Friday, December 10, 2010

I've been Asked About Traffic

Yes. Its true, some people are wondering how to get traffic to their own blog.

I'm tired of the emails. Thats really not what I'm about. Good content will bring readers.

If you need something to boost you up in times when you have the block, try this Link Exchange.

5th Short Story Finished for the Year

Finally, I'm complete with my first iteration of 3 short stories. If you just started reading (and I know, I'm sporadic at best); then this was my plan:

Firstly, I would write three short stories, each one focusing on a different part of my writing style that I think I needed to develop.

1) Voice: I wanted to define the mood and overall disposition with which I executed my writing. My voice constantly changes, but has some core fundamental concepts that are 90% of the time, homogeneous in my writing. A friend who read a short story stated that it reminded her of Film Noir. I would like to think that my voice alternates between that, action-intensity, and epic description typical of High Fantasy.

2) Conflict Resolution: More of a technical aspect. I've become better acquainted with myself as a writer. I'm now able to develop a source-sheet for a project, to prevent me from going on tangent, while at the same time, not being restricted to whats down in the outline.

3) Theme: A big one. My work must pass-along a greater message. Something deeper than the text itself, appealing to emotion, deep intellect, or even something more. Very small target, but I think I'm getting there in  my own way.

Then, after this first series of three is complete, I would try to sum them up in one project:

4) A project that tries to combine all aspects of the first three short stories into one.

Following this; I would execute two more projects to tackle stylistic elements that can be attributed to any genre; although I would argue that the result would be a new genre or sub-genre. Both of these style elements are common in my chosen genre(s) [if it can be considered that I have one].

5) Satire. Using humor in my writing to make a social or political statement.

6) Dark. Unfortunately, far too much of my work ends up being 'dark' and my heroes find defeat easier than they do victory. If thats my standard, I shudder to think what my 'dark' is.

And finally, just a 7th project to wrap it all up.

7) Last Project. My choice. Just an open-ended project.

Now that I've finished project #3; I'm going to begin work on the Satire Piece, and maybe start sourcing for Project 4. However, I've had a concept sheet for a novel laid out for about 3 months now, and that is begging of my attention, so I may opt to start it, and work on projects 4, 6, and 7; when writer's block strikes.

Thanks for reading! Now I'm off to mail this to F&SF Magazine. Wish me luck