Three Things I Learned From Attending Philcon

Philcon was, in many ways, my first "real" science fiction convention as a writer. (I wrote up a brief trip report on my main blog.) I attended Context earlier this year and had a very good time but was only there for one day and wasn't a participant on any panels, so it was a different type of experience from Philcon. Being in the Philadelphia area for all three days of Philcon, staying in the convention hotel, and being on my first panel all made for a very different type of experience. Here are three things which I took from that trip:

The Moments That Make The Work of Writing Worthwhile

Some days writing feels relatively easy; other days, not so much. For me, developing a daily writing routine has helped me push through the not-so-easy days because making the time to work on writing every day has simply become part of daily life for me, part of my routine. But, whether it's a day when the writing feels like a breeze or a day when it feels like I'm pulling every word out of my brain Syllable. By. Syllable. there's one thing that's true. It is work and it does take up part of the 24 hours that I have for that day.

But there are rewards. Oh, yes, there are! Here are some of the moments that make all of the work I have put into writing feel worthwhile to me.

1. Finding the right word for a sentence or the right approach for a story. Mark Twain famously said "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning." Finding those right words can be a tremendous feeling when you just know that you've hit on the way to describe something that lives only in your mind in a way that other people will find affecting.
2. Selling a story. Maybe some day I'll be so jaded that each new story sale is "Well lookee there. Ho hum." I'm nowhere close to that. Getting news of a story sale is still very exciting to me as each one both represents someone saying "I value this enough to pay money for it." and an opportunity for my story to be available for others to read.
3. Seeing someone enjoy something I've written. Granted, I rarely truly "see" this in the sense of watching someone read something I've written. But through various message boards, forums, etc. I can get a sense of the reactions of people to my stories. There's always the chance that the reaction won't be wholly positive but so far I've felt very fortunate in the responses I've received. The outpouring of positive comments on Facebook and Twitter for my recent Daily Science Fiction story "Scraps" was particularly gratifying.
4. Holding a physical copy of a book or a magazine with a story of mine in it. In this age of electronic publications, this has been a somewhat-rare thing for me so far. I have an issue of Nature with "An Unsuitable Job for a Human" in it and my copy of The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes. Both were a thrill to receive.
5. Being able to help another writer. Whether it's been in a blog post or a critiquing exchange or even just talking something through relating to writing, there have been times where something I've said has seemed to really resonate with another writer. I like this both because it's nice to be able to help someone else along but also because of all the help I have received from other writers. I feel like I'm part of a larger community of writers when this happens.

I'm sure I could come up with other moments that make the effort I put into writing feel worthwhile and, of course, every writer's list may look different. What are some of the things that make writing feel worthwhile to you?

Four Reasons to Give NaNoWriMo a Try

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is one of the most talked-about writing events of the year. Since starting more than a decade ago, it has grown to the point where tens of thousands of participants sign up each year.

Last year, I was one of those participants. This year, I will not be, though I'm not passing it up without a bit of reluctance. However, as I've chosen to focus my writing time on short fiction and trying to write 50,000 words of short fiction in a month is an even more significant task than trying to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month, NaNo is not in the cards for me this year.

However, I had a great time last year and I think it's worth giving it a try if you're intrigued by the idea. Here are four reasons why.

1. It gives you a very specific time period in which you can prove to yourself that you can writing a novel. This was the biggest thing I got from NaNo last year. And, if I never whip my first draft into shape for submission, it will be the main thing I got from it. But it was a significant thing for me to learn. I've always been a short story writer but I no longer think to myself "I don't know how to write a novel." I do know how to write one. (Well, the first draft of one at least. Maybe sometime soon I'll learn how to edit a novel!) And, if you don't "win" NaNo by getting through those 50,000 words in November, that doesn't mean that you've proven you can't write a novel; it just means that you didn't do it that time under those circumstances. Frame it that way for yourself and it's a no-lose proposition.
2. The community opportunities are fun. Admittedly, this may not be as relevant if you live somewhere very remote, but the fondest memories I have of last year's NaNo are of the vacation days I took (one a week) when I went to a local write-in and spent three to five hours working on my novel project. There were a handful of us who were regulars and meeting and bonding with them was both a huge encouragement for my work and a lot of fun. In fact, one of the people I met later offered to critique a short story for me and her input was valuable to that story's development. Getting to know people can be both fun and valuable. And, even if you do live somewhere remote, there are plenty of on-line opportunities for socializing and cheering each other on during NaNoWriMo, both on the official site and on other sites like Twitter.
3. It could be a part of building a daily writing routine. One way to approach NaNoWriMo is to plan to write a certain number of words every day. You could aim for the 1667 words per day required to hit 50,000 by the end of the month. Or you could set a floor of, say, 1000 words and plan to exceed it significantly some days. You can also do NaNoWriMo without working on your novel project every day; as I recall, I skipped one or two days to work on other projects during 2011's NaNo. But it's a high-energy, high-support time to try to get through the beginning portion of developing a daily writing routine.
4. You'll most likely learn something about yourself as a writer. As the post I linked to in point #1 above indicated, I learned that I can write a novel. You might learn something different, but an experience this focused is likely to help you learn something about yourself, especially if you're relatively new to writing.

What reasons do you have for trying -- or NOT trying -- NaNoWriMo?

Wednesday List: Four Ways To Get Your Writing Back in Gear

Many writers hit a down spot in their writing routines. For some, it's perceived as full-blown writers' block where they feel like they can't get anything new written. For others, it may be more subtle -- a sense that they are not writing as much or as well as they are capable of doing.

Whichever the case may be, there are a variety of things you can do to try to get your writing routine back in gear when it feels like it's not where it should be. Here are several of the ones which I would personally consider using at a time like that.

1. Change Your Physical Location -- One of the things I've noticed is that when I make a point to actually go somewhere (library, coffee shop, etc.) to write, I typically end up being particularly productive. For me, I think there are several reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that those writing sessions tend to be longer than average. But it's also a psychological indicator to myself that "this time is for writing" and not for anything else.
2. Write Something Different From Your Usual Fare -- I've written a whole blog post about some of the benefits of writing something different than what you usually write. If you're struggling to get words down, particularly if you're feeling that what you're writing isn't "good enough", then you could use this as an opportunity to write something with no expectations of yourself other than getting new words down.
3. Set A Specific Short-Term Goal For Yourself -- Be careful, as this can be a double-edged sword. If you set too ambitious of a goal and don't meet it, you run the risk of reinforcing negative mental narratives. But, if you set a goal which is challenging enough to make you feel as if you've accomplished something significant while also being reasonably attainable, it can give you an opportunity for a short-term "win." Bear in mind that goals are best when they revolve around things entirely within your power. Setting a "goal" of having a story accepted by a specific magazine isn't something you can completely control. That could be an "ambition", certainly. A better goal -- one that's entirely within your control -- would be to plan to write a new story aimed specifically toward that publication and submit it there within the next month.
4. Find Productive Tasks Related To Your Writing Which Aren't "Writing" -- Setting aside for the moment notions specifically of "writing every day," there are plenty of writing-related tasks which need attention. Perhaps you have work which you are circulating to publishers in general but which is not currently out on submission. Then get it back out the door! Maybe you have promised to critique a story by someone else but haven't done that yet. Use some of your writing time to get the critique written up. And so on. These aren't necessarily glamorous things to be doing, but if you get them finished, then you no longer have them sitting out there needing your attention "sometime." And maybe that "sometime" will be a time when you have an especially productive writing day.

Those are four tools I have used and would use again. What do you do to try to help get yourself back into gear when things aren't going as well as you would like?

Three Ways I Keep Writing

For me, the next few days are sort of exciting, in terms of personal writing milestones. A year ago today, I wrote my blog post titled "The Seinfeld Chain" which was the origin of my Daily Writing Chain and, eventually, what brought me to write the book "Write Every Day."

I started formally writing every day on September 1st, 2011. With the leap day earlier this year, that means that tomorrow (August 30th, 2012) will be my 365th consecutive day of writing with August 31st then marking the end of one calendar year of writing every day and September 1st starting a new year.

In honor of all of this, I've marked down the price of Write Every Day to 99 cents (and its equivalent in other countries) for the next few days. The price will go back up to $3.99 on the 2nd of September. So, if you have been on the fence about purchasing Write Every Day, now is a great time to go for it!

99 Cents For a Limited Time!

This past year hasn't always been easy for me, either on the writing side (lots of rejections before starting to get some sales) or on the personal side (it started with major unplanned home repairs and saw multiple other issues including serious health issues to both one of my parents and one of my wife's parents). And yet, I've written every day during that time. Here are three things that helped me along the way:

Three Books on Writing I Want To Read

In addition to the time I spent writing and the time I spend reading fiction, I also enjoy reading about the process of writing. Lately, a lot of that has taken the form of reading blog posts, etc. but there are three books I'm looking forward to reading on this topic.

1. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury - In honor of Bradbury's birthday today, this title gets top spot. I have a copy sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. Now it's just a matter of making the time for it!
2. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - This book was recommended to me by a fellow writer. I had put it on hold at the library but then didn't get around to picking it up before the hold expired. So I won't be reading this one right away, but it is still on my mental "to read" list.
3. On Writing by Stephen King - This one is a bit of a cheat, I guess, since I read it shortly after it came out. But I remember greatly enjoying it and I haven't read it since shortly after it came out. I think it's just about time to give this one another go.

What about you? Do you have writing-related books on your "to read" list?

Three Benefits Of Using Duotrope

The Duotrope website went through a major overhaul earlier today, which seems to make this a prime opportunity to discuss the site. If you submit short fiction or poetry to periodicals/anthologies and you're not already using Duotrope, there's a very good chance that you could benefit from using the site.

Duotrope is a free site; they ask for donations to help keep it that way. I have happily donated in the past and plan to do so again in the future. You do have to register to access some of the features of the site, but since it's free to try, though, you can get a good feel for its value to you before making any financial committment.

And now, three benefits of using Duotrope:

1. Market research and submission tracking. This is what I'd call the "core competency" of Duotrope. You can use Duotrope to research markets which might be interested in publishing things which you have written. You can also track your submissions on the site; this allows you to easily avoid submitting two stories at the same time to a market which doesn't allow for this, submitting the same poem a market has already rejected to them again, etc. Now, I do suggest that people have some kind of backup of this submission tracking data external to Duotrope, just in case something should happen and the service should be temporarily or permanently unavailable. But as a day-to-day resource, I find it very easy to use.
2. Keeping track of upcoming deadlines. Duotrope has a Theme and Deadline Calendar feature which can help you keep track not just of themed deadlines like those I write about every Thursday but also when submission windows are closing for other publications.
3. Spotting signs that a market might be having difficulty. Admittedly, this one involves making some educated guesses. But there's a lot of information around the response time statistics of markets which can be viewed on Duotrope. Often, before I submit to an unfamiliar market, I will look at the "Response Times" section of the market's Duotrope page and also click on the link on that market's page titled "View report of recent responses from this market." Between those two sets of data, I can see if it looks like the market has been doing a poor job of responding to recent submissions and that does sometimes influence my decision of which markets to prioritize.

If you already use Duotrope and have a favorite feature which I didn't call out, give it a mention in the comments below. I'd be happy to learn more about how to use the site.

Three Signs Your Process Might Not Be Working

Ultimately, the only person who can say whether your writing process is truly working is you. Because you're writing for your own goals. (I'm assuming here that you're not dealing with other parties who have a vested interest in the outcome of your writing.)

That said, here are three things which might be a warning sign that your process isn't taking you where you want it to.

1. You're ending up with lots of unfinished work. I know some people who say that this is part of their process, and if they're still meeting their goals, I certainly can't say that they're "doing it wrong." But, to me, unfinished work represents time spent with only minimal return on the time. (I wouldn't say none, since you're getting more experience as a writer even then. Though, on the flip side, you could be reinforcing some bad habits.) If I put even a couple of hours into writing something, I'd like to think that it will be something that someone else will read eventually and (hopefully) that I'll get paid for. If I don't finish a first draft, or if I finish a first draft but don't revise, then I'm not going to meet those goals.
2. You're spending a lot more hours working than seems appropriate for your output. Again, everyone's different, so this is something that really only you can decide if it applies to your situation. For me, if I found I was spending lots of hours at the computer and only getting a single short-short (flash) story out of it, I'd feel like there was something amiss. And to a certain extent, I think it's reasonable to include ancillary time (writing-related correspondence, chat rooms, message boards, etc.) as part of your "working" time. None of those things are bad things, but they aren't inherently "writing" and while some of them may be necessary (submitting stories, dealing with contracts, etc.) it's still good to keep an eye on your overall time "spend."
3. You're not having fun. Writing, for many of us, is work. Writing, for many of us, is also play. It's an interesting dynamic. If it's starting to feel like drudgery, not just once in a while, but on a regular basis, then you might want to take a step back and evaluate what you're doing and why. It may be more than just a "process" issue, in this case, but a malfunctioning process could be one possible cause.

One of the things that helps me is to do a certain amount of self-evaluation of these things (and others). Am I getting stories finished and out the door? Am I spending a "normal" (for me) amount of time on writing? Am I having fun? When I can answer "Yes" to all three, I know I'm in a good place.

Three Things You Can Get From Writing Something Different

One of the things that I consider when I'm in a bit of a writing rut is trying to write something different from my usual fare. This could be something significantly different -- a poem when you usually write prose, a story in a genre you usually don't write in, etc. -- or it could be something like trying a stylistic approach you rarely use. Maybe you rarely write in 1st person, for example. You could try giving that a go. (Note that this works best, in my opinion, for shorter works where you're expending a relatively small amount of energy in the experiment.)

Here are three reasons to consider writing something different, whether you're in a rut or not.

1. You might find out you like/are good at what you try. Just like with trying a new food or listening to a new type of music for the first time, you could very well find something that you enjoy doing quite a bit by trying writing something beyond your usual work. Depending on where you are in your writing career, it may or may not make sense to pursue that with vigor, but it can't hurt to know it either way.
2. You might be able to take things you learned from the experiment and apply them to your more-typical work. One of the things that you would hopefully be doing from this type of experiment is growing as a writer, at least in breadth of experience. Having broader experience gives you more to draw from while writing in general.
3. You have a bit of experience with something new if you want or need to work with it more in the future. Maybe your experiment was with writing a story in a setting different from your usual setting. If a themed anthology opens up, then, which depends on that setting you already have some background knowledge from which to start.

Something to bear in mind is that these three reasons can apply to not only writing, but to reading. I wrote a story recently which I personally was very happy with and which also got very good comments (along with suggestions for improvement, of course) from my beta readers. That story is one that I think shows some influence from the poetry reading I've been doing over the past couple of months.

That's a great thing about being a writer -- all this stuff funnels into our brains and it can come out later in pretty darn awesome ways!

Wednesday List: Three Reasons NOT to Write Every Day

Seems like a funny title for a blog post on the Write Every Day blog, eh?

Well, first of all I've read a couple of really good posts recently about not writing every day, one of which I can share now (The Binge-Pantser of Doom from Anaea Lay's blog) and one of which you'll be able to read when it's published in several days. And secondly, I feel that it's important to make my own feelings about this clear, particularly given the name of the blog.

I've seen quite a few writers express a fear that they won't be taken seriously because they don't write every day. There's a sense that some writers look down on non-daily writers. All I can say to this is that anyone who looks down on another writer who is making progress towards their own personal goals is being presumptuous. They're imposing their idea of what that other writer should want to do and be ahead on that other writer. It would be just as silly as someone coming to me and saying "Why are you wasting your time on short stories? Don't you know 'real writers' write novels?"

That said, I think there are plenty of good reasons for writers to work on their craft every day. Speaking purely for myself, I'm confident that I've gotten a lot further in the last almost-year by having a daily writing routine than I would have otherwise.

But there are also good reasons for writers to NOT write every day. So, this week's Wednesday List is of Three Reasons Not to Write Every Day:

1. It doesn't fit your schedule. Maybe you work some unusual work schedule where you put in 15-hour days three days a week and only have energy to work, eat, and sleep those three days. Maybe one day a week you work all day and have class all evening or help out a neighbor in the evening by watching their child while they go to class. Whatever it is, there are one or more days each week where there simply plain isn't time to write. That is an excellent reason not to write every day. If you were trying to develop a regular writing routine, you might want to set some sort of weekly goal, but clearly writing every day would not be good for a person in this situation.
2. It doesn't mesh well with what you are trying to accomplish. Maybe you're a non-fiction writer and you spend weeks doing research before sitting down to write. Or you could be working on a piece of fiction but prefer to do a lot of plot-outlining, character-defining, etc. before you start actually writing prose. To my mind, that certainly could be work that went into a daily writing routine (at least as far as the framework I described in Write Every Day) but some people would feel like they couldn't call that "writing." Similarly, maybe you're fortunate enough to have a high-profile book release and you're doing a lot of promotional work with your publisher. At that moment, there may be very good reasons to spend your time on that work rather than on "writing."
3. You've tried it and it didn't work for you. Pretty much self-explanatory. You gave it a go, you really did. And you hated it. You've found another way to work -- whatever it is -- that gets you towards your writing goals at a pace which makes you happy. You're making good progress, you're happy -- why mess with a good thing?

There could certainly be plenty of other good reasons -- these are not "the only three reasons..." they are just "three of the reasons...".

The thing I always come back to is: Are you making good progress towards your writing goals? If so, then what you're doing is working for you. You can always try different ways of working to see if they help you make better progress, if you want, but there's no urgency to make a change.

Every writer writes differently. The key for each is to find, as best as they can, their optimal way of working.