What I’m Writing:
Firstly, I’m happy to report my novel has un-stalled, and I’ve broken through that wall in a major way. I’m back to being incredibly excited by the world, the characters, and the various different things I’m doing with the genre. I’m also putting together bits and pieces to plan ahead, and thankfully I’ve found a way to incorporate the first draft’s structure, with which I had so much success initially.
Other than the novel, I’ve written two short stories and a number of poems as well, most of which I’m quite pleased with, though some do need work. Lastly, I’ve begun to put together the structure for a children’s book, and yes, this is the least number of things I’ve had on my plate for a while.
What I’m Editing:
Articles over at the relatively new and still blooming Speculative Post, a genre-fiction site consisting of SFF reviews and articles. I sometimes write reviews of my own there, and over at Ranting Dragon.
I’m also a fiction submissions reader over at literary journal Verity La, an exciting place for brave and strange fiction and poetry.
What I’m Reading:
A whole bunch of beautiful short story collections. Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her, which is gorgeous, lyrical, and refreshing; Rashomon, and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, which proves short stories 100 years old can more than match what’s being written today; George Saunders’ collection Pastoralia, which so far hasn’t bested the brilliance of 10th of December, but it’s early days yet; and the latest addition to this festival of short fiction is Damage Land: New Scottish Gothic Fiction edited by Alan Bisset.
I tend to carry all of these around in my bag so I can flicker between short stories and see what can grab and hold me, or whatever fits my mood. The novel I’m currently carrying alongside these, for a similar reason, is Stephen King’s 11.22.63. For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave out the poetry collections.
New Things for the Blog:
Look out for some guest posts! I’ve decided I’m sadly neglecting both this platform and my network of talented, interesting, up-and-coming creative people, so I’m planning on doing a few cross-overs and interviews in the interests of making this less about me, and more about us – this community of poets and artists I find myself among, doing everything they can to keep their dreams alive.
Question of the Day:
I’ve noticed that the popular writing platform Wattpad has been in the spotlight recently as a few authors that started there have been picked up by publishers. The number of readers is actually ridiculous, and the idea of putting work up there is very tempting. You could build up a following and use that as a base, either to self-publish, or to potentially pitch your ready-made audience to publishers and agents.
It’s also risky, because I suspect most publishers won’t be sold on the notion unless you’re on the insane end of the spectrum with 800 million reads (as in the case linked to above), which means you might end up just giving your work away for free. To say nothing of rendering it inadmissible to most competitions/prizes/etc. So, with that all said, the question remains: Is it worth it?
