Writing Prompt: The End of the World as We Snow It

Okay, the pun was probably unnecessary. They usually are.

Your characters have been trapped somewhere by a winter storm -- a cabin, a car stranded on a freeway, the convenience store downtown, or whatever location is appropriate. What do they have with them that will help them survive? What do they wish they had? Can they last until help arrives or the snow and ice melt?

monthly writing progress, February

I was just going to do the weekly progress, plus the week before that, since I remembered not posting last week. Imagine my surprise to realize I haven't posted my progress since February 6! At this point, rather than posting three weeks' worth of progress and then posting the monthly progress, it made more sense to do a single post.

Words for month: 9,195, mostly a page a day on a single novel, but also some short work, including a synopsis. Daily average for the month is 328 words, for the month is 334 words. Wrote 23 of 28 days.

Continued outline for the next novel I want to write (Sundered Sword). Also did a fair bit of background reading.

Short stories: Completed one I've been working on since December. Wrote one article (Website review). Did 9 short story submissions this month.

Other submissions: 2 poetry, 1 flash, 1 novella.

Rejections: 9 short stories, 1 novella (market doesn't favor that length). Only 1 of the short stories wasn't sent back out again; 1 was sent out more than once.

Acceptances: 2 articles for Vision.

Crits: Finished one novel, epilogue left on a second, some progress on a third. Also, one short story crit.

Did not attend GSHW meeting this month -- was in Boston for Boskone. Truly fun.

Reading: 3 books completed this month. Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld; Metatropolis, edited by John Scalzi; and Norse Code, by Greg van Eekhout.

Other reading of note -- read a good chunk of Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, did some blog reading, and discovered some lovely books on stellar mechanics available free on-line at Harvard.

Editing/submitting: Finished polishing the first 3 chapters of the mystery novel and sent it off into submission-land.

Also signed up with Book-in-a-Week. First time for participation starts tomorrow. Looking forward to bingeing on writing.

Writing Prompt: You are dead

Or are you? This one comes directly from my spam folder. I received an e-mail with the subject line "Is it true you are dead?" Write a story around such an e-mail. Bonus points for not making it a variation of the Nigerian inheritance scam.

gathering the links, February 19

Hope everyone had a great week and weekend. Time for another link round-up.

Jon Gibbs, an Englishman in New Jersey:
Interesting posts about writing – w/e February 19 2010

Margaret McGaffey Fisk:
Friday's Interesting Links
(These are last week's links, as this week's aren't up yet. I love the research section!)

SFSignal:
SF Tidbits for 2/19/10
SF Tidbits for 2/18/10
SF Tidbits for 2/17/10
SF Tidbits for 2/16/10
SF Tidbits for 2/15/10

Jay Lake:
Link salad hopes for an easy day of chemo
Link salad tries to go lite, fails
Link salad says it’s just desserts
Link salad, at first just ghostly, turns a whiter shade of pale

Author Scoop:
Friday Morning LitLinks
Thursday Morning LitLinks
Wednesday Morning LitLinks
Tuesday Morning LitLinks
Monday Morning LitLinks

Mike Brotherton:
More Starlinks…
Super Late Sunday Starlinks on Tuesday

If you know of another site that does great collections of links, let me know in the comments! And if there's one of these sites that you enjoy, please let them know.

back from Boskone

I posted con reports on my other blog: Friday, Saturday, Sunday Enjoy!

short break

I should have mentioned this earlier in the week -- I won't be doing the links or writing prompt today, and the writing progress post will be delayed until Tuesday.

I'm going to be at Boskone! Which is clearly still writing related.

writing progress, January 31-February 6

The week focused on my freelance work, but I did consistently write at least one page (250 words) per day, for a total of 1,957 words on the new project (M) over the week, and 37 words on a short story.

Again, background reading for Sundered Sword.

Squeezed in a quick crit for a friend on a short story and discussed cues for POV.

Only one submission sent out. That put me, for 24 very sweet hours, in the position of having all of my short stories out to market at once. Two short stories and two poems rejected.

More freelancing to start this coming week, and Boskone's at the end of the week, but I'm hoping to maintain at least the page a day on M.

Writing Prompt: Missing Time

Several times in history, the calendar has changed. For example, in 1752 in England, September skipped from the 2nd to the 14th as they finally moved to the Gregorian calendar. The beginning of the year was changed from March 25 to January 1. At other points, new months have been added.

What does such a change mean to your characters if they live through it? Do they notice? Do they rail against it? Or maybe you have a character pushing for a new way of tracking time. If so, why, and who doesn't like it?

gathering the links, February 5

Time to see what links everyone has posted this week!

Jon Gibbs, an Englishman in New Jersey:
Interesting posts about writing – w/e February 05 2010

Margaret McGaffey Fisk:
Friday's Interesting Links

SFSignal:
SF Tidbits for 2/05/10
SF Tidbits for 2/04/10
SF Tidbits for 2/03/10
SF Tidbits for 2/02/10
SF Tidbits for 2/01/10
Amazon vs. Macmillan
SF Tidbits for 1/31/10

Jay Lake:
Link salad gets ready to head for the infusion center
Link salad, mostly weird science edition
A summation of my posts on Amazon vs Macmillan
Jay is headed in for another infusion of chemo. My thoughts are with him.

Author Scoop:
Friday Morning LitLinks
Thursday Morning LitLinks
Wednesday Morning LitLinks
Tuesday Morning LitLinks
Monday Morning LitLinks
Author Scoop also does nice author quotes and book reviews. Check them out.

If you know of another site that does great collections of links, let me know in the comments! And if there's one of these sites that you enjoy, please let them know.