Skip to main content

Dumps Week

Lots of things suck this week.

One, I am an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest loser. Didn't make the next round. Didn't really think I would, but it's a bummer all the same. So I sent the novel out to a couple of publishers, but not holding out much hope. It's not my time yet.

Two, it seems to be just the right time for editors to send rejections on the last short story I sent out. That's fun.

Three, it's the last week of spring break. Next week I have to go back to work, back to the classroom, back to reading painful first years' writing, back to being harried and in contact with the rest of society. Blech.

The good news is there are only three weeks left in the semester. After that, I'm free for the summer, to write, to travel, to fail in finding funding all over again. Whee!

I feel I've gotten some good stuff accomplished these past couple of weeks. I'm back on track with my PhD stuff, having finished a short story draft, come up with lots of fun ideas for the digital adaptation, and have copious notes on getting my larger work started.

I've gotten rolling again with my current novel WIP. It's my goal to write 1000 words a day on it, even when I'm swamped. I'm so tired of being mildly published. I need a damn book in my hands with my name on the cover.

Anyway, I have today and tomorrow, maybe Saturday, to get even more work done before it's back to the grindstone. Can't be slacking off on the blog all day!

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Take on Specifications Grading (or, How I Learned to Not Spend My Weekends Marking)

I’ve been proselytizing this method for a while now, and have used it in a range of creative writing and publishing modules. It’s been wildly successful for me (though of course I’ll continue tweaking it), and enough people have asked about it that I thought I’d put it together into an overview/summary resource. It should probably be an actual paper one of these days, but that would require time and research and motivation. Natch. My teaching model is based on Linda Nilson’s Specifications Grading  (she’s also got a great intro article on Inside Higher Ed ), just so the original genius can get plenty of credit. My motivations are these: I came a hair’s breadth from burning out entirely. I went from teaching creative writing classes with 7-10 students on them to massive creative writing modules with 80+ students on them. Marking loads were insane, despite the fact that I have a pretty streamlined process with rubrics and QuickMarks and commonly used comments that I can cut and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

In which the Apathy Monster is curtailed

Me, lately I spent my PhD years going to many, many  conferences. When you're in a small department in an isolated part of the world, they're kind of a necessity. You go to meet anyone - anyone  - who is doing similar stuff, and who won't stare at you blankly when you describe your research. You go to try out your ideas, to make sure the academic community you'll be pitching them to don't think you're an absolute waste of space ( imposter syndrome is for real). Also, you go just to go somewhere (though I think I went to Leicester far too often). In the last few years, as I've gained contacts and confidence, I've gone to fewer and fewer conferences. I know the ones that best suit me now, and where I'll get to meet and/or catch up with my peeps. I also know the ones, of course, where I've never made any headway at all. I was pleasantly surprised this week to be wrong about that last one. MIX Digital - Bath Spa University Let me back thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts on @dreamingmethods Digital Writing Workshop

I'm on the long train(s) ride home from Kent after a one-day digital fiction workshop with Andy Campbell ( Dreaming Methods ).  It's the first time I've met Andy IRL - great to put a face to the name & works. The workshop itself was set up by Peggy at East Kent Live Lit , funded by the Kent Arts Council, and she was graceful enough to let a non-Kent-resident such as me sit in.  Most of the attendees were not necessarily new to digital fiction, but new to building it.  They were writers, musicians, installation artists, and sometimes a combination of the above.  Almost everyone save me and one other had been able to make the Friday evening session, which was an overview of digital fiction and some of Andy's background. The morning session covered a few examples of dig-fic (from the Poole Literary Festival New Media Prize ), recommended software (more on this in a minute), and resources for media files (more...).  The afternoon session was more hands-on building of di...
1 comment
Read more