Writing Goals

January 9, 2009

Mary Rosenblum:  I hope you all had a great New Year! Seems like a perfect time, this first Forum of 2009, to talk about writing goals.  I might have some useful suggestions for how to get there.
Pam:  I made it to the Auditorium. I'm glad to have found my way here. It was one of my goals for this year.
Mary Rosenblum:  Good for you, Pam! You've achieved your goal and the year is only 9 days old!
That leaves room for lots more
Pam:  I have simple goals!
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep, lots of year left! So what are your writing goals?
Mine is to not have my editor have to work so hard. I want to improve my skills.
My goals is to write well, find my niche and get published.
Rae: my goal is to be able to write again, and have it published.
Mary Rosenblum:  Good goal, Rae. How come you haven't been writing? Blocked? Or life?
Life got in the way.

Mary Rosenblum:  Life does that, but you know what? Every experience adds to the pool you draw from. Cold comfort when the world is falling in about you, but true.
Wise words Mary
Well, I have lots to write about now, mary. LOL.
Mary Rosenblum:  Getting published is a good goal. pretty achievable for most of you, to judge by my prompt submissions.

To finish Breaking Into Print this year.
Mary Rosenblum:  Good for you, Jerry! That should be doable, even if you're early in the course.

I plan to attend at least one writing conference.
Mary Rosenblum:  Pam, I hope you do attend a conference. Where do you live?  What state?
Colorado Denver that is.
Mary Rosenblum:  You should find conferences in and around Denver.  Check Shawguides. They have that whole section on writing conferences.

I have only seen a posting for Ft. Collins, thanks, I will check Shawguides out.
Mary Rosenblum:  As to getting published, the key is to find the right fit between your piece and the marketplace.  That may be a small ezine if you're a new writer and your skills are still a little on the shaky side.  But that gives you a clip and that 'published' is a huge boost to the confidence.  Confidence plays a huge role in writing....the more confident you are, the more it expresses in strong writing. By all means try the top markets first, but then week 'working your way down' to the ones that pay in copies or don't pay at all.

One of my biggest problems is that I'm not sure what genre my writing falls under.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, what are you writing, K?  Long? Set when? What kind of plot?
One story I wrote was a story of a guy who has a one night fling with this woman, then he realizes that he falls in love with her. They find each other and live happily ever after. I sent it as a romance and was told it wasn't.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well it IS a romance, but not a 'category romance'. So what you're looking for is an anthology or ezine or magazine that features romance that are not the stereotypical girl sees boy, they fall in love stories. It's simply the classical girl meets boy 'first meeting' romance, but with the gender reversed. The POV is the guy.
Thanks. I thought it was, but kind of threw me when I was told this wasn't romance.
Mary Rosenblum:  Most mainstream fiction is moving to the internet. You don't have a lot of print magazines in existence and I suspect this economic crash is going to take quite a few down.
sounds like a good read to me.
Mary Rosenblum:  I agree.   Someone was just defining 'romance' very narrowly. Of course it's a romance. Yeah, and likely to attract both male and female readers.
The latest thing I have been working on is sort of sci-fi. With DNA cloning of animals.
That sounds timely
Mary Rosenblum:  What's the cloning tech, K? Cloned animals are hardly SF any more! :-) Reality keeps stepping on the heels of us SF writers!
With this part, it is cloning from a pet that has been gone for a long time. That technology isn't available yet or so I have been told from several of the cloning facilities out there.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, it actually has been done, but if you give this a twist in the story, you'll be fine. Maybe the outcome isn't at all what they expected or something.
That is somewhat of where I was going.
Genetic engineering is a huge frontier, make it the perfect pet maybe, or an attempt for that.
Mary Rosenblum:  Or something that ends up more than the pet they expected. Maybe someone sneaked some human DNA in there.
Right now I'm trying different things right now to see where I fit, like I said I'm trying to find my niche. However you all are giving me great ideas of where I could go with this. Thanks for that.
Mary Rosenblum:   Glad it helps, K. Keep playing with it. Stories are like Lego sculptures...you can take pieces off, add pieces, change things around.
Are they still fun to destroy?
Mary Rosenblum:  All the time! I think that's the greatest discovery you can make as a novice writer...that stories can be taken apart, added to, subtracted from, and put together in wholly new ways. It’s easy to get too 'linear' and try and make this story, told this way, work, no matter what.
[Mary Rosenblum ] 5:28 pm: Sometimes that's just not the best way to tell the story!  Take an axe to it, and put the pieces back together in a different way.
Mary, I tried a search at the library for a market survey this week. I was surprised the librarian suggested using Amazon for a more thorough search than their availability.
Mary Rosenblum:  Were you searching for who publishes a particular type of book? Say, cozy mystery, suspense, something like that ?
Yes, grief
nonfiction literature
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, amazon.com has a huge selection and  one thing that makes it better than, say, Barnes and Noble for seeing who publishes what, is that they list small press. The brick and mortar bookstores do not shelve them.  Once you identify a likely publisher, then you can find their website or email/snail mail them for submission guidelines.
I have yet to look for similar books with Amazon...
Mary Rosenblum:  As small press becomes an increasing share of the publishing marketplace, a bookstore like amazon.com is very useful. That said, their search engine isn't all that great. It can be hard to narrow things down to a particular type of book. It'll take you some browsing.
The problem is, who reads small press magazines and ezines?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, right now, the market is very small. That's going to be changing over the coming decade. The NY model of publishing is no longer succeeding.  Mostly it’s a matter of readers finding new ways to find new books – review sites, online versions of ‘Oprah’ where someone shares favorite new books, that sort of thing.  

In terms of meeting personal goals, do think about setting up your own critique group using the chat rooms. That's a great way to brainstorm a stuck story, make new friends, get some support when you need it. Tell people it's going to meet in, say, the Library here in the chat room at a particular time and see who shows up. That's why I added the Want Ad to the Newsletter and set up the extra rooms on the site.
I'd show up for that.
Mary, I'm reading The Frugal Editor- do you think it is advisable to get an editor for a manuscript? I'd like to publish a book.
Mary Rosenblum:  Pam, I personally do not think it's at all necessary for your average novice writer.  What sells is content. You can improve your craft enough to polish it up.  Now that is not always the case. I have referred some students of mine to editors, mostly ESL students who had a great grasp of story and good stuff to share, but simply didn't have the mastery of nuance in a new language to do it justice. Where an editor or ghost writer is useful is when someone has a marketable experience and no writing ability at all.

She starts out talking about dangling participles....and I was overwhelmed as my confidence left with 2008. I'm not an English major.
Mary Rosenblum:  What are you writing, Pam?

A book on navigating the death of a child. It is a uniquely complex grief due to the age of the child.
Mary Rosenblum:  Pam that's going to be entirely in your voice...so perfect grammar is hardly necessary.
I'm going to write articles on having a child with bipolar disorder. That is actually why I started the program.
Mary Rosenblum: Personal narrative is the author's voice. It's as imperfect as your natural speaking voice and that's fine.

I have a question. I have ran across some sites that publish articles, short stories, etc. They pay according to how many people read the work and comment on them. Are they legit?
Yes, they are, at least the ones I’ve seen.  I should upload some of my vast published inventory there.  You don’t make a lot of money, but that allows your work to be available to readers all the time. There’s a goal for me this year….get off my duff and do that.  Now most of the sites I’ve seen offer work that has been published in some well established market first, but some e-publishers are offering serial novels and stories online for pay, either as email or downloadable files.  This is where publishing is going.  These pay to read fiction sites are HUGE in China, by the way.

I'd like to get across my experience living in gaza for a year. Write the article as one of my assignments. But I have to figure out the slant
Jann- I'd like to read anything on that right now.

Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, timely.

Thanks.  What would you all like to hear about. I have many wonderful vignettes. It wouldn't be political. But about people. Israeli and Arab.
Jan, I know I would want to read about how it would be like living in a place of violence. I can't imagine.
Mary Rosenblum:  Write about the people, jann! We're all SO tired of the politics.
For novice writers in the short story market, how many stories would you say is a reasonable goal for the year? I understand it depends on each writer, but...? I was thinking one a month would be reasonable. Any thoughts?
Mary Rosenblum:  Red, I'd say you want at least a story a month.
A story a month is my limit I think.
Mary Rosenblum:  I'd do flash fiction, too.
Okay. I suppose that could create the time for 2 per month... ish. :)
Sometimes when I write an assignment, I write another similar one on a different topic, especially travel. That's worked well for me, while I'm "in the zone".  Then I stick it in my file, and 3 mos later, voila! There is a call for that topic. My instructor suggested that, and I wrote two exercise pieces off of an assignment: one on motivation, and one on using a pedometer.
Mary Rosenblum:  Pam that's a great idea. Red, I have to say that when I was breaking in, I wrote in ever spare second. You really want a lot of stories in the mail or a lot of queries if you're freelancing.
Quality + volume?
Mary Rosenblum:  Quality plus volume.
That's another goal- send out queries every week....that will take more than 9 days for that goal.
Mary Rosenblum:  Volume says' this one's a stayer' and everybody in the biz has a soft spot for the person really trying. But the quality matters!  That first. Then volume.
Does this go for fiction too?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, I'm talking fiction, Illinois. an editor is seeing a good story from you every month or six weeks, you're going to sell, sooner or later. Notice I said GOOD story.
where do you get your ideas from?
Mary Rosenblum:  Laina, from the paper, conversations, magazines, books, random thoughts, internet research...
Takes me a month to kick out a GOOD story. Guess I'm lagging behind.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, you develop an inventory, illinois. Write a story every two weeks. Not good? Shelve it for now, work on the next. Come back to this one with fresh eyes.
I have lots of those
Mary Rosenblum:   Fix it up, send it out.
does your imagination increase the more you write?
Mary Rosenblum:   Sure, Laina! Exercise anything and it gets stronger.  Story telling and imagination are like muscles.  When you exercise 'em they get bigger and stronger.
Working on two consecutive nonrelated stories at a time sounds like a jumble. I need to stay focused.
Reading helps a LOT. It helps with your own writing as well as ideas. At least that's been my limited experience.
Mary Rosenblum:  Depends on the person, Illinois. I usually work on three projects at a time, one novel, two short stories.  But not everybody can do that.
Thanks Mary, Red. I do read a lot!
Mary Rosenblum:   No kidding, Red. I really do not think you can be a good writer if you are not a reader.
Illinois-Maybe your a perfectionist? At some point, after 4-5 edits by my husband..I say, "Good enough, but wish it was perfect." Then I go on to the next thing.
Yeah, I pick at the details.
Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, setting that 'I’m done with this' limit can be hard.
I have found that the more I write the more things come to me from daily life.
Mary Rosenblum:   Well, this has been a fun discussion. Happy New Year all, and work on those writing goals!