The W1S1 Check-in and Chill Lounge and Bar

Although I haven't been the best W1S1-er lately....

More than the potential prizes (and the added bonus of a shiny new story to begin submitting), it's fun reading all the stories that come from the same prompt. It's kinda like an exclusive anthology.

You can practice with the one hour challenge this Saturday.

soapdish said:

Well, I believe participation in that challenge was a condition you set for me when I twisted your arm to join Write1Sub1, J.
So, I guess I'm in. I'll head over and sign up soon.

I seriously need the practice. And a tight deadline to force me to not only write a story, but polish it enough to post/show it. I haven't done so in awhile.

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jgold said:

Although I haven't been the best W1S1-er lately....

More than the potential prizes (and the added bonus of a shiny new story to begin submitting), it's fun reading all the stories that come from the same prompt. It's kinda like an exclusive anthology.

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I have to second this. I did this challenge during March, and reading the 25 other stories based off the same prompt was amazingly addictive. I loved seeing all the different ways people went with it. I'll definitely be participating again this May.

I had my sub-1 down early for May, and I thought I was going to fail at the write 1 part, until I randomly wrote a complete 1,800 word story last Saturday that I mostly like. So April, if not overall as productive on the completion front, has still been a good month for me. April Lite Ray Goal = complete.

MattJ said:

You can practice with the one hour challenge this Saturday.

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I'm tied up Friday, Saturday, Sunday unfortunately. It promises to be the weekend from hell. I told my family I am only dressing once--early Friday morning. And not changing until Monday morning.

But as soon as I can breathe again (May), I do plan on jumping in on some more of those challenges.

An editor recommended I send a story to a specific anthology in his rejection letter, and it does seem to fit quite well - except that it's five hundred words too short. Does anyone have any tips on fattening up a story? All the editing I've ever done's been going the other way, and I'm a tad hesitant to just start adding adverbs.

I would try to add another scene rather than squeezing in unnecessary extra words in the scenes you've already written.

Is this editor affiliated with the anthology in any way, or just knew about it and felt it was a good fit? If the editor is involved with the anthology, you might ask them about the wordage and see if they'd consider the submission at current size.

Big storms yesterday. Tree down in front yard. Pics on blog.

Where's My House?

All my family is safe, but staying with MIL 'til power comes back on.

Whoa, glad you and your family are okay!

Wrote a drabble today, for a contest ending Apr 30 (thanks, Duotrope - sometimes you CAUSE productivity instead of hampering it with all your updates). It's with the beta readers now for a quick look-over. Brings my story total to 4 for the month of April.

Its a story about a California surfer/stoner type dude summoning a demon. What could possibly go wrong?

We need a place to check in here too I'm running by to mention that I'm still here, still working and still not quite on goal (oh well). I did manage to edit and submit two stories this week (ok, one officially submitted today, but I'm still counting it as yesterday) which means I have 3 stories out right now.

I haven't yet resubmitted the one Apex rejected. I think it needs the right market and I'm not sure what that is. Thinking about it. I also haven't submitted (still) the story I wrote in January (that put me behind and caused all the trouble). The problem is, I consider myself a fantasy writer and, as written, it isn't fantasy. But I think it needs to be (and so, I believe, did the beta readers). But I still don't quite know how to fix it. Trunked until something hits me over the head.

If I count the two little twitter fic pieces (one is in the cricket stage and the other rejected), I'm technically on target right now, but that feels a bit like cheating, so...

If I'd finished the story I'm working on now, I would have been totally caught up. But I'm stuck. The MC needs a con to run on the antagonist - he's not actually going to do it even, but it needs to feel like it would work - and I can't think of one. Oh well, it'll show up and maybe soon enough to do a 2nd May story and then I'll be caught up. (I don't want to just switch to another story as I'm afraid I'd never finish this one then and I like it.) But that's what I thought last month and it didn't happen.

But I'm happy. 4 solid stories and 2 twitter fics now. And a 5th story close.

Oh, and Clarkesworld keeps my rejection on my 'check here' page for me to look at and be discouraged about every time I refresh? eek. I hope *they* don't look at it. I count on them forgetting who I am and looking at new work with new eyes

Thanks Izz. I just think we can do a bit more detail/conversation here than on the main site. I did post there too.

And just about as soon as I posted here, I figured out how to unstick my stuck story *bounces around gleefully*. So off to work.

I've always been using the bar as an unofficial progress thread.

oThree out and quite a few bits of stuff written that might turn into something. Or might not, I suppose.

And this pig story is killing me. But I did get my bacon sandwich, so that was a good thing.

Oh. And Duotrope tells me that two of the places I have submitted too have rejected stories that were sent in after mine. So I am now officially crapping myself and obsessively checking my email.

Congrats everyone on meeting or sticking close to your goals!

For April I wrote one story and two thirds of another, which is significantly more than I managed in March. Sent one out as well. Three stories out at the moment.

My biggest problem at the moment is prioritizing. I'm having difficulty focusing on one thing at a time.

Okay, I'm getting to the point where it's easier for me to write a new story rather than fix up old ones. I think that May is going to be quite a month: I have a number of stories coming to rapid fruition.

Time to get those subs back up. I think my high was 18. I'm down to 7.

Oy Izz, why'd you have to change the name of this thread? Now I'm going to have 'Hotel California' stuck in my head all day.

April was my first month participating in W1S1. I managed to write three new stories, all of which I am very happy with and are out doing the submission rounds right now.

My goal is at least one story a month. I'm working on one right now (a horror/humour story about a homicidal birdhouse), and my goal for it is to have it finished by the end of the week. I also need to get cracking on my next entry in the 'Writers of the Future' contest (the next deadline for that is at the end of June).

One thing that I'm really liking about this is that it's forcing me to write shorter pieces. I never really got into flash fiction before, but I'm starting to learn how to make something compact but still workable.

Izz said:

Stories do that sometimes, don't they?

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Yeah, but I think my pig story resolved itself in my head last night when I was failing to sleep. I think I know where it needs to go and why. So that's good. I'll be glad to see the back of this one.

And welcome to the Rejectioneers Club, where we obsess over responses and the like. Though we try not to obsess too much, otherwise we'll never get any writing done

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It's just weird knowing that they have been looking at stuff that came in after mine, so they have probably looked at mine. It's a weird feeling.

Anyway. Back to the pig...