Amanda M. Blake's Blog, page 8
October 18, 2024
Blessed cold: Friday Update
News:
Nothing to share, except the cool front arrived. I don’t even care if I shiver. It’s been such a long, hot summer.
Works in Progress:
I finished the first edit of The Damp, and there almost isn’t anything to say because it was so easy. Past Amanda did me a solid and wrote a clean first draft that didn’t need any major changes, just little things all the way through and one bigger chunk I’d already separated out to cut.
I’m on the second round of edits now, which are always difficult, even though it’s usually just a polish. My brain resists reading the same thing back to back. I do it anyway because that grumpiness makes me less precious about what I keep.
The first edit brought the word count down from about 48K to 41K words. I’m hoping to bring it under 40K in this second round so that it’ll fit into novella calls.
It occurred to me a little bit ago that, if I can’t find a home for it, The Damp might make a nice novella double feature with A Woman Alone. They’re both period gothic novellas (A Woman Alone set during the Depression and The Damp vaguely set in the sixties) with body horror and erotic elements (in AWA’s case, outright horror erotica), but they’re not overly similar despite that at all. It’s a thought.
As a palate cleanser between edits, I updated my poetry collections with the new things I’ve written that fit them. What Witchcraft We Wrought looks more and more like it’ll be the first to reach a full collection after A Nightmare for All Seasons.
I’m still missing the Dracula reimagining. I have a sickness. Christmas, love. Just wait until Christmas.
Things I’m Reading:
The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon
Things I’m Listening To:
Halloween playlist
Things I’m Watching:
Young Frankenstein
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Haunted Wedding
Halloween Kills
Halloween Ends
Worst Ex Ever series (finished)
Good Bones series (finished)
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Shogun series
S.W.A.T. series
Poem of the Week:
leave chants unsung
silence your pleas
there is no solace
lie with me among
the autumn leaves
there is only us
October 11, 2024
Waiting for autumn: Friday Update
News:
Halloween and autumn decorations are up in the house, but a proper Texas autumn should be coming next week. In autumn and winter, we too often have to get by on vibes rather than weather, but I’m not complaining about the milder late summer or what autumn and winter we do get.
In Found 2 news, they’re pushing the release date back a week to the 25th.
Works in Progress:
I finished the Dracula reimagining on Saturday, which was a total of 26 days’ work. By the end, I had 103,246 words, which was less than I thought I’d have. So the final word count is actually quite manageable, because I should be able to cut it under 100K words without trouble. To give you an idea of novel size, the original Dracula is around 160K words (about the length of an average Thorns novel).
The 103K was prior to stitching everything together, removing the outline (which I always include as word count so that it feels productive), and writing a new scene a few days later. After writing the new scene, I had 46 separate files, most of them composed of only one scene and averaging about 2-3K words.
Once I stitched everything together, removed any parts already marked to cut, and added the new scene, my official first draft word count is 99,222 words. Yet, even a few days later, I’m still missing being in that world and wanting more, which I think is a good thing, that I was able to enjoy it so much for so long. I’m slated to edit the DRI sometime in December, depending on when I finish Masque edits, and those are going to be more involved.
However, I get the feeling that something’s missing from the DRI, like I either need to add significantly more or, paradoxically, cut down some things I like to make it even more streamlined than I tried to write it, closer to the original conception. I think I’ll do one editing pass for consistency, since I wrote it out of order, before sending it to my alpha reader to see if she can pinpoint what might be missing or if I’m just perpetually unsatisfied in the Dracula world, which explains the plethora of adaptations, retellings, and reimaginings in my collection.
With the DRI done and dusted, I’ve moved on to editing The Damp, which is the only thing I can fit in before PitDark. I don’t think anything will come of it, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll shop it around a bit, but in the absence of interest, I think it would actually make a good double novella feature with A Woman Alone one day. I think I can finish with the first round of edits by Tuesday. Honestly, the first draft is pretty solid. Most of these edits are minor. Maybe, just maybe, I can have it done by next weekend at the latest?
Cleaned up some poetry from September and early October. From some recurring themes, I might have an idea for another mini-collection/chapbook (because those have been so successful /s). A few of the pieces were really solid, however, even though I had some trouble getting into the long-poem groove.
Things I’m Reading:
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull (finished)
The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon (bizarro horror picked up at Texas Frightmare, and it is weird)
Things I’m Listening To:
Halloween playlist
Things I’m Watching:
The Craft
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Halloween (2018)
Thir13en Ghosts
The Order (2003)
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Abbott Elementary series
Shogun series
S.W.A.T. series
Supernatural series
Poem of the Week:
you won’t hear it
until it is upon you
with smothering wings
talon to pierce flesh
and wide lantern eye
an owl sure an owl
let’s go with that
October 4, 2024
Mad for greed: Friday Update
News:
She’s a young woman who rebelled against her family by becoming evangelical; he’s the avarice demon that accepts her family’s virgin ‘sacrifice’ as his bride. Resolute innocence vs. intriguing corruption in the fourth Meridian novel (standalone, spicy), AVARICE & CREED, under my other name. It should be available on Amazon in about a week, but here’s the link to the Entwined Publishing page.
I’m kind of disappointed that Meridian (dark urban fantasy) hasn’t had the same love that Arcanium (demonic circus, horror romance) did, because I think they’re both great fun. But I’ll continue putting them out there until Entwined tells me to stop. I’ll be working on writing the last one this November.
When it doesn’t rain, it pours: I had another job interview this week. Not sure how it went, since it was a preliminary phone interview and it’s sometimes hard to hear tone beyond customer-service voice, but I thought it went all right.
We also put up Halloween in the house, which gives me a whole bunch of pieces of joy to look at all October. Most spooky Halloween decor is kind of just decor for me, but an abundance of pumpkins and orange mark my Halloween season and keep it special.
Works in Progress:
I’m at about 96K words on the DRI and have only five more scenes to do, so there’s finally an end in sight and I’m not struggling as much as was earlier this week. Life things personal and global made the flow slow down significantly. So, instead of writing, I watched Silent Hill on Tuesday in a mostly successful attempt to reset. I should almost certainly finish by the end of the weekend, which would mean I wrote it in less than a month, even though I wasn’t enforcing word count goals for this project. Pretty awesome. I’ll do a stat rundown next week after everything is finished, stitched together, and put away.
Once the DRI is done, it’s time to put on my editing pants. I’m not going to get everything done by PitDark on October 24, unfortunately, but I’ll get done what I can.
Things I’m Reading:
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull
Things I’m Listening To:
Halloween playlist
Things I’m Watching:
1408
Silent Hill
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
Columbo series
Abbott Elementary series
Shogun series
American Horror Story: Cult series
Worst Ex Ever series
S.W.A.T. series
Good Bones series
Supernatural series
Poem of the Week:
hang up dead garlands
arrange invertebrate bones
ration our temptations
to make it through
without a trick
call upon the dead
and expect an answer
light the lanterns
pumpkin glow
cut the cords
to make them bleed
knock knock
who’s there
who indeed
just give us
what we need
Grey’s Anatomy series
September 27, 2024
Show me your teeth: Friday Update
News:
Another break in the dry spell of short story acceptances: My story “Six,” about being haunted by a number (inspired by my obsession with maths while in fever dreamstate, not even kidding, it’s a recurring thing), is going to be part of Screams, edited by Judith Sonnet. I’ve been wanting to work with her since we were both in Ruth Anna Evans’ Ooze, so this is a real treat. It’s not a themed anthology but is meant to be a throwback to classic horror, from gory and pulpy to quiet—just downright spooky or scary. It’s slated to come out on Christmas.
Somewhat eerily, “Six” was finally accepted after six rejections. *Twilight Zone theme song*
I also had another job interview today, and I think it went really well. Crossing my fingers.
In leg injury news, my legs are almost completely back to normal except that the original injury isn’t recovering. It’s healed. There’s no pain, no tugging, but it must have healed with too much tangled fibers or scar tissue, because the muscle remains atrophied. The muscle isn’t working, so the other muscles continue to overwork, and the whole leg is weaker. I can’t up the resistance on the elliptical machine, but I can do a whole hour now without reinjuring. I can play pickleball with more vim and vigor. I can walk without pain, although I still start out stiff and sometimes limp a bit. So I still have to be careful going forward, because all these injuries have made me more susceptible to reinjury, but I think I can fairly say that this is as good as it’s going to get, and since that’s without pain, I’ll take it, even it isn’t the ideal outcome.
Works in Progress:
I’m still working on the Dracula retelling. I don’t think I’ll finish by the end of the month, but maybe by next Friday or the end of that weekend? I’ve got to say, the way this book is flowing for me is quite amazing, and it’s so much fun. And I’m incredibly thankful for the outline; it keeps me on task. I have detail for every scene regarding what elements are most relevant and why they’re important. A lot of the verbiage is dialogue, which I like to keep naturalistic, occasional tangents and all, so I sometimes forget what the point of a scene is. So it’s nice having something I can reference to remember where I’m going.
I’m at around 70,000 words and still have three pages’ worth of outline to tackle. I did skip forward earlier this week to do one of the really important scenes, then jumped back to fill in the undone bits (not quite caught up, but close). Otherwise, I’ve actually been working chronologically, to develop the character and conflicts set forth by future scenes already written.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up hitting 110-120K words. To be clear, I envisioned this as a taut, modern reimagining at about 60-80K. The way I viewed it, the shorter size would justify the changes to the story and the found media (new epistolary) format.
I’m not disappointed, per se. As I said above, I’m having a blast, because this has been a dream project, and it’s going so much better than the last time I tried to write it. But it’s not what I wanted it to be, I’m not sure it’s justified as anything but a novelty pet project, not sure if I’ll be able to get it short enough to effectively go on sub. I’m not sure what it is or what to do with it now that it isn’t what I set out to write. Are the formatting and changes enough to keep it interesting to other people who love a good Dracula reimagining as much as me? I guess we’ll know the answer to that eventually.
Things I’m Reading:
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull
Things I’m Listening To:
Halloween playlist
Dracula collection playlist
Things I’m Watching:
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Columbo series
Abbott Elementary series
Shogun series
America’s Got Talent series (finished)
American Horror Story: Cult series
Worst Ex Ever series
S.W.A.T. series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)
I bring with me
A harvest of sour apples
And slices of honeycomb
Cut with soft cheese
Drizzle with honey
This must have been
What the serpent offered
I too would have fallen
For a cool breeze
And a sharp feast
Served on scales.
September 20, 2024
Notes: Friday Update
News:
I’ve had a brief break in the drought with “Nuisance Notifications,” a short story that was accepted by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull for Found 2: More Stories of Found Footage Horror. I’m really honored to be a part of it, and it’s HWA pro-rate, so that’s a bit of a relief, too. It’ll cover one month’s medications, thank goodness.
I make no bones about how much I love epistolary and its progeny, found footage. Found media in general is such a great way to write spare, tight horror. The first Found is amazing so far, and Found 2 is available for pre-order and is coming out October 18.
Works in Progress:
This is my second week working on the Dracula reimagining, and I think I figured out why I’m having such a good time with it. I mean, sure, I’m living the dream of writing a DRI, which has been on my bucket list for a long time, and especially since the last effort was such a disaster, having it work makes a helluva difference.
The reason why it’s consistently fun, though, in spite of the fact that I’m doing everything differently than usual, is because it doesn’t feel like I’m writing a novel. Because it’s modern epistolary/found media and I have discrete documents for each piece, it feels more like I’m writing a bunch of themed short pieces, even though I know I’m writing a novel. Every few thousand words (give or take), I close a document and cross it off my outline, and it hits my brain with endorphins like I’ve finished. So instead of having to wait a month to get that little high, I get one or a few a day. It’s nice.
It wouldn’t work for just any project. This epistolary novel really is like making different-sized granny squares for a throw blanket rather than do a continuous series of crochet stitches. Sure, I have a pattern. I’m not just stitching willy-nilly. And both kinds end up the same size one way or another. But each granny square has its own end, to eventually be stitched together when they’re all done, rather than building a single giant throw on my lap. I couldn’t separate out chapters this way, because it all still feels connected. It’s a unique project, with a unique process, and I’m really enjoying the novelty of both.
Right now, I’m at about 37,000 words of a projected 90,000, but I’m still concerned this is going to cross over 100K, maybe even up to 120K, because I have an awful lot of my outline left to cross out (although some scenes have more notes than others, so it’s a little deceiving). In edits, I’ll probably remove a lot of editorializing; it’s there for me more than the story right now, despite some intended subjectivity. But it’s definitely bigger in scope than I thought. I’d originally conceived DRI to be minimalistic, kind of a counterpoint to the original Dracula tome. Maybe some of the things I’ve written simply won’t be included? But I love relevant detritus and effluvia. It’s like the pumpkin spice of a novel. I guess, as usual, we’ll see.
Definitely throws me even more off-schedule, though. I probably won’t get as much edited by next PitDark as I’d planned, especially if I get the edits for Book & Candle (Meridian 5) back within the next month.
Nevertheless, I’ll aim for crossing off as much of DRI as possible this month, finishing as soon as possible in October, and editing Masque and The Damp before PitDark. Masque will be the wild card, because I already know I need to rewrite the end, and I’ll hear from my alpha reader if there’s anything else I need to reconfigure. Maybe I’ll get The Damp out of the way first, because it feels like all it needs is a standard double edit, and it’s shorter.
Things I’m Reading:
Needful Things by Stephen King (finished)
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull
Things I’m Listening To:
Hannibal series soundtracks
DRI playlist
Dracula collection playlist
Things I’m Watching:
Hannibal
Aliens
Nosferatu (1979)
Columbo series
America’s Got Talent series
American Horror Story: Cult series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series (finished)
Worst Ex Ever series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Murder, She Wrote series (finished!)
Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)
The nexus of our roads
Holds the power of convergence
Within this taut place,
This knot of paths taken
And paths not taken
And paths yet to take.
We call upon the dervish wind
For all curses and hexes
Under a dust-cloud sun.
September 13, 2024
False fall: Friday Update
News:
As I posted earlier this week, Crooked House (Thorns 5) is out in e-book and now trade paperback.
Kindle e-book
Trade paperback
Universal link to all other vendors
I’ll probably put out the playlist as soon as I’m finished with DRI.
It’s mind-blowing to me that a series I’ve worked on and scenes I’ve envisioned since 2012 have been put to page. There are more stories planted in the first five books that seed the way for the next four or five, but the completion of the fifth book is the culmination of everything started from the very beginning. It’s a glorious soft conclusion, although I’m looking forward to the next era of Thorns novels that starts next year with Heart and Heads (Thorns 6).
If you enjoy shows such as Grimm and Once Upon a Time, novels like the Splintered series, the Magic Shop series, and the Lunar Chronicles, and authors like Robin McKinley, Gail Carson Levine, and Donna Jo Napoli, I think you’ll really enjoy the Thorns series. If you’ve been waiting until the series is finished, that might take a while, but the soft conclusion should satisfy you while you wait for the rest.
Works in Progress:
I finished The Damp when I thought I would, on Saturday morning, when I jotted down less than a thousand more words to finish the thing. As a story that’s been knocking about my head for longer than I care to admit and had one failed effort to write it in the previous decade, I’m so immensely relieved that 1) I wrote it and 2) I think it’s good.
It threw me off schedule a bit. I certainly didn’t plan on writing a novella, because it means I have nothing to offer several novelette calls, which are rare and I usually try to take advantage of them when they happen. I had planned on a novelette that took me four to five days to write; I ended up with a novella that took a week and a half. Technically, at 48,202 words (amended from what I reported on social media after some last-minute adjustments), it’s more a short novel by some standards, but I’ll likely cut it down under 40K during edits.
It’s just as gothic as I wanted it, with more body horror than I thought I was going to manage, and more erotic content than I planned, but it was relevant to the story, and I wouldn’t quite call it erotic horror so much as horror with erotic elements.
I took the weekend off, then outlined DRI on Monday. At this point, my perimenopausal uterus decided to give me a heavier period a little over two weeks after my last one (why?!), so Tuesday was tough and I didn’t get much writing done. However, although I usually dislike outlining, I had real fun coming up with all the epistolary pieces for DRI on Monday. This novel is going to be unusual for me in every way, I can tell, not least in that I’m writing it out of order.
I’m normally an Alpha and Omega writer; I write beginning to end, with very little variation. But I tried that the last time I wrote DRI, and I finally had to stop at 75K words (why?!) because the characters became quite different than intended and ruined the trajectory of the story, even though the writing was still flowing. There were some intriguing developments, and I’m not averse to letting characters alter things or making adjustments, but the writing plodded to a halt because it stopped working. So I wrote some notes and put it aside to try again later, as the Magic 8 Ball advises.
I never write out of order, but because this is an epistolary of disparate media, it might be the best format to try, and maybe by writing the destination first, I’ll be better equipped to set up the journey. And that’s exactly what I’ve done this week: I’m writing the end (all but the final final scene, which I’ll save for last). These scenes have been strongest and so significant in my head over the years, and they’re the most important pieces to the puzzle that I wouldn’t have been able to reach in the original effort. Already, I’m more confident with my ability to go backward, knowing what everything should be aiming at.
I’m also not writing to a word count, although I’m trying to write as much as I can. Everything’s being worked on in different documents to put together at the very end. This is a situation when Scrivener might actually serve me, but because this is so atypical for me and I’ve worked in similar ways with poetry collections, I think I’ll be okay. I’m keeping an informal word count in my spreadsheet and update it every time I close a finished document, because that helps me feel like I’ve made Progress (like crossing things off my outline), but I don’t have a word goal per day, which is also new.
I have a good feeling about writing DRI all ‘wrong.’ I’m only at the beginning—the honeymoon—but it’s feeling good, right. I’m concerned it’ll actually be longer than I planned (what a surprise). My original and preferred projection was 60-80K words, but given the length of the outline, I’m wondering if it might push 100K or more. Of course, some of these sections will be so short, I may not have to worry. I’m still aiming for finishing by the end of the month, if possible.
Things I’m Reading:
Needful Things by Stephen King
Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios (finished)
Found edited by Gabino Iglesias and Andrew Cull
Things I’m Listening To:
Fleurie
DRI playlist
Dracula collection playlist
Things I’m Watching:
Damaged (2024)
Tamara
Warriors of Virtue
The Blob (1988)
The Ward
Hatchet
The Bone Collector
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
American Horror Story: Cult series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Poem of the Week: (from September 2021)
Sultry the evening
Heavy hanging
In low dark clouds,
In creeping mist
Through the maze
Of verdant weeds
And tall grass
Concealing indolent serpents,
While wheeling above,
Crows call like ravens,
Framed by flashes
Of blue light
In the hungry belly
Of an impending storm.
September 9, 2024
CROOKED HOUSE is out!
CROOKED HOUSE, the fifth book in the Thorns fairy tale mashup series, is officially out (paperback TBA; universal link to non-Zon vendors here)! This is a soft conclusion for the series, in the sense that if I die tomorrow, it’s a satisfactory ending, although there are more books to come, and I start working on Book 6 in 2025.
September 6, 2024
Hourglass sand: Friday Update
(ETA: Things I’m Reading, Listening To, and Watching, slipped my mind)
News:
Nothing much this week to share. I did forget to write last week that in addition to what I worked on then, I also put together some promotional material for Question Not My Salt that I’ll be sharing on social media in October and November, since QNMS is a holiday-specific story. I, for one, love watching holiday-specific horror at certain times of the year.
I was trying to create deliberately dated graphics for some cheesy material, like old Thanksgiving newsletters in elementary school or Sunday school bulletin boards. Even so, I probably shouldn’t quit my dayjob. Oh, wait…
In that respect, I have nothing to report, and this fills me with simultaneous dread and despair. The job market is the worst it’s been for a while, so I know it’s not entirely my fault, but I’m not sure exactly when I need to lower my standards, and when I do, how much worse will I feel when they don’t want me either.
I write so that I’m doing something, working hard every day, but I know I’m not the only one experiencing a publication slump as well while the anthology and magazine markets dry up, and I ran through all my self-publication budget.
I have a great support system that other people don’t have. As long as I don’t get seriously sick (which is what I’m afraid of), I should be okay. But it’s still scary. I had a plan, but I always have a plan, and you know what they say about hindsight.
I have also killed two large cockroaches in the last two days without completely losing my shit. Please clap.
Works in Progress:
I think I’ll be able to finish The Damp either tonight or by early afternoon tomorrow. Rather than a novelette, I’m a little over 40K and approaching 50K words—much longer than I thought it would be and planned for—but I don’t think I’ll go over. During edits, I’ll probably shoot to get word count under 40K so that it’s a long novella rather than a very short novel. I might have a market or two to submit it to later. I’m happy with its weirdness. I sometimes feel like I’m not weird enough, but I’ll occasionally hit a good minor chord.
After The Damp is done, I’ll take the weekend off to rest, then proceed to work on the Dracula reimagining (henceforth DRI, because I feel like the title is a bit of a spoiler that I’m not ready to give). I’m nervous about writing in a different way, but I don’t anticipate it’ll be a long novel. I’m aiming for finishing before the end of the September, which will hopefully give me enough time to edit The Damp and Masque before end of October, although if I’m given Book & Candle (Meridian 5) first edits, that’ll require an adjustment to the schedule.
However, after NaNoWriMo’s massive missteps over the last year, I will not officially be doing NNWM this year, so it’s not like I have to block off November like usual, as long as I finish a novel in that month, which I can still do with a dayjob and even more easily without.
Things I’m Reading:
Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King
Things I’m Listening To:
Haley Reinhart
Hollywood’s Greatest Themes by Tina Guo
Silent Hill: Revelation soundtrack
Stigmata soundtrack
Nightwish instrumentals
Things I’m Watching:
Jumanji
The Nun II
Pandorum
Crossword Mysteries series
Curious Caterer series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
Abbott Elementary series
White Collar series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series
Poem of the Week: (after today, I’ll be using a previous year’s flash poems, since I’ll be working on longer poems this month)
i see through your eyes
the silent witness pulling strings
an alternative perspective
clearer sight parasite
whispering truths from the other side
of your convenient entrance ear
August 30, 2024
Two steps back: Friday Update
News:
Nothing this week.
Works in Progress:
In the effort to continue giving my brain a bit of a break, instead of starting immediately on the next project, I decided to take out the next poetry collection, put everything together, and polish it up for eventual publication. I’d hoped to put it out this fall, actually, but between financial considerations and exclusivity for a few of the poems (as well as some still being on sub, although I’m not sending out any more), I think it’ll be best if I wait until next year.
However, I am ridiculously pleased with A Nightmare for All Seasons as a collection. It’s four seasonal sections, two of which are segmented long poems and the other two of which are mini collections:
Verdant with Splinter and Thorn: mini collection of 11 poemsThe Lusty Murders of May: segmented long poem, one piece per day in MayThe Halloween Parade: mini collection of 15 poems (I posted the title poem last Halloween to herald in the season)Bleak Midwinter: segmented long poem, one piece per day in DecemberBy the time I have everything ready to put into the path of publication, I may add a few more poems to the mini collections if the appropriately themed pop up in my daily poems or on a whim, but I’m not planning for it. Dead Ends had more of my flash poetry in it, mostly because I like making a concise point and sometimes a punchline, and because Dead Ends emerged from a common theme I write rather than a concerted effort to write for a theme, like A Nightmare for All Seasons. Like the difference between assigning my short works to a potential future collection based on broader themes I keep writing and my Bathroom Omens collection, which I specifically wrote short stories (and some poems) for. As a result, a lot more of the poems in the mini collections are longer, two to three pages, and more narrative, like the two long poems.
Now, I’ve been committed to writing poetry for the last three years (four, if you count lyrics), and I learned about poets and their works in English Lit classes. But try as I might, I do not know what makes good poetry. I know what I like, and I understand correct structure (at least where structure is used), but I don’t know whether I’m good or how to improve, no matter how much poetry I read (and I sometimes just don’t like what some call good, so I trust that it’s good, just not for me). All I can really do is what rings right and clear in my brain. It’s disorienting, feeling as though I’m reading some of my best poetry, but most were soundly rejected by poetry markets, and I wouldn’t know a masterpiece from a marketplace.
Regardless, I’m very happy with the latest draft, and I’m looking forward to when I can pull it back out again, either to submit to a call for collections or to publish it myself. In general, I’m amenable to publishing my own collections, poetry or short prose, because they tend not to be as profitable for publishing companies.
After I put A Nightmare for All Seasons aside, I started work on what I had hoped would be a gothic body horror novelette and which now looks like it’s going to be a gothic horror novella (I’ve crossed 15K words and think I’m only halfway through), with not enough body horror to qualify for the subgenre and therefore no longer appropriate in theme or length for the call I’d hoped to write it for. However, since The Damp (formerly Ooze) has been swimming around my head for over a decade as something I want to write (like Masque), I’m not frustrated by writing it without a market (although I’m disappointed I won’t have something for the body horror novelette call).
What I am frustrated about is that I don’t feel like I have a handle on the story, even while I barrel forward. I don’t know how factual my feelings are, but I feel like I’ve been writing badly very well for a while, not just The Damp. And by that, I mean that on the sentence level, I’m on fire, but not on a character and plot level. Maybe I need to write badly and character and plot will improve? Yeah, that sounds like a plan. (It does not sound like a plan.)
This may be a case of hating the writing while I’m in it but thinking it’s workable by the time I get around to editing it—which usually hits midway through the writing. It may also be a simple case of pressure, because I need the money, yet my writing is not making me money because this is the year of rejections, and of course that will make me question the quality, even though I reread through pieces and don’t know what I’m doing wrong (and I’m usually better at quality discernment with prose). Desperation and insecurity breed low self-esteem, after all.
Nevertheless, all I can do is what I’ve been doing and hoping it’s right in spite of myself. I expect the word count on The Damp will be around 30-35K instead of the 15K I’d planned for. Which is another mental issue, because I hit 15K and end of August when I wanted to be finished, so my brain is like, Welp, I’m finished. And I am not finished. Aiming for finishing by end of Labor Day now. (Think I can reach 20K by end of day?)
Then day or two off and jumping straight into the Dracula reimagining, which I’m going to try writing in a new way, not just with an outline but maybe even out of order, working outward from a central story line, and adding supplemental material afterward as needed. These are interesting times.
Things I’m Reading:
Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King
Things I’m Listening To:
The Village soundtrack
Stigmata soundtrack
Nightwish instrumentals
Things I’m Watching:
Pumpkinhead
The People Under the Stairs
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
CSI: Miami series
Abbott Elementary series
Great British Baking Show series
White Collar series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series
Poem of the Week:
standing on the edge of a cliff
wondering if you should try
to change your point of view
madness isn’t a push or plunge
but a numb sweaty-palmed descent
August 23, 2024
Summer break: Friday Update
News:
There are a few things I really do not like to write and perspectives I don’t want to linger in long. “Predatory” covers one of those, so I’m just really glad it’s only flash fiction. As a horror writer, though, I always find a way to bother a pressure point, poking through all those hard limits. “Predatory” is my entry for the Camp Horror theme of Crystal Lake’s Shallow Waters contest, posting this month. We’re almost at the end, if you’re interested in one last slash at summer camp.
Works in Progress:
Circumstances forced a more extended break on me, between period cramps, burnout, and existential despair (received a rejection for In the Dollhouse… and don’t know what to do with it). I’m still not sure if my brain’s quite done resting. I think I might start back up tomorrow, because my creativity is tired but starting to get restless anyway. I’ll write the oozy novelette, then take another short break before diving into the Dracula reimagining.
I did get a little work done this week, though. I got my Crooked House (Thorns 5) files back from the formatter, so now I just have to send the specs and back cover copy to my cover artist. When she’s finished, I should be able to get CH uploaded. I’ll be doing some of that today.
Also, I’ve been meaning to get into creative nonfiction, and I started that yesterday with a flash piece for a sub call. My fiction is much more interesting than I am, so CNF hasn’t been much on my radar, but I have a few articles knocking around that I’d like to try. It’s good to do new things now and then.
Things I’m Reading:
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (finished; still not great but more enjoyable than first read, and I had an entirely false memory about a scene in it, which is weird)
Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King (comfort read before trying something new)
Things I’m Listening To:
YouTube ambient playlists
Things I’m Watching:
Chariots of Fire
The Beekeeper
The Day After Tomorrow
Monolith
Immaculate
The Ritual Killer
Matilda
Sleepaway Camp
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
Abbott Elementary series
Great British Baking Show series
Hoarders series (finished)
Resident Alien series (finished)
White Collar series
Supernatural series
S.W.A.T. series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series
Poem of the Week:
wrenched into a scream,
limbs tangled under sheets
into an unsolvable knot.
no sword to self-slice,
though with concentration
i may fall off the bed
and, whimpering, roll away.
