Another year...

Let me wish all my readers a happy new year. I hope 2012 brings you all you would wish for. I even hope it brings all you wish for other people. I'm guessing that's mainly good things...

Me? Well, I've been busy planning. Ask me what I should be doing on, for example, October 17th at 20:30. Go on, ask!

I'm glad you asked. I should be about 70% through writing a query letter and crafting a synopsis for a novel entitled "Innocent Error".

You see, this is the year I get rid of the backlog.

A less anal person might look at some items in their backlog and delete them. Chalk it up to experience and move on. Fragments (oh, yes, I have many fragments) might, rarely, be slated for completion. More likely, they will be ditched. That first book they wrote will garner a fond smile before being burned. It served its purpose as a training exercise. Now it can be forgotten. This sensible, efficient writer will be focused on the future. They are going to produce one novel and twelve short stories this year, all of which will be rewritten, edited, sent out to beta readers, tweaked, honed and given a final polish before being submitted. All of them. A work, once started, will be completed and sent off.

I salute this efficient, unsentimental, effective writer. I wish them well.

I'm not doing that. Oh, no. I'm going through the entire backlog: rewriting, editing, gaining critiques, honing, polishing...

All of them.

I will start 2013 with no backlog. All my works to date will be out there, fighting for attention and sales. That's five novels, four screenplays and three anthologies of short stories. I can just about finish them all, go through the entire production process, submit them to carefully chosen agents - having regard for location, genre, other clientele and general suitability - and maintain a database of submissions. I should submit the last novel on December 30th, just short of midnight. I can look at the database on 31st December 2012 with a degree of smugness.

A sceptical reader might think - oh, poor dear. He's got writer's block. No new ideas, can't face the blank page anymore.

Not at all. I have plots for two more novels, two screenplays and ideas for about 130 other works stored away. I like to say they're maturing nicely. If past experience is anything to go by (and let's face it, at my age, past experience is frequently all I have to go by) I will generate another twenty or thirty good ideas this year.

Talking of past experience, all my hard-earned knowledge of plans and schedules tells me this plan will last perhaps one week before something happens to throw everything off track. Timetables will go awry, word counts will be hopelessly lacking, I'll have to face change of job, bereavement, moving house and the complete demise of Western society as we know it. Ah well, no change there.

Which is why I've restricted my New Year's resolutions to these three:

• I will submit two different novels to agents this year
• I will submit two different screenplays to agents this year
• I will self-publish one anthology of linked short stories

I like the ambiguity. About fifty percent of theoretical maximum output, and I don't specify which novels, screenplays and anthology. Because I know in one year's time, I'll be writing:
  
"I will start 2014 with no backlog. All my works to date will be out there..."

Until the next time - enjoy!

Muddy waters - suitable for bottom feeders

This is a comment I've just left on The Write Agenda (TWA) website.

What, so all these well-respected literary figures and organizations are engaged in smear and hate campaigns against the rip-off guys and the vanity publishers? Hard to believe. I quote from nielsenhayden.com - April 19th this year:

"Word to the wise: a new outfit calling itself The Write Agenda has been taking potshots at Victoria Strauss, Ann Crispin, our own Jim Macdonald, Absolute Write, Writer Beware, Preditors and Editors, SFWA, Atlanta Nights, and other entities that give newbie writers helpful information about the scams and nogoodniks that prey on them."

So Preditors and Editors and the Science Fiction Writers of America - organizations that are legendary for the impartial, disinterested and unstinting help they give to authors, would-be authors and newcomers - are biased and inaccurate when they adversely comment about Publish America and Author House?

I don't think so.

The fact that the people behind The Write Agenda choose to remain anonymous is enough to convince me this site is an attempt by a combine of sharks to muddy the waters enough they can still continue feeding off their innocent, gullible and needy prey.

This comment posted at 12:29 BST, August 5th 2011. Let's see how long it remains up here and what response it gets.

I've personal experience of some of the authors and organizations TWA is attacking. I've found them, without exception, to be thoughtful, honest, helpful and impartial. They have not attempted to charge me fees or rip me off in any way. They have not attempted to sell me anything.

TWA haven't attempted to sell me anything either. They have, however, attempted to dissuade me, with one star reviews, from purchasing the books of several authors whose work I admire.

They gave one star to a collaborative anthology called Menage-a-20. I'm one of the authors in that anthology. My work is far better than one star. All the authors in there are better than one star. Many of them have in the past attacked Publish America and Author House for their dubious practices.

Coincidence they get one star?

Probably not.

And before you say that reviews are a matter of personal taste, I'd like to point out a fact: there are thirty stories in Menage. They encompass a wide variety of styles, themes and genres. Surely they can't all offend the reviewer's tastes?

But don't take my word for the quality of the stories. Download the anthology. Check it out for yourself. It's free. Then check out the reputation of the authors in the anthology.

Decide for yourself who you'd rather believe.