Writing for Myself

I think I’ve passed through the other side of my dejection about not getting published. I’ve received enough rejections (for novels and poems and short stories, by publishers and agents and Pitch Wars). What does that leave?

Writing and improving for myself, primarily. Not letting my self-esteem be at the mercy of publishers and agents. Of course, I would like to be published (I have a couple little things published, and it’s fun). I’d like to have a novel published. I’d like to be published somewhere that people actually read.

I’m willing to keep trying, because the rejections aren’t really that painful anymore. I can take more until my writing hits the right person, whoever that is.

Wish me luck.

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I took off yesterday from writing the blog because I’M ON VACATION FOR A WHOLE WEEK!

Ok, I got that out of my system.

I’m a writer, though. I have things to do over vacation:

Edit one short story for a short story contest.
Edit a couple poems (minor edit)
Edit Whose Hearts are Mountains, which seriously needs a developmental editor because I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction
Rethink this whole writing thing (which I do once a week).

The Beginnings of a Novel

The outline for the new book is going very slowly …

Let me explain the general idea of the book. This is in the Archetype series, none of which has gone to developmental edit yet. A little background: Archetypes are near-immortal beings who are tasked with holding humanity’s cultural memories. If the Archetype for an ethnicity dies, all of the people whose patterns they hold die, so that an entire ethnic group (and, more likely, a large group of people of mixed ethnicity that includes that group) die. This is why Archetypes have been held apart from humans and each other.

My series covers the interactions between one particular renegade family (unique in that Archetypes don’t generally have family bonds) and humans. The humans have their own uniqueness in that they have been gifted with abilities by (depending on who you ask) Gaia, the Maker of the Archetypes, God, or genetic enhancement.

The story I’m writing, tentatively called Gods’ Seeds, involves two threads that will come together as the story develops. But here’s a first attempt at synopsis:

The Council of the Oldest, the ruling body of the Archetypes, has announced that humans’ genetic and cultural memories will be gradually divested back to their humans, as humans have been found fit to retain them. Meanwhile, a young woman on Earth named Leah Inhofer sees horrific visions of Archetypes battling each other, with thousands of human casualties resulting. The Archetypes grow restless, knowing that their reason for existence is being taken away, and they will take desperate measures to keep this from happening. The conflict draws battle lines between Archetype and Archetype, and Leah must find the strength to stand between the two — or watch the decimation of humanity.

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There’s a lot of writing in-between this paragraph and a novel. There’s character, there’s subplots, there’s relationships between characters. And there’s a lot of words — about 80,000 words on average. That’s why I’m going to write an outline, to help me find my way through the plot of the novel.

Wish me luck, and let me know if you’d read this novel!

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!