Manuscript UPDATE!

Oh geez where do I begin? On August 1st, I finished my first round of edits on the manuscript!

My wife has the last pages now, and she's working on her editing for grammar, clarity, etc. etc...

Once she is done with that, I'll be printing up a copy or two and have a first reader lined up to go through it and give an opinion. I'm psyched!

I hate saying that because someone may read it just before acting as a  first reader and be afraid to give honest feedback if it's negative. But that's okay! I'm psyched because for every person who has written a first draft of a novel, there are ten that sit on their butts and say they want to write a book or novel, but never get around to doing it. By getting not only that first draft done in something like six months but also finishing a round of editing and polishing, I'm ahead of the game. This alone was an accomplishment for me!

I fully expect this to not sell. I'm going to try to shop it, and I'll be disappointed if it doesn't get accepted. But it's a first effort. First novels are hard to sell, new authors are hard to sell, and overall, the realistic picture is never good. It's hard out there! But I still came out ahead, and that's what I'm proud of.

If someone does like the story then it's icing on the cake! I actually wrote a manuscript and made it through a round of editing!

Once my wife is finished with her edits I can give a final word count...now is one of those hard times, waiting for someone else to get time set aside to finish working on it...waiting is never easy.

Update on Novel Progress

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted!

Have no fear...I haven't given up, both people who read this blog!

I'm still editing the story. I'm nearly halfway through the current incarnation of the story, and slowly making my way through a turning point.

There have been some setbacks due to personal issues in life taking up my time and energy, so things have slowed a little. But every little bit of progress is progress nonetheless. I have to keep believing that.

In other news, I submitted the opening of the story to a podcast that selected it as one of the manuscripts to review for criticism on their next release coming out this weekend.

To say I'm nervous is a bit of an understatement. The only thing keeping me from obsessing about it are the previously mentioned personal issues. I am hoping the hosts have found some positive points to the story but I know that no story is perfect and I have little doubt there is plenty that can be cleaned up.

That's a nice way of saying that while I don't expect them to love it, I hope they at least like it (or some of it) but I fully expect some need for a thick skin after I get the nerve to listen to the podcast. This was my first attempt at writing a novel-length story. People rarely do well with their first foray into a new skill, and this podcast will no doubt reinforce that lesson!

Knowing When It's Just Not Working

I recently cut about 15,000 words from my first draft. I was working on the scenes leading to the climax ending and I realized that it was getting harder and harder to make progress on the story.

I realized that the story was straying too far from plausibility, which is really saying something for a science fiction story. It was becoming a chore because I was trying to steer it back "on track", and I didn't like where it was going.

At some point I just decided that it wasn't going to work. There was no saving it, and I didn't feel like waiting until I was editing it to rewrite that whole section of work. So I chopped it off and started again, proposing a "what if?" scenario to steer the ending into a new direction.

Does this violate my rule about not editing while writing? I don't think so. I believe it's foolish to keep plodding forward on a plot that just isn't working; I'm using my enthusiasm for the story as it unfolds as a gauge to how well (or poorly) the story is going. This wasn't a matter of tweaking some wording or adding some choice adjectives. It was a matter of seeing that the storyline was going way off script, and fixing it by cutting off the bad part and starting over a from a few steps back.

Doing this threw me off a little, of course, since I'm wwinding back and forward to spare a section of story that did still fit while figuring out what details I thought I had and now don't. It would also be silly to have a character or detail reappear after never being introduced because I used my delete key overzealously.

Anyone else have to cut out large sections of a story to re-steer it into a better direction? I'd have a hard time believing it is that rare of an occurrence!

Author Yearly Income, and First Author Advances

With my other worries involved in trying to write a first novel I sometimes try to picture what would happen if I actually did sell a manuscript. What kind of windfall could I expect? Will I be able to make the bills and mortgage payment, so I could quit my day job? Or will I be able to afford that helicopter pad in the backyard? Or will I instead be lucky to afford a kiddie pool for the backyard?

It's terribly difficult to get solid numbers due to the factors that affect the amount a first time author can receive. Agents tend to get higher advances for authors (but they take a cut). Publishers sometimes only take agented queries, so you may need to acquire an agent before making it into the "big time". Genre selection affects income as well as what topics are "hot" (Probably too late to start writing that novel about a vampire fighting a werewolf for the love of Mary Sue...by the time it gets into the queue to be published, mummy romance will be the next big thing, unless you're writing about a vampire wizard fighting a werewolf wizard who-shall-not-be-named...)

Being an author today is very much a business of branding yourself. From what I can find a new author is expected to bootstrap him or herself, drumming up their own popularity and online following, touring bookstores on their own dime...following a career path in writing is very much a labor of love that unless you are a fortunate lucky stars-smile-upon-you soul who hits the mega big time is going to take a lot of hard knocks along the way.

The averages I found? A 2005 survey done online by Tobias Buckell said $5,000. I found some statistics saying that yearly income is in the $10,000 to $12,000 range.

Ouch.

This means that most likely I'm not going to hit a jackpot. It means that if I want to be successful at this "writing thing" I will need to keep trying. It means that I need to remind myself of Mur Lafferty's rules of writing and that it's okay to suck. I may even need to face the possibility that this side project won't ever amount to much and I'm pouring an hour a day or more into a project that will cost me...well, a portion of my life I won't get back.

On the other hand the same could be said of much of the TV I've absorbed in my life.

Maybe this will be a long exercise in keeping perspective.

What's My Audience?

As I write my story I sometimes stop and wonder if the story I'm telling will have appeal, or at least appeal to the audience I intended it to appeal to.

My primary goal is to sit down and get the words to the page, a little each day. Whether it's 500 words or 2,000, I need to get a little further into the story and keep the momentum up. I figure I can smooth the rough spots in rewrite/editing.

Since my primary goal is to get the story advanced a little each day I find I'm more focused on telling my story than fitting it into a specific criteria. The story is more or less, in my evaluation, a modern-day science fiction story. So...sci fi, right?

Maybe. The thing is that I worry my story is too simplistic. Too straightforward, maybe. That leads me to wonder if it isn't Young Adult sci-fi.

Which would be bad. It's pushing 70,000 words now (69,937 at the moment, give or take) and YA novels are in the 50 to 80 thousand word range. Mine will most likely be pushing 100 thousand, give or take.

So what to do? Is it even worth worrying about at this stage?

If I keep second guessing myself I think I'll stutter and lose my momentum or at a minimum lose the story that I'm trying to tell. So I figure the best thing to do is continue with the story and see if the turd at the end is something that can be polished, then worry about how to summarize and pitch and query it.

Unless someone else knows of a better way...that's my course of action. Finish story and worry later. Yeah.

(Does anyone know a good "litmus test" for a story to tell what genre and subgenre it would fit into, like whether this story will be best a sci-fi or YA sci-fi story?)

Novel Fears

I wrote already that I'm working on a draft of a novel. It's progressing...but there are fears.

I'm averaging something like 700 to 1100 words a day on the draft. Then it would need a second pass to clean it up. Then I pass it to my editor-wife who actually knows something about things like grammar and punctuation. Then probably another pass or two. Assuming that the feedback doesn't point it in the direction of the garbage can, I would probably either start an agent or publisher hunt or find an editor for hire with more experience in the field of publishing and see if they can polish it up for an affordable fee.

But there's always doubt.

I'm dedicating probably an hour and a half to two hours a day on it. It's not perfect and I don't think of myself as a professional writer (my wife asked me when I'd stop thinking that way and I said, "When someone hands me a check in exchange for the manuscript and says they'd like to see more for another check, that's when!)

I try to remain realistic. The vast majority of writers never make it through the slush piles. Many writers, including some famous ones, collect hundreds of rejections before finding the first break.

I hear horror stories like the ones in the (current as of this writing) ISBW podcast episode talking with an editor from tor.com. They say science fiction just isn't selling now...yikes! Big publishers are in trouble due to the economy (and probably because most Americans don't read)...they are hesitant to have new writers into the scene when the moneymakers are the established authors...the list goes on and on. The podcast goes on to mention that beginners writing most likely does suck, and it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill like writing. Triple yikes! It's very possible I'm laboring for something that no one will ever want and will never make any money, which is even scarier since I put off another venture in trying to program an application that might be a better money maker in the long run (although running a business is a jar of hurt unto itself, really).

So in the end I'm working rather hard on something that may never see the light of day.

I try to cheer myself up by saying, I'm not a professional writer. There's no slap to the ego or personal hit in trying this.

I see plenty of horror stories about wanna-be authors that blatantly break common sense rules in submitting manuscripts; they send horror stories to young adult-representing agents, or don't bother to follow an agent's preferences by using fancy fonts and colored paper and pretty pictures. Still others do no research on how to properly query an agent or publisher. Or they just write a first draft and send that out with hardly any attention paid to detail in spelling or grammar.

I'm not perfect in that regard; heck, this blog probably has broken most of the grammatical rules since its inception, but these are typed off the top of my head. I rarely go back and repair entries unless my wife finds something that makes her eyes bleed. I do these so far in advance that when she asks about it I usually don't remember what she's referring to.

I really wish there were statistics somewhere regarding writers and publishing for relevant information I could use to not be so anxious about this dipping of the toes into the water. Sure, 95% (making that up...probably close though...) of people trying to get published are rejected. Maybe only .05% get a fat contract that lets them quit the day job and focus on their love of writing. But how many of the 95% were writing pure crap? Or never even heard of Standard Manuscript Format?

How many fit into my spectrum of skill (or lack thereof) and still get rejected? I want to filter out the people that make the mistakes I am trying to avoid. Would it skew into my favor then?

All I can do is keep plugging away and hope for the best...

Novel Writing

I chronicled my progress on entering The Writing Show's Halloween short story contest. What I haven't really discussed was that since I entered that contest I was working on a novel.

I think writing is one of those ideal jobs for people with my mental wiring. I kind of live in my head already. I have stories to try telling. I want to work alone, without having to get stressed by other people. Unfortunately the life of an author is seldom the life of the Stephen Kings in the world. Very few authors get to make a life of their writing; most do it as a side job or labor of love. And that's the small percentage that actually get published.

I've heard that an author is someone who manages to get published despite really knowing how the odds are stacked against them.

I want to get a book published. I wondered if I could manage to defy odds and get a novel out there, maybe get someone to read it and like it.

I'm not an English major. I can't accurately dissect sentences into parts of speech. I just wanted to see if I could tell a story in a compelling way, compelling enough to sell it to someone that would hand over a decent advance and say, "Hey, kid, how about you send me another manuscript and we'll see about getting it published a year after this one?"

But I was afraid. See, something like this is best kept in your head. My head was filled with stories. Great stories. Stories that would make you tingle with delight at the valor of heroes and gape in awe at the entrance of the starship that swoops in at the last moment to the riffs of Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out For a Hero". Your head would explode from the sheer amount of awesome in my imagination.

Actually trying to get these things on paper was another story. In my head, I am successful. I am great, as a matter of fact. To actually try it...that's putting yourself out there. It's a way to perhaps validate that I'm a failure. One of the only things I thought I could do as an alternative to the stresses I currently live with in my current job would be finally acknowledged as a non-alternative.

But I still toyed with the idea. I listen to I Should Be Writing. I listen to The Writing Show. Both give inspiration for wanna-be writers. I started reading magazines aimed at writers with tips on how to create decent characters and plots and how to avoid common pitfalls in beginner's writings.

After the contest entries I sat down and started working on a story. I'm near the 25,000 word mark at the time of this writing. It will require a lot of polish and enhancement before I really show it to anyone for editing. I still have fears that it'll get to a point where if there is a decent story in the chaff, I'll get stuck at a point where it can't be fully developed or completed. Or I might sabotage myself and give it a crap ending, validating my fear that I'm not able to cut it as an author.

I desperately wish I knew what I was doing, if what I have is "right". But it's subjective. And I can't send it out to people for comments if it's not minimally reworked; one of the bad things I've read about is asking for comments from someone then telling them a week later, "Wait! I redid these parts. See if it's better with this instead!"

I could be wasting my time completely.

But for now...I'm making goals to stick to. I wanted to add at least 500 words a day to the draft. I've been pleasantly surprised to be hitting about 1,000 almost every day.

So who knows? Maybe I'll have something good with this. Maybe it'll end up thrown away. If I can polish it, then get it edited a few times, I'll try shopping it around to a few hundred agents and see if there's interest. If not then at least I finally tried. I really haven't failed until I have tried, right?