Argh.

Could I have been more frustrated a couple days ago when, despite having written a 40-ish page synopsis, I still managed to create a plot hole. I've had a couple of days to sort it out. It's not so great a problem that I have to walk away from the story, it's just that I went to such lengths to avoid stumbling into plot holes that having done so again has almost driven me mad.

Here's the deal. I had all the details of my current work, Forever By His Side, nailed down tight. There is a relationship that runs into difficulty. There's a complex magical element. There is a spooky backstory vignette. And there is a mystical meeting that leads to final closure. I needed to have all my ducks in a row to pull this off. Thus the 40-something page synopsis. I took a month to work through it. I read and reread. I gave it a couple of days off so I could triple-check it with somewhat fresh eyes. I was confident everything worked, that there weren't plot holes. All I had to do was follow the synopsis and I was home free.

It sounded great. In theory.

I wrote my first two chapters. They're told from the POV of the main character, a 14-ish-year-old Apalachian girl named Wady. I figured I'd go out on a limb and mimic the Appalachian dialect. So when my critique group got hold of it, I would have expected the critique would be limited to that, the thick dialect. While they did hammer the depth of the dialect, they all agreed that I needed more backstory prior to where I had chosen to start the story. I agreed. During that initial critique, the group had also mentioned that the magical element also needed a bit more clarification. This is where the problem came in.

I was so excited to get started. Even before I got home from the critique, I had what I thought was the solution to all my problems. I would switch up how the magic worked. It would solve all the critique group's concerns.  That night and over the next two weeks, I crafted two chapters that would precede the action of the original two chapters. Never once did I feel concerned that making this little tweak would affect the later action.

Well, I was wrong.

The two new chapters finished and well-received, I looked forward to moving on with the rest of the story. That's when I realized that the "tweak" I had made to the magic element rendered the most important part of the story, the very culmination of the action near the end, impossible.

How could I have missed this? I KNEW the synopsis. I KNEW what had to and what could not happen. I had the synopsis open behind my manuscript document. Still, it didn't occur to me. I simply didn't think it through. 

And I've been taking this as a personal shortcoming. It's simple laziness or denial. And it's not like this is the first time I've done this. The whole reason I wrote out a synopsis of this detail was because I had failed to think my plots through adequately, leaving me in the middle of an impossible situation, where only a mediocre ending could be reached. Huge time wasted unless I took away something that would better my writing in the future.

Fortunately it's fixable, but, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post, I was so frustrated I could have scrapped the whole thing. The chapters, the story, writing, everything. And argh.

Folks, the synopsis is there not only to craft the story into something that works; it's there to maintain direction. It's a reference, so if you don't refer to it, you get what you deserve.

The first chapter of Forever By His Side, my latest novelette-to-novel-length work, was critiqued Tuesday evening (May 11, 2010). The reviews were largely positive. And since first chapters pose the greatest challenge for most writers, I was heartened.

Forever By His Side follows Wady, a 14-year-old girl living far from normal society in a place that is (or may as well be) Appalachia. The boy Wady loves doesn't return her feelings. She finds out from her mother a secret, an ability the women in her family has passed down for more than a century. The gift turns out to be a curse and the passing of the ability a cruel trick played on Wady's great grandmother Ruthie Mayo when she was 14, also in a love that was not returned.

With this work, I'm biting off quite a bit. Wady and all those she interacts with have a deep-woods manner of speaking. The beginning paragraphs give you a good idea of the voice. (Disclaimer: These paragraphs are modified slightly; I had originally gone out on a flimsy limb, hackin' the "g"s off all the ing endings. I had read not to do so a dozen times, but something in me said I could pull it off. I couldn't ;)

    I was becoming more like Ma every day, filling out my dresses similar to her and giving myself recently to conversing more than horseplay. And it was during some late Summer sitting, me in Pa’s rocker and Ma in her own, I struck up an old topic between us.

    Ma? How’d you and Pa come to be together?” If I done asked her oncet, I done asked twenty times, never yet hearing a plain-spoke answer from her.

As expected, the challenge was to keep up the dialect at a consistent level. My upbringing largely in Tennessee helped a great deal as did my exposure to my rural family in Ohio. Those factors and a natural gravitation to country folk I've met helped a great deal. 

Word choice was crucial. Paraphrasing one member of my critique group: "Reading this sort of thing aloud is vital for catching when the voice falls away." I couldn't agree more. I read aloud and still managed a couple misses in the 11 pages. Still, no worries. Nothing that can't be corrected.

Next, the nature of the magic needed to be better defined. Until fresh eyes read through a piece like this story, you can't get a good idea of how certain elements are going to be received. Being too close to the story, knowing what everything was supposed to mean and how everything was intended to work, I was blind to alternate ways processes could be understood.

There were other critiques, but they were smaller fixes not worth going into. The bottom line is, neither of these problems could have been caught by me. So, if you're not already in one, join a critique group. If you're disinclined to join in a group, find a critique partner. I can't stress enough how important it is to have others -- not family or non-writing friends -- look over your work for you.

For the last couple weeks I've been writing and tweaking a nice story that came to me at the end of a rare long session of sleep.

Like the moon missions where the United States's hand was forced by international politics to move too quickly and too soon, the protagonist is sent into time-shift before scientists and the agency for whom he operates has all the bugs worked out. But the nature of the threat calls for premature action. The story tracks this first recorded time-shift mission and the agent's experience: he doesn't know what the hell is going on but slowly figures [part of] it out.

I wrote the first draft in two days and have spent the last week tweaking it do death, patching holes and refining the language. Even though the story will likely not reach 3000 words, going is a little slow due to the science and the flow of events. Time is a little out of whack out of necessity. The antagonist force operates in a different time space.

Writing this story has been fun and helpful in a couple of ways. First off, it has allowed me to step away from the Head on a Stump story so I can return to it with a clear, fresh mind. Work on that had gotten a little too much like work. The more I write (generally) the more I can detect when I'm in an ineffective state of mind. Secondly, it has been fun to write outside my normal genre. Sci-fi is not something I've attempted to do before. Fortunately, the POV allows me to get away with not having to know too much about what's going on from a technical standpoint. As I've alluded to above, for most of the story, the protagonist is baffled and even when he does start to catch on, it's mainly deductive reasoning, not a textbook on how time-shift works. Finally, there are elements about this story that are inadvertently serving as study for some of the weird time handling I'm planning for Head on a Stump. Practicing keeping track of events on an alternate fabric here should prove useful when I get into the later stages of that story.

My novel has another new title: The Tree of Rise and Ruin

Nice, eh? I love it. I met with my writing/critique partner, Beckie Ugolini, over the weekend. I had submitted The Tree of Ruination and Rise to her and she suggested Ruination and Rise were not parallel. Drop the "ation." Better.

In that same meeting, I had voiced concerns about how the whole of the novel should be handled. There are three parts that take place in three different times from the PsOV of three different men. I expressed my worry that I didn't have enough reading experience to choose between one of three directions I saw the story being told.

Beckie laid down some basic rules and shared her own experience blocking out one of her stories. She swears the system works.

The jury is still out as to whether it will work. I've been so busy and tired lately I haven't been able to complete even this seemingly easy blocking step, but it shows a lot of promise. Already, I can see one huge benefit, though. I have been forced to make final decisions on the flow of two of the three parts. Eventually, I'll have to nail down all aspects of the story. Until I started this, I hadn't realized how up in the air much of the story actually was. Knowing the story basically is far from knowing the story well enough to write it down without punching holes that may not be sealable later (without a great deal of work, that is).

Not long ago, I was certain my outline -- a traditional college-style outline -- was up to the task. Though I can see that step was necessary for fleshing out the broad strokes, breaking down the story's action in chapters defines the action to an altogether higher level. This must happen now, before this and after that. This character will be here while this other character, in a different part of the story, is suspended over there.

I can't wait to get to it again soon. I believe that once this blocking out business is all done, I'll be many times more confident in the actual writing. I've already made a number of changes to how I thought the stories would interact and I've taken a number of opportunities to elaborate on items I had only touched on briefly before.

My novel-in-the-works has undergone plot, character and title changes so many times I would be hard pressed to piece together a remotely accurate history. Now, too late, do I understand the use of a writing diary.

I can't say I truly embrace the necessity of it as others have written but see how it could track the odd process of a novel's creation. In one way, it's similar to the behind-the-scenes video so much a necessity in creating a film. What I don't fully get is the way a writing diary  is supposed to keep a writer on track or to get difficulties with a work out in the open. I tried it for the better part of a year and, for all the good it did for me now and then, it proved more just another thing to do in my already over-busy schedule.

I stopped keeping up with it when I realized everything I was supposed to be gaining from a writing diary I was getting from this blog. Blogging is public, so I'm confident I'm less candid in my journaling than if I knew no one would ever see my notes. That's a huge difference. But I also find that -- and maybe it's because I'm Irish -- when I journal, I go on and on and dwell in the negative. In this public forum, I steer away from those doldrums.

So, if I'm journaling, I should get to the story.

Here's the basic idea of my head-on-a-stump story
An Ojibwe man in the Great Lakes area before contact with white men kills off his lifelong rival. His punishment is years of penance spent as a disembodied head on the stump of a mystical tree. Escape from his imprisonment, if it is at all possible, must come from inside himself, all that remains. 

Obviously, I suppose, by referring to my story as "The head-on-a-stump story" whenever it's mentioned, it's clear I am having difficulty titling the work.

It's been called "The Letter From William Waiklin." That fell by the wayside when I decided not to include William Waiklin in the story. In fact I cut out the letter. That's for a second story. There's an outside chance he and the letter will be included as a second part too. Whether or not they do will hinge on the length of the section I'm working on now. Day to day, my estimation of the novel's length changes. One day, i see it going to 250 pages; the next I see it barely reaching novella length.

It's been called "Felled." I liked the feel of it. It was direct and looked good on a mock cover I created. But the more I tested the title, the more it sounded like bad grammar. Maybe I'm succumbing to the idea that Americans are less literate than they once were. I go back to this title more often than any other, though, so I suppose there's something to it.

It's been called something like "Fraxus cryptica." I thought that title -- which means Mysterious Oak in scientific speak -- would be totally lost on people. It was short-lived.

It's been called "The Beating Heart Tree." That was what the old Ojibwe I had relate the mythology of the tree called it. I scrapped that one pretty quickly too. I read an article in the November - December issue of Writers Weekly which mentioned men won't buy anything with "Heart" in the title. 

Right now it's called "Hatred Oak." I think, like Felled, it has some directness. Like Fraxus cryptica, it refers to a fictional type of tree without mystifying the reader. It's not clear whether the title refers to a tree or a place, though, but I'm not sure how much, if at all, that matters.

This is probably all a waste of time anyway. I've read that authors, even experienced, published authors, don't choose the names of their novels. Before it's all said and done, it'll probably end up titled "The Head On a Stump."

Over the last couple weeks, my small critique group has taken a look at the first chapters of my novel-in-the-works that has gone by various titles: The Letter from William Waiklin, Felled, William Waiklin, The Beating Heart Tree. What stands out about their reviews is that a] I suffered from having taken time away from solid, careful writing every day and b] that the parts that I needed to work did, in fact, work.

The first chapter is told from the perspective of a biind, aging Ojibwe man who has all but completely been Westernized since living his early years in "the old ways." He and William Waiklin have a tense conversation under false pretenses. Eventually the important truth about why William is there is revealed. This sets up the frame into which other stories, which constitute the bulk of the story, are told.

I mistakenly called this chapter a prologue, but as I should have known, a prologue is never 20 pages long. There is a place for a prologue, but I'll need to reorder the content of the chapter some to make it work the way I want it to. The important part is, again, that the parts of the chapter worked, so reordering is possible. I would have found proceeding in the direction I had intended had my groupf deemed the parts themselves unworkable.

I decided to leave the reordering work for later when I can revisit that section with a fresh eye.

The second looks at a young love triangle in the pre-Western-trade years in an Ojibwe village. Through back and forth flashback from one of the three characters' POV, we see the parallel between the tension building between him and a competing male and his actions on a very violent day, actions which lead to his very peculiar downfall.

The critiques were consistent. I had clumsy POV issues. I hadn't set up the backstory well.  I hadn't tied the second section to the first in any way. To compound the issue, i had mistakenly sent two or three pages that I had not even attempted to perfect. Notes, basically. Members of my group were left, understandably befuddled at the beginning and at the end.

The silver lining was that, if one disregarded the beginning and end, the flashbacks themselves did seem to work. These flashbacks, again, being told from a 16th (maybe) century Indian's POV could have gone terribly wrong; however, his voice worked, all members agreed. This was key. The Indian voice in this and the first section needed to work of it was back to research.

Overall, I'm excited about the direction I'm taking. I realize the structure of the finished piece will be a difficult puzzle and possibly a hard-sell, but at my age, I'm pretty sure I'm headed in the right direction even if the course ahead is foggy.

I've already made enough changes to the first part -- notes, really -- to address the large stroke problems my group pointed out. Next, I'm working on the "evil deed" part of the second section, the killing, the mortal judgment, the supernatural penance. 

But I've already said too much.

Photo: Frank Montano (Anakwad), Ojibwe musician

After an interminable number of days unable to dedicate substantial time to writing each day due to free web work for my beloved cousin, Daphne, and free graphical work designing my son's cycling team's full kit, I found the transition back to my regular writing pace a mixed bag.

On the positive side, the energy to write released like a flood. I'm typically neither a speedy nor particularly focused writer. But driven by so many unrealized ideas that had gathered at the door, the words came fast and furious, like releasing puppies from a basket. 

On the negative side, who wants to read the disorder a basket of puppies can produce. The result was similar to that well-known Cheech and Chong moment when they have to follow around the dog who ate their stash. There was a great volume of words and little in the way of quality to sift out.

I guess that is arguably a good thing. Still, I noticed a general dulling of my writing, a lack of stamina and ability to focus singly on the desired story path.

Regardless of the confusion, I'm confident I'll normalize soon. Writing may not be one of those impossible-to-forget activities but the curve back to full fitness should be a short one. Setting is everything. Providing oneself with the proper setting and ample time to allow true writing to begin, typically 20 minutes after beginning, is essential to growing as a writer. I may have written every day during my semi-hiatus, but I may have been better off not writing at all rather than forcing myself forward out of pride through asphyxiating conditions.

I am proud to announce, thanks to a kind heads-up from my friend and fellow author Sanford Allen, that my first published work is up at Tales from the Moonlit Path. Tales is a terrific online magazine specializing in odd, frightening tales, so I'm doubly honored to have my work included in their November/Halloween issue.

Tales introduces my story wonderfully:

Thomas McAuley's, "Spirit into Speck" is a delightful Halloween-ish tale about a senile witch who ultimately gets her comeuppance.

This publishing game is one of patience to be sure. Four months ago, I received confirmation that Tales From the Moonlit Path wanted to publish my short story. That's a painful long time to wait, but I hear from my fellow writers that is not at all out of the ordinary.

Please take a moment out of your day and enjoy my little witchy tale »

And an early Happy Hallloween to everyone!!!

However long ago, nearly two years I'd guess without looking, I put aside my story titled "Felled" at one point and "The Letter From William Waklin" later on. At the time I had reservations about a few things related to the story. As I worked through my original story arc, I continued to read about and learn what made for successful and unsuccessful stories: pacing, characterization, consistency in POV, etc. Very early on, I found I was not ready for this story. I had much more to learn, more stories to write, more hours in front of the keyboard.

In the last two(ish) years, I wrote a number of short stories, a very nearly complete adult novella and a complete youth novella. Also in that time, I entered at least ten flash fiction contests. From the time I abandoned what I often call my "head-on-a-stump" story to now, I have evolved into a much more proficient writer (if, admittedly, not more prolific).

So I have taken the time since Chris Roberson's presentation to the San Antonio Writers Guild to work on a very detailed outline of the events in this newest iteration. I very much like the direction I'm headed now.

Due to the shortcomings of the first three drafts, I kept a keen eye out for solutions to any problems that killed each of them. I feel safe that I won't fall into the same holes as before. I'm confident there are more, new holes out there to fall into though, so I'm not going into this sleepwalking (or "somnambulating" as Joe McKinney wrote in Dead City).

This morning I sat at Starbucks and made terrific progress on an opening passage I had been massaging for a week. I had originally written the passage from one character's perspective. Last night, unable to sleep due to the idea bugs swarming around in my head, I realized I could solve two shortcomings of the section by telling it from the perspective of other person involved. So far, the novel-length work will have three main sections, each with a different POV and this new beginning, ending/section from yet another, forth POV.

Handling the story in this way will be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it to be sure.

At the San Antonio Writers Guild August meeting last night, Chris Roberson spoke about his personal writing process as contrasted against those of other writers. His presentation, given in a casual conversational style, was titled "Everyone Else Is Crazy: Finding the Process that Fits".

Chris admitted he was in fact the person who was just as likely to be crazy. His point was that every other writer's system or method or process appears crazy to other writers. No two writers have the same process, much as no two people have the same signature or surf the web in the same way. And that's a good thing.

What's important is we learn what other successful writers do, take what we can use and throw the rest out. This advice is very much like that given in 12-step programs...not that I would know ;-)

Chris's process is basically this:

He jots any and every notable idea in small Moleskin notebooks he takes everywhere with him.

After a time, stewing on a number of different story ideas, he'll walk through these small notebooks and pop the related ideas into a different style, slightly larger, notebook. In these, he'll record his 2-sided "conversation" with himself in an effort to shake ideas from the bushes.

The third and longest step is outlining. We're not talking high school outlines. We're not talking college outlines. We're talking full doctorate-level outline where, in the case of short stories, every detail of every paragraph is defined. This step can take anywhere from 2-3 weeks, depending upon the length of the work. I found it curious that his short story outlines tend to be nearly as long as the finished work whereas his novel outlines will be closer to 20% of the novel's finished length. He outlines his novel's chapter detail as opposed to individual paragraphs. Doing otherwise might tip the balance and have men in white coats looking for him.

Finally, once he has nailed down the outline with 100% certainty, only then does he do the actual writing. Having the road cleared of any second-guessing or mid-stream modification, he is free to attack his writing with what for many of us is unthinkable speed: 10k words in a day is not uncommon. 

What at first sounds like madness became perfectly clear to me as I sat listening to him. The fact that he has done the difficult groundwork beforehand, all the plotting and massaging, allows him to write the entire story or novel in the same mind.

Talk about an a-ha moment. 

One of the major difficulties I've had in writing longer pieces has been, as a beginning writing my words tend to sound different by the end of the story than they did at the beginning. I attribute this to a two things.

First, when I begin a story, writing by the seat of my pants, I know the story in a fresh, undiscovered way. By the end of the story, I know it far better so the mood has changed. I can see a positive aspect of writing this way: transformation in the author, transformation in the characters and action. The problem is, I'm out of my comfort zone. As a designer, I find it necessary to have all my ducks in a row before I start on a design because I have to get pretty close the first time since I'm working with other people's money.

Second, my writing is constantly improving so when I write a story over a few months time, I'm at a different, noticeable skill level from the beginning to the end. Try as I might, I can't find the benefit to this problem.

So a big thank you to Chris Roberson for sharing his process and for having a process adequately odd for me to simulate in my next work. I'll let you know how it goes.

Click here to visit Chris at his site Roberson's Interminable Ramble.

Double-Take (formerly Now You See Him) is ready for critique. My group liked a lot about this short story when I showed the first half to them a month ago.

The story starts with Branton (Mr.) Salley in a mad rush along the busy New York City streets, late for a very important meeting. He meets up (quite solidly) with a familiar face but doesn't connect the dots until he has already passed. Some things never change.

Now, with the first part of the story massaged and the second half in their hands, I'm eager to hear what my peers have to say.

I've really found a terrific solution for writers block. It seems no matter how tired or brain-dead I feel, I can always imagine one of my stock characters, William Waiklin, Branton Salley, Hilmer Gibb or Frances Klik, doing something interesting to write about. If you have a troupe, I suggest you draw on them when times get tough, when you're staring at the screen and thinking....nothing.

My last three stories that have gone before critique have shared one similar shortcoming: crappy use of narrative summary. I've read a lot about writing and I'm sure I have read about narrative summary along the way, but the way my mind works, I had forgotten what it was and how or if it should be used.

I looked around the Internet and came across this wonderful article "How Interesting is your Narrative Summary?" that explains how to use narrative summary effectively in your writing. So, instead of reinventing the wheel, I invite you to read the teaser that follows and click the 'read more' link after it.

So the verdict, as far as I can tell is this: narrative summary, like any other element of fiction that some would throw out without exception -- there is a current Stephen King-driven war on adverbs -- is a powerful tool. And like any tool, it must be used correctly. You can tighten the nut or you can bludgeon the homeowners.

Bless this day and all that come after for I have, as of yesterday, made the switch from PC to Mac after about a decade of darkness and frustration.

When I first began my design career, O'More College of Design in Frankin, Tennessee back in '92, when I pulled my chair in front of a computer to create my first digital layouts, a Mac sat in front of me. Even 18 years ago -- a gray hair just leapt to its death, btw -- graphic design was a Mac industry. Every artistic industry was and there was good reason for it. I bought a Mac for my own use during college and used it well into my early graphic design career afterwards.

Then Satan descended to earth on New Year's day of 1999. A fellow at a party asked me this fateful question: "Do you design websites?"

Two thoughts entered my mind at that moment:

In my last year of college, only three years before, I asked an instructor, "So what's a web page?" That's a bad sign, right?

I'm terrible at freelancing. This sounds like a perfect time to say yes.

I said yes. Four months later, he knew the truth had been no, but you're in too deep to let me go now. In that uncomfortable time, I learned just enough about web design to get myself into a entry level job as a web maintenance flunky.

At this nightmarish first web-specific job, I learned that the industry I had fallen onto the wrong side of the fence: PCville. In a day, my Mac became a tool of limited use. Soon it would be replaced as my need for work-from-home machine became necessary.

It has been so until yesterday when, after learning that not only was my company switching to Macs but that my boss would be graciously footing the not-insubstantial bill for the switchover software, I bought a display model 17" MacBook Pro. 

I've only begun to learn all of its capabilities and I may not be able to hook it to my triple monitor set-up I have now, but I can tell already that the learning curve will be short.

I'll be using the Mac in Round 2 of NYC Midnight contest so it's a trial by fire tonight at a 10:59!

• Start in the middle of the action.
• Static characters are okay.
• Allow only brief, telling character descriptions.
• Run with small ideas.

Sanford Nowlin (sanfordallen.com and www.missionsunknown.com) laid these and other flash fiction writing and selling tips on the San Antonio Writers Guild members at our June meeting. In his blog, Candy Skulls!, Sanford describes his [then] upcoming talk best:

What’s flash fiction? The short answer is that it’s about a third to half of what I write. The longer answer is that it’s fiction of extreme brevity, usually under 1,000 words.

The flash form’s been around a long time, but it’s enjoying a resurgence as more fiction magazines go online and feature shorter pieces.

Of particular use to me was his stating that, though flash fiction should have a beginning, middle and end, the "story" is a moment. "It is a story...of a moment, an interesting moment." My apologies to Sanford, but at that flash-fiction-worthy epiphanic moment, the flood gates opened and I found myself scratching story ideas in the margins of the page I had, until then, been jotting notes. God knows what other important nuggets I missed.

I raced home to get at least one of the stories out. As it turned out, I completed two before heading off to bed. Two complete--if unedited--stories, ready for peer review. Sanford made the point early in his talk that exactly the sort of thing I had just accomplished was one of the major attractions of flash fiction: with substantially less heartache and time, one can feel the instant gratification of completing a work.

Of course, that is not to say flash fiction demands less skill or attention from the author; that is a constant. Flash fiction requires only less time due to its brevity. The point was made, either by Sanford or another SAWG member, that editing flash fiction is akin to editing poetry in that, due to that aforementioned brevity, every word counts.

Another attractive aspect of writing flash fiction is its natural fit with the changing face of publishing, namely online-only publications or online divisions of traditional publishing houses. Online outlets are accepting more and more flash-length work. Some sites feature a new flash piece daily, so their appetite for work is steady. What can be more appealing to an author, especially one needing to fill out his early resumé?

Tweet me about Flash Fiction @ThomasMcAuley »

Our small critique group met a week ago for a Submission Party. I was a little late but once I arrived, I hit the ground running.

The most important thing I had to get out of the way was having something to submit. As much as I would have loved to submit Hilmer Gibb and His Honkin' Huge Bib, the time we had lent itself better to short story submission to literature magazines.

The first stop was Duotrope (http://www.duotrope.com/) "a free writers' resource listing over 2425 current Fiction and Poetry publications," as they describe themselves.

I sent out a longer rewrite of Spirit Into Speck (Previously titled Into Spirit and Speck) to three publication by the end of the evening.

I would suggest hosting or attending such a Submission Party. Submitting is a thankless, tedious job that, similar to write-ins, is best done in the company of others who are suffering the same fate. The added benefit of submitting with other writers is that your peers may have experience with a certain publication. Their nuggets of wisdom can save you time and frustration.

090626 Follow up regarding how to submit your short stories and flash fiction:
At the August 6 San Antonio Writers Guild meeting, Stewart Smith will discuss "Acts of Submission--Electronically". The August program will demonstrate the use of the Duotrope on-line database in the process of submitting a short story for publication.

Hilmer Gibb and His Honkin' Huge Bib is not finished, as it turns out. Let me share a strange story and you decide if it was some sort of cosmic sign.

For critiques, the author prints out around 10 copies to be handed out so people can follow along with the story as one person (not the author) reads out loud. After the critiques are finished, the copies are handed back to the author.

Following the B&N critique of the last part of the 27-page version of the bib story, I separated the copies of the story into two sections: those with comments written on them and those without. The former I would use to make final corrections; the latter I would place face-down next to my work station to be recycled.

In the morning, I returned to my work station to apply people's changes to the story. I looked over and happened to see comments on the back of the last "no comments" stack. I had missed a quite in-depth note written on the back page.

What were the chances that I would put that stack, the only one with comments on it -- I checked -- last so that they would be on the one page I happed to see? Shocked by the unlikelihood, I picked up the paper and read the comment.

The core of the note was this: The ridiculous problem that makes the story big and interesting should be solved by an equally or yet more ridiculous solution.

I had written the story around a giant bib stretching across the city and Hilmer's search for it. After the bib is introduced, the solution pretty much stays in the realm of the very normal, in fact the very boring.

The comment was exactly what I had needed to hear. I had felt a luke-warm about the story's ending, but I couldn't put my finger on why that was. They hit the nail on the head.

I stood up at that moment, paced around the house and brainstormed a new ending, a bigger, crazier ending. I wanted something worthy of the problem. Sure it was a big bib, but was that all I wanted out of the story. Did I want to stop at "Imagine if there was a big bib?" No. I wanted a story about what happened when Hilmer accidentally ordered a big bib and the "you wouldn't believe it" solution.

The strange thing about the note is it was signed illegibly. I have asked a number of people in SAWG if they recognize the signature or writing, but so far no one has.

So I have taken the story from a 27-pager to one that stretches on -- not unnecessarily -- to around 75 pages. There are some bits to iron out: typical grammar and punctuation in the beginning; and two wholesale mini-scene rewrites. I expect to be finished with all work in a week.

My original plan was to be done by the end of March, but that is nigh impossible unless I decide to take a day off from work next week. I don't see the need to force myself to that timeline in this case. I feel good about the story and I would hate to compromise it at this late stage due to an arbitrary timeline.

Beginning writers have many misconceptions about what makes good writing. Two of these commonest of these misconceptions are related. One is that he needs to be different from any writer in history, so he applied effort to achieve that goal. The second is that he must be poetical in his writing.

Both misconceptions are understandable and both are easily avoided simply by writing simply.

It's been said by some wise, experienced writer somewhere that one doesn't really achieve writing until one has written 1,000,000 words. In my experience, that was about the time I found my own writing confidence, my voice as it has been described.

The truth is you probably will sound boring at first...if you're doing it right, keeping it simple. Cling to the rules. Embrace them. Limit yourself to them. Once you've got those tools down pat, your natural style will naturally emerge.

You can't force a flower to bloom.

Forcing uniqueness or complexity into your writing will sound forced to the reader. Keep your writing simple simple simple, even after you feel you've reached a certain point of proficiency. I can't explain how you'll know, but you'll know when to let something through that breaks the rule.

I received a year planner from my family at Christmas. I've never been one to keep up with a planner. Sometime around this time each year, I realize I don't keep track of enough stuff to justify having one. There may be two or three points during the year when I think it might come in handy, but once those times have passed, I once again don't need to lug around yet another item.

Well this one is different. First of all it's a Moleskin (I think that's the name) so the quality and design is up to my snotty standards. Secondly -- and what has made all the difference -- I decided to use it solely to keep track of my writing progress each day.

And it has worked. Too well, possibly. I realized sometime last week that I had neglected the website in almost two months. For shame. I think there's enough time in my day to do both. I think the secret is keeping the website entries and the journal entries reasonably small.

I'll sit down, last thing each day, and write around three short sentences about what I edited, critiqued, wrote, outlined, whatever writing-related activity I accomplished. Then I'll write a reasonable goal for the following day. This gives me something specific to ruminate on over night. I know just what I need to write the next time I sit down to the keyboard.

Hilmer Gibb and His Honkin' Huge Bib is finished, the last half being critiqued last night. Outside of a comma or two and a couple words I omitted during a last-minute edit before the latest Barnes & Noble critique, it's ready to send out.

This work is technically my first full-length story ready for submissions. I'm excited about the accomplishment and even more excited about the reactions it's getting, but I'm feeling a little lost.

What is the best next step? I realize it will need illustrations, but how does one proceed? Is that something I arrange myself or do I allow a publisher to make that most critical choice for me. (Of course, that's vainly assuming I get it accepted by a publisher who wants to produce it as a book.)

When I started out writing, I never expected I'd be in this position, that of pushing my children's book. The story came out of nowhere and had to be written. I'm happy with the results but I'm terribly unprepared.

I'll keep you posted.

Hilmer Gibb and His Honkin' Huge Bib is my first foray into children's literature. It's a 20 something page story about a spaghetti and meatballs fanatic who orders more bib than he can imagine, that bib's curious disappearance and the wonderful things he finds during the bib's recovery.

I have to admit that I had to ask the advice of my fellow writers as to whether writing a children's book would qualify me as a legitimate author -- and with that I offer my apologies to children's authors who might read this.

Let me clarify...

Children's stories were never on my list of goals. In my thinking, a person who writes children's books is simply a different kind of person, a different kind of author. Not more or less, just different. I simply didn't want to take time out to write a story for kids when I saw myself building in a "more serious" direction.

But what is one to do when he has an idea for a story. A good idea too. One of those ideas that come around every now and then -- and always whenever one is NOT looking for them -- that the author MUST write immediately or the magic is gone.

So was the case what what I've come to call The Bib Story.

Tomorrow, part 2 of the story will go in front of our Wednesday night critique group.