Category: writing
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A visit with my younger self: 14 June 1988
I encountered recently a writer who was publishing his old journal entries on Substack, and it occurred to me that there was probably nothing that private about my old journal entries that I couldn’t do the same, so here it is. “Rescuer”—A boy who wants to grow up to be a hero.. When the opportunity arrives…
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Writerly resolutions: April status
Finally beginning to get back into a groove on the writing. After much delay, I finished my post-workshop revisions on chapter three and then managed to get a first draft and rewrite of a new chapter (which will become chapter two coming before the existing chapter two). I also think I solved a characterization problem…
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Writerly resolutions: March status
This was a terribly unproductive month for my writing. It turns out it still hurts to do things like operate a pencil or scissors. The latter is mostly helpful for things like opening packages, but the former is something I like to do for revising. I did manage to finally finish revisions on chapter two…
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Writerly resolutions: February status
So February started strong, which was nice but life can be a real jerk and between a bit of a slowdown mid-month combined with a minor disaster, I kind of stalled out. Minor disaster you say? These used to match: Why yes, I tripped and fell, landing hard on my hands, and, as it turned…
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Crazy bishops
My son is learning French, and being also chess-obsessed, wanted to learn the French words for various chess terms which he asked ChatGPT to provide. I don’t trust ChatGPT or any other generative AI to provide accurate answers. After all, it has provided such “delightful” knowledge as: so I made a point of looking over…
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Writerly resolutions: January status
So on the three goals I’ve set for myself, solid progress on the novel, although perhaps not as rapid as I might have hoped. Chapter two is finished, I’m working on the rewrite of chapter three and I updated chapters one and two after workshopping the first chapter. Still working on a new story (something…
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Writerly resolutions for 2025
I’m feeling pretty good about where things are with my writing at the moment. I’ve cleared off a lot of the decks of things lingering that needed more immediate attention. This year will be focused on getting a complete draft of the new novel finished (ideally well before year’s end, but we’ll see), workshopping those…
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2024 in rejections (and acceptances)
I almost forgot my last year-end post, my traditional year-end round up of rejections (and acceptances). In fiction, my acceptance rate was up to 3% from last year’s 1.4% and tiered rejections were at 24% up from 22%. The accepted stories were both excerpts from the novel I queried, one in Nebo and the other in Exterminating…
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Writerly resolutions for 2024: the post-mortem
I had modest goals for 2024: Get final draft of the novel finished Query query query Get six new stories workshopped and into submissions Maybe start a new novel? Of these, I completed 1, 2 and 4, and partially finished 3: I only got three new stories into submissions, but I did also get two…