C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 165

Progress Report: Week 3, July 2015

This week was one steep learning curve. I managed to be comfortably writing a short story a day by the end of the week, but the progress was lumpy. So far I have completed 9 short stories as part of the Story Match Challenge, but I have only just started to work out how a balanced daily routine will look. University starts on Monday, and my littlest goes back to school, so the routine will have to be reworked once again. No doubt, I’m looking at some near-misses and a whole lot of change, but the journey is well worth the travel.
 
Overview
New words produced: 29,029Old words revised: 0Works completed: 0Works revised: 0Covers created: 0Works published: 0Works submitted: 0Competitions Entered: 0Bloggery: 3,219
Publishing Tasks
Created 8 blog posts for this blog;Catalogued more of my short work so I could track publications and submissions for each.Created 1 blog post for the C.M. Simpson Publishing blog;Completed the edit on Orb Wielder;Formatted Orb Wielder to CreateSpace for both large print and mass market print-on-demandFormatted Orb Wielder for SmashwordsRelease Orb Wielder on Smashwords as an eBook.

New Arrivals
The following pieces arrived last week and were written to completion:
ShortStory487 (Autumnal Threat): a science fiction story of colonisation and ecology.ShortStory488 (In Service to the Pinnacle): a science fiction story linked to Odyssey;ShortStory489 (Earth and Lunar Dreaming): a science fiction story linked to Odyssey and the werewolves of Lunar Base One.ShortStory492 (The Taletellers’ Slumbering): a science fiction story about the importance of story and memory;ShortStory493 (A Legacy of Elves): an urban post-apocalyptic fantasy about pixies, elves and trolls
The following pieces arrived last week and need to be completed:
ShortStory483 (The Royal Starman in the Moon): the 6th story in the story match challengeShortStory484 (The Pink Unicorn): a piece of urban flash fiction fantasy about a miniature pink unicorn;ShortStory485 (That Accursed Rug): a piece of urban flash fiction fantasy about a rug;ShortStory486 (Untitled): a story about trolls, cockatoos and elves – urban fantasy.ShortStory490 (Men of Sand and Light): a science fiction short story about illusion and reality; ShortStory491 (White Pinnacle): a short story   

The Story Match Challenge—Day 12: July 18, 2015

Today’s word goal was 3,600—and I honestly thought I’d barely make it… up until three hours ago when the story took off. I’d like to say it was because I’d found the ending, and that’s probably about the size of it. I’d also taken a break after writing the first 1,600 words, and done some publishing, and then come back to it. Another break at the 2,800-word mark, to cook and eat dinner with the family and then a couple of hours to finish the story at 6,400 words. Not what I expected at all.
Still, the randomly rolled title was: 03-Legacy and 54-Elves, so the title became A Legacy of Elves and the story rolled from there. End result was that I didn’t write any flash fiction or poetry today, but I did finalise the edit on a young adult novel and release it on Smashwords. Tomorrow, that novel will be released in mass market and large print print-on-demand versiions.. All in all, a very good day’s work, even if I have to focus on studying in the morning.Story Match: Complete—A Legacy of Elves (post-apocalyptic urban fantasy – 6,400 words.
Word Total for Today: 6,981

New Release: Orb Wielder as Carlie Simonsen

Hey all - Carlie Simonsen's young adult fantasy adventure Orb Wielder is now available on Smashwords - and will soon be available in print.



When Liralee buys an orb from the Shawl Lady’s stall, she opens a path to another world, for the orb is not just a pretty glass ball that impresses her friends; it’s a symbol of power that produces magic for enchantments. And it’s wanted by two warring kingdoms and a sorcerer with plans of conquest. When strangers try to take the orb, and her friends gather to aid her, Liralee begins an adventure that could end in disaster or victory. The choice is hers.

The Story Match Challenge—Day 11: July 17, 2015

Today, I had high hopes of writing two stories. I was feeling well, had caught up on my sleep, and got into the writing shortly after getting up. To be honest, I could probably still get another story done, but only if I stayed up until midnight, and didn’t do some of the lesson prep I neglected yesterday.
So, even though I’m still fizzing from finishing the latest short story, I have to settle down and do the readings for Monday’s classes—even if one of them might not run. I have had a blast, today. I wrote another science fiction piece and it ended up being another Odyssey tale, and Miss Delight made another cameo. Have to say, I like this universe.Anyway, the day started with me very optimistically rolling two titles. The first one, and the one I worked on today came out as 37-The Tale’s and 57-Slumber, which I left en situ right up until the very end, when it morphed into The Taleteller’s Slumber.I was aiming at 3,350 words and at 2,700 words I was sure I would just about make it. That was after 3 hours typing. I finished the story at 7.p.m., at 5,926 words. All in all, I’m very pleased with the day. Still buzzing, still happy. Even without the usual flash fiction or poetry met, it has been a good day.Story Match: Complete—The Taletellers’ Slumber (science fiction - 5,926 words)Word Total for the Day: 6,183

The Story Match Challenge—Day 10: July 16, 2015

Today I wanted to do something a little different—I wanted to try and write two stories. I remembered that I was a few stories behind, which is my own fault for taking five days to decide what I wanted to do in the months and years lying ahead. So, today, I thought I would try for two stories. Word targets were 3,150 and 4,000.
Why’s Behind the Story Match Challenge:To recap, this challenge came out of me wanting to see what real writers did, and then trying it for myself. I was feeling very uncertain of myself, in spite of being free to finally pursue what I had wanted to do for a very long time, and I needed a little direction. I don’t know what you folks do when you feel like this, but I go looking to see if there are people out there who are where I want to be, and then I take a look at what they’re doing and see if there is anything in there that acts as a pointer. And I think the thing that stands out for me is that writers write.Pretty obvious, but how, why and did I want to write that much each day, every day? Did I, in fact, really want to write as a full-time thing? Or was I content with just playing the game? So, I read a lot of bloggery, but what I mostly got stuck on was the bloggery of Joe Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Chuck Wendig and Bob Mayer. Why? Because when I first researched independent publishing, these guys were the first blogs I saved to favourites so I could always find them, and if they all write something, I don’t get much further down my interesting blogs list.Now, the thing about these guys is that they’re all making a living from their writing, and they’ve all been doing it a hell of a lot longer than I have, so I read, and I learned, and then one of them, Dean Wesley Smith, had this crazy idea that he was going to write a story every day for the month of July. I followed his progress for five days and I thought I’d like to try something similar (only without the publishing at the end, because I wanted to try something different with the completed stories), so I created this challenge, to write a story each day Dean does and try to write as many words.Why the word minimum? Not because I want to write more than Dean each day—because that’s just a dumb idea for a goal—but because I’ve been writing a lot of flash fiction lately, and I thought that it wouldn’t be fair to count a flash fiction story as the same as a short, hence the word goal each day, which is based on the length of Dean’s story. Essentially, I’m making sure I don’t cheat on the challenge… Heaven help me when I get a story that doesn’t QQwantQQ to be as long as the day’s minimum. I guess I’ll just have to deal with it when I get to it.I also set a minimum because I have now written more than 450 pieces of flash fiction, and I wanted to write a story in the mid-length that the story magazine market looks for. Dean has been very successful at that—and so has Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Both of them put up a short story as a free read each week. You can find this week’s here for Dean and here for Kristine. I figured I could use this challenge as impetus to practice writing to that length.And finally, I wanted to learn what I could expect of myself as a writer, what I was capable of, and what was unreasonable. My lifestyle is different to Dean’s and Kristine’s and Bob’s and Chuck’s and pretty much every other writer whose blogs I’ve read, so what works for any one of them probably won’t work for me. I wanted to work out what my lifestyle looked like as a writer, and this challenge gave me impetus for that.Going Forward:Today, I wanted to write two stories – partly to catch up, but also because I’m really enjoying myself and I know that when the challenge is over I will be trying something new. So, when I went over to Dean’s blog to see how he was going with the challenge—and to see if he’d written anything else on writing in general, which he does quite often, I was surprised to find he was thinking of winding it up early. At first, I was a little disappointed, but then I read why and it made sense.It also matches some of the thoughts I had this morning before heading out to read the blog, about change and about where I wanted to go next. I won’t continue to write a short story a day when this challenge is done, early or not—there’s a thing I want to try with novels, and there’s a bunch of publishing stuff I need to do with the stories I’ve finished (both for this challenge, and earlier in the year) and the stories I’ve published.Will I set another challenge? I think I will, because Dean is right when he talks about the power of setting a challenge (here, here, here, hereand here). Without this challenge, I wouldn’t have written and finished the stories I’ve managed so far. I wouldn’t have been able to work on developing a writing habit as effectively, and I wouldn’t have discovered some wonderful characters or found the start of, or idea sparks for, a couple of novels.And that makes me realise that challenges are really goals in disguise, and everyone needs goals if they are to succeed.What else I learned today:Chalk up another lesson, that I kind of knew—Nothing is set in stone—coupled with one I’m not so familiar with—it’s okay to change your mind and stop something earlier than intended as the world changes around you and your goals and directions change. Finishing before the time I’ve originally set, is something I’ve never allowed myself to do, even when that would be the more sensible thing to do. Maybe it’s time I practiced that…maybe… let me think on that some more. I’m still deciding on the next step.Today’s Challenge Results:I started one story and put the title up for a second but the recent late nights caught up with me and I started to feel unwell so I took a nap. And then I decided I needed an early night. So, a blowout day, but that’s okay, they happen.Words Written Today: 2,130

The Story Match Challenge—Day 9: July 15, 2015

The word goal for Day 9 was a merciful 1,650 words; the challenge was going to be to convince the story it liked that length. Again, I randomly rolled for the two title components and came up with 2-Green and 73-in the Moon. Honestly, there are days when I think this generator needs a little more work.
The title immediately morphed into Greening the Moon-a Lunar Werewolf Story , because the whole lunar werewolf thing happened when I was writing my first flash fiction collection. The Lunar Werewolves are part of a series of poems and flash fiction that came out of Ode to Hummingbirds … and now I realise that, I will have to put them all in one place fore reference.And speaking of realising things, I’ve noticed that all my science fiction, with one possible exception, is happening in the same universe: the lizardine and Odyssey are not definitely in the same universe, as are pretty much all of my colony stories. And that’s a good thing to realise, because it means that universe if bigger and more interconnected than I had hoped, and that the stories can enrich each other. Tracking it is going to be fun, but at least I realise that now, and not in six novels time.I decided to get into the short story early today, not just because I have a lot to do, but because I need to be getting to bed earlier than 1 a.m. if I’m to avoid getting sick again. Apparently, my body has limits. I need to cut back to 15-hour days if I want to avoid another 8-week flu.So, the writing. Well, I started around 10:30 a.m., but only had 900 words done by lunch time. By dinner, I’d managed to reach 2,400 and was thinking I only had two or three hundred to go. Boy, was I wrong. After the bath-time, dinner, bedtime routines were done, the story found more legs than I imagined it had and I was writing until 11:25 p.m. when it wound out at 5,316 words.Needless to say, no flash fiction or poetry got done, but I was nicely surprised by a story that looks like it wants to turn into another novel. The novel will probably be called Greening the Moon, but the short story title morphed again to become Earth and Lunar Dreaming .The Story Match Challenge: Complete— Earth and Lunar Dreaming (science fiction—5,316 words)Word Total for the Day: 5,736 words

The Story Match Challenge—Day 8: July 14, 2015

Yesterday’s word goal was 2,400 words… and the day before’s was supposed to be 1,900. Oh well, I doubt the story would have listened, anyway. I had a stop-start sort of day, constant interruptions from my five-year-old, and university administration to undertake. I swear they throw the lecturers in at the deep-end.
I managed to sign up to all my classes, and take a look over all the readings I needed to do, and I made a start on the first essay and readings for next week’s classes.By the time the dinner routine came around, I had reached 1,600 words by 6 p.m. I got side-tracked by family and the bed-time routine and then managed to fit in some language learning before getting back to the writing around 10 p.m. By midnight, I had 3,400 words of story complete, and the feeling that this one might grow into something longer at a later date.Today’s title started out as a randomly rolled Servants Pinnacle , before morphing into The Servants of Pinnacle Rock , which changed to In Service to the Pinnacle by the end of the story. Also, by the end of the story, I realised this was going to be a tale from an organisation known as Odyssey, so I added A Tale from Odyssey to the end.No poetry or flash fiction achieved, but it was a full day, and the results acceptable. I’m starting to be able to keep the stories rolling more easily, and that is a big plus.Story Match Challenge: Complete— In Service to the Pinnacle – A Tale from Odyssey (science fiction - 3,402 words)Total Words for the Day: 3,685

Poetry Challenge - Introducing the Acrostic Form 5: The Multiple Acrostic Type 2

Another form of multiple acrostic is formed when the first and last letter of each line of the acrostic forms the same word… or not, as the case may be. When the word is repeated, this form of acrostic is also known as a double acrostic.

Down the wind currents, comes the scent of those doomeDRallied by greed’s call, they chose to ignore the warning roaRAnd went in search of riches long entombed, ignoring danger’s aurAGone are the fine knights in their armor, the quick-fingered thieves who moved like lightninGOnly those who ran might still escape, might, but that depends on just how far they gONoon comes and so the exits, cold and vengeful for the intrusion; death comes sooN
Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one double acrostic for each day of this week. You can find out more about how to write acrostics from the following sites:
http://www.kathimitchell.com/poemtypes.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostichttp://poetry.about.com/od/poeticforms/g/abecedarian.htmhttp://classiclit.about.com/od/literaryterms/g/aa_abcedarianpo.htmhttp://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/acrostic/http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/acrosticterm.htmhttp://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hickey/acrostic.htmhttp://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-an-acrostic-poem/http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/puzzles/acrostic-puzzles2.htmhttp://classroom.synonym.com/explanation-acrostic-poems-2019.htmlhttp://www.poemofquotes.com/articles/howto-write-an-acrostic-poem.phphttp://kingpoetry.com/murder.htm

The Story Match Challenge—Day 7: July 13, 2015

Today’s word goal was 2,600 words.Before:I woke late, but not sick, which put me ahead on yesterday, and I allowed myself to get sidetracked by some of the admin I needed to do to keep track of the short work I’ve been working on. I also got into a few house chores that have been a bit neglected over the last few weeks, so it was midday when I sat down with the aim of writing the story.I used my new title generator for the title, rolling 11-Man of and 29-Autumn. All righty, then.During: The title, Man of Autumn , quickly changed to Man of Autumn’s Fire , and then to Fire Man of Autumn , and finally ended up at Autumn’s Flame . At a thousand words in, I knew this wasn’t on any of the worlds I knew, but it reminded me of some of the flash fiction tales I had written. I wondered if this colony would feature in future tales.Somewhere around 1 p.m., I remembered that this was the week before university was due to go back, and that my materials might finally be available for download, so, in between downloading my compulsory readings and recordings for the semester, feeding the family and doing the washing and washing up, I continued to write.By half past nine, I’d made it to 2,400 words, and had a fairly clear idea of where this story was going. This was a nice change from the last six stories, so I guess the practice must be paying off. With the advent of the university semester things were only going to get more challenging from here, so to be moving more smoothly towards an ending was a major step forward.Downloading the university files took much longer than anticipated and it was 11 p.m. when I got back to the story. By a quarter past midnight, I had written another 1,900 words and the story was done, an unexpected piece about colonisation and the ecology of a new world.After:I changed the title to Autumnal Threat , posted the blog entry, and went to bed.Challenge SuccessesI only completed the Story Match story, today, and didn’t get to the flash fiction or poetry pieces, but that’s okay. I’m in the process of rebalancing to allow room for my university workload. Finding out what I can and can’t do is all part of the challenge—and I finished a story! And I enjoyed it.Story Match: Completed— Autumnal Threat (science fiction-4,301 words)Total Words: 4,735

The Story Match Challenge—Day 6: July 12, 2015

Word target for today’s story was around 4,350. Once that’s done, the plan was for more editing, admin, or maybe some more writing. In the end, that wasn’t how it happened. After sleeping late and waking feeling under the weather, I found I couldn’t concentrate on the story, so I did some of the administration that needed to be done, hoping my head would clear.That worked to some extent, and I finally got the story underway, some five hours into the day. About an hour after that, I had to go and sleep. I was hoping I’d feel better when I woke. And I did, only realising I’d been sick that morning because I felt well when I woke. I got back to writing and the story started to develop nicely, but other responsibilities interrupted and I had to stop.I returned to it after dinner, and typed until 11:15 pm. The story ( The Royal Starman in the Moon -science fiction) has reached 2,674 words, and two other stories also demanded a start along the way ( The Pink Unicorn -140 words; The Accursed Rug -262 words; and an untitled piece -293 words).So, today was an overall challenge fail, but I’m still happy with the stories that have been begun.Tomorrow, I hope to feel better.Word Total: 3,594