Writing sessions

A writer friend of mine told me once that when you are writing you should never "write yourself out," that is, you should always stop for the day before you have finished all you have thought of to create.

That way, he reasoned, you would always have a starting place the next day. Voila! No writer's block and a quick start to your next session.

That sounded reasonable to me and so I tried it and found it was almost impossible to do. The more I tried it, the less I liked it. In fact, sometimes I found that by the next writing session, sometimes I had forgotten exactly where I was going. That may mean the "inspiration" wasn't so good in the first place.

Or it might mean I missed an opportunity.

This is a tactic for any writers who might stumble upon this blog and it could work for you. But it doesn't work for me.

Who knows how many such strategies are out there to help us be successful? Probably each writer has half a dozen and most of them only work for that one writer.

The point is just because one strategy does not work for you does not mean there is something wrong with you. It just means you have to find another path.

Status of current rejection project: 28,211 words; 99 pages

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Someone is out there

I wouldn't exactly say that readership of this blog has "exploded," but it is interesting that there has been a definite uptick in views over the last month.

In the first month or so, I would get probably two or three reads a day. I mostly knew who was doing the reading as they were friends of mine. Now I get about 20 views a day.

As I said, no explosion, but at least I don't know the first names of everyone who is looking in.

I know this because the blog stats record the origin nation of the viewer. Of course, almost all the views are from the United States, but a surprising number come from France (?!). About a dozen other nations are represented in the list. This week, someone from India looked in.

Thanks for reading. I hope a little of what I am writing about helps someone in their own journey to get published. At the very least you know that there are others out who are struggling in the same way you are.

The message I am trying to get across above all other things is keep plugging away. Don't stop writing. Never stop writing.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

A good friend

OK, I make light of rejection and the truth really is I don't take myself all that seriously. I take my writing seriously, but not myself. I put everything I have into my writing and you should, too. It is what matters.

But every now and then rejection does get to be a drag and I have to force myself to plow forward, get past the, "why the hell am I doing this" arguments and just write. In times like these I tell myself that at least I am leaving something behind for my kids to read.

My father left me poems he wrote and they are among my most treasured memories.

I had a few friends read "Lost in Translation," my second novel. They were people I picked who were well-read.

After the dismal failure of that manuscript to pick up any interest whatsoever, I've set it aside. I thought it was decent, the agents did not. I respect that decision.

But my friend, who is a published author and playwright came to my office, sat down and quietly said this:

"I don't think I ever told you this, but Lost in Translation is a very good novel. You have written something special and you need to know that."

A good friend and sometimes it helps your soul to listen to friends instead of the critics.

Yours in Rejection,

Phil

Tedium

Now there's a title to really make you want to read a blog, right?

In this case I'm talking about the tedium of re-reading and re-writing. It is so bad I can only do about 14 or 15 pages a night at the absolute maximum.

When your eyes start crossing it is time to stop.

But here is the thing: I always find many errors and examples of bad writing when I re-read. That makes it worthwhile no matter how many times I do it and no matter how tedious it gets.

I've never sold a book, but I still think this is one of key elements to getting one sold. Probably I'm not doing it half enough.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

We interrup this regularly scheduled writing...

I decided on a whim last night that it was time to do another re-through and edit before I went any further.

This is odd because I'm on a roll, know exactly where I am taking the characters and the all important "what happens next."

But I don't want to neglect this sense that I need to re-group, work on what I have so far then forge ahead. I almost wrote, "I've learned not to neglect these feelings...." But that would be goofy since one could easily say that the Master Rejector has not learned anything just yet.

So the next few days will be consumed with going over it word by word.

Part of the reason for this is that I've just started reading "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck. What a book! His descriptive phrasing has to be the most precise ever.

I'll keep updating, especially if I find some egregious errors.

Rejection project status: 26,302 words in 93 pages.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Rejected!

My short story in the Writer's Digest Short Story contest was a non-winner.

Now THERE'S a surprise!

The only thing left up in the air is whether I made the top 100 list in short stories. I'm not holding my breath on that one, either, but it would be nice to see how I fell in the ranking.

If I don't rank I'm going to blame it on the fact that I used the "p-word" too many times. Yep, it was in there a bunch, but it called for it. There was no gratuitous "p" in my story.

There's an upside to not winning. To get to the 4,000-word limit, I really had to slice and dice it and cut out some parts I thought were necessary. It was a much better story - at least in my opinion - at 5,000 words than 4,000.

This is a tough contest and I did not expect to win. I've read some of the entries from past years and they are very good. Congratulations to those who did win and good luck in catching that brass ring.

Rejection project status: 24,555 words in 84 pages.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Christmas present

I decided today that the Christmas present I will give myself is Knight in Shining Armor, Ltd, finished by the end of the year.

I'm not talking about final, ready-to-send-to-agents finished, but finished with the first write. It still won't be easy. That gives me about 70 days (roughly) to write about 60,000 words (roughly, again). As I said, not easy, but it gives me a target, even if it is one I will not hit.

I will be working in that direction and, unless the unforeseen happens I will be at least close by the end of the year.

On another note, if I am going to get notified as being the winner of the Writer's Digest short story contest, it will be by Friday. Not holding my breath.

Rejection project update: 23,167 words

Yours in rejection,

Phil

I wonder if this happens to other writers?

Here is something odd - or maybe normal I don't know.

I can write myself into a corner that I can't get out of.

It happened this weekend when I had a character fall asleep at a certain point, which effectively stopped the action of my main character. It seemed perfectly proper to write it in this manner at the time. Character A was tired and Character B needed time to think.

But I discovered I had made Character A so tired that she would not quickly wake up, which gave Character B - my main character - too much time to do nothing. So I wandered around in this mish-mash for 500 words or so trying to make it work, writing a bunch of drivel.

It is tough just hit the delete key on 500 words but that is what I eventually had to do. It hurt initially but felt a lot better once I got going again.

I always have the feeling that other writers - you know, those who actually get published - don't have these kinds of problems. I wonder if that is true? Probably never know.

Status of Rejection Project: 22,333 words.

Yours in Rejection,

Phil

Writing all day

On certain days, I would like to do nothing but write all day.

Working a full-time job leaves little time for writing and that doesn't even include all the other responsibilities I have, plus the desire to - every now and then - do something other than work.

And I can't forget about the "fatigue factor." If on a weekday I am able to write more than an hour on the rejection project I feel lucky. Last night, for instance, it was about 20 minutes, which did give me the time to write one good paragraph and kind of begin to work out of a jam in the narrative.

At least I think I would like to write a full day. It could be that, if given the opportunity, I would write productively for one hour then be stuck for the next eight or ten hours.

Rejection project status: 21,202 words.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Resistance of self

I am about 21,000 words on Knight in Shining Armor, Ltd, which is probably about 25 percent through the writing process. You never quite know, but the other two novels I have written have been between 80,000 and 90,000 words.

I don't have a target, though that might not necessarily be a bad idea. If you were determined not to let your manuscript go beyond, say, 80,000 words, at some point you would begin choosing your words much more wisely. I have a feeling this is some of the problem with my writing.

But here is something interesting: As I get to each little milestone, and even though I have now worked out some of the biggest problems with the story, I still try to convince myself that it isn't going to go to completion. I do this in ways large and small, obvious and subtle.

But my own negativity is not enough to stop me. I wonder why?

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Naked Lunch

I am almost through with Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. When I bought the book, from Prospero's bookstore in downtown Marshall, the owner said to me, "This is a famous novel."

And so it is. It is the novel of the beat generation. Reading the jacket notes, it is praised by reviewer after reviewer.

Certainly it is a shocking book, which must have been Burroughs' intent. He will rip you right out of your middle-class recliner and throw you into the world of junkies. I find it both fascinating and repelling. It is a difficult read with much of it the dreams, make that nightmares, of junkies.

And there is a lot of sex, not regular sex, but all kinds of disgusting scenarios where people are killed in the middle of gay encounters. Semen and shit are flung on almost every page.

Would I recommend it? Yes, with a caution.

You need to be prepared for this. I did not really understand what I was going to be reading. If you don't have a fairly strong stomach, I would steer clear. But if you want to read a novel that is written on the extreme and does have something important to say, you might give it a try.

Just be ready.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Crazy or brilliant?

In the course of writing novels - even ones that are in terminal rejection - you always run into problems, large and small. I have a big problem with KSA - a deal-breaker - but I think I have found a solution.

But I ran into a smaller problem when writing last night, so much so that I packed it in a little earlier than I normally would have.

So today I got an idea that is either, as the title says, crazy or brilliant. I'm going to let the character work it out himself.

Here's the situation: I am at a point where I don't know exactly what I want the next step to be, how I want the character to proceed. Part of this character's make-up is being unsure of himself and not believing in himself. Also, some inability to act.

So I decided to let the character make the decision himself. He is going to write it down a strategy on a notepad about what makes the most sense.

Will this work? Don't have a clue, but I'm going to try. Let my left brain (or is that the right brain) come up with a solution.

Best guess is that it will move me past a logjam enough to keep going but will take some serious rewriting later.

As to whether this is crazy or brilliant, I need only refer you to the title of this blog.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

The march forward

I wrote 2,000 words last night, which is about double what I would do on a normal night, but sometimes Sundays can be more productive.

I should explain that when I say "wrote 2,000 words," I'm not trying to say that they were 2,000 good words, or that they will not all change in the first re-write. This is not the time to worry about that.

Part of the difficulty of writing (my opinion) is getting past the hurdle of actually putting words down, to move them from the safety of your brain, where no one will ever see them, to paper or computer where there is the possibility that they will be discovered.

Just prying them from your brain is the beginning, but it is not the hardest part. Once you have done that you must convince yourself that these thoughts and words are mere ore that must be processed and that, without that, they are fairly useless to anyone.

But first steps are good. Brain to computer document. I still have a long way to go with that.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

On poetry

As nearly as I can tell I have written 55 poems, all fairly close to completion. I say close because whenever I open one and begin to look at it I usually start tweaking it.

I have had one of the poems "published," so to speak, in an online zine, but I have not really spent that much effort trying to get any of them published. I don't think poetry is my strongest talent (to say the least), but I love reading poetry and I also enjoy writing it, so it is almost something I do for a change of pace. A sorbet for my mind.

Besides, not everything has to be written with the intent of publication. Some things can specifically not be written for anything but to get something out of your head.

A friend once asked me to post some of the poetry here, but the rules of "publication" would turn every poem posted into a "published" piece. That means no one else would consider it for publication. I probably will never even try to get most of it published but at least I want the option!

Yours in rejection,

Phil

The process

Since I am Mr. Rejection anyone who stumbles onto this blog would do well to take any advice I have with some trepidation. I am obviously just learning and, since this is largely self-taught, you never quite know when you are going in exactly the wrong direction.

Hmmmmm, since I've never had anything published, maybe that would be a clue for me....

But I have a feeling that the process is important. I mean, not just the writing and the final product, but how you get to that point, the number of times you re-write, how you proof, how you make decisions about plot, character, well you get the picture. There are likely 100 points of process.

I'm not saying that the successful writer necessarily makes all the correct decisions every time, but I believe the process is vital and not just the art of the work.

All conjecture, of course, take it for what it is worth.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

A solution? Maybe

I've mentioned several times that I had a major problem with KSA, Ltd., to the point that I worried I was going to write 30,000 words and just have to stop cold, not being able to write any more on this particular rejection project.

I've lost sleep over this. Spent a lot of nights staring up at the ceiling trying to think of a way for my "hero" to actually be a Knight in Shining Armor. I'm now at about 17,000 words, probably on my way to roughly 80,000-85,000 which would make me almost one-fourth done. I am not at a point in the narrative where this must be decided, but I can see it in the horizon, so I was beginning to get antsy.

But this morning an idea came to me out of the blue and it makes total sense with my character and how he would act. Not only that, but it covers a topic I know a great deal about, at least in the emotional sense.

Now it is just an idea, so there are not any guarantees just yet. Furthermore, it is pretty vague at this moment. Instead of calling it an idea, I should call it an idea of an idea. That's how unformed it is.

But that is a lot more than I had yesterday. Hooray for me.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

A first re-read

As everyone knows, re-reading and re-writing is the real chore of creating a novel - or, as in my case, a rejection project.

So last night, instead of writing further on Knight in Shining Armor, Ltd. I did a first re-read, re-write from the top. I do this periodically, in hopes of not going too far astray. It is easy to catch the really, really bad parts of your writing.

What is not so easy is catching the not-very-good parts and that (I'm guessing) is what turns a rejection project into a finished and published novel, or it is at least one of the things.

Because you wrote it, you tend to like it, get amused with the same turns of phrase that you liked a few weeks, or months ago.

But a lot of it is probably crap. Which is why other people should read it, but unless you have someone who is both actually not biased in favor of your work — and who knows a noun from an adverb — then the results of having it read may not be that helpful.

So you try to turn a critical eye to it, but I'm not sure how good that "eyesight" really is. The good news is I've changed much. The bad news is I don't if I've changed it for the better or for the worse.

Yours in rejection,

Phil

Short-short story vs. novel

I mentioned that I am entering the Writer's Digest short-short story contest. In this case, the story can be no longer than 1,500 words. I've seen limits for these short-shorts be as low as 1,000 words, but I've never entered one before.

I've been writing on the short-short for about a week and I am at about 900 words. I write well more than that every night on my third and latest rejection project, otherwise known as a novel.

I'm no genius, but something tells me this is a clue that I've taken a wrong turn.

With the short-short I find myself agonizing over every word and, when I begin the night writing on it, I completely re-read it, honing it as I go.

It would make sense that I follow a similar procedure on the novel.

My novels aren't getting rejected because of my writing ability, or so I've been told, so perhaps this isn't absolutely necessary, but I'm sure my work would be substantially better if I worked at it the same way.

Or maybe not. I don't much like the short-short to this point and I'm not sure it will be the one that eventually gets turned in.

Surely a topic to think about as I write. I'm not in a race of time, I'm in a race of quality.

Yours in rejection,

Phil