Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Status update: the closer I get to finishing, the further away I am from it.

It seems the closer I get to finishing the first draft, the longer I am from actually doing it. 7 more scenes/chapters remain before the last full stop, the so painfully sought-after “The End” and yet never in these past 4 months have I felt more tired and the end further away from me than now. I don’t know what’s wrong. Perhaps I’m fed up with it, perhaps something inside me tells me that the story sucks, that there are too many plot holes or the plot points are too far-fetched (it’s a post-apocalyptic story, which means people assign it the “sci-fi” tag, thus some parts of it, should be far-fetched to a certain extent, right?). Perhaps I feel that I have often led the (potential) reader by the hand too much, instead of letting him/her think about some things, perhaps it’s because a lot of my character development is done by showing his inner thoughts (going over the top with italics, perhaps?). The point is, where at one point a month ago I could sit down and write 1700 to 2000 words in a couple of hours (usually between 10 in the morning and be done by 1 in the afternoon with a 30-45 minute total break), now I can barely write 1000-1200 words up to 2 or 3 in the afternoon. The fact that I have exceeded my originally planned word limit for the draft doesn’t help either. The uncertainty I see before me, doesn’t help either.

125,147 words. Two scenes away from reaching the climax of the story and closing the main character’s arc. Seven scenes before the draft is over.

Any of you, dear readers/fellow writers, know if having only 5 chapters left for what follows the climax all the way to the end of the story is enough? I keep having the feeling that all the key points are in the wrong place, either too soon in the story or too late. Every time I read a technical book related to structure, I see things in my book that are wrong, when the previous structure-related book said it’s ok. It’s so frustrating! If I ever get to finish this thing, I’m so going out and celebrating it with the few friends who know I’m writing.

Of course, try as I might, I can’t see myself feeling relaxed after it, ’cause I will have to find beta readers or editors who know the craft of writing better than me. Wouldn’t things be sooooooo much easier if every one of us aspiring writers had two mentors by our side? One also aspiring writer or newly published who could help with the big, eye-hurting mistakes and then another one who would be a well known writer who’s been at it for years? How helpful would that be? Both could benefit noobs like me so much.

Too much whining. If you have an answer to my previous question, please let me know. Need to prepare the synopsis for the next scene/chapter for tomorrow. Until next time, I bid you all adieu.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Progress Report

It’s been a while since I gave you a progress report on my work so far. If I remember correctly, it was on August 31st and it was around 73k words. So here’s how much I’ve written so far: 94500 words. It’s clear now that I will exceed my originally planned word limit. The good news is that the first 10 chapters will have to be condensed into 2 or maybe 3. There are 2 scenes with dream-like memories in them where we learn a few things about the main character but they will be placed between later chapters. A daunting effort, no doubt. “Murder your darlings” is the saying, right? Well, I’ll show them 😛 The reason for such a huge need to remove so many chapters is that my inciting moment takes place at chapter 10. It was a great blunder I made, as I tried to set the character, his relation to the rest of the world (which amounts to one and only family) and, the most important for the story as I saw it then, to show the fear the survivors of the Darkening experience and how the main character experiences it. I think I over did it… Alas, we can only learn from our mistakes. I just hope that when those  revisions and edits, the result will be a less boring story for the reader (the things we do for you, dead reader, lol) without failing to show the ever-present dangers the survivors have to face.

Heat has dropped considerably here in Greece and I can once again use the PC for a few hours. Slowly, but steadily I’m getting back to reaching my old word limit of 2000 words per day. I started by getting into the habit of writing 1500 words daily but the past couple of days I was able to write 2000 words in matter of 3 hours, so that’s good news. If everything goes as planned, I will have completed the first draft by November, at which point I will put it away and not think about it for at least 1 month, if not 2. Then I’ll roll my sleeves and get it edited, hopefully with a beta-reader (that’s another problem I will have to tackle – to find beta readers).

Finally, as you may have seen already, I made some changes to the blog’s layout today. New theme, deleted a page (removed the one about the ideas) and corrected the goodreads widget. Comment below if you can’t find something or if I forgot to add a widget from the old theme or just to tell me if you like the new layout.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Published for the third time

It’s a fact: Eternal Haunted Summer has honoured me by accepting my short story titled When Hades Felt to feature in their autumn issue. I expect it to be made public around September 21st or about that time. The magazine’s editor accepted the revisions I made to the story and I got to learn some stuff on how magazine editors pick stories and how they review them.
It’s been a few months since I’ve been trying to get it published and now I’m more convinced than ever that Eternal Haunted Summer is the right place for that story. As you can understand, I’m very excited about it. Especially when the editor’s email of acceptance ended by asking me to submit more of my work to them. Is there really anything better for an aspiring writer / storyteller to spell “job well done” other than reading an acceptance letter / email and a request for more work?

So, now I’m left with just one more short story that is still unpublished, going from editor to editor and that will be the hardest story to place to a market. The reason is that I’m not really sure what kind of story it is, so I don’t know which magazines to pursue. There are dark elements (most of my work has those), there is a fantasy / horror element but there’s also a drama element. I wish I knew how to classify it. Currently, I’m waiting for an answer by a British magazine that is somewhat delayed. I should probably send a follow up email around Tuesday and hope for the best.

I will post links for the stories once they are published and update the ‘publications’ page accordingly then.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Updates

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I was expecting some revisions and corrections from another magazine’s editor. It was about a story that had troubled me a lot when I wrote it, but this magazine seems to be the right place for it.
The editor made several corrections, suggestions and changes. Looking at some of those in retrospect, I’m surprised at how many things I missed and how many more the people at scribophile, that had a go at it, failed to spot. It made me not only wonder at how lenient that magazine’s editor was with my story (every page had at least 2 points marked in red – and I stress the “at least” part) but also how important an editor’s job really is. In one of my rare moments of optimism (I’m not the most optimistic person in the world), I couldn’t help but think that the editor saw something in that story that was worth her time and effort, despite the many mistakes she spotted. I think it takes a very knowledgeable person to be able to do that, even when a story lacks a certain something.
I can tell you one thing for sure: the more I write and the more I submit stuff in magazines, the more respect I give to the editors for the work they do and I tip my hat to them.
So, I resubmitted the story with the corrections and the new paragraphs that (hopefully) answered the many questions the editor had. I’m waiting once again to see if the things I added are to her liking and if she will still be willing to publish it.
The progression of the novel has slowed down a bit but so far I’m almost at 60k words (it was 48k words two weeks ago). I had to work on that short story and I had some family from Italy coming over for a short visit. On top of that, I have no access to the computer since a small short circuit has caused a problem. Hopefully, the problem will have either damaged the ups battery (I hope not) or it will have fried the resistance in the multiple outlet extension cord. Preliminary tests show the latter to be the case but I will know for sure tomorrow.

Hopefully I may be able to announce my third publication by next week. Once again, cross your fingers for me please.