Almost there!

It's good to be getting back to work. I didn't manage to get all the way through line editing the Tower!Guy novel before I set out for Florida to make wedding preparations (and honestly, I think I would have preferred working on my novel at some points!) with The Boy.

I did a bit last night, and have discovered that I'm now at a mere 82,000 words from the original 95,000 total, just from eliminating prose level stupidities. I have a bad habit of repeating and re-describing action after it happens. Like so:

Betty got into the car, mad at Joe.

"I hate that man!" she shouted, slamming the door now that she had gotten into her car, furious. Joe had made her so angry with what he said to her. (38 words)

Which can actually condense down into:

"I hate that man!" Betty shouted, slamming the car door as she got in, unable to believe what Joe said. (20 words).

I just cut 18 words out by not repeating myself, and by making a few choice decisions on small clauses in sentences or sentences themselves and trusting the reader to use logic and make logical assumptions.

The entire last sentence went away, because it's all useless. We already saw (in this example) the conversation that made Betty so furious. There's no need to reiterate little things, like the fact that he was talking and talking to Betty (as opposed to talking to someone else and making Betty mad that way). Unless the reader has the memory of a brain damaged goldfish, the plastic castle will not, in fact, be a surprise.

Also, I deleted the phrase "her car" and replaced it with just "slamming the car door as she got in". Because obviously, she wouldn't be getting into someone else's car.

Well, she might. I've accidentally tried to unlock other people's cars that looked just like mine (well until mine became so uniquely dented that I could spot it from 100 yards off), but that comes later. And if I'm writing something with a lighter tone, I might just have my poor beleaguered Betty accidentally step into someone else's car in a fit of rage. I've done that in fits of stupidity. But until then, I think it's safe to let the reader assume that the car she's getting into belongs to her.

I think it's really a sign of how far I still have left to go as a writer that I'm cutting out in excess of 13,000 words just because of this one bad habit, but I do think it says something for just how streamlined my story is, however, because not one bit of that 13,000 words came from cutting out scenes in their entirety.

Of course, none of this goes towards getting my synopsis in any better shape. I hammered at that thing until it was time to go to the airport, and still nothing.

How is it that writing a one to three page summary of the novel is harder than writing the novel itself?

Draft r teh_done.

The Tower Guy novel is now officially finished. The line editing is done! I have now written, edited, revised, rewritten, corrected, and spellchecked this thing all I can.

The final draft is done. Now all that's left are the queries and synopses and the long waiting and the many rejections and all the things that follow.

But it's done! I'm done! This whole stupid novel that has taken me frelling years to write is now finished and done in it's entirety.

Which means I can finally close the file and begin working on something else. Anything else.

Drive by linking

As I was cruising the interwebs, looking for any further agents/agencies I ought to query, I came across this listing of agents who say they accept SF/F. It's a pretty good list compiled by an aspiring author, and it's clear some research has gone into it, but it is not a one-stop shop for agency info, by any means.

The maintainer of the list does not make a distinction between urban and high fantasy or different types of science fiction. Thus, agencies are listed that may in theory accept SF/F, but in practice are romance and women's fiction oriented. Yes, novels with covers of half naked men who are supposed to be vampires might say they're "fantasy", but if you're looking to sell the next Wheel of Time, it's no good.

Also, some of the agencies published one vaguely SF/F book back in 1999 and have been doing books about people Remembering Their Angsty Childhood In Suburbia ever since. Sometimes that's noted, sometimes not.

The list is also somewhat outdated, and not quality controlled. All the agencies/agents listed pass a basic inspection. None are fee-charging or obvious predators. However, some of the links went to dead or outdated sites. Also, some of the agencies have scrolls and scrolls of clients that I've never heard of, with books I could hardly find on Amazon that were published by presses that have either no websites or the world's most crap websites ever.

Seriously. The blinking, scrolling text across the screen with the tiled background? Is so 1996. The people born when you made that website are now hitting puberty.

The good news about the site is that I did get a couple of names I hadn't considered from agencies that I didn't find in combing AgentQuery or LitMatch, because they weren't listed there.

So, my recommendation is to use the site as a non-exhaustive resource, but do your homework. Just thought I'd share. If you see an agent there, go and look them up and read all about them you can.

Questions about the definitions of words

One of the questions I've had during Racefail09 and since I've been following 50books_poc is something that I'm not sure where or how to ask, but I figure since I'm at a loose end, I'll just go ahead and ask it.

( My questions, beneath the cut and other musings on what those questions mean and how it can help me to be a better ally. As always, discussion welcomed, cookies declined. Meaningful responses only, please. )