Author: Barbara A. Barnett

I'm an avid rejection letter collector--or, what is more popularly known as a writer.

I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover

I’m pleased to report that my short story “Unlucky Clover” has been accepted for the July 2011 issue of Beyond Centauri. “Unlucky Clover” is a sequel of sorts to my story “Lucky Clover” (Flash Fiction Online, March 2008), following the son of that story’s leprechaun protagonist (who also makes an appearance in the sequel).

Today’s Entry: One Part Plug, One Part Review

1) The non-shameless plug: Fantasy Magazine has a poll for the Best Fantasy Magazine Story of 2010. The shameless plug: my story “Mortis Persona” is among the stories you can vote for if you enjoyed it and feel so moved. 

2) In a review of issue 20 of Black Static at Suite101, my story “The Wounded House” gets an “outstanding.” I’ll quite happily take that!

My brain is a vengeful brain

So, that last post where silly conversations with my uncooperative brain eventually led to me outlining the rest of the short story I’m working on? Well, yesterday I sat down to write, confident that I’d now be able to crank out some significant wordage and maybe even finish the first draft, only to discover that, somehow, none of the outline had saved. I’m rather obsessive compulsive about constantly saving my work, so how I managed to completely lose half an hour’s worth has me completely baffled (not to mention annoyed as all get out).

So instead of finishing the story, I spent most of yesterday’s writing time redoing the outline.* There were many frustrating moments of “I know my protagonist was going to do this next, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.” Eventually, though, my plot came back together. Who knows, maybe what I have outlined now is better than what I had originally. But still, the whole process took far longer than it should have.

I suspect that my brain did some self-sabotaging and made me unconsciously delete the original outline as revenge for me subjecting it to Battlefield Earth. The movie was on TV the other night, I was morbidly curious to see if it was as horrible as I had heard, and wow. Just wow. The sheer dreadfulness overpowered my ability to mock. I only made it through half an hour–approximately the same amount of time I spent doing that original outline. I think my brain decided, “You wasted 30 minutes of my life, so I’m going to destroy 30 minutes of yours.”

*I normally don’t outline short stories, but this one is the type where having a road map will be a huge help to my writerly sanity, even if I ultimately decide to take a different route.

Your Writing Soundtrack

I’m not someone who has to have music on when I write.  I’ve written in silence, and I’ve written in noisy places without benefit of music–or sometimes in places playing music I didn’t care for, which meant I tuned the music out.  But I prefer to have music (that I like) on when I write.

Continue reading “Your Writing Soundtrack” →

The Writerly Update: Butt + Chair = Productivity Edition

In theory, I should have had more writing time last week.  In actuality, I didn’t make a lick of progress on the short story I had started the week before.  But today?  Oh, today was surprisingly lovely for a Monday.  For what felt like the first time in ages, I sat down and just cranked out first draftage for three solid uninterrupted hours.  About 1,400 words in all, which is pretty damn good for slow-going me.  It’s all crappy first draftage, yes, but I think (hope) it’s going to clean up nicely.  When the story’s done, that is.  I usually get a good sense early on about how long a story is going to be, and I think this one’s going to push the 6K mark, at least.

In other and unrelated news: shiny new Apple trackpad!  I’m quite loving this thing.  It doesn’t make my hand all crampy and achy like a mouse would do after a day at the computer.

The Writerly (and Readerly) Update

As expected, this past week was rather weird for me schedule-wise.  Adjusting to the whole part-time from home day job shift was sort of like pulling on an old pair of pants; you’re thrilled they fit again, but it’s been so long since you’ve worn them that you’re trying to remember which tops look right with them.  As a result, the time I spent trying on metaphorical tops meant I didn’t do much fiction writing during the week.  At least until yesterday, when I finally got my ass out of the metaphorical dressing room.

After doing a small amount of research and photo scrounging on Thursday, I finally started the prequel-ish My Big Fat Epic Fantasy Novel short story.  Well, I had already written a first sentence or two and jotted down some notes a while back, but yesterday was when I finally sat my butt down and started writing in earnest.  The Silk Road Ensemble was kind of a "duh" soundtrack choice for working on a story set at a caravanserai, especially when one of the albums I have from them has a track called "Night at the Caravanserai."  And I threw Loreena McKennitt’s "Caravanserai" onto my writing playlist for good measure.

After working on the short story for a bit, I switched gears slightly and did an hour writing exercise with some online folks for the first time in forever.  Recently, I’ve imposed all these huge expectations on myself as a writer, which often has the unfortunate side effect of making me petrified when I’m staring down a blank page.  This was a good way to tell those expectations where to shove it.  I turned off Serious Writer Brain and just goofed off for an hour by writing something silly that will probably never go anywhere beyond the exercise.  It was also my first time playing with Write or Die, which was a great help in turning off Serious Writer Brain.

And finally, on to the reading front:

Readerly update under the cut…