It's been a tumultuous two weeks. Allow me to break it down for you.
Good news: I spent the first week of February getting a good chunk of writing done.
Bad news: ...while I was at jury duty, not getting selected for a jury, listening from afar as hordes of orcs ravaged my workplace, set fire to the consultants, and forced my boss to run sobbing into his office. At least, this is the picture that's been painted for me by the consultants. It may be an exaggeration - my office didn't smell like orc when I got back.
Good news: I've been making good progress on reading The Princess Bride aloud to my dog, a goal I took on for 2010.
Bad News: ...because I figured out last week that Hobbes is quickly going deaf, and I feel the need to finish reading him the book before he can't hear my voice anymore. Yes, it's irrational. Yes, I'm a crazy person. But I've had this dog since I was ten years old, he loves it when people talk, sing, or read to him, and reading aloud has always been a passion of mine, yet somehow I've never read an entire book to him. It seems wrong.
Good news: I won't have to shovel the deck stairs of my apartment next winter!
Bad News: ...because last week I found out that the bank is foreclosing on my building, so I have just over six months left in this apartment I love so dearly before the bank starts trying to sell it out from under me. This apartment where I was planning on spending three more years. This apartment that was so perfect for me because on top of its unique space, its proximity to everything I need to get to, and the fact that there are freaking fruit trees in the back yard (fruit trees, people!), it's owned by a friend of mine who has been the best landlord I've ever had.
So you understand why I haven't been blogging lately. I've spent this last week stomping around fuming and making threats to punch the universe in the crotch. My friends say, "And how will you find the universe's crotch?" and "But you have very small hands," but goddammit, I'm sure Google Maps can give me a vague idea, and if I need to sculpt a giant fist, there's always paper mache.
But then, on the other hand...
Good news: Thanks to feedback and a kick in the ass from a fabulous new writer-friend and beta reader I found through Ravelry, I now have a polished draft of Or Your Money Back that's ready to be shopped around to literary agents! Which I'm planning to start doing this week! And I'm so excited about it that every thought that has anything to do with the querying process ends in an exclamation point! I should print out address labels! I think there's still some nice paper in my desk drawer at work! Do I have envelopes?!
Bad news: No, I think I used up all my envelopes! (But I'm sure I can borrow some from work!)
Yeah, that's it. I've got a query letter almost ready to go and a list of my four top pick agents sitting on my desk! I've been excited to start the agent hunt since I finished the first draft of this novel, and this week I'm finally doing it! I'm hoping that all the crap that's come my way these last two weeks is the universe's way of balancing out something really awesome that's on its way. Maybe something publishing related, even.
And if it isn't? Well, then, I'll plow ahead on the agent hunt and spend my spare time making that giant paper mache fist.
Showing posts with label revisions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revisions. Show all posts
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Mostly ravioli, it turned out.
A while back, after not having bought groceries for a few months, I made the mistake of going grocery shopping without a list. I didn't have any recipes I made on a regular basis at the time, so I didn't have a starting point from which to toss things into the cart. The idea of gathering everything I needed to feed myself seemed like a staggeringly huge task, and after so long without having shopped for my own food, I just couldn't remember what I usually bought. I wound up roaming the frozen food aisle wide-eyed, wringing my hands and going, "What do I EAT?"
My former roommates remember this. I clung to their sleeves and cried, "You should know this! What do I EAT?" and they said, "Uh...food?"
This is about how I feel right after finishing a big revision.
Tonight I finished the second draft of Or Your Money Back. It's now 81,835 words long (over 11,000 words longer than before), more fleshed out in a lot of ways, and well on its way to being a finished book. I saved the finished draft, went out celebrating, sat down to write again...and stopped.
What do I WRITE?
You guys! You should know this! What do I WRITE?
I have a list somewhere, I think. Maybe I should go dig that up.
And hey, if all else fails, I can just throw some things in the cart and see what sticks.
My former roommates remember this. I clung to their sleeves and cried, "You should know this! What do I EAT?" and they said, "Uh...food?"
This is about how I feel right after finishing a big revision.
Tonight I finished the second draft of Or Your Money Back. It's now 81,835 words long (over 11,000 words longer than before), more fleshed out in a lot of ways, and well on its way to being a finished book. I saved the finished draft, went out celebrating, sat down to write again...and stopped.
What do I WRITE?
You guys! You should know this! What do I WRITE?
I have a list somewhere, I think. Maybe I should go dig that up.
And hey, if all else fails, I can just throw some things in the cart and see what sticks.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
From the Obsessive Writer school of home decorating
Like I said last post, I've been working on my revision of OYMB. After much swearing and a lot of caffeine, I realized I needed to see the book laid out visually, so I got out my stack of 3x5" notecards, filled one out for every scene in the book, and strung them up over my workspace so I could move them around at will.
It's kind of a neat decorating effect. This is my workspace right now:
I think there's some cosmic rule that prevents me from having enough desk space no matter how many desks I have pushed together. This is two desks and a TV tray, and I still can't fit everything. It's a comfortable setup, at least, and since it's in the middle of my apartment, I'm actually using it. So's the dog - you can see his red blanket right where my feet are supposed to go. He curls up there while I'm writing, which is cute, if counter-productive.
I'm loving the notecards system. I did it for one previous revision, but that was a much less streamlined process, so it didn't last. This? Useful. Here's a typical card:
Upper left corner: the current chapter in which this scene exists (four, in this case). The blue text is a quick description of the scene (my protagonist being dragged out to a bar by a new ally). Green text below it is stuff I want to add or subtract from the scene (fiddle with the dramatic volume of the scene, include a theme of agency I've been wanting do do more with by having Seb bring it up, and make Sky a sneakier bastard). Entirely new scenes I want to add are all green and have no chapter numbers.
Not all the notecards are as easy to understand as that one. Some of them are so shorthand I'm the only person who knows what they mean.
And some of them are bad inside jokes that make Kiah think I'm a dork.
You can identify the point at which I started getting bored with re-reading and marking up the first draft, because the notecards start getting more shorthand and weird. Like so:
Badly drawn Mr. T. approves of most things I do. He's kind of a yes-man.
My revised plan for revision goes like this:
Stage 1: Notecards
Stage 2: Edits and rewrites of scenes
Stage 3: Cleanup and polishing
I just started Stage 2 and am on chapter 2/12.
It's kind of a neat decorating effect. This is my workspace right now:
I think there's some cosmic rule that prevents me from having enough desk space no matter how many desks I have pushed together. This is two desks and a TV tray, and I still can't fit everything. It's a comfortable setup, at least, and since it's in the middle of my apartment, I'm actually using it. So's the dog - you can see his red blanket right where my feet are supposed to go. He curls up there while I'm writing, which is cute, if counter-productive.
I'm loving the notecards system. I did it for one previous revision, but that was a much less streamlined process, so it didn't last. This? Useful. Here's a typical card:
Upper left corner: the current chapter in which this scene exists (four, in this case). The blue text is a quick description of the scene (my protagonist being dragged out to a bar by a new ally). Green text below it is stuff I want to add or subtract from the scene (fiddle with the dramatic volume of the scene, include a theme of agency I've been wanting do do more with by having Seb bring it up, and make Sky a sneakier bastard). Entirely new scenes I want to add are all green and have no chapter numbers.
Not all the notecards are as easy to understand as that one. Some of them are so shorthand I'm the only person who knows what they mean.
And some of them are bad inside jokes that make Kiah think I'm a dork.
You can identify the point at which I started getting bored with re-reading and marking up the first draft, because the notecards start getting more shorthand and weird. Like so:
Badly drawn Mr. T. approves of most things I do. He's kind of a yes-man.
My revised plan for revision goes like this:
Stage 1: Notecards
Stage 2: Edits and rewrites of scenes
Stage 3: Cleanup and polishing
I just started Stage 2 and am on chapter 2/12.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
A list of ten things from a long ten days
1. Since I last posted here, my computer has died. It's well past the expiration of its AppleCare plan, it's not really worth attempting to salvage, and getting it fixed would cost as much as another computer, so it's currently sitting in its messenger bag on the floor. Poor old Sophie. She had her hard drive die and half her insides replaced in March, then she was forced to take notes on subcommittee meetings and surf fanfiction all summer, and now it looks like her logic board's gone bad. It's been a rough year for the old girl.
2. I'm currently using my 2004 G4 desktop as my primary computer. It's running OS X 10.5 and is hooked up to a 22" monitor and a 500GB external hard drive, so it's kind of like Number 5 trying to hang out with Cylons, but y'know, it works.
If anyone got that reference, please let me know so we can arrange a high-five later.
3. Partly because of the computer issues, I haven't made much progress in anything except knitting lately. And thanks to daylight savings, which ensures it's already dark out when I get home from work, I don't have any pictures of my recent knitting.
4. One piece of writing advice that's always stuck with me is something Neil Gaiman blogged about: "You never learn how to write a novel," Gene Wolfe once said to him. "You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing." This is absolutely true. I struggled with the first draft of Or Your Money back because all the longer stories I'd written before were installments of the Series What Ate My Life. I knew how to write those novels, to let epic fantasy plotlines sprawl across the page - what I didn't know how to write was a quiet coming of age romance with no explosions or psychic eviscerations. By the end of the first draft, I sort of figured it out, and I was so proud of myself for that.
I got cocky. Now I'm learning that you can't learn how to revise a novel, just how to revise the novel you're revising. The novel revisions I've done before have focused on hacking down massive forests of text - upwards of 50,000 words - but this revision requires small bits of pruning and a lot of new additions. My chainsaw of revision is useless here. I need shears and potting soil.
5. To further earburn Neil Gaiman, I'm already at the point in the revison where his NaNoWriMo pep talk feels appropriate to re-read. Substitute the "writes" with "revises" and you've got my mindset exactly. I get the "This is the worst thing I've ever written, maybe I should quit writing and become a lawyer/florist/sherpa" thing during every first draft and every major revision.
6. What did the hot dog say when he won the contest?
(Answer: I'm the wiener!)
7. I have a whole drawer full of candy leftover from Halloween. Most of it is Laffy Taffy.
8. My Christmas knitting is starting to move along. I'm sure I won't get it all done in time for Christmas - especially taking breaks to knit stuff for myself - but I'm pretty sure I can finish what I need to finish for the people who actually care about it being on time.
9. I've finally figured out an age/maturity level test for whether a person is old enough for me to date. If I say "DuckTales" and they respond with "WOO-OOH," it's cool. If they stare at me blankly, they're too young. Or they're not that into TV, in which case I'd probably drive them nuts, anyway.
10. I'll take and post pictures of WIPs when I can.
2. I'm currently using my 2004 G4 desktop as my primary computer. It's running OS X 10.5 and is hooked up to a 22" monitor and a 500GB external hard drive, so it's kind of like Number 5 trying to hang out with Cylons, but y'know, it works.
If anyone got that reference, please let me know so we can arrange a high-five later.
3. Partly because of the computer issues, I haven't made much progress in anything except knitting lately. And thanks to daylight savings, which ensures it's already dark out when I get home from work, I don't have any pictures of my recent knitting.
4. One piece of writing advice that's always stuck with me is something Neil Gaiman blogged about: "You never learn how to write a novel," Gene Wolfe once said to him. "You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing." This is absolutely true. I struggled with the first draft of Or Your Money back because all the longer stories I'd written before were installments of the Series What Ate My Life. I knew how to write those novels, to let epic fantasy plotlines sprawl across the page - what I didn't know how to write was a quiet coming of age romance with no explosions or psychic eviscerations. By the end of the first draft, I sort of figured it out, and I was so proud of myself for that.
I got cocky. Now I'm learning that you can't learn how to revise a novel, just how to revise the novel you're revising. The novel revisions I've done before have focused on hacking down massive forests of text - upwards of 50,000 words - but this revision requires small bits of pruning and a lot of new additions. My chainsaw of revision is useless here. I need shears and potting soil.
5. To further earburn Neil Gaiman, I'm already at the point in the revison where his NaNoWriMo pep talk feels appropriate to re-read. Substitute the "writes" with "revises" and you've got my mindset exactly. I get the "This is the worst thing I've ever written, maybe I should quit writing and become a lawyer/florist/sherpa" thing during every first draft and every major revision.
6. What did the hot dog say when he won the contest?
(Answer: I'm the wiener!)
7. I have a whole drawer full of candy leftover from Halloween. Most of it is Laffy Taffy.
8. My Christmas knitting is starting to move along. I'm sure I won't get it all done in time for Christmas - especially taking breaks to knit stuff for myself - but I'm pretty sure I can finish what I need to finish for the people who actually care about it being on time.
9. I've finally figured out an age/maturity level test for whether a person is old enough for me to date. If I say "DuckTales" and they respond with "WOO-OOH," it's cool. If they stare at me blankly, they're too young. Or they're not that into TV, in which case I'd probably drive them nuts, anyway.
10. I'll take and post pictures of WIPs when I can.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Not much for today.
Slow progress today - on short story revision and sweater alike.
Bah. Sleeves. Who needs 'em?
...aside from me, sitting here in northern Wisconsin with 3+ feet of snow creeping up into the windows, I mean.
After the other short story revision this week sped by, naturally this one had to be like trudging through drying cement. I'm only 650 words into retyping the (7000 word) story so far. Changes needed: cut 1000+ words off the total length, fix passive sentences, add more sensory details, improve the overall cohesiveness, patch up the lame ending, and get rid of the deus ex machina aftertaste that walking suit of armor gives me. (I did figure out his motivation. Turns out, it's "be awesome." Think Barney from How I Met Your Mother, but saving people instead of picking up chicks. And also a suit of armor instead of a dude in a suit. It's possible I'm stretching this too far. I blame the eight metric tons of turkey I just ate for dinner.)
Also, I finished reading The Bone People yesterday, and I'm trying to pick out the words to describe it. I think this one deserves a proper essay. That should be appearing here soonish.
Bah. Sleeves. Who needs 'em?...aside from me, sitting here in northern Wisconsin with 3+ feet of snow creeping up into the windows, I mean.
After the other short story revision this week sped by, naturally this one had to be like trudging through drying cement. I'm only 650 words into retyping the (7000 word) story so far. Changes needed: cut 1000+ words off the total length, fix passive sentences, add more sensory details, improve the overall cohesiveness, patch up the lame ending, and get rid of the deus ex machina aftertaste that walking suit of armor gives me. (I did figure out his motivation. Turns out, it's "be awesome." Think Barney from How I Met Your Mother, but saving people instead of picking up chicks. And also a suit of armor instead of a dude in a suit. It's possible I'm stretching this too far. I blame the eight metric tons of turkey I just ate for dinner.)
Also, I finished reading The Bone People yesterday, and I'm trying to pick out the words to describe it. I think this one deserves a proper essay. That should be appearing here soonish.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)