What now?

Note: This was written Friday late afternoon.

I’m done. What now?

I finished the second read-through of Whose Hearts are Mountains this afternoon and even wrote a query letter, even though it’s still in need of a developmental edit. I’ve spent time in the hot tub and am waiting for a dinner that I suspect will be wonderful.

But part of me is like, “What do I do now?”

I get really focused when I’m writing and editing. And during a writing retreat, I’m more focused than usual because I’m in a calming place where there’s just enough background noise to keep me from being distracted by silence. Lied Lodge, with its vaulting stone and wood greatroom, fits the function of retreat superbly.

But what now? Dinner, followed by part 2 of a slow-motion Harry Potter marathon, then home tomorrow before the snow hits. We’re supposed to get lots of snow, which means we’ll get barely three inches and I’ll be going back to work on Monday.

Also, I know the answer to “what now?”:

Get Prodigies back from the diversity edit, fix things, and query it to young adult agents with the shiny new query letter
Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to my dev editor
Look over Apocalypse a couple times before sending it to a dev edit
Sit on Voyageurs for a while before sending it on a dev edit
Try to figure out what’s wrong with The Kringle Conspiracy
Write another book. There’s at least two I could write right now.

That’s enough work for three years, I think.

Escape from Black Friday

Normally on the day after Thanksgiving, Richard and I go to a mall for Black Friday. Not to shop, but to watch people. People are generally not at their best when grabbing bargain deals, but there is still enough quirk to make people-watching fun.

Not this year. Lied Lodge (Arbor Day Lodge) is such a soothing combination of wood and stone and fireplace and comfy rocking chairs and plenty of coffee that I’m settled in here for another day of writing retreat. I might get through the second edit on Whose Hearts are Mountains to send it to dev edit (I’m pretty sure I’m sending it to dev edit first.)

We’re cutting the visit a day short because Sunday is bringing a snowstorm to the area that might bring as much as 8 inches of snow. I’m hoping for a snow day Monday.

Peace to my readers.

Miles to Go

Whose Hearts are Mountains is a mess.

As well it should be. After all, it’s a first draft. In the rush to get ideas on the page, things are going to be garbled. For example, I gave one object two different names, and two different characters shared the same name. There were a hundred subtle or less subtle things I corrected on the first pass.

And I’m not done yet. I now have to do a leisurely pass through for things like language (currently not the most poetic) and character (some of my secondary characters need development) and descriptions (too much telling, not enough showing) and that’s going to take a while.

Luckily I’m taking a writing retreat over Thanksgiving…

The best use of my time

I have decided to quit NaNo this year. Not because I can’t finish it, but because I don’t need to finish it. I have serious editing to do on everything I write because a bad habit of mine has been pointed out to me (telling rather than showing). My past dev editor didn’t pick these problems up, but the current publishing editor (who missed the problems in my query materials) did. Go figure.

I need to learn to deal with these myself because I don’t know if I can afford another dev edit on the same document. I need to get better, and someday I might be good enough to publish.

I’m scared I’ll never be good enough to publish, but if I can’t find the problems in my writing, I know I’ll never be good enough to. Becoming Kringle can wait — the best use of my time right now is re-editing.

Tomorrow is NaNo

Tomorrow, I commit myself to writing 2000 words a day for the next month, I’ll be honest; I’m not as motivated for this as I’d like.

I have a lot of documents to edit (now that my developmental editor lets me know what’s not working). I have a novel that needs 25,000 more words.

On the other hand, there’s feeling a part of something bigger than me. NaNo is huge. NaNo is worldwide. NaNo comes with its own motivation.

Oh, this is such a hard decision! I’ll keep you posted.

My chat with the publishing coach — part 1

As I noted in these pages prior, I am trying out two publishing coaches (this happened by accident when I realized I’d verbally committed to two different people). I spoke with coach #1 yesterday and this is what I learned:

1) My cover letter needs to be more personal. I had no idea of this — I’m used to writing business letters, and that’s what I did. I rewrote my cover letter keeping this in mind.

2) I need more of an online presence. This blog, for example, is an online presence, but few people know about it. I have a twitter account which posts links to this blog. I’m putting up a page on Facebook and have invited friends — but few people etc. etc. In other words, I haven’t been letting the agents into my online presence. I’m fixing this.

3) I have a writing quirk that could be dropping readers out of the story — and it shows up on the first page. The quirk is that sometimes I give background in a blunt manner rather than through narrative or other storytelling. I break the adage “show me, don’t tell me”. My publishing coach is going to look for this in the first 50 pages; I need to edit the rest of this.

Being a serious writer, it turns out, is hard work. In my arrogance, or perhaps my ignorance, I thought my writing was publishing-ready when I finished it. I thought all that was needed was to proofread and change up some awkward language.

At the same time I’m grateful for my coaching and editing and I’m sighing about having to go through the document again.

But hello, online presence! Thanks for sharing the day with me!

Murder your darlings thoroughly dead

I am murdering my darlings quite thoroughly in this edit/rewrite.

It hasn’t been fun. I’m losing a lot of storytelling and world building I’m going to have to build back in.

But there’s a storyteller’s adage, rendered sometimes as “Murder your darlings” and others as “Kill your darlings”, which simply means to get rid of all the self-indulgent stuff.

And when I look over my first novels, I find a lot of self-indulgent stuff.

I hope I’ve discovered the line between world-building and self-indulgent stuff now. I have to admit part of what I put in the original story embarrasses me and I cut it quite readily. I’m a bit scared of whether I’m cutting too much.

Oh, well, I can always add some back…

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!

A poem from the book I’m editing

I’m taking a quick pass through one of the books I’ve neglected before Camp Nano — July session happens. This might be my most transgressive poem — something about the mud ..

I don’t know whether I want to hold you
Till I feel your heart in my chest,
And we entwine like the Trees,
Or mate with you
In the mud, in the rain, in plain sight.
Either way, we become something new.

Editing, as much as I dislike it, may be where the magic happens.

Writing is delightful, full of beginnings — meeting the characters, exploring their world, setting them on an adventure. Writing feels like the first of May — trees in bloom, journeys started.

Editing feels like carving into a knotty tree with a chainsaw. Every spare subplot, every awkward sentence, every cliche causes the saw to buck. And then, when all the negative space is trimmed out, the question becomes whether or not what’s left is the true seeming of the story.

I had a revelation about where a couple of my stories (novella? novel?) should go, and I’ve been wielding the chainsaw lately. I think they’re getting better. I think. It’s sometimes hard for the one with the chainsaw to judge.