White on the Map

Wow, I didn't realize it had already been a year and a half since I last logged into Dreamwidth! 

Anyway, like everyone else, I'm dusting off the ol' Dreamwidth blog in preparation for Tumblr crashing and burning. As far as fandom updates go, I've posted a handful of fics on AO3 since May of 2017, but for the most part I'm focusing on trying to get my original work published. So far this year I've had 6 (!!!) short stories accepted to various online lit magazines, which absolutely blows my mind, and I have short stories coming out in 2 different anthologies in 2019. I write under a different pen name, of course, but someday I may be brave enough to release that pen name to my fandom following. You guys were my first readers, after all, and some of you have been with me since I started posting fic back in 2010. I can't believe it's been 8 years already! 

Okay, enough of my rambling. Expect to see more posts here on writing, fandom, and whatever else strikes my fancy! 

 Guess who write a Star Trek fic two years ago and then totally forgot about it in her drafts folder?

Oops.

(LJ users, this has been cross-posted from Dreamwidth. Come find me there!) 

Happy March! 
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(LJ readers, this has been crossposted from Dreamwidth. Find me there!) :-) 

So the optimist in me was like, "Sure, I can post a couple of times a week! No problem!"

Now the realist in me is like, "Wtf, it's been almost 20 days and I have to make ANOTHER post? Jesus."

I really have nothing to report from a writing standpoint.  

Editing. Editing is happening. Sort of. I'm focusing on little, tiny things now, and less on the plot itself. There was a great post I saw on Tumblr a while back (wish I'd bookmarked it) that challenged you to go through your story and remove as many instances of  "said Character A" as you could. Not in the sense that you would replace "said" with a more interesting synonym (that is bad advice, don't do that, it gets distracting after a while), but either eliminate "said Character A" altogether or make the character do something or show their emotion instead. So like:

"I have to go," Bill said.

or

"I have to go." Bill took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily.

Kinda like that. I'm paraphrasing from the actual post, but hopefully you get the idea. It seemed like good advice and now that I'm implementing it in my story, it's really pulling scenes together. So that's cool. I like how I'm always learning things about writing that I didn't know I knew. You don't always think about these things when you're just reading a book for fun.

I did have someone on Tumblr a couple of weeks ago tell me that I shouldn't bother trying to publish my own original work, which was the kick in the pants I needed to finally start really digging into Manuscript Wish List, looking for agents who match what I've written. I've also been polishing and customizing my query letter to fit each agent. I need to start submitting things, which I'll probably do sooner rather than later now. Thanks, anonymous person, since I know you're reading this as well! *waves*

Anyway, on to more serious stuff.

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