Occam's Razor for Writers

So I've been fiddling for a while with a bio to include with my story for The Forge. All the while, I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, it's kind of hard to write an author bio." But I left it alone for a couple of weeks, and when I opened the file tonight, I realized that, with the exception of one sentence, it really is a good bio. I deleted the sentence I didn't want, and voila! Now I have a nice little bio. I think, as usual, that I was making things too complicated. I was too busy fretting over the fact that I didn't have many significant writing credentials yet to see that my bio was pretty good. So, the moral of this post is to keep your writing a simple as possible--even when writing a bio.

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Camp Nanowrimo and Writing Chaos

I can't believe I haven't written in this blog since January. Er...scratch that. Yes, I can. My little boy arrived three weeks early, back in February. He was due in March. The good news is that I finished typing up my book shortly before he decided to arrive. Needless to say, I wasn't doing a lot of writing after he came.

Now that he is 3 months old, however, things are getting a little easier. Or enough easier that I've started potty training my daughter and editing my book.

But alas, the editing must be put on hold. For Camp Nanowrimo, perhaps? No. Although it's tempting. Quite tempting. But I've made my husband promise to slap me silly if I try to take that on; I'm supposed to be concentrating on my editing, after all. I'd like to have this book ready to send out by sometime next year.

So what, then, has forced me to turn my attention away from editing?

A short story.

I'm trying to write a short story at the request of a guest editor, for a publication called The Forge.

So, it's back to writing I go. Hopefully, since I only have about a month to write it, my submission won't totally stink. I had a vague idea for a short story (and I say vague, because, really, it was only a title) recently, so now I'm trying to spin a plot that I think is compelling enough to submit.

Well, we shall see. The worst that can happen is that the editor takes back her offer, right?

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