Insanity, infrequency
So, yeah, I haven’t posted in some time. Things are a little crazy. Something about the beginning of summer, afternoon storm rolling in from the west, and politicians yakking each other into irrelevance makes for a hectic path towards the year’s wind down. I blame society. That and about six deadlines.
Expect posts to be dismal for a while.
The good news is my first reader has finished the first draft extract. I didn’t have high hopes. I thought this story (as opposed to previous ones) would be a little too obtuse and too clever by half. I’m happy to report I was wrong. My first reader (bless her) engaged completely with the story and was keen to keep reading. A good sign.
My first reader is not an editor or a writer, or in any way associated with the industry. In fact it took me some time to teach her how to give feedback. We’ve come a long way from “I hate it” to “I don’t get it” to “I thought that middle section didn’t work”.
We had to meet half way and it’s a good place to get your initial feedback. Editors (or, worse, other writers) can be a little too…detailed for a rough draft. Pure readers can be too vague. But if a reader can articulate his or her thoughts and the writer trusts those ideas, then you get gold.
It’s an imperfect science, but it works for me.
Read MoreSubmission Mode
No, the new novel is not ready for submission. This is more about distraction. The last novel is ready for another hawking round and the short stories, as always, require some attention.
This is a part of the writer’s lot that doesn’t often receive much attention. Yes, you have to write, in your head and on the page. Yes you have to edit and edit and edit. But you also have to keep your eye out for publishing opportunities, prepare manuscripts for submission, and get them out to the relevant people.
It’s the kind of process that, if you hate, will probably mean your work will never see publication at all. It requires an obsessive scouring of newsletters, web site, and the Australian Writer’s Marketplace. Then, once it’s out there, you need to keep track of what’s been sent out. To make matters worse, not all publications will actually bother to contact you back with a rejection, a bitter pet hate of mine by the way.
I was using a spreadsheet to track all this coming and going, which worked okay for me for a while, first in Microsoft Excel, then in Apple’s Numbers, but more recently I’ve been using the online Writer’s Database. You can get right into it, making the database almost like an address book. I don’t bother going that far, but I do use it to track what’s out and to log all those rejections that come back.
It’s a nice way to deal with rejections. Log them, then choose the next victim immediately. Very Zen. (Note I know nothing about Zen Buddhism. The last statement just sounded good in my head.)
And I promise next post will actually be about the manuscript. Maybe.
Read MoreSynopsis Strain
Alright, so the fifty page extract is coming together. I figured it needed a bit of attention before I actually submitted it to anyone, so I’ve printed it off for a serious scribble.
I find editing on screen a little laborious. So back to the paper.
But the pressing concern right now is writing the synopsis. Synopses are hard to write. Really hard. I come from a short story writing background and I’ve always found a one-paragraph synopsis for a short relatively easy to put together. Short stories tend to have a simpler focus. In comparison, novels are a nightmare of parallel storylines and casts of thousands.
How the hell do I streamline half a dozen weirdoes and three or four competing narratives into a single, sophisticated half-pager?
Really, the answer is work. Draft after draft of clunky prose. I expect I should get something together by the end of this week. Knowing how reliable I am with the deadlines I put on this blog, it’ll more likely be in three weeks, but we’ll see.
Won’t we?
Read MoreThe Books
