My Writing Journal

By admin | Published: July 1, 2009

I have several blogs that I try to keep up with, and I always ponder what I should do on each of them, this being one of them. And I think I’ve decided, at least here.

I have wanted to keep a writing journal. I’m not sure how exciting it will be, but I’m willing to try it to see.

So, that being said, this is my new writing journal. Hopefully I will be writing a lot here to let you know what I’m doing.

Stay tuned.

~Doug

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Writers’ League of Texas Agents and Editors Conference

By admin | Published: June 28, 2009

I spent the weekend at the WLT Agents and Editors Conference. It starts on Friday evening, is all day Saturday and Sunday until noon. It doesn’t sound like that much, but it’s a brutal weekend. Most of it is spent stressing about pitching your novel the the agent you have an appointment with, or pitching to one of the other agents you hope to hook up with in during the cocktail parties on Friday or Saturday.

And you’re just hoping to hear those magic words, “I like it. Send me fifty pages.”

It’s almost a form of prostitution. You do everything you can possibly do to try to attract the attention of the agent. And they tell you to be selective. But as a first-time author, it’s hard to be selective. It’s like dating. You’ll go out with the first girl who says “yes” because so many of them say no.

But I had a good weekend. The agent I pitched to didn’t say yes, per se, but she did get me in contact with another agent, a friend of hers. She picked up her phone and tweeted her on Twitter right there in front  of me.

Within a few minutes, she told me to contact her friend and she gave me the secret handshake to get through the screening process. All I can say, is thanks.

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The ROT Rally

By admin | Published: June 14, 2009

ROT stands for Republic of Texas and the ROT Rally is the biggest motorcycle rally in the state. This year ROT came June 11-14. Thursday through Sunday.

It usually goes something like this. Thursday, the vendors are all setting up. Everyone who’s camping sets up their campsite. They fill their coolers with ice and beer, and the festivities begin. Friday evening, there’s a parade on 6th Street in Austin and Friday night is about being downtown on your motorcycle.

Saturday during the day is all about getting out on your motorcycle and experiencing the roads around Austin and the Hill Country. Saturday night is about being at the convention center, riding around the campsites and giving away beads, if you know what I mean.

And then finally, there’s Sunday. Everything is winding down. The vendors are tearing down their booths – if they haven’t already – and it’s all over by about noon.

It’s a busy weekend and there’s usually a lot going on. As you can see from my bio page, I have a motorcycle, and I live in central Texas, so it puts me in prime position to go to ROT. And I often do, though it’s always sporadic and spontaneous. But not this year.

This year, my wife and I planned for it. We even took vacation from work, both taking Thursday and Friday off. But for some reason, the stars conspired against us and kept us from making it to ROT.

Thursday we got off to a slow start. We knew that there was no reason to go down early because everyone was setting up. We were going to head down Thursday evening, but then a storm blew in from nowhere that was blasting us with almost golf ball sized hail, lots of wind and plenty of rain. If you know me, you know that I’ll ride in the rain, but not on purpose.

Friday was equally a bust. We were going to go down and check out the vendors. We decided that after the thunderstorms of the previous evening, it would be muddy at the convention center, so we took the bike out and just rode. It was nice because we saw lots of other bikes out doing the same thing.

Friday night we were going to go down to 6th Street but a couple of things stopped us. One, another storm was blowing in, almost identical to Thursday’s, and two, we had to get up early on Saturday to take our daughter to her swim meet. So we took the bike out but stayed pretty close to home, going out to eat and grabbing a couple of beers. We called it a night early.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is that we were also keeping my sister-in-law’s dog, CJ. CJ is a black lab. He used to be ours, but we gave him to my wife’s sister a couple of years back. He’s getting pretty old and she takes good care of him. But she spoils him – BAD! And she works strange hours. Currently, she gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning to go to work. That means CJ gets up at that time too.

And he did, for the entire time he was with us. In fact, he got up several times in the night, whining and crying. It got to where my wife and I were taking turns on who got to get up with him on which night – worse than having a baby.

Friday night was the worst. He got up constantly and by the time Saturday morning rolled around, we were exhausted. We took our daughter to the swim meet and sat out in the hot sun. By the time we got home, all we wanted to do was take a nap. But not CJ. He’d been sleeping the whole time we were at the meet.

Saturday night was out because we had to go to the airport to pick up Maria’s sister. Good news, CJ went home. Bad news, ROT is almost over and we still haven’t made it down there.

So here I am. It’s Sunday morning and I’m writing this blog. I could have gotten on the bike and rode down to ROT, but I figure after all of this, why bother? Next year will roll around and we’ll try it again. We may make it, we may not. But I’ll bet that we at least get out to ride like we did this year. At least we have that.

~Doug

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ttyl by Lauren Myracle

By admin | Published: May 20, 2009

I bought this book for a couple of reasons. One, it was pulled from a local middle school and it hit the news. I thought to myself, “if this is being pulled from the schools, then it’s probably something I wanted to read.

And two, I have a daughter that is in 7th grade and if there’s a possibility that she’s going to read this, then I should read it first (especially considering point number one above).

I stopped reading after page 40. It’s definitely written for teen girls based on the style (it uses IM shorthand such as “u r” for “you are”) and topics, but then there are gratuitous topics such as shaving pubic hair and female ejaculation that I found totally unnecessary.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I would have to rate this book a 2. It wasn’t horrible, even though it was hard to read, but it also isn’t for teen girls. I think it’s for adult girls who want to pretend.

~Doug

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Saving Abel, Seether, and Nickelback

By admin | Published: April 12, 2009

I just got back, this second, from the concert listed above. I’m at a hotel where they don’t have free Internet so you’re not going to see it as instantly as I write it, but you’ll still see it.

Having said that, I have to say, the concert was awesome. Saving Abel came on first and from what we hear, for only about 10 minutes. We missed them. That’s too bad because they have a couple of songs I really like and I would have liked to see them perform them.

Seether was awesome. They had a lot of people standing in the aisle, and it was almost impossible to get to our seats. When we did, we got to the wrong seats because someone was sitting in ours and it turned into a whole “you’re in our seats”…”well they’re in our seats” conversation, but it got worked out, and then they took a break and all the issues were over.

For Nickelback, there were no seat issues. There was nothing but music, and a lot of it. To top that off, it was all songs we recognized. Granted, there could have been more songs from their latest album, but we’ve never seen them in concert so it was fine with us.

So, to sum it up, we went to an awesome concert and had an awesome time. That’s all I have to say about that.

~Doug

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Six Words

By admin | Published: March 27, 2009

So, there’s this unconfirmed legend that Ernest Hemingway once wrote six words that he considered his best work:

“For Sale: Baby shoes – never used.”

The searching I did on the Internet couldn’t confirm that Hemingway ever wrote that, but it did get me interested in what I could write in six words. I even found a website that posts six words, http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/. Basically, it’s whatever you want in six words. Anyone can do it; it’s easy.

So, I’ve decided that for the next 30 days or so, I’m going to write and submit six words. You can track my progress by viewing my page at: http://www.smithmag.net/community/people.php/dmac9000. I’ve only submitted a couple so far, but the list is going to grow.

If you’d like, comment to this blog and give me the link for your six words. I’ll follow yours too.

So, until tomorrow when I post my next six words,

~Doug

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Micro-Fiction

By admin | Published: March 7, 2009

As an author, I think it’s important to work on different writing styles. I’m not talking about genre, I’m talking about micro-fiction.

First, there was flash fiction. Generally, flash fiction is a story of 1000 words or less. Some consider it a story of 500 words or less. Either way, it’s a short amount of time to formulate a complete story arc with a beginning, middle, and end.

After flash, I found Six Sentences at http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/. It’s a website where you can say whatever you want. You just have to do it in six sentences.

Next, I discovered drabbles. A drabble is a story that is exactly 100 words in length. There are several markets for drabbles. My favorites are The Drabblecast at http://web.mac.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html and The Drabbler at http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/contents.htm. But there are others.

After drabbles, I discovered a website that focuses on stories that are exactly 55 words, at http://www.birdandmoon.com/55words/. The idea is based off of a New York Times contest that had to be 55 words or less. With this one, it must be exactly 55 words. There are others as well.

Then I found the One Sentence website at http://www.onesentence.org/. The idea is to say what you want in only one sentence. The catcher with this website is that it has to be true (so precisely, not micro-fiction).

The last thing I want to add is Six Words. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “For Sale: Baby Shoes – never used.” He considered this his best work and there are tributes to six words because of this. One market for six words is http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/.

And of course, along the way, there are Haikus and Tankus (Japanese poetry). All of which brings me to my point. As an author, writing in these different styles breaks you out of your mold and forces you to stretch your skills. It tightens your writing, or stretches. My wife has specifically told me that my writing has really improved since I started submitting to Six Sentences.

So, if you need to break out of your rut, try some micro-fiction. It doesn’t pay, but the experience offers a tremendous return on your meager investment.

~Doug

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Time Off to Write

By admin | Published: December 29, 2008

It happened over the Thanksgiving break, and it happened over the Christmas break. I had all this free time that I was going to use to write. But it didn’t work out that way. It never does.

Good intentions, sure, but there are a million little things that get in the way. Shopping for presents, juggling cars for maintenance while my son is home with a second vehicle, calling the plumber, cleaning the house, well, you get the idea.

But the one thing I seem to have difficulty finding time for is writing. I had all these great plans for writing over the holidays. And here it is, Thanksgiving is gone, Christmas break is half over, and still no, well, not much, writing.

So I’m going to make a pact with myself. I am going to write at least 2 hours every day from now until I go back to work. That is, unless I need to get more work done on the car, or the house, or the…oh, never mind.

~Doug

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Writer’s Block

By admin | Published: October 10, 2008

A friend of mine, Kimmmbo, suggested that I have writer’s block because I haven’t been blogging lately. She may be correct. Blogging can be difficult at times. You tell yourself that you’re going to blog every week, or twice a week, or whatever, but then weeks slip away with the keyboard silent and the blog space lonely.

I know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and they are good intentions, but things get in the way: road trips to Odessa, allergies, parent-teacher conferences. But that’s not to say that blogging isn’t important. It is. I think that once you make a commitment to do it, then you need to. Which is why I am doing so now.

Not because Kimmmbo guilted me into it, but because I need to get back on track. In fact, I need to figure out how to create an audio blog. That’s one of my next major endeavors. I have a new, nifty microphone just sitting around collecting dust.

So stay tuned, boys and girls, because the inaugural audio blog of Doug McIntire is coming. Just don’t hold your breath. It may take a little longer than that.

~Doug

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Podcasts and Podcasting

By admin | Published: September 24, 2008

So I recently had one of my short stories, Woman Called Witch, turned into a podcast by the folks at The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine (http://dunesteef.com/). Okay, some of this is just bragging, but it also brings up the conversation of where podcasting fits in the bigger scheme of publication.

I’m a pretty big fan of podcasts, at least in the form of short stories and serialized novels. I regularly listen to Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org/), Drabblecast (http://web.mac.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html), and Scott Sigler (http://www.scottsigler.com/).

I also believe that the publishing industry is a little behind the times. I remember an agent telling me in 2007 that she just got a book deal for one of her authors and that it would be published in 2012. That’s 5-6 years out. Holy cow!

Now, I may be wrong, but an industry that’s locked in 5-6 years out in this fast-paced, Internet-rich society seems to be a little out of touch. At the speed technology is growing, in 5-6 years we will have solved problems we don’t even know will exist yet.

Now that’s not to say that podcasts will replace the publishing industry. I don’t think it will, at least not for some time, but it is an interesting niche. You see, podcasts aren’t just like audio books. They’re more like the old radio broadcasts of the thirties and forties. They incorporate some sound effects, like gunshots or footsteps.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. What I do know is that the Internet and technology will play a much larger role than they do today. What that will turn into is anybodies guess, but I think it’s an exciting time to live and help formulate.

~Doug

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