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What am I going to write about next?

I know it’s a little early to think about this, as I am about to send Voyageurs to the developmental editor and my beta-readers have a hold of Prodigies, but I don’t know what to write about next!

The problem is that most of my new ideas are based on either Voyageurs or Mythos (the book that will go to developmental edit after Prodigies, because my betas get lost in the middle of it)  and I don’t want to make the mistake I made before of basing 3 other books off a first book that I can’t publish.

No, I still don’t have an agent  yet, but I remain optimistic.

Anyone have any ideas?

There’s plenty of margaritas for all of us.

Dear Beta-readers:

I love hanging out with you, you know that?

I picture one of these all-female gatherings* where we’re drinking margaritas and talking about something we’ve read, except it’s the thing that I wrote and you’re telling me what needs work on it. 
It doesn’t bother me that you’re telling me that page 72 confused you or that my words are too big (hi, Sheri! You’re right!) It doesn’t bother me because you’re in the spirit of helping me, and because I get to show off something that’s important to me.
You go, girls, and I owe you all dinner. 
* All my beta-readers are female. Whose fault is that, men? Where are my male beta-readers? There’s plenty of margaritas for all of us. 

From Prodigies:

“Sadness, I think. People say I’m happy all the time, and I guess I am. It’s a lot simpler that way. So I’ll challenge you to make me feel sad …”
I knew the song, then. An old spiritual, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” a little lower-pitched than Marian Anderson’s version and less jazzy than Lena Horne’s, to suit my contralto voice. “… nobody knows my sorrow …” I sang, pulling out all the sadness wrapped around my bones like sinew and muscle. I sang to the G-d I didn’t know if I believed in anymore, the one I gave up on when my parents, the last of my family, died.
When I finished, I faced silence. I looked back at the tall, slender Ichirou supporting the shorter, stockier Weissrogue, who slumped with his head bowed. I heard a sniff from the other side of the counter — Ayana and Greg stood there, with Greg’s face streaked with tears and Ayana’s hand in his.
“I haven’t had a cry that good since I was seven,” Weissrogue said shakily. “How long before this wears off?” He wandered, dazed, back into the secluded booth; we all followed him.

Sorry I haven’t written lately, but I’ve been mad busy editing Prodigies on the advice of my editor. Whew! The hardest part is what I’m in the middle of — eradicating “was, were, have, had” from my document. One can’t eliminate all of them, and one has to restructure sentences to eliminate them, but passive tense IS BAD.

This type of editing is high cognitive and low reward, not like turning up the emotional content or developing a character further. In other words, as I like to say, high effort, no cookies. So I’m counting the chapters, waiting to be done with this!

Balancing omens

I’m the sort of people who believes in omens. Yes, I’m a college professor and I know all about confirmation bias. In confirmation bias, a piece of data that corresponds to your belief, positive or negative, will confirm that belief, even if there’s a multitude of data that corresponds to the opposite belief. In addition, omens cannot be separated from coincidence, as we cannot test stimulus and response adequately.

I still believe in omens. As a mystic (had you not guessed that?) I find believing in omens and the rest of the unseen world makes for better poetry, and allows my imagination to fly further.  However, I have to maintain a certain amount of detachment to allow them in my life.

The danger in believing wholeheartedly is that I can accept things as omens that will make me feel very negative about my writing. For example, I have received 13 rejections so far on my latest round of Mythos, and if I saw those as omens of how things are going to go, I’d give up here. I have to see them with both parts of my brain (the rational and the whimsical) in order to make sense of them.

I mentioned Dragonfly the other day. Dragonfly is my omen of unexpected things. When Dragonfly flies loops around me, with his jeweled strength and fragility, he tells me to look outside rather than staying within, because life is going to surprise me and I don’t want to miss it. When Dragonfly buzzes in my ear and crashes against me, I’m either being really dense or I’m really missing something going on around me. (Or, the rational side of my brain says, he thought there was a bug in my ear, which is entirely possible and thank you for eating it, Dragonfly.)

I’m selective with my omens. If a black cat crosses my path, I pet it and say, “You’re a kitty!” If I break a mirror, I say “Oh, shit.” But there are things — Dragonfly is one — that I read as omens. There are a fewe others that I will talk about another time.

What are your omens?

Wrestling with a Character

One of the things I’ve been suggested to do by my developmental editor is to beef up the developing relationship between Grace, a black/Jewish viola prodigy and Ichirou, the young-looking computer design prodigy at the beginning of Prodigies. This should take care of slow pacing and more development for Ichirou.

Somehow, I have not developed Ichirou enough. Part of this is because Ichirou is Japanese, and Japan is a collectivistic society, so Ichirou appears reserved at the beginning. Conversations have the target of taking care of the group and not preserving the assertiveness and individuality of its members. How do I develop Ichirou — somewhat reserved, idealistic, and in love with Grace?

At the beginning of this story, I find this difficult to do. After all, he’s 17 but looks 12, and Grace sees him as a “little pervo”. He notices Gracie, but she treats him like a younger brother. He has a tendency to let his mind disappear into an alternate place where he gets ideas, and he seems fragile.

Nonetheless, I have to do something. So far the approach I’m using: They talk about what they have in common — living in boarding schools, feeling lonely, being pursued by Second World’s men. Being prodigies if not Prodigies — If you’re interested in that distinction, be my beta-readers!

I hope this keeps my beginning from dragging!

Classism and consumption in romance novels

I used to read a lot of romance novels, probably because I was single for a long time. Over time, I kept seeing tropes pop up that rubbed me the wrong way:

  • Vast differences in social class between male and female protagonists. Titles like “The Millionaire’s Pregnant Secretary” and “The Sheikh’s Prize* make male wealth and female beauty the main selling point in the book. Edwardian romance paints the man as a duke or an earl and the woman as a genteel clergyman’s daughter or an orphan or a nanny. And don’t get me started with JD Robb’s romantic police procedurals — she’s a cop and he owns half the planet. The exchange of her beauty for his money is classic, but perhaps outdated in a society with much more egalitarianism.
  • Large amounts of money in the happily ever after — research shows that, although money changes everything, it does not necessarily change it for the better. Lottery winners are no more happy than us normal people, and maybe even less happy. People tend to throw their fortunes away, and given the bounty the male protagonist drops on his true love, romantic males are no exception.
  • Speaking of money, conspicuous consumption. When the male protagonist spends money, we get detailed descriptions about his wardrobe, his car, the dress, the dinner, the yacht, the trousseau, the … you get it. We witness how the protagonists spend their wealth, because if they didn’t spend it, nobody, including us, would know how rich they were. That’s the meaning of conspicuous consumption.
  • Overdone sex and male prowess. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex.** But these invariable rules make me skip ahead to the next scene: If the female is a virgin, she’s overwhelmed by the size of the male’s penis. If she’s not a virgin, he supplies better orgasms than anyone else. No matter how badly the two protagonists fight, they still have better sex than any of their readers. They always have sex before falling in love, and they spend the rest of the book dithering about why they can’t marry the other person, and it’s invariably that they don’t want to subject the other person to embarrassment or ridicule or a life of servitude. We, the readers, don’t only vicariously consume the couple’s wealth, but their out-in-the-open sex life. 
I admit I’m not the typical reader. Wish fulfillment to me would be living in Canada as a published author, retired, and a cat***.  I like my couples to have more equal footing, and the woman to supply more than just her pretty face to the union. I like strong females and males with depth, not just “strong and silent”.
I have to admit that I still read a few romance authors. Robin D. Owens I read for her world building and her focus on emotional baggage rather than “He/she wouldn’t possibly want to marry me”. Also, her sex scenes are reasonably anchored in reality. I read Barbara Michaels, although her books may not be considered romance, because she has very real protagonists who seldom have the immense social class disparities. I read a few others — Mary Balogh among others. And I still read JD Robb, but I skip over the sexual acrobatics.
* These may actually be real titles for all I know.
** Oops. TMI.
*** I would not be the first published cat. That honor goes to Lil’ Bub, the pint-sized alien cat. 

The Developmental Edit

I’ve just gone through a developmental edit on Prodigies.

Developmental edits are not like copy edits, where someone proofreads and questions word choices. It’s a lot more thorough, and looks at things like pacing, distracting techniques, etc. A second pair of skilled eyes to look over my work and find the problems.

It’s not cheap, but if you’re serious about getting published and you like having more work to do on your pet project, it’s highly advisable.

My editor, Chelsea Harper, is a skilled developmental editor. She not only picked out all the things that nagged in the back of my mind (and couldn’t put words to), but she found some issues I hadn’t picked up, like too many scene breaks. And she told me something important that I hadn’t guessed:

I should be submitting my work to agents in literary fiction (or edit it extensively for fewer big words, which I don’t think I can do.)

Yes, I was told that my words are too big before (hi, Sheri!) but I didn’t think my writing had what it took for literary fiction. I thought that was the sole province of English professors about High Concepts. Maybe I’m writing crossover fiction — same difference; I may just be querying the wrong agents.

I don’t know where that’s going to get me, but it’s something.

Deep breath. I’ve gotten five rejections from Mythos. It might be a good reason to eventually give that to a developmental editor as well. I think we need a developmental edit money pool. Or a Mega Millions win.

Life without writing

About querying time, I wonder what it would be like to quit writing and quit pursuing representation and publication. Querying is brutal — you prepare excerpts of your prized manuscripts to people who will go by their first impressions, and nobody will tell why they rejected you except “It’s not you, it’s me” or “I’m very picky about who I represent”. I would love some real feedback like: “Could you rewrite your query letter and tell me more about x”.

What would my life be like without writing? I think it would feel like having a lobotomy — I would know something important was missing, but have no idea what. It would be like waking up and finding out a loved one was gone — not dead, just gone. In other words, there would be a hole and I can’t imagine filling it up. No other hobbies I’ve had have been this fulfilling, and for my gardening to be close to this fulfilling I would need a working greenhouse with enough room to actually handle my plants. (We do not have the space or money for that.) My moulage (casualty simulation) might become more fulfilling if I could go professional with it, but the outfits that need moulage for training purposes can’t afford a professional.

As for giving up dreams of being published, that’s a little more complex. There are certain things built into my psyche for better or worse. I love to accomplish new things, and everything else in my life lately has been things I’ve done for the last N years, where N is probably around 30. I’ve hit a stagnation point in my job with 8 years until retirement (I’ve tried hard, coworkers, but I’m chronically burnt out and in need of a break). I need challenge, and I need recognition. I need people liking my work, and to do so they have to see it. Esteem and accomplishment are nothing to be afraid of.

What would it feel like to give up trying to get published? I’d be exactly where I am now, except that the challenge would be gone and I would feel like I had given up on an adventure to stay in my stagnation. I don’t know if I can find another opportunity to break the stagnation.

So I do the same thing I’ve been doing every four months for the past two years, wondering if I will ever make escape velocity.

If anyone has ideas of challenges I could try (I’ve already lost 70 lbs, I have some health problems that keep me from running, I don’t want to run for public office, and I have profound hand-eye coordination problems), let me know.