From the Mixed-Up Files of an Unproductive Novelist

Another week, another Tuesday.

I fear I must report that absolutely nothing happened on the writing front over the past week. No rejections, no acceptances, and no, er, editing... I don't know if I just got discouraged or if the surge of heat has made me more than usually lethargic, or what.

Actually, come to think of it, I did start writing a short story. Start being the keyword. I also finished reading two more Diana Wynne Jones books, Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet, the first two books in her Dalemark quartet; they were quite fantastic.

Oh and I cleaned my room (don't look in the closet).

And I ate a lot of watermelon.

So I guess the week wasn't a total loss.

As of last night, this message board for children's authors and illustrators is quite fantastic. A prime opportunity for lots of procrastination--I mean valuable information gleaning. :-)

And, hmm. I think that's about it. Guess I'd better get my butt in gear and GET SOMETHING DONE so I have something exciting to blog about next week.

Another Tuesday Come and Gone (well it's not gone yet, but it will be soon)

So it appears that I will be blogging on Tuesdays. At least, for as long as I remember/care/have something to write about.

Today I don't really have anything to write about. I've decided to improvise with random bits of information.

On the querying front, I've only one more rejection since last week, which brings my rejection total up to nine and leaves my queries-still-waiting-anxiously-somewhere-in-cyberspace at seven. Fascinating, I know.

On the editing front, I haven't gotten very far at all. Still trying to map out changes for Part III and being thwarted at every turn.

It's partly cloudy today. Sun is out intermittently with vastly dark dramatic clouds mostly to the north. Will it rain? Doubtful, but one can always hope.

I am still in love with the color green, in case anyone was wondering.

Haven't really been reading anything. Tragic, I know.

Yesterday I sorta tried to clean my room, which resulted in a two and a half hour bookshelf rearranging/dusting ordeal. At least my bookshelves look nice now. :-) On a side note, I have a few empty spots, which means, of course, that I need MORE BOOKS!! Excellent.

I'm starving, and should probably eat something.

I'm going to go eat something.

Update-age

Happy Tuesday, oh peoples of the blogosphere!

I've been querying agents for two weeks now, and currently have eight rejections and eight queries still out in cyberspace. Been keeping track of all these queries in the lovely, the amazing, the fantastic Scrivener (oh Scrivener, how I love thee); rejection is not quite as painful when you get to turn the corresponding index card a pretty color every time you receive one. Small pleasures. Or something.

Slowly poking away at restructuring Part III of The Fire in the Glass. Painful. Need to get back to that, as a matter of fact. Been putting it off.

Blogs I've been reading:

• Literary agents Nathan Brandsford and Jennifer Jackson have lots of fascinating (and sobering) insights into the publishing business.

• Author Shannon Hale is like the coolest person ever. Basically, I want to be her.

And that's about it. Been watching Firefly on Hulu and liking it pretty well. It's got absolutely nothing on Doctor Who, though (really, what does??).

Okay. Gonna work on some edits now.

Cloudy with a Chance of Novels

So here's a little update from Joanna-land:

I am currently querying agents for The Whale and the Tree and so far have collected me seven rejection letters. Some of them, I might add, have been very nice letters (if one ignores the obvious). Waiting to hear back from a few more queries before I send out a new batch. Soon, I'm going to run out of agents to query, and have no idea what I'm going to do then. Still, I just need one agent, right? Just one. Just one just one just one. There's gotta be one out there for me. Right? Right?? I'm not discouraged. Okay not that discouraged. I am irrepressible! I have hope! I believe in my novel, dang it! It must be let loose into the world! The world is ready! Or something. Whatever. I'll keep you posted. :-)

Also hardcore wrestling with preliminary edits for The Fire in the Glass. Way rough, man. Way rough. I've started in the middle, 'cause that's the part that sucks the most: plot holes and characterization issues galore, let me tell you!! Dang. If I actually figure out what to do in the middle, the rest ought to be a proverbial piece of cake! (I like saying proverbial. It's fun. Try it in a sentence). At any rate, I'll keep you posted on that, too.

Still on my Diana Wynne Jones kick. She rocks so much it's not even funny. And she's written like a billion books. All of them are awesome, or at least the nine that I've read so far are! Just finished the sixth book in her hilarious and captivating Chrestomanci series which I absolutely adored, and picked up a couple more of her books at the library this morning. I suspect I should spread them out a little bit, but whatever. *hearts Chrestomanci and his multifarious expensive dressing gowns*

Oh, and speaking of books... the title to the next book in Megan Whalen Turner's flawless Attolia series (begun in The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia, respectively) was announced this week as A Conspiracy of Kings. I'm way excited. Way, way excited. You don't even know. Regrettably, it doesn't come out until March, but going on how fast the year has zipped by thus far, it's not really that far away. *hearts Eugenidies and his awesome*

And that, dear readers (do I have any readers? I don't really think so. But whatever), is, as they say, that.

On Re-reading My Crazy Novel

So I just finished re-reading The Fire in the Glass, the novel I began during NaNoWriMo 2007 and finished at the end of March 2008. Haven't looked at the 209,000 word monster for a year, so definitely came into it with as fresh a perspective as I think I could possibly have.

Overall, I liked it quite a lot; the concepts, story, and characters are all fairly sound, but it's very much a rough draft and suffers from ailments big and small. Ailments ranging from overly-melodramatic prose and characters crying on every single freaking page (whoops), to plot holes, loose-ends, and middle-of-the-novel-storyline-floundering. Basically it needs some heavy duty take-no-prisoners not-for-the-faint-of-heart editing. My favorite thing (not).

Also, whilst I was reading through, I tallied up all the characters I cruelly knocked off during the course of the novel. I knew it was a lot, but man.

Death Count:

• Secondary Characters—6
• Minor Characters—7
• Specifically Mentioned Soldiers—2
• Unborn Children—2
• Group of Soldiers One—23
• Group of Soldiers Two—300 +
• Undetermined Amount of Soldiers—lots and lots
• Off-screen—7 + 1 cat
• Metaphorical Deaths—3

So that's 347 if you don't count the cat or the metaphorical, plus the Undetermined Amount.

Basically, I kill everyone.

Well. Almost. :-)

That Blogging Horse

All righty, so it's been a while. And by a while I mean like half a year. But I figured I might as well poke that old blogging horse again. Plus I'm slightly bored and feel like procrastinating from my writing projects (as usual).

So. How about a quick update about all the (not) exciting things that I've been up to since November? Glad you asked. Here ya go:

Writing Stuff:

• Finished The Silver Crane at the end of March, clocking in at 193,000 words.
• Wrote a screenplay in April for Script Frenzy that is completely cringe-worthy and I'm trying my best to forget about. Definitely not as good as last year's.
• Currently editing a short story The Painter and the Sky for a contest. Short stories are troublesome beasts. Novels are easier.
• Pondering tweaking The Whale and the Tree yet again, mostly focusing on the ending--which I fear I might have kinda messed up with my edits last year--and some minor details throughout the rest of it. Then it's off to nab me an agent!
• Musing on ideas for this year's nano novel, which I've dubbed The Last Garden and will be set in the same universe-system as Rose Queen and Fire in the Glass. Should be pretty awesome if I can coax it into some semblance of a coherent plot.

Awesome Books:

• Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (the movie, though different, is equally fantastic)
  
• A Curse Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Other Stuff

• Over the past week, I've gotten ridiculously addicted to the TV series Legend of the Seeker, which is, according to a comment I came across somewhere on the interwebs, "a guilty pleasure for Lord of the Rings fans who need their fix." Hilarious, and true.
• I'm learning to play the guitar! I've been at it a little over three weeks now, and am pleased to announce that I have callouses on the fingers of my left hand. I know three songs, and am not very good at them.

And that, ladies and gents, is that.

NaNoWiMo Update: Week 1

Okay, so Week One of National Novel Writing Month has come to a close. Where am I and how is my novel going? Glad you asked. I'll tell you. :-)

Word Count: 41,911. Yes, I know this is completely insane. But you have to keep in mind that I'm heading for 100k instead of 50k, as I am apparently incapable of telling a story in only fifty thousand words... :-P

Deaths: 3, all off-screen. Much less bloody than my last nano. So far, heh.

Characters: Kinda getting to know them now, and all the main plot threads have been introduced... I think? Nobody is really behaving like they're supposed to, as characters usually do whatever the heck they want. But you'll have that.

General Story: I'm not entirely sure I actually like my novel so far. No, that's not true. I do like it. It's just... weird. Or something. No idea. Moving along. :-)

Next up, 50k!!