I should be focusing on the final revision for Black Magic and Barbecue Sauce. I received feedback from Peggy on the first five chapters of such worth that it has proved all the impetus I need to delay. Want: Chosen One has had a phenomenal start. I'm through chapter 9, have over 19,000 words, and am not slowing down. Every time I think I need to take a break or pause and reflect, I sit down and knock out 2500 words. I don't want to stop and lose all that momentum.

Also, and this is totally wrong of me, I wanted to work with the Nelson Agency. I know there are plenty of good authors out there, but none that do such a good job of selling themselves. I believe that NLA has the right ethos toward agenting, its relationship with authors and its relationship with publishers. Wanted: Chosen One is more mainstream, I think. It still has flawed characters, but not as abysmally depressed as Cy. Ironically, between the two, Wanted has the sadder ending, but I still think will be more widely accepted. It toys with generally accepted fantasy paradigms in a way that reminds me of some well established authors in the genre. And really, I have trouble figuring out what genre Black Magic falls into. Some agents would call it fantasy, some would call it literary fiction, others would call it commercial fiction. Wanted: Chosen One is most certainly fantasy without reservation. So, if my progress continues on such a heavy clip and I finish the manuscript by the beginning of November, perhaps I'll shop it out to NLA before returning to Black Magic.

That's a slippery slope, and one I'm keeping an eye on. Get a rejection and make excuses to work on something else. This isn't denial. I have a large list of agents at home to submit Black Magic to. This is opportunity. As long as Wanted: Chosen One continues to come so easily, I'll keep writing it.

Julie just sent me tremendous insight on Cy. Woo hoo! To quote Nathan Fillion, Bam said the lady!

This puts me in a great position. I'm writing this post mostly to remind myself to insert a bit about Matty saying how all Speakers are inherently selfish. After so many years of people saying it's all about them, they inevitably start to believe it.

This next revision is going to be top notch!

So I've started to get deedback on my draft. I'm very enthusiastic about this because it was very strong feedback. A lot of the time I'll get feedback and wonder if the person even read what I wrote. In this case, there were some very relevant questions and observations. Of the two most important suggestions, I am adding back in a chapter I origionally removed, thinking I had too many flashback chapters and that it slowed down the pacing. Turns out it's too vague what happened between Christian and Cy, so I'm reinserting the chapter where he kidnaps Matty and forces Cy to steal the couer de la reine from the tower of London. I'm adding it much earlier than I origionally planned (it's now chapter 19 rather than in the high 30s/low 40s.

The question I still want additional input on is whether any readers like Cy. It was always a concern of mine that he wasn't likeable and so far that's been affirmed. I need more input on that one.

Because of this necessary revision, I'm not submitting to any more agents until I have a finished ms. Chapter 19 isn't coming as fast as I'd like, though and will probably have to be rewritten before it stops sucking.

I do want to say that I appreciate the support I received when NLA rejected my query, but that support was unnecessarily negative toward NLA. Sure I wish my work appealed to them, but it didn't. I want an agent that will get behind me and my work. A query letter is only 2-3 paragraphs, so a rejection after two days is great. It could have been MUCH longer without any more time spent considering it. It's only a couple paragraphs after all.

So, when I get my next rejection (and I'm sure I will), keep in mind that that's part of the profession and unless they are rude in their rejection, they should be treated respectfully. Thanks.

On yet another new story note, Good Ken and I talked a lot during his visit. One topic we dwelled on was the Pathfinder Society and that conversation lead me to a new story idea, one that I find much more exciting than Sandwich Notch Drive or Jehovah's Hitlist. I have already written chapter one of WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING. This first chapter is significantly better than my first chapter of JH.

Writing on my blackberry, so I'll save a description for a separate post at a later time. If the book keeps up at this quality, not only am I certain that it will be published, but it will be quite successful.

What's that? Algiers is the capital of Algeria you say? Of course it is. The words are almost identical. Wait, what's that? I list it in Morocco?

...

*waves hand with two fingers extended*

That doesn't say Algiers, that says Marrakech. It also says red city not white. And it's near the mountains not the sea. You should really pay more attention when you read.

Add the line

Not when you live forever. Great things get you noticed. Get you worshiped.

Maybe scrap that last sentence.

I rewrote my query letter for the tenth time yesterday. I've read so many different Good Query Letter blogposts that everything is starting to blur together. My pitch is solid, I think. BCC just like Karen Nelson suggests, but for some reason I remember someone saying not to mention themes, to let them see the themes in your writing, but then examples I see include themes. *shrug* I added a few thematic questions. That made me realize, perhaps I did not explore those themes as best I can.

I'll wait for feedback from folks and then take a look when I take my next pass.

I set myself a deadline to finish revisions by my birthday. Here's my birthday and here I am...almost finished. I'll finish this evening. :) 50 pages left.

Finishing the first draft and not showing to anyone was tough at first. It's always good to get that affirmation after you finish something. So now that I have a complete revised draft, I need to send it out for people to read and give feedback. I want to send it to agents now!!! But I can't. They'll find something I didn't and I'll need to fix things and this will make it better. But...but...dammit, I don't want to wait any longer!!! GAH!!!

Of course, my writing group dissolved a long time ago. Peggy had the most talent of the lot and we're still friends, so I hope she'll give it a look. Trouble is, while I've had a lot of people express interest in reading it, few of them are of the caliber or background that I would find useful. They'll read it (or not) and tell me it was good and be done with it and that's not what I want or need (well, it's always cool to receive affirmation, but "it's good" always seems polite and not genuine. What was good about it?).

I have a few people I'm going to ask, but I don't know if they have time or the inclination to do so. Fingers crossed that they say yes and that I get good feedback.

Why.

Ask why.

Ask why until you have all the answers that you think with your characters' minds.

Frustrated that I don't have any twists, I realized I haven't even asked why enough. I've spent the past couple days trying to fill in the holes. I hope they don't appear as weak fixes. Christian's convoluted plan was the thinnest of the group given the way it was resolved.

122 pages left and it'll be ready for people to read.

One task I have been avoiding is fixing the chapter numbering. I have deleted three chapters so far. One just wasn't relevant and got the axe. The other two I never finished and when I got to them, I saw why. Neither warranted their own chapter and both were resolved by adding a sentence (or less) to the preceding or succeeding chapter.

I am now 65% finished with revision and am confident that any chapters remaining will be kept. I'm moving toward the climax and those chapters left all represent pieces that need to be moved into position. This means that I can renumber all the chapters. A pain in the ass if you're not using Word (where you can view as outline and see all your chapter titles if you marked them as Headers rather than text). But I did it nonetheless and now my chapters are properly sequenced.

Black Magic and Barbecue Sauce is 69 chapters long. How fitting. :D

Found a chapter today that I never wrote. Deleted it and replaced it with a subordinate clause in the following chapter. Obviously it was not an important chapter. Mark Twain Rule is in effect.

Revision is accelerating. It's not so much that I've been putting more work into it (though now that I'm back to work commuting and finished Bujold's two Challion books, I should hopefully devote more time to it), but that there seems less that needs revising.

This could mark the simple improvement of my writing and the story and the book progressed. Or I could be screwing up revising. We'll see once I finish it and send it to some people for review.

It's one of my earliest. :)

Revision is 18% complete. I'm hoping this effort will accelerate when I get to later chapters when characters' relationships were better defined. I'm editing Matty's first phone call. They were originally just friends not ex-spouses so the type of familiarity Cy takes with her is no longer appropriate. Add to that some weird "it's been 20 years" even though I already revealed he knew she was coming and it turns into a major scrub job. Hopefully I can still make it shine.

I have not gotten as much done this week as I had planned. Nothing over the weekend. It was all wedding and guests and reading The Curse of Challion. Then Tuesday was Franconia Notch. Wednesday saw a little progress as well as yesterday. Not much more than an hour each day, though. Still, if I apply myself appropriately during my commute, I should finish by the end of September.

I'm anxious to get some outside feedback.

That last post was written on a Blackberry while I paced through North Station, waiting for the commuter train to arrive. Based on the number of errors, clearly I shouldn't pace and type. :)

Editing is going well. I've fully scrubbed the first 7 chapters, so almost 10% complete. You know when you're scrubbing the tub and you get that pool of dirty water but then you rinse it away and there is sparkling white porcelain beneath? That's what this feels like. Having finished the manuscript and fully evolved the characters' relationships, I am now able to revise the beginning and align it with those relationships. I can also seed certain character attitudes that didn't properly come across beforehand.

Once my vacation comes, I'll lay into editing more fully and see if I can't plow through more of this. I want to have a finished second draft by my birthday.

The gerand is a seuctress whose siren's song I find difficult to resist. I cast her away almost every paragraph I edit, yet still she persists.

Reading as much as I have lately, I've witnessed by best-selling, well-established authors that show don't tell isn't as hard and fast a rule as you might think it is. There is a delicate balance between the two. Having started by telling, I swung hard the other way and only showed, which created a rather bland succession of events that lacked any context. Rewriting Kayla's (wa Dawn was Christie) chapter from her perspective, I have once again swung too far back to telling. I'll find a balance eventually.

It's both intriguing and satisfying when just a small addition makes a chapter a hundred times better. It makes me happy.

As I expected would happen, I"
'M thinking editing on hardcopy is untennible. There's just too much that needs changing. I need the option of revising whole pages without having to handwrite it, which is exceedingly difficult on a train.

I posted early chapters of Black Magic and Barbecue Sauce to this journal. Some of you even commented. Why the hell didn't any of you tell me it was this bad?!?! What kind of friends are you?

I can write every day. I can write twice a day. Editing is HARD! I'm not sure I can keep an every-day pace going through this. I have a chapter--one I really liked when I wrote it--showing the home relationship of two characters, one of whom you've met once and one you haven't met at all. Who the hell cares about these people? This chapter is boring! What little insight there is is redundant to a previous chapter. The entire thing is founded on a pratfall gimmick. What a load of crap!

No one will ever read this shit.

I have read four books since I finished my novel, three of which I only read last year. This is a good thing. I enjoy Bujold's Miles series enough that reading the novels again is still exciting, but the stories are still fresh enough in my mind that I can focus on other things, like when she takes the time to explain through exposition and when through dialogue. Which works when and why. Her use of adverbs, and even the progression of the quality of her writing. Compare Memory with the Warrior's Apprentice and you notice a definite growth in the writer's ability.

This has exposed errors in my own decisions, errors that I aim to correct and look forward to the rounder, more complete story they will create (for all my attempts, Dawn is still a relatively two-dimensional character, even if she is no longer the damsel in distress that she was before. And Dawn has not been a fitting name. I need to find something different that isn't too exotic but not too mundane either).

So this morning I went to Jackie's and edited the first 28 pages of the manuscript. Sure there's a crapload more to do and I might be faster just typing (especially since I'll have to type all these corrections), but editing by hand has a number of benefits. It slows the process down and requires me to weigh each action and word choice. It allows me to see how those decisions are framed in a larger context (not something as easy to accomplish on a 10" screen. And I edit in red pen, so let me tell you, there's some serious humility going on when you see swaths of your text crossed out mercilessly. Chapters 1 and 2 (1 having been previously revised even [for the audio sample on my website which I guess now I'll have to revise]) took some considerable straightening. Two is in a much better place than it was before.

Chapter 3 hasn't suffered too much from corrections yet. It was originally chapter 6 and it is heartening to see how much my writing improved between 2 and 6. Hopefully that means the rest of the manuscript isn't as crappy as I sometimes felt it was.

I didn't sleep well last night. While I had more to say on the subject, thinking right now is difficult and I want to go back to the couch and play some Wii.

Bye.

I finished chapter 66 today. I mapped out the next five chapters. Why didn't I map out more, you ask? Because the manuscript ends in 5 chapters.

71 is the end zone, baby! I'm almost there! Yay, I won't have to give up trying to write professionally. And how. I'll come in around the 110,000 word mark all since March. This pleases me.

Now the challenge is to go back and make that 110,000 not suck. Oh yes, that will be a challenge. And of course I'll have to resist the urge to send it to people to read even though it's not in a place that I would enjoy as a reader and wouldn't expect you to either. Still, it's exciting when you finish something. You want people to read it right away and tell you how amazing it is.

Now, the question is, am I far enough removed from the beginning of the book that I can start revising immediately, or should I take a break first? Read a book or write a short story, something like that. No point in revising if my second draft sucks as much as the first.

Woooooo!!!!!

You know, one of the things I find most satisfying is finishing I couldn't finish before. You know those chapters that are just so crappy that you have to stop writing them or they'll kill the entire process? But then yoi go back and delete stuff and go forward again and then it stops sucking and you finish it.

Yeah, that's satisfying. :) Did that this morning. Three more chapters like it and I'll head into the climax.

Wwwoooooooooooooo, the end is near!

You know, since I've written my preface, I've referenced it in a few chapters later in the book. I'm thinking--and I'll have to wait until the draft is finished--that I can just scrap the prologue all together and keep the references as they do a better job of implying what happened without actually retelling that entire scene. I like starting with chapter one. I like starting with William Henderson and his suits.

As I type this, I realize I had already decided on a more poignant end with Cy and Dawn and an Epilogue would just ruin that so it's scrapped. Scrap the prologue too, I think. I'm 90% sure that chapter's going away.

I wrote today for the first time in a week. It wasn't a "I need to take time off and recharge my batteries by reading," week. It was a "Oh my god Washington, DC, was exhausting and work is kicking my ass" week. Technically, it should be kicking my ass now, but I wanted to write this down.

So for those of you that read the prologue, enjoy it, you probably won't see it in print.