I always think of September as a month of change. Everything looks and feels vastly different at the end of the month when you look back at the beginning. The temperature, the days, school buses crowding the streets, free time dwindling as work and activities start up again – there is so much upheaval, so many adjustments to be made, that sometimes I feel like I spend the month reacting to and planning for what the last three months of the year will bring.
All that uncertainty causes a shortage of writing time for me. It is hard to schedule fixed times when I have so much going on, so I must cram it in whenever I know I have an uninterrupted block of at least an hour to try and get things accomplished. I spend a lot of my lunch breaks editing, since that is easier to work on in short bursts.
And that editing time has paid off. I was able to edit A Bugler’s Final Note my satisfaction. I also did an overhaul on an older short fantasy story called Colynn’s Song and did another pass on The Weiralla, a story I wrote at the beginning of the summer that I am very happy with. Two of those were based on prompts I got in my writing group, so I can genuinely say that being a part of that has helped my writing grow.
I had a couple of other ideas, but I was unable to get any traction on those so I filed them away for another time.
I also spent some time gathering some things together to support an upcoming Kickstarter campaign. (You know where this is going, right?) “We Suck at Comics Volume 2 – Coloring Outside the Lines” is gearing up for launch in October. I am super-pumped for this book already. The cover is awesome and the peeks I have seen really have me excited to see the whole book. If you haven’t already, head on over to Kickstarter and follow the campaign before it launches. You’ll be glad you did!
During those infrequent writing times, I was able to make progress on the YA series I am working on, not as much as I would have liked but enough that I feel good about it. My plans for that series has changed in the last few weeks, not in terms of the story but in how I planned on tackling the bulk of the writing.
Simply put: I will no longer be taking part in the NaNoWriMo challenge through their website, and I will no longer be supporting them. You can read this article to get more information on what their latest controversy is if you are unaware already. To summarize the issue – the people who run NaNoWriMo released a statement that, in a very veiled and obfuscating way, declared that the use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) to write is acceptable. Anyone who is an artist of any kind should find that idea abhorrent. Are there A.I.-based tools, such as voce-to-text, that can help people write who might not be able to type or otherwise write in a traditional way? Absolutely. But the upswing in the use of generative A.I., which is used to try to create authentic works of fiction (and which is taught by feeding it literature that is already published) is insulting to any author. They have backtracked somewhat, trying to stem the tide of people leaving and to mollify those they insulted, but they have yet to state clearly that they do not condone the use of generative A.I. in writing or any other art form.
Blah, that’s enough about that. I’m looking for an alternative that I feel comfortable with using and speaking up about, but that may take me a couple of months. That means my writing marathon – the goal remains the same, 50K words in one month – will have to be postponed.
There will be a special blog post in a couple of weeks to discuss a big event in October. There’s a clue hidden in this post. But if you know me, you already know what it is.
Okay – not much has changed since last month, but here it is anyway:
1 – I want finish editing book one of my YA series to the point that I consider it good enough for publication (it probably won’t be, but I want to get it as far as I can take it). I can’t lie, I am way, way behind on where I wanted to be on this. Between writing dialogue for book 2, picking up other writing projects, and not having enough time to read out loud (it is much easier to find errors, awkward bits, and dialogue mistakes that way) I just haven’t been able to get much traction on this goal. I still think I can do it, but it will mean shelving some other things.
2 – I want to begin querying agents to see if I can publish that book, and its sequels, traditionally. My query letters are as good as I can get them. I may shell out a little money to see if I can get some professional assistance with this.
3 – I want to finish the first draft of book 2 in that series and begin outlining book 3 with an aim at starting the writing process this year as well. The NaNo issue has really affected this goal, so I am uncertain if it is still viable. Hopefully I can figure out a way to get it done.
4 – I want to have at least 2 short stories accepted for publication (not ones I submitted in 2023). Success! Blade of Glass and Repercussions have both been accepted, which means this goal is COMPLETE! Wow.
5 – I want to extend my visibility as far as social interactions and publicity goes. The Facebook needle is pointing in a positive direction. This goal was vague, since I don’t know how to measure it except by “followers” and that number has grown since the beginning of the year. So I will say this goal will be met by the end of the year.