My wife is a member of a neighborhood book club. Which is not, as you might think, a thinly veiled excuse to drink wine and complain about their husbands. It is, however, mostly filled with snacks and conversations. Most of which aren’t relevant to the book. They’re usual fare isn’t usually book clubby books — books with heavy subjects but entertaining stories like The Help or The Fault in Our Stars. This month, it was Merm-8. Hey, that’s my book. And to tell the truth, I’m disappointed in myself for not exploiting the opportunity as much as I could’ve/should’ve. For some reason, I just didn’t feel very writerly that day…
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Writing Is Getting Less Fun
These days, the writing is getting less fun. Lots of struggle for no reward. I haven’t sold a story since Influx Capacitor, which was in March. Black Hole Son has been sent to 30 agents, and only one garnered a positive response. Granted, I said before how Black Hole Son would never be published so this isn’t totally unexpected. But still, it’s disheartening. It’s not certain why things aren’t selling, and earlier they were. Maybe it’s economy. Maybe it’s summer–for some reason everything slows down in the summer. Maybe too many people take vacations. Maybe everyone just sucks (sorry, that’s the cold talking, most people don’t suck, but for those…
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Midwest Literary Magazine Is Helpful
While I was busy helping my wife poop out a tax deduction, I garnered a few rejections in the e-mail box, natch. One of those came from the Midwest Literary Magazine for Vampire Family Story. They gave me one of the most complete personal rejections I’ve ever received. He told me what he liked and didn’t like. AND he gave me a recommendation on where next to send it to. This is a good sign. The more personal the rejections get, the closer you are to being thought about by an editor for selected. Plus a recommendation is already a +5 to acceptance. The hard part is trimming the story.…
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I Predicted this post would be about Predictability
So critiques on White Mage Story are done for a while. Haven’t gotten through many of them, five or so, maybe a quarter of the total. So far, response has been positive. There have not been very many complaints about structure or boredom or confusing points (actually, there are some of that last one, but they usually contradict one another, so most of the time, unless it’s repeated, I chalk it up to “reader not paying enough attention”, which is legitimate because these people aren’t getting paid – I had one person call my novel New Moon Sun). But there’s been one that’s been stuck in my craw. One of…
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An RFDR Done!
Yay, I’m done with the RFDR I was doing for someone. This was a whopper – a 160,000 word fantasy novel. It’s written in first person by a sort of knight guardian. And he does a lot of asides. To give you an idea what was done to it, I’ll explain it like this. It started at 157,000 words. I cut it to 83,000 – with all my comments and some jibber-jabber at the end. Most of my marks were deletions. Delete, delete, delete. So much deleting. I thought I was wordy, but at least all of my scenes had SOMETHING to do with the plot – no asides or…
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BHS Break
I took a break from composing the outline for Mermaid Story to incorporate information from the critiques on Black Hole Son. I’m not sure why I took this break – I wasn’t particularly exhausted from idea generation, and I wasn’t stuck on anything. I just took a break to take a break, I guess. It was fun coming back to the BHS world… at first. Some of the critiques were harsh, some unnecessarily mean, some completely unhelpful, some no longer relevant. But for the most part, it helped me with the story. It’s always important to get an outsider’s perspective for stories. One of the two hardest parts is seeing…
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Friends Who Want To Read Your Work
You ever have someone who wants to read your story? This is why I have a hard time telling people I’m a writer. None of my friends are writers, or are much of readers (except Janet Evanovich novels, which are all the same). So I get a book in the mail and say it’s research for a story I’m writing, someone says “Oh, can I read it when you’re done”. Maybe I’m just being a moron, but I don’t think they really mean it. I think they’re just being polite. Why? Well for one thing, not everyone’s favored genre is the same, and moreso, favorite authors and styles. So it’s…
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No changes
No changes in review status since this weekend. Still the same two on Zoetrope and no comments on FictionSlamming. This is unusual since my last submission to FictionSlamming got comments right away. Maybe they’re still looking for things to hate and can’t find any?
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Why Doesn’t Anyone Like Me (my novel)?
I guess I can give up on the hopes that I can get my novel critqued. On Critters I only got three total for the week it was up. The guidelines said I could expect 15-20. The next unit won’t be up until Mar. 21. At this rate, the novel won’t be completely critiqued until September 2009. Even paying a professional is too expensive. I wouldn’t pay any more than $50, which is about the maximum price of a novel. Most of the services I’m looking at, I’d have to pay $500 for my 153,000 word baby. I was willing to pay for it after I saw how little I…