Category Archives: Breaking the Author

Should You Enter Writing Contests?

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It’s Thursday and I want to bring you a strictly opinionated post today. The subject matter is something I hold true and is not touted as “the correct answer”, so be warned to take with grains of salt!

I’ve talked about submitting short stories and the like to editors for magazines, e-zines, journals, anthologies. Most of the time submitting stories for publication consideration to these types of things is free, costing only time and effort. If they’re not free, it’s usually the price of postage for snail-mail and printing your story for the more old-fashioned publications.

But writing contests are a whole different ball-game. A writing contest is usually a one-time event. It may see your story published at some point as a reward for winning the contest, but likely it will be available on whatever space you submitted the story to for the contest and you will receive some form of payment. Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Eleven

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It’s March 20th, 2016, which means it’s time for the Week Eleven update!

My goals for Week Eleven were:

  • Write Shapes 2 Part 7
  • Write Week 2 for Writing Game Year 2
  • Continue broad edits on Writing Game Year 1
  • Finish line edits on Shapes 1
  • Maintain the blog
  • Submit a short story, not necessarily Shibboleth

I’m still having trouble completing all my goals for a week, as you can see, but I’m making progress on both writing and editing goals, and those are my most important goals, along with maintaining the blog, so I’m still pretty happy with progress so far.

I wrote for a D&D style romantic fantasy story in the writing game this week, and I had a lot of fun driving a wedge between the two main characters before adding in an overarching conflict for them to struggle against. The writing game, as I’ve mentioned, was one of my favorite things from my year of writing last year, so I’m still psyched to be doing it again.

Writing Game Year 1 will become available once I finish the broad edits and confer with the other writers about how the more particular editing will go. Since one-sixth of the stories are not my writing, it’s a different editing proposition. I will be seeking changes but not actually making the changes myself for the most part. Similar to Editors for short story magazines and anthologies, I will be recommending changes and we’ll settle on what works while keeping in line with the original author’s intent and wishes whenever possible.

I don’t know when it will be “done” but an announcement will be made when it is!

My goals for next week are thus:

  • Write Shapes 2 Part 8
  • Write Week 3 for Writing Game Year 2
  • Continue broad edits on Writing Game Year 1
  • Finish line edits on Shapes 1
  • Maintain the blog
  • Submit a short story, not necessarily Shibboleth

Until next week, go out and tell someone something that you’ve been putting off. Doesn’t matter what it is: something they’ve done to annoy you, an impassioned plea to change destructive behavior, a declaration of love, telling someone close to you a thing you’ve been holding in, quitting your job, whatever! Don’t let things go on unsaid, it’s unhealthy.

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As always, follow me on Facebook and Twitter with #breakingauthor. Keep on striving for those goals.

And always remember to write the hell on!

Using Slang and Dialect in Writing

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Well howdy y’all! Ah sure hope you’s doin’ fahn this’n here Thursdy mornin’!

Okay. I’ll stop. It’s torture for the eyes, reading that.

Accents, slang, dialects! These are methods one may use to add a sense of local color or flavor to a story, or even just a scene in an unfamiliar location to your characters. But one must be careful when writing out these accents and dialects because if you get too focused on replicating a form of speech perfectly in the written word, all you’re doing is causing the reader undue aggravation as they try to parse not only how to say the words, but piece the sentence together for something meaningful.

Here’s what I mean by that! Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Ten

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It’s March 13th, 2016, which means it’s time for the Week Ten update!

My goals for Week Nine were:

  • Write Shapes 2 Part 6
  • Write for the Writing Game Year 2
  • Continue broad edits on Writing Game Year One
  • Finish line edits on Shapes 1
  • Maintain the blog
  • Submit Shibboleth short story

Continue reading →

Project Management as a Vital Author Skill

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It’s Thursday and I want to talk about a thing that I’ve mentioned once or twice, but that I haven’t really delved into in detail.

Sometimes you’re working on one story, and for whatever reason another story is jostling for space in your brainmeats. Getting distracted from one story to work on another can often result in a full stop on productivity on the first story, and that is no bueno.

What I discovered last year was that I had the capacity to work on multiple projects at the same time, but this is not a skill that many writers seem to possess, based on my purely anecdotal experience with other writers.

So how do you pull on multiple threads without losing track of any given thread? Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Nine

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It’s March 6th, 2016 and I have been writing and editing this week! It’s time for the Week Nine update for 2016.

I managed to miss some of the goals this week, but I still accomplished several and feel pretty good despite the hectic days I’ve been having.
Continue reading →

A Pile of Failure

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This clip is relevant to today’s subject!

FAILURE.

Failure’s a thing, right?

A dirty, rotten, horrible robber who shows up to knock you down and take your wallet. You’re not expecting this assault against your person, and yet it comes like a tornado through your psyche, uprooting all the positive feelings and tearing down all the sensitive barriers you’ve built up.

I received my first 1-Star rating on The Recluse and the Runaway this past week. Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Eight

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It’s February 28th, 2016, and that means I have an update thing for you. You know, that thing I do. On a weekly basis. It’s cool. Trust me.

So it’s well known that I’ve been having a rough time of it for pretty much all of this month, but I managed to complete all my goals for the week this week, so that’s a step in the right direction!

  • Write Shapes 2 Part 4 for next week’s post.
  • Write the opening part to a collaborative story game beginning in March.
  • Continue plugging away at Shapes 1 line edits.
  • Maintain the blog.

Continue reading →

Media Medley – February 2016

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It’s the last Thursday of the month, which means it’s time to yammer on about all the movies, TV shows, books, comics, games, and whatever else I consumed during the previous month, talking about each one briefly and what I liked or disliked about it, with a single recommendation at the end.

Away we go for February!

Movies:

Deadpool –  The Fox vehicle that surprised pretty much everyone, starring Ryan Reynolds as a psychotic, fourth-wall breaking maniac in a red suit. It was everything I hoped it would be and more: smart, violent, raunchy, insane, and more meta than most can handle. I’m so glad it took the world by storm and that it was the X-Men movie franchise’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” moment. That is to say, a risky movie about niche characters the mainstream public knew almost nothing about that turned into a frickin’ sensation overnight. Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Seven

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It’s Sunday, February 21st, 2016, and it’s time for another update!

The past week of my writerly productivity has been mildly depressing. I had a list of things to achieve, as per usual, and I did almost none of them.

  • Maintain the blog with a weekly update, an editorial, and a story post.
  • Complete Shapes 1 Line Edits
  • Write Shapes 2 Part 3
  • Write the opening part to a collaborative story game that begins in March.
  • Find cover art for Shapes 1
  • Begin Gridfall read and broad fixes before deep editing phases.
  • Get my writer resumé in a little bit more order and submit applications to a couple of places that I know are looking for writers.

So I managed to do the resumé bit, the blog, and writing Shapes 2 Part 3 for this coming Tuesday’s story post. The rest I have let languish and I’m trying not to take it too hard because I need the break.

Part of my writer life suffering is because I was recently rededicated to my management position at work, that I have been trying to get out of for the past seven months. I made the decision to step down from management, we were taking steps toward it at work, and then everything changed and now they need me to stay on as a project manager for the foreseeable future.

I’m disappointed that I have to continue doing it, but I’m also going to, in the short to mid term, do it to the best of my ability. And part of that is dedicating all my mental energy to that first, and writing gets whatever’s left. So I come home from work and I’m mentally exhausted and I just can’t make myself do the writer work to any significant degree.

I will get back to it, but in the meantime my writerly goals are going to be smaller.

For the coming week I will be attempting to do the following:

  • Write Shapes 2 Part 4 for next week’s post.
  • Write the opening part to a collaborative story game beginning in March.
  • Continue plugging away at Shapes 1 line edits.
  • Maintain the blog.

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As always, follow me on Facebook and Twitter with #breakingauthor. Keep on striving for those goals.

And always remember to write the hell on!