Edits on the fourth story are mostly finished. A couple of spots need a second look, but only a couple. I’m now drafting a query letter to an agent I’m interested in. To write a proper one, I picked up Katharine Sands’ Making the Perfect Pitch, which has a lot of great advice. Cross your fingers for me please!
The first takes a lot of discipline, practice, patience, time (if you’re like me), and devotion. The second requires an attention to detail, concentration (it shouldn’t need to be said, but there it is), and the ability to see “above” the words on the screen.
Does this detail add to characterization or to the plot? Or is it useless? (If the latter, trash it or change it.)
Is the whole manuscript in need of a diet? Too many adverbs, gestures, “looks”, etc that don’t add any meaning to the story, are too vague, or detract from the real meat of a scene (e.g. dialogue) need to be trimmed.
Does this paragraph show behavior and feelings, or does it tell? (If the latter, revise it to the former.)
Does this story contain the oomph, the panache, the zing that sends other stories to Bestsellers’ lists? Does it have any themes? Are they appropriate? Is there something to connect these themes?
Is the writing “rich”? Or is it like a blog? :-P~
Thus, having written out only some of the things that I re-write, then re-write again–then again and again until it’s polished–I hope you’ll all understand why I’m still working on edits for my fourth story.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
A writer has this little smidgen of an idea, and decides to make a whole story about it. She fleshes out some important themes, creates characters and a plot that support each other and the themes, works out kinks and writes it all down, revising a few things along the way. Finally, after much sitting and pondering for hours and hours and HOURS, the rough draft is finished.
Next is revision–LOTS of revision. Perhaps a major theme will change or a character will completely disappear. If she’s lucky, the story remains somewhat the same. Discontinuities are found and fixed by editors and beta readers. Weak areas are bolstered or discarded for being un-fixable. Depending on her situation, the writer may then need to look for an agent. She needs the agent looking to promote books of the genre the author has written, and an agent that seems professional, well-connected, and has the tools and experience to guide the author through the process of finding a publishing contract that the author would kill for.
Compared to the rough draft, revision and agent-hunting feels far more stressful.
My job is so far working out fairly well. It’s nothing glamorous, but it’ll get me some income. Writing on my fourth book was stalled for a couple of weeks while I tried to get used to my work schedule and find some private time where I wasn’t surrounded by people. I’ve finally set up my desktop in my room and can come up here to close the door when I have time to write. I’m hoping to get the rough draft done by the end of next week.
Wish me luck!
Ugh… one thing I think all people who are lucky enough to have computers could do without is spam. Email spam, pop-up advertising, and yes, even spam in blog comments. Comment spam was sparse for the last couple of months, but for some reason, in the last week, I’ve had to mark a comment as spam and ban the IP address from which it was sent at least once a day, if not twice.
In other news, I have finally moved to a new house, though I’ve not settled in yet. Still many things to do. Also, the fourth book I’ve been working on for quite a while is very close to completion. A couple more weeks and I can get the thing into my editor’s hands.
I’ve got to say, I’m very pleased with it so far. I only hope that the final version is something readers would like, too. D:
I must say that I have a whole new appreciation for authors who write historicals. Fantasy or contemporary writers really don’t have to invest nearly as much time into research (if at all in some cases). Unless one is writing a medical/spy thriller or a mystery involving police work, that is. (Even then, most successful authors of that genre are doctors, ex-spies, or ex-cops/detectives.) That makes me sad. :( I would love to write a thriller or mystery some day. Perhaps when I can write full-time and invest that time into research, I shall attempt it.
As for my fourth book, it’s finally becoming vastly improved versus what it was three months ago. I’ve been researching language, customs and general history (what little of it I can get regarding some topics). Thank God for my good friend at the library. She’s a whiz with information retrieval.
Finally, this brings me to the topic of this post: historical accuracy and artistic license. We’ve seen Hollywood movies that are really accurate and a great many others that are really inaccurate (I’m thinking of Academy Award-winning Braveheart right now). Yet, I know lots of people that really liked Braveheart (I didn’t for the reason that it made me cry so hard–I refuse to watch it again). We’ve also read books that ignored certain historical facts in order to create a more exciting (or more convenient) story, but I have heard of people who rip apart books set in the Georgian/Regency/Victorian eras because they ignore a couple of things that regular readers wouldn’t know were missing, anyway.
Where do you draw the line? If an author describes the home of a peasant but includes an item that most peasants wouldn’t own, would you cry foul, even though having that item allows for the story to move faster? If an author’s dialogue uses words that were 50 years too soon for the period (such as using “glamour” in the 1600s when it wasn’t used until 1715), would you prefer that the author limit their vocabulary or even search for archaic words that no one today would know the meaning of? Or worse, use the word with the meaning that it had then but doesn’t have now? The word “nice” didn’t always have a positive meaning. The phrase, “It’s nice to meet you,” would’ve been insulting once upon a time. Would doing this make an historically-accurate novel suddenly unreadable? Or at least too much work to read?
I wonder these things all the time. Some friends tell me to try to find a “happy medium” and strive for a “taste” of historically-accurate dialogue, which might not satisfy members of the SCA, but would at least give me elbow room to write a well-paced, interesting, moving story that isn’t weighed down by the (many) limitations of historical fact. Sometimes, these facts can’t even be confirmed or are entirely missing from written record, which is really annoying.
Please comment if you have a few minutes!
It’s the first day of summer and I have a plan for my life! Well, at least for the next year or two. I’m in love with writing and I’d like to see if I can actually make a career out of it. I’ll have to continue writing in my spare time since I’ll be working a full-time job (soonish), but that’s how my first three were written and I managed to finish them relatively quickly. I sometimes hear authors say that they crank out 10 to 15 pages a day, but even when I’ve got a whole day to myself, such as a Sunday or something, I can’t spew out that much prose. Even so, and even with a job, I think I’m going to commit myself to this writing thing I enjoy so much. Wish me luck!
Stark: “Hmmm. Your eyes are red. Tears for your long lost boss?”
Potts: “Tears of joy. I hate job-hunting.”
As the Ironman quote may imply, I am now job-hunting in Seattle. (Unfortunately, writing full-time is not within my grasp right now.) I’ve got a very promising lead on a decent job, so that’s good news. Once I know if I get it and have an idea of a budget, I can finally get started on finding an apartment so that I can have my own address in Seattle and finally renew my driver’s license, which expired on my birthday earlier this month. Ugh, the stress!
Writing has honestly slowed down since I came home from Japan (and has ground to a halt now that I’m in Seattle). It grates at me because I want to get this story written down and the characters keep pestering me about it. I’ve been striving to improve my craft (because damn, it could use a lot of improvement), so I hope that once the final draft is ready for submission, it’s more impressive than my earlier and much more awkward manuscripts.
I’ve got a few quiet moments right now, though, so I think I’ll go poke at my story. Have a good one, everybody!
You may remember my short commentary back in February on “character voices” and being careful to avoid writing every character with the same speech patterns. Today I’ll tackle topic #2: Author Voice.
Voice I: Character Voices
Voice II: Author Voice
Voice III: First-Person, Third-Person, and Other POVs (next time)
A quick look at the misconceptions we in the present day have of the life and people of the Middle Ages in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »