Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 35

Proofing Checklist: Just Nod & Smile

I recently finished the latest revision of my novel, and after all the heavy lifting was done–you know, adding new scenes, tweaking character motivations, all that–it was time for one more proof before it goes back to my agent. Now I have a pretty lengthy proofing checklist that includes all kinds of things, from overused words, sentence structure bugaboos, adverb annihilation, dialog tag correctification, the works. What I want to focus on today, though, is body language and nonverbal cues,...

A Week of Writing: 8/12/19 to 8/18/19

Here we go. Another week of writing gone by, and here’s how I did.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote comes from Stephen King

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”

— Stephen King

Yeah, that’s, uh, a little grim, but the message is a good one. Kill, kill, kill your darlings. It’s a difficult process,...

2019 Acceptance Rate Check-In

With 2019 three quarters of the way through, let’s see how I’m doing with regards to submissions and rate of acceptance. In this post I’m gonna run the numbers for the year to date and compare it with the numbers for all the years I’ve tracked my submissions through Duotrope. Before I get to the numbers, let me first tell you about my methodology. The acceptance rate is calculated with the following formula: total acceptances/(total submissions – pending subs and withdrawals). Obviously, the...

Get Your Hooks In: Even More Fun With First Lines

For a while now I’ve been revisiting my published stories specifically to look at the first line and determine if it’s the kind of line that immediately hooks the reader. Once again, this is because of an essay by Stephen King called “Great Hookers I Have Known” from his collection Secret Windows. It’s a great little piece where King looks at the first lines from his novels to see if they qualify as “hookers.” That’s apparently old publisher slang for a first lines that grab a reader’s attent...

A Week of Writing: 7/29/19 to 8/4/19

Another week, another bunch of words in roughly the shape of novels and stories and stuff.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote comes from Salvador Dali.

“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.”

― Salvador Dali

It’s been said that perfection is the enemy of done (or something like that), and in my experience that is very true. I find you have to give up the pursuit of perfection at some point, and you must be able to step back and say, “good enough,” and get that story submitted o...

A Week of Writing: 7/22/19 to 7/28/19

Yeesh, have I fallen behind on these things. Okay, here we go.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote comes from Truman Capote.

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”

― Truman Capote

You ever seen someone smother their french fries in ketchup to the point where you can’t even see the fries? Or maybe someone dumps so much cream in their coffee you say something stupid like, “Hey, you want some coffee with that cream?” Anyway, that’s how I’ve been feeling about my writing lately...

The Post-Acceptance Process

In a recent post, I discussed my process after receiving a rejection. Well, there’s a flip side to that, and I have a post-acceptance process too. It’s just as important as the post-rejection ritual, maybe even more so. Here’s what I do (or try to do) after what I like to call “the blessed event.”

Submission Statement: May/June 2019

Playing catch-up again. Here are my submission endeavors for May and June.

May/June 2019 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 11 Rejections: 12 Acceptances: 1 Publications: 0 Submission Withdrawal: 1

May was fairly productive with 7 submissions, but I stumbled in June and only managed 4 more. A few of the rejections were from stories submitted prior to May and June, but most were for those sent out in that two-month period. I withdrew one story and sent it out again last week.

Rejections

Twelve re...

Form Rejections: What Do They Actually Mean?

As a longtime student of rejectomancy, I’ll be the first to tell you the arcane art of divining meaning from rejections only gets you so far. Sometimes a rejection just means what it says and nothing more. Attempting to read complex hidden motives into a simple “no thanks” can lead you down a dark, miserable path of self-doubt. In this post, we’ll discuss how to avoid that path with some examples of form rejections from my own collection and a little rejectomantic analysis.

Form Rejection #1

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The Rejectomancer Mk II

If you’ve followed my blog for long, you’ve likely seen the “Be a Rejectomancer” page. It’s been a fixture in my menu bar since I began Rejectomancy. Essentially, it translates rejection into a game of sorts, an RPG-class-inspired bit of fun designed to take some of the sting out of rejections. I’ve been threatening to update it and add new features to the “rejectomancer class” for a while, and, well, after four years of this blog and a whole bunch of rejections, it’s time. So here’s the new...