Short update: My story “Too Careful” was published by Daily Science Fiction this morning. It goes out by e-mail first, and then I’ll have a link to it online in a week! DSF is a great way to start the morning and I’m honored to have another story under their banner.
I want to try and submit a short story of piece of flash every Friday. This way I’ll always have at least something in circulation, and hell, submitting is the only way to get anything published. Tonight’s submission went in to DSF again—I think it would make a good fit—but I’m planning next week’s for Brain Harvest, one of the first online publications I started reading regularly.
Hopefully I can stick to this schedule for productivity’s sake.
In a way, it’s funny to me that this post and the one prior act as empty bookends to the month of November. It’s a sandwich without meat, folks (or cheese, lettuce, candy, etc).
This was not, it turns out, a month for writing.
But there is news, NaNo failure notwithstanding. My story “The Butcher’s First” goes out by digital pony express to all subscribers of DSF bright and early tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to feedback, and I hope seeing my own work in a professional capacity will act as a set of spurs for my motivation.
OKAY. It’s happening.
I made it 500 words into the story I thought I wanted to write and quickly realized it won’t work. Kept chipping my teeth on it, went back on a few different angles and couldn’t make it happen. Thankfully I had another idea waiting in the wings, which has been a hell of a lot easier to write so far (no jinx no jinx no jinx).
I’m sitting at about 1200 words right now, and I’ll get back to it to hit the recommended 1700 later tonight. Feels pretty good right now, but the first day’s been the easiest the last two times I crashed and burned. But hey!
I’ve been following NaNo developments on twitter and I have a few resources to share:
Also, I sold my flash “The Butcher’s First” to DailySF a few months back, and—according to the schedule posted on SF Signal—it’ll go out by e-mail on November 30. This is the first story I’ve ever sold, so I’m pretty excited it’s finally going up—also a reminder to get off my ass and submit more (though that might be on hold ’til after NaNo, now). You can sign up for free, daily e-mails of sci-fi on their website, and it’ll be available on the front page maybe… a week after that? I don’t know. I’ll post a link.
Follow your dreams to the max. Amen.
So I’ve been listening almost exclusively to one sing for the past three or four days: Ratatat’s remix of Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Party and Bullshit.’
It’s got an electronic buzz beat that keeps pulling me back. I haven’t kept a song on repeat like this in years.
But I was listening to it the other day, and I heard the first drop where it really kicks in and I cut over in my head to that scene in the finale of Breaking Bad season 4 where (SPOILER) the door explodes outward and Gus emerges.
The sound and the image matched up in my head and I thought, “I should try and edit together a bunch of cool clips from season 4 and set them to that song.”
So I did.
This is the first time I’ve really done anything like this, but as soon as I started I was hooked. It’s a strange thrill to scroll through each episode frame by frame, looking for shots to match up with the different sound cues in the song. Some parts of it I’m happy with—others not so much. A lot of the shots linger, and should be replaced with quicker cuts, but I just didn’t really have the patience for it this time.
It probably took me between four and five hours total, but a good amount of that involved screwing up trying to learn Premiere. I feel like I have a decent handle on basic cuts and timeline manipulation—that’s all I had to do for this—but I haven’t really played around with different effects yet.
It’s encouraging to watch and think about what I’ll do differently next time. I feel like I’m learning, and I have the itch to try making some movies again.
The flash fiction I sold to DSF hasn’t been published yet, but I’m hoping next month? I can’t wait to see it online. Hah, I shouldn’t have talked about it so soon to people without having anything to show. Oh well. Soon.
I haven’t submitted much more lately, which is frustrating. I’m partway through four different short stories, but I’m having trouble narrowing my focus to single one out and finish it, so I just make incremental progress on all of them at the same time. I’ll still be crawling along when the month turns, and then I’ll have to deal with the prospect of NaNoWriMo—the 50,000 word elephant in the room.
Maybe this year I’ll actually make a dent? I have a story all lined up, just need to force the pen to the page and stop worrying about whether or not it’ll actually be any good.
There is a dial.
There is a dial on the box.
There is a dial on the box with three settings.
There is a dial on the box with three settings and the first will make you a king.
There is a dial on the box with three settings and the first will make you a king but the second will set the swords of the nation against you, serpentine strings of wheels—iron and molded bronze—primed to grind furrows across your back.
There is a dial on the box with three settings and the first will make you a king but the second will set the swords of the nation against you, serpentine strings of wheels—iron and molded bronze—primed to grind furrows across your back; when the pain crawls under your skin to rest there like sheets of metal and fire, the third setting will take it away.
There is a dial.
volatile content 