Holy shit. Half the year is gone already. More.
It is times like this I think back on the year and wonder why I haven’t lost five kilograms, or learned 
Kung-Fu, or sufficiently explained to my 3-year-old the importance of him becoming an astronaut.
After these three things my mind turns to writing goals and how they are tracking. To be blunt, I’m not quite where I want to be.
This year I’ve:
- Made 20 short story submissions, for 15 rejections, 4 pending, and 1 acceptance (to Interzone).
- Submitted 4 stories for re-print; 3 have been rejected.
- Made 10 submissions for translation, for 1 acceptance (to Galaxies Science-Fiction). I haven’t heard from the rest. The translation acceptance is a first for me and a bright spot in an otherwise
underwhelming six months. Galaxies S-F is a very good French magazine and I’m pleased to be getting a gig there.
Overall I’m underperforming against my goals for 2015, which are:
- Six new short stories written (2 finished so far, 1 in draft)
- Two new Novellas (completed a novel instead, for an equivalent amount of words)
- 50 Submissions (at 20 I’m short).
- Four short story acceptances (one professional) (I’m at 1), and
- One other sale (novel or novella) (currently at zero)
The ten submissions to foreign markets were all in one hit, just a weekend or two ago. It’s an embuggerance to do all the research, draft all the cover letters and get all the stories out to each publication’s specifications, but an embuggerance worth undertaking.
This wasn’t on my list of goals, so I’m glad I did it. Now I’ve done all the research, it will be quicker 
and easier in the future (I recommend this site for a good list of foreign markets). At one point during my research I wondered: “does it really fucking matter if I have something translated to Estonian,” but in the end figured it couldn’t hurt. I’m just buying more tickets in the writing lottery, hoping one day a hundred thousand Estonians will turn around and buy my book.
As mentioned above, I finished the draft of a novel this year (a kind of necessary requirement when trying to be an author). Unfortunately my beta-readers tell me I have to re-write about 30% of it (at least) and I tend to agree with them. Now, anyway. I was pretty happy with it right up until the best-selling author and award-winning author who read it said it was mainly a pile of shite. So a bit of work to do there.
Writers of the Future
My major writerly event for the first half of the year was travelling to LA for the Writers of the Future workshop and ceremony. I could have done without the 3-hour ceremony, although I do cut a fine figure in a purple-on-purple dress shirt / tie ensemble.
The workshop was interesting. Dave Farland and Tim Powers led the discussions for most of the week, and were an entertaining, enlightening duo. The likes of Nancy Kress, Eric Flint, Rob Sawyer and Sean Williams were also very interesting and informative. In fact all the speakers were useful, with the possible exception of Orson Scott Card, who stood around for forty five minutes calling everyone in the world ‘idiots.’
I got on very well with the other 11 winners who attended. We didn’t have enough free time together – there was a plethora of extra-curricular activities put on by the organisers I could have done without – but the time we spent hanging out was good fun.
It’s quite unusual for me, living in Vietnam, to be able to spend so much time around talented geeks, and I valued it greatly. The Competition isn’t perfect, but damn if it doesn’t present an invaluable opportunity for the unknown writer.
The Next Six
Lessons learned from the past six months? Well. Novels are fucking hard, that’s one. There are way
too many talented writers out there, for another. Leave no stone unturned in the search for sales, that’s three; a seafood platter doesn’t mix well with a half-dozen White Russians, for four.
The big take away lesson from the Writers of the Future workshops was this: going to conventions in the US can help your career. While the big-name writers who spoke to us disagreed on a lot of things, on this point they were pretty much unanimous.
I see this angle in poker terms. In poker, as in writing, there are a lot of very skilled players who know all the fundamentals and understand how the industry works. But being skilled and well-versed in poker theory is not enough to make you a winning player: you also need to accumulate small edges.
Being physically fit, knowing when to quit a game, and having an even temperament – these are all examples of edges. Edges like these mean that two players of exactly the same skill and experience level will often find themselves on different sides of the win / loss register.
For a writer, living in the US is an edge, as is having enough money to attend US conventions. This is not a whinge about privilege: this is a simple statement of fact. The US is the biggest and most lucrative market for science-fiction in the world. If an Australian can’t make it there, they probably can’t make a living writing (unless they manage to crack Japan, or find some sort of pan-European popularity).
Living in Vietnam is an edge insofar as it provides a fantastic amount of raw material for my writing. I use that and I use it well. But being so far from connectedness with the US is something I don’t have a lot of ways to remedy.
The WotF workshop was a start. At some point I’d love to attend a WorldCon. That would be pretty sweet. I’d much prefer the annual Star Trek convention in Vegas, as that kills two birds with one stone for me. But career-wise any of the large US writer’s conventions is on my radar.
Not something I can attend to in the next six months, however. The next six months I’m going lose five kilograms, learn jujitsu, and drink a lot of White Russians. At least one of those three, anyway.
