One of my goals is to blog more in 2018, but honestly I hate blogging. Here’s how much I hate it: I hate it so much that I won’t even do it in order to procrastinate actually writing stuff. Usually I will clean the whole house and before finally sitting down to work on my novel/a short story, but I’ll still do it before I write a blog post.

But I am pretty proud of the things I achieved in 2017, proud enough that it outweighs my aversion to talking about myself on the internet.

Short Stories
I had (or, will have) four stories published this year. Back in January my little horror/sci-fi story ‘Goes Both Ways‘ was published in Daily Science Fiction. It took three years and a dozen rejections before this story found a home at DSF, so if you’ve got a story you believe in getting rejected left and right, don’t give up! Keep sending it out!

That said, I do have kind of mixed feelings towards ‘Goes both Ways’ as I wrote it so many years ago. ‘A Seed on The Ground,’ however, I wrote in January of this year. It’s a fantasy flash story about being on the edges of a conflict. I’m really proud of it and am glad to see other people have enjoyed it as well.

I have one more story coming up in Daily Science Fiction this year: on Boxing Day my story ‘Prodigal Daughter’ is due to go out. It features two sisters arguing as a numbers station threatens to tear them apart. I’m really tickled that it’s being published during the holiday season when a lot of people are having their own family dramas (that may or may not involve other-worldly radio stations).

Outside the sf/f genre, I also had a short romance story published.

Reviews
I am all about horror films, so I was happy to share my thoughts on the genre in reviews of ‘Blair Witch‘ (thumbs down) and ‘XX‘ (thumbs up).

Other Stuff
I finished the secondish draft on a 110,000 word fantasy novel. I wrote twenty new short stories (most of them flash, but they still count). In my day job as a freelancer I worked on several manga releases.

Phew! The other thing I hate about blog posts is that they always take more time to write than you expect them to. If you have read this far and are genuinely interested in knowing what I am up to, please follow me on twitter: @shannonLfay. I’m not a majorly prolific tweeter, but I am on there more often than I’m on my own website.

See you all in 2018!

The last week of the 2017 Write-a-Thon! The last blog post about it! Woot! I want to thank my friends who have sponsored me and given money to Clarion West. It really means a lot to me. Thank you.

My goal for the Write-a-Thon was simple: write a set number of words every day. At first the word count goal was 1,000, but when that was too much I shifted the goalposts to 750. Even with that lowered amount there’s still a whole week worth of days where I wrote absolutely nothing (some days I had a good excuse, like when I did a full day of first aid training and came home to a surprise party. Other days not so much). So with this last week of the Write-a-Thon, I’ve temporarily doubled my daily goal to 1,500 words in order to catch up. I’ve been hitting it so far and I really feel like my novel is coming along.

The point of all this boring word count stuff is this: don’t get discouraged if you fail some days, if you fall behind, if you aren’t meeting your own standards. If you keep at it you will get a chance to catch back up.

The Write-a-Thon ends Friday, but in the meantime you can still sponsor me for this last leg of the journey at my write-a-thon page:
https://www.clarionwest.org/members/shannonlfay/

Clarion-West-Write-A-Thon Week Two

Last blog post I wrote about how much it meant to me when people sponsored me for the Write-A-Thon. I want to say thanks to Beth Moris Tanner, a fellow Write-a-Thon participant and a very kind and insightful writer and critiquer. I also want to say sorry, because for all my talk about how donations to Clarion West encourage me to write, it’s been a lackluster week writing wise. I wrote a 700-word mystery story and that’s it. I didn’t work on my novel, I didn’t work on my short story. I had a few ‘real life’ excuses to fall back on (work, health) but really the only reason is that I lost faith in myself. Last Sunday was my local in-person writing group. “I really like this,” a friend there said. “It’s my favourite thing you’ve ever sent in.” And yet all I could focus on was the criticism. Not because they weren’t fair crits, they were, that was the problem. I depressed myself by thinking about how much work it would take to ‘fix’ this story. What was I doing working on a short story anyway, when I had my novel to work on? But what if that was no good too? What if I was no good?

But several things happened as the week went on: I received a contract for a short story sale. A story of mine was published in a mainstream magazine. I was paid for the story, and able to use part of the paycheck to pay for two cavity fillings (one of my summer projects is fixing my teeth. I’ve been going to the dentist so often that I know measure big purchases against how many dentist visits the same amount would cover). I got an email telling me that a story of mine had been held for further consideration.

It’s rare to get a series of validations like that. Even then it didn’t totally shake my self-doubt; writers are like Schrodinger’s cat in that we are capable of believing we are awesome while simultaneously believing we are crap. But it did make me realize that I couldn’t celebrate my accomplishments and believably keep up the pity party. I had to let my self-doubt go if I was going to move on.

On July 1^st Camp Nano started. I got up early and type out 750 words. I’ve done so every day since. I’ve sent back out stories that had been rejected. I (successfully) pitched an article to a magazine. I feel like I’ve come out of my mini-slump stronger for it. I’m ready for week 3.

As always, if you want to sponsor me (or any other writer out there, like Beth for instance) I would really appreciate it. I promise to keep writing.

What the heck is the Clarion West Write-a-Thon? It’s anything you want it to be. For six weeks you write, working towards a goal that YOU set, hopefully raising money at the same time for Clarion West, a fantastic writers’ program. As I have mentioned multiple times on this blog, I am a Clarion West graduate and I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without it. I was also lucky enough to receive some financial assistance from the program to help me attend, so I try to help out with fundraising, even if it’s just throwing a link out to my Write-A-Thon page in the hope that some generous blog readers might go sponsor me and kick some dollars CW’s way.

The Write-A-Thon has officially started (first day was Sunday) but the registration date has been extended to June 25^th, so register! You can even double dip and do it alongside the Clarion San Diego Write-a-Thon, or Camp NaNoin July (yet another ‘set-your-own-goal’ summer writing initiative). If you are a writer, I highly encourage you to take part. It’s kind of like a personal NaNoWriMo, in that you have a set time (six weeks) to achieve your goal. The big difference is that this is a bit more personalized than NaNo, in that it’s your own goal that you’re chasing rather than 50k. It’s all very low-key and casual. You can make your goal as specific or as vague as you like. Heck, you can even go onto your personal page and change your goal if it is not working out for you. For example, I wanted to hulk-out writing wise this summer, so I challenged myself to write 1000 words a day (I also wanted to update this blog more, so writing a blog post each week was also one of my goals. Hence, this post). But I am at Day 5 of this Write-A-Thon and I am just not going to survive if I try to keep up 1k a day, so I am lowering that goal to 750 words a day, a number that will help me write tons but still keep everything else under control.

I am working on both my novel ‘Innate Magic’ and also a short story that is growing in length. The not-so short story doesn’t have a name yet, though it does have a pretty silly pun title that I will only reveal if I reach $20 worth of donations on my Write-a-Thon page. I’m not usually one to post excerpts from works in progress, but I thought it might be fun to show a little bit of what I am working on, even if it’s still a first draft (plus I am really liking this short story so far so I’m willing to go against my better instincts and share it with the world). If you like it, please consider going to my page and clicking the donate button. Knowing that there are people out there who have donated money on me behalf is a great motivator for me to keep writing. I’d be grateful for any donation.

https://www.clarionwest.org/members/shannonlfay/

CLARION WEST WRITE-A-THON WEEK 1 SHORT STORY EXCERPT

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