Jeremy Zimmerman's Blog, page 12

Kansas! Day Thirteen

The workshop is, for all intents and purposes, over. Tonight is the awards banquet for the Campbell Conference, which then continues through the weekend.

This week of the workshop has been a little different from the first week. We had a new attendee that couldn't make the first week, and two of our writers only had two stories each. It made the dynamic a little different. The new person had attended the workshop in the past, but we didn't have a chance to get to know him like we did the othe...

Kansas! Day Eight

It is the weekend, which the short story workshoppers have "off" and the novelists do not. I'm still playing catchup with reading and have to upload my short story revisions today. But otherwise it's been a lazy day of doing laundry and looking for coffee. The local coffee stand is closed on the weekends and the cafeteria doesn't open until 11 ("Brunch").
Friday we read aloud the opening scene to either one of the stories we had gotten critiqued earlier in the week or a new creation. Either w...

Kansas! Day Six

Sorry for the lack of updates. Between spotty internet and the constant game of catchup with reading stuff to critique and taking naps to beat down exhaustion. I'd been trying to only do blog updates at night, but that doesn't work so well.
By yesterday we got through the first two rounds of critiques, so I've been on the hot seat twice now. "It's All Fun and Games" and "Thus Have I Heard" have been pretty thoroughly raked over the coals. It's a little frustrating, since most of the workshopp...

Kansas! Day Two

I woke up bright and early with the aim of getting lots of stuff done today. I hung out in the lobby, working on my workshop notes, waiting for someone to go to breakfast with. I ended up waiting for quite a while. But finally there were signs of life and we went to check out the local cafeteria. They were a couple people from the novel workshop, since they actually met in the morning while us short story folks didn't have to be anywhere till after lunch.
The Mad Greek</a>. The sun had come o...

Kansas! Day One

I am in scenic Lawrence, Kansas, for the Science Fiction Writers Workshop put on by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. This is primarily a workshop for short stories. James Gunn leads the workshop. There is a concurrent workshop being run for SF novelists run by Kij Johnson. Because I'm not well versed in SF lore, I had not heard of either of these people. But as their Wikipedia articles illustrate, they're kind of a big deal.

Because a few friends have been curious about the experi...

Brief notes

First, pimping of others:

There's a new story up at Wily Writers, "The Tunnel" by Matt Cowens.

A.M. Dellamonica, who taught my UCLA extension course, has been short-listed for the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. There's also some other people on the list.

Cross Genres has announced the winners of their flash fiction contest.

The location of the Seattle stop of Jennifer Brozek and Seanan McGuire's "Murder and Mayhem" tour has changed. It is now as follows:

SEATTLE
July ...

Standards

In getting ready to submit a short story, I reviewed the submission guidelines for the publication in question. They said they wanted it in Standard Manuscript Format, and at first I thought I knew what they meant when they said that. Especially since the link pointed to the SFWA Web site. In the short story writing class I took through UCLA Extension, we were asked to submit our story for the class in Standard Manuscript Format, and were directed to an article on the SFWA Web site by Vonda M...

State of the Honeydew

A quick post to review where I am with my goals.

6/14/2010: Submit my three stories for workshopping in Kansas. 100%.

6/30/2010: Wily Writer's "Song" issue. 5%. I'm going to try and get this out, even with just three days to do it.

6/30/2010: Crossed Genres "Invasion" issue. 100%.

6/30/2010: Crossed Genres "Science in my Fiction" contest. 0%. Decided against it.

7/1/2010: Hallow's Eve Press Steampunk anthology. 95%. I've finished a first draft and sent it around for feedback.

7/4/2010: Read...

Notes from the front lines.

In a move that surprises no one, I am not one of the finalists for the PNWA Literary Contest. Though I did discover that Nathan Everett, known as Wayzgoose among the NaNoWriMo set, is a finalist! So rock on for him.

The news of the finalists is mainly of note to me because the notes from the judges are supposed to be back this week. I can then turn around and roll that feedback into the manuscript I'm working on. I may have to have a few beers before facing the criticisms, though.

In other ne...

The wind up, the pitch.

Not going to bother with a honeydew update. It's basically the same as before, except I've pecked out a little bit more on my steampunk story. I really want to at least get a submission for Wily Writers together, but my idea for that (even with brainstorming) seems much more tenuous as I poke at it more. I have vast, big concept. No actual plot.

But I do have some other thoughts regarding writing.
One thing I failed to track for my writing schedule is Go Play Northwest, the indy game conventi...