12.29.07
Sowing The Seeds
(Quick Gaming Note: I’m aware of some problems with Xbox Live right now that are preventing the gamercard above from functioning properly. This all stems from a glitch with Soltrio Solitaire not properly giving me credit for an achievement, and it threatens to put me out of the running in the Achievement Race. Gah. More news as it develops.)
So, I might not have mentioned this, but I wrote a novel this year. (You may commence with the throwing of heavy objects to get me to stop bragging… now.) It’s not the first one, really, and that’s what worries me. Harvesting Blueberries is my second novel, but it’s not like I can go around and say “Oh, yeah, I’ve done this before,” because they invariably ask me about the first novel, and my response is usually a mumbled “we don’t talk about the first novel anymore”. So my second big resolution is going to be a stronger commitment to editing and submitting Blueberries for publication.
(side note: I realize, actually, that if I wanted to, I could write an FF8 fan novella remarkably similar to Blueberries… and the title would have to be “Sowing the SeeDs”. Yeah, not gonna happen.)
I only sent about seven query letters for Inconsequential. I really did mean to send more. Honestly. The problem is that that book was just such a weird niche title as to be almost unsellable as a first novel. (Or I could be rationalizing my crappy-ass writing, but I doubt that just enough to keep me out of Aerobic Brooding territory.) I did get some positive feedback from a couple of the rejections, though– particularly from a source I definitely would not have expected (Launchbooks sent me a personalized letter; I did indeed emit the squee of joy). So I figure that I just didn’t get it to the right people.
It’s the damnedest thing, honestly. I wrote Incon because I specifically did not want to write a fantasy story. So what should I find when I started leafing heavily through the 2007 Writer’s Market? “We want fantasy!”. That’s the other thing, though. I gravitate towards fantasy naturally anyway. I suppose Blueberries could be called “magical realism”, except that I certainly don’t get into any huge philosophical debates as Gabriel Garcia Marquez does. It’s not exactly “modern fantasy”, either, as there’s only the lightest of fantasy touches added in (I took great pains to not let the characters rely far too much on their less mundane aspects). Still, the fact that Blueberries is so wide open actually works in its favor, as opposed to how narrowly Incon was defined (”modern literary satire” wasn’t in terribly many agent listings).
So, the goal right now is to get ten letters sent a month, regardless of response times or rejections. I’m going to send letters based on this draft, as well, for January; editing will continue on it as I send out, but this is the biggest stumbling block I’ve had to deal with. Like yesterday, it boils down to laziness, but laziness of a different sort– I, previously, didn’t see the value in the whole endeavor. It’s a matter of risk versus reward, and blowing a couple hundred dollars on paper, toner, stamps and envelopes is a small price to pay to get published. Plus, well, the next one will be easier, or so I hear. And the next one might just be Incon… maybe.
Oh, I want to make 2008 a two-novel year, too. I’m thinking May or June as a writing month, depending on how the gaming goes. I’ve found that this dedication stuff works wonders for me, and putting enough pressure on myself to do it helps out quite a bit. So, I might take late spring or early summer to do up a novel, or more likely, write up some short stories. A 100K word novel is a rough job, but four or five 10K word short stories, with a handful of shorter ones, would probably be enough to spur me into remaining creative the whole year around. And I’ve got a ton of stuff on my scrap pile to look through; what I outlined as the ‘06 NaNo could probably be reworked into a longer-form tale.
Fair enough, I suppose; we’ll see how well this turns out. Tomorrow, let’s have a look at the gaming and anime plans for the new year.