In the middle of a new story

I had a few votes against Man-titty Mondays (boo! hiss!) so we'll stick with random m-words until I can think of something better. Muddlings? Madness? Mutancy?

Spent the weekend watching cricket (eek!) and doing my civic duty as a Romance Writers of Australia contest manager. Any of you entering the Valerie Parv Award this year? You'll be dealing with me, bwahahaha...

I'm in the middle of a new short story (demon-hunting witches, yay!) and it's going pretty well so far. It's a challenge to write to a theme, yet keep the story true to the world-building I've already done. It's a Shadowfae story, in case you're wondering. New characters, new messes, same horny fairies. Amen :) All things going well, you'll see it in a St Martin's Press anthology later in 2011.

Writing a 10K short is challenging, too, when you're used to 100,000 word novels. The outline has the same shape - it's just a lot smaller, and everything has to be simplified. World-building has to be slimline. And as for backstory -- forget it, unless you can work it seamlessly into the story. You don't have time for flashbacks or paragraph-long ruminations on what just happened. Efficient scene-cutting (as in, deciding where you start and finish a scene) is crucial... hey, I just had an idea for my writing post on Wednesday! I'll shut up about it now :) you'll have to wait for my wisdom. Sigh. Oh, well.

Meanwhile, don't forget to enter last week's Friday giveaway -- Eve Silver's SINS OF THE HEART.

And here's an interesting link: one author's take on what it's really like to get published. I'd have to say I agree, though I'd never have believed myself two years ago -- selling is the easy part, folks. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm the last to whine about how hard it is to have a contract with an advance and an awesome editor and a big publishing house distributing my books. Wow, this diamond up my ass really hurts, y'know?

But pre-contract, all you have to care about is how good your book is, and researching markets. That's it.  Once you sell, there's so much more at stake. So much more you can mess up. So much more you have no control over. You think rejections are frustrating and beyond your control? Wait till you have to deal with sales figures, and reviews, and why your book is or isn't in stores, and why your book is or isn't an ebook...

But hey, I wouldn't give it up for anything :)