lizvogel

Writing a novel would have been a really poor choice this November, but querying a novel... so that's what I did. My goal was 30 queries, one per day; I managed 10. Which is not 30, but given that I kept forgetting it was November for the first week or two, isn't bad. And it's 10 more than I would've managed otherwise, so I call win.

And I carried on the good work and managed another yesterday. Kind of by default; my library is starting a writing group, hoping to capitalize on the momentum from NaNo... and one other person showed up. Not exactly critical mass for good discussion or future planning, so she free-wrote and I queried.

Now if some of these would turn into something other than silence or form rejections. Ah, the exciting writing life....

How is it the middle of April already? When did this happen? (Do not even ask about my taxes.)

So, March's stats, better late than never.

old-mission stories: 609
other original short fiction: 3225
Lightning Strikes Twice = 4852

Total new words in March: 8686

Hot damn! That's way better than I thought I was doing. Which makes me feel a whole lot better about the state of the writing, which is just the pick-me-up I needed right now.

(The "old" mission story is actually a new one, my characters during the pandemic. Not sure how publishable that'll ever be, but I like it, so it counts. The shorts include the rest of "Going Home" and all of "Tooth of the Matter".)

On the business side, 1 short story submitted and 2 queries sent. Which is not wonderful, but... well, there is no but. Just gotta sit down and do it, however discouraging it is.

Still, 8686 words! That's awesome. More of that, April.

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.

Crammed in a final push tonight, which brought my total querying time to 40 hours 15 minutes. That's a quarter of an hour over my self-imposed target of 2 hours per every non-Day-Job day in November, despite losing five days to the rescue flight to Canada and ensuing maintenance of the Hobbling Housemate.

Feeling pretty damn good about that, and also that my last session included querying an agent who sounds pretty great. Hopefully ninjas, grues, and a cyborg platypus is just what she always wanted to see in her inbox, but even if not, I've done my bit.

There's a couple more agents I want to check out for this round, then I think I'm going to let things sit on the querying front and see how this batch goes. The housemate wrangling promises to eat an extraordinary amount of time, the Day Job's upped my hours again, and there are short stories I should be sending out.

So, overall, NaNoQueryMo was a good choice. I only got 9 queries sent (yeah, I'm slow, and picky), but it's 9 more than I would've done otherwise. And despite tonight's late-night push, I haven't killed myself doing it. Works for me.

This querying thing is getting discouraging. Spent two unproductive hours this evening trying to choose between two agents at one agency, growing increasingly disillusioned with both of them, and finally chose one for irrelevant reasons only to discover that both require a synopsis. Which I haven't written yet, for Kitchen Sink. And which I will have to write, eventually, but I'd rather do it for an agent I'm not side-eyeing dubiously to start with.

I think I'm still above "par" for my personal NaNoQueryMo, but if so it's just barely. Need to make myself a par bar chart for tracking; also need to get stricter about putting in the time.

On the plus side, the new schedule came out yesterday at the Day Job, and I am finally back down to the kind of hours I'm supposed to be working. That extra day per week was really cramping everything else; now that I've got it back, maybe I can get some progress made. Or at least some more sleep.

Since I can't track what I'm doing on the website....

Nov. 1 (Friday) - Day Job day.

Nov. 2 - Querying 2 hrs 45 minutes. Mostly organizational; tweaked QUERY1 to include 2nd story sale (!!!), fine-tuned spreadsheet, sorted agent data from HoM efforts & various notes. Ready to research and go next time.

Nov. 3 - Day Job day. Bonus 30 minutes querying at a write-in at a cat cafe (astonishing that I did any at all). Not off to a great start: first agent I picked, who I've been looking forward to querying for ages, closed three months ago. *headdesk* Hope this is not a sign of things to come.

Nov. 4 - Querying 3 hrs. Researched the snot out of second agent on list (far more than necessary, really), then discovered that not only don't I have the various 5-page, 10-page, etc. chunks pre-made, I only barely have a submission-format version of the whole novel. Also, there's a bit I've tripped over before that I kept telling myself would be fine if I read it in context, that... isn't. Wondering if I need to do a fresh review pass on the whole MS before starting to shop it around.

Nov. 5 - Querying 2 hrs. Actually managed to send a query! And found another agent who's closed. Housemate convinced me last night that the bit wasn't an issue, so that's good. Now have 5-page and 10-page samples ready when needed.

Nov. 6 - Day Job day.

Nov. 7 - Querying 2 hrs 15 minutes. Found another agent closed to queries. Picked an agency & spent much time researching to determine best agent there to query, and did so. Went to very cold! write-in after writers group; didn't get any additional querying done, but did do some badly-needed computer maintenance.

Nov. 8 - Querying 2 hrs 15 minutes. That seems to be about what I need to research & query one agent. Yes, that's a long time; don't seem to be able to speed it up and still feel I'm doing due dilligence.

Nov. 9 - Day Job day. Bonus 2 hours querying, much of which was fighting with software & the printer to get a snail-mail query package looking decent. Time is approximate because I paused the timer and forgot to unpause it.

Nov. 10 - Querying 3.5 hours. Which sounds great, but all I ended up doing was crossing off a couple of agencies that had been at the top of my list. Bad fit by genre, bad fit by personality, etc. And this is important work that needs to be done, but damn it's discouraging to put in that much time with no queries sent to show for it.

Nov. 11 - Day Job day. I had meant to log some bonus querying time by taking a snail query to the post office, but after fishtailing through eight inches of churned slush on a main road, I decided it could wait, and so could anything else that didn't involve heading straight home.

Nov. 12 - Querying 1 hr 45 minutes. Actually sent something! which I feel pretty good about. Will try to do more later, and/or count the post office trip; now to finish shoveling the driveway so said trip can happen.

Nov. 13 - Day Job day.

Nov. 14 - Spent 45 minutes round-trip taking snail query to post office. Meant to do more, but other errands ate my morning, and the evening just... didn't happen.

Nov. 15 - Day Job day.

Nov. 16 - Spent 2 hours waffling back and forth between two agents (or neither) at same agency, only to discover that both require a synopsis, which I haven't written for Kitchen Sink. Frustratingly unproductive.

Nov. 17 - 3 hours, in which I crossed off a bad-fit agent, and then spent another couple hours waffling back and forth before crossing off another. I swear, I'm not trying to be insanely picky. But I do think that "only query people you're excited to work with" is good advice, and... I'm not. Hopefully next time.

Nov. 18 - Querying 3 hours 30 minutes. Much better than yesterday; a couple of agents I'd be excited to work with and that are open to queries!

Nov. 19 - Querying 3 hours. No queries sent, but I feel better than usual about that because my research ended up steering me clear of an agency with some very dubious practices. Sheesh!

Nov. 20 - Day Job day.

Nov. 21 - Querying 2 hours. Crossed off more agents.

Nov. 22 - Querying 3 hours 15 minutes. Crossed off some more, then found a brand new agent I like the sound of. Query sent! Also prepped more samples of varying lengths.

Nov. 23 - Day Job day.

Nov. 24-29 - Lost five days to the emergency trip to Canada and attendant housemate feeding & maintenance. Nov. 26 was a Day Job day.

Nov. 30 - Querying 2 hours 45 minutes, bringing me in at a total of 40 hours 15 minutes -- fifteen minutes over quota!!

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... )

(backdated; found on USB about a year after the fact)

The original plan was to take December off, goof around with writing fanfic or whatever took my fancy, and then get back to Lightning Strikes Twice. Technology and other issues put paid to that, and I ended up not writing at all for most of December. So then January was supposed to be my goofing-off month -- and I did noodle around a bit with fanfic and such. But I also had this idea of starting a new series, and writing the first story in January -- which I mostly did, putting the finishing pre-beta touches on "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" only one day into the next month. Only now it's February, and the deal with taking January to goof off was that I would start cracking on LST again in February. And I'm still scrambling around with half-assed technology, and a non-writing project that's eating all my spare time and badly needs more, and the last-gasp push on querying Highway of Mirrors that somehow was also supposed to get done in January and is... only half so, and I am in no headspace to dive back into LST even if it is at a much-reduced pace from NaNo's.

Somehow, this month, I need to:
-reactivate LST
-finish querying HoM
-sub one|more short stories
-write another short story, no wait, two short stories (I still owe somebody one from May)
-do something about the writing laptop situation
-do enough stuff for the non-writing project to qualify as a full-time job if I were getting paid

Let's all sing the Doom Song now, shall we?

I'm not querying any faster for the purring cat who keeps demanding attention, but I sure am querying happier.

I meant to get the novel done before the beginning of May. Then before MediaWest. Then before the end of May. Then June 21?, which would have been exactly the four-year mark since I started. Then the end of June. Then the end of July. At least I made it before BistoCon, which was deadline... six? seven? of the current crop. There were whooshing noises for some time before that, too.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter when I got it done. I'm not under contract, or even (yet) in any professional relationship with expectations about productivity. And for my personal writerly development, the difference between four years and four years and two months is not that big a deal -- though I am deeply frustrated by not being able to hit that target.

However, that original May deadline wasn't just to fit it in around convention season; it was also about what would happen after. A nice, leisurely read-through, followed by edits as necessary and then setting the book aside with a sense of finality (for now). A couple of months off, in which I could mess about with short stories, get back to that just-for-fun project I've been missing, maybe play with some fanfic. Do some querying and submitting, that's been left by the wayside in the push to Finish The Book. Recharge the batteries, relax the writing muscles. Not no-writing, because my brain gets troublesome if I don't write semi-regularly, but low-pressure, small-stretches kinds of stuff, so I can remember that this writing thing is supposed to be fun.

And then, after several months of recuperation, think seriously about doing NaNo, and gear up for that.

Instead, I find myself with less than half the time I originally envisioned -- and the resulting drive to hurry-up-and-relax-right-now. The just-for-fun project has about 15-20K left to go; that's 3-4 months for me when I'm in good form. There's the story I promised someone at MediaWest. There's the final due-diligence push on querying Highway of Mirrors, which has also blown past more deadlines than I can count. A dozen or so short stories that should all be out there right now, and kept out there til they sell. The Doctor Who fanfic that I figured out how to un-stick a while back, and that Star Trek series I'm not writing, and maybe that last Atlantis story, and the fanfic all counts just as much because I promised myself I would relax, dammit!

And frankly, Falling From Ground was enough of a death-march that I'm a tad leery of grabbing hold of the hot stove element of another novel just yet. Even if I did nothing but doodle for the next two months, what kind of state would I be in, writing-wise, come November 1st? The NaNo project (should I choose to accept it) would be the sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink, my NaNo win from a few years back. It should be fun, fast-paced, a bit wacky but sensible in a surreal way. I'm calling it Lightning Strikes Twice, and there's an implicit challenge in that title. Am I up to that challenge? Am I going to be up to that challenge, and can I possibly pack enough relaxation into the remaining time to make myself so?

Yeah. Hurry up and relax. 'Cause that's gonna work.