I'm here

But I'm exhausted. Riding roller coasters is hard work. I'd blog more but the wireless connection where I'm at is spotty. Instead I give you a picture. Doesn't that look like fun?

Monsters to Slay

Another rejection! Hurray! It's not even news anymore, but I give the agent credit for getting back to me. Pretty much if they haven't gotten back by now, I'm figuring the answer is no.

A lot of writers really fret the no response thing from agents. I don't. I have no need to hear back from absolutely everybody. Moving forward. After a month or so, I already know.

So a friend of mine turned me onto a game called "Braid" yesterday and it has some gorgeous art and sound. A bit like a Mario Bros. game with Impressionist art and beautiful violin. The only thing that bothers me about this video game is that it is obviously an about a girl. The intro talks about how the main character, Tim, is off to rescue the princess from the monster. But the princess actually left of her own accord because Tim made a lot of mistakes. It then goes on about the culture of causality and the miserliness of forgiveness and how wouldn't it be nice if we could learn from our mistakes and that we'd be rewarded for learning instead of punished for making them.

A girlfriend of mine was over when I was looking at this and we both had the same comment. This was written by a guy. And I don't know anything about Tim and the Princess's relationship, but how many mistakes did the guy make? Did he just keep making them and only 'learn' after it became clear he lost her? And did he really learn anything at all? Because by making it about the miserliness of forgiveness, he's essentially saying the relationship broke down, not because of his mistakes, but because she couldn't forgive. It's her fault. (I am totally over-analyzing a game here, I know.)

So here it is: Just because you are forgiven doesn't mean someone let's you back into his or her life. They're not the same thing. And chasing after saying, "Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!" is essentially saying, "Give me! Give me! Give me!" It's a self-centered act.

If I were the Princess's friend I would look at the game and say, "Awesome game. Really talented guy. Don't go back there."

If Tim had really learned something it would say, "I'm sorry. I did it. I know it. And the next Princess I meet I will be more giving to her." How many monsters do you have to slay to get the girl? One. Yourself.

Obsessions and Submissions

I'll get better at this blogging thing. Part of it is I usually want to make my writing perfect, to be witty, erudite, etc., etc. And that isn't exactly the nature of blogging. Not that people don't come up with brilliant and wonderful things, but most times it is the day to day, the little thoughts, and the unexceptional.

So here I am, endevoring to be unexceptional. So here are the updates:

Between May 13 and 15 I sent queries out to 21 agents. I got three requests for partials, all of whom rejected bringing the total to 15 rejections and 6 no responses. A number of the rejections were actually positive (if there is such a thing) and praised my story and my writing. So I consider that to be a kind of success. I'm wondering if the real difficulty is that nothing in my query mentions that I'm intending to be a little upscale. If you read my query you might be expecting it to start hard and fast and be tons of adventure. There is adventure and shootings and explosions. But the climax of the novel isn't when the bad guys are caught. It's more character driven. So if you are expecting high octane, you'll think it starts a little slowly. But I'm holding out hope. Some word nerd is going to look at this and connect immediately. It's out there.

In the meantime I've been working on another edit because did I mention the perfectionist in me? But I finally let go and am sending it to a few friends.

In the meantime, I've been to Iowa for a bit to be at my father-in-law's retirement party. And the husband and I reconnected to World of Warcraft. This is dangerous business.

We used to play Dark Age of Camelot together and then City of Heroes. We'd been on WoW but then gave up. I think we'd just burnt out after so many games. But we're back now and it's been full on obsession. Somewhere between helping with the massive church rummage sale and the trip to Iowa I lost my writing habit and it became harder and harder to get back into it, especially as the computer was enticing me with slaying beasties as my gnome warrior.

Yep, it's an obsession. And I went with it. Rather than trying to force myself and getting upset, I went with it. Obsessions can lead you into some interesting waters and as much as I'm a big believer in habit and putting my butt to the chair, I also know there is no point in forcing myself when all I'll do is drive myself crazy. So every morning I would make my tea as usual. I'd sit down with my journal and write some drivel. Maybe mess a little bit with the manuscript. And after a little time I'd go feed the obsession. It's feeding the fever and letting it burn itself out. It did. Not that I'm off WoW by any means. But it's taken its rightful place now as a hobby to be done after writing. And that is good.

About Trends

The other day, I was talking to someone about what to write next. He told me that I should consider putting my vampire idea on a backburner for now, because while vampire books have been pretty popular for the last couple years, the trend might be over by the time my book would come out. Which is a pretty valid point, on the one hand. Of course you should be aware of trends as you write and submit. On the other hand, however, I don't think that anyone should let trends dictate what they write, or when they write it. Writing a good, tight book with accessible characters and good pacing is way more important than what the trend is. If your book is amazing, it'll sell even if the trend is on the wane.
Any thoughts on this, anyone? Pro- or anti-trend?
An aside, specifically about the vampire trend: Vampires have been popular for a long time. Bram Stoker's Dracula, anyone? So I wouldn't worry too much about vamps ever becoming really unpopular. They've stood the test of time, I think!

Radio Silence

Well, sorry about that. I haven't been a very consistent blogger. I think it's just that I've been too busy working. And Internet at home doesn't happen often.
This week I've been dealing with author corrections for a particular book. The author wrote her corrections in with a pink highlighter pen. Now, really. It's often hard enough to decipher a stranger's handwriting as is. Did I really need the added difficulty of that? Sigh. Oh well. It's finished for now, that's the important part.
I'm behind on my writing. I really want to be done with my edits in about a week, but I'm a week or so behind. Still working on that work/writing/freelance/social life balance. It's quite the tightrope act! And I seem to be slipping . . . But that's really just the way it goes. Sometimes you're productive, sometimes not. Sometimes you're busy, sometimes not. I want to be less busy, so I can be more productive. But I do enjoy my job, and (usually) the freelance work as well. Anyway. Hopefully I'll be working on query letters in a couple weeks, and will put them up here for your perusal/entertainment.
I wish I had something more exciting to say, but my brain is mush at this point. (And it's only Tuesday. That, my friends, is a bad sign!) Have a good night. I'll try not to be such a quite coblogger.

my writing

I write fantasy. I can't really be any more specific than that. The first manuscript I completed was a YA urban fantasy novel, sort of a Romeo and Juliet lite, only with fey folk. In New York. The one I'm working on now is definitely an adult novel. And there's no urban about it, it's just fantasy. Not epic fantasy, either. Just an alternate world, a different set of gods to worship, and a few different human-type species. No magic, or swords, or dragons. My short fiction is all over the place: I have written non-genre short stories. I wrote one about Lucifer returning in the form of a cat. One about a woman locked in an iron room and losing her child. One about a girl who went to a different world in her dreams and raced a stag and the moon to become high priestess of the land. There's one I can't even describe about a frustrated musician who goes to a bar that turns into a pirate ship. . . . See? I'm really all over the place. And that comes about, I think, because I'm not an outline-oriented writer. I start with a character. Or a scene. Or a line. And I just keep going after that, and see what happens. I always thought that that's the fun of writing: seeing where it goes. (I'm not trying to be negative about outlines, don't get me wrong. I've even considered trying to do one and writing a novel from it at some point, to see what it's like. But I do feel that there's a magic in just following where the words lead.)
I like a lot of things about my writing habit. I like that I am motivated and disciplined. I like that I write such a variety. But. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a slow writer. Which drives me nuts, but there's no other way to be. I wish I could churn out two or three books a year, like a certain young author I'm insanely jealous of whose blog I read. But the fact of the matter is that, around working full-time and then some, and having a couple of interests outside of writing, there's no way for me to burn through writing a manuscript. I just don't have the time. Maybe someday . . . So for now I content myself with being slower than I'd like. Slow and steady wins the race, eh?
I'm currently revising my manuscript for the second time. When I'm done, I hope to convince people to read it and give me feedback again, and then I'll polish it up one more time, and then submit. But I have to be honest: a small part of my brain is already churning away on a very important question. What do I write next? So many ideas, so little time!
Anyway. It's weekend time. Enjoy, everyone!

another brief one

I know, I know, I owe the blogosphere a nice long ramble either about my book or about the publishing industry. And it'll happen. Sometime next week. I would like to say I promise, but I think that I would just be setting myself up for disaster, so instead I'll just say that I'll really try.
Today, I want to talk about the importance of deadlines, in two ways. First, deadlines you set for yourself, and second, deadlines your publishing house sets for you.
So, first. I believe that it's really important to give yourself deadlines. If you find you can't respect them, have someone else give you deadlines. Something easy, even. For example, every two weeks you give your critique partner five new pages. Something. Anything to keep you moving as a writer, and also so that you learn to work under a deadline. Because once you have a contract for your book, you will have lots of deadlines from your publisher.
Which leads me to my second deadline point. Please, please keep to whatever deadlines you're given. A couple of days here or there may not seem like a big deal. But a couple of days in a tight schedule can mean that your book gets bumped to a later pub date because something didn't happen quickly enough. And bumping is not good because the sales and marketing teams, and the bookstores, are expecting things on a certain date. It's not just a problem for them, either. Late materials can affect the editor, the art department, the text designer, the copyeditor, proofreader, etc. The typesetter. The printer! Because it snowballs. So if your editor sends you your copyedited manuscript for review and asks you to return it in two weeks, please do just that.
And now, I'm off to enjoy the beautiful weather. Have a nice weekend, everyone!

query letter link

Hi all, I only have a sec but wanted to post about this great editorial blog entry I found on query letters, since that's been a major topic of conversation here lately. Go take a peek at it, and I'll try to be back later in the day or tomorrow!

Query Letter #6

And the final one. I realized that the problem with #5 was the order.  I had a nice lead off line.  But then I needed to show where Swan was coming from instead of doing it the other way around.  So here is what I hope is my final version.

***

The last thing Swan Shreve needs is a crazy old lady with a gun following her around.  She’s already been feeling like a loser standing small ever since she graduated with a Ph.D. in English and took a job as a secretary at a weapons company to make ends meet while all her friends got tenure tracks teaching Aphra Behn to sleeping freshmen.  Now, Mrs. Hamel turns up out of nowhere, announces she’s a spy and says she needs Swan’s help.  Swan thinks the old bat needs a retirement home and medication.  But Mrs. Hamel isn’t crazy.  The Strategic Secretarial Services (SSS) is real and when a coworker is murdered, Swan needs all Mrs. Hamel's guns and help to stay alive.

Query Letter #5

So as bad as #4 was, there were a couple of new things in it that I thought were neat ideas. So I spliced 3 and 4 to create 5, which is why 4, as horrid as it is, was important to do, even it it was worse than where I started.

***

The last thing Swan Shreve needs is a crazy old lady with a gun.  It's been 15 years since the last time she saw Mrs. Hamel and now the old bat turns up out of nowhere, announces she's actually a spy for a top secret governmental secretarial pool, and says she needs Swan's help.  Even if it were real, Swan isn't interested.  She got her Ph.D. in English six months ago and has been feeling like a loser standing small ever since she got a job as a secretary to an upper level engineer at a weapons company and all her friends landed tenure tracks teaching Aphra Behn to sleeping freshmen.  But the Strategic Secretarial Services (SSS) is real and when a coworker is murdered, Swan needs all Mrs. Hamel's help and her guns to stay alive.

Query Letter #4

I thought I'd done really well with letter #3 and was thinking of skipping the other letters I promised I'd write. That was good enough right? But I made myself write another one, starting from scratch. Yeah. Um... all I can say is sometimes the way forward looks like the way back.

***

The last thing Swan Shreve needs is a senile old lady with a gun claiming to be a spy. Sure life has been a bit boring ever since she graduated with her Ph.D. in American Literature and went to work as a secretary at a high tech weapons company. She's watched all her friends move on to good jobs, relationships and success while she feels like a loser standing small, but that doesn't make her so desperate as to believe there is a top secret group of secretarial spies out saving the world. Then a coworker is killed and Swan finds out she's in danger. She's going to need all the little old ladies packing heat that she can muster to survive.

don't f*k with the system

That pretty much sums up the last couple of weeks. I should know better. I've been writing a long time. But still, every once in awhile I decide it would be fun to tinker and then my writing goes no where. Absolutely no where. I finally managed to put down 400 words today.

Ok, the system is this. I get up, make lunch for the guy, take him to the train, come home, feed the cat, make tea, turn on the computer, get cereal, play a game of free cell, and then write. In that order or the monster in charge of my creativity (he has floppy ears) decides to go pick daisies instead.

But my computer is old and its immune system is vulnerable to every sort of new virus that comes along. Most times I just keep it in the bubble of my apartment with no internet but it had to go out, so we put on a new virus scanner. A virus scanner that causes my poor, sluggish baby to take for-freaking-ever (which is even longer than forever, let me tell you) to load. Waiting for load time is not in the writing system. It's a sensitive system. I sit in front of the computer glaring at it, chomping on my cereal and wondering how many more million times I need to click the button to get free cell to come up.

So instead of waiting, I took to playing piano (ok, more like playing at piano, or playing with a piano--actually, it's a keyboard, I only wish I had a real piano, and my musicality is sort of limited anyway) while the computer loaded up. And the monster went to pick daisies. And it has only taken me TWO WHOLE WEEKS to figure out why I was suddenly and massively word constipated. Two weeks. I am a moron. In the meantime I have not been a joy to live with and have resolutely turned down everything and stayed in my little hidey hole hoping the monster would come and play with me.

And so I have tweaked the system in a way that just might work. Now I get up, turn on the computer, make lunch, etc, etc, and by the time I get home from the train station and the tea made and the cat fed, the computer is ready for me to play free cell and start putting words down. The creative monster has made enough daisy chains.

All Quiet on the Northern Front

Hello, everyone. Sorry things have been so quiet here; I've been quite busy at work and at home, and I'm not sure where my fellow contributor has gotten herself to these days. One can only hope that she is too busy with her revisions at this point to deal with such things as blogs and e-mail.
Anyway. I wanted to say a brief something from a production standpoint to all writers out there who may come across this.
Please, please, when you are marking changes on your copyedited manuscript or on your typeset pages, make sure they are logical and legible. It makes everybody's life easier.
Short and sweet, I know, but it's past time to go home already. I promise a longer ramble about my writing soon.

Community

I think that many of us secretly hold a romantic vision of the starving writer in our heads. This writer sits at a rickety table in a drafty, gray garret somewhere, scribbling (or typing) furiously through reams of smudged white paper while smoking endless cigarettes and downing bottle after bottle of cheap red wine. This writer does not have friends, or family, or pets. This writer exists in a perfect bubble of isolation, toiling way at the act of creation until voila! they have created something beautiful and unique and perfect.
Can you see your secret writer now, all rumpled clothes and mussed hair, dark circles beneath the eyes, ink smeared on fingers and cheeks? I can. I've had a secret writer in my head for a long, long time.
But you know what? I think that, for the majority of us writers, being that solitary is unhealthy. Our writing is fed by what we know, what we see, what we experience. It stands to reason that, therefore, our characters are fed by who we know, who we see, who we experience. We need exposure to the world in order to create. And beyond that, without the objective eye of our peers, how will we gain perspective on our work?
I believe that community is essential for growth as a writer/artist/what-have-you. But. It's important to find the right community. Don't just join the first critique group you come across. Check it out, by all means. Sit in on a session or three. Give them an excerpt, or a short story, of yours and see what they do with it. It's like a test. What you want in a community is a group of people who can read one another's work objectively (at least semi-objectively) and then give good, constructive, helpful feedback, be they fellow writers or not. Some the best feedback I get about my writing comes from a sibling of mine who doesn't write. But she reads a lot. So she has a sense of how stories work. And she's not attached to it like me, so she can tell me when things are good and when things are boring. I find feedback from other people to be immensely helpful. They always, always spot things I missed. Or just didn't think of. And that's the sort of community we should all be trying to find. A circle of trustworthy people who will look at your art, point out the good parts, and then politely poke their fingers through the holes, so you know that those holes are there. (And if you're really lucky, they may even have suggestion on how to fix those holes!)
It's taken me a while to build up a community for my writing to flourish in. It's still a fairly small circle of people. And I don't show them everything I write, not by a long shot. But just knowing that they will be fair and open-minded and helpful about whatever I toss at them is a beautiful feeling.
So I say let go of that lonely writer in the garret. Or write a story about him/her, and show it to your friends! Seriously, we can't help each other grow as writers if we all lock ourselves away from the world. So go out there and find or make some community. You'll be happier that way in the long run. I promise.

Query Letter #3

Here we are getting a bit better. More engaging. Better tone. Much shorter. Better first line, though I have ideas on how to make it even better. This isn't perfect, but it is a leap forward. In this one I feel there is a possibility the reader will believe I can write.
****
Swan Shreve thinks her former middle school secretary has lost her marbles. It's been fifteen years since the last time she saw the old bat and now Mrs. Hamel shows up out of nowhere, announces she's actually a spy for a top secret government secretarial pool, and says she needs Swan's help. Even if it were real, Swan isn't interested. She just got her Ph.D. in English and working as a secretary to an upper level engineer in a weapons company is only temporary until she can find a tenure track position teahching the importance of Aphra Behn to sleeping freshmen. But Mrs. Hamel has more of her marbles (and various other weapons) than Swan realizes. The Strategic Secretarial Services (SSS) is real and when a coworker is murder and the killers come after Swan, she'll need every bit of Mrs. Hamel's help to stay alive.

Query Letter #2

Ok. This one is shorter, which is better. However I apparently still thought the line, "Secretaries know everything," was a good hook. And never let it be said that I let go of a bad phrase when I have convinced myself it is good. I'm far too stubborn for that. It is still quite long though and not really engaging. Not to mention it's never clear who the main character is anyway. (Hard to be engaging when the reader doesn't know who she's supposed to engage with.) And there are a few (many) cliches in here. The bad kind. The lazy writer kind. Yup. All in all, #2 goes in the bin. Here it is, in all it's awful glory.
***
Secretaries know everything. In WWII when the precursor to the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services was created, a top secret sister organization was also started: The Strategic Secretarial Services (SSS). Throughout the Cold War the ladies of the SSS kept America and the world safe. They infiltrated the most dangerous networks, made the most daring rescues, and were an unstoppable force in the intelligence community. Until women's lib. Now all the smart, strong young women want bigger and better careers than being a secretary.

Swan Shreve is a modern, young woman. In the last 6 months she's finished her Ph.D. in American Literature, gotten dumped by her boyfriend and found a job as a secretary to an upper level engineer in a weapons company until her ship--in the form of a tenure track at a nice university--comes in. All she needs to do is survive rude callers and being stalked by the secretary of her old middle school, now retired, who keeps going on about spying. Clearly the woman sniffed a lot of copier fluid. Or so Swan believes until a fellow secretary is gunned down before Swan's eyes.

Query Letter #1

And because I am a glutton for punishment (or maybe it's that I'm a sadist), I am going to post all 6 query letters. So here it is, my first crack at it. #1. Possibly not the worst query letter ever written, but that bar is too low to limbo under. I bet I don't miss it by much though.

The tone is wrong for the book. It is far, far too long. Just this synopsis takes up the whole first page of a one page letter. Oops. Yeah. I suspect it was looking at this mess and realizing there was only so much revision could do that gave me the idea of tossing and starting over several more times.

Query letter #1


We all know secretaries run the world. What we don’t know is there exists a governmental department of secretary spies, the Strategic Secretarial Services, that grew up in World War II and has been saving the world ever since. In my novel, Spies and Secretaries, Swan Shreve is about to learn.

Swan Shreve graduated with a doctorate in American Literature and then hit a wall. Unable to find a decent job at a university because of her focus on Edith Wharton’s ghost stories, not serious enough literature, she finds a job as a secretary and now feels insecure and defeated, still sending out resumes every Tuesday.

Mrs. Hamel and the Strategic Secretarial Services have another problem. Ever since women’s liberation all the good candidates have gone into “better” careers. And while she can still wield a machine gun and crush a larynx with the best of them before going home to bake excellent cookies for her seven grandkids, she knows if they don’t get some new members soon, the SSS will die out and the country will be left with only the CIA to protect them.

However Swan is more inclined to believe Mrs. Hamel is senile than a master spy and refuses to join. When another secretary at her company in assassinated, Swan finds herself helping the SSS discover the mole in their midst and learning that her own self worth doesn’t need to be tied to her job title.

attempting more coherence tonight

And hoping I will make sense. Maybe.

I went out to lunch with a friend of mine and had him take a look at the latest and greatest of my query letters. He pointed out the ways it wasn't working. This bothered me, because I really thought I had it this time. But despite my pleading, he refused to say it was wonderful and perfect as is. This is why I have him look at my stuff.

So more on writing query letters, because they are essentially writer kryptonite. People can turn out novels that run hundreds and hundreds of pages and then flip about a one page query letter and a two page synopsis, the general industry standards.

I'm starting pretty early with this, mostly because I know that the second I feel completely finished with the book, I won't have the patience to do a good job on the query letter and synopsis. I'll want to start sending it out NOW. So I'm doing this while I have patience.

And since I also know that writing the perfect query letter is writer kryptonite and a writer can become paralyzed at just the thought of doing this task, I have set myself up to write six of them.

Why six? Why not just one and revise it to perfection? Several reasons. 1)When I write something down and then try to revise, I tend to get stuck with the way I wrote it down in the first place. I can't seem to imagine another way to write it. And when it comes to query letters or other things of this nature, the first version will be bad and I'll just be revising bad into mediocre. Where when I start over from scratch, I find other ways of addressing the letter that will be better. Really. Letter 2 was better than 1 and letter 3 was so much better I seem to have forgotten that I meant to write six. I thought I was done. Turns out I need six.

And 2) It gets rid of a lot of the anxiety to set out to write a bunch of these rather than just one perfect one. Gives me room to mess up.

Six is a good number for this. After all, it is only one page, so it's not like this takes tons of time. I'm not just sitting down and banging out six in a row. I'm giving myself weeks to do this. I write one. Stare at it. Write another. Compare and contrast. Wrote the third. Showed it to friends. Took some comments. I'm on to number 4. Now I need to tackle the synopsis just as seriously.

More writer kryptonite. I can feel my powers draining.

blink, blink

I have recently given up cooking. It's that bad. I'm doing 6-8 hours of revising and rewriting a day and when I finally look away from my computer screen it feels as though all my brain has turned to mush and I can't think anymore for the rest of the day. Deciding what to make for dinner is too complex. I'm progressing at a rate of a chapter every other day. I'm a slow writer. This is breakneck speed for me.

I'm glad it's going like this. I think I'm actually within 100 pages of the end of this draft. In the meantime, I'm just glad Andy is willing to make dinner and not make many other demands on me.

This is the first novel that has been worth revising. And the other ones, let's just say I wasn't as serious about them. So I have to wonder if this is what it is going to be like at the end of writing every novel. Will I always hit this pushing phase where I am otherwise useless to the world? The hardest part of writing this novel is really all the time its taken me to learn my own process of writing. I write in the mornings. Usually by hand, but when I get going I type, etc., etc. Each of the failed novels (5 of them) I got a little further along and a little better. This is the first time I've made it this far. I did them all in different ways (for 4 of them I had no outline or idea of where I was going. The only sad thing is that it took me FOUR failed novels to figure out that doesn't work for me. FOUR. Excuse me while I continue banging my head against a wall because I like it) until I finally figured out something that worked.

Now I'm figuring out rewrites. Sure, I've rewritten stories, but this is a tad bit... bigger. My longest short stories top out at 10,000 words. This is already at 90,000. We'll see where it ends up after the revisions. So it is a whole new game. It's taken me almost a year to do the first draft through the third draft. Will it always take that amount of time? Will I get faster at this once I know how this works? Will I ever feel like my brain is functioning again or is the mush thing permanent?

Ok. I'm off to sleep and then get back to work. I have another chapter that needs doing and I'm so very close.

weekend roundup

• Agent Janet Reid rebutts the Wall Street Journal article I posted last week.
• Editorial Anonymous has a fabulous post on what to put in the autobiographical portion of the query letter.
• An interesting bit of questions and answers, most up for the first few.
• Various literary terms that may not already be in your vocabulary.

That's all I've got this week. I'm going to go see if the Husker baseball team can pull out a win (already down by 3 in the first inning) and avoid doing the mini-sweetrolls I need to make for coffee hour tomorrow. Procrastination will make my baking better. I'm sure of it.