a walk around the writer's block

I think I remember reading in Beginnings, Middles and Ends that there's a kind of writer's block where you just keep going back and rereading what you have, and it disappoints you or intimidates you so much that you can't find where to go from where you stopped. This is the exact problem I'm having with the new project and also with The Weight of Ice, which I reread a few days ago. Since I have more words written and a much clearer idea of where I'm going in Ice, logically it's the project I should be working on completing. But - and I swear this isn't ego - there are whole sections of it that are so, so well-written, and I'm not actually sure I can duplicate that quality for the rest of the book.

I'm having the same category but a different strain of block with the horror project - rereading it over and over and seeing that this thing needs a million years of work before it approaches good, even discounting the fact that 75% of it is unwritten. I know that I have the skill and stamina (and scissors) necessary to do this, but I keep trying to do it now instead of blazing ahead with the rest of the work and going back to edit. I know that I will edit better if I do this, because I will have more plot and more character ideas to draw on once I've gone further in the manuscript and come up with more things, but instead I'm doing things like going back and writing essentially the same contemplation for my main character twice, in two different places, to take up space. Shitty, Coldiron. Shitty.

Also, I need to come up with more stuff that will happen for the rest of the book. I have a solid 20,000 words of stuff happening, but I need another 60,000, and I'm not sure if I actually have more than another 20,000. I could pad, a lot, and I have a sort a crazy direction that I could take the book such that a third or a half of it would be completely different from the pop-horror I imagined when I started it. But I feel a little helpless (and a lot spread too thin) when I think about it. Unlike other projects, I don't have every detail of this book fixed in my mind. With Falling Leaves, I knew every single thing that had happened and every thing that was going to happen - even unto additional books - when I was writing any given paragraph. In this one I'm not even sure I know the backgrounds of some of my supporting characters, and my main character is turning out to be a bore. The range of specificity in atmospheric details is jagged as hell. My timeline of events is not working.

This book has major problems, is what I'm saying. Little voices are starting to tell me to junk it entirely and work on the projects that have fewer problems, if less promise. But I don't want to junk it. This is a good idea, and I think it'll be a good book. I just have to find a way to focus on it, and to keep putting words on the page. It's going to take more focus than I have right now just to write it, and I have no idea how I'm going to find the focus to edit and rewrite it into something cohesive, when the time comes.

Frankly, and a bit crazily, the biggest emotion I feel about all this is gratitude. I know that I will learn a lot of bare-bones stuff about being a writer from this project. I think I will literally have to cut pages up and rearrange them on the floor of my living room in order to make sense of the final draft, and that will certainly be a new experience.

Leaping Bloggers, Batman!

There's a blogger I read (whom I will not identify) who last fall decided to self-publish a book of some of her blog posts and some of her unpublished journal entries. She is a very popular blogger, likely four digits of hits every day. She apparently has a lucrative job in a field which she has not identified, but she's come to the conclusion over the years of writing her blog that writing is what she wants to do for a living. I wouldn't be surprised if her self-published book sold well enough to land her an agent or a publishing contract, but to be honest, I also wouldn't be surprised if the book was self-indulgently long and in need of an editor. (She said in one post that the edit she sent to the press for a proof was almost 500 pages.) 

She writes a lot about writing in sort of a windy way, a way that I recognize because I used to be naive about the publishing industry too. It took 10X10X10, a couple hundred rejections, and a lot of reading to realize that while I'm probably a talented writer, I am also a tiny speck in a huge, sooty machine (the publishing industry), and may or may not ever get to be one of the little cogs - much less a larger wheel. It's a lot of luck, and a lot of virtual pavement-pounding, that gets you published. Near as I can tell, this gal doesn't want to do it that way, and hasn't actually taken the time to find out how it's generally done. I think she did a perfunctory gathering of information or querying and determined she'd just self-publish and go from there. I find this extremely unwise for someone wanting to switch careers into writing. (Her fiction is apparently untried, but there's a lot about writing that she doesn't put in her blog.) 

Now, when she started on this self-publishing jaunt, she apparently got the proof of her book before Christmas and told people if they preordered she would probably be able to send the books in time to be gifts. It's March, and not only have the books not been sent, but she has only just now provided an update on the book, the first one in a few months. The people who preordered? She's offered them their money back, and she's apologized, but that's all. Her excuse is that something in her life has just been off since the early winter and she hasn't been able to meet her self-imposed deadlines for the final edit of the book. 

I totally, completely understand how offness can affect how able one is to meet one's writing responsibilities (10X10X10), but money is in the equation here, hard-earned money in some cases, and she had a LOT more people's expectations to meet (hundreds) than I did (a few dozen at the very most). Also, she has expressed such enthusiasm, such firm intention, to make a career out of writing. If she can't meet her own self-publishing deadlines, how can she possibly expect to meet the professional deadlines of an editor? Her fans write in the comments sections to lay off her, because after all she works 40 hours a week and tries to have a life, too, but this is how writers generally live, and they are still required to meet their responsibilities. The whole episode smells of dabbling to me, and of leaping before she looked. 

Part of me thinks that I'm jealous of her, of the kind of audience that can make a self-publishing venture actually viable, and of the determination she's shown in the face of a lot of psychological pressure to continue with her mainstream, non-writing career. Probably I am. But the reason that I'm insisting this bothers me, that she's in over her head and always has been and is still failing to realize or admit it, is nevertheless a valid reason. 

being your own agent?

I've been reading a lot of stuff on the web about getting an agent. Particularly Nathan Bransford's extremely informative blog and some stuff that Neil Gaiman's blog linked to on this page. What I've been reading is largely depressing, giving me a well-I-should-just-give-up-now-and-save-myself-the-time feeling, but it bothers me for another, less concrete, probably ill-informed reason.

Most of the articles/blogs/sites I've read talk about informing yourself not only on the agent, but on the entire publishing industry. Learn all you can, go to publishing events, read Publishers Weekly, etc. That way you will be speaking the agent's language when you query them, and you have a better chance of success.

The thing is, part of the reason I want to get an agent is that I don't want to have to learn all this stuff. The ins and outs of the publishing industry, I feel, should be the purview of the publishers and the agents, not the writers. Writers write, publishers publish, and agents communicate between the two. Right? When you start learning enough about the publishing industry to be able to talk agent talk, why would you even bother getting an agent in the first place?

I know I sound a little like a writer who wants to stay wholly in her garret and only comes out after sundown for virgin blood and deadly nightshade, but the shift towards writers making themselves marketable is one that I don't like for both personal and general reasons. Personal: I am not good at making myself marketable. General: that is what agents and publicists are for. It's what they're good at. Making me learn about the publishing industry takes away from what I'm good at, namely writing. I will do interviews, I will write blog posts, I will do whatever kind of marketing I'm asked to do, but asking me to read Publisher's Weekly and come up with my own marketing plan seems redundant to the process of getting an agent.

I realize that the industry is what it is, and that if I want to be published I should just follow the new rules, but that won't stop me from declaring these rules unfair.

flying blind

Oh, man. I am IN the ZONE. 15,000 words written, and the first death is behind me. I'm starting to run into all kinds of problems, though - I like my main character a whole lot less than her best friend (whom I have to kill off), I seem to be writing mostly dialogue and can't figure out how and where to have breaks for exposition and explanation, I think I'm going to end up cutting wide swaths out of what I'm writing now and having to rewrite (I've always been a lazy editor, so I'm not looking forward to this), and the organization of the book is starting to look pretty lopsided instead of methodical. I'm just barreling ahead, though, treating it a little like NaNoWriMo and figuring that I can always rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite again, once I have a (terrible) draft. 

I'm running into the same feeling I had when I wrote the SF novella, though - that I am in territory that is too foreign for me to feel comfortable and/or write well. I've read and watched plenty of horror, but I've only written a couple of little things in the genre, and I don't know if what I'm doing is right at all. I'm flying on instinct, all my windows dark and my instruments unreadable. It's worrisome, especially since I have no idea if I'm in fact wasting my time and this thing is going to turn out very badly. 

It's really consuming me, though, this book. It's most of what I'm thinking about. I've written every night for the last week and day, and I even wrote during work during a slow time yesterday. 

I keep getting the nagging feeling that I ought to look at Those Ghosts of Time again, and try to set my red pen to it, but it's such a discouraging prospect. I like its length exactly as it is, but it's only 45,000 words and that's on the (very) short side for a novel these days. I feel like I'd be overinflating it if I tried to make it any longer.

Incidentally, it seems like shorter novels would be all the rage these days, since the attention span of our culture is the size of a postage stamp. But at this time, the more pages you can stuff into a paperback the better. I find this weird. Bigger profit margin for longer books, maybe? 

the beginnings of discipline

No agenty nibbles at my book yet. I am not stupid and I realize that getting an agent/getting published is very hard, and that the odds are vastly against me, but I'm also wondering why what seems to me to be a profitable idea isn't even meriting an email saying "no thanks". I guess I underestimated the selling power of incest. 

The horror book is going well. It's making me crazy not to spill all the details of the plot and where I'm going with it, either here or on my anonymous blog, because I'm pretty excited about the idea and have no one to talk to about it. But my good sense is telling me to keep it to myself. The news is really that I've managed to go home, sit in front of my computer, and write for 45 minutes-an hour for FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS NOW. I know this is not much of a trend, but considering that I've never ever been disciplined about writing in my time off, I'm pleased with myself. If I can keep this up, and write half a chapter (or more) every day, it should only be a few months until I have a first draft. I'm 7500 words in and the first death is about to happen. 

The best thing about writing this book so far is that it's amusing me. I remember feeling this way when I was writing Falling Leaves, too. I knew I was writing commercial fiction, and that I didn't have to suck in my stomach and fit into the uncomfortable prom dress that is literary fiction, and that all I had to do was keep writing and have fun. I'm delighted by the fact that part of the source of the horror really is located under the stairs of the lodge. That when one of the characters dies, there will be one fewer place set at the table, because the Caretaker KNEW it was going to happen! Woooo! Spooky! That it's a bunch of under-30 people hanging out in a weird old lodge in the woods and there's no way to leave. (The nearest town is Cliche City, and it's too far to walk.) It's just a blast to be able to make this stuff up. Last night when I was finished, Matt asked how far I'd gotten, and I told him that "in the next section, Jenna's going to have an appointment...WITH DEATH!" and we laughed. 

I have another idea cooking which may be a more sensible one, as it's not fiction and its characteristics are very hip right now. I haven't set aside any time to work on it as of yet, because in truth I haven't gotten the shape of the thing laid out in my mind. I just have a first chapter, tens of thousands of already-written words to draw from, and an idea of what the purpose of the thing is. I don't have a skeleton, or anything but the broadest of themes. 

It's troubling to have ideas in so many different places. It makes me feel that I'll never really have a career, or that if I do, I'll have too many different kinds of things published to have consistent readers (or an agent who will be at all happy to have me as a client). Right now I have a finished V.C. Andrews novel, a coming-along-nicely horror novel, a finished-but-useless sci-fi novella, a still-needs-editing literary-esque ghost-story novel, an I'll-finish-it-someday literary speculative novel, and two memoirs (one in the can and one cooking). Along with firm ideas for an obscenely literary novel regarding religion and perception and a novel about Marilyn Monroe. And a bunch of short stories that are as scattered in their genre as what I've just listed. 

In my non-writing life I'm a dilettante, too. It's equally difficult to fit into a square hole there. 

IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!

Well, sort of. The "it" is my brain - my writing brain - because I HAVE AN IDEA. Not just any idea, but a fairly good idea for a horror novel. Finally all those years of King and Craven are starting to pay off. 

Unfortunately, the idea didn't arrive in my head fully fleshed out the way they usually do, so I have to do a bunch of the kind of writerly work I never, ever do - character sketches and outlines and the like. It's only been a couple of days, but I've been plodding through these exercises hoping that something would come to me that would inspire me more than the original idea. (The original idea is for my antagonist, and her situation, and virtually no other information about the story arrived in my head at the same time as this.) Finally, today, I was longhand-writing some brainstorming, bored by my own conceptions, and a little 5-watt lightbulb went off about my main character and suddenly the gates were open again. Sub-ideas came that I was sure were right for the project. Character traits appeared out of nowhere. I still have no idea what's going to happen in the book, but I no longer think that getting started on the project is impossible. 

By the way, I know I barely post here, and I don't expect that to change for several more months yet. I'm trying to finish my paralegal education, which has taken up nearly all my mental space since January 2008. It's only having this month off from school which has made my writing gears stop squeaking and rusting together. If anything happens with this idea, or with my book (which I'm planning to send to one agent after another this year), I will absolutely post it here. 

So you want to know what the idea actually is? Well, I'm not telling. I can tell you that it involves the bunch-of-young-people-in-a-big-spooky-house schtick, but what the bloodthirsty thing under the stairs is...that will have to remain my property only for now. 

more apologies, but no promises

I know that I haven't written in a long, long time. Those of you who know me IRL, I apologize for the lack of updates. In March I took up blogging anonymously at another site, because a blog that was only about one topic - writing - was too damn restrictive for me, and the knowledge that someone Googling me could turn up words that might not be so good for them to read was unpleasant. That blog has turned into something I really enjoy.

Also, I hadn't had much news on the writing front except more and more rejections. And I had pretty much stopped writing when I had free time. So rather than pervert the blog into one that wasn't about writing, I stopped.

Now I do have some news about writing. In the future, every time I get news, even if months and months go by, I will try to update.

First: I published the last two issues of 10X10X10. It took me far too long and far too much self-flagellation for me to do it, but I did it. The mag is now closed, and with it all my regrets about how badly I failed at it.

Second: A terrific review of my story "Fucked", as it appeared in Front&Centre, has popped up on a Canadian website. I am incredibly pleased and a little humbled at the compliments I was given in this article.

Third: Speaking of "Fucked", it was accepted for the "Born in the 1980's" issue of Route magazine, which is a UK publication that I think will come out in October 2008. I am pleased about this too. A picture of me and my new haircut will also appear.

Fourth: My story "Marooned" was accepted for publication in JMWW's summer issue. I am particularly pleased about this because a) the publication is local (Maryland) and b) they do print copies of that year's online issues after the end of the year. That makes three print publications.

At the moment, I'm not writing, although I'm trying to keep my long-percolating ideas open to catching whatever the world wants to throw at them. I'm also going to try submitting in a sort of every-now-and-then fashion, rather than pushing and pushing at it with several submissions a week. I can't afford the time to do that, and it wasn't getting me anywhere, and I hated all the waiting I was doing. If I can wait and try to pick markets that I think are really right for the story and vice versa, I think I will do better. In this spirit, I've sent "Gone to Earth" to Weird Tales (it's taken me this long to get up the guts to submit to them), "The Yellow Man" to Realms of Fantasy (not a chance), "Loss and Gain" to NecessaryFiction (no idea), and "Suicide" to Contrary (who knows - I'm not even clear on whether I like that story, much less whether it's any good).

I told Matt that I'm thinking about trying to get Those Ghosts in shape to send out to agents or publishers, and that I really, really want to get Falling Leaves in the hands of an agent or two, but despite the return of some of my confidence, I still don't know if I'm ready. Those Ghosts really makes me nervous, because I'm just not sure if it's actually good, or if I've just invested so much in it that I'm seeing things in it that aren't there.

I will be finished with my paralegal certificate in May 2009. After that I'm considering another kind of training that will take up many of my weekends, but if I don't do that I might go back to writing. I'm just not sure what's going to happen in the next two years. It all seems hazy and full of promise.

(Moderate) success

This weekend I did indeed get through my inbox at 10X10X10, with a couple of exceptions, and I put together five of the ten pages I'm going to need for the next issue. Yes! This is not 100% success, but it's a huge step forward compared to how poorly I have been working. I posted the announcement on the 10X10X10 website that I'm going to close the mag, and half the emails in my inbox the next day were saying how sorry they were.

I sent an erotica story to an erotica market, and I have a glimmer of an idea how I can get AE published, but I don't really have any other news. I'm aching to write, I miss it.

Appearance/disappearance

Hello again. I know it's been a while.

I read the Snowblog every day, sometimes a couple of times a day, and I communicate with the Snowbookers quite often because they're friendly and smart. I finally decided to submit something to the Snowcase, an innovation of Emma's that I think is quite good. Mine is #37 (thirty-seven!? in a row?) and it's a few hundred words of AE. Enjoy.

Still haven't written. Still getting rejections.

I've decided to shut down 10X10X10 at the end of the year. If anyone waiting for a response from me is reading this, please accept my humble apologies, but I seem to have had a psychological block against logging in to that email account for the past several weeks. I feel like a jerk. Please forgive me.

Before 2007 wanes into 2008, I will publish one issue, send acceptance or rejection notices to everybody in my inbox, and possibly publish another issue depending on how much good stuff is in my inbox (likely none). Part of the reason I'm shutting down is a simple lack of viable submissions; no one really took notice of the mag, except mostly writers as desperate as me, and that desperation comes with varying levels of talent. Another part is that I wasn't cut out to be an editor for long; I'm too irresponsible, too incautious with the writer's feelings, and too ADD in my desires to dedicate myself to one thing or another. Still another part is the fact that I'm starting a paralegal program in the spring and will still be working full-time, and there just won't be any time for a flagging e-mag in my life. If I had had a partner to work with me on the project it might have lasted longer, so we could induce each other to read the submissions when one of us wasn't feeling up to it, but that was not to be. I got what I wanted out of the project--seeing what a year's crop of submissions looks like--but that is a bitter compensation, since the mag was intended to be of service to writers, not just to me.

I can't help adding this to my long, long mental list of embarrassing failures in my personal, professional, and writing lives. Likely no one on earth remembers 3/4 of these failures except me, but nevertheless, the flagellation continues. (That sounds like a sequel to a themed horror flick, doesn't it? Monastery of Death 2: The Flagellation Continues.)

I hope this weekend I will get down to business on the abovementioned embarrassment, but if I don't, I hope I will get down to business on Those Ghosts. There's a publisher, Spinster's Ink, which I think would be pretty good for it, and they accept manuscripts in the length range that Those Ghosts is. I really want to get that work ready for public eyes.

I'm also turning over some essay ideas in my head, and turning over the idea of seeing if I have enough essays for a book (the likely answer is no, not a chance, not for another few years, as all my essays are short). I found another publisher that I think I might try for my essays, collected. It seems too dignified for my musings but we'll see.

Again, 10X10X10 authors, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I really, truly hate myself for making you wait as long as I have.

Antibodies...exhausted

I'm sick at home for the second day in a row. It burns me to miss more than a day of work at a time, and although I went in this morning to see if there was anything urgent (there wasn't) I still feel like everyone else is sneering behind my back: "Oh, she's not really sick." I have no evidence that my co-workers have any emotions other than friendliness and affability toward me, but I feel that way every time I get sick, at every job I've ever had.

Rejection from the Route people for Eleven Memories. That's really fine with me; it was a last-minute thing to submit it. Maybe I should've submitted Filial Love instead, but I really did think that other market was going to take it. I'm still hoping for Fucked to get accepted.

A flurry of sending things out, as well. 11 submissions during the last week of September. Whoo! Godspeed, all you little darlings. I also reread a bunch of my work yesterday, and I certainly had on gray-colored glasses whilst browsing. Everything seemed mediocre and flat. I hope it's the sickness clouding me up, instead of the sickness clarifying me--it would be awful if my writing really was mediocre and flat. I hope I can get back on the horse sometime soon, but right now getting dressed is a chore, so stay tuned.