The Month Where I Hacked & Slashed
Productive Mary wasn't as productive as she set out to be in April.
Blame it on the fact that one of my new WIPs is horror-bordering-on-sci-fi. I’ve never written sci-fi. I feel uneducated about sci-fi. Hence, I think I felt a bit intimidated and let that hold me back.
So the decision now is – do I keep the sci-fi aspect or can the story work with it being only “slightly” futuristic? Near-future, if you will. I'd rather do what I’m good at than take a risk with something that doesn't measure up. Hopefully, I can work out the kinks this month. I’m thinking it will take more karate-chopping than gentle persuasion.
I’m also a bit bummed I haven’t been able to work on my mini collection of self-published shorts. Or my novels. Apparently, I need to clone myself if I want to do it all.
Either way, I've got 2 shorts on the go for May, plus 2 rough outlines for the 1st volume of the mini collection. And that’s paring down my WIP list to what’s doable…
Total Words Written This Month: 11224
Stories Started: 1
Stories Finished: 2 old, 0 new
Acceptances: 0
Rejections: 0
Stories In Submission: 4
Pertaining to the above: tattoos, ghosts, sacrifice, an asylum, the Grim Reaper, nightmares, mysterious cures, small towns (no surprises there!), 17th century, ritual, scrapbooking, jealousy, a priest.
What I’m reading:
- Chilling Tales and Shadows & Tall Trees Issue 1 (thanks Cate!)
- a billion eBooks I need to get to
Discover more from MaryRajotte.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Always remember, just compare your productivity to mine, and you’ll feel *much* better. 😉
Once school’s out, I imagine you’ll make up for lost time!
There’s hard scifi, where you have to actually know what you’re talking about.
I’ve got a novel coming out in a month or so that I describe as marshmallow soft scifi. I share some of your worries. I don’t know what the reception will be by people who expect actual science in their science fiction.
That’s exactly it. But I guess if we never push ourselves, we can never grow as writers.
Won’t stop my from biting my nails, though.
I was weirded out by my first sci-fi too. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but oh god, I psyched myself out for it…
Those self-imposed boundaries, huh? Maybe I need to channel Miss Write and break through the wall with my shit-kickers! 😉
I love dark sci-fi so I say go for it.
Maybe I just found my 1st beta reader…
🙂
Some of the best sci-fi I’ve read has more to do with imagination than facts. Besides, if there’s anything too terribly egregious that violates any number of Clarion guidelines or laws of known physics, that’s what editing and subsequent drafts are for. 🙂