Last-Day of 2007 Musings

[will_couvillier]

Humm...

In 2 days, on Jan 2, it will be 2 months from a poetry submission to A&A.   They generally say there to query in 2 months if you haven't heard back, but I don't know if that applies to just the fiction, or to all catagories they publish.  Also there are the holidays, and should allowances be made for that?  Trent is a busy man, after all...

Re: Name Mispelling in Abaculus 2007.  The typo is only on the ToC and Copyright page - the name on the story is correctly spelled; however, in the short bio the word Extraterrestrial should have been in cap, seeing as how it is part of a title.  

New Year's Resolution:  only one.  Get a story done each month.  No weight res, no resolution that can't be met.  If I can't do that, then it is just plain laziness.

I asked this question on a Jay Lake post, but he hasn't replied, so I'll throw it up here.  With his progress reports on his conversion of a short ot a novel, I wondered -- is it easier to adapt a short story to novel length, or is it easier to starting a novel fresh with the intention of it being a novel?  I'm sure that there is an individual issue with it, but I am curious.

Saw AvP:R this weekend.  I liked it, but not as much as I thought I might.  It is a good sequel to the first, taking place immediately afterwards.  It also ended very open, but leaving me thinking, "whhaaaat...?" and implying Predator vs Human sequel instead of an AvP.  Over all, with this and a couple other less-than-logical moments and such, I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5 warpholes.

Comments

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Oops. That moved too far down my inbox. I'm sorry.

To answer your question, they're just different. Think of a short story as a very tight outline. Personally, I like loose outlines, but with a tight outline, you don't have to figure as much stuff out. In that sense, it's easier.

On the other hand, when the structural or plot requirements of the novel require you to diverge from an outline, so what? When they require you to diverge from something that's already published, that's kind of a problem. At least for me.

Working from the short story "Green" to build the first 1/3 of the novel Green was a whole lot less painful than I had expected, for whatever that is worth.

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Oh, no worries!

I just figured that you were busy on the new WIP or that you missed it -- you are a quite active poster, after all.

Thanks for the info! I think that the reason I asked is that I may eventually work the story I had published in Visual Journeys into a novel. In the past I've outlined for a novel, using a 1-2 sentence summary for each chapter; however, I've never completed one from it. With the ss, I feel that since it is essentially fleshing out a completed thing, it may actually happen. Got the nucleus there already, right?

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Yep, a nucleus indeed. Outlining is one of those mysteries of life. Everybody does it differently. Did you see my post on it a while back?

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

I believe I read some of it at the time, but if you can link it, I'd love to review it again.

With "Inheritance", my story in VJ -- it covers just way too big an area not to deserve a novelization up from the ss format. There's an itching in the back of my mind to include the character in "Adrift", my story coming out in Desolate Places, in there as well.

With this, I think it can't really go as an outline, but as a full dive into the meat of the write. All of the half-thoughts and things I've worked into my NanoFuture timeline seem to be perculating, bubblig, and nearly ready to whistle out...

Sauce link porkages

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

http://jaylake.livejournal.com/629128.html

http://jaylake.livejournal.com/1172394.html

Also:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajaylake.livejournal.com+outline&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Re: Sauce link porkages

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Yummmm!

Thanks for the info!

[mariness.livejournal.com]

With A & A, I think that the poetry thing is different -- they still have some poems of mine that I submitted back in August. I sent them a query letter earlier this month and didn't get a response yet. Other writers, though, have reported much faster response times with A &A fiction -- both for rejections and acceptance slips. My personal guess is that given that there are fewer poetry markets, A&A just gets overwhelmed with poetry submissions and it takes them forever to get through them all.

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that too -- I submitted a story the same day, and I heard back from that around the beginning of December.

I must remind myself - patience!

Poetry at A&A

[saycestsay.livejournal.com]

Please do be patient. Our poetry editor is without internet and doing it all freeform. We shall get to you soon!

If you need to query, please go ahead and send an email. To editor at abyssandapex dot com, not to poetrysubs at yahoo dot com (poetry ed can't access that address easily!)

You can also email me and I'll see what I can do.

Re: Poetry at A&A

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Patience works...didn't know he was internet-less at the moment! Sorta puts a crimp in the works, I'd think...

I only sent a single little poem I wrote a decade ago, anyway, in the body of the submission. I've found a few interesting things I did years ago with my file scanning. A couple of old stories are gonna get a face lift, too, and hit the sub-rail again.

Conversion of short to novel

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

Me being an upside down, inside out, backward person, I did it the other way around at first. The story "Tomb" that will appear in Desolate Places was taken out of one of my novels. I changed the names and the viewpoint character.

At first it was hard for me to write short stories because I started with novels, but I'm getting the hang of it. It's hard, I have to focus on one plot and not let the story run away from me.

Am just now thinking about making two of my shorts (same millieau) into a novel.

Re: Conversion of short to novel

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Seems that with "Tomb", then, it will be really easy to novelize it....

Re: Conversion of short to novel

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

It's already a novel, though the title is different. I took the short out of the novel.

Re: Conversion of short to novel

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

I know that! I was making a funny...

(my wife sez I'm not funny. Ah well, I crack me up, anyway!)

: )

Re: Conversion of short to novel

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

The joke is on me. :)

My husband says I'm not funny, either, but my daughters think I am.