News and Notes from the Writing Desk: May Edition

It's been a busy week on the submission front. This week brought a rejection, but it was more of a relief than a disappointment. It was one that had been held for months, so it frees up those pieces to go out again. Which is a good thing, because I don't do simultaneous subs, and I really wanted to send a specific piece out, and I forgot was still in the hands of this publication.

I would love to say that I have a new project for May like I was supposed to, but I focused on getting these subs out so I didn't start on one. I really wish I could choose a project and see it to the end, but this seems to be one of those months where I work on a different project each week. That's not a bad thing, it just means a slower rollout for any individual project. They will all get to the finish line, I promise.

So what's on the agenda for next week? Who knows! I'm trying to get myself to finish up my two public projects (Love Bites the Big Apple and Pieces), but that may take some more time because I seem to have hit a creative wall on those.

Projects with Abandonment Issues

I've been immersed in my latest poetry project over the past couple of week. It's fun, it's challenging, and I'm finding constant inspiration. That's good, right? Because I'm trying to reign it in when I can, knowing poetry is low on the totem pole of professional success stories. Like a good investor, I need a diverse portfolio of work to make sure that success has a long-term reach. And that thought leads me to all of that other stuff I started working on and have yet to finish. Right now, I want to take time to acknowledge all of the projects I've put on hold.

Love Bites the Big Apple: My first foray into a story for the Episode app is still on my mind, it just hasn't been updated for awhile. I promise that when I get back to it, I'll do a major multi-chapter drop.

Completed first drafts such as Verses and Vows, In Another Life, 277 Miles: Hang in there, kids. We'll meet again--hopefully soon!

Numerous incomplete first drafts: I admire the dedication of these stories. They always come back to my mind in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Usually right in the middle of NaNoWriMo, but what can you do?

And I can't forget the two other projects sharing my non-freelance time: Honorable mentions go to the draft of my current YA novel and to Pieces, which may have to take a short hiatus in a few weeks due to lack of new pieces to post.

Hopefully all of my projects with abandonment issues will come back to me at the right time to be completed. As always, you can be a part of the action: don't forget to join my journey on Patreon to get more details about my latest poetry project, exclusives, and much more.

New Poetry Project

This is one of those weeks where I just can't sit still. I know that I have tons of half-completed projects, but a new one seems to have pushed its way to the front of the line. It's a poetry project that's contained under a very specific theme. I only have two pieces written, but it looks like its heading for something that is chapbook length. It may expand to a full manuscript, but for now, I'm only concentrating on what ideas I've already come up with.

I'm also getting back on the submission cycle. Although there is one publication that I've submitted to twice already (one regular submission, one contest), it is now the one thing I want to conquer. I know that sending in poetry to a single publication more than once is just asking for rejection, but I'm still convinced that I know what they like, and I have pieces that they'll eventually publish. The key is in finding the right combination of pieces for my next submission. One of the publication's upcoming themes is Persona, and I have a stack of poems that meet this theme (from an unpublished manuscript entitled Personas, if you can believe it), so I should have something good that they haven't seen--or they have, just as a single page in a chapbook entry.

There are also a few other places where I'm looking to submit, including places that produce broadsides, which I've always loved. 

Outside of the poetry world, I'm almost finished with chapter five of Love Bites the Big Apple, I've been working on getting the diamond thief novel to a place where I can start revising it, and I've been thinking about putting together an editorial calendar for myself, but that seems like an impossible task at the moment.

That's what's on my desk right now. What are you working on?

PS: My Melody of Love novella series won't be around much longer! Make sure to pick up your copies from Amazon before they disappear.

Scribbling Away

I've been keeping my head down and concentrating on my work lately. I didn't think I would see any tangible results because I'm nowhere near a new release of any kind, but when it comes to my Episode story, I've been seeing some movement.

I honestly didn't think that I could get any chapter reads at all, because I haven't been advertising the story anywhere. But as of last check, I've got 35 reads across the four published chapters, so I think that's pretty good. Of course, I'm only 499,965 reads away from qualifying for the payment program. There's still a little work to do. Chapter 5 should be coming soon. I got sidetracked over the past two weeks, but I'm trying to get back on the chapter a week schedule I set from the beginning.

Other than that, everything is still chugging along. You can check out more of what I'm doing if you go to my Patreon page. Even if you're not ready to commit to a monthly subscription at one of the reward tiers, you can still follow the page to check out all of the public posts that are there. 

Taking Stock

It's wild to think about, but 2018 is nearing the halfway point. I had some writing goals to complete before the end of the year, so I'm spending a few moments to take stock to see where I am on that.

My main goal was to publish four works--it didn't matter what form it took, I just wanted to get four pieces out there. So far this year there has been a novella, a poetry collection, and a story on the Episode app. The first one is getting pulled soon, and those last two are not completed, but since the finished parts are live and available to the public, it still counts towards my goal. I just have to find one more piece to finish, submit, and find success with.

Speaking of submissions--all of those submissions I was waiting to hear back on in January all died in April. Every last one of them, including the rhyming poetry I submitted to a contest specifically for rhyming poetry in which all of the winners and finalists were not rhyming poems. That's what I get for not realizing they lumped rhyming in with "traditional" so top prizes went to those instead. My poor rhyming poem... it's been through it all, and still no one takes it seriously.

Anyway, the two submissions I was waiting to hear back from when I last wrote about it were also rejections, but specifically rejections because they had each received a record number of submissions for that submission period. Both publications pointed to being featured in Submittable's weekly emails--and of course that's where I was getting my submission leads, so apparently it's completely counterintuitive to use that weekly email. Who knew?

My next step will be getting back to finding a home for my poetry chapbook. I don't think I'll be aiming for contests anymore because they simply don't work out (and can get pricey with entry fees). I'll be targeting micro-presses instead, which may give me a better chance at getting that fourth publication before the end of the year.

Various Directions

Now that Camp NaNoWriMo is officially over (I happily left with 10,345 words) I have shifted my attention back to other projects. The first on the list is of course that script I wanted to use to apply to a script writing program. I'm still not happy with it, so it's in a serious revision state with only three weeks to go until applications close, but on top of that, I've never put a TV episode into the proper format before, so there are a lot of little annoying things I have to get just right. Usually I just write TV episodes in feature format, which is wrong, but everything else is still first drafts, so I guess I would have had to bring them up to this standard at some point anyway.

I also jumped into the world of Episode. I downloaded the app just because I was bored and needed something to do for ten minutes, and I've always loved the choose-your-own-adventure format. Once I opened the app, I noticed that there was a write tab, so I checked it out. It turns out that you can write your own story on Episode, and that intrigued me. Most of the stories are geared toward flirty romance and light mystery (the target audience being female 13+). I thought, why not? I could come up with something fun, and it says there is a paid program for writers.

A sneak peek of Love Bites the Big Apple (I promise, it does get better!)

I started my story, but then I found out there is a lot of other aspects of writing a story for Episode that I wasn't thrilled with. First, you can't just plug a script into a form and get it animated. You have to control the movements, directions, and facial expressions of all the characters. Some people compare it to something like coding rather than simply writing, but I think any true coder will tell you it's nothing like coding either. I found that it's closer in comparison to a technical script--where it has camera angles and specific shots along with all of the dialogue.

It is tedious to do all of the directions, set changes, and clothing changes, but once I really got into it, I was starting to have fun. The story is still working itself out--since the look of the characters seems a little Barbie-esque to me, I decided to plug in the story I used to use when I played with my dolls. I can't publish anything to the app until I have three chapters that meet a certain length requirement, so it may be awhile before it goes live.

And about that payment program. I'm pretty sure this is going to be a passion project rather than a paid project. To qualify for payment, a writer must get 500,000 reads in only 60 days. Once you meet that, then the payment program signup is available. Anything about what you get paid per read after that is information that I have yet to get my hands on. I'm going to say that even if people fall in love with my story and clamor to get more chapters, I would still have less than a twenty percent chance of qualifying. Half a million is a giant number. I still have to get through the popular stories on the app to see what it takes to really get noticed--and since I started this journey on my Kindle, which hasn't had an Episode update in the past four years, I'm going to have to switch to my phone to read more of the recent stories for research. With only a small chance of ever turning this into paid work, I've been trying to restrict myself to an hour a day working on it.

Even with all of this work, I managed to think up a short story idea in the shower this morning. Today is looking to be a very long writing day.