The Writing Show Contest Update 8

The final count for the story was 4,827 words. Took several rounds of editing, but I just emailed it. Twice, actually. The first time I didn't put in some information that Paula B. might find handy, like the title of the story...

But it's done. I can work on a second one but right now it's time for a break, I think.

The Writing Show Contest Update 7

Ah, lucky update number seven. My wife had gone through the draft again, more edits and cuts were made, and it was still over the limit. I went back through and cut another four hundred words. The current word count is now 4,826!

I'm printing it out now for another run through and then if it's deemed "done enough" I'll convert it to PDF and send the entry.

It's hard to edit a story. My wife is far better with the grammar and punctuation thing, but when it comes to cutting and rearranging, to changing words...that is hard in a different way. In my head I have a better idea of what I meant. On paper, it comes out different. Then with a word limit, you end up making cuts to details and information that seems to subtly change the story in ways you prefer not to change it, but at the same time you need to fit the requirements of your audience.

In the end the story isn't quite as "good" as you'd like it to be in some ways. But that comes with the territory I suppose. I know I was cutting words out with descriptions and dialog that I thought helped show some of the characters personalities and better illustrate to the reader what the environment and characters looked like.

So I tell myself that if I suddenly become very rich and famous, I can rewrite the story as a "director's cut". I know very well that in truth I'll probably never touch the story again, but this achieves the short term goal.

Hopefully this means that this weekend my entry will be ready to email to Paula B.!

The Writing Show Contest Update 6

My wife had a few edits that she wrote in and gave to me last night; today I made a couple changes and re-printed the story for her to look at again. She said this time she's going to help with trimming things and look at the second half for grammar mistakes.

I'm hoping to have something to turn in soon. The ending was a bit cliche, she said, and I agreed. Mainly because I had other things in mind and found out that the things I had in mind would go way over the 5000 word limit so I ended up putting in a cheap ending that feels rushed.

But like I said...I was aiming at trying to enter, not necessarily expecting to win.

Hesselbeck Sued for Copyright Infringement

Elisabeth Hasselbeck is being sued for stealing a book idea. I found the stories here and here.

I personally think Hasselbeck's an idiot. I've consistently found that her views are illogical, naive, unreasonable and/or little more than the same rhetoric spouted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But is there merit in this case?

Without actually seeing the work I don't know. Supposedly author Susan Hassett had sent Hasselbeck a copy of her self-published book "Living With Celiac Disease" and Mrs. Hasselbeck copied it word for word in her own book "The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide".

If she did indeed copy it "word for word" then I'd think there's not much to save her; it's a pretty clear cut case of infringement. If Ms. Hassett is lying about that, then I suppose she has found a great way to promote her own self-published book...go ahead and google her name. apparently alleging that a moron celebrity has wronged you will pop you up in the Google rankings faster than an eel moving on a slip-n-slide downhill. If nothing else she found a great way to advertise.

I tried looking on Hassett's website at the table of contents for her book and the contents weren't quite "word for word", and personally I think that when you're dealing with a topic like Celiac there probably will be a lot of overlap in material. Unless there truly are passages that are copied between the two books I'm wondering if this is more a case of publicity seeking.

EDIT: A popular author's website, Writer Beware Blogs!, has a piece on the lawsuit. Sounds like it takes a stronger stance on the side I came down on...in other words, WBB says Hassett is being an idiot.

The Writing Show Contest Update 5

Well, it's Monday night.

I originally said I'd be aiming to have an entry by Monday; I said this on Thursday.

After I posted it online I realized that the 5000 word limit on the short story came to about 20 pages of text. There's no way I could do that in only five days' work; you're not an author, this isn't your full time job.

I don't have an entry ready for submission. I do have one ready for editing, though. The word count when all was done was about ten words shy of 6,000 words.

I am rather dissatisfied with it too. I felt that as the ending (and my self imposed deadline) loomed I had taken the quick way out and the ending seemed too tacked on, too much like something you'd expect from a young adult story.

There was more I wanted to do with it, but if I realized those ideas it would probably end up being 10,000 words or more, easily. And this was without editing. I don't know if the tone or voice was anything worth reading by someone else. I'm fully prepared to have my "first reader" come back to me telling me that it sucked.

Unfortunately it's my wife that will be reading it first, so chances are she won't come out and say how horrible it really is. But once it's trimmed by about a thousand words and any glaring errors are corrected I am hoping that it will be an entry. I also doubt I'll win, but my goal is to manage an entry. If I'm really lucky I'd have some feedback. I'm trying to face my fear of failure and criticism by entering this contest so I suppose that by redefining "winning" as even entering the thing...I'll reach that goal.

Right now I'm waiting for my wife to look at it and see what she can cut out and reword. Maybe there will be sections to redo, I don't know. But at any rate I'm hoping that I'll be able to export it to PDF and email it in to Paula B. at The Writing Show within a couple days.

The Writing Show Contest Update 4

I worked a bit on the story again today. We actually spent some time at the park for a Father's Day picnic lunch, and while there I managed to add a few more words. I also worked on it while at my parents for a Father's Day dinner and a few more words when I could sneak them in.

Turns out I was wrong, it is very possible in spare time to fill in five thousand words over four days. I am currently at 4200 words. That isn't to say I'm keeping all those words, though. A lot of it will no doubt need to be trimmed. I just introduced the conflict in the story and next will come a bit of the twist. Then it'll need some major heavy-handed editing.

At this rate I may not make it in time for my Monday-night deadline, but I might be somewhat close. So instead of submitting it by Monday I may need to send it Tuesday or even Wednesday (although my family is planning an outing to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen that night...).

So now it's nearly nineteen pages. It's slowly shaping up.

The Writing Show Contest Update 3

I managed to work on the story some more yesterday; an hour or so at home, a couple hours in the coffee shop at a Barnes and Noble. The page count came to 12 pages now...2400 words so far.

Again I'm worried because it's just getting into the story; everything else has been leading up to it, background and such. I don't know how much material of that nature is acceptable but I'm pretty sure that in a short story, that's a bit much. I'm hoping to trim it down after the fact. I'm really really hoping that maybe my wife would be willing to help with suggestions and editing since she would see it from the perspective of a reader while I'm seeing it from the perspective of, "Damn, this isn't how I pictured it..."

I'd spend the next three weeks trying to make it much better and still not have something I'd be comfortable turning in for the contest. Ugh.

Have I mentioned how crazy it is to work in a coffee shop? For some reason it was really full while we were there. Probably because of the rain. I was still surprised though given the number of studies that are more and more often painting the picture wherein Americans are basically illiterate hicks that can't tell the difference between reality shows and actual reality.

While sitting there I think I was privy to no fewer than three cell phone conversations. I enjoy it though. I make sure that people know I'm enjoying listening to their discussions. It makes me feel more like a participant in the world. I figure if they didn't want more participation from strangers, they'd take the conversation somewhere more private. Some of the looks I got, though, puzzled me, since this seems to make perfect sense to me but their glares say otherwise.

Anyway I hope to get into the meat of the story today. Wish me luck!

The Writing Show Contest Update 2

Last night I was out rather late, but I did put in another hour or so and go the potential story length up to four and a half pages.

The opening seems to be way too long before finding a hook...I'm hoping that as I add more material to it there will emerge a better "entry point", and I'll just trim off the material that rambles before it.

I think my "hooking" skills need polishing.

Um...maybe that's not the right way to phrase the sentiment...

The Writing Show Entry Update 1

Well, I said that I'd be trying to create an entry of some kind for the contest being held on The Writing Show's website for the Halloween holiday.

The story can be up to 5000 words...given the industry estimates of 250 words per page, that's a 20 page story. There's no way I could reasonably do that before Monday, but the goal is to write a story with a Halloween theme, not necessarily fill 20 pages just to fill 20 pages.

I spent some time last night at the keyboard trying to come up with a good start of a story. I spent a bit of time staring into space mulling over concepts, none of which seemed particularly scary and then having a few false starts before completing two pages of an opening.

My wife thought it could use some punching up. I don't disagree. But I figure I can worry about that later, if more of the story takes shape. I guess I can sit and polish the opening for days and not feel that it's good enough...but at some point I need to still actually have a story to edit.

So to that end I will worry about altering the opening later. I need to get some meat onto the skeleton now. Will I hit my goal of having a story ready by Monday? Maybe not. But I'm going to try...

A Self-Imposed Deadline: The Writing Show

I've been lazy. Sort of.

I have plenty of excuses here...I have a four year old. I ride a stationary bike for an hour a night. I don't often get home until 5:00.

We have a comfortable schedule where usually I expect to get home around five, get things put away and sit for a moment, take time to pay bills or catch up on mail, dinner is usually anywhere from six to seven thirty, ride bike for an hour after changing clothes, come up and then I have some "free" time. I sometimes fill in some of that with reading. I also spend time on the blog, of course, and we as a family run errands and get shopping done usually around the dinner time, shoving everything further up so it feels like there's not much time or energy to accomplish more. Go to bed at around ten or eleven, alarm goes off near six in the morning, repeat...the truth is that because of my need for routine, this "comfy" routine is difficult for me to break out of; my routine becomes my excuse to use as "I'm too busy to do XYZ."

Since the surgery I was promising myself to try one of two things to dedicate some time to. One is creating a program (I have a couple ideas of the type of application I want in mind) and in the process start studying a programming language. The other is writing a novel.

I spent many hours agonizing over the pros and cons of each and decided on working on the program. I have been trying to spend an hour here and there working on it, and it's slow going since I have to Google for information in order to get different bits of functionality to work. But so far I'm hitting several milestones for myself. It's taken forever, but hey, chipping away at it still counts as progress.

But I saw that contest that Paula B on The Writing Show is holding wherein you can submit a story with a Halloween theme and possibly win $75. It must be less than 5,000 words and just tell a good Halloween story. Well, actually, I heard of the contest as an announcement on her podcast. If you're a wanna-be author, check out the link above for information on the podcast, the contest, and various mentorship packages Paula offers.

I heard her talk of the contest and thought to myself that I should try entering. I even wrote a blog posting about it. Then Paula herself found the entry and left a comment on the blog, saying that so far entries have been slow to come in! Well...if they're not getting a huge turnout just yet...maybe that means I could have a better chance of scoring that $75!

So I'm pledging here to try getting an entry in by Monday. I'll even update the blog with progress on the story to try keeping it honest. I'm taking a big step here for me...I've had one item published in a local anthology from the EMWP Project, and that's it. It's probably enough to technically say I've been published but it's not something I've made money with.

Mur Lafferty, host of I Should Be Writing, has given some of the best advice for wanna-be fiction writers. "You're allowed to suck." This is a huge hurdle for me to even sit in the chair and type...fear. Fear of sucking. I have to keep telling myself that it's okay to suck. If it's rejected then it's rejected. At least I wrote something and tried, and maybe writing something will help improve my skills.

So that's what I'll do. A 5000 word story (well, less) by Monday for submitting to The Writing Show, not the suck part. Well the story may suck but I'm not aiming to make it suck. The story submissions are due by August 31st, and people may enter up to 2 stories, so I could theoretically write another one and try; especially if people are slow to enter the contest...it'll boost my chances of winning! So don't you people get any ideas!!