Turning it down from 11

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. You know how they always say publishing is slow during the summer? Yeah, not so much if you work in production. I am currently the busiest I'll be all year (most likely) and while I'm not as crushed as I was in my old department, I am merrily occupied from start to finish. It makes blogging at work a little challenging. But here I am! Taking time out just for you! I missed you so much.

So what's going on with me? Well, aside from having one of the best Independence Day celebrations I've had in my life (swimming, grilling, fireworks, oh my!) I'm still hard at work on a rewrite/revision. AND not only is this manuscript better than it's ever been, but it has a new title as well.

I mentioned WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING a little while ago, saying that I was taking an agent's advice and changing the main character of the story. I cut some 30,000 words and have put back in 10,000. My "scraps" file I use to keep track of everything I cut (in case I want to use it elsewhere) is currently at 175 pages long (double spaced, courier new)! That's HUGE!

My previous rewriting attempt choked on itself. I slashed so deeply that I nicked an artery and killed the story. I realized my error and have rewritten one of the POVs. I can say, without a doubt, this is the best shape this story has ever been in. I'm really enthused at what the end product will be. I may have even started on a quality query. Who knows. (If that's the case, the world is coming to an end. Run!)

I felt that this new direction required a new title as well. WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING was clunky and while the story started tongue-in-cheek, it quickly evolved away from that. Also, whenever that phrase appears in the text, it always begins "HELP WANTED..." So that seemed an appropriate addition. I'd name it HELP WANTED: CHOSEN ONE. That rolled off the tongue better. But then I remembered the very first self-published novel I downloaded (it was thankfully free) named HELP WANTED: HERO. It was atrocious. This not only spoiled the new title, it spoiled the old title as well. I need to remove any kind of similarity between the two. I didn't want any of that stink on me.

So...we need a new title! Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. Come up with a bunch of crappy options. I have four characters, an underlying theme that doesn't work well as a title, and plenty of secrets. In the end, I decided to take inspiration from the end of the story. The new title is WITH A CROOKED CROWN, which I like a whole lot. (Google tells me this is a song by Bonnie Raitt, which means the last three titles I've chosen have been named after a song or a music album--I think there may be a blog post there.)

I'm only 81 pages into the revision. I've finished most of the rewriting. There's a collection of chapters coming up that will need some realignment to conform to this new approach.

The biggest work I've done so far? Changing the early plot path for my two prophets. Their introduction and the beginning of their quest leads in the same direction but is handled in a much more succinct manner. More importantly, one of the characters has seriously mellowed out. Now, he got shoehorned into this whole thing and didn't want to go. He has all kinds of secrets he doesn't want to come out and was frequently obstinate. Okay, he was a dick. But in an attempt to speed things up and change focus to the new main character, my original rewrite turned him into a HUGE dick.

And unless you're reading about porn, no one wants to read about a huge dick. I wrote the thing and he was pissing me off. He went up to 11 and he needed to be around a 6. So this new rewrite he got a serious overhaul. I don't think anyone would have read past page 50 in the previous iteration of this manuscript. He was that much of a jerk. Now I'm enthusiastic. I certainly hope others like it once I start querying. Current pace says that'll be at the end of July or so. Ugh. This thing is so big! (That's what she said.) It'll be worth it once it's done. (That's what he said.)

August Wilson

If your education was anything like mine, the only plays you were exposed to in high school were the Shakespeare you read in English class (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, maybe King Leer or Macbeth) and whatever your school performed for the yearly musical (Guys and Dolls again?). Maybe around senior year you got yourself a Death of a Salesman and/or Glass Menagerie. Once you got to college you picked those two up, some more Shakespeare, maybe Our Town or Die Fledermaus.

You know what, they're all good plays and there is a reason they are timeless (well, aside from that last which is technically an opera). But I will admit that I went through all of high school and all of college (earning a theatre degree!) and I never read a play written by a black playwright.

A couple years ago I saw Fences by August Wilson and was blown away. I mean, blown. away. I went from the Huntington all the way to North Station without speaking (and really, me anywhere not speaking is a bit of a big deal) because I was still reeling from the play's impact.

It is one of ten plays Wilson wrote, each representing a different decade in the 20th century and he African experience of that decade. Fences is set in the fifties after Jackie Robinson and World War II where America is beginning to integrate but hasn't yet reached the civil rights movement.

I wish I had read/scene this play in college. Hell, I wish I had scene/read it in high school. It was the single most powerful bit of theatre I have ever been exposed to and I think I would have approached my college experience entirely different if I had scene it first.

If you are in the New York area or will be traveling there, there is a play written by a black playwright while she was in residence at the Huntington. It's called Stickfly and I saw it when it ran in Boston. It's about black families on Nantucket island. It has some hard hitting dialogue and doesn't just sing a "I'm so persecuted" song. It challenges all its characters and is finely done. Give it a try if you have the opportunity.

Why Oh Why? Oh Me. Oh My! (...times seven)

It's hard to keep track of topics when you're on a variety of soap boxes. I've written in two different live journals, hosted a podcast, and now how this blog/journal. Sometimes you think you've written about a topic when you haven't. Or, you think you've written about it in one place when really it was in another and no one is going to see it. Today's post may or may not be a redux. I'm not copying/pasting, but I know it's at least a topic I've covered on the PodgeCast, so we'll call it a redux nonetheless.

I have been pondering the rewrite of HELP WANTED: CHOSEN ONE for awhile now. An agent who read the manuscript suggested I change the main character from Nashau to Bastin, the latter being more energetic and overall more likable. I was unsure of this, because the story I was telling was most certainly Nashau's, but since I already had multiple POVs, it seemed a better way to hook the reader into the overall story. Once I made some cuts, I saw that he was right.

But something happened when I changed the main character. All of a sudden motivations I never had to explain to the reader became necessary. And those motivations seemed pretty thin. You might get away with a second character coming along because of a curiosity or amusement or the adventure of it all. Main characters need more depth than that and Bastin was my main character. So I needed to articulate the reasons he was doing what he was doing.

Now, keep in mind, I'm not making up excuses for why he's doing what he's doing. If you get to that point, your plot is too thin and you need to back up and really take a hard look at things. You should never make excuses for your characters. They do things and they do those things for the reasons they do them. You may feel it, like they do, but given enough time, you should be able to adequately articulate the psychology behind it without making an excuse. If you ever say "just because," you are required to slap yourself in front of a mirror. If your reasons make someone's eyes roll (especially our own), you have to let that person slap you.

But you don't want to be slapped! Neither do I. So it's best we find a way to articulate our characters' motivations. How do we do that? you ask. We ask the Why Tree.

The why tree is not some ancient being of untold knowledge, it is the question "Why?" asked over and over and over again. (I generally recommend seven times for those people that need a rigid number to properly implement such a stratagem.) Write the question why then draw a line to possible answers. Draw a line from those answers to another question why and so forth seven times. The ever expanding list will take on a Christmas tree-like shape. It's a Why Tree.

Bastin is my main character
Why?
Bastin will participate in the quest the prophets claim he is chosen to complete
Why?
To make amends to his adoptive father
Why?
Because he betrayed his adoptive father
Why?
He was young and dumb and didn't trust anyone
Why?
His mother was a prostitute and he ran with a street gang
Why?
His mother died, leaving him on the street
Why?
She had no family to care for him and didn't know who his father was


This has given me all the information I need. When the prophets coming looking for the descendent of a famous count, I have a con man who also doesn't know who his father is. He may or may not be the actual chosen one, something to reveal at the end.

It also gives him the motivation to pursue this quest if you throw in a well-placed "How?"

For all the whys, the HOW? is the really important question. How does all this stuff influence Bastin so he decides to go on this quest? And that's what was stumping me on this rewrite. What was Bastin's motivation that he would risk his life? Amusement? Boredom? May play for a secondary character, but you need something better for a main character. And that's when I keyed on to his adoptive father. I already show Bastin trying to make amends, repaying the money he stole that landed Jin in debtors prison where he eventually died. The thing Bastin can't do, however, is restore Jin's reputation. But here he is being offered a chance to participate in a prophecy. All he need do is tell people it was Jin that did the deed instead of him and all of a sudden, boom! reputation restored. The one thing he cannot do he now can. This doesn't just offer him motivation, but the level of emotional attachment to brave dangers without quitting and an end goal that is worth the risk.

Get excited!

Why?

Because this story is gonna rock your face!

Customized Google

Once upon a time in the early days of the intertubes, like last year, you and I could Google the same phrase and get the same results. As we continue down the path of Minority Report where every advertisement ever is customized for our interests and needs of that moment, Google is not so simple a tool as it once was. You see, based on your history and your interests and various brainwaves in specific key areas of your brain, Google can predict what sites would be of most interest to you based on your search parameters.

Humor aside, Google the company has modified its search algorithm so that Google the search engine takes into account various information it has collected about you and customizes your search results to best provide you the results that you would most likely want based on your search parameters and personal tastes.

I don't mind this so much. I mean, yes, it's one more layer away from our privacy onions, but it's not any more intrusive than Facebook and doesn't require me to go into my privacy settings to uncheck boxes that clearly cross a line every four months.

Where this really takes away the fun for me is looking at my analytics here on the website/blog. One of the fields you review is search terms that people used to arrive at your site.

1. what is being factual?
2. "moss troll problem"¹
3. henchman street history, boston, ma
4. hobo writing²
5. jennifer hillier creep³
6. jlselby.blogspot.com
7. josephlselby.com⁴
8. sarah megibow rejection partial

I was particularly interested in where I showed up in the Sarah Megibow rejection list (her name is Sara Megibow by the way, without the H). Searching through the first ten pages, I could not find a result that came to my website. Really, if something isn't in the first ten pages, it's not worth finding. SO, this leads us to one of two possible conclusions:

Option 1) My search is customized differently than that person. I'll never know just where I appeared in their search results.

Option 2) That person looked farther than ten pages, in which case, dude, you need to chill. Yeah, Sara rejects partials, including mine and if you went past ten pages, obviously yours as well. Be happy she requested a partial. Plenty of people got passed. Look at the silver lining. And unless you pull out the dick response, she'll be more than receptive to your next query. (She was challening me to submit my next manuscript the NEXT DAY after she passed on my partial. And I picked up that throne gauntlet with alacrity. If this is a duel, it's one I'm going to win. But I'm going to do it with class and manners. So don't be a dick, crazy person.)

Option 3⁵) Someone was trying to find my blog post the other day and thought it would be faster to look over pages of Google search results than scroll down the front page of my website. Because, you know, sure, whatever. I got nothin'.


¹ When you put quotes around a search phrase, you are telling your search engine that you want an exact match. Don't look for individual words Moss, troll, and problem. No, that person has a moss troll problem specifically and needed to come here to try and figure out what to do. This is weird because I don't believe I've ever discussed moss trolls before nor do I know how to deal with them (giant slugs would be my first suggestion, though). Still, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your time here.

² YES! Someone is searching for hobo writing! I have officially coined a phrase! (Pauses to make sure it wasn't me. ... no, no it wasn't.) WOO HOO! I hope to go hobo writing again soon.

³ Muah ha ha ha ha, someone Googling Jennifer Hilier's new book came here instead. See that, kiddies? You don't need to write a book, you just need to filch other people's fame. Awesome. I'm winning!

⁴ Wait... You Googled josephlselby.com to figure out how to come to josephlselby.com? Isn't that like asking what the number is for 9-1-1?

⁵ I know I said there were only two options, but that one is technically an option too. An incredibly lazy, more work than just coming here, round about way to remember a post I just published last week.

The Good, the Bad, and the Stuffing

So I have decided that rejections that offer praise first actually sting more than just flat rejection. "This is a great story with strong writing, but I didn't fall in love with it" says to me "Damn you were close, but it just didn't click with me" which stings SO MUCH MORE than just a straight "This isn't for me." (Granted, by the time an agent has requested pages, a "this isn't for me" response doesn't work because you'd have to wonder how they couldn't figure that out by the query.)

I am not one of those people that take solace in coming in second. That just means you won at losing. (Extreme, and probably hyperbolic, but you get my point, yeah? I want to win.) Knowing I was SO CLOSE bums me out more than if I hadn't come close at all. I think this may come from a childhood of choking at sports when it really mattered. Or not. I don't know.

But this is not all self-created doom and gloom. Two agents I greatly respect have used pretty much those exact words. Strong writing. Great story. One loved the world building more than the other, but they also read different stories so I'm not sweating that. This is wicked awesome confidence inspiring bolstering supder-dupertude. I've got the tools. I've got the talent. I just need some ghosts to bust...er, an agent that clicks with the stories I tell.

SO CLOSE! It's time to finish in first place. Let's get on that.

...after lunch. Chicken and stuffing. Nom nom nom nom!!!

Anti-Social Socializing

I am not anti-social. In fact, I love being the center of attention. I have wanted to be the storyteller since I was five, lying about the size of the frog I caught¹. The trick is, there are a lot of social situations where I cannot be the center of attention, and in those cases I find I would much rather be writing.

Most often, this is a barbershop party. My wife is in a competitive a capela barbershop chorus and quartet and those folks love to party. When they party, they sing. I can't sing². So I hang out while they sing. They're good people and we converse at times, but really, it's a party where everyone else is singing. I would rather write, but I feel that's rude. I don't want to sit in the corner on my computer. So...I sit in the corner with my liquor. It's marginally more social.

Any more, it seems I measure all social engagements against writing time. Knowing that I've already had two hours to write that day, would the time spent socializing be more fun than more writing. If yes, then yay! If no, then...can I bring my computer just in case?



¹ It was THIS big!

² I'm told I could sing very well with proper training, but I consider that training writing time and would not sacrifice the one for the other.

A New Game

My wife created a new game last night, one I found to be fun and a great exercise in creativity. (Of course, the pressure of making her laugh mounted as the game went on).

It's simple. One person names an animal or fish. The other person chooses what activity that animal likes best to participate in. Examples:

Kitties play banjos.
Octopi like to play poker.
Kangaroos know kung fu.
Yaks play the harmonica and occasionally the spoons.

And so on. Continue until one side cannot think of an animal/fish or the other side can't think of a fun activity. Or just laugh until it's time to turn out the light and go to sleep. That's my favorite outcome.

Meme: Blog of DOOOOOOMMMM!!!!

Ted Cross (of Ted Cross fame) passed along a blog award called the BLOG OF DOOM!!!! While normally I shy away from blog awards, this one is full of DOOM! How could I pass that up?



The Rules:

1. When you receive the Blog Award of DOOM your task is to post a short selection of your writing, 100-300 words, in which your favorite character suffers a horrible fate. It can be your favorite character from your own writing or from something you've read, it can be from a finished manuscript, a WIP or something you just made up on the spot. Your choice, but it has to be full of DOOM!

2. Pass it on to one other blogger and let them know their DOOM has come.

3. Remember that the person who passed the award on to you also received it as well. Go back to their post to read and comment on their writing sample. Make sure to thank them for sending the DOOM your way.

4. Whenever you use the word DOOM in your post, you must capitalize the whole thing.


As such, I will tap Nate Wilson who seems like a ridiculously nice fellow. Let us see his dark side. I'll also give a nod to Jennifer Hillier whose debut thriller CREEP releases July 5th.

As for my own offering of DOOM! I have picked an excerpt from an epilogue that originally appeared at the end of my dystopian sf manuscript, JEHOVAH'S HITLIST. It did not make the final cut (a pun!), but I will most likely post it as a short story here on the site. See after the jump for...DOOM!!!!

(Also, for some context, this scene features quadruplet brothers all of whom are named Joe.)


Epilogue...of DOOM!

The water wasn't stopping. It was rising and fast. Seated on the ground, it already came up to their bellies.

“What do we do?” Joe³ screamed.

“Climb.” Joe¹ pointed at a ledge above them. They scanned the wall for handholds but there weren't any to be found.

“On me,” Joe¹ said. They used to play this game when none of them was tall enough to jump to the fire escape ladder on their own. Joe² hopped on Joe¹'s shoulders. It was hard to keep their balance with the water pounding against them, harder still when Joe³ climbed up to stand on Joe²'s shoulders.

“I got it!” Joe³ called back down.

“What about Joe?” Joe² asked of his youngest brother.

“I'll hand him up once you got yerselves a perch,” Joe¹ said. Their youngest brother by a few hours sat between his legs, unconscious and bleeding.

Joe³ found himself a stable spot and hung upside down. He grabbed Joe² by the wrists and hauled him up. Then he flipped upside down, Joe³ taking him by the ankles. They hung down and reached. The water was over Joe⁴'s head now, up to Joe¹ chest even though he was standing.

Joe¹ fought hard to pull his brother up out of the water, the current trying to suck him under completely and wash him away down the street. Joe⁴'s head broke the water. He coughed violently, confused but conscious.

“I don't need no bath, Anna,” he insisted, slapping at Joe¹.

Joe¹ wrapped his arms around him and threw him upward inch by inch until he was almost sitting on his shoulders. He was high enough Joe² could grab his shirt and hoist him up.

By the time they got Joe⁴ situated so he wouldn't knock himself off again, the water was up to Joe¹'s shoulders.

“Yer turn,” Joe² shouted, hanging upside down again.

“I cain't! The water's too strong!” Joe¹ did his best to hold onto the wall, but the water still roared through the crack in the wall, washing everything away.

“You got to!” Joe² yelled.

“I cain't!”

“You got to! You said you was gonna teach me how t'whistle. I cain't whistle!”

The water rose up over Joe¹'s head, turning any response into bubbles.

“Joe!” his brothers screamed, but his head never reappeared.

Joe² kicked at Joe³'s hands until Joe³ dropped him. He dove into the water after his brother. He never came up from the water. Joe³ jumped in shortly after.

Joe⁴ lay on the precipice of the building, bleeding and confused. He watched his brothers drown. He did not cry when the water rose past the second floor, when it lapped at his face, or when it eventually overtook him. He did not try to run.

He had always done everything with his brothers.

Visual Aid

Yesterday's comments inspired a visual aid that I think best communicates one's goal of publishing and the routes available to you via traditional publishers and self-publishing.

Traditional Publishing

Self-Publishing

Splitting the Hairs

Previously I had posted about reconsidering self-publishing as a viable strategy. This was not, as is so often the case, a response to a query rejection. It was prompted by a strategic decision made by my company (a publisher). This was hard to accept for a couple of reasons.

1) Traditional publishing had been my goal for so long, it felt like giving up.

2) Traditional publishers have to revise their business models to cope with the epocalypse and I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.


I learned some things from that investigation as well.

1) While reconsidering my stance was not prompted by a rejection, as soon as a full manuscript was rejected, I began strenuously considering this route. (The revision I made three months later as a resubmit to an agent made the story infinitely better.)

2) It's a standard position for self-publishing advocates to stress that self-publishing (or indie publishing as is the new trend to call it) should still involve rigorous editing and revision. HOWEVER, the vast majority of people self-publishing are skipping this step.

3) Publishers current changes to their business model actually position them in the opposite direction they should be headed. As such, the ideal strategy right now is to traditionally publish paper text and self-publish the ebook (opening a whole can of non-compete worms).


What I know most of all.

1) Pursuing traditional publishing has made me a better writer. A MUCH better writer. For all the vitriol and frustration of craft norming and limitations, I am a thousand times better as a writer and storyteller than I was only two years ago.

A Little Binger to Brighten Up Your Day

I never truly appreciated Jim Davis' genius until I read Garfield Minus Garfield where another (much smarter) artist removed Garfield from his own comic and revealed Jon Arbuckle to be the wholly psychotic person that he is.

Following in that line, some other genius has taken classic Peanuts frames and replaced the text with actual Tweets.

The end product will make you laugh so hard, you will pee yourself.

PATV

My friend Luke introduced me to Penny Arcade many years ago and it didn't click. I didn't have an X-Box and my Playstation 1 was gathering dust. I didn't get any of their jokes.

But one day in 2005 we're hanging out in his room and his screensaver is a composite of his favorite PA strips (at that time) and they were funny as hell! We went through the whole thing twice and laughed every time. So I started reading the strip regularly and have continued to do so for six years now. And of course, now I have an X-Box 360 that does not gather dust (thanks to Bioware and Valve) and I get more (but not all) of the jokes.

To continue the trend, I didn't key in on Penny Arcade TV right away. I figured it would be lame self-promotion. It turned out to be awesome self-promotion! Self-promotion has a bad stigma to it, but really this is how you want to promote your product. It's an exploration of character and voice and craft. It's funny and endearing and at the end you really wish you worked there too.

SEO What

It's never too early to start. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. You may see a lot of ads around the internets for SEO companies that will help you game the system. They understand the value of links to and from your content to work your way through Google's algorithm. Once upon a time it was thought of as narcissistic to Google yourself. Now it's a must.

Go do that right now. We'll wait.

If your website or blog did not come up first, you're doing it wrong. Now granted, some of you may have more competition than others. Once upon a time, there was an English rocker of note with my name and I was appearing on page 6. Now I am the entirety of page 1.

Though that's not entirely honest, is it? Google recently changed its algorithm to personalize search results. Googling the exact same term as you will not yield the same top ten results. So I recommend Googling yourself on a friend's computer (or a coworker's who doesn't have an online history talking to you would be best).

Here's what it comes down to, when an agent Googles your name, you want the first option he/she clicks to be you. Your website, your blog, or at least your Twitter account.

But how, Joe? How do we do this? Links, young man/woman. Links will aid you in your effort. The more (valid) locations linking to your website, the more Google's algorithm thinks your important. (Compound this with the frequency in which you are clicked on after a search and up up up you go!) So you know when you're reading a blog and you see a commenter posting his/her website? That's not just to drive content to their site. It's to improve their SEO as well. Live links (not just the text), leading to your site make it important. That's how unethical SEO companies work so quickly. They set up 175 or so false websites and have all of them link back to you, ratcheting you up the list. Google has taken steps to have such results stripped or at least dropped in ranking. They've added a "relevance" variable, which is why attempting this on your own would be a waste.

Participation is the key! And friendship. People who list your website are helping you. When you list their website, you help them. When you participate, you help yourself and if you participate well, you help the community! It's all interconnected, like on Ferngully.

For me personally, one of the biggest challenges to merging my site and my website is that pages that appear in the top ten results are no longer functional. If an agent were to click on "the Inkwell" for example, they would get a page not found and there's unfortunately no way I can fix it. (This also means older sites and interviews I gave when I was wet(ter) behind the ears are starting to show up on the first page. It takes a lot to kill your history on the internet. Always be mindful of echoes from the past.

So go and be popular, boys and girls! I expect you all to start showing up on the first page of Google results by next month. By next year I want yo to be number one! (Unless you are named after someone famous, in which case find a different way to phrase your online presence so that you might be found.)

Still haven't Googled yourself? I'll make it easy for you. Copy and paste this URL http://lmgtfy.com/?q=joseph+l+selby

Replace "joseph+l+selby" with your own name (and use + signs instead of spaces).