Daniel Ausema's Blog, page 7
January 25, 2020
A Trade in Betrayals--done!
Late Thursday night I wrote the final words of the first draft of A Trade in Betrayals, the third (and likely final) book in the Arcist Chronicles. It feels like the book is...really good. The beats work and build well. The connections within the novel and to the earlier books are the right balance of surprising and fitting. It feels like a powerful and fitting conclusion to the story.
It may not still feel that way later, when it comes time to revise and polish it, but for now I'm not just satisfied but excited for this book and the chance people will have to read it.
I always take a few months off a project like this after finishing the first draft. That gives my mind the space it needs to come back to it fresh. So I'll be working on other things now, maybe some short stories, maybe some poetry, definitely some submissions/queries being sent out.
But I'll take a moment to look back first at how the writing went. Since it was a novel that started as a NaNoWriMo project, I'll look mostly at word count and how the writing went day by day. But before November arrived, I had done some planning. Book 2, The Roots of Betrayal, was sent to my publisher in September. That book left a lot of things open that I knew I would have to address. Most of those I didn't know how exactly I would address, only that the resolution would come in the third book. (Book 2 has its own resolution, for what it's worth--and satisfying, I think--but to get that resolution I had to leave other things unresolved.)
So I really didn't know much about how the novel would go at that point. I spent the rest of September and all of October letting various ideas bounce around in my head, jotting down some ideas. So by the end of October I had a rough and fluid outline for the story--who it would focus on and what they would be doing at different points of the novel.
Then in November I dived right in and didn't allow myself to second guess things. If I wasn't sure what would happen next, I would walk the dog and wonder what would make this discrete part of the novel exciting, trusting that the rough outline I had would keep it all flowing in a way that works.
For the first 25 days of November, I wrote almost exactly 2,000 words per day. After that we were traveling to visit my in-laws, and I only got about another 2,000 words over the rest of the month. Both of the previous books in the series had been in the 120k-130k word range, so I was hoping to get a little farther in November, but still it was enough to "win" NaNo, and I was pleased with the progress.
My goal in December was to write 1,000 words per day. Early in the month I struggled to get that much, not so much because of anything in the writing, but because of busyness with non writing stuff. That said, there's always a point in any novel I've written (and almost any short story even) about that far in when it becomes harder to keep plugging away, when you start to question the story, the approach, the writing itself. So the slowdown was probably partly due to that as well. But later I caught up and ended the month at almost exactly 1,000 words/day.
The goal then was 1,000 words a day for January as well, which I guessed would get my within a few thousand of the end to either finish in February or maybe find a way to get to in January. But the first day of the month I hit 1,500 words, and then the second day as well. And I decided to aim for that as long as I could. That worked out well. There were two days when busyness limited me to just over 1k, and two days when everything was flowing so well that I got almost 3k, with the rest of the days right around 1,500 until the book was complete.
When will you get to read this masterpiece? I don't know and don't want to even hazard a guess. I hope to come back to it in a few months for the first of several revisions. Then hopefully I can have it polished and sent to my publisher sometime around next fall or early winter. Beyond that, I have no guess and little control. But I'm excited already for when this book comes out for everyone to read!
It may not still feel that way later, when it comes time to revise and polish it, but for now I'm not just satisfied but excited for this book and the chance people will have to read it.
I always take a few months off a project like this after finishing the first draft. That gives my mind the space it needs to come back to it fresh. So I'll be working on other things now, maybe some short stories, maybe some poetry, definitely some submissions/queries being sent out.
But I'll take a moment to look back first at how the writing went. Since it was a novel that started as a NaNoWriMo project, I'll look mostly at word count and how the writing went day by day. But before November arrived, I had done some planning. Book 2, The Roots of Betrayal, was sent to my publisher in September. That book left a lot of things open that I knew I would have to address. Most of those I didn't know how exactly I would address, only that the resolution would come in the third book. (Book 2 has its own resolution, for what it's worth--and satisfying, I think--but to get that resolution I had to leave other things unresolved.)
So I really didn't know much about how the novel would go at that point. I spent the rest of September and all of October letting various ideas bounce around in my head, jotting down some ideas. So by the end of October I had a rough and fluid outline for the story--who it would focus on and what they would be doing at different points of the novel.
Then in November I dived right in and didn't allow myself to second guess things. If I wasn't sure what would happen next, I would walk the dog and wonder what would make this discrete part of the novel exciting, trusting that the rough outline I had would keep it all flowing in a way that works.
For the first 25 days of November, I wrote almost exactly 2,000 words per day. After that we were traveling to visit my in-laws, and I only got about another 2,000 words over the rest of the month. Both of the previous books in the series had been in the 120k-130k word range, so I was hoping to get a little farther in November, but still it was enough to "win" NaNo, and I was pleased with the progress.
My goal in December was to write 1,000 words per day. Early in the month I struggled to get that much, not so much because of anything in the writing, but because of busyness with non writing stuff. That said, there's always a point in any novel I've written (and almost any short story even) about that far in when it becomes harder to keep plugging away, when you start to question the story, the approach, the writing itself. So the slowdown was probably partly due to that as well. But later I caught up and ended the month at almost exactly 1,000 words/day.
The goal then was 1,000 words a day for January as well, which I guessed would get my within a few thousand of the end to either finish in February or maybe find a way to get to in January. But the first day of the month I hit 1,500 words, and then the second day as well. And I decided to aim for that as long as I could. That worked out well. There were two days when busyness limited me to just over 1k, and two days when everything was flowing so well that I got almost 3k, with the rest of the days right around 1,500 until the book was complete.
When will you get to read this masterpiece? I don't know and don't want to even hazard a guess. I hope to come back to it in a few months for the first of several revisions. Then hopefully I can have it polished and sent to my publisher sometime around next fall or early winter. Beyond that, I have no guess and little control. But I'm excited already for when this book comes out for everyone to read!
January 3, 2020
Goal setting—a fiction writer's how to
I didn't used to like creating specific goals. It always felt artificial and a recipe for disappointment. Because, sure, I could set a goal to write XYZ, but when I fell short I thought the fact of falling short would overwhelm any sense of accomplishment for the goals I did meet or other things I accomplished.
It was reading Jeff VanderMeer's Booklife ten years ago that convinced me to give goal-setting a try and gave a framework for how to categorize my goals. I've adapted that framework, so here's how I've been creating my goals for the past ten years.
One of the struggles I came against was that certain goals are...to some extent out of my control. Early on, one goal I had every year, even before formalizing the process, was to get a short story accepted by a SFWA-qualifying market. And after I'd sold my first, to sell more so that I qualified to join. More recently, it's been to have a work short-listed for an award, for example. Well, I can control some of that--by reading the stories those markets publish, by improving my own craft, by continuing to submit even in the face of rejections. But some of it is outside my control, and I didn't want to judge whether I'd met a goal or not by things I couldn't control.
So I created a category that I called "Uncontrollable" and put those goals in there, knowing that they were more aspirations than actual goals. Then the rest of my goals I split between "Private": what creative things I would accomplish; and "Public": what things I would do on social media, etc. to interact with other writers and readers and help people be aware of my writing.
Those were (and still are) the columns of my table of goals. Then the rows are broken down into a 5-year goal and a 1-year goal and then below that the monthly and weekly tasks that could help me achieve those goals. In recent years I've filled the space below that with a month-by-month breakdown of the year, which was especially important, for example, when I was serializing the Spire City seasons.
It all sounds incredibly...anal. Which is not my personality at all, so it's always been a stretch to get myself to categorize things this way. But I think it's largely because it forces me to do something less familiar and natural that I've gotten so much benefit from setting goals this way.
So, for example, this is what my 2010 goal sheet—the first year I did this—looked like (this was before Musa had accepted the Spire City serial, and at the time I was contemplating releasing recordings of the episodes on Podiobooks):
And at the end of that year, I wrote down some notes of how the goal setting had gone:
As for the 5-year goals, the private ones I more than exceeded (I think I wrote at least three more novels in those five years, not including a MG novel draft). The public goals, well that's so general it's hard to quantify. I've ping-ponged between high and low engagement in a variety of online places. And the uncontrollable ones—I met and far exceeded the 1-year goal within a couple of years, but even now haven't met the specific goals I put down as the 5-year plan...
That process has been largely the same ever since. It isn't exactly the framework in Booklife, but it's one that worked well for me. I keep a second document that's a task list. In that I jot down at the beginning of the month what I hope to accomplish that month. Then each week I add what I should aim for that week so that I can meet those monthly goals.
I've never made it through an entire year of using that task list fully--there's usually at least a month here or there where I neglect the document because I'm caught up in other things or don't bother to update it there. It would probably help to put the document on Google docs--it's always been on my desktop, which is where I go to do a lot of my organizational type work, and submitting, etc. but a lot of my writing for the past decade has been done on tablets or a Chromebook while watching kids (or now the puppy) in another room. But even so, it's definitely been a part of my most successful times of the year.
What about you? What have you done to help you meet your writing goals?
It was reading Jeff VanderMeer's Booklife ten years ago that convinced me to give goal-setting a try and gave a framework for how to categorize my goals. I've adapted that framework, so here's how I've been creating my goals for the past ten years.
One of the struggles I came against was that certain goals are...to some extent out of my control. Early on, one goal I had every year, even before formalizing the process, was to get a short story accepted by a SFWA-qualifying market. And after I'd sold my first, to sell more so that I qualified to join. More recently, it's been to have a work short-listed for an award, for example. Well, I can control some of that--by reading the stories those markets publish, by improving my own craft, by continuing to submit even in the face of rejections. But some of it is outside my control, and I didn't want to judge whether I'd met a goal or not by things I couldn't control.
So I created a category that I called "Uncontrollable" and put those goals in there, knowing that they were more aspirations than actual goals. Then the rest of my goals I split between "Private": what creative things I would accomplish; and "Public": what things I would do on social media, etc. to interact with other writers and readers and help people be aware of my writing.
Those were (and still are) the columns of my table of goals. Then the rows are broken down into a 5-year goal and a 1-year goal and then below that the monthly and weekly tasks that could help me achieve those goals. In recent years I've filled the space below that with a month-by-month breakdown of the year, which was especially important, for example, when I was serializing the Spire City seasons.
It all sounds incredibly...anal. Which is not my personality at all, so it's always been a stretch to get myself to categorize things this way. But I think it's largely because it forces me to do something less familiar and natural that I've gotten so much benefit from setting goals this way.
So, for example, this is what my 2010 goal sheet—the first year I did this—looked like (this was before Musa had accepted the Spire City serial, and at the time I was contemplating releasing recordings of the episodes on Podiobooks):
And at the end of that year, I wrote down some notes of how the goal setting had gone:
As for the 5-year goals, the private ones I more than exceeded (I think I wrote at least three more novels in those five years, not including a MG novel draft). The public goals, well that's so general it's hard to quantify. I've ping-ponged between high and low engagement in a variety of online places. And the uncontrollable ones—I met and far exceeded the 1-year goal within a couple of years, but even now haven't met the specific goals I put down as the 5-year plan...That process has been largely the same ever since. It isn't exactly the framework in Booklife, but it's one that worked well for me. I keep a second document that's a task list. In that I jot down at the beginning of the month what I hope to accomplish that month. Then each week I add what I should aim for that week so that I can meet those monthly goals.
I've never made it through an entire year of using that task list fully--there's usually at least a month here or there where I neglect the document because I'm caught up in other things or don't bother to update it there. It would probably help to put the document on Google docs--it's always been on my desktop, which is where I go to do a lot of my organizational type work, and submitting, etc. but a lot of my writing for the past decade has been done on tablets or a Chromebook while watching kids (or now the puppy) in another room. But even so, it's definitely been a part of my most successful times of the year.
What about you? What have you done to help you meet your writing goals?
December 25, 2019
Two stories, one to read and one to hear. Wait, make that three!
The Dying Earth anthology is finally out. My story "To Climb by the Light of the Sputtering Sun" was written specifically for the antho. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the only full short story I wrote in 2018. (I wrote some flash and micro fiction, not to mention the draft of one novel and a major revision of another. But only the one short story.)
We had a lot of discussion in the forums about what the Dying Earth subgenre really is. A lot of people, even knowledgeable writers, conflated it with your standard apocalyptic, end-of-the-world kinds of stories. But these have a different flavor, a mood and feeling of the world as an old, old place, where powerful technologies have been invented and lost countless times so that the line between what the characters think of as magic and what they consider science becomes blurred. It's a really fun space to explore. The writers in the antho just got our digital copies of the book the other day, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the other writers addressed it.
My story involves a team of scavengers, mistrusted by the other citizens of their aging city. But when the power goes out in the city, they're given the task to search for the magical? technological? parts to restore the electricity.
Be sure to pick up your copy of the Dying Earth anthology today!
***
Second, you can listen to me read one of my flash fiction stories at Beth Turnage's website. A few months ago, a group of us sat down and wrote entries for the Weird Christmas contest. None of us were chosen, but we got to talking and liked the idea of hearing each other read our own stories. Only problem for me: I fully expect to find a paying market for my piece and am planning to send it out again on submission. And releasing a recording of it would turn it into a reprint. So I went back for a suitably holiday-themed reprint of my own and read my story "Letter to Santa from a Budding Mad Scientist," which was published in Splickety Magazine a few years ago.
It isn't often you get to listen to me read my own work, so enjoy!
***
And last but not least, last year's SFFWorld anthology was the superhero-themed Pacific City shared-world anthology. It includes my story "Over Sea, Under Surveillance," about people who want to be left alone and a high tech government who won't let them. This leads to the origin story of a new superhero of the ocean.
The anthology is free for two days only...and one of those days is already past. So hurry for your chance to get a copy of the anthology, full of a wide range of superheroes fighting to save the city. Or maybe fighting the city to save something else.
Happy reading, whatever holidays you choose to celebrate!
We had a lot of discussion in the forums about what the Dying Earth subgenre really is. A lot of people, even knowledgeable writers, conflated it with your standard apocalyptic, end-of-the-world kinds of stories. But these have a different flavor, a mood and feeling of the world as an old, old place, where powerful technologies have been invented and lost countless times so that the line between what the characters think of as magic and what they consider science becomes blurred. It's a really fun space to explore. The writers in the antho just got our digital copies of the book the other day, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the other writers addressed it.My story involves a team of scavengers, mistrusted by the other citizens of their aging city. But when the power goes out in the city, they're given the task to search for the magical? technological? parts to restore the electricity.
Be sure to pick up your copy of the Dying Earth anthology today!
***
Second, you can listen to me read one of my flash fiction stories at Beth Turnage's website. A few months ago, a group of us sat down and wrote entries for the Weird Christmas contest. None of us were chosen, but we got to talking and liked the idea of hearing each other read our own stories. Only problem for me: I fully expect to find a paying market for my piece and am planning to send it out again on submission. And releasing a recording of it would turn it into a reprint. So I went back for a suitably holiday-themed reprint of my own and read my story "Letter to Santa from a Budding Mad Scientist," which was published in Splickety Magazine a few years ago.
It isn't often you get to listen to me read my own work, so enjoy!
***
And last but not least, last year's SFFWorld anthology was the superhero-themed Pacific City shared-world anthology. It includes my story "Over Sea, Under Surveillance," about people who want to be left alone and a high tech government who won't let them. This leads to the origin story of a new superhero of the ocean.
The anthology is free for two days only...and one of those days is already past. So hurry for your chance to get a copy of the anthology, full of a wide range of superheroes fighting to save the city. Or maybe fighting the city to save something else.
Happy reading, whatever holidays you choose to celebrate!
December 6, 2019
The next Lyrical Worlds newsletter
I knew a newsletter going out at the start of the week would just get lost in Cyber Monday sales pitches (and yikes, I knew it would be bad, but it seemed like a lot more than other years this time...). So the December newsletter will be going out early next week.
You shouldn't miss this month's. In addition to news and the like, this month will include a seasonal story, "A Winter Solstice Sun,"--and it will even include some fan art that I was given around the time it was first published. Here's a teaser of a portion of that picture:
What? There's got to be a story around that. And there is. So subscribe to the newsletter now so you can not only read the story but also find out just how that all came about. My subscriber numbers have doubled in the past month. I'd love to see it double again--join in so you don't miss out!
You shouldn't miss this month's. In addition to news and the like, this month will include a seasonal story, "A Winter Solstice Sun,"--and it will even include some fan art that I was given around the time it was first published. Here's a teaser of a portion of that picture:
What? There's got to be a story around that. And there is. So subscribe to the newsletter now so you can not only read the story but also find out just how that all came about. My subscriber numbers have doubled in the past month. I'd love to see it double again--join in so you don't miss out!
November 22, 2019
Story sale! "Carnival Days and Days" to Daily Science Fiction
Quick news that I've sold this flash fiction story, a sort of trapped-by-forces-beyond-our-control horror/fantasy story. With clowns. It will be my fourth story in DSF.
November 16, 2019
2019 eligibility post
Lots of posts going up on Twitter about this year's eligibility for various awards, etc. I have two more short stories that I'm expecting to come out before the end of the year, so I'll add those in tentatively and update it with links, new stories if any, and deletions if necessary (there's also a forthcoming story in DSF that I haven't even announced yet, but I suspect that won't be out until the new year):
Short stories:
"The Scapegoat Village" in Kaleidotrope
"Amid Stone and Sun, an Alias" in Mirror Dance
"To Climb by the Light of the Sputtering Sun" in SFFWorld's Dying Earth anthology (hopefully out by the end of the year)
"Heroes Never Die" flash fiction in Frozen Wavelets (first issue is currently rolling out, so...possibly by the end of the year)
And then my collection Cities of Wonder, Rails of Irreality included some reprints and also these previously unpublished short/flash stories:
"City of Animals"
"The Singing Caves"
"The City of Corpses"
"City of Letters"
"The City of Lost Voices"
and it includes these previously unpublished poems:
"The Locus of All Rails"
"The People of Train Smoke"
"The Fossils of Yahm"
Short stories:
"The Scapegoat Village" in Kaleidotrope
"Amid Stone and Sun, an Alias" in Mirror Dance
"To Climb by the Light of the Sputtering Sun" in SFFWorld's Dying Earth anthology (hopefully out by the end of the year)
"Heroes Never Die" flash fiction in Frozen Wavelets (first issue is currently rolling out, so...possibly by the end of the year)
And then my collection Cities of Wonder, Rails of Irreality included some reprints and also these previously unpublished short/flash stories:
"City of Animals"
"The Singing Caves"
"The City of Corpses"
"City of Letters"
"The City of Lost Voices"
and it includes these previously unpublished poems:
"The Locus of All Rails"
"The People of Train Smoke"
"The Fossils of Yahm"
November 12, 2019
“The Game” in the Lyrical Worlds newsletter
I mentioned in my November Lyrical Worlds newsletter that I would share pictures of the original publication of the reprinted story in it, "The Game."Fictitious Force had a unique shape. I suppose it was simply folded the other direction (hotdog bun style instead of hamburger bun style, as I used to explain to kids), but it definitely makes it stand out in my box of contributor copies. The cover for this issue was even inspired by my story, so that's a cool thing.
The story itself is a rather jaded take on the political process...sort of. Or else it's a cynical take on office culture and the things people engage in outside of work to keep life meaningful. But really it's a fantasy story of a fantastical city where everything is decided by a game of numbers, skill, intrigue, and subterfuge.
Or as a friend used to say about all his stories when forced to explain them: you know, a love story.
This issue had quite the table of contents. Some of these are writers I haven't heard from since then, but many have established themselves as prolific and award winning writers. Contributors, in addition to myself were Aliette de Bodard, Ian Whates, Michael Merriam, Brian K. Derkson, Michele Winkler, Anetta Ribken, Brian Dotlon, Cheryl McCreary, Mari Ness, Sarah Monette, Kurt Kirchmeier, and Michelle Scott.So if you've signed up for the Lyrical Worlds newsletter, be sure to open that email and give the story a read. If you haven't signed up yet, sign up now and then send me a quick email saying you'd like to have the November issue as well as future ones.
November 7, 2019
Dying Earth cover art
I announced a story sale to this anthology some months ago, and at the time it was expected to come out fairly soon, but there were some delays in getting to publication.Now it's finally getting close to publication, and we recently were sent the cover art. Looking good!
I'm excited to get a peek inside the antho once it's out, so keep your eyes peeled here, at SFFWorld, and elsewhere for news on when it actually comes out.
November 4, 2019
November newsletter almost ready to go out.
Here's what could be in your inbox soon...This newsletter includes a short story that has never appeared online before, a story that appeared (I'm just rediscovering now) alongside some now well known, award-winning short story writers. So if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, do so soon.
And check your spam folders. The test emails, at least, are getting sent to my spam folder in Outlook... So if you don't think you got an email after signing up, check again!
October 28, 2019
Lyrical Worlds newsletter--sign up now!
And there it is, hinted at a few weeks ago and now live: the Lyrical Worlds newsletter.Lyrical Worlds will be the key way to get the latest news about my stories, poems, novels, etc. I'll still share links here on the blog, but the monthly newsletter will be a simpler format to update readers on everything strange and wondrous happening with my writing.
Free books!
And just for signing up, you'll get two free books. One is a Spire City novel, the first season of the Spire City series. The other is a booklet that looks behind the scenes at The Silk Betrayal and the Arcist Chronicles.
But wait, there's more!
It's a newsletter, but it isn't just about news. I've had stories and poems published going back almost twenty years now. Many of those were in print zines that are no longer published. Others were online at one time, but the pages have disappeared and the links gone dark. Some of them will be very early writing that you'd think I'd be embarrassed to be read.
But you'd be wrong. I have no shame.
OK, maybe I do... There are probably some stories and poems that I won't bring back out of oblivion.
Others will be stories I'm still very proud of, stories and poems that I don't want anyone to miss out on. So don't unsubscribe after you get your free ebooks. The first reprint, in November, will be a story that's never appeared online, a strangely off-kilter fantasy that you shouldn't miss.
So sign up now!
All you have to do is enter your email in the form below. Don't worry, I won't use your email address for anything except to send the newsletters through the Mailerlite automated system. Just make sure you check your spam filters for a confirmation email. And then check your spam filters again if you don't get the email with a link to your free books.
And, of course, stay subscribed to the newsletter so you can get the monthly updates and delightful reprints, and the occasional special deals!
And thanks in advance for signing up!
