Tag Archives: Writing

I’m a big fat winner!

Posted on by Sherri
7

I have so much energy right now it’s hard to make myself sit still. But what am I going to do with this new energy, vacuum? I think not! Instead, I post.

Over the weekend I attended a banquet at the OWFI writer’s conference. The Saturday night banquet ends the conference, and that is also the night they announce the winners in the annual contest. The last time I won anything was 1st Honorable Mention for a confession story, of all things, in 2000, and I wasn’t even there to receive my certificate. I don’t enter every year—I’d say I’ve entered maybe three times since. No winners.

The good thing about entering the contest is getting feedback from the professionals who volunteer to judge. I’d forgotten to put postage on the return envelopes, so that meant I’d have to pick up my entries in person. Which meant I might as well lay down $40 for the banquet.

Well, I’m glad I went, because I actually won something. My first novel, Ea’s Gift—the one that landed my former agent—took 3rd place in the fantasy novel category!

I’d entered it five years ago, before it was completely finished (they only need the synopsis and 1st 30 pages) and the judge slammed it, but apparently he slammed all of them, because on his blog he lamented the terribleness of the entries. Yes. Publicly. He’s a fairly well-known writer now, of novels and screenplays, though he wasn’t big then.

So anyway, a finished, polished Ea’s Gift got much more helpful comments. I think it helps when the judge enjoys your sub-genre, too, since Fantasy is such a large umbrella with too many different styles under it. Go visit Ty Drago. He’s got taste. Also, he’s a Quaker. I like Quakers.

I got good comments on Black Veil Angel as well, but the judge felt it shouldn’t have been entered in the YA category. That hurt the score. You know what’s funny? I had just put this judge at the top of my new agent query list for BVA, but I didn’t realize she was the judge for my category. I guess I don’t need to bother now.

My short story, Mon Petit Ami, didn’t get any comments but the score was in the 80–89 range, out of a hundred. She had a huge number of entries, so I don’t hold it against her.

I feel validated, which I really needed, but I still don’t know what to do with these stories. I’ve been looking at small presses and at self e-publishing and at agents. I’m feeling pretty creative, so maybe I’ll just write for a while.

A Mountain of Markets

Posted on by Sherri
4

Several years ago I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to get my short stories published, but I never was able to successfully scale the veritable mountain of available markets. The process got to me, so I quit. This morning I decided to give it another go. Don’t know what made me think I’d be able to handle it any better today, but here I am.

I use Duotrope to narrow down the search for magazine markets, and while it’s an indispensable tool, it doesn’t make it an automatic process by any means. I’ve been researching for almost an hour and haven’t come up with one viable market. I’m starting at the high end of the payscale and working my way down, so I’m sure I’ll come across something eventually, but meanwhile, it’s drudgery.

The first challenge is defining the work, in terms of genre (fantasy), subgenre (light fantasy? magic realism? We’ll go with “Any subgenre.”), style (I’d call it quirky, but that returns no results so again: “Any subgenre.”). I choose my story specs, length and such, and hit Enter. I get 70 results. Wowzers. That’s a lot of stuff to go through, and of course I’m not familiar with most of these markets so not only do I have to research their submission requirements, but also their style to see if my story will match. I’m afraid my story won’t match any style.

I’d like to get paid, of course, but I’m mostly hungry for a cred, so I choose any payscale and sort from high to low. I don’t want to wait for six months before I can submit again, so I discard those who won’t take simultaneous submissions. I’m working my way through the list, but I’ll have to take a break before I make any real progress, it seems.

What method do you use for sorting through all these markets? Have you been successful? I’d love to hear how you climbed to the summit of Market Mountain. Don’t be shy.

Meeting Reader Expectations

Posted on by Sherri
5

As an author–as a human, actually–there’s no way to guarantee a reader’s expectations will intersect with my offering. So many things are out of my control, and I just can’t know what makes a reader like or dislike certain things about my book. It’s like that Aerosmith song, “Same Old Song and Dance”:

Get yourself a cooler lay yourself low
Coincidental murder with nothing to show
The judge’s constipation will go to his head
And his wife’s aggravation, you’ll soon end up dead

I just finished a book wherein the ending came way too soon for me. I was so disappointed, because I thought I had a whole ‘nother chapter to go, judging by the number of pages left. So I finish a chapter, anticipating the “wrap-up” that should begin as I turn the page, and find instead discussion questions and an excerpt of the author’s novel. It was over. Like that.

I understand the need to market the next book, but this actually made a black mark against the author in my mind. Even though the book was fantastic the ending soured it for me. Because of where I expected it to end, I was reading that final chapter in a different way than the author intended. She knew it was the end. I did not.

I re-read that last chapter as a last chapter, just to see if maybe I’d missed a change in pacing or rhythm, the subtle signs that the book was ending, and sure enough, they were there. I think the ending was still weak, but it definitely would have been stronger for me if I’d had the right expectations.

Is my reader in a loveless marriage, or did her boyfriend just say he loved her for the first time? Did the cover promise something I didn’t include in the book, or is the reader a writer himself with his own ideas of how to do things? Did my reader just get the death penalty?

You just never know.

Emerging from the Chrysalis

Posted on by Sherri
6

I must say I have reservations about re-opening Sherri Blossoms. All the old fears and pressures return as I open Live Writer and begin to type. Have I really taken enough time off? Do I have anything to say? Will blogging still be a bore, and is it worth the energy?

The answer to all those questions is: I won’t know until I try. And so I begin.

I’ve spent the past two months adrift, a necessary thing, releasing old ideas about how this blog, my career, my relationships should be. I played at NaNoWriMo; wrote parts of books and stories, but nothing that lights my fire; joined OWFI and planned to enter their annual contest in several categories, and actually got quite a bit done in that direction; accepted the fact that crappy stuff happens all the time, and I have to learn how to write anyway.

I think I finally settled on a blog theme that works exactly how I need it to, and will build it over time. I might post writings here, stories that maybe aren’t worth trying to sell but still have some entertainment value. A new About Me page would be nice.

I’m accepting the fact that the blogging community has changed immensely since I started. It used to be the way I communicated all the parts of my life, but I have Facebook for the more mundane stuff now. I used links and images, and I thought about SEO and getting the blog out there. That helped in the beginning, but dang… If you enter “Sherri Cornelius” into Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you will find this website in the top spot, not to mention various others of my hangouts in positions below that. I’m “out there”, mmkay?

The writing of the blog never bored me, but all the side work did, and I guess I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I don’t want to imagine what I can make of this place, but to be surprised with what it becomes.

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