m. c. de marco

As part of being back on the wagon, I wrote a new story this week and submitted it to Writers of the Future—-at 11:50pm Thursday night, thanks to their new online submissions policy. Today I finally got around to logging it and my NaNoWriMo novel in my giant writing spreadsheet, and I noticed that I’d gone over the million word mark back on November 30th. Since I started writing in the summer of 2001, I also managed to do the whole thing in just under 10 years.

I hesitate to call it a novel, but I have limped over the finish line with about 50,100 words. In NaNoWriMo terms I think I blew a knee this time. I did not hit my all-time high daily word count (8,000 or so, I think) but I did do a couple of days of 6,666 words at the last minute. Maybe next year I’ll pace myself better.

In preparation for the upcoming month of procrastination and cat-vacuuming, I skimmed through my favorite NaNoWriMo forum last night, NaNo Technology, and found the usual topics—including how to make a map for your fantasy novel on your Mac.

It’s that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month, better known to us hoary veterans as NaNoWriMo or just NaNo. This will be my ninth year, and, Muse willing, my ninth victory—450,000 words written in Novembers alone.

Charlie Jane Anders reveals 12 Secrets To Being A Super-Prolific Short Story Writer at io9. Unnumbered but still lurking there in the introduction is the classic story-a-week advice. Also of note are secret #6, share one of your worlds with yourself, and #12, write to different markets.

My shortest story yet was published today at Thaumatrope, an sf/f/h twitter fiction magazine. I dimly recall submitting it, apparently in response to a call for steampunk and/or holiday stories, but I figured Bad Elf had killed little Timmy and buried his body in the slush pile.

To submit your own 140 characters of immortal speculative prose, all you need is a twitter account.

I was pointed to A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing via a mailing list. It comes with this handy summary of the past five hundred blog posts. Some of the advice struck me as much deeper than the topic of writing itself:

Know When To Quit

The measure of a human being is what makes them finally give up. The stronger the person, the more they can take.