Brook abandoned the hex when she heard the voices of men in the forest.
The new first sentence, replacing:
"Brook was digging a hex at the riverbank when she heard the first hint of trouble.
The sounds of men.
Distant voices muttered, too scattered by the leafless birches to make out. There was nothing threatening about them, except that they shouldn't have been there."
...and about 200 other words.
I'm still not happy. As first sentences go, they both bite (the new one bites with less tetanus-like tenacity, but it's not good, let alone great).
I have at least one more draft left to get that darn opening sentence worked out--at least the month of November (if not also December). We'll just have to see what my subconscious comes up with. But I've been working on this story in one form or another since I was 16 (the truth comes out!)--and in it's various incarnations, I've never hit on The Great Opening Sentence.
(le sigh)
(Would le sigh be a good category for sorting some of my entries into, or what? It'd be shorthand for "almost pretentious melodrama that no one else on earth cares about.")
In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce (43) n + 1 reread
I mentioned somewhere, somewhen, that this was the first book that did it for me. This is the first book I stayed up very late to finish, this is the first book of fantasy that made me realize I wanted to live, breathe and eat fantasy (not just read it or write it, though it may have been the first book for that, as well). I'm pretty sure that I'd read many things I loved already (I'm pretty sure Anne of Green Gables was under my belt; I remember getting that series for Christmas well before 6th grade, which is when I read Pierce) and some fantasy books as well (I know I'd read the Prydain Chronicles already).
I reread it this time and my critical eye was quick to notice that Alanna has all the luck. She's strong, and if not pretty, she's got red hair and violet eyes and all the most handsome and powerful men in the kingdom panting after her; she's beyond talented with anything she turns her hand to. I read this book at age 11 with baited breath (I actually recall trembling with excitement when I turned the pages), and now, of course, I am more reserved.
I do not find the things I note critically now to be flaws, however; I know that they work. They worked exceptionally well on an 11-year-old in 1986, and they work pretty well even now, 18 years later. Alanna has plenty to overcome, and her perfection and luck don't get annoying because she's also perfectly likeable.
I chose to reread this book critically not in an attempt to pick at it, but in an attempt to try to discern what was so all-consumingly wonderful about it so long ago, and to try and figure out if I have (or could) capture any of that in my work. I'm not so sure... but doubt about my work shouldn't be included in the reading of this book, even if that's the reason why I chose to read it. (Or should it? Now we are at a historical cross-roads. In 500 years, when all blogs from the 21st century written by YA fantasy novelists have been lost, except for mine, it will be, I'm sure, an excruciatingly painful moment for the Biographers. Haw, haw. I think I'll leave this whole line of thought alone from here on in.)
Sorry for no consistent updatery around here. I'm not actually planning to let this log lapse or anything, even by slow degrees, but I'm having a hard time coming up with content that would be of interest for the all three people who check this log on an at-least weekly basis... though I keep this log as much for myself and for the Biographers as for a modern external audience.
(The Biographers are trademarked by Peg, I believe.)
So. In the interest of keeping things lively (if lively means "updated" and not "interesting"), I will start excerpting bits and pieces of story-notes and highlighting draft changes. Why? 'Cause I can. And 'cause I need content.
Hya.
I'm at the part in revisions of The Bitter Road where I am utterly struck by what a good word "revision" is. I'm visioning this novel, all over again. Re-vision.
That said, it is so very, very hard to figure out if this is any good... I enjoy it very much. But that doesn't mean its enjoyable to other people.
Time to dig in again. My Halloween deadline loometh.
Write Club was productive. I worked on the first quarter of The Bitter Road. One more day, and the first quarter will be in good shape. I feel vaguely on track to have draft three in hand by Halloween.
I also wrote a pivotal paragraph for "Coming Due," and finally introduced the not-Polynesians in "The Lonesome Dark." I wouldn't be working on short stories at all in favor of the novel, but at the same time, I'm very quickly learning not to waste small bursts of inspiration on specific projects.
I've not done a goals schema in a while--in part because I never quite manage to really nail my specific goals, y'know? But I'd be super-happy if I managed to finish the two library stories ("Coming Due" and "The Library Seed"), the space opera of manners ("Wedding Dress...") and "The Lonesome Dark" by end of year. Think I could do a story a week in November? Me neither.
Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce (42) (re-read #2) [YA fantasy]
Yep, I've only read this book twice now. I've read the successive ones in the trilogy numerous times, I think because I first read In the Hand of the Goddess, and so much goes on in that book that it was painful to me to go backward. However, time has passed, and I am older and wiser and interested in books for more than mere entertainment value.
What I wanted to do--what I needed to do--for The Bitter Road was to really diagnose a first book of the sort I'm trying to write (well, actually, it's written, but, you know.) Crown Duel and The Blue Sword are aimed a little older than I'm trying to go, and others are aimed a little younger. Alanna is just right.
I paid good attention for the first third of the book. By the second third, I was all drawn into the story and forgetting my goals from moment to moment. So. I hope I learned enough with the first third, because the rest was read for sheer entertainment purposes.
Alanna was the heroine of my youth. I first read about her when I was eleven, and she totally hooked me on strong female heroines and fantasy novels. I had missed her, I think... It's been a few years since I'd read anything from this series (nope, Alanna doesn't show up in the booklog prior to 2001, which is how far back my on-line archive goes).
Ok, enough generic extolling. I'm not prepared to say anything specific, so I'll hug myself and go back to sleep--at home, down with a cold today.
Well, my predictions for the veritable swarm of editorial correspondance I was going to have received by now were sadly off. Responses come in by dribs and drabs, and do not overwhelm me.
Alas.
1 rejection, 0 acceptances this week
I wrote about 3/4's of "The Lonesome Dark" at Writer's Retreat. Hardly a record. But relaxation was probably more important than busting tail, and I held steady at my usual rate of production instead of stunting this weekend. (Stunting in, say, a cheerleader's sense of the word, not as in a discussion of growth.)
I have no idea if "The Lonesome Dark" will end up being half as good as I feel it is right now, but right now, I'm simply amazed. I've never written a story this carefully, with this much control and clear thought and precision--and yet naturally. I don't feel overwhelmed by ideas I can't quite snatch, nor do I feel that I have to try and control every piece of the story from end to end with notecards. The story isn't all there, and I'm uncovering it, line by line... and each line feels crisp, precise, necessary.
When I finish it, will I have any idea of what happened? Why this story, like this, and not in any of the other ways? And will it still seem good at the end?
Dunno. Really not good with the predictions, you know?
Here we are! Not much activity yet, but I have made a to-do list.
The only other news is that my husband switched laundry detergents, and now I smell like hamster. Rather, cedar shavings--so, a well-appointed hamster house, not so much a hamster per se.
Bounce on "Bound by Spells." Did not make it out of the slush at F&SF this time. To the grindstone!
(eyes the mailbox with deep suspicion) You're awfully quiet, but for this little outburst. Hm....
Alas, but the comment spam is getting stupid around here. I've been closing off comments for particular entries as they get spammed, and I'm still doing that, but I believe I will add to my "weekly update" ritual the closing of the previous week's comments.
Implementing MT Blacklist might be the smarter solution in the long-run, but something about the plug-in really turned me off. I just can't remember what. Maybe the workload?
No rejections, no acceptances. Nuttin'.
-I wrote a very small (300 wordsish?) amount on "Wedding Dress..."
-Got in about 1300 words in the last two days on "Lonesome Dark"
-Am writing (mostly done with) a very brief reaction paper on Bede's account of England's conversion to Christianity for my Brit History class. 5 pages, double-spaced, feels like a ridiculously small amount of work. Now, if I could just finish this last page and a half without wanting to bang head on wall.
I began a to-do list to take me through the end of December. It includes many sorts of things, like writing the paper I'm currently working on, as well as finishing up the many unread periodicals lying around the house (since making the list, I did finish the October Realms of Fantasy), and also stories.
It might be useful through the end of the week. Bleah.
I suppose most people who spend time with me do not think I lack for motivation (or maybe discipline) with regard to writing; in fact, however, I am just coming out the end of a period of time in which discipline had to be enforced, and motivation was earned, not inspired.
I'm not sure, but I think I've rounded the bend and have come back around to inspiration. Just... last night, I was falling asleep at my computer and struggling to stay upright and keep writing. Practically speaking, I'm pretty sure that was a bad choice; I'll likely have to rewrite some stuff... Also speaking practically, it's not like I finished a story or anything. I laid down about 737 words of the story I'm calling (as a working title) Singularity Creek, since it's my combination of homage to Westerns and a reponse to the singularity theory. (I think it'll actually be entitled "The Lonesome Dark," but we'll see.)
I've been paying attention to motion lately, since motion is quite literally the thing that always gives me writing inspiration: a walk, a drive, a bike-ride. Put me in motion, and I over-flow with ideas. It gets pretty frustrating if I'm in charge of the motion-making device (the car or the bike), but it's wonderful if I'm not (or I can stop and write some things down). I carry in my purse a tape recorder for the car situations, and a tiny notebook for all other situations.
Non-kinetic motion works as well, though this is probably more obvious. I get a lot of ideas while listening to lectures. Not seeing things--that distracts me, and documentaries will never work for this--but NPR, non-fiction books on tape, and college lectures are all places of mental motion, causing thoughts to fly thick and fast in my brain.
If I could figure out what it was about motion, I'd bottle it. In the meantime, I'll just know that I can always take a walk and get out of writer's block.
The Whim of the Dragon by Pamela Dean (41)
Where was this trilogy when I was a kid? And I mean that very literally. Where was it? Other people read these books when they were growing up. Somehow, I didn't. It was not for lack of prowling the YA shelves, I assure you. I found Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley and all the other usual suspects...
Anyway, I really like this trilogy, not only for the tropes it turns on their ears, but just for the sheer love of words it displays. Though, the magic comes in during the trope-busting: I won't give the ending away, but it was quite satisfying and very unexpected.
King John by W.L. Warren (40)
A biography of the worst king of England? I'm so there! Plus, it was required for my class...
First, valuable, valuable information about the time period. For someone who was trying to write a story set in the time period at one point (and, I suppose, technically I still am), the book has extremely good stuff--not just political and military happenings, but good background info on social structures. It really cleared up a period of history that was actually quite murky in my head.
Beyond that, it humanized King John for me, pointing out his strengths as well as his flaws. Warren is good at suggesting the places where John should have turned left instead of right (ie, pointing out simple human errors), as well as explaining John's deep weaknesses of character. This one's definitely a keeper.
I'm talking short story queries here.
As you know, Bob (well, actually, many of you don't, and not a few of you don't care, and a few more of you actually know way more about this than I do, so who the heck am I actually talking to?), when you submit short stories to genre publications, you do not query about it beforehand unless there is some reason you can't comply with the guidelines. Note, in about 80 submissions, I have queried about an exception to guidelines once. I figure that takes care of me for the next 80 submissions, too. Asking to be an exception to guidelines strikes me as potentially bad form--though less bad form than sending in exceptions to guidelines without querying.
(For the record, I had a story that exceeded Arabella's word-limit by a significant margin--1,500 words past their 4,500 word limit. I queried; they said yes, send it, but please do be aware that it will come under harsh scrutiny (my words). If it had been any other sort of story--ie, non-romance, which has a very, very, very tiny short fiction market, and I didn't feel I could afford to cut Arabella out of my efforts without even trying.)
So, querying in short story-land tends to come after the fact--after the submission--n'est-ce pas? "Dear editors, you have had my short story for 635 days, please send me an answer now." Except, more politely.
It's a very careful balancing act, the knowing when to query. The immediate suspicion is that either the submission or the response went astray--and indeed, that's covered the bulk of my experiences which have required querying. But there's always that chance that some other nefarious forces are at work. Grad school, I know, came into play once during a particularly long interlude... "Heretic's Day Out" languished on an editor's desk under a pile of grad school papers, and only got rejected at the end of the term--or something. I never really was clear on what happened. (In any case, I sold it to the very next market I sent it to, so I never did feel very bad about not querying on that one.)
In general, though, I keep an eye on turn-around times. I'm sensitive to turn-around times in part because I worked (and technically still do) in document delivery. I have no idea what slush-reading is like, but I do sense the ebb and flow of papers washing across a desk. I know how perfectly innocent-looking papers can build and build and build until you have a tsunami of wood-pulp and rags bearing down on you. I know what it's like to be the one holding onto anonymous piles of paper, while there are individuals out there lusting to have in their hands just one tiny twentieth of a ream sent to them. The paper hoarder is clearly the social criminal; you may as well be hoarding meat in the Kalahari or gold in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
No, actually I keep an eye on turn-around times 'cause it's the only real way to know where you stand. It's the only way to prepare oneself for the oncoming rejection. Even if you love and embrace rejections as I do, it still takes a level of mental vigilance to continue not to take it personally.
So, when a magazine says on their website that they turn stories around in two months, and if not two, in three for sure... Ok. The mind opens up to the possibility of rejection at two months, and by three, is downright antsy when no word has come. And that's what I mean by "keeping an eye on turn-around times." I don't know how the rest of the writing world does it, but I comb through my circulating list every day or two, just to get a feel: "will this rejection be coming soon? Will this one?" (Note: I do not dare look for acceptances. That way lies madness. Acceptances should be pleasant surprises.)
But stated web-guidelines are only the first step on the road to query. After that, I start checking other places: The Black Hole, for one, which lists real-life stats on turn-around times. Of course, that's not quite enough information to go on, most of the time--it's usually anecdotal evidence at best.
The next step is hitting up the rumor mill. You can do that literally over at the actual Rumor Mill, or see if Ralan has made note of anything, or check The Write Hemisphere. And so on.
Let's run a real-life example or three.
I sent "One Million Years BFE" to Interzone on 7/19. That's overseas, but they kindly will send an e-reply to save you postage, so at least the transit time is cut in half, and doesn't need to factor into the equation unduly. Ralan says their response time is "2 months max," which you'll notice it was at the end of September, if you are extremely generous to the slackitude of the combined efforts of the US Postal Service and Her Majesty's as well. Their actual guidelines states "four weeks but please don’t query submissions until at least eight weeks have passed." I would be in my rights to do query now, but...
What does the Black Hole say? Well, they report a couple rejections from this spring that mostly fit the 4-8 week window. Hm. Anecdotal evidence at best: 2 items from this spring.
(crinkles brow) Wasn't there some sort of biggish publishing merger or something recently? Could that be causing a delay? Or... oh, let's just keep looking. The ten minutes I spend browsing is ten minutes I could use to compose and send a query, but you know, there's nothing quiet like detective work.
I head over to Write Hemisphere and use their search box. I remember reading an entry about Interzone there and thinking "That may be relevant." I was, of course, well under 8 weeks at that point, and had no suspicion that I would be going over... Well, WH doesn't want to load right now, but when I did this earlier today, I found a link to an Interzone "ask the editor" style board where a number of people started asking about their submissions--a very informal style of querying. The editor was gracious in responding to them, but the general consensus on the board was that there was a bunch of stuff still going on with the merger (or something; I'm doubtless misremembering), and things were taking a leetle longer to get through slush than anyone expected.
Ok, well. The editor has publicly asked for patience, and heck, I hate composing query letters.
Similar circumstances dog the footsteps of "Sun's East" which is at Amazing Stories right now. They are getting a new editor; there was a public plea for turn-around clemency, which I found on the Write Hemisphere. So, I automatically tacked another month, maybe two onto that one.
There is always the dreadful possibility that my submissions were still never received; or that they've been read and rejected and the correspondance went astray. It's certainly happened (though that seems to be more likely due to bad email addresses I've typed in than any vagaries of the post office. Yes, I'm less reliable than the post office!). However, at this point, if they had been e-subs, I would have caught the bad addresses, most likely. Though, email addresses also have a way of changing rather lickety-split, and I've sent subs to bounce endlessly around dead-end ether before (ok, just once).
I've lost subs to hard-drive failures and I've lost responses to overeager spam filters. Interestingly, each problem has been unique, and I've never replicated a disaster yet. Statistically, I think that makes sense. On a personal level, it's just irritating. It is completely vexing to keep giving a market the benefit of the doubt only to find out that there was no need to give them such benefit, that they never got your manuscript. Again, that's happened only a few times out of the 80ish submissions I've made. In the end, I suppose it's worth the wait, though... query only when all hope is lost. That may come from the horrors of having to wade through a paper tsunami to find that one piece of paper that someone would have gotten on time if they'd just been patient. It may come from the fact that I hate writing letters. It may come from being afraid to piss editors off with my nagging.
In any case, it's a learned kind of patience, a sort of art for the unambitious. And now you know how I do it.
This week....
-three rewrites of "Bound by Spells." No, really.
-started a rewrite of "Souls on a String."
-a few thousand scattered new words hither and yon, but sadly, no serious buckling down on anything, in spite of a few game efforts.
This month...
-3 rejections, 1 sale. Absolutely nothing to complain about there.
-no stories finished. Blah.
Goals for next month?
-put a serious dent in the The Bitter Road rewrite
-skeleton-writing of the October story
-finish a story
And onward.