Tag: authors

Creative Writing and Hustle Culture is a Toxic Mix

Hustle culture is awful. It’s not a unique thought, obviously. And it’s not a problem unique to the writing/publishing world. If you’re a creative writer, though, you know what I’m talking about. It’s so toxic. I hate it. I’m sure you do, too. Trouble is, hustle culture is hard to resist!

A few days ago, a fellow short fiction author posted in the Codex Writers forums about how worn down she is by the grind of the short fiction world and how she’s feeling ready to just… stop? Like, she still wants to write stuff for herself, but she’s ready to quit pursuing publishing. Why? Because the publishing industry as a whole is So. Damned. Toxic. Not to mention unsustainable. The ratio of rejections to acceptances is appallingly high. Which isn’t a new thing but yeah. It sucks.

A bunch of people responded to her forum post with comments about feeling equally burned out. My heart ached for her (and for all the authors who commented about being in the same place she is). She’s an incredible writer and an incredible person. The thread filled up with offers of love and virtual hugs and general support. I didn’t leave a comment. I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer that would change her situation or make her feel authentically better. And also, I don’t think I’m struggling with things in quite the same way she seems to be.

I enjoy writing short stories, but trying to get them published is definitely a grind. And, oh my goodness folks, the hustle culture is ridiculous!

Recently, I read a post by author Chuck Wendig that was supposed to be funny but left me feeling a little sick. Basically, he described the sisyphean nature of the writing/publishing world’s hustle culture without actually naming it. The post was supposed to be funny, sort of, but I felt sad after reading it. Wendig’s musings highlighted the (unhappily) accepted norms of the industry, but the thesis of his post seemed to be, “This is absolutely awful and horrible but there’s no viable alternatives so we authors just need to accept it or else we’ll fail and starve.” I mean, he wasn’t actively promoting hustle culture. But he also wasn’t rejecting it. He was just complaining about it while simultaneously engaging in it.

Stuff like this is toxic. It seems motivational but really it promotes hustle culture and might as well read: 10 Steps to Burn Out Quick and Feel Like a Failure.

At Boskone last year (or maybe it was the year before), I listened to a panel discussion about this exact issue. One of the panelists was veteran short story author and novelist John Langen, who shared that he still gets upwards of a hundred rejections each year. He also gets solicitations to contribute to anthologies, and invitations to collaborate with greats like Paul Tremblay, which likely serves as a nice buffer to all those rejection letters. While on the Boskone panel, he advised new writers to just keep submitting stories. Just acknowledge that rejection is part of the process. In that moment, I felt seen and affirmed. I nodded my head in agreement. Yes, yes! It’s not just me getting 40+ rejections for every 1 acceptance. It’s not just new authors. It’s all of us, even the established folks. That makes it okay. But… maybe not?

Just because creative writers, new and established, are all in the same boat together doesn’t mean the boat isn’t a genuinely toxic place to be. I mean, if I were on a cruise ship plagued with norovirus and there happened to be a few celebrities on board whom I admired, their presence wouldn’t lessen the awfulness of puking my guts out. I wouldn’t be like, “I feel like I’m dying but it’s okay because So-and-So Big Name is going through this, too, and they say this is just how cruising is.” Nope. I’d be like, “This experience is terrible and I can’t wait for it to be over and I’m never doing it again.”

Maybe Langen’s argument that we should all just suck it up and go with the flow doesn’t make sense. Not like it used to, anyway. You know, once upon a time back in the days of actual typewriters and physical paper. Back when you had to buy postage and envelopes. When the pace of life moved at 7 to 10 business days. Oh, and there were 50%+ fewer people on the planet. Back then there were more markets and fewer writers submitting fewer stories to them. Yes, they were all still getting far more rejections than acceptances, but the ratio was waaaaay lower than it is today.

Behold! My pile of rejection letters circa 2021. It’s grown since then.

These days, short fiction markets are closing right and left while technology is making those ever dwindling markets more and more accessible on a global scale. Magazines used to get fifty submissions a week. Now magazines sometimes get over two hundred submissions a week. In many ways, the new accessibility is a good thing. New and previously underrepresented writers who maybe couldn’t previously submit their work now can. Historically underrepresented voices and perspectives and cultures are enriching the genre fiction world. That’s fantastic. The point I’m trying to make, though, is that the market is oversaturated. Beyond oversaturated if you factor in AI submissions, and that trend is increasing. So yeah, fewer markets and exponentially more submissions to them. A perfect recipe for hustle culture. I don’t blame that author over on Codex for burning out and having a “what’s the point in trying” moment.

There are soooo many factors involved in getting published that are completely out of an author’s control. Some of it is raw numbers and market trends, some of it is yuckier stuff (nepotism, favoritism, biases and prejudices that people in the industry don’t like to talk about and certainly don’t want to acknowledge), but more and more getting a story published is just a matter of chance. Yet the hustle culture of the publishing world would have us believing that there’s a causal relationship between how hard we work and how much publication success we have. Authors who self-publish are, perhaps, in a slightly different situation, but some would argue the hustle culture is even worse for them. I don’t know. That’s a discussion for a different day.

In my mind, submitting a story for publication is a bit like buying a scratch ticket. The idea of getting published is fun, and occasionally I get an acceptance letter. In those instances, I revel in the endorphin dump and embrace the dopamine hit of seeing my stories in print, but I try hard to resist the hustle culture. That old adage that “If you’re not writing every day, you’re not a real writer” is harmful and self-destructive. I have a day job. I’m a teacher (another industry with a toxic hustle culture problem). I have a family and, you know, other hobbies and interests that I enjoy.

I write stories, and I submit them to markets for possible publication. But I do it at my own pace, in a way that fits in my life, and I don’t feel guilty about that. I’m not willing to engage with the hustle culture that seems to drive the publishing industry so completely. If I don’t write today, or this week, or this month because I’m too busy with other things or even just because I don’t feel like writing, I’m okay with that. The author who posted about burnout over on Codex probably won’t read this, but I hope she finds a way to reject the grind and rediscover the joy in writing, because she’s a damned good writer and I hate what the hustle culture of the industry is doing to her and to all writers (all creatives really).

I’ve got a few stories out on submission right now. I’m playing around with a few new stories, too. I’m doing a live reading with two other Radon Journal authors in July. I’ll also be attending ReaderCon as a panelist this year. Beyond that, I’m elbows deep in developing two new genetics and biotechnology courses to teach next year, and I’m taking a graduate class so I can actually teach those classes competently. I’m embarking upon the college application process with my eldest child (omg MORE hustle culture shenanigans). Yikes, that’s a lot. Guess I’m as trapped in the hustle culture as everyone else. But, I’m also gardening, and kayaking, and bird watching, and going for hikes, and reading, and sitting in the backyard feeling the sun on my face while listening to the wind rustle through the leaves of Yggdrasil.

Are you feeling burned out these days? Is the hustle culture grinding you down? Feel free to vent or commiserate or offer tips for breaking free in the comments. As always, thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you.

June 16, 2024
Three Times the Publishing Charm!

I’ve been grinning a lot these days. It’s been hard not to. I had a big publishing milestone this past April when I received my first story acceptance at MetaStellar Magazine. For someone who has dreamed of being a published author since childhood, that first acceptance really is a very big deal. It comes with thoughts of, I did it! I finally did it! and a sense of unbridled joy and satisfaction that only comes when something you’ve been working at for ages finally happens.

I remember spending the summer of my 11th year trying to hit a baseball all the way across my yard from between the two peach trees to under the outer most bows of the white pine. In truth, it wasn’t a far distance, but to 11-year-old me it was grand slam material, and I wanted to be able to hit a ball that far so badly. So every day I went out and swung and hit and swung and hit until I was dripping sweat and had to stop. I remember the day the ball soared up in a high and perfect arc, came down within spitting distance of the target. I will never forget the feeling of victory, of bone deep pride and satisfaction that exploded inside of me when I saw that ball vanish into the bows of that pine tree. After weeks of swinging and coming up short over and over again I did it!

That’s how it felt when I got that email from MetaStellar. I f**king did it.

Once is a Fluke, Twice is a Stroke of Luck

Funny thing, though. A couple of weeks went by and I found myself mentally minimizing my publishing success, doubting it. Once is a fluke, I thought. Once doesn’t mean anything. But then it happened again. Another acceptance showed up in my inbox in early May, this time from Metaphorosis Magazine. It’s been an amazing spring season. I mean, to get even one story published was amazing, but two? And so close to one another. The acceptances at least; the first one’s coming out in mid-July. I don’t yet know when the second story will be published. Still, that little voice has been nagging at me. What if this second sale was just a stroke of dumb luck?

Three Times is the Charm!

Two weeks ago, my spouse and I went to an art opening at the Salem Art Association in Salem Massachusetts. He’s a member and had/still has art in the show. I was still glowing from news of my second story sale, but when Lover introduced me to someone and called me an “author,” I immediately felt compelled to clarify that I was a teacher, not an author. Calling myself an author felt hubristic. After all, I’d only had two stories accepted for publication, and neither of them have even come out yet.

But this past Tuesday I got a third acceptance email! A cozy sci-fi story I wrote back in February is going to be published in Uncharted Magazine!! I can’t believe it. Maybe the next time my spouse introduces me to someone as an “author” I won’t feel the need to demur.

In the meantime, I’ve got a story I need to get back to and do some work on, then send it out on submission, see if I can ride this recent wave of publishing success. But I had to take a quick moment and share the news.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

June 2, 2023
Author Update: Milestone Moment (Part 2)

Last time I posted, I shared some general life milestone moments culminating in the discovery that I need reading glasses. This time, I have far more exciting news to share.

Life: A Long and Winding Road

I started submitting short stories to science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines in 2000. Back then, the internet was clunky and only accessible via dial-up modems. Barely recognizable compared to what it is today. Most (all?) fiction magazines only accepted submissions via regular mail. I remember making multiple photocopies of my stories at Staples, buying manilla envelopes and business envelopes in bulk, and regularly hitting up the post office to buy stamps. If you think the submission process is slow now, Odin Allfather, you have no idea.

For about a year, I wrote and submitted a lot of stories. Sadly, I was too full of self-doubt to sending anything to Asimov’s or Analog or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I mean, I loved writing, but I was a nobody, so I spent that year submitting my stuff to non-paying markets. Two pieces found homes in small zines that paid in contributor copies. Boneworld Publishing (no longer extant) gave me my first authorial milestone moment when they accepted a mother-daughter-survivor’s-guilt ghost story for their magazine, Barbaric YAWP. The second venue I landed a piece in was Samsara: The Magazine of Suffering. Have a look at my very first acceptance letter! Handwritten on what looks like a piece of scrap paper. No contract sent or signed or anything. It was a different time back then, for sure.

Then, a whole bunch of general life milestone moments happened. In 2000, I started teaching high school science–biology, chemistry, and physical science. I had no background in teaching at all, just a bachelor’s in science. To say the learning curve was steep would be an understatement. For about two years, my life looked like this: Wake up at 6am. Eat breakfast, go to work and teach until 3:30. Go home and sleep for 3 hours. Wake up and eat dinner. Grade and lesson plan until midnight. Repeat. There was no room for anything else. Creative writing fell by the wayside.

In 2003, I got married and switched schools. I gave birth to my first child in 2006. In 2007, my spouse went back to school. The banks went belly up in 2008. The economy tanked, and I switched schools again. In 2009, I switched schools yet again. In 2010, I had another kid…

I didn’t return to writing and submitting stories until 2016. Even then it was only in sporadic and inconsistent bursts. Between 2016 and 2021, I wrote a total of five short stories and submitted them unsuccessfully to a total of eighteen places. Five stories in five years is underwhelming. I would be embarrassed by that lack of productivity, except I don’t really count 2019 or 2020 (or even 2021). I’m a teacher, remember. The pandemic was a time of fear and confusion and frustration and many moments of despair for me. I’m still not fully recovered from the trauma of it (who is?).

So, a flurry of writing and trying to get my stuff published a little over two decades ago and then a whole lot of not much. Until this past year.

Having a Community to Support and Motivate You Matters

In the summer of 2020, trapped in the isolation of the early days of the pandemic, I joined an online community of writers and authors called Codex Writers. The effect of doing so was immediate and motivating. I started writing more consistently than I had been, and I started submitting what I was writing with more intentionality. It was great, but it was also kind of terrible.

The Codex Writer’s community is largely made up of published speculative fiction authors, and I’d kind of snuck in because I’d gotten a masters degree in creative writing in 2018 (a fact I felt barely qualified me for membership). Despite trying my hardest to write something good enough to get published in a pro- or even semi-pro market, the rejection letters piled up. Very occasionally, I got a personalized message from an editor. Usually not. That’s just how it goes, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been slowly wearing me down. Failing because you aren’t trying feels a lot different from failing when you’re trying your hardest, you know?

In interacting with other members of the online Codex group, though, I felt supported and encouraged to to keep writing and keep submitting my stuff.

Milestone Moment: This is the Year I Get A Story Published (and Get Paid for It!)

One of the stories I wrote in 2020 was a slipstream piece of science fiction that I loved, but it was tricky and difficult and experimental. I wanted it to find a home so badly. It had a couple of near misses, but I just couldn’t seem to place it.

At the very end of December 2022, B. Morris Allen over at Metaphorosis magazine sent me a revision invitation on the story. The offer wasn’t an acceptance, but it was a huge step in the right direction. It felt pretty great to know that someone saw potential in the piece and wanted to work with me to make it great. Let’s call that R&R a “mini” milestone moment.

I spent a lot of this past winter juggling work shenanigans and family demands, but every so often I was able to draft a revision and send it Morris’s way. Each time, he responded with very encouraging feedback, suggestions, and a follow-up revision request.

Meanwhile, the Codex Writers Group announced a mid-winter, six-week-long flash fiction challenge they called: Weekend Warrior. Here’s how it worked. Every Friday evening for six weeks, the contest runners posted five writing prompts. Participants (who registered and got sorted into groups) then picked a prompt and wrote a not-longer-than 750 word story that had to be submitted by Monday morning. Your story got read, rated, and given constructive feedback by the other 15 to 20 people in your group. It was amazing. Amaaaaaazing! I wrote six stories and got encouraging and helpful feedback on them from successful and talented authors, some of whom I secretly harbored (and still harbor) hero-worship-style crushes on.

Truthfully, I had no intention of doing anything with any of the stories I wrote for that challenge. I’d never written flash fiction before. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t expect to produce anything good. I took part in the challenge to keep myself writing, try something new, and make some new friends.

The thing about communities, online or in real life: They nurture and support you and build you up. After the competition, I kept reading posts by other folks who were submitting their “WW” stories to magazines. Apparently, it was a common thing to do, and some very kind and incredibly talented authors (Carol Scheina and Phoenix Alexander) told me I should, too. Okay, I thought, why not? Out I sent them, with no real expectation of anything coming of it.

In April, however, I opened my email inbox and gasped like they do in the movies. A flash story I’d written had been accepted for publication. That little voice in my head that had been saying, “You really should stop this nonsense,” went “Huh, maybe you aren’t a complete hack.” You know what that means? Not counting the two stories I sold for contributor copies, 2023 is the year that I get a story published and get paid for it, because it was MetaStellar who took the story! They’re one of the top paying pro-level magazines out there, and the stuff they print is damned good. You should 100% check them out.

Milestone Moment #2: This is the Year I Get TWO Stories Published!!

Less than a month after getting the great news from Metastellar, B. Morris Allen emailed me with an official offer of acceptance on that strange slipstream SF story he’d been editing with me since December! That makes not one but two story acceptances in 2023, both in paying markets. Metaphorosis isn’t a top-paying magazine, but they publish equally fine stories, and I just can’t believe mine will be one of them!

I’m thrilled. I’m also quietly terrified that I won’t see anything else published for another 20+ years, except I know that won’t happen. I’ve still got several other stories out on submission, and now I have actual evidence that I can in fact write publishable stories, so I’m feeling highly motivated to keep at it. Consistency really is the key, it seems. Maybe I’ll give the Ray Bradbury method a try and attempt a story a week for 52 consecutive weeks.

Summer vacation is right around the corner, too. The timing of all of this couldn’t be better. This spring is the first time since we all went into lockdown and life went sideways that I’ve felt mentally healthy again. Not 100%. I take life one day at a time now, but this is the first time in a very long time that the good days outnumber the bad days. I’ll be going into the summer months feeling fresh and excited and ready to go.

2023 has been quite the year for milestone moments so far. Let’s see if I can’t create a few more great ones in the coming months.

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

May 26, 2023
Book Review: The Stone Serpent

I recently had the pleasure of reading Nicholas Kaufmann’s newest horror novel, “The Stone Serpent.” This sequel to Kaufmann’s 2021 novel “The Hungry Earth” takes place a year after the events of the first book and follows the main character, Dr. Laura Powell, as she tries to re-establish some semblance of normalcy in her life. The story’s premise (which you can read over on Goodreads) was a lot of fun, and the fast pace kept me engaged from start to finish.

Kaufmann does love his research. In all his novels, he adds a sense of authenticity by including numerous (and often terrifying) scientific details. The science was one of the things I enjoyed so much in his vampires-on-a-submarine horror novel, “100 Fathoms Below.” As with his other books, “The Stone Serpent” is packed with interesting and accurate scientific facts and descriptions. That said, the science sometimes felt wedged into scenes without good reason. Often, descriptions felt included just for the sake of serving up a creepy or interesting fact. More than once, I wondered why a small-town medical examiner would know about so many facts unrelated to medicine. Nevertheless, all those not-necessarily-needed scientific facts were so interesting (and morbid) that I enjoyed their inclusion regardless.

The main character, Dr. Laura Powell, is a woman I could easily root for–smart, self-confident, capable, and caring. Booker, her boyfriend, is equally likable if a bit passive. His role in the story was mostly to offer emotional support for Laura and to tell her to be careful. There were a few moments when I wanted him to step up and step in, saying, “No, sorry. I can’t let you do this crazy thing because I care about you. It would be irresponsible to let you do such this incredibly dangerous and poorly thought-out thing.” But, this is a somewhat campy horror novel we’re talking about, and characters acting illogically is part of the genre.

As Laura navigates her way through a new crisis, she grapples with a prickly new police Chief, Elana Morales. The chief’s cold affectation and constant micromanaging makes her highly unlikable. Once Kaufmann shared her backstory, though, I started rooting for her as hard as I was rooting for Laura.

A general issue I had with this book was with Kaufmann’s heavy use of exposition as a writing technique. While some explanations helped establish setting or provided context, the abundant exposition did occasionally detract from the immediacy of the action. I wanted to be told less and shown more. A related issue was with the use of dialogue to explain things. There was a lot of “as you know, Bob” conversations throughout this story.

There were two subplots to this story competing for the readers’ attention. One involved the cutting-edge pharmaceutical company, Thurmond Biotech. The other was a plot involving a fringe religious community (the details of which reminded me strongly of Warren Jeff’s extreme sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Of the two competing plots, this was the one that got the most time on the page, yet I found it to be distracting from the main premise of the novel. The characters dominating the religious plot line were, in my opinion, clichéd and two-dimensional. I would have liked more development of the dodgy biotech company and its involvement in the creation of the main threat of the novel: killer snakes!

Ah, the snakes. I won’t say too much about them lest I spoil the horror of them. Let me simply say that if you are naturally squeamish about snakes, this book will have you crawling out of your skin (haha, pun intended).

The final confrontation between the main characters and the snakes was intense and well-written, and the resolution felt earned. As a reader, I felt fully sated. Overall, I would definitely recommend “The Stone Serpent” to fans of just-for-fun, campy horror novels with some cool science packed into the terror.

December 31, 2022
Boskone – New England’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention (part 1)
I discovered Boskone just last year. Talk about arriving late to the party, but better late than never.

My graduate program was wrapping up in less than a year, and I didn’t want my growth as a writer to stagnate. Since I had (have) ambitions of breaking into the publishing industry as an author of excellent stories, attending a science fiction and fantasy (SFF) convention seemed a smart idea.

Without question, I achieved my primary goal of listening to a bunch of panel discussions that imparted heaps of tips, tricks, and sound reminders. But, once the panels were over and the “social” stuff started up, I felt like an awkward outsider. You can read about my (mis)adventures here. Even hiding in a corner, though, I observed the real benefit of attending Boskone. Community.

FOR THE CREATIVES OF THIS WORLD, COMMUNITY IS KEY

I’m a creative writer, but my beloved is a visual artist, as is my mother, and I’m friends with a voice actor and a musician. Trying to make it, professionally, in any art-related field is not for the faint of heart. It can wear you down if you’re not careful. That’s why finding and joining supportive communities is essential. For me–an aspiring author of fantasy, science fiction, and horror fiction–Boskone is one of the best, most supportive communities in New England.

Therefore, despite a vicious head-cold that struck me hard on Thursday, I spent this past weekend in Boston attending the 56th annual Boskone convention (Boskone 56 for short). Thank Thor for modern medicine. Dosed to the max with DayQuil, RobitussenDM, and NyQuil, I had a great time.

The panels were excellent, the panelists entertaining and insightful. This year, however, I focused on meeting and chatting with the other writers, readers, and gamers. And authors, agents, and editors. That last group doesn’t love being stalked by aspiring authors, so I courted them purposefully but respectfully.

Here’s how the Boskone 56 experience went for me. This is the first in a three part post. Yeah, there was that much going on at Bostkone this year, and I only saw a fraction of it all.

FRIDAY – DAY 1 OF THE FUN

Beloved and I opted to get a room in the convention hotel this year rather than commute each day. Good call. If I can, I’ll be staying at the hotel again next year. Taking an elevator up to my room at the end of the day made the evening activities far more enjoyable (although I still wasn’t pulling super late nights because of my cold).

[Quick tip to anyone who attends next year and stays at the hotel: request a room on the lowest floor possible. Sure, the 12th floor gave us a beautiful view of the Boston skyline, but the hot water didn’t seem to get up to us very well, and lukewarm showers aren’t a thing I enjoy.]

PANEL #1: EDITING YOUR MANUSCRIPT FOR SUBMISSION

The first panel discussion I attended was Editing Your Manuscript for Submission. I took copious notes as author/editor Auston Habershaw and Joshua Bilmes, president of Jabberwocky Literary Agency, discussed the value of writing groups, how to know when it’s time to stop editing and start submitting, and the importance of brevity in one’s writing.

Q: How do you get the right distance from a manuscript so you can see it again?

Autson: Put it away for months and start working on something else. Short fiction can act as a great palette cleanser.

Q: Who do you give your revised manuscripts to?

Auston: Beta readers, my agent. Writing groups are okay, but you have to be careful with them. They risk getting stale, becoming an echo chamber without anyone in the group realizing it. Author Tim Powers once told me, ‘You should be the worst person in your writing group.’

Q: [To Joshua Bilmes] What are you most likely to tell Auston not to do when reading and editing one of his manuscripts?

Joshua: If you start a book in a particular style, with a particular voice, you’ve made a promise to the readers that needs to be fulfilled. You can’t change course mid-way through. The readers will get whiplash. They’ll feel betrayed.

Q: When is a manuscript “good enough” to start querying?

Auston: Get it to a place where the big stuff all lines up. Plot stuff, style, voice. Then go through and do line edits. Then give it to beta readers you trust. Work in suggestions as you will. Then, you’re ready.

Joshua: It’s “done” when I ask for it from him in “Track Changes” mode. But, it’s still not done because an editor will buy it and will want more changes.

Q: [To Joshua Bilmes] What do you look for? What should writers avoid?

Joshua: Overwriting. You have to watch the adjectives. Cut it to the bone. And watch your descriptions of facial expressions. Every author seems to have a certain facial expression that they use over and over again. The dialogue tag said is like water. It’s unobtrusive and essential. Any substitutes are overused. Grin, laugh, nod, shrug, sigh. It slows everything down. It distracts.

Q: Tips for learning voice?

Auston: Read poetry! Anything by Langston Hughes.

“Don’t use thirteen words when ten will do.” – Joshua Bilmes.

“You should be the worst person in your writing group.” – Auston Habershaw. [meaning the least-skilled writer.]

You better believe I was taking notes!

KAFFEEKLATSCH #1: MARSHALL RYAN MARESCA

At 6 pm I headed to the galleria to catch my first Kaffeeklatsch of the weekend, hosted by fantasy author Marshall Ryan Maresca.

Turns out, it was his very first time hosting one, and when he saw me approaching the table, he must have thought, uh-oh. Here comes that woman I caught staring at me multiple times from the far side of the lobby last year. Creep alert.

To prove myself a non-creep, I made a point of shaking his hand and introducing myself instead of just staring. A couple of other aspiring writers joined us as well as one established author: S. L. Huang. The fifty-minute session flew by as the group discussed the process by which his books (all twelve of them) came into existence, the struggles of balancing writing with raising children, and our various writing habits.

And then it was time to grab some dinner before the next Friday night activity began.

BROAD UNIVERSE: A COMMUNITY FOR WOMEN WRITERS

At 9 pm, we headed to a multi-author reading session hosted by Broad Universe, an international, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting women writers and editors of SFF, horror, and other speculative genres.

Among the talented women who read from published works and works-in-progress were Elaine Isaac, Juliana Spink Mills, and Joanna Weston, among others. Dianna Sanchez gave away a copy of the 2017 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, an SFF short fiction anthology aimed for middle-grade readers. My hand went up so fast it broke the sound barrier! I’m happy to report that my middle-grader told me over breakfast yesterday morning that they’re two stories in and enjoying it.

THE BOSKONE ART SHOW IS NOT TO BE MISSED!

At 10 pm, Beloved and I headed back down to the Galleria to stroll the art exhibit. This portion of Boskone is where visual artists, illustrators, sculptors, and crafters display their best work. While all of the art at Boskone was exceptional, one vendor’s creations blew my mind!!

Kimberly Leach, of Kimberly’s Creations. She makes paper mache fantasy creations. I know, I know. You’re thinking, paper mache? Really?

Oh, folks. You have no idea. The photos I took (and I took many) fail to do these pieces of art justice. For Freya’s sake, please click the link and explore her website. I’m seriously going to tweet these at Cressida Cowell (wrote the How to Train Your Dragon series that spawned the movies).

Dragon 1

Image 1 of 6

Photograph of a paper mache dragon created and displayed by Kimblerly Leach at Boskone 56

Paper Mache, people. And when I asked how she stumbled upon this epic talent, her answer? I was looking for something to do with my granddaughter. As if it was no big deal, these crafty masterpieces. She’s a genius. Genius!!

By 10:30 pm I couldn’t breathe through my nose anymore and was starting to drag, so Beloved and I called it a day. All hail the powers of NyQuil.

In my next post, I’ll share summaries of all the panel discussions, kaffeeklatsches, and author readings I attended, starting with: Are Villains Necessary? Spoiler alert: they very much are!
```
Are you thinking about attending Boskone next year? What do you most want to know about the convention?
```
February 19, 2019
#IWSG – The Path to Publication

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, which means it’s #IWSG day! That would be the Insecure Writer’s Support Group if you didn’t know, started by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh. Be sure to pop over to the website and check it out. You’ll find a fantastic community of like-minded writer types, all at varying stages of their writing careers. You’ll also find resources up the wazoo on all things writing and publishing related.

The awesome co-hosts for the September 5 posting of the IWSG are Toi Thomas, T. Powell Coltrin, M.J. Fifield, and Tara Tyler! Visit their sites, say hello, and give them a big thank you for hosting.

The question prompt this month is…

What publishing path are you considering/did you take, and why?

That’s me, dreaming of making it in the publishing world.

At this stage in my writing career, I’ve got my sights set on the traditional publishing route.

I just finished up a manuscript and submitted it to Pitch Wars, in fact! I’m pretty darned proud for having entered a competition of this magnitude. Over 3,500 people submitted this year. My chances of being selected are slim, to say the least. But if you don’t try, you fail by default, right? And, if my manuscript is chosen, I’ll work on it with a talented author mentor for a few months. Then, come February, I’ll post it in the agent showcase. Who knows what might happen?!

I want very much to secure agent representation. Getting my manuscripted picked up by big five publishing houses is a dream of mine. My reasons are simple: self-publishing sounds like a massive amount of work.

Not that securing an agent and then working with a team of folks at one of the big houses wouldn’t also be a tremendous amount of work. From everything I’ve read and heard, things just aren’t what they used to be.

Debut authors are being asked to pick up way more marketing and publicity weight much earlier in a book’s release and run with it. But, still. That weight is not 100%, as it is with self-publishing. And then there are the editors and copy editors and proofreaders and cover designers and people who know when the best time of year to release a book is. Stuff like that.

I’m not sure I’d have either the time or the energy to try and do all that. As with teacher, self-publishing requires a particular type of

person. Don’t know that it would be a good fit for me.

I’m thinking about my “other” life as I contemplate all the work that would go into self-publishing a novel. As a high school teacher, my year just started yesterday.

The new crop!

A new crop of students filled my classroom, and I had to do all the stuff that needs doing to be ready for them. And once it begins, it’s really just a continuous, barely controlled fall to June. Not unlike jumping onto a treadmill cranked up to maximum speed. With a broken deceleration button. You can’t ever slow down. I suspect self-publishing is like that.

It’s that way for big name authors, too, I know. Folks like Victoria Schwab and Jason Reynolds come to mind. They’re red hot in the traditionally published world right now, and they’re both exhausted all the time. Jason flat out told me during my final residency at Lesley University that he’s living an unsustainable life at the moment. He doesn’t know when he’ll collapse, but he feels it coming. Victoria has said much the same thing in a few of her videos over on Instagram.

So, yeah. I’d love, love, love to travel the more traditional publishing path, but life does run in straight lines. Who knows how I’ll feel about this question in a week, a month, a year…

How about you? Are you published? Traditionally or via self-publishing? Or, maybe you’re an aspiring author, like me. Which path are you hoping to travel?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

September 5, 2018
The Pros and Cons of Grammarly.com

There are a gazillion writing apps and programs out there in the digital world, some that cost money and some that are free. Of them all, I’ve tried a handful. However, after two years in grad school, chasing the dream of getting an MFA in creative writing, I’ve come to rely heavily on one in particular: Grammarly. Just to be clear, I’m not affiliated with Grammarly. I’m not getting paid to push the app. It’s definitely not perfect, but I like it enough to write a post about it.

What is Grammarly?

Grammarly.com is an online writing program with a free version and a premium version. The Chrome extension is free, or you can pay a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription fee to upgrade. As you probably guessed, the cheapest per month price comes with the annual subscription and works out to about $12/month.

I tried the free version when I was putting together my application materials for Lesley University’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Everything I wrote (cover letter, personal essay, and my creative piece) got fed through the program and analyzed. The day I got the news that I’d been accepted into the program, I bought the yearly subscription because I knew I’d be using it often for the next two years.

What Does Grammarly Do?

In a nutshell, it makes your writing better. It is, for all intents and purposes, an editing algorithm. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a pretty darned good one, too.

See that fancy infographic I screenshotted off their homepage up above? Well, after two years of using the software I can say with confidences that it does all of that.

You can either type directly in the program, or you can upload a file (google doc, word doc). I tend to cut and paste in my material.

The above claim sounds a little hoaky. I mean, if you write enough stuff, your writing skills are going to improve no matter what. It’s inevitable. That said, the detailed explanations that pop up when you hover over a flagged item is a mighty great feature. I like not having to dive out to dictionaries and thesauruses and my copy of The Everyday Writer to check whether a word is appropriate or a grammatical construct is valid. In that way, Grammarly will probably improve your skills faster than they otherwise would.

Free Versus Premium:

The free version of Grammarly is legitimately decent. Heck, I used it to clean up my application materials (successfully). I only upgraded from the free version to catch stuff I’m apparently blind to: spelling mistakes, homophone errors, repetitious used of certain crutch words, etc. I can read through a written piece ten times, and the thing will still look like it was written at 3AM by a sleep-deprived college kid.

For me, all the extra bells and whistles were worth the money. On one of my earliest submissions in my grad school program, I was up against a deadline and in my stressed-out frame of mind, I forgot to run my submission through Grammarly. I’d read it over multiple times, tweaking, correcting awkward sentence structure, finding typos, and punctuation errors, etc.

My professor sent the submission back to me. She wouldn’t read a piece with more than two mistakes per page. I was mortified. Since then, I’ve never forgotten to use Grammarly to check my work before sending it out to anyone.

When you start a new document in Grammarly, you can select which features are or aren’t active. You can also help the algorithm edit to your needs by telling it what type of document it’s analyzing.

I’ve let the program run an analysis of a document in its “General (default)” setting, made note of the number of “critical” and “Advanced” issues, and then selected “Novel” format and let it re-analyze the document. The number of “critical” issues rarely changes. The number of “advanced” issues almost always decreases in novel format. I guess that means the algorithm knows that creative writers play it a little fast and loose with grammar rules.

Professional Proofreading Services

Premium memberships give you access to a feature I have never used. Supposedly, a real person will read your document and give you feedback on it. I’m skeptical. I don’t know who’s putting eyes on my stuff on the other end. It could be someone with legit editing skills, or it could be someone for whom English is not their first language. For all I know, it could be a well-trained monkey. Maybe one day, I’ll submit a document for professional proofreading, just to see what happens. I probably should. I’m paying for the feature, after all.

Drawbacks and Downsides?

Of course there are drawbacks and downsides.

First, it costs money. That said, it rubs me the wrong way when folks gripe about having to pay for things they want. As if they’re entitled to get everything they want in life for free. Sorry, but someone took the time to write a pretty massive program and debug the thing. They deserve to get paid for their work.

Second, it misses errors. After two years of using the program, I’d estimate that Grammarly misses between 30% and 50% of all the errors that exist in a piece of writing. For some folks, that’s a deal breaker. Not for me. Why? Because the program gets me 50% to 70% of the way toward a mistake free document. That saves me time, and my time is valuable. Now, maybe utilizing that nifty professional proofreading feature would catch the rest of the errors. I don’t know. The point here is, expecting an algorithm to be perfect is dumb. Especially considering the fact that most of us humans can’t match Grammarly’s imperfect error-catch rate.

Third (and the biggest downside), Grammarly undoes certain formatting features in uploaded documents. When you import a piece of writing into the program, all your special fonts, italics, and bold-faced type get converted to plain text. When you export it back to Google Docs or MS Word or Scrivener or whatever, you’ll have to paw through the piece looking for the lost formatting and fix it. I find that step incredibly irritating. Invariably, I’ll miss multiple words or sentences that need to be re-italicized. Grrr.

So yeah, Grammarly is far from perfect, but it’s still pretty darned great for anyone doing a lot of writing.

Do you use Grammarly? What do you think of the program?

March 14, 2018