Most of this blog is about writing, so most of the posts will be categorized, ‘Writing’. You can select this if you don’t care about anything that’s not writing.
I’ve been working diligently (well, working) on the outline I talked about earlier. I’ve managed to work myself into a lousy space: Judging by the increase in outline length (doubled) I’ve probably doubled the length of the story. 40,000 words is kind of a lousy length. There are markets for fiction that length, to be […]
I mentioned earlier two plans related to the novel I’m starting: 1) I’m starting with an outline rather than just diving in, primarily because I’m worried about my lack of organizational skills. 2) I’m taking the plot of a 20,000-word novella I wrote last fall and using that as the basis of the novel: I’m […]
… From James D. Macdonald, “Do the work, then send it out ’til Hell won’t have it. Meanwhile, write another story.”
In the beginning, there was the Outline. Or there will be. (Will have been?) Having more or less run out of usable ideas for short fiction for the moment, I’m diving back into the project I had earlier: expanding Where Do They Bury the Survivors? to novel length. I approach with some trepidation, as the […]
Just got back a rejection for A Stab in the Dark. I wonder at what point F&SF’s form rejections started using the word “story” instead of “tale”. Ah well, into the filing cabinet it goes. Haven’t decided yet about its next stop. Its 7,000 word length is a little bit of a handicap for some […]
After finishing A Stab in the Dark, I decided to revisit the novella that kicked off my mystery-writing spree, Where Do They Bury the Survivors? If you missed it (easy to do, as it hasn’t been accepted anywhere for publication) it’s a locked-room murder mystery that takes place on a space station in interstellar space. […]
Two rejections in one day. That’s a bad thing, but also a good thing.
I finished up the most recent short story yesterday afternoon. I trimmed a few scenes, but made up for it by adding a whole other one (I’ll be curious if anyone coming back to this post can figure out which scene was added). It’s a good piece, one of the better mysteries-per-se that I’ve written. […]
I finished up a rough draft of my work-in-progress. I wound up wrapping it up at around 6300 words, though I may expand it a bit on the next draft. I added a scene looking for a particular piece of evidence, and discovered that the character addition from earlier shortened that scene considerably. Now comes […]
Just finished up a good bit of writing: Just shy of a thousand words, net, on the current mystery story, A Stab in the Dark, after going back and making some revisions based on my notes from the plane. Adding a character (now Sgt. Van Rijn) was very much the right thing to do, the […]
John P. Murphy 