I’ve submitted the story F&SF kindly rejected to another magazine, this one with a much shorter response time, specifically Clarksworld. Again, my expectations are very low, just hoping to eventually snag a personalized response.
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Woot! I just got my first ever rejection notice, finally! Achievement unlocked!
Now that I’ve crossed that threshold, it’s nothing but up from here. 🙂
I apologize for the delay in my updates here. It seems I have been neglectful in keeping you informed of my progress. Allow me to provide you with a more detailed and engaging account of my recent endeavors.
After much contemplation, I made the decision to halt my work on the story I had been developing during Week 2. Although I had managed to write a substantial 1600 words, I realized that the plot was becoming entangled with organic chemistry elements that lie well beyond my area of expertise. If I am to continue making meaningful progress on this particular story, it is clear that I will need to consult with an organic chemistry expert. Their guidance will ensure the plausibility of my narrative and spare me the wrath of readers armed with o-chem textbooks. Let’s avoid that scenario, shall we?
Week 3 turned out to be a rather unproductive week in terms of word count. Despite my initial efforts on the Week 3 story, I found myself succumbing to a persistent cold, perhaps a delayed consequence of attending a convention. Unfortunately, it took me longer than I would have liked to recognize my illness and take the necessary steps towards recovery. Consequently, a couple of days were lost to this ailment. However, I refuse to be disheartened by this setback.
Fortunately, I did manage to assemble most of the outline for the Week 3 story on Monday. Regrettably, some vital components were still missing, particularly a satisfying resolution for the climax. Strangely enough, inspiration struck while I was resting and recuperating from the illness that had invaded my throat. While I am pleased with the answers that have come to me, I cannot say the same for the method by which they were obtained. My productivity was hampered from Tuesday to Thursday, but I finally returned to my writing desk on Friday. Although completing the story within Week 3 seemed unlikely, I remained determined to make significant headway.
Compounding my challenges, San Jose has been in the grips of a heat wave, and unfortunately our Air Conditioner compressor decided to take an unscheduled vacation. Given that my writing space is located upstairs, the sweltering conditions made it unbearable to work there. Even with the assistance of a small fan I acquired from Target, the heat proved too formidable. Nevertheless, despite it now being Week 4, I continue to toil away at the Week 3 story.
Today, I managed to add another 2100 words to my tale, bringing the total to 5195, slightly outside my target range of 3000 to 5000 words. And I think I’m just passed the half-way mark of the story. Oops. Regardless, I am thoroughly enjoying the process, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?
A busy week including BayCon (a review is forthcoming) and July 4th, along with car troubles for a significant part of Friday means I did not accomplish my goal last week of finishing the first draft of a story during the week (my deadline is by bedtime on Saturday). I have several hours free now, time to see if I can finish it. Pre-writing rituals complete, butt in chair, fingers on keyboard. Let’s go…
And that concludes Week 1! I’ve managed to write 4800 words, completing the story (though it’s probably terrible), and I still have a day left. This is great because I don’t anticipate having much time on Saturday for writing.
The story is a “mundane police detective stumbled into a vampire power struggle and somehow manages to emerge on top” kind of story. It’s a clichéd plot, but I’m content with how I addressed some of the inherent challenges.
There’s no time to rest on my accomplishments, though. Sunday is just around the corner, and my goal is to have a fully outlined plan for my next story by the end of the day.
Maybe it’s the exhilaration of the write-a-thon, but I’m actually enjoying the challenge of pushing myself to do this.
A reminder, if you want to cheer me on and celebrate these little accomplishments, there’s still time to contribute to my fundraiser!
In previous discussions, I mentioned my exploration of Large Language Model software, often referred to as “AI” but which I personally dub as “Massive Plagiarism Machines.” Specifically, I’ve been working with ChatGPT, inputting paragraphs from my story that lacked the desired impact and fell flat. To my surprise, the prose generated by ChatGPT proved quite interesting. While I made considerable edits, I found some of its suggestions to be beneficial. ChatGPT seems to have a penchant for excessively flowery writing, abundant with adverbs and redundant descriptions, but amidst the mediocre content, there are truly remarkable gems.
Today, I decided to give Google’s Bard, one of ChatGPT’s main rivals, a try. To my dismay, I was left very disappointed. I presented Bard with the same type of questions and requests I had been posing to ChatGPT, seeking assistance in refining paragraphs with improved grammar and description. Strangely enough, when asked to enhance a passage spanning around 900 words, Bard decided to condense it to a mere 200 words, devoid of any meaningful details or dialogue. It acknowledged that removing the “graphic” elements would be detrimental to the story, yet insisted on excising them regardless.
It appears that each platform has its own distinct applications. While I haven’t yet experimented with other platforms, I believe it would be worthwhile to do so. I find it surprising that Google’s offering completely disregarded my requests, even after numerous corrections were made.
I must emphasize that I do not intend for these tools to write my story on my behalf. However, engaging with them to exchange ideas has proven to be an intriguing exercise. Considering my inclination to create lackluster scenes, I view this experience as an opportunity to enhance my writing skills and strive for improvement.
My introductory scene for this week’s story is written, but as usual for me, I’ve written nearly 1000 words for a target of 500. There’s probably a little fat to be trimmed, but I’m not going to spend any time on it today. That’s something for the edit phase at some point in the future. Next up is the finale of the piece, where I try to wrap things up and emphasize the crux of the story. The parts in between are for the rest of the week.
I was out of town for the weekend, driving home on Monday afternoon. While I had great intentions to find time to write during my vacation, the dream did not match reality, and I got very little done beyond brainstorming. Not that brainstorming was bad, I did add quite a bit of ideas to my idea pool. But I had wanted to have an outline of my story this week completed by Sunday evening, and fleshed out by the end of Monday, and none of that happened.
Today, though, I dug through my idea pool, mixed my metaphors, and started picking ideas that might make for good stories for the Write-A-Thon. I had accumulated a half-dozen or so when I came across one that jumped out at me and said “this is the one.” It’s a delight when an idea does that.
An hour later I had the rough outline put together, and spent another hour or so adding meat to the bones. I’m not yet where I wanted to be by Monday evening (much less Tuesday evening), but I’m happy with progress so far. I also spent some time doing research to better ground my urban fantasy story in real life.
I’m busy this weekend as well, so three more days to get the story done. I think I’m in a good place to hit that goal.
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