I can’t seem to hit Sundays!

I said I’d blog every other day, and so far, Sunday is my downfall. I’m getting towards the end of my current manuscript. I was a little worried. It’s hanging on at about 83K, and I have more info I need to put in. My sci fi novel turned out at just over 100k and my urban fantasy is 86K. I didn’t know where my current ms should land. I thought somewhere in between.

Then I looked up non-urban fantasy novel wordcounts and found out that many come in at 120K at their smallest, and epic fantasy can really get up there, like 200K and such. I was pretty amazed, even though I’ve read epic fantasy and know they can get quite large. I don’t know quite what sub-genre I’m working in. I guess I’m going to just say “fantasy” in my query because it’s not urban and it’s not epic. I’m just glad fantasy wordcounts start out a bit higher than sci fi. It gives me plenty of wriggle room. I think I’m going to need it.

Has anyone out there ever written a doorstop of a novel?

Let’s talk horses and other fiddly bits

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m writing a fantasy novel at the moment. ^_^ And like many fantasy novels, I have horses in mine. The question is, does anyone care what they do? I let the reader know that my characters are riding into the woods on horseback. I let the reader know when they dismount. Other than that, does it matter? If I have one character move close to another character to whisper, do I need to say, “She steered her horse over to so-and-so”? I find this makes a chapter feature the word “horse” 2976 times.

That leads me to thinking of other ‘fiddly’ bits in a story, other things that, once established, probably don’t need to be mentioned again unless they become especially relevant to the plot. Clothing usually falls into this category for me. I describe it initially, of course, so the reader can get a picture, but I don’t linger over it. I do know that some people really enjoy lingering over clothing in a book, but I sometimes find that if an author spends too much time describing what everyone’s wearing, I forget what was going on in the first place. I think the same may be true for all ‘fiddly” bits of a book.

Does anyone else have this problem?

It’s not always about me?!?

So, I got a massage today. It’s a necessity for me. If someone doesn’t rub the tension out of my shoulders once a month I get terrible headaches and go on homicidal rampages. Anyway, when the therapist is attacking my knotted muscles, I’m not thinking about anything but, “Just cut it out of my back and soak it in hot water!” But when she’s massaging muscles that don’t have any problems, I worry a bit about body image.

I wonder if she’s rolling her eyes at my not-so-perfect body. If she sniggers about it in the break room with all her hoodlum massage therapist pals. But then I thought, nah. I bet that, when she’s on a break or not at work, the last thing she thinks about is rubbing on other people. She thinks about her parakeet or her significant other or whether to cook something healthy for dinner before giving in and eating chips. She does not think about me.

This led me to main characters. A main character is surrounded by secondary characters, and I’ve always thought it suspicious when the seconds have nothing more to do than sit around and think/talk/rhapsodize about the main. Shouldn’t they have lives? This is especially annoying in first person narratives, when it seems like the universe does revolve around the main. I think an author has to be careful to include the lives of the other characters, at least a little bit, to make up complete back stories for them, even if those stories are not included in the novel. Making up the stories will help flesh out the characters and will give the seconds something to think/talk/rhapsodize about that doesn’t include the main.

What about all of you? Do you find it odd when the lives of the seconds completely revolve around the main? Are there any books that feel like the seconds are doing nothing but waiting for the main to return?

Maybe I read too many agent blogs

Last week, one of the agent blogs I read gave a piece of advice about query letters that really stuck with me. Essentially, he said to think of what everyone else will say and then say something different.

Am I the only one who finds this extremely unhelpful? The internet abounds with query letter advice. Don’t use colored paper. 12pt Courier or Times New York. One page with a max of two paragraphs for plot and one for previous publishing credits. Must include genre and word count. In the more nebulous realm of things it must also be informative, business-like and entertaining. And now, on top of that, it has to be unique. I would go crazy if every time I thought I had a good idea for a query, I had to scrutinize that idea and wonder if everyone else had the same idea.

I saw an agent-assistant blog that made fun of queries that used rhetorical questions, so now I guess that’s a bad idea. I feel sorry for agents and their assistants who have to read the same sort of query letters over and over, but we authors are floundering out here, too. In the submission process, the query is rapidly becoming more important than the novel. All agents say that the important thing is to write a good book, but that’s losing some of its truth. Many agents want just a query before any material, so that query has to knock their socks off.

I guess I gotta go take my rhetorical question out of my query letter.

Trying to get out of the doldrums

So, the weather is crappy here in College Station, and the rejections have been trickling in. Needless to say, I’m not in the best of moods. It’s hard to write anything during times like this. I want to curl up in a blanket, snack, and watch B-movies until the sun comes back.

Can’t do any of that, though. Getting back into writing after taking a break from it is soooo much harder than muddling through during times like this. Besides which, my snacks aren’t exactly…healthy. I can’t have them without also putting in some time on the elliptical.

The wind sounds very mournful outside. I guess I could write some mournful scenes, but I’m afraid that route leads to bad teenage poetry about how life is dark and so am I, and trying to find words that rhyme with void. I’m not depressed. I’m just bleh.

How do you get out of the doldrums?

No time to post today

I’m too immersed in a great post at Words from the Woods. I also got quite a bit of writing done at our local Blue Baker and have been trying to figure out my first forays into ebay. Busy, busy, busy.

Discarded pizza boxes are an excellent source of cheese

If you’ll remember, I was waiting on an agent to get back to me after she requested a full manuscript some months ago. It was my fourth full request ever. She turned it down the other day, and I’ve been wondering how to feel about it. No one likes getting rejected, but I thought I’d grown used to it. After a few days, however, it’s wearing on me.

Many times, I’ve gotten past the query to the sample pages. Many times, those sample pages have gotten past the assistant to the agent. Four times, that agent has requested a full. And every single time, I’ve been turned down. Most of my rejections have been form letters. Some were very personal. One was handwritten. The personal letters were glowing. Unique voice. Clever style. Wonderful dialogue. But…but…but…no. They didn’t bother to get specific about the no. I understand why. They told the truth as much as they could. My stories didn’t grab them, and one cannot edit on that kind of info. If my story grabbed me, and if it grabbed those in my various circles who read it, then I can’t make it any more grabby. They say that all you need is one yes, but I haven’t found my grabbee yet.

I feel so…fingernails about the whole thing. Which is a weird feeling, I know. But I’m clinging. Sometimes I feel like I’m sooooo close, that I’m hanging inches away from that elusive yes. Blame it on the economy, blame it on e-books, blame it on the state of publishing today. Blame, blame, blame, there’s lots of it to go around. There’s lots of encouragement on the web, but there’s lots of reality, too. I read, keep trying, but I also read, maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe I haven’t written the best book yet, maybe that’s my current project, or the one after that, or the one after that. Maybe I should accept defeat and become an organ grinder, or an organ donor. I hear that some hospitals pay for plasma. If I wasn’t a writer, I’d be… I can’t finish. If it weren’t for my wonderful husband who believes people should follow their dreams when they can, I’d probably be homeless, hence the title of this post.

Good but not great? Maybe that’s where I am. I can’t find anything lacking in my manuscripts. I believe they are as good as I can make them at this point in my life. Don’t fear for me. I’ll keep writing, and I’m not looking for pity. I just wanted to share. And of course, I want to hear from you. To all those aspiring authors, do you ever feel fingernails about this process? And to all you published authors, how long did you have to hang there?

Have you seen my ending?

I’ve done a post like this before, but it needs to be repeated. Every writer has run out of steam once in awhile. And not just between projects either, but in the middle of them. The beginning is pretty easy. It’s all excitement and explosions. The characters are new and shiny, with parfait layers all ready to explore. (I don’t like onions.)

And then, the middle comes. The story is bogged down. The characters refuse to have the revelations you planned for them. The plot feels worn out and begins to look like something you’ve seen everywhere. It’s trite, it’s overdone, and you suddenly hate these characters and want to move on to the shiny, exciting, explosive ideas that are suddenly burning a hole in your brain.

Well, don’t. Jot the ideas on a piece of paper, put them away, then slog through that novel. If at the end, you don’t see anything worth saving, then you can lock it away, too, but in getting to the end, you’ll learn something about how and what to write. And maybe that novel will work itself out, and you’ll have a revelation of your own. The reason your character wouldn’t go forward is because he never forgave his father for failing him as a child and….. These sorts of realizations will begin to tumble out, and you might have to move some of it back to that boring middle to spice it up a bit, but you will begin to hurtle toward the end like a freight train.

Easier said than done? Perhaps. You might need more than just willpower. All right, how about some inspiration. If you get yourself over this hurdle, if you push for the end, you’ll know that you can’t be trapped by this. You’ll know you can finish something. You will be among the few, the proud, the people who have finished.

And if that doesn’t work, if you still find that you aren’t motivated to continue, then maybe you need to go a completely different direction with the plot. Just change lanes right there in the middle and fix the beginning later. Do something exciting out of the blue. Kill all your characters in a big revenge scene and then resurrect them. That should vent some of your frustration. Force an epiphany or two and then work backward later. Just push. Remember, you don’t get in sight of the finish line only to turn around and start the race over from the beginning. Run for it.

When to slow down

In my opinion, I write fast-paced novels. Action follows on the heels of action, and even when my characters are ruminating, I try to make them do it on the hoof, so to speak. Or I keep their thoughts brief, trying not to spend too much time thinking about one topic.

I have a character now who has run headlong into danger in the past. Now, she’s learned caution. In her latest escapade, she did recon before proceeding into an enemy stronghold. I did find, however, that my readers missed the headlong action. They found the recon a little tedious. The thing is, when I heard this, I read back over the part and found that the recon took maybe a page. A page in which the main character chomped at the bit, really wanting to get to the action, but she knew she had to be careful because going off half-cocked had burned her in the past. A couple of members of my writing group thought the scene dragged. Was it boring, I asked, or were you just anxious, as the character was anxious? They couldn’t give me an answer, and I thought, how fine a line is that?

So, I hope some of you will tell me when you slow down in your stories, when you take a breath, and if your readers prefer you not to. Is making a reader feel the same anxiousness as a character actually a triumph?

I completely skipped yesterday

Sorry about that. I know I meant to post, but I was too busy reading other blogs!

I took a class once on marketing oneself via the internet, and they recommended starting a blog, but they also warned about spending so much time reading other blogs that you did nothing else. I have to remember that one and not put internet time before writing time, even if that’s just writing my own blog.

I spent quite a bit of yesterday submitting, and I was amazed by the number of agents that still demand paper queries and still others who don’t have a website. I was leery of submitting to several who only had Agent Query or Publisher’s Marketplace entries, but as always, the Absolute Write Forums were my guide. An excellent source of information on agents or editors. Together with P&E and Writer’s Beware, they sniff out many a scam.

I was very surprised to learn that one of the biggest sci-fi reps, Spectrum, only takes paper queries. So many agencies have gone paperless, why not one that accepts queries about space age technology? Maybe they use this as part of their weeding process. If you’re too lazy to mail a letter, we don’t want you? Save a tree, I say, and not just because I AM lazy. ^_^

Haven’t heard back yet from IGMS about my story, but I got a rejection from Crossed Genres. But I still love them and will do so forever. ^_^ I got a request for pages from one agent one day after I sent the query and was rejected the next morning. Some of them have truly awesome turnarounds, and some will probably never respond. I’ve become almost sanguine about the whole thing, especially after reading this.