lizvogel

June:

original short fiction = 3871

July:

original short fiction = 4172

That includes the rest of DDJJ2 ("Dix Dayton and the Miner from Mars"), "Dear Ones" (which is now going as "A Fine Warm Tale On A Winter's Night"), and "Hands On", as well as bits and pieces of other things. Technically June includes 296 words of Street Magic, which is a novel, but it's not developed enough yet to get its own wordcount file.

In addition, 601 words in July on the "beach house" follow-up to HoM. I don't normally include it in monthly totals (because it's a sprawly character self-indulgence, likely never to be publishable), but in this case it's worth noting because I finally figured out what I needed to get a key sequence moving (hint: Dad games).

Short story submissions:
June: 6
July: 2

Two of which were acceptances!


Queries sent (July): 2


The numbers are actually pretty decent! (Okay, more querying, but otherwise.) The numbers don't quite tell the whole story, though; there's a lot of not-writing in there, for all I've been kicking it with the short stories lately. For example, all of July's writing happened from the 6th to the 15th, and not a word since.

I've been writing to deadline and/or to spec so much lately (anthology calls, ficathons, etc.) that I don't quite know what to do with myself when there isn't a specific (and close) target in sight. I need to get back to a semi-steady writing habit, with at least some focus on longer things. So for August, I'm going to try booting up Green Ring again; as a little for-fun fantasy thing (albeit with asperations to be a novella), it should be a good bridge.

Also, more querying.

A little while ago, I had an epiphany of sorts: I was dragging my feet about the final-push querying on Highway of Mirrors because it really was time to put it aside and try something else. (I still think HoM is a good book, but it's time and then some to admit it's not going to be my debut novel.) The other part of the epiphany was that, of the two books I've been waffling about querying next, I really should just go with the one that everybody's responded positively to (and that is ready to go, unlike the other which is ready except for one final thing that I'm stuck on).

Of course, this means I had to write another query letter. Constructive comments welcome.

( Read more... )

In my efforts to get back in the query trenches, I'm looking at an agent who has a long and unnecessarily-detailed (yet oddly appealing) submission form. One of the several things she wants, in addition to query and synopsis, is a one-line pitch.

Now, I've never had a good short pitch for Highway of Mirrors. The plot is highly dependent on a lot of character and backstory stuff, and it doesn't reduce down to a sound-bite in a coherent and appealing way. It would be much easier if I was pitching ...And The Kitchen Sink, which I've been known to describe as "a rollicking space-opera adventure filled with everything from ninjas to grues to a cyborg platypus." I'm fond of that pitch; it gives you a good idea right up front of what kind of book you're looking at, and if you want more details, you can always ask.

And then it hit me: That pitch for Kitchen Sink says nothing whatsoever about the plot. You can infer a little about the sort of plot from "space-opera adventure", but who does what where to whom? That's for the follow-up discussion, which is what a short pitch is supposed to encourage. And that's okay, because Kitchen Sink is not a plot-driven book. If you enjoy it, you'll enjoy it for the characters and the settings and the jokes about plural nouns. The plot holds up reasonably well, but it's primarily there as a framework to hang all the other stuff on.

And the same goes for Highway of Mirrors. Okay, not the grammar jokes. But it is not a plot-driven book either; what it's really about is the characters, their interactions, and the MC's ethical dilemma. But popular wisdom declares that you have to talk about the PLOT!!!, so every attempt I've made at a short pitch for HoM has been an attempt to summarize the plot in one sentence -- and not only does that tend to come across as confusing and/or stupid, it does nothing to tell you what makes the book worth reading.

So what do I think the point of HoM is? How about: "A spy on the run from her own agency has to compromise her ethics, her marriage, and even her daughter -- to protect her daughter." That could use a little fine-tuning, but it's much closer to why I care about this story in the first place than anything else I've tried. And if you're the right reader for this book, it might just be why you care about it, too.

original short fiction: 257
Highway of Mirrors revisions: 1571

Total new words in February: 1828

Better than I expected, and not bad for a month in which word-count really wasn't the point.

I've added a little over 4k words to Highway of Mirrors in this revision pass, mostly in the form of little characterization snippets.


Short story submissions: 6, and queried on one outstanding

At one point, I had everything fit to go out in some slush pile somewhere. They've started trickling back already, of course, but goal still achieved and it was nice while it lasted.


For March: Start writing new stuff again, consistently. Also, read-through of HoM with housemate and revisions as necessary.

Revision generally comes to me in one of two ways. There's the reading-through of the text, when I come across something that just doesn't ring right or could be better. Those usually aren't too hard to work the new text in (though if something was wrong the first time, there's no guarantee that I can come up with the right thing now). And then there's the snippets of words that come to me when I'm not looking at the existing manuscript, in fact often nowhere near it; sometimes just a line or a phrase, sometimes half a scene of new content. These typically get scribbled down by hand on whatever paper I can reach at the time, and then fitted in later. Sometimes they actually do fit where I'd envisioned them, but more often I've misremembered the existing text just enough that the new stuff has nowhere to go, or crashes into the existing with that horrible crunching sound and shrapnel everywhere. And that's if the new stuff came with a specific spot in mind; just as often it's a bit that I like or that adds something important, and it needs to go somewhere, but I have to canvass the existing text to figure out where. And then comes the roadblock or the shrapnel....

This current revision pass of Highway of Mirrors has had plenty of both kinds. I'm now down to the last few handwritten bits that need to be fitted in, and of course these are the hard ones; the easy ones got done already. There's at least one bit that I really like that I don't think I'm going to be able to use; it would add a lovely oomph to the figuring-out-the-spy-plot part, but there's no way my characters could acquire the information in question -- and making a way would probably require another 20k words, all of which would be a distraction from what the novel's really about. So, no.

One bit is a two-parter; I came up with the perfect way to work in the set-up reference a couple days ago (when I needed to be getting ready for work, of course), and now I need to scan through the later chapters to figure out where the follow-up goes.

Another bit is adding some needed depth to the antagonist's characterization, and that too requires writing a new chunk to fit it into. But in this case, the point in the story where it really needs to go happens to coincide with one of the weaker scenes in the novel. So, as is often the case, put two problems together to create a solution. I'm having to effectively write a whole new scene to slip this into the background of, but I'll have less summarizing and more actual story when I'm done.

Doesn't mean I'm enjoying the process, though. ;-P

Well, that's embarrassing.

Turns out the logical inconsistency that I've been stressing out about in Highway of Mirrors... doesn't exist. (Short version: It's not the existence of the Sekrit Facility that $character uses his Sooper Spy Tricks to suss out; it's who's there and when. The place itself is officially known of. So it's perfectly all right if said character shows up at said facility later on.)

I'm still digging into the revisions, though. There's a lot of stuff that I think I can do better now, and one or two things that I've never been entirely happy about. (I still don't know what to do about those, but it feels like time to give it another try.) The previously "final" version is backed up in several places, so I can dink around to my heart's content and always go back if something proves to be a bad decision.

Have not yet devolved to spending all morning taking a comma out and all afternoon putting it back in, though I expect that will come. But for now, onward.

I had meant to do some writing on the first, to start the New Year off right. Instead, I got sucked into errands and tasks, and haven't gotten unsucked yet. So it looks like the new year is carrying on true to form. ;-P


So what did December have to say for itself?

original short fiction: 1920

Total new words in December: 1920

Disappointingly low, but then I did give myself permission to go easy in December. Plus, that total represents two completed short stories, both of which were previously stuck, as well as tweaks to a third story which got it to the point that I'm willing to send it out. So actually I'm pretty darned satisfied.


No queries sent, and there won't be until I've found a new email service that doesn't randomly delete messages with the subject line "Re: Query...."


Short stories submitted: 2


So overall not bad, given the limitations and the time of year. I'll take it.




For January: The laid-back approach still seems to be working, so I'm going to carry on not stressing about word-counts for a while longer.

I did finally make a list of all the works-in-progress (credit less to willpower than to curiosity). It was not as traumatic as I'd feared; stories-started-then-stuck made up a much smaller portion of the list than I'd anticipated. And it was useful as a focusing tool. So:

January's main goal is to dig into the Highway of Mirrors revisions. At minimum, fix the logical inconsistency, and sort through the other notes I've accumulated to see what fits where. It may be worth trying to recruit fresh betas between the logic-fix and any emotion-conveying revisions. (Psst, hey, anybody wanna read an old-school-inspired spy novel with a complicated-romance sub-theme?)

Stretch goal: Finish a short story (probably "Measure", the one that needed the railroad research).


Carry on submitting stories as opportunity presents.


In a writing-related vein, get going on the email research. I've been concentrating on cleaning out my existing accounts, and not that that doesn't need to be done, but that doesn't have to happen before new accounts can be test-driven. And too much is waiting on having new accounts established.

Coming into Chapter 2 of Falling From Ground, I had the problem that I was looking at a giant unrelieved block of navel-gazing. Some of that's inevitable and even appropriate -- the MC's got quite a mess inside his head that he needs to sort out -- but there needs to be something actually happening, too, as leavening. And so when action starts happening that is related to the mess, in a few chapters, it won't be too much of a change of pace.

Went out to dinner with the housemate and tossed the problem around, and now someone's following him. Don't know who or why, yet, but that's okay. But the words still weren't happening. I'm coming up on end-of-month, and despite having sailed well over quota last month, I'm looking at a hell of a push to make word-count this time.

This is incredibly frustrating and more than a little scary. Beginnings are supposed to be the easy part! But then I got to thinking about the Haley novel, and how I had to re-research Zurich three times. And most of the messing-about-in-Zurich stuff is in the earlier parts.... So I checked my notes:

It took me five months to write Chapter 2 of Haley.

And something like nine months for the second chapter of Highway of Mirrors, though there's some first-novel learning-curve there. Which means this isn't a sign that this novel is going horribly off the rails, or that even the easy parts will be hard and nothing will ever be easy again. This is just part of my process.

It makes sense, when the enthusiasm for a new project meets the tedium of actually making it happen. And it's not necessarily a part of my process that I have to keep unaltered; I still want to make quota for this month, if I can. And I don't think the lull is due to any back-brain work that needs to be done: I can still generate world-building at the drop of a keystroke, for example. But it's useful to know that this is a thing I do, and right about at this point in a new novel, pretty consistently.

Now, get back to work.

Saw Mary Robinette Kowal's local book-tour stop Tuesday night. It was an excellent presentation, and jam-packed. (Puppetry! Books! Regency dressmaking! I don't believe the woman sleeps.) Both Without A Summer, which I haven't gotten to yet, and the fourth book, out next year, sound like they're going to be a lot of fun.

Afterward, I had a chance to speak to her briefly about pitching. MRK is something of a genius at this -- seriously, "Jane Austen with magic"? How great is that? Four words, and you know exactly what you're getting into. I'd been hoping she might be talked into doing a pitching workshop at a certain upcoming convention, but alas, it is not to be. She did kindly take the time to offer some advice, however. She made some good suggestions, among which was to focus on the "gee-whiz" factor, the thing that made me excited about the story. This is advice that I've heard before, and for various reasons it doesn't apply. In the spirit of showing willing, however, I gave it another try, and may have at least figured out why this excellent suggestion doesn't get me any forwarder.

See, the other common advice for pitching/summarizing is to practice with other media, books you've read or movies you've seen that you're really excited about. And I'm terrible at that, too. Seriously, if you ask me about, say, The Avengers movie, what you're going to hear about is how there's this great fight scene with excellent use of small-unit tactics, and Cap showing actual leadership and personnel management skills by tasking each of his team members in ways that play to their strengths.... are your eyes glazing over yet? What you're not going to get is any idea of the plot, or any kind of overall impression of the movie -- not even any notion of what kind of movie it is, beyond the kind that has a really cool fight sequence in it.

And in trying to pitch Highway of Mirrors, I have much the same problem. Thinking about the things that got me excited about writing the book, I come up with (1) the theme of conflicting loyalties, and what happens when someone tries to stay loyal to multiple forces that are pulling in different directions, (2) the idea that two people can look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions, without either of them being evil or stupid, and (3) the moment when the main character realizes that in order to stop the bad guy, she's going to have to run her own daughter as an asset -- in short, she's going to have to do the very thing she's been fighting all along to keep him from doing. The first two are thematic matters, much too vague and generic to use in an elevator pitch. And the third is back to the same problem that I have in trying to pitch The Avengers, an isolated scene that gives you no sense of what the rest of the book is like, and that probably loses a certain amount of its own impact in isolation.

Now, I'm not completely hopeless; in talking with the housemate, I've figured out that I can probably pitch ...And The Kitchen Sink as "the Avengers in space", though I do have to specify that I mean the old British TV show The Avengers and not the superhero movie. But Kitchen Sink is a much simpler book; it's a fun, quirky sci-fi adventure, not a... well, if I could describe Highway of Mirrors that easily, I'd have half the battle won. The basic scenario of Highway of Mirrors just does not readily reduce to a pithy sound-bite. It doesn't help that the concept is one of those things that could either be really cool or really stupid, depending entirely on how it's done. I've yet to come up with a means of conveying that I've done it the really cool way, which means that my pitch generally leaves people attacking the concept instead of asking follow-up questions. Not fun, and not useful to me or anybody else.

So, how about you, oh reader? When you're telling somebody about a story with the idea of getting them to read/watch it, what bait do you use?

Last week(s): Queried, got rejected. This week: Queried again.

Today: Crossed several agents off the list due to questionable business practices, attitude problems, or reps for unresponsiveness, and one for entirely legitimate things that made them not a good match for me. It's good solid work that needed to be done, but it's not leaving me feeling productive. I was hoping to get another query in the ether today; instead, I'm feeling discouraged about finding enough agents to query.

Which, wait for it... wasn't supposed to be the hard part. Oh, yeah; slogan for the whole process. Marching on anyway.