1.  2" 3-ring binder filled with sheets pertaining to Character, Settings, Plot Throughlines, Individual Scenes, Scene-by-Scene Timeline, a growing Things to Research list, Day-by-Day/Scenes-per-Chapter & POV Outline, a general High-Points Outline and a Detailed Outline. (Whew! Yeah I completed all those)

2.  A second 2" 3-ring binder filled with print outs of Dramatica Pro reports about my novel. The reports detail the motivations and changes my Protagonist, Antagonist, and Impact Character exhibit throughout the course of the story; and the Plot and Theme elements of my story. (Sweet!)

At this point, Dramatic Pro is becoming tedious ~ even with the printouts. I’ve found the at-you-fingertips sheets suggested by the 1st Draft method to be a more workable system. Dramatica Pro is database compiled and driven. Both are easy to update and change since both reside inside the computer.

3.  AND, thanks to the 1st Draft method, I now have a completed and polished Chapter 1. (Yipee!  A real coup for me, given my proclivity of being easily distracted.)

Then Kay Patterson called me up to chat.

She congratulated me on my progress.  (She’s working on her own novel and is a chapter or two a head of me. But unlike me, she’s just plain busy.) Anyhow, she then asks me how my Chapter 1 stats stack up. My what? Again she asks how my Readability and Pacing Scores match up to the desired scores of a first chapter with an Opening Hook. Again I’m speechless, struck utterly dumb (dumb as in stupid).

Of course, overseeing mother that she is, Kay explained and enlightened me.

Guess what?

My nice, completed and polished Chapter 1 fell way short of Hook Pacing and Readability Potential. UGH!

At least, Kay was kind enough to listen to me relate the specifics of my opening scenes. Then she graciously instructed me on how I could tweak my sentence structure and opening scenes to heighten the chapter’s Wow factor score. She also admonished me for not noting the nice little sticky-note bookmarks she had so sagely placed in the copy of The Writer’s Little Helper book by James V. Smith, Jr. she sent me two months ago. Bad me. Stupid me.

But now I’m enlightened, and after two evening of tweaking and review the stats, I’m back to having a completed and polished First Chapter ~ with good pacing and a hook!

Thanks Kay. Oh, and be sure to check out Kay’s Blog on AlienSkinMag.com for details on desirable Readability Scores and the Pacing of Scenes.

So what did I do?

Naturally, I surfed the Net. What better way is there for a blocked writer to obtain inspiration ~ don’t answer that, I know the Internet is not even on the bottom of the top 20 Ways to Remove Writer’s Block list.

But I surfed and I found a treasure horde of Name Generators!

You’re gonna love these. There are name generators for Being/Alien Species, Organization, Superheroes, Technology, Medieval Street NNames, Eqyptian Names

Check these out:

Seventh Sanctum

Fantasy Name Generator

Fantasy Lands

Squid.org

Serendipity

The Forge

As writers, it is our job to wow our readers and to offer them a respite from their everyday, often very drab, lives by providing them with a new world or moment to explore through our fiction. Novel writing aside (and yes, I've put it aside again to embrace writing more short fiction), it is even more important for us short fiction writers to hone our skills in creating scenarios where our readers can glean a glimpse of what it would be like to live or work someplace else or to be someone else. This means we have to be consciously aware of creating characters outside the norm or the average person. We have to move away from the average setting, the average accouterments of the stereotypical livelihood, residence, family life, etc., and offer readers a new experience.

For instance, if I'm writing for a publication that is mainly sold in the US, I might set my story in Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia. I might write about a character with a profession or problem unique to that local, and I would sprinkle in terminology of that location, to enhance my reader's experience. I'm sure you get the picture.

Unfortunately, as a reader, I most often encounter short stories that might possess a unique plot but feature mundane locales and a typical main character that could be even me.

While these stories are indeed getting published, they lack the wow power for me as a reader. So as a writer, now one who is delving into short works, I've challenged myself to stretch my story ideas into new directions. I spice things up as I mentioned above. While this is proving fun, it is also proving to have its own unique challenge because one can not just fall back on settings and information I've gained from watching movies, TV, or my travel experience to make my 'new settings and characters' come alive to my readers. Nor can I, or any other writer I know, jet right over to the location we want to write about. And there's where the mini research comes in.

being a natural-born and quite avid procrastinator, I've spend not hours but months honing my skill at snooping around the Web for pictures and information on the places or things I want to write about. I've also obtain quite a few Writer's Digest books on Places, Careers, and Lingo.

What's also nice about this compilation of resources I now have at my fingertips and in my 'Favorites' folder is that they are also useful in my novel writing.

For short stories though, you don't need much. You don't want to inundate readers with too much mumbo-jumbo and foreign words, names or places. They'll get distracted from the story and you'll failed to maintain their interest ~ as well as the interest of an editor.

Great References Books Must Haves:

Writer's Guide to Places by Don Prues and Jack Heffron, features places in North America & Canada

Eyewitness Travel Guide to Europe by Dan Colwell, a marvelous inside look at cities and provinces in 20 European countries, with color and aerial photos, maps, etc.

Careers for your Characters by Raymond Obstfeld, features information and jargon of 101 professions from Architecture to Zookeeper.
 

Emboldened, by the exaltations of my wife and family members (no, I didn’t submit any of the tales to my writers group. Dumb I know), I submitted the stories to a handful of worthy markets.

Like you, and every other writer, I waited and waited; religiously checked my email twice, thrice, six times a day for over a month and...

Wham! Bing, bing. Zip.

In came the rejection emails!

Oh the pain! Oh the shame!

They were form rejections for the most part.  I shunnd my broom-closet.  Refused to peek at my email account.

The I got one little gem from an editor that almost mad me cry.  It wasn't an acceptance letter, but it was so kind.

The longest tale I had sent out, a dark fantasy piece of 2,200 words, garnered a kind response from an editor who took the time to write:

'I really liked this story. We pondered it and tried to fit it in, but in the end, we felt it just didn’t match up with the other tales in the anthology. But do try us again. There's still time to send us something else.  We really liked your storytelling style. Your narrative voice and empathy for the main character, Nick, really sucked us in. Well, done.'

~ sniffle, sniffle ~ I actually printed the email out and pinned it to the red IKEA bulletin board on my closet wall.

Kay’s advice to me:

'Snap out of it! Review your stories, read ‘em out loud, tweak ‘em and send them out again to another market. Buck up, Philly. (She’s the only one who calls me Philly).  You'll sell a few of them, I'm sure of it.  Keep trying.'

So that’s what I’ve been do the past few weeks. Rereading and tweaking.  It's also my excuse as to why I haven’t posted anything on my blog for June. I was pouting.  Alright, I admit it. I wallowed in self pity, watched baseless TV, downed a six pack over a period of 3 weeks (I hate beer), then I crawled back into my broom-closet and printed out each tale to read and edit them.

Now I’m back. I’m jittery, knowing 10 of my tales are out there, knowing they may bring me more rejections; but my hide has thickened, my bruises have healed. I’m ready to take what ever the editors hit me with, though, please, please I pray it'll be more niceness if not a sale!

The moral to this blubbering:

Hey, if I can Buck Up, Regroup, Revise, and Resubmit -- so Can YOU!

And for those of you that are equally crushed by a simple rejection letter:

I feel your pain. Been there, done that. Hated it!

Once bitten by the creative bug though I couldn't shake the fever.  I typed up sic of those micro-fiction stories Kay had told us about.  Of those, I sent out four.  Then I tried the fib poem thing and I liked it.  I didn't get hooked on writing poems, but I do like the conciseness of micro-fiction writing.  It really challenges you to consider your word choices, making you strive to select words that will evoke a clear and vivid image in the reader's mind.  I found myself consciously reviewing my 120 word story after I've written in, while I was watching TV that night and when I was at work the next day, wondering if I had chosen the right words or if I could've described something another way.  I reworked one of the stories once.  Changed only a couple of words in two others.  Then I sent four of the mini stories out.  I didn't feel the plots of the two others were strong enough for publication, but I liked the stories.

Guess we'll wait and see what happens.  My family is still in shock.

But I did it.

With the use of my new, handy-dandy Write It Now software I actually outlined, plotted and wrote two entirely complete tales. Marketable tales mind you. Not merely rough drafts. I did those too. It took me about a week of outlining and brainstorming to plot out each story, then another week each to draft out the story. By then, I was needing some time away from the tight confines of my tiny broom closet work space, so I took a week off. I read some AlienSkin submissions, watched some god-awful movies on TV. I surfed the net for mindless stuff, like bikini babes, beauties in the wild, beauties in lace on linen, etc. That kind of stuff. I took the wife to dinner. Took the kids to Chuckie Cheese and to a cartoon movie at the Cineplex. I snoozed, ate junk food, downed a Yingling or two . . . or three.

Then I got the urge to write again. Yep, I did. It wasn’t THE urge to work on the novel again, but it was a urge to revisit the two short stories I had recently whipped up. So I slipped back into my closet, tapped my pinup girl on the fanny as I closed the closet door, and I pulled up the first story. I reread it, made some edits, formatted it and moved it out of my Work-In-Progress folder to my newly created Short Story folder. Finito.

Story two took three days to revamp and complete. But it too advanced to the new folder.

One story weighed in at 1,000 words exactly and the other breached 1,500 words. Not novella lengths by any means. But they mean I can scan the markets and get my name out there before editors again. Wahoo.

I’ll let you know how it goes once I send them out to markets this week.

AlienSkin Magazine’s senior editor, Kay Patterson, introduced me to it, and got me hooked.

I use it for my short stuff. It’s basic, no frills. Totally unlike Dramatica Pro in that regard.

Writers who prefer to outline their stories first before they write them would find this little program nifty.

And though it doesn’t have all the bells & whistles of Dramatica Pro, it also helps be brainstorm and gives that infernal itch to sit in a chair and write.

Price? A mere $39 bucks. Yep, it’s cheap. But it’s actually pretty good.

Without the bells and whistles I tend to procrastinate less and write more. Hum...

For years the only software I had found minimally helpful was a program that calculated readability. I don’t me like those found in Word Perfect or MSWord. This software package spit out a full page report. I can’t remember the name of it, and laughably it was DOS based and loaded from a floppy disk ~ no not the huge floppy disk of old, but a 1.44MB disk none the less.

Today, I while away hours toying with my novel writing software ~ which I also utilize for the occasional short stories I write.

I’m hooked on Dramatica Pro. I bought it new but at a reduced rate through Amazon.com. And it took me months to master the basics of it ~ but only because I’m a procrastinator don’t y’know.

Dramatica Pro’s nearly everything I could ask for in a writing program. It helps me analyze my characters, my plot, subplot, story theme; it helps me build tension and supplies me with plenty of well-known example stories to help me along.

As I answer its myriad of questions, it actually builds a useable synopsis of my story.

It even helps me brainstorm ideas, showing me chart-wise how my overall story changes when I rearrange character wants and roles, etc.

The only things it doesn’t do is dammit is write my novel! And it doesn’t talk to me.

For short stories you would answer about 50 questions versus the 200+ questions for novel length fiction.

I find when I use it, when I re-read the chart notations or review my notes for each character, new insights pop into my head or the itch to write some of the story strikes. Which, for a procrastinating writer like me, is a good thing!

New the program will cost you anywhere from $199.00 to $250.00. A big investment if your a newbie writer or more into short stories. But you can also find used copies (Make Sure the Used Package Comes With Accompanying Book and chart) occasionally on Amazon.com or in your local Half-Priced Books.

I have to lean back, turn on my lava lamp ~ wait for it to heat up and start blobbing ~ before I even turn my computer on. Once I do press the power button, I bounce my bobble-body hula girl and watch her wiggle around, while the pc is booting.

Then I spend another 20-40 minutes checking my email, checking AlienSkin’s incoming Submissions email, responding to newbie writers who submit improperly, I printing out whatever new subs from AlienSkin Magazine does get, staple those and flip them into the in-bin on my desk, then I surf the new bizarro clips on You-Tube for a quick chuckle.

Then, once the pc is up and I’ve opened Word, I spend another 15 minutes re-reading the dripple I wrote the day or week before.

So it’s typically a hour or so after I sit place my butt in the chair that I can even contemplate what I might write in that sitting.

I do keep a basic outline of the novels and short stories I’m working on (2 novels and 4 short stories at the moment), so I peruse those. They, and my mood, help me decide what I’ll be working on that session.

Today, it happened to be ‘Short Story Day’. I just wasn’t focused enough to deal with completing or starting a new chapter in either of my books, and the kids and Jen were due home from visiting Granny’s in about 3 hours, so my writing time would be short--or split between now and later tonight, once the kids were in bed.

Unlike novel writing, I don’t need to rely on reference books, my inspirational photo folder, mood music, or hand notes for short story writing. All I generally require is a title and my Story Ideas Notebook.

My Story Ideas Notebook, is just that. A battered 3 subject notebook in which I tend to jot down basic story ideas as they pop into my head during the week or month, etc. Sometimes these notes are just a story title I thought was cool, and sometimes these notes could be 2 or more pages long depending on how much of the idea had come to me while I was driving, while I was showering, napping, etc.

All writers have them.

Ages ago, I use to scribble notes on whatever paper was handy at the time-- a napkin, the coaster beneath my beer, a blank deposit slip from my check book, etc. Back then, I never carried a notebook anywhere. Now I keep one in the bathroom, on the headboard shelf of our bed, on the coffee table in the family room, and in the car caddie of my Taurus.

All these ‘mini notebooks’ get copied monthly into my ‘Official Story Idea Notebook’. Not a big task, since most of the notebooks may not have a note or may only have a brief entry or two.

Fortunately for me, I’ve already done the ‘perusal of the Story Idea Notebook and have 4 short stories in progress. So all I have to do now is select which on of my tales I want to work on--basically, which story strikes my fancy today.

So what will it be today?

The Fingers of Wu ~ Fantasy/Horror

Blow Out, Blow Up ~ another Humorous Fantasy

Cave In ~ Supernatural Horror

A Sudden Chill in July ~ Horror

Of those, I feel I can settle into Blow Out, Blow Up quite easily.

Now, as I open the Blowout file, I have exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes to write in peace.

Then I realize I’m thirsty. I head for the fridge, craving a tall glass of orange soda on ice. Of course I hit the can first.

Now back in my chair. I have a good hour to kill. So I start re-reading the page I completed last.

Two minutes later, I start typing. I settle in.

In an hour I finished 2 pages. I nuked 2 slices of pizza. Gobbled those down between sips of orange soda, then resumed.

Another hour later, I head the garage door open signaling Jen and the kids are home.

With 1 more page completed, and with my creative juices flowing. I hang my ‘Do Not Disturb Daddy’ picture on the out doorknob of my broom closet office and continue typing.

They have been revamped by Writer’s Digest with new spiffy covers, but their interior content has remained the same in their reprinting.

I was lucky enough to snatch up these babies when they were initially published. They are truly Indispensable Must Haves.

They are the Writer’s Digest Books:  Elements of Fiction Writing series on fiction writing.

~ A Complete Series of 6 Books ~

1. Beginnings, Middles, & Endings

2. Character & Viewpoint

3. Conflict, Action & Suspense

4. Description

5. Plot

6. Scene & Structure

And there you have it. The last of my Indispensable Reference Books.

As you may have guessed (and this is particularly true about most writers, novelist and otherwise) that reference book reading is indeed a major distract for procrastinating little ol’ me. But at least it is an educational one, that helps me to improve my chances at writing publishable stories.

But these books are top notch, packed with invaluable information that is both useful and easy to employ in any writing project: flash, short story, novel.

I also categorize these as part of my Inspirational Stuff too. I certainly can’t write without them being within arms reach.

On my new 3-tier shelf, they definitely sit on the top shelf.

These books are:

1. Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe,
     by George Ochoa & Jeffrey Osier

2. World Building, by Stephen L. Gillett & edited by Ben Bova

3. Aliens & Alien Societies, by Stanley Schmidt
    & edited by Ben Bova

4. Space Travel, by Anthony R. Lewis & Edited by Ben Bova

5. Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Crawford Kilian

 

But the only ones I deemed Indispensable and carted down to my closet office were these:

1. The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, by Evan Marshall

2. The Novel Writer’s Toolkit, by Bob Mayer

3. 1st Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner

4. Novelist’s Boot Camp, by Todd A. Stone

 

The above are in no particular order. They’re all good, and I highly recommend them to anyone serious about starting a novel.

Me, I have 3. Three that I hold dear, and Must Have near to me at all times when I write. And only 1 of these relates to writing my preferred genres Science Fiction & Fantasy writing.

I have a hell of a lot more How-Tos on general fiction writing and on writing short stories.

But only 3 How-Tos that have proven effective for me. These 3 indispensable books are, in the order I’ve deem of importance:

   #1 How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card

   #2 How To Tell A Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales,
          by Peter Rubie & Gary Provost

   #3 How To Write A Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass

I’ve toted down milk crate loads of my reference and resource books ~ only the ones I’ve deemed my Indispensable Tomes: the How-To Write a Novel books, the You Can books, the Writer’s Digest collection of Plot, Scene, Character, Setting, etc.

I spend a half day haunting our local Office Max, Walmart, and IKEA looking for a short 3-tier shelf that would fit a long the back wall of my limited cube space. I found one, put it together and crammed it full of my handy-dandy, well-worn tomes.

The one deep-set shelf, an inherent component of the utility closet’s design, was already filled with my Inspirational Stuff. The items that fuel my imagination and provide me with a creative atmosphere in which to work. My: Static Ball-Holding Bronze Buddha, fearsome impeccably-detailed hand-painted Ceramic Green Dragon, large-eyed Alien Skull, gruesome-looking rubber Shrunken Heads with realistic hair and stitched eyes & lips, small Bobble-Body Hawaiian Hula Girl Lamp, replica of Mutant Conjoined Twins statue, and ceramic Croc Creature with bloody teeth.

It took me several hours juts to pick out the right calendar and Science Fiction/Space prints to adorn my three remaining walls ~ I snuck a Maxim Swimsuit Calendar into my inner sanctum and pinned it up on the inside of my closet door.

Adding my own little touches got my creative juices flowing. The kids loved watching daddy flick on and off the little Hula girl lamp and make my pair of shrunken heads jiggle.

The only question Jen asked after watching all of this was: Did you getting any writing done?

Nah.

At first, I felt hurt, slighted.  After all, I supported her creative interests. I help her spool yarn, twirling skein after skein of colored cotton threads, nodding off at the monotony of the task, while she wrapped and swirled the line I fed her into a large ball.  I hide my head beneath my pillow some nights while she reads her lovey-dovey books by Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, and a horde of pseudo-romance writers, allowing her that simple luxury.  I hold my tongue while she plucks her so-called ‘bargains’ from shopping bags when she returns from sating her urge to hunt through the sales racks at our local mall.

So why can’t I spend my nights writing at my computer while everyone else is asleep or when I come home from work and have some down time to expend?

Well, naturally, I had over-reacted.

I should’ve known, Jen, would never crush my aspirations to finish my SF novel ~ not so overtly anyway.  I should’ve trusted my intuitive and good-natured wife, even though she has systematically booted me and my pc out of the family room, the dining room, and from the desk in our bedroom where I had been doing my writing amongst the family.

But Jen’s’ nesting instinct had kicked in, and although she may have wanted me out of the bedroom so she could drift off to sleep easier without the constant glare of my pc monitor, she had found me the perfect sanctuary in which to write.

She had prepared my haven for me while I was at work, and revealed it to me after dinner.

I knew something was up.  During dinner the kids kept grinning at me, bobbing their heads up and down while they chewed their fish sticks.  Both of them and Jen kept hold of their secret though.

She scooted the kids off to the family room to watch TV while she lead me over to the utility closet at that back of the kitchen.  We called it the broom closet since it held our vacuum, rug scubber, floor mops, extra can goods, and stacked boxes of assorted junk that we hadn’t gotten around to tossing out or toting over to the Goodwill drop off center.

I figured she wanted me to fetch her something for her that was wedge at the back of the closet, or she had found some mess I had that she wanted me to vacuum up.  But I was wrong on both accounts, and shocked to see my computer desk and pc all set up inside the closet.

To some the closet would be a pantry.  It was wide and deep, heated by three interior walls, and shared one wall with our attached garage. And the lighting wasn’t bad.

Jen must’ve gotten her bother or our neighbor Hal to unhook my pc and lug my desk downstairs. Maybe she enlisted both of their help.  I don’t know, I was too stunned to ask her.

It took me a good ten minutes to recover from my initial internal reaction of childish disappointment.  Then I noticed the soft plush carpet, the nifty IKEA bought lamp shade she had gotten for the previously bare light bulb that had lighted the room, and the spongy cushion for my chair.  I smiled.

"You like it, hon?" she asked like an excited school girl.

The spot was perfect.  Quiet, secluded, close to the coffee-maker, fridge and downstairs bathroom. It was roomy enough for me to tilt my chair back and stretch.  She had even plugged in my CD player and cellphone charger.  I could envision it as my little slice of heaven.

"Of course."  I told her.  The smile on my face was genuine and wide.

What serious writer wouldn’t?

So here I sit, in the broom closet.  Typing away.