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This Query Hell shit is killing me. This is why I put my foot down when it comes to editing stuff. I can take edits into consideration, make changes based on those edits, release it into the wild and it’ll still come back with more editing suggestions. At least this last time I posted ES’s query I knew it was too long and the people that commented on it said as much. So I chopped it down and I have something that’s more general but slightly specific (as if that isn’t confusing enough) and follows the basic plot line of the book. But I’m questioning whether to post it for a fourth time.
It’ll be a never-ending cycle that I won’t win. It just has to get to a point of good enough or where I really like it and not willing to make more changes. I’m digging the simplicity of my most recent incarnation. It still remains in Michael’s voice and gets the point across but does it need to be edited again? I don’t want to overlook something huge that I’m not seeing in my own work. At the same time I don’t want to be stuck in a vortex. I also don’t want to rush it out the door so I can just have a completed query.
Ugh. Editing. Fun times.
“Next time don’t come down stairs until you’ve rubbed the bitch out of your eyes.”
I love that line so much. I don’t really know why, but it’s tickles me. That’s Michael greeting his ever-pleasant older sister at way too early in the morning. In all fairness, she was being a bitch.
Applying the edits I made to the manuscript starts tonight. I’m thinking it’ll take me a week or a week and a half to finish. I’m still up in the air about the opening lines.
“And that’s what can happen when you feed a dog Poprocks. Amazing, isn’t it, Diane?”
“It certainly is, Rick. I hope little Billy’s wounds heal soon. We at News Channel Seven wish you a speedy recovery, Billy.”
It’s completely irrelevant to the rest of the plot but it’s what Michael’s sitting in front of the TV watching. He makes some comments on it, like wondering when Poprocks became breaking news, but it’s not the context I’m worried about more so than what people’s reactions would be as a first introduction to my story is a newscast about a dog eating Poprocks. Again, betas will help immensely.
So I’m finagling on my laptop last night and I’m trying to create those little ‘alt’ symbols, like the spades and hearts and things like that, for bullets over on Bites. On laptops, you can’t use the number bar for that so you have to enable the number pad. Well, the thing worked fine on Wednesday night but last night it decided to give me a wet willy. At first it wouldn’t turn on and then it did and now it won’t go off. Do you have any idea how hard it is to type when you constantly have to hold down the Fn key in order to not get L311! type? And I type something like 100 words a minute. Yeah, I’m down to a crawl with that.
There doesn’t seem to be anything stuck; it just appears that the little censor thing on the board underneath has farted out. I wanted to pop off another button to do some comparing so I went for the Caps Lock . . . and broke that one. It still works just fine, there just isn’t an actual button. Thankfully my dad has a spare keyboard that he can install to replace this one (damn Fn key) and even if he doesn’t, I’m just going to go buy a wireless keyboard, sit my laptop on the tray it has and type in my lap. Better for my wrists anyway.
But now my groove is off. I’m using my desktop now but that’s not where I do my writing. That’s done on the laptop in my room but my mojo’s been trampled by Fn. WTF? My comfort zone bubble’s been popped! I’ll find out Sunday if my dad has the spare keyboard and if not, I’m going over to Staples and getting something cheap to replace it. A laptop kayboard runs about $100 and needs to get shipped. I’m twitchy as it is that I’ve lost a day editing and it’s just not right doing it on this computer. *twitch* Gah! Must fix . . .
On the plus side, everything that I’ve made thus far that’s been gluten free hasn’t been an epic fail. I’ve made (or my mom has, for only a couple things) turkey chili, fried chicken, pizza, white cake with cream cheese frosting and baked apple streusel. The pizza I just made tonight and was shockingly good for gluten free dough. Although it does hang a little limp and I just absolutely refuse to use a knife and fork on pizza (never ever ever ever ever) so I ended up making a mess but it was good. The cake kicks ass. I’m actually quite excited.
And the thing is, and this is both good and bad, I feel better. Crap.
You know you have them. If you’re a writer, no matter how much you love to write, there are just certain aspects of it that have you procrastinating until it’s 4 am. Don’t lie.
For me, one of them is naming my characters, namely surnames. I hate it. Absolutely despise is with the passion from the fiery pits of Hell. I never know how to work my MCs’ (or any characters’) full name into the story and not have it sound contrived. Even when it’s a viable means of saying it so the reader knows what it is it still sounds like I’m forcing it. I can’t stand it. Are last names necessary in fiction? Will it kill the readers to never know my characters’ last names?
The other one is titling. I hate giving anything a title even more than I hate giving my characters last names. I yearn for the day when titling is out of my hands and into those of the publishers. They know what they’re doing and can come up with some pretty good stuff. Me, I just gimp around usually with the first thing that pops into my head and hope for the best. But attachment, pretty much never. Up until my junior year of college I never titled anything until my creative writing professor said I had to. With hindsight I know I don’t have to but I didn’t know any better then. But it’s not like I can query a novel called Untitled. Agents like to see you can at least come up with something.
So what about you? What aspects of writing can you just not stand?
And OMG help me hatch my eggs! They’ll die if you don’t! You don’t want that to happen, do you? Caled needs family!
Not quite regularly scheduled posting but pretty close. I’m still pretty afraid of shopping areas with it being the weekend after Christmas and all but I’m thinking tomorrow on the bit of research I need for the post. Or I’m sure the Barnes and Noble website could help me out but I’m more concerned with what’s on the shelf.
Anyway, yesterday I completed the first draft of Earth Shatterer, my NaNo-written novel. I had even less to finish than I thought and it came in at just over 55,000 words. It’s a little scant when it comes to editing wiggle room but my idea for this story was much more concise, not to mention it was my second book. And if you’re thinking, “well why didn’t you just finish it in November,” to that I say bite me. An extra 5,000 words and I would have been in a straight jacket.
Since Diamond Crier was my first, I did a lot of experimenting with my writing, spent four and a half chapters alone finding the voice and the rest of the book figuring out where it was going to go. Well, not that so much but allowing it to blossom far beyond what the original intention was. With 83,000 words on that one, I have a lot hacking to do and a bigger deal in trying to figure out what goes and what stays.
Earth Shatterer was much more concise. It was pretty fatless from the beginning, the action came as it was needed and the plot propelled itself forward. I got lucky with this one. I don’t have much whittling to do. That’s not to say I won’t have a lot of editing to do but at least I won’t have to hack down to about 55,000 from 83,000 words. That’s a mighty hack.
The two books, I know, will be two different editing experiences but I’m looking forward to it (although I’m plotting my procrastination now). The new year will begin the editing process and I think I’ll edit the two before I start on something new or the next book in the sequence. For one I don’t want first drafts piling up with no editing done. I would like to find an agent sometime this century. And two, I don’t see a point in starting the second book to either series before I have everything put together and organized in the first. Since I write without looking back, I’d almost be writing the sequel blind and I’m really trying to keep my sanity intact, especially while I’m editing. Plus it’ll give me a chance to catch up on my fun writing. I miss my fun writing.
On a completely unrelated note, I have custom fields! Fun! Now I just need to figure out how to use them.
