I'm still gathering research, and building my spreadsheet o' doom for this time around on the Merry-Go-Agent.

I think I might be ready to go, after another run through of my query letter, synopsis, and the manuscript by the end of this week. I'm trying to build up my confidence so I can do this without devolving into a nervous wreck.

I got a lot of progress done on the UF!2girls novel, but I realize that editing this thing is going to be hell on wheels, because there's so much stuff that I need to cut out, other stuff I know now I need to add, and yet other things that just need to be plain old rewritten.

The wordcount is getting heavy because I'm at 80k and little more than halfway through, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to cut out at least 40k. After all, I took a 123k draft down to 82k with the Tower!Guy novel, and I'm sure I can do at least that much for this novel.

Lately, I've been metaphorizing my writing by thinking of clay sculptures we used to do in art class at school. My teacher told us that the first stages were about sticking everything on, and then you shave things down and smooth them out, but first you have to get the basic form. That seems reasonable right now. I'm letting myself stick lumps of text here and there, knowing I'll go back with the refining tools to make it all come together attractively and it'll be an editing problem later on.

Also, it helps to make editing notes and stick them somewhere for later use.

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?

jaylake has an oddly appropriate entry about crutch words and how they can overwhelm the prose of a piece. As always: Jay knows his stuff when it comes to the business of writing.

Given that I'm currently line editing with a vengeance, I'm very aware of how sloppy prose of a piece can get on the first few drafts. I'm not even half way through line editing and I've already managed to cut out ten pages worth of crutch words and unnecessary phrases and other linguistic detritus. I have a love affair with the word "that", apparently. I think at least half of the 5,000 deleted words so far were that's.

Ugh. This is still easier than trying to hammer out a synopsis, and that's just sad.

I still have no idea if I have anything approaching the right kind of synopsis, and I think this is the most aggravating part of the entire thing. Even more aggravating than starting from scratch on a novel that I worked four years already on. At least then I knew what to do.

I have no idea how to handle a synopsis. I've tried writing and re-writing it several times. It always sounds like crap and there's only so much hair on my head that I can pull out before I'm bald.

I shall call this mode: "Person with one leg in a butt kicking contest". I was sick as a dog the night before, which means yesterday I got nothing done.

Ergo, today I'm scrambling to get back on schedule with the revisions of the Tower!Guy novel. I realize I set aside my deadline as being unimportant, given the givens, but part of me just needs to be done with revisions, needs to send this out, needs to have this over with.

I just want to work on a new project, on writing words that I haven't gone over with a fine tooth comb fifty times already.

Apropos of nothing: I think the Tor.com site could be a much better if they stopped letting a certain someone post reviews of TV shows that are not even remotely SF/F or SF/F related. I've tried to get into the site because there's some free short fiction there and things, but honestly? As long as they keep letting one of their contributors post reviews of a mainstream crime drama just because it's her favoritest show ever and apparently her thoughts on it are so deep and enlightening that they must be shared at every turn, whether they're relevant or not, I'm out. I can't take the site seriously, because nobody's ever explained to me why they think one person's opinion about a non-SF/F show should be on a site specifically dedicated to SF/F. I swear to god, next there'll be posts about rock climbing. [/bitchery].

I really should get back to work. When I start snarking like this, it means I'm not busy enough.

I feel there is only one thing that can really, truly, and accurately capture what I feel like, trying to completely finish off the revisions of the Tower!Guy novel in one month, among all the other obligations I have during December.

That thing is a clip from "Meet the Robinsons". Because sometimes you just have to say with computer animated dinosaurs.

So right now, just to recap: I HAVE A BIG HEAD AND LITTLE ARMS. I AM NOT SURE HOW WELL I THOUGHT THIS PLAN THROUGH.

Additionally, I might be covered in bees, too.

Carry on, that is all.

I actually made positive progress today on editing the Tower!Guy novel. I realized that it's not the big huge mess I thought it was yesterday.

What really helped was following fairmer's suggestion to use a chart to keep track of chapters and POV's. I hear there is software out there that can do that for you, but honestly? It was just as easy to make a chart on the back of one of the pages of the manuscript.

I'm one of those people who doesn't tend to believe in having a lot of bells and whistles in the physical writing process. Not that those who have special tools or software are wrong or lesser writers, but I'm kind of a naturalist. I basically just need a quiet place to think and a word processor. Or pen and paper, depending on the situation. Of course, I'm also a completely unpublished nobody, so the mileage on this may vary.

Another helpful step was to make a list of the bare bones of plot that happen in each chapter on the chart next to the POV column. This way I can see not only who's telling the story, but what's happening. It helped me see that there were some chapters where a lot of plot points happen, and some chapters where nothing happens. Having a character watch something for ten pages is not plot.

Not to mention that making the chart gave me a very visible understanding of why things were lopsided. I have three POV characters, but there's a huge six chapter streak of my novel that's only from one character's perspective. And most of it doesn't have to be, either.

What all of this means is that I won't have to go back and do another massive overhaul of the novel like I did this summer. That was like taking an old house, knocking out walls, putting a new roof on, and basically remaking the place.

This is more like fixing some leaky plumbing and maybe putting in hardwood instead of carpet. Nothing to despair over.

Guess it's time to cowboy up with the Red Pen of Death and get back to line editing for all my grammar mistakes. Seeing my own grammar errors gets a bit funny after a while. It's like a thousand English teachers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

So far I've gotten back critiques on the Tower!Guy novel from two of the four people that I sent it out to and I couldn't be more pleased with how thoroughly they read the novel and what a terrific job they did.

I really lucked out big time in that regard. I couldn't have gotten better folks to give this thing a read through.

First and foremost, both of them said they liked the novel overall, and that it was a good novel. I trust that they'd tell me if I wasn't or if it was a hopeless cause.

Also, none of the things pointed out in their critiques are fatal flaws. With some rearranging and adjusting of things, I think it can be an even better novel, one that (*fingers crossed*) might be worthy of sending out somewhere. I know that right now, in this belt-tightened market and the market that is likely to ensue in 2009 and 2010, that more than ever, I need to have something really spectacular to hand to an agent and/or editor.

Of course, there are some mistakes that they pointed out that make me absolutely angry and frustrated with myself, because they seem like such obvious mistakes. Amateur mistakes, even. And I so desperately don't want to be a rank amateur anymore.

I want to be good that this. No, scratch that, I want to be fabulous. I'm not usually a terribly ambitious person in other aspects of my life. In day jobs, I don't tend to care about advancement up the ladder. I can't say that I give a damn about status symbols such as cars, clothes, and fancy things.

But in writing? I feel a kind of motivation and drive that I don't feel in any other aspect of my life.

Not that I aspire to either fame or fortune. I certainly have no illusions that writing books about such things as dragons and werewolves will garner me either. But neither of those things precludes me from being a spectacular writer if I work hard enough at it.

In the end, for me, this is about telling a truly incredible story in a truly incredible way - and I suppose I'm still a bit frustrated that my reach extends so far beyond my grasp. Not that it shouldn't always, but there's a difference between arms length and lightyears.

But that's the one advantage of my situation. There's a simple solution to this sort of frustration which involves the reapplication of one's nose to the grindstone.

When in doubt, get back to work, I guess.

Yesterday's determined march towards my goal netted me a fairly respectable 3036 words, and most of the next chapter.

Today's goal is still at 5000 words, but also to get done with this chapter and move on into the next chapter.

I think one of my best ideas so far has been to go through a plot out, bit by bit, who's POV we're seeing through, and allowing myself to change POV in a chapter, so long as there's some sort of break to let the reader have a pause.

I have three POV characters, and I think mapping out when each person gets their turn to tell their bit of the story is useful. At the very least, it keeps me from jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint all over the place. And believe me, I will do that if left to my own devices.

So, right now the count stands at:


Tower!Guy Story editing, by wordcount

13,876 / 100,000 (13.9%)

Tower!Guy Story editing by chapters

3.8 / 20 (19.0%)

Well, I have to hold myself publicly accountable from now on, or I'll never finish the Tower!Guy edit/rewrite. I refuse to let myself fall into the excuse of "I don't know how to measure progress". It's not a scientific inquiry, so I'll just guesstimate.


Tower!Guy Edit by Sections

2 / 20 (7.5%)

Tower!Guy Edit by Wordcount

4,027 / 100,000 (4.0%)

'



I'm hoping that even with new material folded in, having gutted the entire center will mean that I won't pass the 100,000 word mark. I really, really, really hope so. Because I will cry if I did all this and still have to contend with being 20,000 overbudget again. I'll cry, and I think Baby Jesus will cry, too.

I'll post by the end of business today on the progress I'm making when I'm not longingly staring around the apartment going, "Wow, I could do dishes. Dishes do need doing!"

The only advantage of my crap internship was that when I had downtime, I could write like my hands were on fire because I literally had nothing else I was allowed to do except look busy.

I finally finished the outline to the Queenmaker story, or at least the first installment. The thing about this is, I already know that there's no freaking way to tell this story in one novel. I can tell it reasonably in three, and since the publishing industry seems to like that kind of thing, so be it. And I do think that this has potential to at least make it to an agent's desk and probably not make them scream or tear their hair out or anything like that.

In this tale or 'verse or what the frak ever we're calling it, everybody has a really interesting tale to tell so I sort of have to direct traffic and make sure nobody's stories get into head on collisions. Because right now it's a challenge to keep things balanced. Especially since the next story is desperate to get told and outlined as well.

Though that's understandable, because frankly, who wouldn't want to skip ahead to the part with bickering Emperors and the monkey with his four monkey daughters, and the old lady pirate admiral who thinks everyone just needs either a slap or a good shag and the duel to the death over party decorations and and excuses to slip famous lolcat sayings in under the guise of legitimate literature. Because, well, jesus christ, it's a LION!.

But at least the outline for the first part is finished. I took longer on this outline than I usually do because I think one of the problems with the Tower!Guy story was that when I did the outline for it, there were parts of the story/background that I didn't know, so all the info I didn't have got pastede_on_unyay with whatever I could come up with.

This lead to fundamental problems when it came time to explain certain logistical elements of the story.

Thus, I decided that it would be worth my while to take the time to really think out and structure the parts that I didn't immediately already have invented in my head.

As you can probably tell, I'm having a lot of fun with this story.

It'd be nice if I could have as much fun editing the Tower!Guy story, but so far it's just an exercise in, "What the frak was I thinking? I SUCK."

But no matter how much it sucks, no matter how much I'd love to give in and abandon the damn thing, I made myself a promise. It will be put in an envelope and mailed to either an agent or editor somewhere. Of course, said agent and/or editor may laugh themselves into a vegetative state over how bad it is, but still. It will at least get mailed somewhere to someone.