Life's Sweet Inevitability... and Cons

I just spent the weekend walking the tightrope, balancing between loving and nurturing my family -- pronounced "seeing" -- and learning, promoting and chatting with friends at ConDFW. I got to the other end of the rope with honor, home life and dignity intact. Well, honor and homelife anyway; it was a con.

I'll try to blog a little this week about what I learned at the Con, especially at an indie publisher panel I attended. I may point you to some authors I met (and/or I may end up reviewing ARCs for you.) And I'll definitely be reviewing Rosemary Clement-Moore's second book Hell Week as soon as I can clear six hours to read it.

But that's not what this post is about.

The private-public balancing act from this weekend reminded me of a post I wanted to point you all to over on Jay Lake's website. Jay is one of the most prolific spec fiction writers of my generation, or at least I'm expecting him to be by the end of the day.

Both Jay and I think about the "end of the day" a bit, because we are colon cancer survivors, and it does affect how we see the world. This post is one he wrote in January about that awareness, plus Calvin and Hobbes. Enjoy.

He wrote HOW many stories?

Prolific flash writer Michael Kechula has some tips over on Katie Hines's blog, specifically tips about writing short fiction. And by prolific, I mean, makes Jay Lake look sedate.

Kechula's tips:

1. Write openers that grab attention.
   
2. Omit excessive detail. It burns up precious word count.
   
3. Omit long sentences, especially those with semi-colons.
   
4. Consider including 1-word, or 2-word sentences for impact.
   
5. Include dialog. Big chunks of narrative create yawns.
   
6. Use contractions. Especially in dialog. One word is saved each time.
   
7. Use words gained from items 2 and 6 to enhance the plot.
   
8. Omit anything that may throw readers out of the story.
   
9. Keep moving the story forward.
   
10. Keep characters down to a minimum.
    
11. Read your draft manuscript out loud. Better yet, record it and listen to the story several times.
    
12. Edit, edit, edit.
    

And if you want to know precisely how many stories he's published in the last four years, go read it. Unbelievable.