Day 4: Publishing

It's day four and I'm happy to report that I beat my word goal yesterday! I got about 3500 words down across one three hour 'bread and butter' session, and a shorter house keeping session later in the day. I'm going to up the goal to 2000 today given my good progress yesterday, and we'll see if I can maintain that until the end of the week. I'll reevaluate on Monday.

What I was working on you might ask?

The lion's share of that progress went into a short story titled 'Demonitization'. This poor guy has been so neglected because I just didn't know where to go with the story, but yesterday I had a breakthrough and managed to get most of it down. I got more than double what I already had down in a day! This is the life of a pantser apparently. Or maybe I'm simply disorganized. Hopefully a rigid writing schedule will cure me of that. I'm planning on finishing the first draft by the end of the week so that I can start the editing process and have it ready for publishing soon.

The publishing plan is something I worked on during the housekeeping session yesterday. Right now it is admittedly very weak. It amounts to shooting in the dark and hoping I hit something, but unfortunately I don't have many other options. I don't have any previous publications so everybody is new to me. This plan will be under going further adjustments during future housekeeping sessions.

There are a couple of fiction magazines I have in mind for submitting this story. I read these two regularly and can't recommend them enough for some good fiction. Scream Magazine, which market themselves as the number one horror magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Unfortunately, these are two of the biggest names in the world of fiction publications, so the competition is very high. Realistically, I don't have much chance of getting published by either of these two, so I'm seeking alternatives as well. One contender is a magazine I found via this very blog! I'm glad to see that it is already paying dividends to post here regularly. I got a like from https://edgeofhumanity.com/, which I never would have found otherwise. They have the most open ended submissions page I've ever seen and I'm not sure exactly what they're after, but 'Demonitization' definitely explores the edge of human nature, so I'll be giving this one a try for sure.

Above is Plan A. Plan B is to publish it right here on WordPress for everybody to read! I don't believe the magazines above allow for simultaneous submissions though, so this will have to be the backup plan. I would publish it here and submit it if I could, but that will only hurt my chances in Plan A.

Moving on to another housekeeping matter, the schedule for this blog. I said yesterday I'm going to start my days with the blog, but when you can expect to get your hands on it exactly? I'm going to do my best to submit this bad boy every day between 11AM and 1PM EST. I'm giving myself a window because honestly I just don't know how long each post will end up being. The blog is to air my thoughts, announce plans, and keep on track. It doesn't have any set-in-stone word goal or length requirement because that's not what it's for. Sometimes I might get it out early, sometimes I might get it out a little later, but you can always expect it in that two hour window Mondays through Fridays. I may also submit on weekends but I reserve the right to sleep all day on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe I'll label those as bonus submissions, take the blog into topics other than my writing, or do something else entirely. I'm excited to see what I can come up with!

My fingers feel warm again and I'm hitting the end of that submission window I just laid out. Today's post was a little boring in my opinion, so I'll try to have something more exciting ready for you tomorrow. Maybe I'll go for one of those book buying field trips!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley