Professional Writer & Editor
I write and edit ... a lot. It's my all-time everyday oxygen-blood. It is what fuels me. Yes, it's also my work, but writing is the thing I would do even if my career was in some other industry. Creating stories and thinking about them ARE the things I do instead of most other things. But it's also something that doesn't just happen.
Ending July with a bang and kicking off August with two more short story sales, novel query and submission news, and starting my August short story challenge.
On index cards sometimes just on a dry erase board or poster board, writers build a story just by its scenes. Instead of writing it out word by word, they draw or sketch it with images or words. Sometimes it'll just be something as simple as 'The Bad Man Dies' and some sketch of how the scene should look or take place.
I've been spending my time doing a lot of career planning and looking to the future. The question on my mind is: this time next year, where do I want to be? The answers I've been chewing on are the steps and moves I need to make to get to that dream writer-self by July 2023. I do this type of thinking/planning every year and whether or not I get the thing I want, I always end up in a better place than where I started with opportunities crawling out of the woodwork. But how do I build on that to make sure my career and craft are constantly growing?
Learn how to analyze and troubleshoot your novels by organizing them into a spreadsheet to create a cohesive narrative.
I feel like I've been heavy in this cavern of learning and consuming over the past month. I don't think I've made any big sales, though I did hear back about a story being held for further review. Bittersweet news. I hope the story gets accepted, but if it doesn't, it getting held means the story is doing something right.
All about what I've been working on over the past month, including my recent sales to the Washington Post, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and so much more.
I haven't been researching anything exciting for work the past few weeks. My job has me doing a lot of research, but not on anything you fine reader would be interested in reading about. It's all boring business formation and state statures. Exciting to me, but not too many people. So, instead, I'll give you an update on the book process and where I'm at with my editing and nailing down the hard part of the story.
Updates on my query journey, my editing work exploits, takeaways from Futurescapes, and more, like bread pictures.
My process of writing a book in a week and a bit about the horror novella.
Aigner Loren Wilson 