Tag Archives: write this way

Possible titles for my short story collection

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By the end of the year I am planning on having my 30+ short stories all bundled up into one lovingly handcrafted and self-published volume. Freed from the dictates of a publisher I am able to follow my own whims when it comes to book design and so on.

Today I was thinking about possible titles for the collection. If all of the stories were of the same genre it would be easier but they run the gamut from fantasy to horror to (laughably bad) science fiction to speculative stories that would work nicely as Twilight Zone episodes.

Still, the majority are horror stories or ‘weird tales’ and I love alliteration and word play, so I came up with this:

Tales of Madness and Macramé

I like it but it sounds like a murder mystery set in a knitting club. Not a bad idea for a story, though.

Then I thought I could take the number of stories, cut the number in half and voila:

16 Pairs of Shorts

I kind of like this. A good number of the stories are lighter in tone or deliberately comical so this could put the reader in the right general frame of mind.

And now I realize I am blanking on the other titles I’d come up with so I’ll end this here and edit in my other semi-finalist choices when my brain deigns to remember them

thennotwrite.com

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My last Grand Writing Decision (GWD) of 2011 is to pull the plug on my moribund site thenwrite.com. Thinking it over, I’m just not prepared to give it the effort it needs to get rolling again and with the hosting due in a few days I’d rather put it on ice for now and mull its future over than re-commit and produce lots of nothing.

I may revive the short story exercises I did on the Martian Cartel forum. They worked fairly well overall and produced some nice results. Or maybe I will become a hermit and write haikus on the insides of clam shells while living under the pier at Jericho Beach.

Decisions!

Soon I shall smash words for fun (and maybe profit)

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I now have a (at the moment rather spartan) Smashwords profile. What is Smashwords? Allow me to quote:

Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.

You can read more on the Smashwords About page.

Much like the fellow in this Quarter to Three thread, I am planning on submitting some of my short stories (and ultimately bundling them into a collection at some point), some for free, some for a very modest cost, all in an effort to get my writing out there. I’ve imposed a deadline of one week (!) to get the first two stories out — both are already written, they just need to be fine-tuned and formatted. One will be gratis, the other likely to sell for the princely sum of 99 cents.

I shall report back with my success or lack thereof in due time.

Will this ship finally sail?

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This is one of those ‘may be embarrassing to look back a year later’ posts.

Today I began the second draft of my novel, The Ferry. It was written as part of National Novel Writing Month in November 2009 and you can see the play-by-play on its fevered creation in this thread on the Quarter to the Three forums. In 21 days I wrote a complete short novel — 50,810 words in total. It had started out as a short story back in 1993 that outgrew its short story status before eventually being abandoned. Over the years I revisited it, trying to get it steaming along again, one time even switching it from its first person narrative to third person but I could never figure out where to go with it and so it remained unfinished.

The ‘just for fun’ approach of NaNoWriMo took the pressure off, as I briefly recount in this blog post written the day after completing it.

The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience.

Ho ho!

And so tonight, after a number of false starts, I begin the second draft. My marginal goal is to have the second draft done before NaNoWriMo 2011 begins. That gives me four months. I vow to update on this come October 31st!

WriteQuest 2011!

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2010 was a moribund year for me as far as writing went. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month, the writing group fell apart and my output slowed and then pretty much stopped for most of the year.

I’ve vowed to make 2011 the start of my writing renewal and part of that has been taking the writing group and exercises and moving them off a couple of scattered subforums and onto their own website, thenwrite.com. I’m hoping it will keep me and the other participants inspired and excited about putting words to page (and screen).

If not, I vow to become a pole dancer.