Short

The last time I talked to my agent, he was very happy that the last round of edits to The Ninth Wave were done, and we talked about which editor's desk it would land on next. I can't say a lot about that at the moment, but it was going to a very, very good place, so until I hear otherwise, I'll keep hoping for the best. While he was very happy to hear about the last critique, the rewrite and the results thereof, he wanted to know whether I had anything else to tell him. Did I have any story credits, any other contest results, any other irons in the fire that might prove useful? Well...no. I didn't . I wish I did. Therein lies my problem: credentials and the lack thereof.

Last year, The Ninth Wave was one of the eight finalists in the PNWA writing contest's Science Fiction/Fantasy category. They told me that it's very, very hard to final in this contest, and that last year they had a record number of entries. So that was huge for me. But it wasn't an actual publication credit. Due to the special crit, the rewrite and my kids' correspondence school schedule snafus, I haven't had time to enter any other contests. And I have a very hard time writing short things. Remember my trouble with the synopsis? I got the thing down to three and a half pages. Whoohoo. If I needed a one-page synopsis, I'm not sure how I'd do it. I have written a few short stories, (all in the epic fantasy genre) but I sent all those out years ago and when they didn't get published, I used them as text for my miniature books. So all my short stories have been self-published. The distribution was so low that it hardly counts, but technically I can't offer first publication rights on them since they came out through Pookatales Press. Some of the limited edition copies were sold to people in other countries. The books are even listed on Amazon, though they don't have all the information and you can't buy them from there. They are still available through my Pookatales Press website, and I sometimes sell them on eBay.

If I need to pull another magic rabbit out of my hat and come up with some other little tidbit of credibility, I guess I need to write a brand new short story, then submit it to the current roster of fantasy 'zines.

Gah! I so rarely write short! I don't like doing it. In the hopes of writing a new short story to take to the Moxie this weekend, I've been messing with an idea all week long, and I must have rewritten the first thousand words at least three times already. For whatever reason, I find it's harder for me to throw out a thousand words of a novel than to throw out an entire short story if it isn't going well. So of the maybe 3000 total words written this week, I've probably thrown out 2500 of them. I feel like I need this short story for the potential credit...but I'd really rather just keep writing on the second Brenna novel.

If I can't get a really good start on a short story--any short story--before Sunday, I'm going to bag it and just write on the Brenna book. Or maybe I'll manage to do both. I was hoping that doing some more work on Brigid's Forge could be my reward for writing a tight, edgy short story that I can shop around to magazines. Sigh.