Once I manage to learn how to quill that is.  Apparently it is a skill.

Like collage.

I’m accruing more rejection letters.  One of my projects, the tragedy/comedy masks, is proving more difficult than I thought.  I have pre-made masks and am pasting torn off sections of the rejection slips onto either mask.  Happy/neutral parts go onto the comedy mask and sad bits go onto the tragedy mask.  After each layer I add some watercolor.

This is my first time trying something like this, and while I didn’t assume it would look amazing I also wasn’t expecting…this.  It’s going to need a lot of glitter and shiny bits added to it.  Hopefully the glitter will distract the viewer’s eyes from the hot mess the masks are rapidly becoming.

Or rather, not so rapidly, considering that my last post was a few months ago…

Pics to come.

Once I become brave enough to record this horror for posterity.

1. Sending 10,000 words into the space between acceptance and rejection is a really nice feeling.

2. If, hope beyond hope, they all get accepted, I would make enough to cover my monthly car payment.

Now, it does need to be said that I’m not really in this for the money. There are far easier ways to make an extra buck than to open a vein over the keyboard. However, my subconscious is a tricky little beast and it is absolutely enamored by the act of attaching my writing goals to more concrete goals.

So the goal is to treat my writing like a side job. Which means every month submitting around 10k words worth of story, or enough to pay a big bill once you figure out the cents per word of the market.

The side effect is that hopefully I get more stories finished, instead of letting the languish while I polish them to a highly edited sheen.

I have however three new pieces on the editing block. One drabble that needs cutting down, a short story that isn’t quite working yet, and a novelette that was almost done, but then I decided to change the main character. Because that is how I roll.

I’ll be seeding the new crop once they’re ready, although at the moment I’m not sure if I prefer to think of the submission process as farming or if I like the image of the wicked witch of the West sending out her flying monkeys better.

Fly my pretties! Fly!

Handwriting years far much better, got to 25,000, but afterwards it took over a month to retype it.  Mostly because of bad handwriting on my part.  I’ll be partially handwriting my novel this year.  I’ve got a notebook that will be my on-the-go writing buddy and I’ve already resupplied my fountain pen cartridges.  For some strange reason my handwriting is best when I use fountain pens.  There’s something about them that makes me slow down a bit and attempt to actually write nicely, instead of just scrawling my teeny-tiny chicken scratch over the page.

What’s that you say?  If I’m not using a computer and I’m only partially handwriting, how is the rest being created?

I’m now the proud owner of a pair of manual typewriters.  Totally going old school.  Gonna be awesome.  Hopefully I won’t break anything.

Now I just need to figure out what I’m actually going to be writing about.  Too many ideas!

I’ve gotten one personalized rejection, but I’m not really sure which mask to use it on.  On one hand it’s a rejection, but on the other hand it’s an actual person telling me what’s wrong with the story I sent in.  That alone raises me up another writer level and is a great ego boost over the form letters I’ve been getting.  Tragedy or comedy?  Should I use it in another project maybe, something like a table of silver linings?  Decisions decisions.

It’s funny, now that I’m trying to collect rejection slips for an art project the entire submission process has been mentally reframed. There’s more of an urgency to put my work out there in the world.

So that I can get rejected or accepted, and decoupage tragedy and comedy masks (respectively).

Am thinking of branching out into horror poetry. Did not know until now that it was a genre.

Is it still considered optimism when mass amounts of failure are assumed?

Anyway, the leading suggestions/ideas are scrap booking, collage, setting them on fire in a giant bonfire and dancing around it widdershins, or decoupage.  I like the idea of decoupage best, as it would let me have a fail table and chair of rejection.  I wonder how many rejection letters I would need to get a furniture set?

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to continue that metaphor on and describe how I’m going to post more, but it’s really not that good of a metaphor and I’ve always been bad at them in general.  If anyone can figure out a way to make it work or knows a better metaphor to use, post in comments plz.

Where are we from last time?  My short story got declined, and has gone through another batch of revisions.  I’m waiting on an editor friend to finish looking it over before dragging it back into the sunlight and sending it out into the world.

While that’s in the works, I’m on the second draft of Family First.  Think Romeo and Juliet, if Juliet was marrying Romeo on a lark, and her entire family was extremely violent werewolves.  The second draft is the time where I try to smooth out the flow and transitions, and winnow out the plot holes.  Here’s the current Wordle word map.