Chaos often breeds life

[naomi_jay]

So I've had a couple of advance reviews for WILD which I think I tweeted about but didn't blog about. Rabid Reads thinks it's "the start of a promising trilogy," and Book Goggles thinks it's "a joy to read" and "damn near pefect." That makes me feel pretty good! I don't have a release date scheduled yet, but it's looking more like June than May now, so I hope people will still be interested by then!

I've been thinking a lot about the second book in the trilogy, Caged, today. I haven't started writing it yet, but it's in my head, and I've got a nice clear idea of where Lizzie's going next. I'd love to be working on it right now, but I'm starting to overwhelm myself with projects again, and I really do want to finish Halflife this year, once Night Breed's first draft is done (hopefully by the end of August). I think if I manage to wrap up Halflife by the end of this year (which seems impossibly far away but really isn't), then in 2012 I'll start on Caged. I also think reader reactions to WILD will end up dictating my non-contracted stuff and what I focus on, but we'll see. I'm just going to let the currents drag me around for a while. I feel like I waste so much energy worrying about things beyond my control; maybe it's time to just go with the flow.

In other news, I probably mentioned somewhere that Serve in Heaven, Reign in Hell is closed to submissions. I'll be getting to work on the edits this weekend. There are some really wonderful stories in there, and I'm excited about seeing the final product. At the same time, I've seen a fair view submissions where it's clear the authors either A) don't understand basic rules of grammar and punctuation or B) don't understand what a short story is.

This baffles me, but maybe I'm a snob? I don't see why anyone would submit a story somewhere if the grammar and punctuation was wrong. You might not catch every mistake, but if you're at the level where you're considering publication, you should know that this is wrong:

"What happened." Asked Bob.

And this is right:

"What happened?" asked Bob.

(That's just a made up example, but it's also the most common mistake I saw in reading through submissions. People don't know how to punctuate dialogue!

The other aspect, that people don't understand what a short story is, is I guess more complex. I'm not talking about obvious things like word count, but more how a short story differs from novels and flash fiction. I want to write some more indepth posts about this, but I'm worried about coming across as a know-it-all twat. I don't know it all, but I spent my entire degree writing short stories to very strict rules, so I think I know enough.

So I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a few such posts?

Comments

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

Frankly, since I write without knowing anything but spelling and grammar (all the rest is self-taught), I would love to read about what a short story is according to someone who actually knows these things.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

I'm digging around in my memory for some of the writing exercises my university tutors made us do... If I can think of any useful ones, they might make a nice addition to the blog series... or am I getting ahead of myself?

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

haha, the exercises might be interesting too, but an explanation would be fine for me.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I have so many feelings on writing convetions and I like seeing other people have feelings about them.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

I have many feelings on this subject; it might be hard for me to get them into a coherent form, lol.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

lol I understand completely. You have no idea how many times I deleted a giant paragraph of ~~feelings from my first comment.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Most of my livejournal posts are edited-down versions of my ... feelings ... even the really angsty ones. Imagine the stream-of-conscious nonsense this place would be otherwise. I'd be all super injuctions make me sad also babies and fawns but at least my mother loves me or maybe not plus I want steak for tea and I don't understand anything but I know where commas go.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

PS - I would be most interested in your feelings. In general and specifically!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I will save that for when you post. Right now, I'm stuck in a place of "I hate being stuck in a middle-ground between clear and concise communication matters and handwavey perfection is not the goal, stop being so pedantic about grammar!" which is somewhere I've been stuck since high school, depending on what subject I'm dealing with. Writing conventions, how the fuck do they even work?!

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

My feeling is always going to be that clear and concise communication matters. A lot of my understanding of grammar is instinctual or garnered from, you know, reading a lot (I could never tell you what a gerund was, for example), since moving around so much meant I missed the grammar/punctuation bits of English at school. I'm never going to judge people too harshly for spelling errors or a misplaced comma here or there.

However, if you want to be published, you need to be able to communicate clearly. If you want to be published, I'm going to expect you to understand that. That's not being pedantic, that's being professional. Nobody's perfect, but everyone's capable of using spell and grammar check. And hell, if you are published, I'm going to hold you to an even higher standard. (I'm sure we had this conversation over LKH and her blog about "oh, you guys understood even though my writing was an appalling mess, therefore fuck you, haterz."

[six-old-cars.livejournal.com]

That's not being pedantic, that's being professional.

Absolutely. Mind you, I think it may be more your being so young, rather than having moved a lot, that made you miss out on grammar teaching at school. I know so many otherwise clearly intelligent people of your generation who simply haven't a clue how to use their native language, and it seems to come down to the prevalence at that time of the "handwavey perfection is not the goal, stop being so pedantic about grammar!" theories of education.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Possibly, although a lot of the mature (and elderly) students on my university course had trouble with basic grammar as well. Kinda baffled me as everyone had to submit a portfolio of work to get onto the course in the first place. I dread to think what the rejectees were like!

[intothenyght.livejournal.com]

I'd love to know more about your take on writing short stories! I'm definitely a "turn everything into a novel" person, so I'm always curious as to how others go about it. :)

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

^_^ Well, I won't claim to be an expert, but I think I can offer some fairly reasonable thoughts!

[intothenyght.livejournal.com]

Either way, I'd love to hear/read them! :D

[spiderling.livejournal.com]

As you can attest I have that very punctuation problem!

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Lol! You're not alone. Plus, you're aware of it, which puts you about five steps ahead of some stories I've read.

[micheleis.livejournal.com]

Yes. Please do rant.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

^_^ Rants shall be forthcoming.

[acidamoeba.livejournal.com]

Help and advice on short stories would be greatly appreciatel. I know I have a hard time writing them, so any advice, and especially the exercises, would be appreciated - and definitely a good read.

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

Cool! ^_^ I'll get to work on putting some stuff together.