It's only a learning experience if you learn something

Got my contributor's copys of the new issue of A Thousand Faces. I always enjoy that magazine (even when I'm not in it!) and they did a great job with this issue as well. It's full of superhero goodness.

I had a weird switcharoo with my writing this past week. I couldn't find the time to write more on the new novel - at least not a good chunk of it anyway - so I opened up my old novel and worked on some revisions. It was kind of fun and turned out to be something I could do in small bits and pieces.

I'd gotten some really good feedback from agents on it when I first sent it around, the biggest complaint being the direction I took after a beginning they enjoyed.

After quite a bit of writing since then, I've learned so much about plot and pacing that I finally feel comfortable going back to the book and tinkering with it a little. I know most people write a first book, if it doesn't go well, they stick it in a drawer and move on. That would be the wise thing to do, which obviously isn't my style, right?

I actually stopped submitting the book to agents after only about 6-7 tries. The main reason was I was getting the same feedback from the majority of them about good characters and writing, but poorly-planned pacing and plot. So I stopped with every intention of working on it and getting it right back out there.

The only problem was: I landed one of those first few agents.

Problem? Wha?

Yeah.

The agent agreed to take me on provided I did a rewrite of the book, making it YA. This would have to be a total rewrite. Not a big deal, I thought. The book was hovering close to YA anyway. But when I started trying to write the book all over again, after taking so long to do it the first time, things weren't happening. I quickly got burnt out on trying to put these characters into a new situation, or trying to make them better or worse or whatever making it YA should've entailed.

About the time I settled on a new idea for the characters, things went south between the agent and I. As much as you can call a note from an agency "That agent doesn't work here anymore", going south. There's slightly more to it than that, but not much.

After that, I started sending out the original manuscript and that's when I started getting the comments from agents about what they liked and didn't. This is the point where I should've done those revisions and got it right back out there. But I didn't. I so hated that book at that point. At least I had the presence of mind to stop sending it out before I exhaused my list of potential agents with a book I knew wasn't working.

Anyway... jump ahead two or three years and I'm ready to get back to work. I have plans for editing that thing and trying again with it. Of course I'm also in the middle of writing the new book... Hopefully that'll work for me, rather than against me. When I'm blocked on one, I'll work on the next.

Hey, it could happen!

Do you ever work on two big projects at once? How's that work out for you?

Nerd is the word

I found a bunch of action figures from when I was a kid. I'm cleaning them up to let my son play with them. Not the really valuable ones, of course! Not my original Luke Skywalker with retractable lightsaber! Are you nuts?

No, no. I'm letting him have the old Adventure People. Remember them? No? Am I that old? Yikes. If I'm that old, they may be collector's items! I used to have a fire truck with a ladder that went up and down for the Adventure People firemen. I remember it because the truck made such a puny siren sound, as if apologizing for causing anyone alarm.

A-hem. Excuse me? May I possibly get through? There's a cat food warehouse engulfed in flames across town and I'd very much like to get to it. If it's no bother.

I also remember having the Adventure People news van. Maybe that's why I went into news? Could be. The news van came with a reporter with the largest afro I've ever seen on an action figure and a gruff but lovable news director, a la Lou Grant. (Anyone? Lou Grant? TV show? Asner? Where is my driver's license? How old AM I?)


Look at that face. What kid wouldn't have hours of reporting fun with an action figure like that? In all honesty, the news van became a battle wagon, and the gigantic video camera later became a surface-to-air missile launcher, but only after the action news team got their story!

Woo Hoo!

Finally got my laptop up and running! Looks like I've managed to recover most, if not all, of my documents. Oddly, the backup I did isn't allowing me to recover my version of Word. I had to dig out a really old version, which kind of sucks. Hopefully, I can find the back up disk for that.

But, I can't tell you how nice it is to finally have that laptop working and ready to rock when I get home!

Progress? Soon!

Maybe I'll take up smoking again

I haven't had time to try to raise my laptop from the dead yet, so I have no idea what to do with myself. I can check my email at work, or use my wife's laptop when I'm at home, but all my files are on my computer. I have versions of them backed up on my back up drive, but all the really recent - last week or so - stuff is on that laptop.

I'll have time to work on it this weekend and hopefully get it going without much trouble. In the meantime, it's been weird. I don't know what to do at lunch. I usually go to a coffee shop and write, or edit or do blog stuff, but for the last week I haven't been able to.

I managed to read a book, get Christmas shopping done.

It's not natural. I should be writing.

Is this how all the "Norms" live?

Yeesh.

Oh, and a side note. The temp here has been in the 20s-30s at night and still up around the 50s during the day, so it's not too bad yet. Still, I feel the email I got today from the realty company that rents the beach house we stayed at in North Carolina was a bit mean-spirited. They weren't exactly taunting me, but the huge picture of the sunny beach they sent was over the line.

I got the first few critiques back from my group last night on the steampunk story I finished recently. You know, the one that didn't stop until it crept over the 10,000 word mark? It actually stopped at 10,200 if we want to be exact.

They were amazingly kind. Everyone had great things to say about it. Even the readers who aren't fans of genre fiction or didn't know what steampunk was when they started, seemed to enjoy it. That's the good news.

My main instruction to them was to find somewhere to chop it down to size, since most markets don't accept stories of that length. Usually, 7 or 8k is pushing their limits. None of the readers could find any big chunks to slice out, though they did find a number of smaller things that could be exorcised which would bring the total word count down under 10k. That's good, but still a hard sell.

A couple of readers suggested in their comments that they wanted more, not less. That I should flesh out some sections and then continue on from where the story currently stops. That's awesome that they feel that way and I have some ideas where the story would go, but with the current book halfway done, I don't want do stop working on it. On the other hand, I'm enjoying the steampunk story so much, I'd hate to lose momentum on it.

I was kind of hoping they'd all agree that the middle ten pages would need cut completely and spare me any actual effort on my part.

Errr. Effort.

I've said it before. Writing is, like, hard and stuff.

Come on! Everyone else is doing it!

A story from Reuters out of London says that more people that work in finance are having affairs these days. They site an online company called IllicitEncounters.com, who claim enrollment by bankers is up partially due to the economy.

Here's the part that gets me. They surveyed 600 of their members within the financial community to ask why they have afairs. Here's the top ten list:

1. To feel loved
2. For the thrill
3. Unstable home life
4. To escape the mundane
5. Ego boost
6. To avoid costly divorce
7. To lavish attention on someone
8. Because they feel entitled
9. Because they can/opportunity
10. Peer pressure

These all make sense to me except for number ten. Peer Pressure? Seriously?

Come on Jim, everyone else is having an affair.

No.

Mike down in legal is having one.

No.

Lisa in payroll in doing it.

No.

All the cool bankers are cheating this year.

No.

What, do you love your wife or something? Big baby going to run home to a stable relationship?

Ok! Ok. Just stop. I'll do it. Just leave me alone. Did you say Leslie in marketing or Lisa in payroll was up for it?

First and Ten

Sorry I've been absent from the blog - the holiday, a stupid cold and a laptop crash have all made the last week or so pretty crazy. I'm still working on the laptop issue, but the rest is nearly over with.

I got an email letting me know the tenth (and latest) issue of A Thousand Faces is available. ATF is a journal dedicated to superhero fiction. It has a flash piece of mine in it called "Everyone is the Hero of their Own Movie". This is a odd story for me in that I pretty much wrote it and sent it off without too much laboring over edits and such. I had the idea, put it on paper and then did a little editing as I typed it in the computer. As soon as I sent it off, I was sorry I did. I immediately felt I should have worked harder on it or fleshed it out more.

When I got an acceptance for it, I cringed. This story is going out into the world as is? Ugh.

A few months later, I got another email asking me to look over the proof for the story to make sure it was right. I let it sit for a week. I nearly withdrew the story, but it was too late. Then I almost just ok'd the proof without looking at it just so I didn't have to think about it. I finally figured I may as well check it out. Hate for it to have mistakes in it, as well as be terrible.

The read was interesting. Since I didn't labor over the initial writing, and it was well over six months since I last looked at it, it was kind of like reading someone else's story. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I remembered a couple of things that I couldn't decide on initially, and liked the desicions I made.

I'm not bragging about my amazing writing skills here - I think I'm suggesting that I trusted my instincts as far as story goes and it worked out for me. As I said, this isn't always the way it goes. I usually do several passes and then take suggestions from my critique group before the final version goes out.

Maybe the shorter, flash pieces come out better when I go it alone?

In this particular case, I'm glad I trusted my instincts!

This marks my second flash piece in A Thousand Faces. My first, "Officer White Takes a Sick Day", appeared in issue #1.