Stuff Stolen from Other People

Eric at Pimp My Novel retweeted this blog post that has a great quote:

“An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts on himself.” – Irwin Shaw

I'll try to keep that in mind next time the query process is thunder punching me in the junk.


Le R. at The Rejectionist posted a You Tube video sent to her by Maine Character. You will find value in what it has to say, so I repost it here for your edification.

Redux: There is No Such Thing as Writer's Block

Not quite sure why people are so much more willing to read blogger than live journal as one is just as easy as the other (other than displaying in reader, but we won't get into an RSS feed discussion). Anyway, because it has reared its ugly head again, I feel inclined to repost one of my earlier journal entries on writer's block. It doesn't exist. Stop making excuses.

I can't remember who the author was, someone I respected immensely at the time (Kurt Vonnegut Jr. perhaps?), but I read his opinions long long ago and to this day, I have found them mostly accurate. I say mostly because physical and psychological factors can also play a part in one's writing, so if you're exhausted, overly stressed, or in some other way not prepared to write, it may be frustrating if you're trying to push yourself through. Excluding such instances and focusing directly on writing (when you're in the proper state of self, when you should be writing), there is no such thing as writer's block.

I'll say it again, there's no such thing as writer's block. If you find yourself stuck, unable to move the story forward or unsure of where to go from where you are, you're not "blocked." You've made a mistake. Go back and review what you've written. Somewhere in there is a mistake. When you've corrected the mistake, the story will continue to progress normally. Thus, writing without mistakes will yield a fluid process from beginning to end. Granted, by fluid process, I don't mean that you'll write a publishable book on your first try. There's still revision and corrections to be made. But it's a serious mistake that stops a writer cold.

I have yet to discover this claim to be untrue.

But this is what I do!

I went to lunch across the street, diligently working on the revision of TTS (Otwald is about to meet Crown Princess Klara, which will require some serious scrubbing). The owner's wife brings out my food and sees me tapping away on my laptop.

"No more work," she says. "It's time to enjoy ourselves!"

I smiled and nodded, but really just wanted to reply, "This is how I enjoy myself."

This is what I do, lady.

A Ponderance: What do you think is back there?

My good online friend and beta reader, LurkerWithout works nights at a hotel. Having held this job myself, I understand his psychological pain. To pass the time, he will occasionally doodle and share those doodles with the masses. (That's you and me, in case you were wondering just who was amassed.) Today's offering is worth reposting, both for its humor, but in particular the fourth panel:



I love the angle of the door and the streaks that give it texture and make me feel like I'm looking at a door that's really there and really weird. But it's the question! The question demands an answer and my brain just starts turning.

What is behind the crooked door?

Is it a crooked world? Is it a world filled with optical illusions where everything is level, but based on its craft, everyone walks slanted in an attempt to maintain their balance? Or is it metaphorical? Is the world on that side the same as ours but crooked? Half-way between this world and the bizarro world, where everything seems normal until the twelve-foot tall white rabbit comes out of his pawn shop and beats the shit out of you because you were looking through the window too long. Don't fuck with the white rabbit. If you're looking you're buying else move along.

So move along you do, walking down a street like any other you might walk in New York at night, feeling dirtier than it really is because the air is stagnant and filled with exhaust. You turn in an alley because that's what one does when he feels like he's being followed and no matter where you go, you always feel like you're being followed inside the crooked door. That's where you meet Tommy the Rat, but he's not a squealer. Bobby the Hamster is, but Bobby the Hamster is Tommy's bitch and the hamster doesn't do anything without the rat's say so (unless you can get Bobby alone and buy him an orange soda, but since you don't have the peach pits to pay up, how are you going to get an orange soda?).

All you have is cloth money (as dollars are cloth not paper, so we really need to change that phrase) and that doesn't get you very far here. You need yourself some peach pits or people will think you're a chump.

Maybe you can turn a trick or two, but the corners are already full of fellas and their pimp looks like she can kick your ass. It doesn't much anyway cause the fellas are as broke as you. No one wants humans anymore. There's nothing finer than the foxes uptown. They don't have pimps. They have services with phone lines and operators. An hour with a fox costs more pits than you could make in a year turning tricks down on the corner, so just give that up and see if you can't pick up some day labor down by the docks.

When does the sun rise here?

A Ponderance: How to Steal from the Greeks

You may have noticed Nate Wilson appearing here and there in the comments section. He's a good bean. He's a bean you'd use in your award-winning chili. He has his own blog. If you have not read it, you should. The footnotes alone make it worthwhile. Recently, he posted an explanation of why the blog is named Sometimes, the Wheel is on Fire. This origin is wicked awesome. I immediately declared I would steal this from him and use it for a story. I pondered and I pondered and I pondered some more. But no matter how much I pondered, I could not come up with a story better than the original mythology. It's just cool. But it's not cool to just use the mythology as if it was something you came up with. If you can't play a tune and make it dance like a monkey, there's no reason to include it.

But today that monkey danced! The mistake I made was to look at new stories where the wheel could be used. Oh no, my friends, I should have been looking in stories I've already written. Or more precisely, the one I'm writing right now.

In JEHOVAH'S HITLIST, you don't get a lot of the resources you see today. No wood, no plastic. Most everything is fabric, recycled paper, or metal (mostly metal--aluminum or tin and the like). Each avenue is named for the 53 states and has three or four parks named for the larger cities in that state, the largest always being the capital city. These parks, lacking trees or vegetation of any kind, are a lot like your modern day skate parks and playgrounds. The problem is, the tinkers have already looted all the movable metal. Swing sets are barren, teater totters have nothing with which to teeter or totter. So you get these great big cement ramps and these concave bowls where if you run fast enough, it's like you're going sideways.

But what about the larger pieces of metal too heavy for the tinkers to haul away? What about those wheels where you run in a circle and then grab hold and go round and round?

So far, the punishment I've found for almost anything is death, and that's a bit extreme. There would have to be some method of punishment for minor infractions. The gangs aren't going to shoot you over every little thing. The deputies aren't going to string you up. You'd get beaten up or left out in the elements. But how? Circling a pursing and beating them is blah. No curb stomping or anything that extreme.

The wheel!

When Jehovah finally goes up above and to Ademi Dayo, the young woman he has to kill, the two talk about the differences of their worlds. Jehovah talks about how much trouble he got into when he was younger, always acting out. When you get in trouble, they tie you to the wheel and throw rocks at you.

How horrible!

Nah, not really. It could be a lot worse.

How could anything be worse than that?

Sometimes, the wheel is on fire.

BAM!

Idea stolen and assimilated. Boo. Yah.

Beware the AYFKM, My Son

There are plenty of reasons a person may stop reading your book at the beginning: overwriting, underwriting, rehashed plots or story elements, a disconnection with the protagonist. I can't even list the number of books I've picked up and put back down before the end of chapter 1 (it's a long list). That's the important part. I can't list them. I don't even remember most of them. Those books are discarded from my memory as not worth remembering or filed into the "not right for me" category. The worst that happens when someone starts to read and dislikes your story is that they stop. They might go so far as to comment that they did not enjoy the story when the subject matter comes up. Sure it stings and you want all the readers you can get, but in the grand scheme of things, much worse things can happen.

Like the AYFKM--the Are You Fucking Kidding Me moment. This is so much more dangerous than a person giving up after page two. The AYFKM happens much later in the book. The reader has invested time and money, but more importantly has invested in the story. He or she cares for what's happening, cares for the characters and the outcome. There is something at stake. Then you hammer the square peg into the round hole and that whole investiture comes apart. You shat on their feelings with your plot decision and there are consequences for your action.

AYFKM Level One
The reader immediately stops reading the book. They then seek out others to vent their frustrations, say like a blog post. ;) They're not waiting for conversation. They're starting the conversation. This isn't the same as weighing in with a "yeah, I just didn't like xxx main character, so I never read the series." This is "I was reading xxx and yyy happened. Are you fucking kidding me?!?!"

AYFKM Level Two
The reader immediately stops reading the book and refuses to buy any more books in the series (or possibly no books by you ever again). They actively begin conversations, but rather than voicing their frustration, they tell people that the entire experience is a waste of time. Stay away from this series. The author completely ruins everything that came before it (*cough*HPbook7*cough*). If you're lucky, this person may read the back cover copy for your next series, but as far as this one goes, it's dead in the water, and they're going to try to sink it with everyone they know too.

AYFKM Level Three
This is where all the bells and whistles go off. The torpedo is in the water and the submarine has to dive before everyone on board is killed. You didn't just waste their time, you hurt them on a personal level. For whatever reason, the bond they established with your story/character was an intense emotional investiture, and you just gave them a golden shower. You have made yourself an internet enemy. Nothing you ever write will ever earn you forgiveness. They will hunt you across the internet and make you pay. They will troll your blogs, spoil your Twitter hashtag conversations, and even show up at conventions to tell you how much they hate you. Nothing breads entitlement like an open mic and anonymity (aka, the internet), and you're about to suffer the worst of it. And you deserve it (or so they think).


And the real trick is, beneath all this self-assured rage, the person has a point. There is quite possibly, a fundamental flaw in the event that set them off. Too often an author will bend the plot to accommodate a personal desire/whim at the expense of immersion/realism. I know writers who decide what the beginning and end are going to be, what they want the plot to be, and they'll beat the story as hard as they must to move it from point A to point B.

I had a level one AYFKM moment this evening, that I will put behind the cut because it includes spoilers.

I've arrived at Lowell, reading BLUE FIRE all the way home. I have 20 pages left in the entire book and I'm at the tail end of the climax. Rather than driving home and finishing it there, I head up to my car in the parking lot and continue reading. I am that invested. We're not going anywhere until those last 20 pages are accounted for.

The big bad is defeated (for this book at least), the mysterious machine is going haywire, and the big damn hero has to make a run for it. Using the BDH's unique powers, the MM has killed people, disintegrated objects, and is destroying the BB's palace all around them. Walls and floors and ceilings are crumbling. RUN!

The BDH takes two survivors with her (as BDHs are wont to do). They run through the palace, walls exploding around them and the roof about to collapse on their heads. And just when they reach the door to the outside world, to freedom, to survival, one of the rescuees stops them. You see, using the BDH's unique power, the MM disintegrated her clothes. He stops them--INSIDE--and gives her his tunic lest she go outside naked.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

A palace. Not a shack. Not a shanty. A motherfucking palace is about to fall on top of you, and you're going to stop and put on a skirt?

Let me guarantee you, if I was naked and fleeing a crumbling palace, the world would see my swinging cod before I stopped to put on a pair of shorts and give that building one last chance to drop a rock on my skull.

And it's a palace. Why didn't they stop outside the building on the grounds? What palace doesn't have grounds? You already described how long the walk was. There have to be grounds.

I loved this book. I devoured it. I got it yesterday and was 20 pages away from finishing it today (and I read slow). As soon as that happened, I turned off my nook and came home.

I have since finished the book and the ending is of a satisfactory nature that I will buy the third. As a result of the AYFKM moment occurring so close to the end of the book, my enthusiasm for the next installment is considerably depreciated. Time will heal this, of course, but where I was champing at the bit for book 2, book 3 can take its time.

How many people did the BDH kill in this book (middle grade my ass)? But she can't go outside naked. This is a pervading fact of American fiction (both in text and in screen) and it is incredibly stupid.

Frenetic

I have stopped revising so I can read BLUE FIRE. I haven't opened my computer since Monday evening. This isn't too bad because I should finish the book by tomorrow. It's not a long-term delay or anything. And reading a good book is a great way to recharge one's batteries. Keep the juices flowing and the ideas fresh. Flowing juice can be difficult to handle, though. Fresh ideas just pop out of your head and demand to be put to paper (or in my case, screen). I've had some new ideas for THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE (and I still want to get to the end because I love it so much. I had a HUGE breakthrough for JEHOVAH'S HITLIST that requires I write another 30,000 words before I even get to it. I have some corrections I need to make to THE TRIAD SOCIETY once I start revising again--of course those come at the end as well, so I need to get that back in gear. I've even been having ideas for WINE AND VINEGAR, which I had forgotten about until I found the manuscript file the other day.

I feel absolutely frenetic inside. I'm really enjoying the book, and I want to finish it. But all these ideas! They demand attention! They demand appeasement! And the worst of it is, once I finish the book, I will still only work on one of them at a time. I'll need to finish revising TTS so I can send it out to beta readers so I can go back to JH and finish that first draft. Then when I set that aside, I can start back on T7S, which I'm effectively starting from scratch and aborting my previous attempt. So IF (and that's an all caps IF) I write WINE AND VINEGAR directly after T7S, that won't be until this time next year at the earliest.

GAH! Too much juice! Too much juice!!!

BLUE FIRE, Writing to Age, and the Agency Model for eBooks

 BLUE FIRE by Janice Hardy released today. Some how, I switched the 10 and the 5 and thought it wasn't coming out until Friday even though new books come out on Tuesdays. I are dumb. So I get an email while riding the train into work saying the download is available. I turn on my nook's wifi to see if there's a signal on the train. There is. And I promptly download the new book, setting aside the two other books I'm still in the midst of completing (those being ROSEMARY AND RUE and JULIET). As a personal note, this is the first ebook I've ever pre-ordered.

I was introduced to Janice's first novel, THE SHIFTER, through Kristin Nelson's blog when she discussed the challenges of titles. (THE SHIFTER was originally titled THE PAIN MERCHANTS, which is a much cooler title but was thought it might inhibit the target market from buying this title.) Kristin being an agent I want to work with, I have looked over all the fantasy novels she has sold so far. Now, I'm a bit finicky in my fantasy tastes. If you give your main character a "cool name," it's an immediate turn off. This was the first of Kristin's fantasy novels that piqued my interest.

I actually passed on it the first time, though. Then she did a second blog post where she posted first pages. She was illustrating how important first pages were and how little Janice's first pages changed from what she sent as part of her query and what they submitted to publishers in an attempt to make the sale. They were very similar, almost identical. (Hence, first pages are important. But then, so are the rest of them. :) Reading the first pages, I felt like it was a book worth buying. Two days later, I had finished the entire thing. I read it again about six months later. It's a short but solid work. I am glad that the second novel came out when promised and not fallen into the sophomore slump of coming out years after the initial success.

What really shocked me about this series is that Kristin called it Middle Grade. Wow, really? It has a young protagonist, absent sexuality (other than young infatuation) or profanity, and most violence is threat more than execution. And it has a short word count. But still, Middle Grade? I would have assumed YA (sure, the line between the two isn't as distinct as between genres, but I don't usually read YA and I never read MG--I thought--so this came as a shocker to me).

I have one young-reader's story. Without it being finished, I don't know it's classification. MG is kind of new, really. Everything else I write is most certainly adult. I have graphic violence, profanity, sexuality, and all used (I think) in a manner appropriate to the work. Could I take it out? Could Otwald, aged 18, be the star of a YA TRIAD SOCIETY rather than the adult fantasy as I've written it? Until today, I never even considered it. I don't write YA. I have no interest in writing YA (with the exception of HOUSE ON SANDWICH NOTCH LANE). But "The Healing Wars" is a solid story that never seemed "young" to me. It's well written and an immersive setting. I have no qualms reading it. But writing it..?

I don't know, man. I just don't know. That's really the point of this post. Most of the time I just think of YA as the genre every agent and her sister reps when there are less than 30 agents remaining that accept submissions for adult (non-urban) fantasy. Now, let me be clear, I'm not pondering this to possibly expand my available agent pool. I'm just pondering on the state of adult fantasy all together. Between YA and Urban Fantasy, the genre is much diminished.

One last thing to note about BLUE FIRE. I bought it for $9.99. I bought so many more books last year before the agency model was implemented with ebooks. I was buying them left and right. Now that they're being priced $5 higher, I won't buy them. This makes me sad. A lot. There have been a number of books I wanted to buy that were priced too high.

The Selby Invitational

If you've browsed my website (and specifically the Inkwell), you will have noticed that I've done some work with D&D. I love me some role playing games. RPG play is highly regionalized. There is a reason D&D was born in Wisconsin. The epicenter of fanatical role-playing is the Midwest. Sure there are groups out here on the East Coast, but nothing like back there. It's just all over the place.

So, my favorite and most prevalent hobby took a bit of a hit when I moved from Missouri to New Hampshire. Role playing out here? I've had a little bit here and there, but nothing like when I lived in St. Louis (and if I had gone to Kansas City, good lord, that would have been endless RPGing).

When I first moved out here, my girlfriend-now-wife was still back in St. Louis. She didn't come out for another month and a half. She was looking for various things she could do to introduce and acclimate herself to her new home. Among the list was meetup.com. She found a board game night hosted at a local Borders just a block and a half from our apartment. She suggested I go and scope it out for us. I like board games. My friend Luke had introduced me to such exciting games as Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride (I had only previously been exposed to lame games like Monopoly). This could be awesome! But I expected it to be three or four losers who got together and played a game once a week.

Boy was I wrong. RPGs:Midwest::Board Games:Northeast. Wow! Twenty people showed up that night! There was ticket to ride, settlers, carcasonne, and a bunch of others I had never heard of. I knew Germany made board games, but do they do anything else? Most of my friends out here I met at board game night. It has been a great experience. Mondays have moved to the Holiday Inn as Borders slowly dies. 35 people show up every Monday where we play Thurn and Taxis, Imperial, Brass, Quirkle, Small World, Ra, Dog, Tichu, and so many others.

Now, once a quarter, Jen and I like to host our closest friends at our home for a seasonal meal, get together, board game party. Today is our quarterly Selby Invitational! There will be do-it-yourself nachos, chicken chili, rice krispy treats, hot apple cider, root/beer, seasonal coffees, and games games games. Telestrations, Cyclades, Conan, Quirkle Cubed, Trigon, and on and on and on. And it will be the first time in our new home! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Jen loves to host people. I love to play games. We both love food! This is going to be a good day.

REVISIOOOOON! REVISION.

I love revision. My love for revision is inversely equivalent to my love for writing queries. When I get into a groove on revising, the words to "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof change to "Revision," and I hear the chorus shouting it over and over in my head.

I'm 1/3 of the way through TTS, and I am in such a good mood. Why? Well for one, if I'm revising, that means I have a finished manuscript. It always feels good to finish a novel. But more importantly, I'm taking what is most assuredly a crappy draft and making it awesome. I'm still concerned there might be too much world building in the first two chapters, but I just finished chapter 11 and am totally jazzed. I've really tightened a lot of stuff that was loose before and the whole progression of events is solid. I'm enjoying this story as a reader not just a writer, and that's always a good sign. Really, I think it's the best sign. If you would sit down and read your work for the sake of reading it, then you've written something you truly enjoy for its own merits and not just the obligatory sense of accomplishment.

And not to toot my own horn, but that first chapter I wrote where Otwald first goes to the Triad Society? Holy hell, that was some good world building. I'm mean, damn fine. Sometimes I really do feel like I have the skill to not only succeed at all this, but to be awesome at it.

Fingers crossed that holds true for when this goes out to beta readers. LurkerWithout didn't like WANTED, and I value his opinion as a reader. He reads a billion books a month, so if he likes it, that carries weight with me.

Pay Attention, Stupid

Google Home Page has been increasingly deficient in updating modules with new blog posts. I follow a collection of industry people who post daily and lately, some of their posts haven't been showing up until days later. That was another impetus for me to switch from LJ to Blogger. The Blogger Dashboard is much more effective at telling me when content is available. (I'm told it's the same thing as Reader, but I started with Google Homepage when I had a lot of non-blog modules included as well, but they have fallen away over the years.)

One such industry person is Jessica Faust from BookEnds, LLC, a literary agency I queried for BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE. She posted her form rejection letter on her blog today, and I wanted to compare it to the one I received (identical, in case you were wondering). It struck me that it was only to BM&BBQ and not WCO. Why hadn't I queried her again?

So I went to her agent page and saw the reason. She only reps contemporary fantasy, which Black Magic was. Wanted is pure classic fantasy.

...

Now, if you've done your homework properly, you know I'm wrong. She reps contemporary, fantasy. That reads "contemporary [COMMA] fantasy"

You see, that comma was at the end of the line and I skipped right over it. Right over. Woosh! Here's an agent whose blog I follow daily (where I participate almost as frequently) who I could have queried MONTHS ago, but because I missed one stupid comma, I did not send her anything.

So the rule that says do your homework before querying an agent? Here's a sub-clause: Pay attention, stupid.


Oh yeah! While the above remains a smart lesson, in this case, the decision not to query was intentional. I read an interview with Jessica where she voiced a firm opinion of word counts, which WCO surpasses by 30,000+ words.

Hobo Writing

So I live in New Hampshire (Nashua). I work in Massachusetts (Boston). While this may seem extreme to drive from one state to another for someone living in the middle of a huge state (read any state not in New England, Delaware, Maryland, or Hawaii), it's not that far. I drive 20-30 minutes to the train station, take an hour long train ride, then a twenty minute subway ride and I'm just down the street from where I work. Sure, this is longer than any commute I've ever had in my life, but I love the company I work for, and it beats being unemployed.

The best part is the hour-long train ride. When people see me cranking 2000-4000 words five days a week every week, they say, "Wow you write so fast!" I don't think so. I just write two hours a day every day and that's what comes of it. (I also write on weekends, but usually only accomplish 1000 words a day or so.)

I always joke that if I am successful enough that I can write full-time, I would have to continue buying my rail pass and ride the trains all day while I write. Well, I have vacation all this week, and I decided to ride the rails like a hobo--a well dressed, showered, shaved, and equipped hobo.

So here's how it works. Take the train down to North Station, skip down to South Station, and the grab whatever train leaves next. Get off at the last destination my card gets me (not the destination station, which has an impact I discuss later), eat lunch, get back on the train, go back to South Station, and repeat until I get a full day's worth of work. Hobo Writing!

Now, I had another epiphany over the weekend so I have officially stopped work on JEHOVAH'S HITLIST and begun revising THE TRIAD SOCIETY. I forgot how flipping large the first two chapters are. I'll have to go over those again before I send them out and make sure I'm not world building too much too early. (And where the hell did all this passive voice come from?)

Here is what I learned:

• When going off on adventure, be sure to fully charge your smart phone so you can take advantage of the miracle of modern technology, like GPs mapping and the Googles. Mistake #1
• When I have consecutive days off, I always stay up late. I feel like I'm not maximizing my vacation time if I'm not staying up late. Don't ask me why this is, but this prevents me from getting an early and effective start. Mistake #2
• Non-destination locations are commuter waypoints. They are oases of parking lots an factory buildings with little by way of food or even neighborhoods I feel comfortable walking around without a loaded pistol...okay, not even then.
• Destination locations are much the same unless they are an Amtrak stop or a state capital (...which are Amtrak stops). I should have waited 15 more minutes and gone down to Providence. Mistake #3
• Much like flying, riding a train all day is dehydrating. I don't know why, exactly, but it is. Certainly walking around Bridgewater State College (which is one big ass building and nothing by way of food) and then sitting for thirty minutes in the humidity didn't help. Mistake #4
• When trekking to an unknown subway stop--say Kendall Square--three hours after lunch time, be sure to look in both directions before wandering off in search for food. There may have been a bar and grill right to your left. Mistake #5
• When beholding manna from heaven that is food trucks, do not break down crying when you find the only ones still selling offer only soy burgers and fellafel.
• Do not presume to understand Boston regardless of the years you've worked there or the frequency in which you've gotten lost in Southie. You have not seen Boston in its entirety until you've been to MIT (yes, pedagogues, it's not technically Boston. All of Eastern Massachusetts is Boston, so stuff it! :p).
• Do not ask the woman carrying the bucket of ice-like substance and baster whether she's a good scientist or an evil scientist. You may not like her answer.
• Watch all available seasons of Eureka before going to MIT. It will help prepare you.
• The crazy lady having a meltdown on the platform to the Red Line should be sad, but given she's standing outside Mass General, it's okay to laugh. Medical treatment is within her grasp...and they can hear her, so they're probably already on the way.
• When you finally get food and your hands are shaking because you're so hungry, do not gorge yourself on onion rings. The increased fat in your bloodstream will make you lethargic and your writing productivity will plummet. Mistake #6
• Treat your return train ride home during rush hour like any other rush hour train. Get there in a reasonable amount of time else you won't get to write at all. Mistake #7
• When driving home in the rain, do not leave adequate stopping distance between you and the car in front of you. That kind of thing is to assholes what shit is to flies.

Total revision work for today was 10,000 words. Not bad, but I think I could have done better if I had left during my normal time of 7am rather than 9. And if I had gone to Providence rather than Bridgewater. If I try again tomorrow, we'll see how far I get.

The Hard Part

I got a pass on WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING today. This particular agent has looked at BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE as well and is very good about giving feedback with rejections. What struck me today is that his comment was very similar to a comment Elizabeth Poole gave me when she beta-read the story.

Bastin is a more likable character than Nashau or Podome. This isn't disputed, trust me. Bastin is your classic high charisma, high energy flimflam man you find in many fantasy novels. That was one of the reasons he wasn't the main character. I've seen him before. Or at least, I've seen other characters with that attitude (Bastin keeps himself out of the cliche gutter, I think). And regardless, it wasn't his story I wanted to tell. It was Nashau's. It is a story about unemployment in a fantasy setting. I saw the story I wanted to tell and I told it.

But here is the feedback, this story would be better with Bastin as the main character. A story may be better with Bastin as the main character, but that story wouldn't be this story. And there's the hard part.

Completing a novel is difficult. Revising that novel is challenging. But rewriting the novel? That's flipping hard.

Revising makes a story better. It fixes flaws, improves weak structure to make it stronger. It's an essential element of professional writing. Rewriting is taking the fundamental aspects of a story: it's plot or theme or characters or setting, and telling a whole different tale.

Now, the agent did not say "If you rewrite this with Bastin as the main character, I will represent you" which saved me a lot of hand-wringing. But the implicit statement of "I'll look at this again" was (I think) there.

Since I received that email, I have pondered and pondered and pondered whether or not I could tell WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING with Bastin as the sole main character rather than 1 of 4 (with Nashau being the primary main character of the group with Jara being second). The first half is easy. There's a lot of stuff early on with Nashau and Podome that could be cut. If they're not main characters, those chapters are unnecessary. But that leaves me with stuff later...well, those chapters balance because of the foundation I built with those early chapters. I don't think I can revise my way to a Bastin-centric story. I'm too attached to the story I told and still believe it is better the way it is.

What happens when this happens later? What happens when it's an editor and I'm contractually obligated to deliver and they say something like this? I'm terrified. I've always known it's a possibility, but was able to ignore it because I'm still looking for an agent. It's hard to stifle that gut reaction of, "No, it's better this way" just because that's the way you told it. Really, rewriting is asking for a different story than the one you've told but with the same stuff included. Ugh! That's so hard!