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chapter 16 blog
In my last post things weren't looking so great. I was behind, I was struggling and I didn't have a lot of hope for the future in terms of my career. All that is still true and if anything, I have more work to do than ever.
On the bright side, I have changed the name of the site again. I'm back to Chapter 16. I had a fun little Writing Writer phase, but it just wasn't as me, and I didn't connect as strongly to the title. It's not a huge deal, because this is just a placeholder site until I have enough money and enough training to jazz up the site for the domain name I've already bought. Still, I wanted something I could connect to, and Chapter 16 was it. In retrospect I should never have changed it. It's going to confuse people and I have to go re-link things, not to mention that my domain name doesn't technically match the site title anymore (since chapter 16 was taken, my new url is just www.catvoleur.weebly.com) but at least I've learned from this little mistake and am confident with this last change. On top of the sea of submissions that I am perpetually drowning in, I'm doing an overhaul of the portfolio site and looking for a new day job. So essentially, I'm never going to sleep again. That is for another blog entry though, which will be coming soon. Right now I just wanted to inform everyone about the site change. Thank you guys for reading and bearing with me through all this transitional nonsense. I will (hopefully) get my shit together one day. -Cat
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Sometimes being a writer sucks. Sometimes it sucks a lot.
The writing part, I love. There are very few things in life that come close to making me as happy as time alone with a blank notebook and a pen. The thing about being a writer is that you really only get to write about 10% of the time that you spend working. There's market research, self-promotion, networking, submissions, and then all of the stressful horrors that come with submissions. I suck at all that stuff. I can't design a site well, I can't promote myself or my work, I can't meet people, I suck at submitting things and I just am not fast enough. I have spent the last two weeks working insanely hard trying to stay on top of all my October submissions and I woke up today feeling so good about it. In the last 7 days I've written 12,000 words just in rough drafts, polished up 2 new short stories and a flash fiction piece, and done so much research. So much. There's been planning and organizing and I thought today was going to be such a huge breakthrough day for me and one by one my projects fell through until I started to feel so hopelessly behind. I've been so productive all week and I still feel like I'm getting nowhere. It's been okay that my zine is falling apart because I'm busy and our artist is busy and that's not just on me. I've been doing my best. It's been okay that my portfolio site isn't even up yet because even though I haven't finished that I have been submitting. It's been okay that I don't have a steady job and that I'm broke and that even this site right here is only a placeholder for the site I want to build myself and that everything is a mess because I've been putting in the effort. It's been okay that I still suck at social media things because hey, I'm getting the writing part done.... only that doesn't feel like enough anymore. It doesn't feel anywhere close to enough. I spent 3 hours yesterday choosing where to send a short story that is back in my submission rotation after being rejected again. ( How great does it feel that the best thing I've written all year has already been rejected twice?) I made a nice list of my top choices, compared submission deadlines, made pros and cons list, just to find out that my top two choices closed for submissions early. My third choice is super competitive and I know I don't stand a chance, but I submitted it anyway because I promised myself I'd get this done today. Now it's out of my rotation again for 2-6 months and it will be rejected. The rights for the only thing I've gotten published this year reverted back to me and I went to submit it to the only speculative fiction zine I know of that pays for horror reprints just to find out they're not taking new submissions until January due to an influx. There are now two more markets that I want to submit to in October meaning that I've gone from having 2/7 completed to 2/9. I feel like at this point even if I get them all done by the deadlines it won't matter because they're probably going to close early - since that seems to be my pattern. I spent so much time writing the rough draft for a specific submission and it's just absolutely terrible. I felt like the idea was solid but it came out terribly. Now I don't know if I want to scrap it or shelve it or try to salvage it before the submission date rolls around. Best of all is the 2 hours I spent this morning writing and editing my newest flash fiction piece. It's terrible and despite my best attempts to cut it down it's still a good 60 words over a firm 1.5k limit. It's just so exhausting. I knew this was going to be hard work when I committed to it, but I had no idea just how quickly I could get beaten down and buried under the workload. I had no idea that self improvement and dream-chasing would make me this tired. Part of me really wants to quit. I could get a regular day job or go back to school, find some other exhausting profession that I'm not cut out for, let writing just be something I do for fun. It was so much more relaxing when it was something that I just did for myself. This wouldn't be the first time that I walked away from something I believed in. But I'm not going to quit. Maybe that makes me an idiot, but I don't want to be a quitter anymore. I've never stuck with something this long and I don't want to quit just because it's difficult. I don't want to have to say "I used to be a writer." So, here we are. Tonight, instead of going to bed and getting sleep like a normal person, I'm going to open up that flash-fiction piece, edit out 60 words, submit it before they run out of slots and start on my next round of market research. In around all of that, I also want to find the time to work on my sites. This was a long rant, but I do feel better. I'm also not overly concerned about anyone reading these anyway, so that's good. Those of you who are reading, I'd apologize, but you're probably used to the ranting by now. -Cat Hey guys,
It's been a busy couple weeks. T realized shortly after I posted my last blog that the September leads I had were all due on the first, so I busted my ass to get them in and now I'm done with submissions for the month. The next thing I want to apply to is due October 15th. This gives me a little bit of breathing room to work on my October stuff I guess. The earliest one isn't until the 15th, sure, but there are a ton of places. There's a steampunk horror anthology, a space horror zine, a location-specific spooky tales collection, a body horror site, and a religious horror publisher all coming up in the second half of that month, so the extra time is probably going to be really helpful. It's also going to let me work on my portfolio some, which is good. I've been needing to do that for awhile now, and it looks like I will finally have the time to get a good start, if not finish. So that's what is going on with me. Hope things are going well for all of you out there. Tonight I made a bold decision, that I'm hoping is not a huge mistake. I'm scrapping most of the submission work I've done this month and just giving myself some breathing room to focus on the deadlines I'd like to meet in September.
I've been working really hard on anthology submissions all through August, and so far I haven't made a single deadline. I started out behind this month because I took July off from submissions and ever since then I've just felt panicked. I've been finishing my rough drafts just a couple days before the deadlines and that's not leaving me enough time to comb through and edit and polish my submissions to a quality I feel comfortable submitting. So far I've let 4 deadlines come and go and all I've accomplished is stressing myself out. I have a handful of stories started for anthologies that are closing submissions on the 31st, and I'm putting a pin in every single one of them. Some look perfect for me. Some I want to be in desperately. I'm not letting those things be a factor. If I want to actually stand a hope at acceptance, I need to be able to stand behind my work and that's not going to happen with the stuff I've been doing lately. I have three submission leads coming up in September, and I'm going to focus all my attention on polishing up those. That's not a ridiculous number, and will hopefully be more manageable than what I've been trying to do this last month. Then with any luck I'll have some time to get back to basics, work on stories I feel like working on, and finishing my portfolio site. Thank you guys for reading and for bearing with me. I'm going through a rough patch, but I'll get back on the ball eventually. I hope. (This was supposed to be a play on the term "Krampusnacht" but I'm feeling really insecure about whether or not people will get it. I'm far too tired to attempt cleverness.)
There aren't really a lot of updates for me to give you...which I guess is why I haven't been on. Today I missed the deadline for a Krampus story that I've been working on all summer, and that kind of sucked. The story wasn't really going anywhere so it's good I didn't submit but it is sad. My productivity hasn't been the best lately. I think I know why but I'm not really going to get into it. In any case, I'm going to put good old Krampus back on the shelf for now and see if I can't write something worthwhile for a different anthology or zine or site or something. It's worth a shot, right? I have been really terrible updates, for which I apologize. This does not however mean that I have been idle.
In the past month since I have been writing like crazy, working on short stories to be considered for various horror zines and anthologies, promoting stuff and networking. I also entered a ton of contests and worked on some really exciting exercises. It was a crazy month, but I got through it and I feel pretty good. Now it's time to, well, keep at it I suppose - but also to do a better job keeping you guys updated about how it's going. On the agenda for tonight I'm going to do a little project research for a Krampus-related story I'm working on, edit the comic script for this month's issue of Toxic Bubblegum, and see if I can't get a little portfolio work done after that. Thank you guys for reading and for bearing with me through these long and unexpected absences. -Cat I'm sorry I haven't been on much lately guys. Between working on my big portfolio site update and socializing with other writers, I've been pretty swamped - but I can assure you guys that this site has not been abandoned!
My portfolio site is still my number 1 priority at the moment, I need to get that up and running so I can, you know, start linking it to people and getting my work out there and all that cal. In the meantime just hang tight. I don't think anyone is eagerly waiting at the edge of their seat for updates or anything, but I will be getting to them soon, I promise. Once the site work is out of the way I can get back to actually working on some of my bigger projects again and get back on track in regards to my publication mission. Thank you guys for your patience! -Cat So, I am feeling a ton better after taking a day off. I feel refreshed and I even got a full 8 hours of sleep last night. Now to get back to the enormous list of things to do.
My portfolio site is still going really slowly. That being said, I have made some progress. I have set up most of my links so that when the title of a sample is clicked it takes you to the corresponding sample page (and all the text now matches my color scheme.) That took a surprisingly long time to set up. It's still mostly filler text and all that is actually on the sample pages is the layout for where stuff will go when I have it up (which I don't yet....) but still, it's some progress. I'm working on it. So here's what I'm working on today:
And that's about it. It doesn't seem like a lot but I imagine it will be enough to keep me busy pretty much all day. So I'm going to run off and get started on all of that. I will let you guys know if I have any site breakthroughs or anything exciting happens. Thanks as always for checking out the site. -Cat Hey guys!
I'm sort of proud of myself today. I've done a really good job getting work done and tackling issues as they come up, I've been very productive for the last 12 hours with only very short breaks to go pick up food. The portfolio site is still a giant mess because it's going to take a lot longer to format than I would have hoped. but even with a ton of setbacks I got all the basic layout formatting done today, if not all of the linking. There's still a ton of stuff to do obviously, but I made lots of progress. Around all of that I managed to do the final edit for a piece I've been trying to finish on and off for the last couple weeks, just in time to get it sent in for anthology consideration. I know that it's going to get rejected. That's not pessimistic-Cat talking either, it's just sort of a fact. It's technically an open call but they're looking for more established writers and they're pretty hardcore. I like reading graphic horror stories as much or more than the next girl (and probably more than is healthy) but I'm not great at writing them. I'm probably going to have the tamest submission out of all of them, and there are probably editors laughing and saying "how cute" about my story as I type this. Still though, it's good practice for me, which is why I submitted the story even though I know it's not going to make it in. I'm getting in the habit of formatting my stories in a specific way, of writing submission emails, taking risks, and sometime between now and September when I get a response I will be getting some much needed practice at being rejected - which I have been known not to handle well and I know I'll have to experience a lot of in the coming years. Plus, they allow simultaneous submissions - which means that I can go ahead and send the story into somewhere that is more likely to consider it (and I have a few of those places lined up as it happens.) I'm taking tomorrow off work - it will be the first time that I've not worked for a long time. I feel like I've earned it. When I get back I shall be sure to get some linking (and if I make it far enough, uploading) done on the portfolio site. Then I get to start work on next week's submissions. I remember when I thought writing for myself full time was going to be less stressful than my ghost-writing job. It's funny how wrong I was. I'm working harder than ever and so far I've made a total of about $73 off of original content. I don't quite recall why I thought this would be a good idea... But anyway, financial crisis aside, I do feel like I'm making progress and for the first time in my life I'm sort of staying on track and keeping at it. That's the part that I'm choosing to focus on today. Anyway, thanks for reading. I'll be sure to let you guys know how it goes when I see you tomorrow or Tuesday. -Cat |
Chapter 16 BlogJust a place for me to give updates on my work and mission of publication. Archives
February 2018
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