Discussion: Q1 Volume 39

Posted by: @axeminister

I may try something totally bonkers and start over. Not a complete from scratch, but a rewrite of a six-year-old HM. I'm reading an author that inspires me and that story keeps popping into my head, but written in 3rd and in a fantastic new voice.

Now I have to see if I can do 6k in under 6 weeks. I can do the word count, but can I edit? I'm an editor, not a writer. Heh.

Will try to get to 1k this weekend, then I'll have hope. Fingers crossed!

That sounds great. Personally I love when something I am reading pulls one of my stories into my mind over and over (at least I love it when I'm not trying to focus on something else). Have found I usually have pretty good results with big edits when that happens - or at least results I'm pleased with. My Q1 entry is kind of like that - although I had never submitted it anywhere - at one point it just kept pulling at my mind. I did a major overhaul on it and I am so much happier with it than the original story.

Curse you Instagram! I love reading the writing prompts from the accounts I follow there, but now one of them has given me an idea for a hilarious story that just won't get out of my head. It takes one of the most annoying tropes I've ever come across and basically inverts it, and I start cackling whenever I think about the idea.

Posted by: @axeminister

Thanks Spud!

Okay, 1300 this morning. Notes in my book all crossed out, and I must blaze anew.

 

You got this, Dustin!  

OK, got to 2500 this weekend. I know where the plot goes from here in general, so I think this'll happen. This is good because I can bump my other Q1 up as I'll need more time on that one.

Now I just need to not break the momentum. Work can wreck that... Lately I've been at my work pc at 5am instead of writing. So I'll put in some hours today and see if I can carve out an hour each morning to keep my head in the story until it's done.

Thanks for the cheers, folks. They absolutely help!

Ok, I am now on this one. I got stopped in my tracks mid-story, but my brain is back in gear and I'm set to finish it off.

And my first draft is done, despite a headache and the neighbours trying to wake the dead this morning. Just need to let it stew for a while while I think of the next thing, which is already starting to form.

I'm in for 1st quarter! Yay!

December is steaming ahead and I am still emotionally in October, send help. My first draft is maybe 3/5 in, hoping to push trough to the end this week. 

So, I just took my fallback entry prospect, polished it...and sent it out to another place for submission, having decided that I'm damn well going to write something new for Q1. I figure if I can't find my groove with trying to write new stories again, then what exactly is the point of me putting in the effort to try and find a great path forwards to being a professional writer? So, safety net out, hard-hat on, and let's see if I can't pull something quickly out of the bag.

(I also need to get a notebook, because I had another great idea for a story in the shower a couple of days ago, brainstormed the whole thing out while standing around there, realized it would be a good story, complex but quick to write, and...went to sleep, forgot it, and can't remember a single damn thing about what it was now. Sigh. This is even worse than my old notebook, which I had filled with cryptic two- or three-word notes that described a story I had thought of without effectively describing what I was thinking of at all. That notebook still ended up yielding a few stories, though, I suspect none of which were anything to do with whatever original ideas I'd had in the first place.)

So, I'm coming into the end of November with no ideas, a packed schedule, a ton of enthusiasm, and a determination to figure out a new story while simultaneously working out how to put up Christmas lights outside our new place. I may even pull out the ukulele for a bit, and see if I've forgotten everything I taught myself back in the spring. Who knows, maybe it'll give me an idea. Probably not, but hey, worth a shot.

Regardless, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And to anyone who's not celebrating it, have a plain old Happy Thursday, and enjoy something delicious.

I'm hoping against hope I'll have time to get a fresh story submitted to this quarter. I've had various entanglements preventing me from entering a story into a Q1 before. But... I think I can pull it off this time! And no... not sure yet what that story will be. 😉

I have a thread of an idea I'm working with now, a heavily revamped concept that I previously tried and failed to write, but with the central characters made much less alien than in the original versions.

I'm not sure yet how long it'll be--it's one of those ideas that feels like it could be as long or as short as it needs to be, depending which avenues of the idea I choose to explore. I wrote a throw away opening for it yesterday, enough to explore the idea and decide I like it enough to press forwards. So for now, I'm going to hitch my wagon to this, and see where it goes.

I'm actually saving the resub for a quarter when I don't have a fresh story. I'll be submitting a fresh story that feels WotFy.

Right, I'm in and have an email confirmation but can we please have a simple submit button on the submission page? At the moment, until I just figured it out, it looks as though I submitted an untitled document sometime in October when I hadn't submitted anything at all for this quarter. The fact that I needed to edit that entry and save it only occurred to me after clicking about randomly. For a while I thought I'd already submitted something and forgot about it, and forgotten to give it a title.

I'm up to 7200 and haven't started the climax. Ugh. Maybe 2k more. But I don't want to be over 8k, so I'm gonna have to cut stuff I already don't want to cut.

But I got a month, so... onward!

Posted by: @doctorjest

I'm damn well going to write something new for Q1.

I say good on you, Jest. We are writers! Coming up with a new idea shouldn't be too tricky (although I'm sure it sometimes is). Here's to your fresh work, may it surprise even you with how engaging it is.

If there's anything a humble guy as myself can offer to help, let me know, Happy to read when you get something done. If you don't need that, then I'm happy to be another voice of encouragement!

Hit it hard. Best of luck.  

@axeminister 

Yeah, I try to keep mine around the 7,500. If I really feel it needs to go over I might let it. Generally I can cull them back. May your story's climax be epic and worth the 2k!

Gah! I haven't even got this quarter figured out.

Posted by: @axeminister

I'm up to 7200 and haven't started the climax. Ugh. Maybe 2k more. But I don't want to be over 8k, so I'm gonna have to cut stuff I already don't want to cut.

But I got a month, so... onward!

Write on!

I have mixed feelings on my 1st QTR. Some days Iove it, and some days I dont. I sent out for edit and am waiting for it to come back. I think there will be quite a bit to edit.

Meanwhile I am working on lighter KYD which I should finish by end of week.

My favorite piece was my 3rd QTR, but my husband liked the 4th QTR better.

Posted by: @axeminister

I'm up to 7200 and haven't started the climax. Ugh. Maybe 2k more. But I don't want to be over 8k, so I'm gonna have to cut stuff I already don't want to cut.

But I got a month, so... onward!

Ack, this can be super painful! I ended up cutting 4k from the length of one of my entries, and 4.5k from another. I think that later one suffered for the cuts, though.

Posted by: @axeminister

I'm up to 7200 and haven't started the climax. Ugh. Maybe 2k more. But I don't want to be over 8k, so I'm gonna have to cut stuff I already don't want to cut.

But I got a month, so... onward!

I believe in you!  

Posted by: @storysinger

Gah! I haven't even got this quarter figured out.

Don't stress. You've still got a month, resubs are an option, and if you miss a quarter it honestly isn't the end of the world. (I always preferred to be in for a given quarter rather than not, but I also understand that life is not always accommodating of such things, as I myself had to take breaks from submitting on more than one occasion.)

Posted by: @axeminister

I'm up to 7200 and haven't started the climax. Ugh. Maybe 2k more. But I don't want to be over 8k, so I'm gonna have to cut stuff I already don't want to cut.

But I got a month, so... onward!

Let the story be what the story needs to be. Sure, MOST winning stories fall in the 7-10K range. But some pushed 13K too. It's okay to push the long end IF the story demands it and IF the story is compelling. Get it all written and cut what needs to be cut, but you have room to keep the stuff that needs to stay.

I'm playing with new stories now to prepare for my entry. After my best run of results for a little while, two HMs back to back has been a bit disappointing, and I'm still not quite sure what I need to take away from my Finalist that I haven't learned. However, I've written out a pair of opening 500s for a couple of new story ideas over the last couple of days, and I'm rather liking what I have so far.

I'm going to also try an opening 500 for a third story I'm considering. They're all very different to each other--one's a kind of semi-magical-fantasy, another a harder sci-fi with an emotional tilt, and the third more a kind of sci-fi-in-fantasy tale, so they're all very different to each other. I'm having fun with them, though currently leaning towards the second one as my favourite idea--whether I'll still think so when execution is complete, however, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to brainstorm for new ideas, and trying to see if I can't break out one new idea each day. But whatever happens, my Q1 will be something completely new again.

My Q1 story is percolating. A fresh idea has made itself known, now to get it written.  

I've almost got my Q1 ready for beta readers. Maybe another few hundred words and I'll have the first draft in the bag. Then comes the dreaded editing process. This is more of an experimental story for me, taking a popular trope and turning it on its head, but I wanted to at least put it out there and see how it does.

Hey guys, hope everyone's day is going swimmingly.
Question for you: If you're entering a re-worked story that's been submitted before, do you tag as such in the file name, or let the re-work speak for itself? Cheers.

Sam x

I think it should stand on its own merit. I'm not sure the contest wants to know it's a rewrite.

Earlier this year I applied knowledge learned from taking the WotF workshop, and Wulf's Super Secrets, to a story that garnered an HM a few years ago. That experiment turned an hm into an r.  

No tags. New story.

Or you can wait 10 years, change the title, alter the characters names and resubmit.

Not that I know anything about that...

My current favorite prospect is stuck in an odd place, where I know the beginning, middle, and end of the story in abstract, but I haven't found the emotional core of it yet. That is the driver for it, and it could be dozens of things--but the right one will make it a much better story, and the wrong one will make it fall flat. I've been thinking about it for two days and have some ideas, but I'm unsure if I'm closer to the answer than when I started.