So What's Up? Part II

Yes, there's been a long silence from me. No, I haven't been idle. I may have been procrastinating a little. But that's beside the point.

I've compiled a big list of agents, and now I'm narrowing the list down to determine who will be my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier choices and so on. So far, that project is going well. It looks like I'll have somewhere over 30 agents to choose from, and a few are standing out as the ones I'd definitely like to query first. It's a tedious process, but one that I feel is necessary if I'm to set myself apart from the thousands of other would-be authors who barrage agents with tons of misguided queries every day. Hopefully, after the ill-timed fiasco that was The Serenity Solution, I've learned some valuable things that will better equip me for this particular quest.

A query letter is a BIG DEAL. Sometimes I feel like too much attention is given to it. Sometimes I see query letters that look ho-hum, and yet landed a writer a great contract. Other times I see query letters that get me all excited, and yet they've failed after the writer put a TON of effort into it. I think just about every would-be author out there has questioned the validity of a query letter and has yanked out more than a little hair over it. I know I have. But, I think that maybe, just maybe, I've finally written a query letter that isn't complete junk. It might be a little wordy. I might be approaching it wrong. I might have broken every query letter convention. I may not have sufficiently answered or focused on "Mod So-and-So's" almighty three questions. About 20,273 doubts plague me.

And yet, it's about time to press the trigger and hope my aim is good.

My synopsis probably needs work. I may entirely rewrite Chapter One of Kricket's Song because I'm not confident I've established conflict, setting, and character well enough. Etc.

And so I forge ahead, and I take a little more slack out of the trigger.

One of these days, I'll hit the target dead center.

So What's Up?

It's been a little while since I've posted, and even though things look quiet right now, there actually has been progress on Kricket's Song. So here's what's going on.

As you know, I've completed the initial editing/polishing phase on the manuscript. It can no longer be considered a "rough draft." It's starting to take a shape resembling what it should be when you pick it up on the bookshelf in a store. But, before you (or I) start getting excited...well, there's still a really long way to go before that happens.

I've started compiling a list of agents that I might like to query. Right now, it's just a very large and general list; I'll need to narrow it down and figure out which agents would be my top picks before I start sending out query letters. And that brings me to my next point: actually writing a query letter. I've written three drafts so far, and I've been receiving critiques on it from some of my fellow writers at Absolute Write. They've brought up some very good points and made some good suggestions. The problem is, it seems like every time I address an issue, it either raises more issues, or un-fixes an issue I'd previous thought fixed.

Also, after an initially unsuccessful appeal for some beta readers, I finally did find one person who was willing to take the first chapter. Again, he made some suggestions and critiques, and it appears I still have work to do on the manuscript itself. The good news is, this wasn't unexpected. Also, the changes should be too difficult to effect. The bad news is...well, there's still more work to do!

But all in all, progress is being made, so that's good. I've also been brainstorming some more for Kricket's Key and I think I'm making some progress with that particular plot puzzle. Hopefully, as I get the kinks worked out with Kricket's Song, I'll be able to turn my focus more and more to Key, but that may yet be some time down the road.

I'll keep you updated!

And Now, For the Scary Part

A little behind schedule, but I finally finished the Read Through/Polish of the manuscript for Kricket's Song. As I wrote the rough draft, I discovered I had a lot of bad habits when it comes to writing. I tend to use certain sentence structures way to much, and of those, a few are quite clumsy. I also have a tendency to use too many adverbs and adjectives. The polish was an attempt to get rid of as many of those errors as possible, and I think I did a good job of it.

In total, I eliminated almost 2,400 words from the manuscript that served no purpose whatsoever, other than to clutter things up. The current word count now totals just over 95K, and I think it's ready to go out to beta readers. So, tomorrow, I'll be contacting the two people who've already volunteered, and I'll be looking for others as well. While the beta readers have it, I'll be working on creating a query letter and a synopsis for the book. I'll also be researching agents I'd like to query. Hopefully I can get that process rolling very soon! It'd be nice to have an agent before summer, so that he/she can be working on selling it to a publisher while I'm wandering around the woods firefighting.

I'll also be working on getting a more concrete plot outline and character sheets drawn up for the next book, tentatively titled Kricket's Key. I've had enough ideas trickling in over the past couple months that it shouldn't be too hard, and most of my characters are drawn up already. Just need to change their motivations and goals for this new book. There will, however, be some other characters entering the equation.

That's about all for now; I hope to have more updates on the process soon!

Momentum, or Lack Thereof

Momentum is one of a writer's best allies. When you're making good, consistent progress, you can see your goal drawing closer. This provides motivation, which produces more progress, which continues to build the momentum and, therefore, the motivation. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. When there's very little progress, there's less motivation to continue with the process, even when the next step of that process is relatively easy.

In this case, the process involves going through my manuscript chapter by chapter, polishing up the writing and eliminating as many unnecessary words as possible, clarifying things, and generally trying to make it professional without making it come across as "writerly." So far, I've eliminated almost 1,000 unnecessary words from the manuscript, and I'm not even halfway through it yet. I'm sure my beta readers, when they get it, will point out a lot more to me.

Getting the ball rolling again after the holidays was more difficult than I'd hoped. After I got back from visiting my parents, I went right into a six-day work week. Immediately after that, I traveled back home to pick up something I ordered in Oregon before Christmas, but didn't come in before I had to get back to work. Tomorrow, I'll be making my way back to Nevada again--which means no writing will get done until Thursday at the earliest. And then, you guessed it, I'm back to work again! I got some polishing done today, but it's slow going. I'm about 38% of the way through the manuscript, and I hope to have it done before January is over, but we'll see.

Meanwhile, ideas and inspiration continues to develop for the next Kricket book, as well as ideas for the overall story arc that may end up taking three or even four books to completely play out. The challenge will be keeping these books complete in their own right so that I don't fall into the trap of being a new writer trying to market a series. But, as they say, "Write what you want and worry about the rest later." And right now, what I want to write is Kricket.

So...nyah.