Commute Edits

01-02-2012

For once an entry not about submissions and rejections . Don't worry they will return soon enough no doubt.

No this one is about how I am turning my new forty minute commute in the mornings into something productive.

See myself and the lady friend purchased a house recently and even more recently (as in last weekend) we moved into it. This is big news alright, which I have talked about on the other site I maintain, and since this one is meant to be purely about writing and all things writing related I won't go into more details here.

Let's just say the house is awesome.

But now I have a slightly longer commute into work. Not the short trip I use to have where I would read. Now I have roughly forty minutes into work and forty minutes back home.

Not a huge problem to have in terms of commuting to work, that is true. Thing is that most people would say "sure you'll get a load of reading done."

They would be right too, I would. That's one hour and twenty minutes a day to be spent reading. At the speed I read most books I would be reading three average sized fantasy novels a week, or four Philip K. Dick ones

Now I knew this commute was coming and had considered getting a tablet to bring in and out to work with me. This would allow me to be a little be productive on one of the bus trips and thus turn forty minutes spent sleeping/reading into something useful. Lo and behold the lady friend picks up on this topics of conversation like a damn present buying ninja and at Christmas got me the exact tablet I had spoken of. She even then helped the mother figure purchase a keypad dock that is meant for the tablet, turning it into a small netbook.

This morning the tablet got it's first real workout on the bus trip in and it has to be said it was great.

Forty solid minutes of editing The Fairy Detective. I've done some of my hobby before work.

It felt good being behind the keyboard again, I won't lie. I haven't written anything in a good few months for various reasons and my fingers were getting itchy to type once more. Rather than start a complete new story I figured I would start the rewrites on The Fairy Detective as the story has been sitting in Rough-draft mode for a while now.

Today it officially entered into draft one.

The only downside to this idea is the office application for Android Tablets lacks a spell checker, but that isn't the end of the world. If you can rewrite entire paragraphs and fix up plot passing and holes during the morning then I can always use the old laptop for the spell checking afterwards.

Productivity thy name is Asus!

That's the make of the tablet, before anyone goes wondering what pantheon I pulled that one from

-Derek

First Rejection Of The New Year

17-01-2012

Just got my first rejection email of 2012. Nice to see that the trend is continuing. Once again it was a nicely phrased email that went along the lines of "Sorry, nothing we can do with this." and once again lacked anything in the way of help.

That part of submitting things is really grating on me at this stage. The constant rejections are soul destroying enough, but you are prepared for that sort of thing. But the lack of decent feedback is really worse. If they even replied with "Sorry, but this was pure cow dung." that would be more helpful than politely declining the book outright.

In many ways it is a mystery to see how anybody ever gets published as the rejections come fast and free, but how to improve never gets sent along at all. You are left lost in a limbo of literary wonder.

Clearly books to get published, their are stores that prove that very fact, yet how is a great mystery.

Just once I would like real and decent feedback. At least if I got told, just once, that my work was so below par it would never see the light of day I could stop submitting it and start work on it again. I could improve it, make it better, stronger, faster, rebuild it, we have the technology...that might be the Bionic Man there

But you get the point. No feedback makes you sit and stare and wonder what if I just submit to one more person. Some feedback would save you time and energy and postage, allowing you to improve and fix and tweak and then brave the winds of faith once more.

Alas it seems this is not meant to be. Only this morning as I was commuting into work did I think to myself that I need to start writing again. Not really something new, but maybe re-working stuff I have written already. I think enough time has passed to allow me to start working on draft two of my last book.

The real question is do I continue with this struggle to get The Ogra Pig published/picked up while I start the rewrites or do I leave it now on the shelf. Forever gathering dust as I have no idea what would need to be done to it to improve it.

Who knows...

-Derek