What a query is good for

I am pretty sure all my obligations are currently met. I returned the edits for The Weredeer and Blood and Ashes, and I read and critiqued a (very good) YA book for someone. And I still have three weeks before NaNoWriMo!

I still want to finish the Misfits revisions. It's the first book I've written where I knew immediately that I needed to fix something, but I couldn't figure out what, so rather than convince myself I was wrong and it was ready to query, I just set it aside. Of course, I was busy with other stuff at the time. But it still counts as growth!

Figuring out what was wrong with Misfits turned out to be easy. When I started writing the query, every time I got past the hook I had to stop. I couldn't put my finger on the main theme of the book, which meant it wasn't clear enough. So once I had time, I jotted some notes down on ways I could focus the book--and then I had to do those damn edits, and never did get around to the revisions. Not until now.

I don't need a reward. Really.

Something's messed up when as a reward for finishing my Weredeer edits, I am allowing myself an evening to do revisions on Misfits. Of course, I had so much to do before I even turned on my computer this evening that I won't actually have time to open the Misfits file.

I have to address the Blood and Ashes edits this week, and this weekend I promised someone I'd read and critique their YA novel. So really, I shouldn't be slacking off with any darn revisions anyway. Yeah.

Oh, editing, how I despise you

I meant to work on my Weredeer edits this weekend, but we're closing on the new house Thursday so the weekend was filled with last-minute packing and cleaning and perusing of paint swatch cards. Also, it rained a lot today and Mom wanted to drive around in the rain. Until we move, she's lamentably divorced from the full effects of weather. She's the kind of person who sleeps with her bedroom window propped open a little no matter how cold or hot it is out, and who sleeps with her head as close to the window as possible (in our old house, she actually slept with her head at the foot of the bed for just that reason). Now we're staying with my aunt and uncle, and the windows in her room don't open and are too well insulated for her to even hear the rain.

I'm about a third through the edits. They take soooooo looooong and I have to cooooncentrate on them, dammit. And I've recharged from writing Misfits this summer and I think I'm ready to write again rather than edit. My attention veers from finishing Adventures in Zoology to finishing the major rewrite of The Trickster Society to finishing the tail-end of Bloodhound. My interest in editing anything is at an all-time low. Yet, edit I must.

Also, I'm way behind in my reading. Why are there so few hours in the day?

Part of the problem is that I'm back at work now, which I hate. I mean, I hate having to work anyway, and I hate having to leave Mom during the day (although she's doing much better and her main problem is boredom), but I also hate that there are certain things I can't do while I'm at work. Like editing.

Rewrite Request Retire

The day I went to the beach, I got a rewrite request from a large small publisher (heh) for one of my billions of useless novellas. Obviously I haven't had a chance to address the rewrites yet, but I've been thinking about what I want to do. I've got a good idea of how I should fix the motivation problem, but there's a worldbuilding issue that has me flummoxed. I need to set aside a few hours to work on the rewrite. Maybe Thursday.

Last month I got another rewrite request...on a 900-word story. The editor was confused because she expected the story to be spooky and it wasn't. I have noticed that that particular market doesn't seem to recognize humor when they see it. Since the story wasn't much good to start with, I just deleted it. Flash fiction is disposable.

Ice Day

Ice day isn't as fun as snow day. We had some freezing rain overnight, which means this morning the roads (and trees, and houses, and power lines) were glazed over with ice. Fortunately I was off work today anyway (and my college wasn't even closed, just on a two-hour delay) and also fortunately, the temperature has already warmed up above freezing and the ice is melting fast.

Tomorrow's my last day at work before I get a two-week holiday! Of course I have to work ten hours--we've extended the testing center hours to make up for being closed Monday--but it shouldn't be too stressful and then I can recharge for the remainder of the year. I have a lot I want to finish up before 2011, mostly revisions. My main goal is to have the still-untitled romance finished and ready to sub in January. I also want to do the rewrites of The Trickster Society (I've already started and it's going to turn into a major rewrite, I think).

The hard part is keeping to a writing schedule while I'm off work. Structure helps me stay productive. NaNoWriMo helped me a lot this year, just by getting me back into the rhythm of writing every single day. Now I need to make sure I stick with it.

NaNoEeeeeeek!

I don't have anything to say, but I need to blog. <--words people dread seeing at the top of a post.

I am so completely unprepared for NaNoWriMo. Two freaking days and that's it! I'd planned to outline the rest of Adventures in Zoology but of course I haven't. I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

I have come to the conclusion that I'm not actually done with The Trickster Society. As soon as NaNo's over, I'm digging in for a complete overhaul of the plot. I pretty much know what I want to do although I still need to decide what the bad guy's motivation is and how that will affect Ivy. I think the rewrite will only take a few weeks; hopefully I'll be able to go back to querying by the beginning of 2011.

But by hook or by crook, I'm going to finish Adventures in Zoology this year. It's waited long enough.

Backtracking

I haven't been able to settle to anything after finishing The Trickster Society, which surprises me. I finished it some two months ago and NaNo's coming up. I should have dug into something new by now, but I can't leave Trickster Society alone. I keep going back in and rereading parts of it. I even did a full editing pass earlier this week.

Last night I realized the problem. It's not done. This is not a good realization when you've got 20-some queries out to agents.

The problem is the beginning, which is unusual for me. Usually I have trouble with endings. The book starts way too slow and the inciting incident doesn't occur until a third of the way in. I spent an hour last night trying to figure out how to rearrange a very closely-plotted book to make things start faster, and finally moved the book's opening back about twelve hours of book time.

Now there's a brand new first chapter where something alarming takes place, which hopefully will add a sinister pall over events in the next few chapters. I was able to introduce the shadow people properly in the new first chapter, too. I plan to cut several thousand words from the scavenger hunt since it's no longer as important (and just drags on way too long). I'm also shortening chapters when I can, which will help the pacing seem faster.

I wish I'd done this before I'd started querying agents. I should know better than to start querying so soon after finishing revisions, since I always come back to a book after a few months to fix stuff. But there are still a lot of agents out there I haven't queried yet.

Now 3% grimmer!

I've added about 2,000 words to The Trickster Society, fleshing out the worldbuilding just a bit and adding a longer, darker fight at the end. I still want to do some tinkering, but I think the revisions will be fairly minor. For once I took the time to get the ending right!

Now that I'm getting close to wrapping up the first-pass edits and will soon set Trickster Society aside to cool a little, I'm ready for my next project. I'm going to finish that awful romance book I started this spring, by God, even if it kills me. It would be totally awesome if I could finish it before NaNo--I might even allow myself to write something new in November if so.

Hey, I have a full two months before NaNo! I wrote Bell-Men in less time (um, and took twice as long to rewrite it because I rushed it, but never mind). I can totally write a frothy romance book in two months. Just watch me!

September

Happy 3rd birthday to my blog! I started it on Sept. 1, 2007. My goodness, what a lot of blather I've perpetrated since then.

Since it's the first of the month, here's a picture of my garden. Everything got so tall it fell over. We took down the fence since I didn't think it was keeping the deer out; turns out it was keeping some of the deer out, and now the deer have eaten up the tomato plants and the sweet potato plants and even some of the pepper plants (geez, deer, what the hell is wrong with the neighbor's garden?), the sunflowers got some sort of weird fungus so we took them out, and the squash plants died because it's been dry lately and I forgot to water them. Oops.

I've done a read-through of The Trickster Society and done the first round of light edits. It's not bad, but it feels a little thin and light to me. Of course, my last project, Bell-Men, was a juggernaut--originally 130,000 words, full of angst and murder and horrible things happening. This book is much shorter and lighter in tone. I like the characters, but I'm just not sure if the book itself is okay as is or if I need to grim it up a little.

Oh, and I have a purple daisy of some kind in my garden and not only do I have no idea what it actually is, I didn't plant it:

Editing doesn't count

Over the long weekend I opened up Bell-Men and hacked and slashed my way through it line by line. I managed to cut 6,000 words--my goal--without taking out more than a few dozen from any one passage. All the words I cut were completely unnecessary. Now the book is much trimmer at a bit under 118,000 words by MS Word's count (OpenOffice always gives me a higher count; it thinks the book is 120,000 words). I've given up on agents for this one and have sent queries out to three publishers. Onward and upward.

I haven't written much lately. Occasionally I open up Adventures in Zoology or The Trickster Society and tap out a few words, but nothing substantial. I think both projects are a lot of fun, though. I intend to finish both before the year is out. I suspect neither of them will ever sell--AinZ is about a 40-year-old zoologist who's chosen to go on a trip to fantasyland; Trickster Society is about a troll woman (yes, seriously) who...well, never mind, since there's not a single agent or publisher in the world who will get any further than that upon reading the query.

I'm getting fed up with myself for not finishing anything yet this year. Editing doesn't count. Editing is fun and easy. I think I am going to do NaNo this year, but only to see how many projects I can finish during the month.

Also, I'm thinking of taking up fencing. Really. I have an aunt who used to fence; next time I see her, I'm going to ask for a few lessons in basic footwork. Because she's my aunt and loves me, she won't look at my fat, bruised legs and say, "You're not shaped like an athlete and you're clumsy as hell." At least, I hope she won't.

Useless Week

This week has been a bad one for writing, in that I have not done any. Well, I did write about a page and a half on Adventures in Zoology, but that barely counts. I haven't even done much reading even though I'm reading (and enjoying hugely) Pierre Pevel's swashbuckling adventure The Cardinal's Blades. Heck, I haven't even posted here in a week.

On the other hand, I have pulled out an old story and started to edit it. It's not as bad as I remembered, but it does need a lot of work. Man, I was wordy and repetitive back when I wrote that thing (back in 2004); mostly I'm cutting. Since the story was only about 46,000 words to start with, I've got yet another useless novella to try and place.

I think I'll go read The Cardinal's Blades. And have some peach ice cream, which makes everything better.

Bring on the rewards

Hey, I did it! I finished the Bell-Men rewrite yesterday at long, long last. It sucks, and I'm going to have to do a lot of editing, but it's done. Again.

I'm going to give it a rest for a while and see if I can manage a short story or two first, though. I spent last night and today editing The Price of Justice, the novella I wrote a year and a half ago and haven't done much with. When I read it last night, I realized its main problem was that the main character, Coral, just isn't very likeable. I worked hard today to make her a little less neurotic and a little more warm. I also added a short but vital scene halfway through. I'm not sure if it's much better, but at least I worked on it.

Now I need to come up with some short story ideas.

Um.

Just because I have absolutely nothing to report on the Bell-Men completion front doesn't mean I have to stop blogging, I guess.

I don't know what my problem is with (re-)finishing Bell-Men. It's weird. I've never had trouble like this--it's like I've run into a solid wall of 'now what OMG what next?' and can't get past it.

Actually, I have had this trouble before, some three-odd years ago when I was rewriting the sequel to The Weredeer (that still doesn't have a really good title--I call it Stag at Bay despite its being generic). Like Bell-Men, Stag at Bay was a true rewrite. I had a finished draft that I hated, so I cut the entire latter half--and I do mean cut, almost every word went away--and rewrote it entirely. Then I wasn't happy with the result and by God I did it again. I like the book now, but it about killed me at the time.

The main problem with that book was a lack of plot. I hadn't done enough plotting going in, and then I'd muscled through anyway without knowing what I wanted to do with the book. During the rewrites, I remember spending hours stripping wallpaper from the bathroom while talking out loud to myself, trying to work out a new plot. That I actually preferred stripping wallpaper to writing shows just how desperate the situation was. (I did a terrible job on the bathroom, incidentally. I just hope the writing was better.)

Alas, I have no wallpapered bathroom to deal with now. I'm just going to have to stop reading other people's books for one stupid day OMG and knuckle down for an old-fashioned plotting session. I am literally within two or three thousand words of THE END. There is absolutely no excuse for me dragging my feet like this.

WIP Wednesday: final Bell-Men installment

At least, I hope I'll be done with the Bell-Men rewrites by next Wednesday. I'm to the point at the ending where I'm stripping out almost everything I wrote in the first draft, so wordcount is actually shrinking--which is good, since at the moment it stands at 123,000 words, which is about 20,000 words too long. The next revision pass is going to be cut cut cut cut cut.

I'm truly so close to the ending I could finish it in about an hour, except that I'm still not 100% sure how to end it. The bad guy is dead, Cam and Tomas have been reunited, but I still have to resolve the murders and set up for the sequel. You know, that actually won't be as hard as it seems right now. Maybe I should just settle in and write the rest of it tonight (yeah, right I will).

I've been thinking of retitling the book from Bell-Men to Bell-Men and Bloodhound. What do you think?

I've been thinking all day that it's January 14. Apparently it's only the 13th. I feel like I won a free day in the lottery or something.

That odd paradox

If I didn't have to work, I'd be able to spend all day writing, right? Except that on days when I'm off work, I usually actually spend less time writing than on days when I do have to work. And that's one of the reasons why I'll probably never quit my day job*.

I haven't typed up what I wrote longhand today, but I probably cleared 1,000 words on my Bell-Man rewrites. I'm about to link to a scene that's already written, which encourages me. Of course, then I have to rewrite the entire climax of the book from scratch, and I'm not sure what precisely I want to happen. I just know I want it to happen a lot better than it happened the first time around.

*Other reasons include health insurance, steady paychecks, and the fact that no one's paying me all that much money for my writing.

Saving the world

Oh yeah, I have a blog, don't I? Maybe I should post.

I've been adding to Bell-Men this evening. There's a lot I want to change and add, which is worrisome. NaNo starts next Sunday! I don't even really know what Tiger's going to be about; I had planned to spend the week thinking about it, but Bell-Men won't let me go yet.

I've noticed that the Bell-Men plot is morphing into something more fantasy-ish than I originally had. I try and stay away from the "hero saves the world" fantasy plot, but it's hard to resist. I think "more is at stake than the hero initially realizes" is one of those tropes woven right into the fabric of the genre. Well, you know what I mean.

Finally, I can read again

Mom gave me the new Terry Pratchett book for my birthday, Unseen Academicals, and I spent many lovely hours today reading it. It's awesome. I had to set aside Jim C. Hines's The Mermaid's Madness to read it, and in turn I had set aside Fritz Leiber's Swords & Deviltry to read that. I am surrounded by awesome books. And now that I'm done with Bell-Men, I can read them all muahahaha at least until NaNo starts next Sunday.

Next Sunday! And I'm already wondering if maybe I should throw out Tiger and write a YA story I have in mind instead--but I think I need to spend more effort worldbuilding and plotting and ultimately writing the YA story. Tiger is just a fun throwaway idea, perfect for NaNo.

And despite the reading, I find Bell-Men creeping into my thoughts frequently. The writing is solid, and the plot and pacing is good up to about 3/4 through. Then things feel rushed and the ending frankly sucketh mightily, with a bonafide deus ex machina. I'm already coming up with ways to fix all that. I wasn't intending to tinker with Bell-Men until probably January, but I suspect I'll be writing new scenes for it this week. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final wordcount comes to 100,000.

Now I can stop yammering about it.

I finished The Bell-Men last night. Somewhere along the line, the working title stuck and I think I like it as the real title. I'm taking suggestions for improvements, of course.

The word count ended at 91,063, although that's already changed a bit. Because what did I do a few hours after I typed THE END? I opened the file again and started rereading it. I told myself I was insane, but actually, it's an important step. I'm going to set the book aside until probably January, but my brain will be working on it quietly until then. I need to know the shape of the book--its pacing, the characterization, the plot, etc.--to get a better idea of what needs to be fixed. Until this final readthrough of the draft, I don't have a sense of its weaknesses.

This reading also gives me the opportunity for a very light editing pass. I'm making final name changes (Thomas is now Tomas, a minor character Robert became Kilian), adding a line or two here or there to fix the flow, taking out a line or two that seem redundant, eliminating adverbs and adjectives, fixing typos and grammatical bobbles, and so forth. I actually like doing this. It makes me feel like I wrote a real book.

Once I'm done, I can start thinking about Nano! Only a week and a half!

Title goes here.

Look at me! I'm revising!

I realized a few days ago that the reason I'm not really happy with Blood and Taxes is because the ending is all wrong. Or rather, the ending is right, but the build-up to the ending is wrong. Someone locks Ana in a closet. Someone else helps her escape. Whee!

So I'm rewriting it and I'm mostly done already. Ana takes a much more active role (which is something I was concerned about from the start) and it's also much shorter. Hurrah for brevity!

I think I'm ready to plunge deeply into my next project. I've been picking and pecking for months and months, thinking I was just being lazy. I think I was just recharging. I mean, I wrote two full-length novels and a novella between September of last year and February of this year; I think I'm allowed some recharge time. But now I've got that itch to really jump in and write write write. Thank goodness!

And the week from hell hath ended with a whimper

I missed WIP Wednesday! And I actually have been working on a project, although not, alas, today. Today I didn't do jack except work work work workworkworkwork and I still didn't get everything done, including something rather important that is going to backfire on me and cause me (I can see this clearly) to be unable to take any time off in August.

On the other hand, I'm off work for the weekend, because the five hours I work on Saturday don't really count. And Mom picked up tickets to Harry Potter for tomorrow!

This weekend I want to edit "Standard-Bearer" and get it sent off, and I'd like to finish that story I was working on all week too. I'm about halfway through and can't tell if it's going to be any good. Since it's a short story, my guess is no, it will not be any good. But maybe it won't be all that bad.