Publishing Chronicles: Let's Try This Again

I don't even know what that potato thing was the other week. At any rate, I'm conveniently back now.

Time for a query process update. The agencies I queried back at the beginning of February asked those who submitted to them to wait 6-8 weeks for response, and the 8th week concluded just last week.

I wish I had news to cheerily report - even news of so much as acknowledgment through rejection, but alas, I do not. It could be that my letter needs some more work - I'm not even sure how I'd revise it at this point, but I may give that a shot if I don't get any response from this next set. It could be that the premise itself didn't sound interesting enough or particularly appeal to the two agents I started with. It could be that the first ten pages weren't enough to hook them. It could even be that they never finished the letter and tossed it quickly, or that they haven't even gotten to it yet. There's really any number of possible reasons, but the fact remains that the first query set's response waiting period is over.

It's disappointing that my first query efforts turned out this way, but then, being completely new to this part of the process and only having queried two agents to start with, going without response is probably to be expected. It would've been unrealistic to expect anything more. And it's probably unrealistic for me to expect anything out of these next four queries that I just sent out. But it's all part of the process. Going ignored, getting silently rejected, continuing to wait - these are undoubtedly important experiences to have as a writer.

No part of this process is easy, and it probably wouldn't be rewarding if any part was. It's time to press onward and now begin the waiting period for the second query set. After consulting a calendar, going by a regular 8-week or so waiting period, I should be able to get five or so sets of queries out this year. It'd be amazing to find representation within the year, but to assume I'll achieve that would be overconfident if not borderline hubristic. At this point, so much as a rejection response, some comments, or any kind of acknowledgment from an individual agent would be a victory of sorts. So in the least, while I wait, babble here, write short stories, work on my second novel, and enter more contests over the course of the year, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed on that much.

Before my third query set goes out in early June, I'm going to need to do some more research and find some more agents taking unsolicited queries who might be interested in the sort of thing I write. It can be hard to know who would give your work a shot, as a literary fiction writer. Crossing genres while not becoming genre fiction is a literary fiction staple, but it's hard to know what to think when agents express an interest in literary fiction and perhaps one or two of the following genres - fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries - but aren't interested in one or two of the others. Any kind of issues of preference could get something as complex and comparatively off the pigeonholed, beaten-path territory of genre fiction could sink a literary novel pitch. Literary fiction driven by some surrealistic elements of the fantastic is pretty much my thing, after all, with some mystery and science fiction elements in past and future projects. All of them are character-driven, however, keeping well within the realm of literary fiction at heart. I'm not exactly writing mainstream fiction, and I'm continuously trying to challenge myself to write stories that feel unusual and fresh - at least to me.

While my second novel that I'm currently working on - Project Princess - is probably more marketable than Project 27 Days, I have some concerns with how it would be received as well. Particularly over whether my eventual agent or a publisher might mistake it for fantasy genre fiction despite its focus being squarely on the characters rather than "the quest," a key divide between literary and fantasy genre fiction. In that way, it's not unlike how the Battlestar Galactica reimagining was written and largely treated as a character drama that happened to be set in space, and purposefully avoided numerous sci-fi cliches to be an edgy, fresh space opera that drew a lot of viewers who normally wouldn't go near a show like that.

I'm sure that narrative structure can be an alienating factor as well. Project 27 Days plays out as sort of a slice of life, taking the reader through the protagonist's thoughts, conversations, and experiences each day from dreaming to waking and struggling to sleep each night. I feel that it works well, as it was an important part of the novel's conception - that the reader have these full, day-to-day experiences with the protagonist. And I'm sure there's an audience out there that would appreciate it. Finding an agent willing to represent it - and me - and a publisher willing to back it, however, could possibly end up being a challenge. Project Princess has a somewhat more traditional structure as a novel, but "present action" chapters are also intercut by chapters of somewhat shorter length in which the protagonist discusses bits of the fantasy world's history, mythology, and the clash between history records and myths that makes it very difficult to determine which parts of their celebrated history are real and which are fiction. Though it's just conjecture on my part, I'm concerned that this could drive off as many people as it might draw in. It's part of my continued exploration of the concept of setting as character, which plays a major role in Project 27 Days through its surreal, small scale train setting. There's going to be at least some of that in my third novel down the line too - which is going to be much more of a comedy. (By which readers will continue to glean just how weird I am - as though everything else I write doesn't express that enough - and that I'm also a Judd Apatow fan.) Something to have some light, albeit crude fun with - still backed by my usual focus on strong literary character writing - as a bit of a mental and emotional palate cleanser. Project Princess is easily my darkest work to date with only a little humor here and there, so by the time I'm done with it, I'm going to need to write a comedy, and I've been working on this particular comedy novel conceptually since all the way back in autumn of 2004.

Getting back to the aforementioned note of contests, I also entered one of NPR's three-minute fiction contests back at the end of February. Competition's much stiffer when organizations like NPR are involved, and as you can imagine, I didn't win and probably didn't even come close to having my story deemed one of the notable entries. But as you know by now, dear readers, I'm kind of an eccentric writer to begin with. I may have gotten disqualified early on for some mild drug references, too - the protagonist of the story was a bit of a junkie, and there were a few references to his dealing. I can't say I'd be surprised if they were very sensitive about potentially broadcasting that sort of content, even if it was as mild as it was. You had to look at the picture they provided and write what came to you - the protagonist of this story just happened to be a junkie leading a fairly sad existence. It can't be helped if that's what sometimes comes out.

Oh Seriously, You're Gonna Make Mistakes, You're Young

What's that, I finally realized  there was a new post editor I could upgrade to on blogger? Why did it take me this long Astonishing!

From this post onward, I'll be using more of the features more easily accessible through the new post editor for some pretty sweet new formatting elements. Plus, I'm planning on renovating and overhauling this blog this year. It's 2010. I think it's time. You may have noticed the slight change to the main title - though I don't have a novel on shelves yet, I am technically published; a step beyond merely 'aspiring.'

And look at this, easy jump breaks! Now I can post without clogging the entire front page of the blog up with massive text-walls! (You have to click the post to get to the rest of the wall.)

Now, let's take a look at a variety of goals I'm setting in 2010 for this blog, for myself professionally, and personally. I've been saying "This is gonna be a big year!" every year since I launched Spiral Reverie back in 2007. Granted, each of these years have had their own "big" moments to qualify them as such. But as a professional writer, I'm especially set on 2010 being a big step forward into that "real world" I always hear people talking about. (That doesn't really exist, you know - it's just how people rationalize their misery in adulthood.)

Publishing Chronicles: Taking the Plunge

Here I am again, sitting in front of my keyboard and monitor, typing yet another redundant opening statement for a blog post. The same kind of statement I open almost every blog entry with. Is it laziness that drives me to reiterate the same opening statements each time, or am I trying to welcome the reader to each blog post with something comfortable and familiar? Something personal, perhaps. Maybe it's a little from column A and column B mashed together with a healthy dose of nitro-glycerin. I could just as well start each post with a random assertion that may or may not be true. Chocolate milk is the best kind of milk! Motion is only a state of mind, you're merely moving the rest of the world around yourself through intense delusion! The Teapot Dome Scandal has the best name of any political scandal in human history! FACTS!

I could do these things. But for some reason, I'm not.

What I am doing with this post, however, is kicking off what I'm hoping will make for an interesting ongoing post series up until I am finally published. I'm sure many - somehow - of the few of you regularly taking the time out of your busy daily schedules to read this have asked yourself this question many a time and yet opted not to pose the very question to me: "If you're some kinda aspiring author, why don't you spend more time talking about writerly things in this blog?" First of all, I am a multifaceted human being (Pretend I sound shockingly angry when I say that). Second, as a writer who's only been published once through a relatively small contest in a new literary publication, I feel like I lack the experience and authority as a writer to discuss the literary and publishing world on a professional level at this point. This is something I am changing this year - fact. Whatever it takes. And third, as a result of point two and the very gradual and meticulous process that is writing a novel in the first place, I've often felt that I don't have too much to write about as a writer just yet. And hey, let's bust out some platitudes while we're at it and take note of that whole variety being the spice of life thing. (Those who have claimed it's paprika are liars working as paprika industry sleeper cells. There are more of them than you might suspect.)

So to you, dear readers, I today present to you the first part in my latest post series of indeterminate links: Publishing Chronicles.

Naturally, while I am blogging about my experiences with the process, I've every intention of approaching this in an entirely professional manner. This entails, of course, that I will not be disclosing which agencies or specific agents I'm contacting, nor is this going to simply turn into an "I can't believe they rejected me!" bitchfest where I post rejection emails and tear them apart verbally. I've read that apparently some aspiring writers have thought that this was a good idea - you would think that common sense would make it clear that this is not the case. But then, many people do seem to lack basic common sense. And I'm not keen on writing anything about my adventures in hunting for an agent and publisher that could backfire on me professionally. As absurd and obviously unprofessional as most of my blog-writing is - and intentionally so, that's what blogging's about, after all  (That and ME ME ME ME ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME ARE YA LOOKING YET) - I intend to use my more serious writing about this aspect of my life and pursuit of a lifelong writing career as further practice, in a sense, at working within my newly-developing consciousness of professional courtesy and conduct within the publishing industry itself. While I am obviously one to celebrate the rough-around-the-edges, this is an opportunity to flesh out my more professional side in regard to my own career. (And it feels kind of strange saying that and looking at it in these terms, having that sort of bohemian drifter/freeloader personality when it comes to my aspirations, but this is part of what it means to become a writer - to devote one's life to storytelling and the refinement of one's craft. I've got to start exploiting what few connections I have soon and work on making more - hopefully through this query process - as well as really try to learn more about literary marketing and how to properly market myself and my work. I'm more or less at a loss as to where to begin on that as the huge introvert I am, so I've obviously got my work cut out for me.)

All that said, 99% of the above was written back around October 20th. The joy of but one of my numerous upcoming blog posts initially begun days/weeks/months ago. It's just after 1 PM on the 1st of February now, and the plunge is taken - I just sent off my first two query letters minutes ago. I don't have anything else to add to the rest of my babbling above, though the statements made there all remain true. Look forward to more writing and publishing posts from me this year. It's time to get professional. Aww yeah.

(Some really massive posts coming soon again, also - just the way you like them: so substantive most readers immediately turn and run for the hills.)

The Next Step: Querying Quandaries

So, I'm continuing this whole more consistent blog updating thing. (Or so I claim, considering that the first part of this post dropped over two weeks ago now.) Since I finished Project 27 Days' final set of edits - at least before an agent tells me what else needs refining, and in order for that to happen, I first need an agent - I still get the daily writing itch without the constant novel/revision work. (This is probably a good thing for me to have developed as a writer-person. It would be worrisome if I weren't addicted to the whole constantly gushing words thing. Which is also funny because in real life, I constantly stumble over everything I say and am not so great at the whole speaking thing. My vocal cords and I have a hot-and-cold relationship. Someday we're going to split up completely and none will be the wiser.) So hey, what better way to scratch the writing itch than through more of this regular self-expression thing? I probably need to overhaul this blog's overall appearance is, and ideally keep producing readable enough content to see if I can drag some more people here. (LOOK, I DON'T MAKE THE RULES, YOU EITHER READ THE WORDS OR I CAVE IN THE BACK OF YOUR SKULL I DON'T LIKE THIS ANY MORE THAN YOU DO I'M NOT A VIOLENT PERSON) I don't know where that came from.

Besides, I did kinda say at the end of the last post that I was dividing it in half as so to write something readable in length. So here we are, at part two of my outpouring of querying/publishing anxiety. You guys like anxiety, right? It is 95.2% of the human experience, you know.

One of the hardest parts of facing the publishing process is second-guessing myself. Every time I read advice columns in The Writer magazine, which I've been reading for over a year now, I wonder if they'd think such and such terrible things they write not to do about my work. I start self-criticizing in excess, and then I want to go back and spend another couple of years rewriting and revising. Not being "good enough" is a constant worry of mine (A general hangup in life, probably.), and the more I read, the more I end up feeling like there's some insane, arbitrary standards - both abstract and subjective - that I'm expected to meet and realistically can't for everybody. All the while, I'd probably make the book longer if I went back, and in terms of word count, it's apparently "too long" by most genre length standards - something I'm hoping can be forgiven in being both a story in a fantastical setting and a work of literary fiction. Given the costs of printing longer novels, it can be harder to push them for most agents and publishers, especially as a first-time author - another big hurdle ahead.

To elaborate on not being "good enough" - it's my biggest fear in beginning this next phase, now: that I'll get a bunch of people to read sample chapters or the manuscript and they'll all completely hate it and tell me to either spend another year or two completely rewriting it or basically just say that it isn't good enough in any sense to be worth even considering. That no agent or publisher would have any faith in the story for what it is and want me to transform it into something that loses the thematic core of the original story. To essentially have one's story and novel taken away and demanded that you twist it into something an agent or editor or a particular individual at a publisher wants rather than the story that it is is pretty much any author's worst nightmare. And in such situations, your only other alternative could end up being to simply give up and write off several years as wasted, never getting to release the story or accomplish anything with it. There's a reason this phase of the process is known as being one of the most soul-crushing - you've worked incredibly hard and poured your heart and soul into something, but if everyone else rejects it and you don't stand a chance of actually accomplishing anything with it, it can hollow you out inside and take you to your lowest lows. Those of us who live to write can be completely deflated and destroyed in time if our passions amount to nothing but failure, after all. And the failing/failed writer who lives for the storytelling but ends up driven to serious substance abuse and young death isn't exactly a romantic cliche so much as something that has happened to some of the best writers the world's ever known. (Hell, they only just recently gave Edgar Allan Poe a more befitting funeral after he died miserably in squalor, his life uncelebrated while he lived.) And a recent story on the student newspaper for the University of Montana - where my younger brother's a pretty big fish in the system - mentioned that on average, UM Creative Writing MFA students tend to get their first books published at an average of ten years after graduation. So on one hand, this does make it clear that it probably wasn't such a big deal in the end that UMass Amherst rejected me earlier this year (Though I'm still utterly lost as to what half of that attempt represented - getting out of the south, as I absolutely need to if I'm going to have any shot at not being completely miserable in life.), but on the other, it's another discouraging smack to the face that reminds that - especially with everything else I'm trying to express with this first novel - odds of finding representation and getting this book published within the next decade are incredibly soul-crushingly low. (The solution? Obviously, not to end up like these average authors. I have no interest in being the average aspiring author, even if not very many people are aware of my existence and writing at this point. Though, granted, every aspiring author thinks this way. I just have to be one of the ones that doesn't fail.) Enough to make one feel incredibly discouraged and pessimistic about one's path in life - not that my intuition hasn't spent enough time telling me I'm going to die alone in the gutter at some point anyway. (Take note: my intuition hates me.)

At this point, I'm still figuring out how to best narrow down agents to send queries to, and I'd like to - ideally - send two or three queries out by sometime in November. (This whole process is taking longer than I expected, but this is nothing new. Everything is incredibly complex in the writing/publishing world - especially just trying to get your foot in the door so that you may someday have a shot at getting a paycheck for your writing. Ideally enough to build a life on. Your options are to roll with the punches or crumple. I've been doing the former consistently so far, hard to say if I'll ever succumb to the latter. I've likely got a lot of hell ahead that I can't even begin to convey at this point. It's pretty depressing to think about, really.) The query-writing process itself makes me quite anxious for several reasons. First off, I've never really liked formalities - any kind of human interaction dripping with artifice and inauthenticity makes my skin crawl. I much prefer to communicate casually and informally if I communicate with people at all - something obviously reflected in my writing style here, and something that has irked people in real life before.

Second, as an introvert, reaching out to and contacting other people has never been my forte. As such, when I do talk to other people I don't know, I'm extremely self-conscious and feel almost overwhemingly clumsy, however I express myself. Forcing a layer of formality onto these communications only makes things clumsier, I feel. And I've never actually been professionally employed and worked a paying job before, so interacting with others on a more professional level is entirely new terrain for me. Even more clumsiness, and so, additional anxiety.

Then, third, we come to the substance of the query letter itself. It seems apparent enough from the focus on formula in guides I've read on writing query letters that there's an exact precision on top of that formality expected by agents - and after reading quite a few blogs and #queryfail talk amongst literary agents on Twitter, it seems that at least one of two things is apparent. Either most people querying agents are going in with literally no idea what they're doing, flailing about with exactly the kind of clumsiness I'm set on trying to avoid - seeing as I want to actually get an agent, learn, and make it in this crazy literary world - or given the volume of queries they regularly receive, most agents are rather unforgiving of query letters that fail to deliver something and someone appealing with the very precision and exact information they demand. (And even then, there's still the question of whether or not you and what you write will fit in well with that particular agent's clientele.) That's a lot of pressure. (Yes, this statement is about as obvious as being run over by a bus.)

Not being a confident person by nature - leaning far more toward the neurotic - it's hard to do anything but second-guess myself and everything that goes into years of work (Even when the work itself feels done right to me.) when reading articles like this. I constantly ask myself, "Am I doing anything wrong here?" while writing, and feel like I can only dread agents and publishers telling me at some point that I'm doing everything wrong. I've read that I'm supposed to sell myself to potential agents on why I'm qualified to write a novel. This is something that strikes me as especially difficult. I don't have the education or degrees that say, "Hey, this guy's an English language expert and master storyteller!" I only took a couple of creative writing classes in college, while I focused my education elsewhere - on cultural and historical elements that appear in my novels in ways that you likely wouldn't see from people who haven't invested a lot of time in studying East Asia and Japan in particular. (Though I learned the importance of self criticism and second guessing after sitting through numerous tense workshops in one course, where people pretty much tore each other's work apart.) And I've only had one short story published after winning a contest back in summer '08. And on top of that, I've known since I first tried writing my own stories back in 4th grade that my calling was writing fiction. But somehow I doubt these things would impress any potential agent, with as many queries as they get on a regular basis.

In my head, I can only picture agents as wanting someone with actual credentials that say, "You want qualifications? All these English degrees guarantee absolute language proficiency and grammatical perfection! I DEFY YOU TO FIND A SINGLE DANGLING PARTICIPLE!" followed by a much better established publishing track record - "You want passion? This person's been entering and winning contests and finding publishing in smaller publications ever since they were a teenager! THEIR WORDS EXUDE PASSION SO INTENSE IT CAN GIVE YOU THIRD DEGREE BURNS IF YOU DON'T EXERCISE PROPER CAUTION!" And it's hard to compete with how many people like that there likely are out there, as this guy out of nowhere: "Hey, I haven't been published or recognized much, but I've been writing my whole life and pursuing all sorts of intellectual interests that enric- what, stop talking? Okay, uh, I'll shut up. Sorry to bother you." As a writer, I don't really have much that's concrete to boast about or show off by which to sell myself, and from most agents' perspectives, it probably would look like I was coming out of left field and trying to break into a world that I can't already outright prove my qualifications for by the merit of past accomplishments. (Kind of like how many workplaces refuse to hire you without experience, and won't even if you have experience if it isn't relevant, as most low skill/minimum wage jobs aren't. And they won't give you a shot at gaining experience, sticking the applicant in a real rough spot. You can't get hired if you don't have experience, but you can't get experience if no one's willing to take a chance with you.) I probably look like much more like a risk to shy away from than a "sure thing" author who's already more than proven themselves to the world.

So much of what magazines and advice books seem to do is lay down the beaten path as clearly as possible, though warning that there's no guarantee of anything if you follow it, and that any advice they have may or may not amount to anything too valuable after a certain point - there's so much that's subjective about writing (Especially fiction) and getting your writing recognized and published that's entirely subjective that you cannot objectively say much with absolute certainty. For me, the beaten path has never really appealed - or worked out too well. When I try to follow the beaten path rigidly, my efforts have an established track record of failure. My intuition tells me that attempting to rigidly take the beaten path in drawing the interest of agents will only end in failure since it's not an organic or natural process for me, but I'm not entirely sure how exactly to take my own path on query letter writing without just ending up #queryfail fodder on Twitter.

In the least, I've found some guides that simplify the query letter process some instead of spending 3-5 pages psyching the reader out about the volumes you're expected to be able to say across a few handfuls of sentences splattered across a single page. All I can really do is try to develop the fullest understanding of what it is that will get an agent to take your letter seriously and write my letters my own way.

It doesn't help that another writer friend I was talking to a couple of weeks back had been increasingly discouraging about how unlikely it is to ever make anything resembling a living on one's writing as well (The funk this put me into is part of the reason for the long gap between the last post and this one.), when I'm essentially unemployable at my age, no matter how you look at my resume. It doesn't exactly put me in an optimistic frame of mind about my future in any regard. Times like this remind me why it's a good thing that I don't drink.

Still, just a few weeks back now, I also had the pleasure of attending a Sarah Vowell reading of The Wordy Shipmates, and spoke to her briefly while getting a signed copy. It was only for a minute, but I mentioned that I was a writer myself and that I was beginning my hunt for an agent then, and she congratulated me on having finished the writing. I have no idea how many exchanges like that she and who knows how many other writers have had with aspiring authors who may or may not ever make anything of themselves, but in the least, it felt like a sort of validating moment, in having a really great author acknowledge my existence - even on some small level as a fellow writer - like that. I'm socially awkward enough around people I don't know, but I stumble even more when I'm starstruck, having met Vowell and had the opportunity to personally interview a fair number of Japanese animation industry celebrities, voice actors, and manga artists in the past. Like many people, I go in wanting to be comfortable and casual, and not some raving fanboy who goes on at length about how much you love their work. And I do manage to avoid the latter there - I just end up not being sure what to say. This probably comes from a lifetime dedicated more to observing and trying to understand other people from the periphery while keeping my interactions with my fellow human beings to a minimum. Valuable as a writer, but after spending an increasing majority of my youth on this, it's also not something I'm not entirely happy looking back on.

In the end, I at least have some idea of a formula and many of the details I'd want to include - while restricting my query letter to a single page, the exact formatting of which I'm not yet entirely clear on - and the more I understand what exactly it is that I need to do, the less imposing it will hopefully seem in time. I'll probably get rejected a lot - though the sooner I can find someone really interested in representing me, the better - but even rejection can at least be chalked up to experience. We'll see what happens.

The path of leading an authentic, substantive life with actual meaning is, obviously, not an easy one.

On which note, I also have to recommend Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York after finally watching it earlier. It was tough for him to follow Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but while I feel this isn't quite as good as Eternal Sunshine, it's still a stellar, deeply involving film. And one I can relate to, in its focus on an artist - in this case, a theater director - dedicating his chaotic, bleak life to the search for truth and meaning in life beyond the depressing inevitability of death through the creation of one of the craziest theatrical productions conceivable: a full scale recreation of New York in a warehouse, populated by actors playing "real" people, and essentially recreating the story of his own life down to the minutest detail as it continues to go horribly awry. Beautiful, powerful film - and accompanying its very bleak, heavily depressing story are a lot of laugh out loud funny moments. I may have to do a full blog post on this one, not having done a film blog in a while. Kaufman, in the surreality of his scripts, is one of my favorite film writers, after all. I'm hoping my work would appeal to fans of his work in cinema.

And to balance the sheer angst of these past two entries - and I'm planning on writing about writing more often from now on - the next two entries? Both coming within this week. You guys're getting a double the Halloween comedy posts this year.

The Next Step: Publishing and Project 27 Days

As mentioned in my previous post, I finally completed Project 27 Days, my first novel, earlier this week after roughly 7 months of revisions from beginning to end. Overall, it's technically my third draft - and as far as I'm concerned, my "final" draft - after completing the second and first truly complete draft back in early March. And so, it's reflection time. (As all of you waiting for this novel with bated breath have undoubtedly been looking forward to. Besides, I haven't done a writing/publishing centric post in quite some time.)

If you've been wanting more detail about what my first novel's really about and what my second one's going to entail as well, after years of blogging here, you're in luck! This is the post you've been waiting for.

The writing process is a journey unto itself, both frustrating and rewarding. You have to lay the groundwork - scoping out the characters and developing an understanding of them, their motivations, and their goals, as well as developing the setting where their story takes place - and if you do all that right, the characters will take you through their story themselves. After spending over 3 years getting to know these characters and accompanying them on their journey, they've become very important to me, making moving onto a new project difficult. I don't think I'll be adding a section to the right column on my next novel just yet, though - ideally at least until I've made some real progress in getting 27 Days published.

Of course, after the several drafts so far, this "final" draft as far as I'm concerned may not end up being the final one in the end. Future work on the book is contingent upon decisions made by my future agent - hard to say when or if I'll manage to get one anytime soon, all I can do is try to think positively and do my best with my query letters - editor(s), and the publisher. As any writer has to, I've come to accept that my work will ultimately be passing through editors' hands, and that revisions will be made that are not entirely my own. I do have two - I feel - legitimate worries about future possible revisions and work with editors, though.

One, I'm a little worried that I may be expected to take another good year+ to do additional directed revisions for another draft or two by an agent before they'll even consider pitching the manuscript to a publisher. This is a distinct likelihood, going on what I've read about the process, and as much as I've enjoyed spending time with these characters and writing this book, time is of the essence on some level - I feel what I'm trying to get across with the book on an external level risks being lost the longer it takes for the book to be published. (Given the numerous senses in which this first novel is a labor of love. And on at least one level in that regard, I'm expecting it to be a personal failure - sometimes life's about doing ridiculous things and failing, though, too.) And on top of that, every delay in getting my work out there in any capacity is another delay in my being able to get my own life going, given how much personally hinges on this particular work.

Two, while I can certainly accept minor edits either by editors or requested particular self-edits by an agent to improve style, language use, and flow (I'm sure all three are likely needed, this being my first novel - this is about as rough around the edges as any of my novels are going to start, and working with professionals should help me hone my stylistic focus.), I'm leery about the possibility of certain turns of plot or general elements in the story being deemed necessary to cut - possibly entire story arcs. The entire book is carefully plotted and told in a relatively nontraditional style across several story arcs, while each individual chapter focuses on the events of a single day from beginning to end through the eyes of the protagonist. This offbeat structure geared on a slice-of-life approach to the narrative itself is a risk I took when writing that could potentially become a strength or weakness when pitching the novel. Sometimes it's a quiet mood piece, other times it's completely focused on character interaction and humorous, naturalistic dialogue, and other times yet, it's outright surreal. As a work of literary fiction, it blurs genre lines while keeping character development at the heart of the narrative. And from arc to arc, the story does take some arguably very weird and probably unexpectedly turns - both in terms of the courses of events that unfold and how they might seem to fit into this sort of story on the surface. But I've been questioning my decisions behind every arc along the way, along with numerous minor details the fate of which concern me. If anyone can argue for why each and every part of the story is important and necessary, of course, it's myself as the author. But having read some horror stories about how unreasonable people in the publishing work are capable of being, I feel it's only natural to be concerned about how the story would be treated by people seeking to maximize its appeal and profitability to begin with - and literary fiction itself isn't exactly known for being the moneymaker that pulp genre fiction is. To put it bluntly, I'm not interested in "suits" or completely unreasonable people hacking my novel apart and potentially damaging its carefully-constructed essence. (Yes, this is probably one of the more pretentious-sounding statements I've made in a while. As an artisan of words, I'm allowed to get away with these things, right?) As a writer, I seek to celebrate the strange and offbeat and many have been very successful in doing just that, so I'm hoping that my concerns are unfounded and perhaps exaggerated out of anxiety after reading some confidence-crushing horror stories and intimidating writer magazine articles. I can't afford to give in, no matter how intimidated or anxious I become. I have everything to lose by not persevering until I achieve - and deserve - success. And as long as I'm writing anything worth reading, the literary and publishing worlds also have something - technically - to lose without even realizing it. I think that's a healthier attitude to take, anyway.

By extension, given its Murakami-and-Salinger-inspired plot, I'm worried that between the strangeness of the book and its overall length, it may prove considerably difficult to find an agent willing to represent it, let alone a publisher willing to risk publishing it, simply because it's "too weird." This has to be my first published novel for many reasons, and I've put a tremendous amount into it to make sure it's a worthwhile venture - both for readers and ideally a publisher. In many ways, I can only just keep my fingers crossed that all these years of hard work don't amount to nothing. (Save for perhaps a slap in the face from life - and I'm pretty sure I'm already over quota for those.)

Each of my novel projects is about challenging myself on some level or another as a writer. As my first novel, Project 27 Days (Which I'll be pitching with two potential working titles for starters) evolved from a mystery novel - though the final story itself certainly hasn't lost its mystery elements - set aboard a train to a challenge of abstraction. That's a central theme of the story on every conceptual level - one that I'm hoping will be able to draw some interest from both an agent and publisher, given how many explicitly concrete novels there are out there, as opposed to those using more abstract settings, approaches to the plot, and the characters themselves. As a concept of contradictions as well, I like to describe the book as a road novel set in an enclosed space. Like any road novel, it focuses on a journey taken by individuals and the growth they experience over the course of their journey. At the same time, the majority of the story unfolds between a handful of oddly designed train cars, passing oppressively redundant snowy scenery that seems without end beyond the windows. And undercutting the setup for another cliche coming-of-age story, there's a cast of characters who've lost their memories - so the tale focuses on self rediscovery as opposed to self discovery, tempered by melancholy, cynicism, humor, and empathy. (In the least, all of this is what I've worked hard to try to get across with these characters in this story.) I want to get the reader lost in the surreal, confusing setting with the characters - to experience what they experience, to puzzle over the same questions they ask, and to ideally come away from the experience feeling something. I love these characters, and I love this story - as risky, painful, and deeply personal as it is for me in many ways.

Next up is - to officially announce it now - Project Princess. A challenge to myself to pull off a work of literary fantasy fiction, as opposed to genre fantasy. A subversion and twisting of fairy tales and light-hearted swords-and-sorcery fantasy settings. A character study with even rawer emotions at its core. And little humor to back up what I intend to be a personal challenge to write something that takes itself largely seriously without incorporating the offbeat sense of humor I usually rely on - an exercise in attempting to develop further range. (And hopefully something an agent and publisher wouldn't frown upon, given that it seems they like to see authors develop in a particular direction as "this kind of author" or "that kind of author." I'd like to have some breathing room in developing into "That weird author who writes dark stories with at least some humor." As is, I feel like the dark comedy/dramedy world of writing is a lot more honest than many, since you can take your characters and reader to all sorts of lows in addition to being able to make them laugh - and juxtaposing the two, I feel, can make their effects resonate more deeply.)

Project Princess is a thematic followup to Project 27 Days in many ways. Particularly in that it confronts the sort of emotions and their perils that hover quietly over the 27 Days cast, but aren't often directly addressed. But rather than seeing these particular emotions faced by the 27 Days cast then - frankly, I think it would completely ruin the ending I've given them if that was part of the narrative, and would be stretching the ending out far beyond where it needs to go - a new cast, some even more damaged in some ways, will step forward to undertake these challenges themselves.

It's a cold story. Not just literally, though like Project 27 Days, it will be my second - and currently last planned - novel set in a snowbound setting. Where 27 Days focuses on a sympathetic group fighting off their frostbite together aboard a train and supporting one another as they face the bared fangs of their past, Project Princess focuses on a largely more solitary journey. A deeper level of both physical emotional isolation, sharper-edged emotions - joined by sharp-edged blades - and a lack of even the train's comforting furnishings, the plot centering on a rather twisted hero's journey through an apocalyptic blizzard on horseback and foot. A harsh setting in which only the strongest and most twisted can survive and there's no one to turn to for kindness. Given this even colder central story, it's going to be a different experience to write - and involve tapping into some even more intensely negative emotions - and my current challenge is humanizing each of the characters enough so that I can come to love them as well. No matter what horrible things have to happen to them.

I've poured a great deal of my life and passion into this first novel, at any rate, and intend to do so into each successive work. I can only hope that it shows when I begin submitting sample chapters and manuscripts to potential agents, and that they see potential worth pursuing. I was going to write even more about query letter concerns in this post, but it's already long enough - it doesn't need to be yet another insanely long post to the point of unreadability, so I'll be following it up with more query letter thoughts in the next few days in a second post. Those who stuck around, thanks for reading.

Why You Should Fail at Life

A new day, a new month. As I write this, the first Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show is wrapping up. I didn't watch it (I've got a Futurama rerun on at the moment), and I don't plan to, never having been a fan of Fallon's. (He couldn't keep a straight face on SNL, and he was never particularly funny to begin with.) And thus, this post's subject? Failure.

Here in Raleigh, March began with winter having one last hurrah, with about two-ish inches of snow overnight on Sunday. It's already mostly melted in our yard, though I imagine it'll be visible around the city until Wednesday or so. According to current forecasts, we'll be seeing temperatures in the 60s by the end of this week, and Saturday's forecast to hit the low 70s, like the most recent Saturday past. Yes, North Carolina weather and temperatures are completely schizophrenic, and we're currently in the midst of the last seizures between winter and spring before everything gets much warmer and we start seeing summer-like temperatures, which we usually begin to as early as April. As I've mentioned in the past, summer's gradually devouring the rest of the seasons here in the south. Fail.

What a time to be trapped here. I finally heard back from UMass Amherst on Saturday as well, and rather predictably, they rejected me. At the rate things are going, grad school doesn't seem to be in the cards for me, so to speak. Not exactly a heartening feeling. Fail, you might even say.

Lacking an English degree to begin with doesn't help things, but while you certainly don't need a degree as proof of actual writing talent - having a talent and earning a degree are very different things, after all - people tend to jump to conclusions, and lacking a degree lends you the appearance of a lack of credentials and capability as a writer. So in pursuing writing as someone sans English degree, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not that there's such a thing as an easy path as a writer. It's hard to carve out a future or find an exact direction in writing when you're stuck flailing in a couple of general directions rather nearsightedly. Ideally, a few years at UMass would have helped me focus on the directions I'm heading in my life all the more. At this point in 2009, it looks like I'm going to continue being a drifter.

Project 27 Days is nearing completion, with only a couple of pages of the epilogue left to finish now. Then I'll be editing those last few chapters and epilogue and sending them off to my test readers, and beginning a series of massive revisions from the beginning of the book to complete the manuscript and ultimately reformat as much of it as I need to in order to make the book as good as I possibly can on my own. (While also making an effort not to over-rewrite, as it's also very easy to fall into the pitfall of spending forever rewriting and revising a single work, when after a certain point, you have to be willing to call it complete, set it aside, and move on to something else.) Failing at getting into UMass Amherst stings, but it's the sting of rejection I've got to get used to - I'm used to rejection and failure in regards to many things important to me in life (I've come to expect it, in fact), but this year's gonna gonna be full of getting piled on by rejection after rejection, football-style. I always did hate that sport. It's an important part of the writing process, though. Few people who'd like to write a novel ever actually finish one and get to the part where they have to start looking for an agent. Even less make it past that point and find any kind of success. Writing, like all artistic pursuits, is an utterly soul-crushing business, and people becoming completely disenchanted, disillusioned, and giving up on their writing dreams is in no way uncommon. It's a difficult, competitive business, and as my grad school application reminded - competing for one of twenty slots - I don't tend to fare well when the competition's stiff. I never have, in life. Granted, at this point, I have no idea where I place or how I could ascertain that - writing itself is a largely subjective world - but all I can do is keep going.

I've read that the suggested wordcount length for first novels from complete-nobody authors looking to get published is roughly somewhere between 80,000 and 120,000 words. At this point, 27 Days is in the 170,000some word range. It's no 1,000+ page unpublishable behemoth, but it's not a small novel, either. Exactly how much this will impact my odds of finding an agent passionate about my work, let alone a publisher willing to back and market the novel, remains to be seen. I suspect that odds are, the length won't be something in the work's favor. I just have to hope that the intriguing premise and quality of the story are enough to get people interested. (And as far as I'm aware, there's not some massive gap in the literary market between people looking to buy 200-300 page books and people willing to buy interesting-looking 300-400 page books. Neither of those page ranges are anywhere near as intimidating as 1,000+ page books.) I've got a lot of revision work ahead, ideally hoping to finish my personal final draft by early April, but I'm sure I'll have to do a lot of editing for whoever ends up representing me in the end - however many weeks, months, or years it takes for me to find an agent - considering that publishers these days want books that're basically ready to go and hit the printing presses when agents present their manuscripts. That way - while they may feel the need to do a little editing, too - they can focus on getting covers together, get some review comments, and focus on the whole marketing process. (Which the author themselves needs to certainly participate in quite a bit of as well. I'm expecting that if I do indeed manage to make it that far, as I'm hellbent on, it'll be a very interesting experience.) I just have to hope none of the edits are too drastic - I can't see the book losing any complete days in the story, since even on the slower days, there are bits of character development, images, and story elements I really don't like the idea of cutting. I think I've done a good job of letting the characters tell their story overall as is - in a manner much mirroring the way life itself unfolds - while cutting out everything I'd thought about or written in the past that I felt no longer worked in the final, complete story as it grew and told itself.

I just have a very long, undoubtedly rather depressing and soul-crushing year ahead with boatloads of rejection coming my way from all sides. But I'll be facing it with my head held high and dealing with all the disappointments and pain as best I can as I keep on going. I can only persevere: my great passion in life is storytelling, and I will become a published writer - ideally, a successful one in time - whatever it takes. I'm not going to compromise my values or who I am for anyone or anything. Hell, after 7 or so years of my stupid unrequited love situation now, with what I'm doing on that front, if anyone knows what it means to persevere beyond reasonability, it's me. Stepping into the creative literary world is something that takes a measure of foolishness - not unlike love itself - as any seasoned writer'd no doubt tell you. And as human beings, we're not always the most reasonable of creatures to begin with.

Let's end things on a more positive note. The CPAC conservative convention over this past weekend? Really only echoed the desperation of the Republicans and their ever-increasing irrelevance, as last night's Daily Show very effectively noted.

Life's short. Everybody fails sometimes. The most valuable things involve risk-taking, putting yourself out there and making yourself vulnerable in facing the potential for all kinds of embarrassment and pain. So the whole gist of this entry - in case you didn't feel like reading all my rambling - comes down to that you shouldn't be afraid of failure. It hurts, sure, but we all do it, and it's just part of life - part of growth as human beings. It's better to take these risks than to live an insular, secure life where you're left wondering how things could have been different if you'd taken more risks.

The Publishing World and Another Experiment

And just like that, it was February. It's a slippery bastard, time is. Since the last post, I got to enjoy not one, but two trips to the dentist for fillings. But I'm finally done with a bunch I'd been needing since last summer, and I seem to have a good oral hygiene regimen going these days as so to finally maintain healthy teeth and improve that thar smile. (One of these days, my smile won't cause the same reactions as the ark of the covenant at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie. One of these days. Someday.) So I'm pretty ecstatic about health improvements on that front. A good electric toothbrush, specialized enamel toothpaste, and fluoride floss can work wonders.

The snow last time didn't last long, either. It melted away within 24-48 hours, and we were back to the frozen earth. (Until this coming weekend, anyway. Looks like we'll be seeing 70-degree weather on Sunday. Thanks, but no thanks, southern climate. Not ready for spring/summer weather to dominate the rest of the year again.) We had a very light dusting the other night, but it didn't take its time melting either.

Project 27 Days progress was made in spades, though. I'm down to the final two chapters and epilogue now. At the rate things are going, I'll be finishing the first draft in the next week, and finishing the initial revisions to the final chapters over the week following. Then it'll be on to working on a final set of revisions to complete the manuscript and set it aside as I begin querying agents. From the wonderfully stressful research I've done on the whole agent-querying process through the latest issue of The Writer magazine, I'm not really expecting to realistically have a shot at getting an agent - let alone finding publishing - within 2009 now, but at least I'm finishing the manuscript soon (And will be moving on to working on my second novel then) and getting the ball rolling in the rather hellish process that is breaking into that literary world. Maybe I'm being conservative by expecting up to/over 100+ rejections by various agencies, but either way, I'm expecting the whole experience of finding a good agent interested in representing in my work will be taking a few years off my life. All I can do is persevere, though - all kinds of garbage gets published, and while I can't provide an unbiased perspective on the quality of my work (And I tend to be self-deprecating anyway), I can at least say that there's a tremendous amount of crap out there that's worse than what I'm doing, at least. (How's that for confidence? Yeahhh.)

At any rate, there's my grumblings/musings on the daunting challenge faced by new connectionless writers seeking publishing and entry into the professional literary world. Fun stuff, fun times, clearly.

And now, getting to the other purpose of this entry: In celebration of February, I hereby present for your amusement a different kind of writing exercise from my usual idiocy. This one's a little slice of life, inspired by a common weekday morning routine for me.

--

Little Black Dog on a Brown Leather Leash

The barking downstairs signifies a vacant house. Only a foot off the ground, the dog's a behemoth. Only the freeloader's there to hear. He'd rather pretend he was asleep, but he and sleep haven't been close in years.

As he steps outside, the freeloader immediately regrets not wearing a coat. The dog's indifferent, of course. He doesn't care that humans lack fur coats. In fact, the thought's never even crossed his mind. He's a dog. Why should the matters of humans concern him?

The dog drags the freeloader across the yard, stopping at every bit of vegetation. The frost-laden grass crunches below the freeloader's feet. The air stings with every breath.

The dog ignores the freeloader and turns his nose to meet the wind as it picks up. A car passes by, ferrying another to their workplace. The dog watches. He has to make sure they don't intrude.

The freeloader tugs the leather leash lightly to get the dog's attention. Stubbornly, the dog refuses to move. He has to sniff every corner of the yard. He has to assess the state of his domain.

Sometimes the freeloader gives in. Sometimes he doesn't. Regardless of which choice he makes, the dog will bark again. He's harsher than most employers in the working world. Dogs have high expectations, after all.

Resigning himself, the freeloader takes the dog to the backyard and watches as he plows through a pile of dead leaves. In the morning chill, he feels the blood moving through his veins.

At society's perimeter, the dog and freeloader stand and stare and take time to breathe.

--

An odd little narrative experiment I felt like trying, anyway. Not quite a poem, and I'm feeling too tired to attach a specific category.

As things are, I'm feeling a little more bitter about the season this year and not really inspired to write more of the stupid "love-ly" comedy pieces I did for the Valentine's season last year. Instead, I think I'm going to be doing some movie talk about love-themed cinema worth indulging in. Keep an eye out.

Once this book's done, I'm resolving to work on writing here more often. In Spiral Reverie's third year, it'd be nice to be a more active blog and maybe get some more regular readers. (Just maybe.) After finally caving and joining Last.fm, I'm kinda tempted to start doing some occasional music blogging too. It's one of the few interests of mine I haven't really invested time in writing about yet.