Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 44

Good Stories Get Rejected Too

Rejections are tough, and getting bummed out is a perfectly reasonable reaction to being told your story isn’t going to be published, but it’s important to have a little perspective on rejections. This is the very core of rejectomancy, understanding that a rejection probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. It probably doesn’t mean you wrote a bad story or that your writing is terrible or any of the other catastrophic scenarios we writers like to read into a simple “not for us” form reje...

A Week of Writing: 7/30/18 to 8/5/18

Hey, all, it’s Monday, or, uh, Tuesday. Anyway, here’s the week that was.

Words to Write By

Another quote from Mr. King. This one comes from his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

—Stephen King

There are lots of opinions on adverbs in writerly circles, but let’s see what else Stephen King says on this subject in his book.

“With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, tha...

“Do Me A Favor” & Other Free Flash Fiction

It’s great when you find a publisher who’s willing to publish your work. It’s even better when you find a publisher who’s willing to publish your work more than once. Today marks my fourth story with The Arcanist, an excellent publisher of speculative flash fiction. The story is called “Do Me A Favor,” and it’s a quirky little horror/black humor mashup. You can check out the story below, along with three other stories I’ve published with The Arcanist. 

So, uh, do me a favor and read these sto...

A Week of Writing: 7/23/18 to 7/29/18

Monday has arrived, and it’s time to share my weekly writerly report card.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote comes from Elmore Leonard, whose “10 Rules of Writing” is one of my favorite pieces of writing advice.

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

—Elmore Leonard

This quote is the abbreviated version of rule ten in the aforementioned “10 Rules of Writing.” I’m currently trying to figure out which parts of my novel might fall into this category and then remove/rewrite them...

Iron Kingdoms Fiction – Confirmed Kill

Got something neat to share with you today. Privateer Press has granted me permission to host a few of my published Iron Kingdoms short stories on the blog. Most of these come from old issues of No Quarter magazine, and this first one, “Confirmed Kill,” ties into the Acts of War novels, Flashpoint and Aftershock. The story features two of my favorite characters from the series, the trollkin sniper Horgrum and his spotter Sergeant Sharp. “Confirmed Kill” is the story of how these two came to w...

A Week of Writing: 7/16/18 to 7/22/18

Another week gone by, another week of writing, revising, and submitting in the books.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote is something I definitely struggle with at times.

“If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.”

—Margaret Atwood

Though I think Margaret Atwood approaches a level of perfection I can only dream about, I can certainly relate to the sentiment in her quote. Many, many times when I was writing the first draft of Late Risers, I had to tell myself “Get it done, get i...

Watch Out. That First Line is a Doozy

I’ve written a couple posts about the importance of the first line in a short story. The idea being that a great first line sets the tone, instantly engages the reader, gets them asking questions about the story, and, hopefully, keeps them reading. These posts were inspired by a Stephen King essay called “Great Hookers I Have Known” from his collection Secret Windows. According to King’s essay, a “hooker” is a term once used by pulp fiction editors to describe a great first line that immediat...

A Week of Writing: 7/9/18 to 7/15/18

Welcome to another week of writerly works.

Words to Write By

This week’s quote deals with those tricky endings and even trickier beginnings.

“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”

—Joyce Carol Oates

This quote reflects something I’ve been thinking about as I go through the first draft of my novel. It’s very clear that even if I stick the landing, I’ll almost certainly need to rework the beginning to match. For me, I think this has a lot to do with how I app...

Go for the Goal: 100 Submissions

This year I set a goal to send 100 short story submissions. It’s similar to the 100 rejections goal, but the focus is a bit different. Let me explain why I’m doing it and subjecting myself to all those rejections.

A Week of Writing: 7/2/18 to 7/8/18

Happy Monday. Here’s a week of writing wins and woes.

Words to Write By

Another quote from King, and one that’s especially important to me since I tend to write a lot of horror.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

– Stephen King

It seems simple, but if we just look at horror movies as an example, so many fail at this basic concept. If you don’t care about the people in the story, you won’t care when horrible things happen to them. I love writing about mon...