All too often, the revision process involves simultaneously editing two (or more!) scenes to make them line up. This can happen when one scene is dependent on the other. It can happen when showing the same events from multiple different PoVs. It can happen when writing scenes out-of-sequence. It can even happen when the writer had a beautiful brainstorm late in the writing process and to set it up properly, they need to change earlier events to align. *cough, cough*
For on-paper revisions, it’s straightforward enough. Just print out copies of the relevant scenes and set them beside each other on the table. Scribble red ink here, there, and everywhere. Voila! But when moving around large chunks of text, digital revisions may be easier. This is when the idea of a “Working Scenes” file (or two!) comes in handy.
Consider it like a scratchpad. Mine is just an empty document, unless I’m actively working on meshing two scenes. Then I copy one of the scenes from my Work in Progress over into Working Scenes, arrange the file windows next to each other so I can see both at the same time, and adjust both at the same time. I usually keep the scene that needs the most work in the Work in Progress window, and the one that needs few or no adjustments in Working Scenes. If I do make changes in Working Scenes, I bold the section that will need to replace the original. If the changes are extensive enough, I replace the entire section in the original.
Once I’ve made my changes in both scenes, and moved the Working Scene changes back into the Work in Progress, it’s done! Then I delete the scene from Working Scenes. And voila, it’s a blank slate ready for the next round of adjustments!
What I’ve been up to lately, writing-wise:
Oh my slithy toves, let me warn you of the perils of the parenthetical “fix this later” note! Kidding. It’s actually a great tool, as long as you go back and fix things sooner-later instead of later-later. I … did not.
In happier news, today I have discovered that my shoulder-cat, Creamsicle, is happy to sit on my shoulders even when I am *not* sitting in a wingback chair. This is great, because my preferred “office chair” is actually an exercise ball with no back at all. I had been delaying putting it back at my desk because I like having Creamsicle keep me company. Now I know that I don’t need to give up either one. Of course, it’s too hot to work in my attic office in this hellish heatwave. But soon!
The SciFidea Award contest is for Dyson Sphere-themed novels and novellas.
The submitted works should be within the realm of science fiction, and must show a new worldview that conforms with scientific logic.
The work involves both the technical setting of the Dyson Sphere (overall structure, the scale and the size, construction materials and methods, etc.) and the ecological environment of the internal civilization (gravity changes, alternation of day and night, species distribution, etc.).
The writing should be smooth, the imagination and speculation should be creative and novel, and the plot should convey a sense of wonder.
SciFidea
Basics: themed SF, 30,000 – 100,000 words, 10 winners earn $20,000, no reprints, due 8/31/23. Guidelines: https://contest.scifidea.org/
The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be between 11/15/2022 and 11/30/2022. If you don’t want to miss an update, subscribe to the Aswiebe’s Market List newsletter: https://aswiebe.com/marketlist/subscribe-to-market-list/
As the seasons change, I’m reminded that when writers are most productive can change too. Our lives change, our schedules change, our responsibilities change. Hell, our brains change. What works best for you during the summer might not work at all in the fall and winter. Or switching to a new method might break you out of a rut. Knowing what works for you matters, especially if you’re planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year! And if you are planning on doing NaNoWriMo, that quantity of writing provides an excellent opportunity to experiment.
So how do you know when and what works best for you?
There are no shortcuts to this, I’m afraid! You have to try it to find out. Track the time you spend, when you spend it, how many words you produce, and how you feel about those words. You’ll probably want to give yourself a few days of trying something to see how it works for you, because the first day of a new system or schedule is always weird. Only alter one thing at a time–I suggest trying a different writing schedule first.
Here are some things to try, to see what works for you.
Schedule
Look at all the time you have available. Consider temporarily changing your wake-up time, your bedtime, your lunch break habits, your Disney+ habit, and any other “normally I do X now” times that you can move around. Schedule a particular time of day to be your designated writing time. Write at that time every day. Remember that this might change depending on the season, and on the darkest days of the year, a happy light is your friend!
Try writing in a block of at least 2 solid hours with minimal breaks.
Try writing in 25-minute intervals with breaks according to the Pomodoro Method.
Try writing in snippets throughout the day instead of one big chunk of time. Uninstall social media apps and write on your phone when you would normally check Instagram, or carry a notebook with you.
Try burst writing. Don’t write for a couple of days, then go to a coffee shop or turn off your phone and close your door and neglect everything else for a 4-6 hour block of writing.
Method
Outline the whole story first.
Outline the scene you’re about to write.
Don’t outline at all.
Write out of sequence. Focus on the scene you’re most excited about first.
Write multiple stories at once. Switch between them when you get bored. Try a few sentences and if you aren’t excited about what you’re writing, move on to the next one. (Note: this method only works if things eventually get finished!)
Means
Write longhand, then transcribe it later. (Remember to count transcription time.)
Write in a coffee shop, write lying on the couch, write at a desk, write in a museum. Try different locations.
Write with friends, or find a local writing meet-up (NaNoWriMo will offer several).
Write totally alone.
Write with strangers nearby, without interacting with them.
Try blocking the internet and social media while you write.
(Do you have a writing question? Send it to me, either by replying to this email or by using the contact form on my website, and it may get answered in the next newsletter.)
What I’ve been up to lately, writing-wise:
This newsletter of markets updated in October is going out a little late, thanks to Halloween shenanigans. Other than that, I’ve been writing on my WiP. It’s kind of boring giving status updates on writing a novel, right? Because mostly it’s just, “Yup, still writing a novel. Recently researched skullcaps, skullstripping (actual medical terminology!), and the decay rate of brains.” You know, the usual. Also, turns out brains liquify fairly quickly because they are already so liquidy.
I’m over 25% of my wordcount goal for the novel, though. And I think the plot’s about in the same place. Hurray! 1/4 done!
The Nebula Conference is over for 2022, but purchasing a membership now ($75) still gets access to recorded panels and year-round special events: https://membership.sfwa.org/event-4563942
Entries must satisfy two requirements: First, stories must be written in a steampunk style, including by taking place at least partially during the 1800s. Transport us to Meiji Japan; La Belle Époque in Paris; gritty, smoky Manchester; or a camp of immigrants unfurling a railroad across the American west. Feel free to set your story partially in the future; time machines are welcome.
Second, each entry must feature at least one quantum technology, real or imagined. Real and under-construction quantum technologies include quantum computers, communication networks, cryptographic systems, sensors, thermometers, and clocks. Experimentalists have realized quantum engines, batteries, refrigerators, and teleportation, too. Surprise us with your imagined quantum technologies (and inspire our next research-grant proposals).
Quantum-Steampunk Short-Story Contest
Basics: quantum steampunk stories, up to 3,000 words, grand prize $1,500 Visa certificate plus other whimsical categories up to $4,500 total, reprint acceptability unspecified, due 1/15/23.
This (theoretically May) update is going out a couple of days late, so it’s extra large. More new markets! More useful links! So the timing seems right to talk about extra large stories: novellas.
tldr; Be patient, keep an eye on current submission calls (YES, I will list novella calls in this market list when I see them), and consider the advantages and disadvantages of publishing in a magazine.
How long is a novella? A novella is 17,500 – 39,999 words long, as defined by the Nebula Award categories.
Selling a novella is hard. Here are some options for science fiction, fantasy, and horror novellas, both publishers and magazines. There are a few publishers known for publishing novellas, but their unagented submission windows tend to be very short and far between, and there’s a lot of competition. Other publishers who occasionally publish novellas will often have special novella calls, but information about their novella publishing schedule is not even listed on their website the rest of the time. There are several magazines who accept novella-length submissions, but although they are open to the idea, they do not publish many novellas, they don’t pay royalties, and your novella will only be distributed as part of that magazine’s issue. (Yes, self-publishing a novella is always an option–there are special challenges there too!–but this is about selling it to a publisher.)
Options:
PUBLISHERS – OPEN
Pressfuls Novellas wants fantasy, horror, adventure, romance, and crime/mystery, pays 35% royalties. (Pressfuls Magazine appears defunct, but they’re still publishing longer works.) https://pressfuls.com/submit-a-story/
Midnight Bites ANTHOLOGY SERIES wants novelette and novella horror, 10k – 25k words themed and unthemed, pays $50 plus 25% royalties. Currently seeking carnie horror and medical horror. https://cronegirlspress.com/submissions/
PUBLISHERS – UPCOMING SUBMISSION CALLS
Neon Hemlock wants SF, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, and slipstream, especially queer. Pays royalties, or advance plus royalties. Award-winning. Open June 12th to 25th 2022 for trans women writers and writers of color. Open to all writers October 11th to 24th 2022. https://www.neonhemlock.com/submissions
Interstellar Flight Press has a one-time call for horror novellas including SF horror and fantasy horror, pays 30-40% royalties plus possible advance. Open to submissions 10/1/22 – 12/1/22. https://www.interstellarflightpress.com/submissions.html
PUBLISHERS – CURRENTLY CLOSED UNTIL ??
Tor.com (novellas) wants fantasy and SF, pays pro rates of advance + royalties or higher royalty-only rate. Award-winning. CURRENTLY CLOSED. Unclear if/when they will reopen for unagented novella submissions, but it’s been a couple of years. https://www.tor.com/fiction-submissions-guidelines/
Nightfire (Tor) wants horror novels and novellas, pays pro rates of advance + royalties or higher royalty-only rate. CURRENTLY CLOSED. Unclear if/when they will reopen for unagented novella submissions. https://tornightfire.com/nightfire-slush-submission-guidelines/
Uncanny (novellas) wants SF/F, pays $.10/word. Publishes 1 novella a year depending on funding. Award-winning. CURRENTLY CLOSED – LOOK FOR THEM TO OPEN NEXT YEAR. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/submissions/
Stelliform wants science fiction, fantasy, quiet horror and literary works with speculative elements, pays 2¢ CAD per word advance (up to $2000), plus royalties. CURRENTLY CLOSED. https://www.stelliform.press/index.php/submissions/
Wyldblood Press wants speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy or horror) novellas and novels, pays royalties. CURRENTLY CLOSED. https://wyldblood.com/guidance-submissions/
Magazines that accept full length novellas or have no wordcount limit include Analog, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and ParSec. Be cautious about submitting to places that don’t list a maximum wordcount; they don’t always expect or accept novellas.
June’s update will be shorter, and I’ll talk about where to sell flash fiction!
(Do you have a writing question? Send it to me, either by replying to this email or by using the contact form on my website, and it may get answered in the next newsletter.)
What I’ve been up to lately, writing-wise:
I’ve started work on a new novel, working title Desolation Station Salvage. I love this stage. Everything is shiny and new, and all kinds of fun random ideas are popping up as I write.
I’m looking forward to in-person convention 4th Street Fantasy in a couple of weeks, where I’ll be on panels discussing ambiguous endings and PoV.
The Nebula Conference ($150) is over for 2022, but purchasing a membership now still gets access to recorded panels and year-round special events: https://membership.sfwa.org/event-4563942
Featured Market
Award-winning Neon Hemlock will be open for speculative fiction novella submissions June 12 – 25, 2022 for BIPOC and trans women authors, October 11 – 24, 2022 for all. Pays royalties, or advance plus royalties.
:Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Supernatural, Slipstream, & Weird. Hybrid work or difficult to categorize novellas are also welcome.
Standalone works, although they may be connected to other series or work.
We are particularly interested in work that explores some element of queer experience, broadly speaking.
Neon Hemlock
Neon Hemlock
Basics: speculative fiction, 17,500-40,000 words, pay ?, no reprints, due 6/12/22-6/25/22 and 10/11/22-10/24/22.
To see all the details about these new listings and what they’re looking for, as well as hundreds of other listings, go to Aswiebe’s Market List and download the latest version of the spreadsheet. Note: going forward, limited demographic market listings will be italicized.
Horror flash fiction, themed to When We Were Getting High, My Last Trick ‘r Treat, Body Grotesquerie, Ominous Visitors from Deep Space, or Out in the Fields, Forests, and Lakes
An Escape Artists publication. Original fiction up to 6,000 words, reprints up to 17,000. ONE-TIME SUBMISSION THEME: Indigenous Magic (#ownvoices) 7/1/22 – 7/31/22
Librarian, The (Air and Nothingness Press) ONE-TIME ANTHOLOGY – DUE 6/30/22
Speculative fiction, themed to a helpful traveling librarian
Submissions open early on Mondays when they’re taking submissions, then close when they hit their quota. May be closed to submissions even if Moksha says they’re open, if there is no submission type to select. Long response time.
Fiends in the Furrows III, The: Final Harvest ONE-TIME ANTHOLOGY – DUE 7/31/22
Submission periods: 2/15 – 2/28, 5/15 – 5/31, 8/15-08/31 (ONE-TIME 2022 THEME: Nostalgia), 11/15 – 11/30, with a 1-week extension each period for BIPOC.
Story Unlikely
All genres, including bizarro and speculative fiction
How can you make writing a treat? Sure, we all love it when we hit flow state while writing, or when we craft that perfect sentence (that we later delete during edits, half the time). But you can’t rely on that happening. What can you choose to pair it with that will, itself, make writing a reward?
Working in a coffee shop is a good option for me, and not only because there are often yummy treats there. My brain loves going places. A museum, an art gallery, or a public garden are also rewards for me. And now that we are theoretically* approaching patio weather, there are even more options.
I’m also an extrovert, which means that coworking writing events work well for me, whether they are in-person or via Zoom. My brain sees meeting other humans as a reward, too!
If you’re looking for an in-person coworking event, try checking Meetup for writer’s groups in your area, or even general coworking events. There is also a weekly Zoom writing date that is included with Nebula conference membership.
So–what can make writing into a reward for you?
* It is Spring, but it is SO COLD here in Minnesota, you guys. So cold. I wore my winter coat this morning when I took my offspring to an Easter egg hunt.
(Do you have a writing question? Send it to me, either by replying to this email or by using the contact form on my website, and it may get answered in the next newsletter.)
Award-winning Uncanny Magazine will be open for SF/fantasy novella submissions May 1-15, 2022. Novella pay rate unclear; they pay $.10/word for short stories.
Uncanny Magazine is seeking passionate, diverse SF/F fiction and poetry from writers from every conceivable background. We want intricate, experimental stories and poems with gorgeous prose, verve, and imagination that elicit strong emotions and challenge beliefs. Uncanny believes there’s still plenty of room in the genre for tales that make you feel.
To see all the details about these new listings and what they're looking for, as well as hundreds of other listings, go to Aswiebe's Market List and download the latest version of the spreadsheet. Note: going forward, limited demographic market listings will be italicized.
OK to submit even if previously rejected by sister publications Nightmare Magazine or Lightspeed. SUBMISSION PERIODS: ONE-TIME open to BIPOC authors all of 2022. General submissions: 1st – 7th of April, July, and October 2022.
What’s with the new logo? Why do I suddenly have a new website?
tldr; My credit card number was stolen.
Okay, that explanation might be a little too short! As you may remember, I’ve been working on transferring my author website. This project got a sudden boost when my credit card number was stolen. As a result, that credit card was cancelled and I got a totally new card number. Now, my old legacy webhost was notorious for being difficult to cancel their auto-payment plans. But they no longer had my credit card number.
I’ve just barely squeaked under the wire by getting this done by the end of March. Squeak, squeak!
Thanks to the excellent Torknado.com’s One-Hour Author Website site, which helps authors set up the basic framework for an author website in an hour and then takes a lotlonger to go into all the customization nitty-gritty, I have a new website! More or less. My market list site is pretty solid, but I’ll be tweaking it for a while yet. My main author site is still a mess-in-progress, though, so don’t judge me on it (yet)!
(Do you have a writing question? Send it to me, either by replying to this email or by using the contact form on my website, and it may get answered in the next newsletter.)
What I’ve been up to lately, writing-wise:
Taxes and building a new website have taken up almost all my “writing” time. Elvis is still stuck in the LHC. (Yes, if I can’t work on a story for a while, I feel like my poor characters are stranded in the middle of whatever was going on.)
The Bioluminescent anthology (Android Press) wants optimistic SF with a lunarpunk aesthetic, pays $.08/word.
Lunarpunk is a very young, still somewhat nebulous and developing aesthetic — much more so than solarpunk at least— so it isn’t really possible to define exactly, specifically what that aesthetic is. But in many ways it can be thought of as a gothic take on solarpunk.
This site does a good job of putting forward an idea of what the Lunarpunk aesthetic entails. But to put it briefly, think of solarpunk and lunarpunk in terms of a dicotomy. If solarpunk is about bright colors, daylight and sun, science, community, etc… then lunarpunk is about darker colors, nighttime and moonlight, spirituality (though not necessarily a negation of science), introspection and more individual focus (though not a negation of community).
A lunarpunk world might include bioluminescent plant life, or other special tech to help societies function in the dark. A Lunarpunk community might live underground, in caves, on the moon, or elsewhere. Pagan nature worship, flowing robes and clothing, blacks, greys, silver and sparkle, purples, blues, and greens, mushrooms and night blooming plants, and various other elements of the gothic aesthetic are all common among what little, already existing lunarpunk work is out there.
To see all the details about these new listings and what they're looking for, as well as hundreds of other listings, go to Aswiebe's Market List and download the latest version of the spreadsheet. Note: going forward, limited demographic market listings will be italicized.
Name
What they want
Pay Per Word USD (originals)
Flat Pay USD (originals)
Website
Notes
Factor Four Magazine
All speculative fiction, especially SF, fantasy, supernatural, and superhero fiction
SUBMISSION PERIODS: Recommended Reading (short stories) has 2 1-week open submission periods, usually in Spring and Fall, The Commuter (flash fiction) has 4 1-week submission periods. NOTE: Long response time.
Squeak, squeak!