Meanwhile…

I’ve been a bit too busy to write much that’s fun, but here’s a movie review I whipped up for this silly company newsletter thing at work. There are no spoilers, in case you’re worried.

After a really lame July, there’s actually been a number of good movies this past month. When I get chance I may post more about some of them.

Continue reading

Here’s the beginning of a new piece I’m working on. It was originally intended to be a flash, but it may grow beyond that. Continue reading

1. She is sassy! Whenever her inferiors are around our heroine is always ready with an arched eyebrow and a snappy remark to make the upstart feel foolish.
2. She takes no guff! She is always ready to point out how wrong her superiors are (by superior we mean only that they have greater rank – rank likely earned through politics, seniority, or luck, not merit, clearly) and it’s up to her to put things right when the situation goes, ahem, tits up. They should have listened to her to begin with!
3. She is infinitely good at her job. Even if she’s had no training, and in particular knows more than anyone who’s knowledge comes purely from books, not experience. If a particularly unique scenario comes up, feature the following exchange:

   “Wow!” said the intern. “Where have you even done that before? It’s not in the manual!”

   Our heroine arches an eyebrow, wipes the sweat from her brow. “Who said I had?”

4. On the rare occasion that our heroine gets something wrong, it’s not that she was wrong, but rather that the other character was right. Use the opportunity to develop the other character, not her.
5. You must give your heroine some flaws, obviously. Just make sure they are relationship problems. Divorce is a popular choice. Just make sure she leaves these personal issues at home! She doesn’t have time to let that nonsense interfere with her career.
6. She always takes the hard road to achieve her goals, and it always pays off. Bonus points if her parents wanted her to do something else with her life, for any reason – if they also question why she is lacking a husband/child, prepare yourself for a trip to the bank to deposit your giant novelty check.
7. If writing for a younger (young adult, perhaps) audience, make sure she has boyish qualities – maybe she likes cars, or disdains pink dresses. The less feminine your female is, the better. This is especially the case for any story aimed at teenage boys. Obviously, boobs are still a necessity, and if possible she will still have a crush on the cute boy next door who doesn’t notice her until she puts some makeup on for gods’ sake.

This concludes, for now, my seminar on writing strong female characters. I hope you have found it useful. Please refer to page 3A of your handout for further questions.

I thought this was interesting: Three-minute fiction on NPR. I’ll have to see what I can come up with, but I don’t know if I can generate something that would likely suit NPR’s tastes. They’re working with someone from the New Yorker, which automatically gives the whole exercise an air of the pretentious that I can’t stand.

I imagine there is no swearing, which might be problematic. Also, they may not want to read about Moonians or space sharks.

I’ve got two 25-word stories for the Hint Fiction contest. They’re okay, I think. It’s not an easy task. They hint at interesting stories, but I’m not sure they have that haiku-style moment that makes the reader’s heart skip a beat. However, it is hard to analyze something like that when you’ve spent an hour staring at the same sentence trying to figure out which two words you can cut.

I’ve added a Resources page, the link is above the title up there. I hope there’s something useful for my fellow writers contained therein. They are, at least, useful to me.

I Mad Men’d myself.

Don Draper would have never hung out with me.

I have a new short story up over at The Future Fire, “The Overdue Protocols.” Check it out!

This one was inspired by the Beverly Cleary book mentioned in the story (though if I recall correctly it was initially launched from a writing exercise). I hope I captured at least a little of the spirit of Cleary’s novel. Let me know what you think!

This is also my first illustrated story, which is fun.

I’ve got a post on the importance of community building for online writers over at the Flash Fiction Chronicle. Check it out!

In case you haven’t noticed it already, there’s a flash fiction contest going on over at the Flash Fiction Chronicles. If you have an urge to write a few 250-word stories, based on prompts, head on over and check out the guidelines. Prizes include publication and copies of EDF’s Best of 2008 Anthology. Best hurry, it’s only running until Sunday.

I’ll see what I can get written up!

So far I’m doing well on my new goal to submit a story a month – I put some polish on “With the Band” and sent it over to Every Day Fiction. It’s a fun story, so I hope they like it.

The month is still young!

I’m torn on what to do with “Invasion of the Moonians.” It’s basically a talking head story, and I don’t know how interesting those really are for flash. I may just post the whole of it here sometime and not worry about sending it out. Or I may take the material and rework it into something more exciting. We’ll see.

On a sad note, RIP John Hughes. His high school movies are the ones people always talk about, but my favorites came after that, with John Candy in particular. Hell, I even watched Career Opportunities (who can forget Jennifer Connelly on the rocking horse?). I couldn’t tell you how many times I watched Uncle Buck, The Great Outdoors, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when I was a kid.

So as tribute, one of my favorite scenes, from one of my favorite movies.

My short story, “Big in Ak-Sar-Ben,” in which a stalwart scientist battles giant monsters with math, has been accepted by Big Pulp. I’ll post more when it comes out in October! That’s a story I’m pretty happy with. It was hard to sit on it, waiting for Big Pulp’s submission period. But the patience paid off.

I managed to pull off the nigh impossible – well, okay, perhaps it was only the slightly difficult, or even moderatedly challenging – task of winning the writing group’s July contest. I wrote the last piece with about 25 minutes to spare. I may have a couple of publishable works out of it, actually; maybe I should just be dashing things off without putting so much thought into them. Maybe I’m overthinking things. For first drafts, anyway. I would post an excerpt but I don’t have them handy.

Also on the to-do list: send in submissions for the Norton Anthology Hint Fiction contest. I’ve got one ready to go, and ideas for a couple more. Competition will be fierce!

Best of all, I think I have a solid piece that I can send to 10Flash. Once it’s been through the ringer at the writing group I’ll send it in.