lizvogel

So apparently I'm in one of those phases where I have to leave the house to get any writing done. This is inconvenient, not least because my favorite writing venue is still not back to their pre-Covid hours. However, having been hauled out by the housemate on Sunday and sat down in the bookstore cafe, I turned out a solid page on the new Dix story. And I went back yesterday, and did it again.

There was also a nice hot shower before we went out, the value of which should never be underestimated.

(I've been smashing my head against the wall on this one for a month or more now, and it just would not move. Changing location for myself somehow magically made it possible to throw out the original setting (or rather, set it aside for a more suitable occasion) and start fresh, and all the unknowns that were insurmountable obstacles are suddenly minor look-that-up-later brackets. There is no logical reason for this, but it works.)

This is also an expensive way to write, because if I'm sitting there seeing all the yummy food other people are eating, I'm going to end up buying more than just a coffee. If the thing sells for pro rates I'm not quite going to end up having spent more to produce it than I net, but it's not far off. ;-P

I'm delighted to be able to announce that "Dix Dayton and the Miner From Mars" has been accepted by Analog!

This is the sequel to "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" which appeared in Analog's March/April 2020 issue.

/*cue happy dance*/

"Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" is in the March/April issue of Analog.

I opened the mailbox today, and there were copies of Analog in it. With my name in them!

One of the things they don't warn you about when you start thinking about a writing career is how much time you're going to spend knowing something terrific that you can't tell anybody about.

So I'm really pleased, now that I have contract in hand, to be able to say that "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" has been accepted by Analog!

My second pro sale! And to freakin' Analog! Cue jumping up and down!

(Actually got the email about this while we were in London, which led to me being in the hotel lobby at midnight trying to print, sign, and scan a contract in a hotel without a business center. Hotel staff was very helpful but not really equipped for this; they managed the printing all right, but the scanning ended up having to wait till the next morning at the local Mailboxes Etc. All good in the end, though.)

Squeeeeeee!!!!!

Have I really not done this since... July? I can't find one later than July that isn't a NaNo post.

Mind you, a lot of that's because I didn't do much writing for much of that time. And when I did, I'd pretty much abandoned the idea of word count as a metric; it wasn't what I needed while finishing up Falling From Ground (quite the opposite, in fact), and outside of NaNo I've pretty much been in "recovery" mode since then. Oh yeah, and there were technology troubles. However, I do like having the numbers rounded up in one easily-tracked tag, so I shall now dive down the rabbit hole of my record-keeping.

...
...
...

Okay, I'm back. *pant, pant*

August:
Falling From Ground = 1141

September:
Falling From Ground = 17
original short fiction = 489 ("and then the murders started", mostly the short version)

October
Falling From Ground = 502

November was NaNo 2018. 'Nuff said.

December:
original short fiction = 124

January:
original short fiction = 2616


January (and December) is entirely "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey". Which is, hey, done!

Speaking of rabbit holes, the writing of DD,JJ was essentially done a week ago; the time since then has mostly gone to working out tedious details about spaceship propulsion systems and asteroid orbital dynamics. The asteroids particularly were challenging; it seems that there's just enough known about many of them to get me into trouble if I don't fact-check, and not enough for me to be sure of my facts. I did finally find an orbit simulator that told me more or less what I needed, but the process sucked down an amazing amount of time and ambition. I'm only just now recovering the "yay! finished!" feeling I should have when completing a brand new story that I'm pretty happy with.


Also, there was querying!

December:
Sent: 2 queries
Agents set aside for another book in a different genre: 1
Crossed off: 3, I think?

January:
Sent: 7
Crossed off: 28

Which is great! Except that I was supposed to finish the final due-diligence push on Highway of Mirrors in January, and it's... not finished. For a while there, it was going pretty well, in large part because I'm only querying agents I'm genuinely keen to work with; if I'm meh or I find I'm trying to talk myself into them, off the list they go. But querying is all too easily bumped by writing (okay) or a certain non-writing project (not so good), and so I've run aground again.


What's next? I don't even know; I think that's going to merit a post of its own.


(admin note: first use of new tag for short fiction, because cramming it in under "writing" is... unhelpful.)