73 posts tagged “writing”
My short story Reboot has been published by the webzine Short-Story.me.
Here’s how it starts:
A quantum worm uncoiled itself out of the machine being restored, suddenly collapsing into a specific state and wreaking havoc within the operating system. Alarms sounded and the graphs scrolling across Tom's screen spiked wildly. His laptop was plugged into a large black box of qubits, the liquid hydrogen coolant vented slowly in quietly dissipating clouds. Inside, beneath the desperately stylish matt black metallic exterior, beneath the ultra-cooled chamber, inside the electron traps, sat a countless number of electrons, reduced to acting as quantum bits. The qubit box was plugged into the local network, copying its state carefully in a safe, isolated, two-phase restore of the destroyed machines.
Go and read it and tell me what you think.
My Flash story The Paths You Would Walk has been published today by Every Day Fiction.
I think it's probably my favourite Flash story that I've written to date.
My story A Letter Of Complaint is online in the new issue of Spacesuits and Sixguns Magazine.
If you've ever done your grocery shopping online - and have been left baffled at the produce that
actually turns up - then this one is for you.
Show us something you recently wrote.
Some stories.
Two interesting "not acceptances" for my stories in the last few days.
Firstly I've had my first ever rewrite request. The magazine said they liked it but the ending was too much of a downer. And, well they're right. They'd like me to rewrite a new ending, a happy ending, sort of. I'm thinking about it. The problem is envisaging the story as something other than the one I wrote. I might give it a go though.
Secondly I've had a rejection from the Mundane issue of Interzone. That's interesting because I received an email from the guest editor Geoff Ryman, with a selection of very detailed comments, starting with...
"There was a lot to enjoy in this story, especially because there is still fun to be had in this future. However it didn't make the final cut."
Very useful comments, most of which I agree with. And Geoff Ryman is an award winning author, who's book Air I really loved. So, maybe I need another rewrite.
Hmmm.
My writing has been going slow at the moment. I'm currently publishing a piece of flash fiction a day on my writing blog, but I wrote those in August. Since then I've hardly written at all, I finished one story over a month, started one story another and didn't finish it and had a good idea for another. I have however spent a lot of time editing my latest story to go through my writing group, ready to send out for submission.
Talking of submissions I've had a rejection recently that made me feel better :
"It made it through our first round of reading, but in the end, it was not what we were looking for. Thank you for thinking of Electric Velocipede. We would love to see more work from you in the future."
Which was nice, little things like that make my day.
Meanwhile I've also had a constructive, but depressing rejection from Clarkesworld Magazine, where my attempt at minimal detail didn't go down very well. Still, I'm really glad that they take the time to tell you why they didn't like something. It's much better than the minimal rejections where you're left guessing at what was wrong with the story.
If you don't know, F&SF is one of the biggest Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines on the planet. They get approximately 7 squillion submissions a month, all read by JJA aka The Slush God.
Once you have had a few rejections from F&SF (18 for me so far) you start to see a pattern in Mr. Adams' rejection letters. There's:
- The tale failed to grab me == didn't get past the first page
- The tale failed to retain my interest == got bored before the end
...and that's all I've had, I think (although I'm not sure). Anyway this week I got a better one:
- There's some nice writing here, but overall this tale didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid.
Stepping up the ladder!
August is normally my worst writing month, so I made a special effort this time around.
I wrote 31 pieces of flash fiction in the month, usually one a day. It was...erm...interesting. My conclusion is that I'm rubbish at writing flash fiction, but I did generate some ideas that could be okay in a short or novel.
I also submitted the most number of stories I have ever achieved in a month. Which is nice.
And I passed the magic 200 rejections mark!
Submissions in August : 15
Sales in August : 0
Total Days If Submission : 7352
Iain Banks said in response to a question I asked at a convention that new writers should not worry about perfection, because there's no such thing as a perfect novel.
I think they're both saying the same thing. It's like trying to write the perfect song. It never happens, but you keep trying.
I've had quite a few, "it's a good story, but not good enough rejections", it's a mixed blessing, on one hand you think "oh, they thought it was good", on the other hand you think "what on earth do I have to do?".
