lizvogel

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.

This is just here for the record; not much to show for the past couple months.

April:

Haley novel = 38 (I managed to work in a line I really liked and hadn't previously been able to find a place for.)
original short stories = 15
Total new words in April = 53

Queries sent = 1

Looking back at goals, I did get my taxes done. And the flu is gone, though there is a trace of a lingering cough that I'll be very glad to see the back of.


May:

Falling From Ground = 40
original short stories = 184 (incl. more clown history!)
Total new words in May = 224

There were also a couple quick edits on ...And The Kitchen Sink that didn't actually change the word count.

Short stories submitted = 2


What can I say? I've rather had my mind on other matters lately.


I'm not setting targets for June, either; still getting my feet under me from real-life matters. I've an unaccustomed amount of critiquing to do; got the stuff for the library group done just in time, and now there's the 4th Street workshop coming up. I have been fiddling with some living-room fanfic lately, which is a nice low-demand way to ease back into writing. And I poked at Green Ring a little the other night.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat as necessary.

...86,439.

Done? What's that?

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?

Okay! I've finished the line edits, tweaked what I can tweak, and now it's in the hands of the beta-reader. This is another level of done, but this one feels more done-ish. Now to see what my beta has to say, and then see if I can't get this sucker polished off.

The finishing-up stretch of a big story is always a bit odd, no longer fully immersed in the writing but not yet able to dive into something else. It leaves me a bit at loose ends, for the moment.

I seem to have wrapped up the sub-plot for Kitchen Sink last night. My anticipated 15,000 word mini-adventure has turned out to be a 3000 word couple of scenes, which has left me a tad discombobulated. On hashing it out with the housemate, however, I've concluded that expanding it would be the wrong choice. It'd be fun to see these characters go off and play, but it would undermine several developments later in the novel, and the new character I'd have to introduce would end up overshadowing the main villain in the end. So no, it's not just me copping out and going for the easy solution; it really is better for the book.

This morning, I took care of the mysterious package contents that have been lingering in writerly limbo. Between them, these were my loophole for any plot threads that I needed to tie up or (more likely) backfill, but it turns out I connected everything fairly effectively without them. So instead I put in some jokes about bureaucracy. ;-) Works for me.

I've got one mostly-characterization scene left to fill in, and a couple of tweaks here and there, and then this thing should be ready for a proper beta-reading.

For those who find process interesting, ( a week in the life of a writer )

Meanwhile, I've been so focused on my writing quota this week that I completely forgot I have a query quota to fill! Last week's query ended up getting done the following Monday due to virulent Sunday-night inertia; this week's may get rolled over due to, well, oops.

I've been putting off working on the subplot-to-be-added to Kitchen Sink for various reasons: first it was de-bracketing; then I decided I had to re-read the existing text to get back into it, and couldn't concentrate uninterrupted due to various RL things; then I realized I had to do my taxes. Now the month's nearly half gone, and I haven't even started. Which makes me feel bad, which makes me not feel like working on the subplot, which makes me feel bad, which makes me not want to work... yeah. And now the subplot is looming like this mountainous, unclimbable, impossible obstacle -- because obviously if it wasn't, I'd have done it already. Realized tonight that I am freaking the fuck out about the subplot not being done and how can I possibly manage it.

Stop that shit.

Have now reserved time with the housemate to sit down this weekend for a brainstorming session, to figure out just what does happen in the subplot, or at least enough to be going on with. I suspect that the subplot is one of those things that won't be nearly so bad once I get started; it only seems impossible because I haven't started yet.

February's goals weren't word-count goals. There were only sort-of goals at all, which may have been some of the problem. So:

Finish re-writing Highway of Mirrors synopsis: Rough draft done. I'd meant to get it done done, but I somehow lost track of the fact that the month was nearly over.

Start querying again: Not done. Obviously, since I need the synopsis for that.

De-bracket Kitchen Sink, add sub-plot: Really not done. In my defense, my alpha-reader is not in one of her lightning-fast phases, but also, de-bracketing takes an astonishing amount of time and NaNo-style writing leaves a lot of brackets.

Not on the goal list, but a noteworthy accomplishment anyway: Entered Big Deal Conference contest. Which included writing a blurb as well as selecting an excerpt, so some work there.

Total score 0.5 out of 3, plus 1 extra credit; not an impressive tally. I don't feel all that bad about it, though; the work that I did get done (the synopsis) is good work, and I think I may have broken a mental barrier with it. Plus, I did just finish a novel last month; one is perhaps entitled to a bit of a rest, after that.

Only a bit, however. So, March's goals:
- revise Kitchen Sink (de-bracket, add sub-plot, other revisions as necessary)
- finish the bloody HoM synopsis
- query at least one agent

Also, do some writing, even if it's just fanfic. Because I am a happier person when I am making new words.

So, I'm back from Capricon, and almost recovered. (Exhausted doesn't even begin to cover it.) On balance, it was fun, although both the consuite and the (lack of) writing track were disappointing. Gophered my legs off. Highlights were probably hanging out with people representing other cons, specifically the Cafe Capricon/MuseCon folks and the Minneapolis in 2073 bid.

Capricon was a goal-deadline, so let's see how I did:

- Finish rough draft of Kitchen Sink: done. It has an end. I tied up the dangling scenes that weren't related to the subplot-to-be-added, and made a start on de-bracketing.

- Revise "Off The Map": done. I had the interesting experience of going over all the workshop feedback and realizing almost all of it was wrong. Or rather, I don't think the things people were suggesting would have fixed the problem they were identifying. Putting in brand names, describing the kind of car, etc. was their way of asking to be grounded in the setting, but all those things would have come too late; I already had grounding-points half a page in, but by that point readers have made their own assumptions and will not be shifted. The grounding has to happen right at the beginning, before the reader has a chance to build up something else in their head. (Those suggestions would also have made it some other kind of story entirely, which is why I was kicking so hard.) I don't know if what I did instead will work (need fresh betas), but at least it's still the story I'm writing.

Status: Win!

Goal #3, which does not have a fixed deadline, is to get back on the querying horse. As happens every time I try this, I discovered I needed more prep work; the synopsis I thought was done... wasn't. Or, it is, but six bloody pages is just too long. I tried cutting it down, even got a fresh pair of eyes on it, but the result was thoroughly unsatisfactory and still too long. So I'm rewriting it again.

And out of desperation, I'm writing it backwards. I started with what I want the last line to be, then asked, "What has to happen for that to make sense?" and wrote that line. And so forth. It seems to be working; I'm at Chapter 8 of 15 (from back to front) and somewhere around the 500-word mark. (The same material was 1300 words in the previous version.) It may still run a bit over the two-page target when done, but a plot fueled by complex character motivations which are in turn fueled by deep backstory does not summarize easily.


Other than finishing the synopsis (tentative deadline = end of this month) and starting querying again, I do not currently have specific writing goals. This is a bad state for me to be in. I want to at least de-bracket Kitchen Sink before moving on; haven't decided if I should tackle the subplot as well, or rest it for a bit first. There's the Haley novel to be resurrected. Whither the writer?

I have just typed FIN on ...And The Kitchen Sink!

I still need to de-bracket it, and go back and finish that one scene I left hanging, and of course there's the let's-play-detective subplot to be added in. So yeah, it's yet another interesting definition of the word "done". But even so -- hey, I wrote a book-shaped thing! In three months!


It's currently at 82,779 words, for those who are counting. That's 17,160 new words in January.