Week of: 7/4/26

Lots of rejections this week, what fun!

Sometimes I feel a bit like Eleanor Rigby -- writing here, writing the stories I do, and sending them out. Who is it for, I wonder? Though that's a more negative energy than I'd ordinarily like to maintain.

In a slightly more positive light, I showed up to my one-time writing workshop group, the Wordos. It remains to be seen whether I'll keep that up, but it's a nice idea. I've been reading yet another how-to-write book, Bird by Bird. And speaking of reading, I've finished Anna Karenina (and then I started and finished Mother Night)! So even if nobody buys my stories, or gets to read them, hey, at least I'm doing my part by continuing to read!

Week of: 6/27/26

Hooray! I got my first rejection from Writers of the Future since I've taken all this up again! There's a real sense of accomplishment in that, like the soreness after a workout. A physical reminder that you're a true participant, once more. Sure, it would have been nice to have won instead. Of course. But we're being realistic, here, and patient, and we will take what we can get.

I'm still working on stories. I've picked up a bad habit over the last several weeks (or longer) of starting one story only to interrupt myself by starting a different one. Soon, I'm going to have to go back and put paid to all of them, in something like a recursive loop (it also calls to mind a sequence in Gaiman's Sandman comics). But let's not bury the lede here: I continue to write. Everything else, finishing my stories, submitting them, selling them -- they're all further down the line.

The fundamental matter is to write.

Week of: 6/20/26

A day late, today, though hopefully not a dollar short.

Well, that too, I'm sure.

Writing-wise, I didn't have my most productive week ever, though I did start work on a new short story... and I have plans for another, which I might have to try to bang out, first. I'm really leaning into my Summer Reading project, and trying to take big bites of Karenina -- the only way I feel I have a real shot at completing it.

Speaking of which, I'm going to wrap this up to go read so I can get that time in before the family wakes. Writing isn't just writing, you know? It's writing in context, the context of one's life. It's like in martial arts -- and how you can't (or oughtn't) throw an attack without keeping yourself balanced. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and just need more sleep...

But that's just it. Sleep. Food. Reading. Family. Friends. Work. All of the things that come up on a day-to-day basis, all of the little challenges along the way -- that's the true test of writing, beyond whatever it is that makes it onto the page, and that the reader will never know, never see, except in the myriad ways it becomes transformed into plots and characters and the rest. The story is only the beginning of the story.

But I'm putting my reading off. Till next time.

Week of: 6/13/26

So far, so good where Summer Reading is concerned. Two books up, two books down. Today, I plan on starting one of the true behemoths: Anna Karenina, this list's requisite Russian Novel, lol.

In writing news, I wrote a short story that I expect will never get published anywhere. It's irreverent, anti-Christian, specifically, and angry. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, of course. I asked myself a few times near the beginning of writing it whether it was worthwhile for me to write -- or even, perhaps, unadvisable. Because of what it might say about me. That I'm angry, sometimes, that I'm a jerk (most or all of the time).

But then I kept thinking back to the Harlan Ellison quote that I look at most every day:

"Don't be afraid...don't let them scare you...the chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage. And if he has none, he is more than a coward. He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic, because writing is a holy chore."

And that put me back on the path to writing the stories that call to me, even if I know they won't be... oh, well-received, lol. Maybe I shouldn't be taking advice from Mr. Ellison on how to win friends and influence people...? But what can I say? He remains one of my heroes.

Publication-wise, another week gone and more rejections. Settling in the groove of it again, and it feels nice. See you next time.

Week of: 6/6/23

Another birthday has passed. This is my last year of my 40s, and I'd like to try writing a novel before I hit 50. I've never done that before -- and I'm intimidated! I've been told (probably incorrectly) that it's just writing a number of short stories, strung together.

Well... I struggle with short stories, too! But still: I have my eye on that target. A novel before I turn 50.

This week, I did put in time on a short story or two. Not nearly so much time as I'd like; life keeps getting in the way, lol. I've also thrown myself in on my Summer Reading Project, beginning A Deadly Education. I need to move and keep moving, if I'm to have any earthly chance at all at hitting this target. And I might not make it, even then. People sometimes tell me that I'm a "fast reader," but I've been around enough to know that's not true. Not particularly slow, maybe, but certainly not fast. If I want this, I'm really going to have to fight hard for it.

And hey, I've been doing this fairly regularly. Maybe it's too soon to celebrate anything -- maybe I should save that for the year anniversary? -- but one thing I'm trying to do, something I think we probably all should do more, is celebrate the small victories along the way.

So here's to another week!

Summer Readin', Have Me a Blast

A few years ago, I pompously made a list of all the many books I intended to read for 2022. I didn't achieve that, nor I suspect come anywhere close, though I have read several (not all) of the books on that list subsequently. I'd like to revisit that list sometime soon. (And I suggested at the time that I might report back on it "in another five years," and my how time does fly.)

But for right now, I'd simply like to repeat the same mistake. In a nod towards "learning/growth," I'll narrow the scope of my ambitions temporarily and come up with a list of the books I'd like to read this summer.

"Summer" here means the three calendar months of June, July and August. Since this catches me in the middle of (yet again) trying to read 52 books for the year, I'm going to give myself the target of 10 books for the list (with audiobooks and other odds and ends along the way to keep pace). I may have to amend as I move forward based on logistical/practical issues, such as library availability (I've neither the bookshelf space nor the bank account to purchase as much as I'd like to read. And I do like having the physical book in my hands as much as possible, so I favor that over electronic copies... though I use those, at times, as well.)

1. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.

I don't know anything about this book -- and that's exactly the way I like it. As much as possible, I like going into art (literature, film, etc.) knowing as little as I can. I've chosen it because my wife will be reading it at the same time for a women's only book club. I can't participate in their discussion, but I can share in the experience in my own way.

2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This was on my 2022 reading list, ha ha! I have my copy from the library currently, so all systems are go. (No idea how or why this recommendation first came to me, but that's all right. I keep a list of things to read "someday," and once something gets stuck there, it tends to remain.)

3. Gwendy's Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar

The middle book in a three-book series that I'd started as part of my lifelong quest to read Stephen King's oeuvre. This one is not technically on that list, but it bridges two books that are.

4. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Recently selected by The Guardian as the greatest novel ever published in English. All such lists are silly, of course, and I think there are some good questions as to their methodology in creating this particular iteration... but none of that really matters. It's as good a reason as any to take a look at something many people have enjoyed, consider great, and that I've never yet read.

5. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

I've recently read (and loved) The Alchemist, and I'm currently reading a collection of poetry by Rumi, and somehow -- doubtless due to my ignorance -- it seems something of a piece. I don't know except that I've long been aware of this title, have never read it, and again, I don't need all that much of an excuse.

6. Babel by R.F. Kuang

I don't know. I've seen it mentioned here and there, namedropped by some people I generally trust (fellow writers), and it turns out I'm rather easy.

7. Love and Video Games by Zachary Sergi

Taking this on the recommendation of my teenage daughter.

8. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

I've long wanted to read more (i.e. another) Vonnegut following Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, and well, it's taken me quite a while to get there. The specific title chosen mostly at random (it's what came up first as "available" on the library site when I searched for Vonnegut).

9. Beloved by Toni Morrison

It's time.

10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

And this is how I self-sabotage. I think some of the above will already likely put me to the test, but anchoring with this mammoth... ah well, it's sat on my shelf for years, my wife has already read it (and means to re-read it someday), and who would I be if I didn't overburden myself with massive Russian novels from time to time?

***

So that's the game plan. Maybe not in that order, depending on logistics -- and maybe I won't have this complete in three months -- but I have hopes that I'll be able to put a good bite on it, at least. I'm coming in with a lot of momentum.

Or maybe I'll report back in another five years, and recommit myself to reading more Tolstoy, someday.

Week of: 5/23/26

After a relatively hectic morning (and poor night's sleep), the fact that I'm here reveals my thus-far commitment to the bit!

A quiet week, rejections-wise... which means I'm not pushing hard enough, I think. I need to be in the face of these editors, crawling my way over the transom, forcing them to make hard choices, lol. I mean, if they really don't wish to reject my work, there are some other approaches we can explore together... or so I've been told.

In terms of writing, I've made a little progress, finished a first draft the other day to a story I'd like to bring down to about 5k. So we're still working, and that's nice to say in May: not a resolution that melts away with the snow.

Reading, we're putting in time, too. I'm currently reading Peter Straub's Ghost Story, which I've long meant to read (and often found already checked out at the library, especially around Halloween, when it usually occurs to me). An interesting journey thus far. I'm somewhere near halfway through, and only now do I feel like the novel is truly coming together. At some point, I mean to try my hand at being a novelist, though I know that I have a lot to learn about that.

Really, there's no end to all of what I'd like to do eventually. What an exciting (and daunting) prospect.