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Three Conversations About Self-Publishing

Friday, June 11, 2010

With my friend Becky, about six months ago.  My summation:  “I dunno.  I think if I couldn’t get published traditionally, I’d have to take a good, hard look at my work.”

With my writing group, Wednesday night.  My summation: “I think it’s a path to publication that is opening up for some people, like bloggers and celebrities and other people with existing platforms.  But I personally would not do it.”

With Mark, last night.  My summation: “It’s not the worst idea.”

All this is to say that my attitude toward self-pubbing is rapidly opening up.  Which I don’t think is because I’m crazy, or because I haven’t found an agent yet.  I think it’s because between the blogs and the e-readers and the bestselling books based on Twitter feeds, we’re reaching a sort of inflection point.  Things are changing.  For some writers, they already have.

Now, I am not anywhere near ready to comb through the Lulu terms of service yet.  But, Mark and I did have another “what would we do if the book didn’t sell” conversation last night.  It seemed to me that there were two possible paths: (1) write another book, and hope that when it sold, it would pull this one along with it in a package deal and (2) self-pub.

Just for the hell of it, we talked about how to chart a course down Path #2.  “What if I released it as a blog?” I asked.  “A chapter a week, for about a year.  And if you want to read the whole thing right now, you can buy a self-pubbed copy?”

Mark liked it.  It tied into that whole giving-your-stuff-away-for-free ethos that is such a big part of the web.  “You could be, like, the Jonathan Coulton of cozy mysteries.”

“But my audience isn’t all that webby,” I pointed out.  “It’s entirely female, and I’m not really sure it’s necessarily the youngest, most tech savvy females.  My audience properly includes my mom.  My mom is never going to read a book online.”

“And here’s the real kicker.  I’d be risking not just this book, I’d be risking the entire series.  If my book didn’t take off for any reason, I’d never get it, or any of the sequels I intend to write, picked up by a traditional publisher.  I’m not saying I can’t come up with another idea.  I’m just saying, I’ve got plans I don’t want to torpedo on a whim.”

And yet… the idea still held some appeal.  It was new, it was sexy, and it involved higher royalties.  So when I got home, I looked up “serialized online novels.”  And it turns out that, yes, this is a thing that is done.  And is it successful?  Sometimes.

The really successful serialized books I found were in the horror genre, i.e., they had a primarily young, primarily male audience.  And it’s hard, honestly, for me to know how successful they really were.  Which brings up the whole question: what is success?  How do you define it?

I used to define it as having a book published that was critically acclaimed.  Now I couldn’t care less about that last clause (well, I could care less, just not a lot). But I think that for me success still entails a presence on a bookstore shelf.  Which probably means publication, traditional publication.

So that is what I’m pursuing.  But I’ll be honest: the idea of self-publication still does have its appeal.  On the one hand, everything would be on me: the editing, the marketing, et al.  And on the other hand, everything would be on me.  It would be my baby, start to finish.  I could get started today, and if I didn’t get my feet under me immediately that would be ok, because there’s no one I’d ever have to get approval from.

Filed in Self-Publishing, The State of Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing Group | | Comments (2)

Liveblogging Wednesday: In With The New

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

3:50 PM: And we have a very late start to Liveblogging Wednesday this week.  Sorry about that.

Today I plan to start on a new book.  Not the sequel to my current book, but a whole new project, something Mark and I dreamed up during our what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to conversation last week.  I’m still mostly interested in a series following from The Big Life, but that is obviously predicated on… well, The Big Life selling.  I’m planning to work on the sequel soon, but it will do me no harm to tool around with another idea in the meantime.

What I Have: A strong hook, and half a dozen protean characters.

What I Need: Everything else.

4:45 PM: I have had the way this scene goes in my mind for days.  Some people say they like writing better than editing; some people say they like editing better than writing.  I know it sounds weird, but I am not huge on either.  What I like is… scene making.  I really don’t know how else to describe it.  Figuring out what will happen, how it will go down, what images and emotions will be central to a scene… that’s what I like.  The writing… sometimes, that can be hard.

I’m taking a quick break to read Outlander’s story for Writing Group tonight.

5:27 PM: Back.  Man, that was a sad story.

5:33 PM: Ok, that big moment I was writing to is done.  It went down pretty well, I think.

6:26 PM: And they find a body.  Dun dun dun!

6:30 PM: On page three.  Because I’m not messing around.

7:04 PM: Breaking again to read some more stuff for writing group.  Back before too long.

8:05 PM: All right, I think I’m done for the day.  Not a great day of liveblogging, but I have some good pages and some neat ideas.  Gotta make dinner and get ready for group.

Filed in Story Planning, liveblogging | | Comments (0)

The Long, Dark Query Process Of The Soul

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Queries are out.  Or some of them, at least.  It is always hard for me to let each one go.  While I was going through this process, the agent with my full wrote back.  She doesn’t want me.

Remember when I got into Boot Camp and I said, “Can I just say, this feels enormously validating?”  Well, this… this feels like the un of that.

It’s not the end of the world.  I understand this agent’s reasons, and I appreciate the fact that she let me know what they were.  In all honestly, I always knew that my book wasn’t a 100% perfect fit for her interests, as she’s not really a mystery girl.  Still, she had the whole book, and she didn’t go crazy for it.  So, you know, there’s that.

I mailed out some quick queries, and then Mark took me out to dinner (has anyone else noticed that the Olive Garden has gone downhill lately?). And just for the hell of it, we talked about what I would do if the book really didn’t sell.

Not that I think I’m there yet.  And write another book, duh.  Still, it was a good conversation to have, and we came up with some neat ideas in case I need them.

When we came home I already had one rejection waiting for me.  I should have known better than to query the woman who said she was looking for authors with amazing voices, and huge platforms.  That’s sort of like those bachelors on Millionaire Matchmaker who say they’re looking for a woman with a beautiful spirit, and ginormous breasts.

Seriously.  I am down, but not out.  I have more queries to mail.  I have more ideas to write.

And I am working on one now.

Filed in Querying, Rejection | | Comments (3)

Whoopsie

Thursday, June 3, 2010

I did finish that query letter last night, but for some reason it didn’t publish.  So, here it is:

I am seeking representation for my jazz age mystery novel, The Big Life (75,000 words).  It is a spin on the classic hard-boiled detective story—from the secretary’s point of view.

In 1928, Kitty Carmichael arrives in Chicago determined to reinvent herself—and to mooch off her rich uncle as long as possible.  Instead she discovers that her uncle has been murdered, and his half-Japanese daughter, Koko, has been left in her care.  It’s a responsibility she doesn’t want.

When Kitty learns that the fortune Koko should inherit has disappeared, she teams up with clever but cynical detective Tom Gallo to find it.  But they’re not the only ones looking.  When Koko is kidnapped by someone who believes she is the key to finding the fortune, Kitty’s priorities change.  She saves Koko, and in doing so learns that you can’t live the Big Life without a big heart.

The Big Life is a historical mystery with a strong romantic subplot.  Although it could function as a standalone novel, it could also anchor a series.

Previously I was a story writer for the popular online game City of Heroes, known for its intricate plot lines.  I studied writing at Florida State University.

Thank you for your consideration,

Jane Kalmes
What do you think?  Less punchy?  More intriguing?  If anyone has an opinion on this query letter, I am looking for one.

Filed in Querying | | Comments (1)

Liveblogging Wednesday: This and That, and Also Sex and the City

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

It’s time for another Liveblogging Wednesday.  I’m having a hard time deciding what to liveblog today.  I could work on revisions to my query letter.  Or I could work on the initial pages for the sequel to my novel.

But what I really, really want to write is a pan of Sex and the City 2.

So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I promise we’ll get to the liveblogging in due course.  Spoilers in…

3

2

1

I used to love Sex and the City.  The writing for that show was scintillating, not only funny, but also often very interesting and moving.  The writing for the movie… uh, not so much.  They ditched the interesting, and the moving.  And the funny?  Well, they tried for it, but it didn’t really manifest, since most of the lines seemed forced.  Case in point:

Sexy Stranger: Lovely to meet you, Samatha.  I’m Rikard Spurt.

Samantha: Isn’t Rikard the same as Richard?

Rikard: Yes.

Samantha: So your name is Dick Spurt?

Rikard:  Could you be any more American?  I don’t think so.

Translation…

Samantha: So your name is A Name Obviously Constructed In Order To Give Me a Very Moderately Funny Joke?

Rikard:  Could you be any more carelessly written?  I don’t think so.

Samantha was a complete disaster in this movie.  She used to be lewd in a way that was downright erotic in its frankness and confidence.  But in this movie she was gratuitously, pointlessly lewd in a way that was, frankly, a little bit gross.  Even Samantha ought to have had more class than to scream “labia” while surrounded by Muslim men.

Samantha annoyed me a lot in this movie, but the character who really got under my skin was Carrie.  Sadly, this is the one thing that did remain consistent from television to movie:  Carrie can be the most unbelievably selfish brat.

On the show, she was constantly doing things that shocked me (most of them to Aidan).  But I put them aside and loved her anyway, because she was so interesting, and I really did want her story to have a happy ending.

But, man.

If you kiss your old flame, and feel you have to tell your husband (and I’m frankly not sure you should), by all means do not call him in the middle of the night while he is in New York and you are in Abu Dhabi.  It’s like, “Hi, sweetheart, I’d like you to know I kissed the One Who Got Away.  While you’re home alone for the next few days and I’m completely out of your reach (but just a short walk away from that other dude), have fun thinking about that.  I’ve obviously been thinking about it a lot, because I’m calling you about it at 2:30 in the morning.  So, you know, clearly it meant a great deal to me.”

But even that wouldn’t bother me so much if Carrie’s lines during the scene where she debates confessing weren’t all about her.  “I don’t want the secret.”  I, I, I.  No “Don’t I owe him my honesty?” No “Should I really hurt him that way?”  Nope, it’s all about Carrie.  She’s perfectly willing to indulge in any sort of flight of fancy if she thinks it’s something she needs.  But she never makes the mental leap to thinking about what her man needs.

Ok, enough.  I knew going in that SATC 2 was going to be, you know, mediocre.  Really, after the first movie I stopped considering these films to be canon.  But yeesh.  What a way to kill a franchise.

And now, on with the liveblogging:

2:51 PM: I am thinking about amping up my query letter today.  The way I see it, the query letter exists for two purposes:  (1) To sell the aspects of your book that don’t appear in the first five pages and (2) To sell yourself—if not your publishing credentials, at least your professionalism.  I think my query does a decent job of both, but it could maybe be slightly better at #1.  That’s the goal for the first part of today.

3:49 PM: Ok, yugh.  Mark dragged me out of the Barnes and Noble where I was working, and then we lost about an hour to Atlanta’s craptastic traffic.  So, starting now, I am really liveblogging.

4:15 PM: Ok, first change: Replacing “It is the first in a proposed series that looks at the hard-boiled world of guns and gangsters from a feminine point of view” with “It is a spin on the classic hard-boiled detective novel—from the secretary’s point of view.  Although it could function as a standalone, it could also anchor a series.”  Essentially the same information, except (1) stated in a more “hook-y” way, and (2) I left open the option for a standalone (even though I don’t think this is actually a major deal; these types of books tend to sell as series).

4:33 PM: Considering the possibility of one of those “This Book is a wild romp full of X, X, and X.” kind of sentences.  So, what is my book full of?  Making a list… I won’t include this sentence unless it can sparkle with specificity and interest.

4:58 PM: Ok, scrapping that idea.  Here is what I really want to do: I want to inform agents that there is a strong romantic aspect to my book.  Because that’s a significant selling point, and it’s not yet obvious from either the query or the first five pages.  So maybe I just need a new paragraph related to the romantic subplot.

5:45 PM: How can it take so long to write something so short?

5:47 PM: How?  Because I agonize over every phrase, that’s how.

6:06 PM: And because I get distracted.

6:53 PM: At dinner now.  Actually, here is the real problem.  The real problem is that I am having trouble, emotionally, letting go of my last query letter, which I liked, and which got about a 1-in-3 hit rate in partial requests.  The plot summary went a little something like this:

It’s 1928, and farm girl Kitty Carmichael arrives in Chicago determined to reinvent herself—and to mooch off her rich uncle as long as possible.  Instead she discovers that her uncle has been murdered, his fortune is missing, and his half-Japanese daughter, Koko, has been left in her care.

It’s a responsibility she shoulders less than gracefully.  But as she works to solve her uncle’s murder—and more importantly, get her hands on his cash—Kitty discovers a simple truth: you can’t live the Big Life without a big heart.

I thought—I still think—this has a certain elegance.  It encapsulates the core emotional story—selfish young woman grows up—succinctly, and I think with a touch of flare.  But it’s also tight.  Each sentence depends upon the last one.  It doesn’t easily admit the insertion of another line about “ZOMG, also, she meets this handsome dude.”

And yet that is what I have been trying to get it to do.  So I think my job now is to try looking at this query completely afresh.  I’m going to start from scratch with it, even though I’m hoping to later integrate some of the language from Query #1.  But hopefully a blank slate will give me a fresh eye.

7:57 PM: Slowly getting somewhere…

9:15 PM: One sentence left…

Filed in Bad Writing, Querying, liveblogging | Tagged | Comments (0)

The iPad for Writers: A Review

Monday, May 31, 2010

My full Query Me This submission is now up at The Public Query Slushpile, along with nine others. I haven’t had a chance to read through all of them yet, but it looks like there’s some good stuff.

I wrote the entire submission, query and pages, on my iPad, as a sort of experiment. I was looking to find out whether the iPad would be reasonable as my primary computer. Ever since I got it, I’ve been using it almost exclusively. It’s wonderful for all types of reading, and, even with its wireless keyboard, it’s about ten times easier to cart around than my laptop.

But it order to become my primary computer, it would have to be good for writing on. Which, I guess, it’s not.

First of all, i have to say that if you plan on doing any sort of writing on the iPad, you really need to have a wireless keyboard. Otherwise, it’s sort of a nonstarter. But even with this equipment in hand, I found a number of small problems with Pages, Apple’s word processor for the iPad. Such as:

Only one window at a time

This is sort of necessitated by the iPad’s form factor, but it’s still annoying to have to switch to the desktop every time you want to look something up.

No CTRL-B, CTRL-I, CTRL-E

Etcetera. Not a major factor, just a bit of an annoyance.

Poor bulleted lists

You can make a bulleted list, but there’s no obvious way to indent sub-topics.

Very aggressive auto-correct

For example, when I was typing the above section, the iPad insisted that I really meant “billeted lists.” It also just added a period after that quotation mark. And it always reformats “its” to “it’s.” This sort of aggressive auto correct is kind of nice when you’re using the touch keypad (because you tend to make plenty of miskeys), but it becomes more than a little annoying when you’re actually using the wireless keyboard.

All of these things are irritating, but I would probably find a way to be ok with them if it weren’t for the following deal breakers:

No word count or obvious page count

Yes, you can scroll down to the bottom of your doc and see what page you’re on, but that’s not quite what I want. I want a visible control that tells me how long my work is.

No searching within a document

By the time you have a three hundred page document, you need to be able to search for specific passages.

No comments

Comments are a big part of the way I work. I use them not just for editing, but also for keeping track of what time it is within the world of my story, and whether a minor character’s eyes are blue or brown. This is the biggest deal breaker of all.

So, there you have it. I still am head over heels for my iPad, but it’s better at consuming media than it really is at producing it. The laptop will remain my primary computer. I just won’t love it quite as much as I did before it’s younger, sleeker cousin came to play.

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Lines on a Spreadsheet, Lines in the Sand

Sunday, May 30, 2010

I’m sending more queries this week. I still have one full manuscript out from my last round of submissions, but that is no reason not to keep the ball rolling.

In the past, I’ve collected a few names of agents I was really excited about, and queried them. Then, when it’s time for me to send out more queries, I’m sort of starting at Square One again, looking for a new crop of names. No longer. This time I’m being comprehensive.

There are three basic ways I know to find agents:

Search a major database, such as AgentQuery or Publisher’s Marketplace.

This is nice and comprehensive, but tends to give you too much material to weed through. You cannot reasonably query 2,400 agents.

Target the agents of writers you like.

Some people like to go to the bookstore and look at the Acknowledgements page; that way you can frequently see not only the name of the agent, but a little bit about what the author actually thought of him (assuming it was flattering).

Another way to go here is to simply google “Laura Lippman agent.” You might have to hunt around a few web pages, but eventually you will find a bio or interview that reveals the name you want.

Blogrolls

Some agents blog, and many of them link to one another. The way I see it, getting a blogging agent is a bit of a bonus because (1) you can know so much more about them before signing than you could through research and conversation and (2) if they have an audience, they will likely promote your book to it.

***

Yesterday I found myself about forty-five names, through a combination of #2 and #3. Today I am going through them and (after eliminating the agents I simply won’t query, because they’re not seeking clients, don’t rep my genre, or have something truly off-putting in their bio) triaging them into categories: Query First, Query Second, and Query If You Must.

What puts an agent into Query First? A blog (that I like), a client list that speaks to me, or a “What I’m Looking For” section in their bio that seems to be just begging for my book.

What puts an Agent into Query If You Must? Stating that they don’t answer their mail. Ok, there are more factors here, but this is the one I want to talk about.

A surprising number of agents state right up front that unless they are interested in your project, you won’t hear from them. No rejection, nada. I have to admit, I just don’t get this. I mean, I completely get why you can’t send a personalized rejection to everyone who writes. It would take your whole day. But I have a hard time believing that you’re truly too busy to press Reply, CTRL-V, Send. Or at least train an intern to press Reply, CTRL-V, Send.

To me, this is sort of a failing of professionalism and respect. I mean, hey, I get that when I’m looking for an agent, I am the one with the lower status. They are the handsome prince, I am the barefoot cinder wench. I know this, and respect it, and I understand why it has to be the case.

And yet. And yet at the same time as I am writing to an agent and asking him to make my dreams come true, I am also offering him a business opportunity. I am offering him the chance to represent me, and share in my success. And, humble though I may be, it doesn’t behoove me to treat this opportunity as though it were worth nothing.

Which, to me, means not offering it to people who advertise that they’ll treat it as though it were worth nothing.

(Also, I have a hard time believing that someone who doesn’t answer his mail is really going to be the take-the-bull-by-the-horns agent I want.)

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Wednesday Liveblogging: Query Me This

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

So, today I’m launching a new “feature” on this blog: Wednesday Liveblogging. Every Wednesday, come Hell or high water (but possibly not Boot Camp) I will spend a full eight hours liveblogging. Hopefully it will give me a lot of accountability, without having quite the paralyzing effect that trying to write a full story while blogging had.

Today I’m going to work on something strictly for funsies. The Public Query Slushpile is running an experiment called Query Me This. It’s basically an invitation for writers to send in query letters and five pages in answer to the following prompt:

Our protagonist has found evidence that the government is being lured into war. If the country engages in the conflict abroad, its military will not be able to deal with an imminent invasion by a rival nation. The problem is that the source of the information is a double agent, and our protagonist is being set up to cause the war he/she is trying to prevent.

I have to admit, this prompt didn’t really grab me until I started thinking of it as a concept for an alternate history novel. And where do all the hottest alternate history novels go? That’s right, baby. World War II.

Writing a query for a manuscript that doesn’t exist obviously gives me a lot of leeway. Still, there are a number of things I really need to know about this fictional book. What are the major conflicts between these nations? Why is our protagonist in a position to affect them? What’s his (or her) relationship to the double agent? Why does he trust this person, and what will the eventual betrayal mean? Also, how alternate am I going with this history? Are the events of the novel basically the only departure from known history, or am I dealing with a truly different world?

1:47 PM: And so we begin. Well, truthfully, we began about half an hour ago, and have been struggling with Wordpress’s not-so-hot editor for the iPad ever since.

2:00 PM: I’ve been doing some research to try to determine what my conflict would be. Originally I wanted to do a war between Britain and America, weakening both before the Third Reich went on the move. But I honestly couldn’t come up with a reasonable reason for hostilities to exist between these nations, not without grafting on a more alternate history than I was really interested in.

So, I turned my attention to Russia. It’s easy for those of us in the Western world to sort of forget it, but in WWII the Russians were really up against it. America and Britain both lost around four hundred thousand soldiers; in contrast, the USSR lost somewhere around nine or ten million.

And, looking at the history, it wasn’t hard to find a place where the history could be just a touch alternate, with a big effect. My query will focus on the Russian-Japanese conflict along the border of Manchuria in 1938-39.

2:40 PM: Ok, scrapping that idea. Because that history? Isn’t exactly alternate.

2:52 PM: Mark: a fountain of all knowledge military and historical. I’m back to my original idea, Britain vs. America.

2:59 PM: Ok, I have my villain and my protagonist. The former: Miss Moneypenny. (Ok, not Moneypenny exactly, but a selfless secretary working for MI6 and spending her free time fantasizing about our villain, a sort of evil James Bond.)

3:51 PM: An extremely rough draft:

Working as a secretary for the Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 6 isn’t exactly glamorous. But Dilys Dalrymple is happy to do it. After all, she’s the only one who knows how to keep MI6 running smoothly. Plus, it keeps her close to the object of her affection, MI6 agent Max Law.

When Max uncovers a plot by America to take over the far-flung jewels of the British Empire, Australia and India, Miss Dalrymple is eager to get him whatever resources he needs to prove his theory. But is Max really serving queen and country? Or is he working for another government instead?

There are several problems with this, which I won’t go into in their entirety (like the fact that it’s not even clear this is WWII). But the main thing I want to talk about is the similarity to James Bond.

Let’s just say that this is not a project I would pursue as a real book. James Bond is old enough, and iconic enough, to have generated plenty of homages and parodies… and I think these are legitimate works. This idea of mine, though, doesn’t seem legit, at least not yet.

To me, the thing that makes a movie like Austin Powers legit is that it is both closer to, and farther from, the original source material. It is closer in the sense that it is 100% a James Bond story, twisted sideways. It borrows heavily from the Bond trope, including villains with overly elaborate schemes and women with overly suggestive names. And it is farther from the source in the sense that it is in an entirely separate genre, humor rather than action. It is James Bond with a single interesting twist.

Whereas my query here is James Bond with a slightly murky, uninteresting twist. What if James Bond had started in 1943 instead of 1953? Not so interesting. What if James Bond were evil? Interesting, but coupled with the other twist it’s a touch murky and hard to defend. Also, this would remain in the same genre as the original Bond, and that, too, is hard to defend.

What would a Bond novel look like with Moneypenny as the protagonist? This is both the most interesting, and most legitimate twist I’ve got. While it doesn’t place the book in a separate genre, it has the potential to hop it over to a different subgenre, the cozy, funny women sleuths subgenre. If I were going to write a book like this in real life, that’s the twist I would need to concentrate on. (Actually, I sort of already did that with the novel I’m currently shopping, which is a hard boiled detective story from the secretary’s point of view).

All this being said, as an exercise I think this is just fine. I may try to push my characters farther afield, into an area where I would consider them legitimate and original, or I may just leave it as is, since this is for nothing but fun.

4:50 PM: Short break to catch up on a few blogs and such.

5:26 PM: Back. What I really need now is more specifics; the current graphs are just a bunch of generalities.

6:39 PM: Leftover chicken pot pie for dinner. Mega-yum.

There’s a part of me that wonders whether the other people doing this exercise are taking as long as I am. I’m starting to come up with something decent here, but it’s been kind of a long road.

7:28 PM: Okay, this still needs polish, and it’s a bit long for a real query letter, but here’s a draft:

Dear Mr. Agent,

I am seeking representation for my 75,000 word alternate history suspense novel, (Title Here). Set in the days just before World War II, it follows a lowly MI6 secretary who learns that her country is being lured into war with America in order to weaken it before the coming German invasion.

Playing Girl Friday to one of Britain’s most clandestine secret agents isn’t exactly the glamorous life Dilys Griffin hoped for. Most days, she spends more time locating cuff links than saving the world. But Dilys wouldn’t trade her job for anything. After all, she’s serving queen and country, as any Briton should. And there are those times when she’s almost sure that her employer, Agent Maxwell Lloyd, is looking at her with more than professional interest.

When Max disappears while on assignment, Dilys defies MI6 protocol to go after him. She follows him to India, where she learns that he was killed. Heartbroken, Dilys recovers the last dead drop Max made before his death: photographs showing America mounting an invasion force to wrest India from the British Empire.

Pursued throughout the back alleys of Bangalore, Dilys will have to use every trick she ever learned from Max to complete his last mission and bring the photographs to light. But everything is not what it appears to be. The photographs are doctored. The invasion is a lie. And the man Dilys loves is not only not dead–he’s not even British!

(Title Here) could function as a standalone, or could anchor a series in which Dilys serves her government as a spy throughout the events of World War II.

Previously I was a story writer for the popular online game City of Heroes, known for its intricate plot lines. I studied writing at Florida State University.

Thank you for your consideration,

Me

7:32 PM: Well, it needs work, but that will stand for the moment. Now I need to write the five pages that would accompany this letter in a query. Ideally, it’ll be a complete scene… not because it would need to be for agents, but because this is a fake thing, for funning around on the Interwebs, and a full scene would be most entertaining for people to read.

8:47 PM: The scene is going fairly well. About half a page in, and the voice is decent.

9:18 PM: All right, I think that’s it for the night. I’m about halfway into my five pages and going strong. Does anyone have an idea for a good title for this fictional book? Titles are not my strongest point.

Filed in Dorking Around, Querying | Tagged | Comments (0)

Harold’s Coming Out Party

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Last night my writing group met. Along with the latest sections from Newshound’s and Poetess’ novels, we discussed my recent story.

I wound up getting a lot of praise for this story, which surprised me, because I still thought it was kinda marshy and weak in the middle. People loved the concept. The Poetess said something about how I always find an element of hopefulness no matter what dark tale I’m telling, which I thought was a truly lovely compliment. In short, it was a nice night.

Major comments included the fact that relevant info could have been seeded earlier, and also that some of my red herrings and false suspects were, uh, not so hot. Newshound pointed out that the interesting thing about the final reveal was not who did it, but why. So, maybe I can do without some of those weak suspects. They are, in all honesty, not the most interesting thing the story has going on.

Despite the positive feedback, I really feel that this story is not where I want it to be. I’ve started thinking of it as almost a mini-masterwork, something I really want to be hitting on all cylinders all the time. I am willing to put some more effort into this story to get it to match up with what’s in my head.

In other news, I sent off the remainder of my Boot Camp tuition yesterday. I could have (and probably would have) put this off for another week, but I woke up yesterday from a horrible dream in which it was the very last day for payment, and I was on the phone with Orson Scott Card, trying desperately to give him my credit card number. The Discover card in my wallet belonged to my mom for some reason, the one in Mark’s wallet had two conflicting numbers, and when I went looking for my Visa card I discovered all that was left in my wallet was a bunch of old receipts. And meanwhile Orson Scott Card is all like, “Um, ok…I guess I’ll wait,” and no doubt twirling his finger beside his ear.

Not a good dream. Oh, and in other other news, I’m writing this blog post on my iPad.

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Liveblogging, Fin (For Realsies)

Monday, May 17, 2010

Ok, whew.  I’m back to liveblogging, and rather sorry for punking out on it last week.  One of the plusses, and minuses, of a writing group is that it’s like writing with someone looking over your shoulder.  That provides a lot of accountability, which is great, but it also provides a lot of pressure, and sometimes that pressure can get more than a touch negative.

And I’ve found this to be a plus and minus of liveblogging as well.  I’d like to do it again in the future, but I don’t think I’m going to commit to seeing a whole project through with it again.

Here’s where I am with Harold’s story: About one scene farther that I was when last we spoke of it.  Can I just say: What a difference a scene makes!  I am currently deep into The Scene, the scene I first envisioned when I started this story, the scene I’ve been writing toward the whole time.  It’s the scene where Harold reaches out and makes a connection.  Right now, the words are flying (which is good, because I have a Writing Group Deadline I’m already pushing).

2:39 PM: Getting in some good voice-y bits for Harold.  In a later draft, I’ll need to make sure these are more present throughout.

3:07 PM: Inventing a richer history for Harold.

3:21 PM: Done with The Scene, and it wasn’t too bad if I do say so myself.  I thought there’d only be one more to write after this, but it turns out there’s two.

3:29 PM: Argh, not a plot snafu!  Not now!

3:34 PM: Solved.

3:44 PM: Penultimate scene down.  Ultimate scene: engage!

4:26 PM: One last big emotional moment.  Come on.  Get there.

4:50 PM: Hallelujah.  It’s done.

So, let me wrap this up.  That story took an insanely long time to write.  In-sane-ly.  Part of the trouble was that it’s been a while since I wrote a short story; I’ve been an exclusively novel girl for four or so years now.  It’s just sort of a different thing.

And part of it is that is was just an inherently challenging story.  At any rate, I am very happy to have a draft of it complete.  I’ll see what my writing group has to say about it tomorrow.  Despite the fact that this first draft is slightly rough, I have high hopes for the final version.

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