie" on your cover letters from there on out. It's been noted he only gives that to people he really wants...

Did not know that about F&SF rejections. Got a few "didn't quite win me over" from Finlay. Now I feel better about those rejections. Awaken the rejectomancy! No, don't, but it wants to so bad. I have a couple of nicely personalised rejections from him that referred to specific details...

wotf022 wotf022 . why so sure? maybe your Q2 is going to be finalist? Alas not, I had to put it aside due to sudden time constraints. I have a fall-back story that I'll be sending out for Q2 instead, and the story I had intended to be my Q2 entry will be pushed back, and then I'll finish the revisi...

Trust me, I get it. I had to switch stories mid-stream, but I don't think the first story I was working on this quarter is ever going to make the grade. It's just too hard to write properly. This one is similar, a challenging story to write well -- but I think I was close to having it. Just not clo...

And I'm falling back to the position of using a largely elaborated flash story I wrote before -- it's not at all what I'd planned to do, but work schedule just yanked the wheels off my carefully-planned trolley of the month, and this is something I can definitely complete and get out in time for the...

And, turns out my current Q2 is about to become my Q3. Twists and turns...

Blargh, I just discovered I'm probably going to be working very late for the next three weeks, which completely blows my plans for editing this story out of the water, I don't feel like I'll have resolved my issues with it by then. I have a fall-back position though, another story I had sidelined to...

Lightspeed is the same, I think -- I've received the regular "it didn't quite work for me" one, and the "it's nicely written and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn't quite win me over" one.

Do you plan to query your novel or indie-publishing? I'm going indie way on my first novel. So, that means I'm not out of WOTF contest until I've sold 5000 print copies? I'm purposefully delaying my novel launch to try my hand at the contest. My current plan is to query, but I'm still researching i...

Escalation is king, no doubt. It's an emotional rollercoaster -- no good if the first rise and fall is the biggest and best one, all the rest will feel like a bit of a let-down after that.