Feeling a little outspoken today

My God speaks to me in birdsong,
In waves of grass,
Rustling leaves,
And a feather falling to ground.
You speak for your God
In booming voices,
Condemning your lost children,
The ones you yourselves have cast out.
You say your God will love me
If I do what you say –
But what does God say?
I cannot hear him from your yawping.

revamping Mythos

Richard (my husband) and I are sitting down and discussing what to keep and what to get rid of in Mythos. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

Get rid of: The creepy prologue, The B plot with James as her dangerously possessive husband,  first person point of view (with two different parts and two different protagonists!), all those jumpy scene cuts, the word “engendered”.

Keep: The A plot — Lilly’s identity, the A+ plot — the importance of Lilly’s identity, the now B plot — Lilly’s and Adan’s relationship, the Nephilim (half-Archetype cannon fodder), Adan and Lilly’s daughter Angel and the Archetype cats.

I think I’m going to write it from scratch with only an outline. Or maybe not. I don’t know when I’m going to write it — probably NaNo in November. Wish me luck!

Dealing with the Problem Child

I think I’m going to rewrite Mythos from scratch. Ok, from near-scratch.

Mythos is the book I just put through querying that is currently gathering even more rejections than before. Even I think the book is a problem child at this point, and I’m just patiently waiting for more rejections.

I don’t blame the agents for rejecting it.

I don’t want to abandon Mythos completely, because as far as worldbuilding is concerned, It’s beautiful worldbuilding. It’s just that — well, my beta-readers can’t get through it. It has some convolutions that aren’t adding to the plot, as if it was two books smushed together. It is two books smushed together, actually. It was my second book, and the first book is even more problematic.

So what I’m going to do when it’s time to write again is take the outline and rewrite the whole damn* thing. In third person. Without some of the convolutions. Without my tendency to put in too many scene breaks and without the word “engender”** and maybe a few other words that drive my readers crazy …

* “Darn” will not work here.
** Sheri, this one’s for you!

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!