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 Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 10:56 pm
PHADE RANT #16
September 6, 2010
OSS: Ooh, Shiny! Syndrome
So I was going to actually work on book three, since book two seems to be suffering a continuous downward spiral. Pile onto that the fact that I received four rejections in the course of three days, and suffice it to say I need a break from the wonderful world of my fantasy.
Instead, I'm working on this nifty little science-fiction-esque piece that's been stewing in the back of my mind for some time. I started maybe two days ago and already have a bit over seven thousand words. I'm rather fond of it, to be honest.
Which brought me to the point of making the discussion thread "How Do You Drive?" I'm usually a huge fan of character-driven stories, but the more I work with this, the more I think it's a plot-driven novel. And I'm still trying to figure out if it's a YA or an adult book. I think I'll leave the final call until I finish the rough draft, though.
Either way, I'm going to see if I might get lucky and draw some attention to this little piece. If I can get an agent with it (and that's a big if), who knows? Maybe they'll be willing to take a closer look at my fantasy. I can hope, right?
In the mean time, to quote Racheling, this piece is something "new and shiny" that will keep my attention for the time being.
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Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 8:15 am
I know how you feel. I'm getting fed up with my current fiction but people are demanding more online. They are going to be disappointed once I go to Uni in a few weeks time. I love it to pieces just...I need something 'shiny and new' hahaha.
Sounds good Phade!
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DesertRoseFallen Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 5:59 pm
So I'm happy to report this progress. XD It's not the stuff I wanted to work on, but it'll do just the same.
Iron Skies is currently 10,200 words strong and six chapters long.
The momentum is slowing down, so I might flit between a few other projects, but still, it's good progress considering I haven't done much on my other works..
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Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 9:29 pm
Well, I do have to say congrats on 10k words for something that was initially just 'shiny'. My 'shiny' phase comes with a brand new idea. Then I sit down at the computer to start typing and I think, "Hey... maybe I should see if anyone posted something new in the guild... or maybe I should see if a new episode of Castle is up..." etc. And I just can't resist virtual dress-up dolls on deviantart.
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Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:33 pm
Disconnect your internet!
Or write in a notebook instead.
I tend to draw a lot, too, when I get a new idea.
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Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 3:44 am
The internet is such a distraction it is terrible... I agree with disconnecting, just I can never get myself to! Well done on your progress Phade!
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DesertRoseFallen Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 10:39 am
PHADE RANT # 17
September 19, 2010
Leave It And Look Back Later
So I just spent the whole weekend camping with a bunch of Environmental Science Majors. I'm not a major, but it is one of my minors. Now, on this trip, I brought roughly 150 pages of my book with me. A big chunk of the middle section that tends to be my favorite. I had it on paper in front of me (condensed into single-spaced, since I didn't want to get mauled by the "Save the trees!" people).
Now, I haven't actually looked at this piece for awhile. After the last rejection letter I got, I figured I'd just leave it for a bit and let it stew. So at camp, during our downtime, I pulled it out, read through it, and made corrections as I saw they were needed.
I had one page. ONE PAGE, that didn't need to have a correction or change.
You don't realize how much work you really need to do when you're immersed in it all the time. It's actually kind of fascinating.
So now I have 150 pages to go through on the computer and 'fix.'
So while I might have hated camp with a burning passion that was recognized by the faculty when they gave me the "Happy Camper" award (the bastards), it was in fact, good for something.
God, I've missed my computer.
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Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 11:01 am
Oh dear! Well at least you got editing done. I can only really edit with a hard copy smile
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DesertRoseFallen Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 1:48 pm
PHADE RANT #18
September 23, 2010
Back in the Game
So, after a significant amount of brooding time over my four rejections in two-three days, I received another rejection letter. I knew I sent it in the back of my mind, but admittedly, I'd kind of forgotten about it.
It was a "Huh? When did I... OH!" moment when I got the letter. Either way, I checked it and saw it was a rejection. The only thing I noticed about it was that there was an additional little note inside the form rejection that said the premise had merit. It's nothing huge, but it was nice to see I got something other people didn't. It makes me feel like I'm on the right track, even though I've been rejected.
Anyway, thanks to this letter, I'm now on the prowl for more agents to consider querying. And I've found a few. Now it's just a matter of personalizing the letters and cleaning up the synopsis so it can be as clean as it possibly can be.
Yeah. I'm back in the game.
Bring on the rejections.
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Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:46 pm
On a completely unrelated note, Hyperbole and a Half makes me laugh every time.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 7:11 am
PHADE RANT #19
September 26, 2010Fiction of Fantastic WomenWell, this is quite a conundrum. I had brought up in conversation that I didn't really understand the concept of Women's Fiction. What constituted a piece of WF? What were the criteria for a book to be considered WF? I was given a link to check out, and after reading it, I ventured out on my own and did some research. I have always considered this project of mine to be fantasy. Good old-fashioned medieval concept, classical fantasy creatures like dragons and phoenixes, magic and mayhem--you'd think it'd scream fantasy. But at the same time, it's not nearly as immersed in the fantastic aspects as other fantasy books. I think it's what people would call "Low Fantasy." And I'm honestly less about the fantastic aspects and more about the people. I follow the people around and see what they do. It just so happens that the MC of this book is a female, and while she starts off as a bit of a bitter princess-y type, she does go on a life-altering journey of sorts and comes to make a huge discovery about herself at the end of the story. Which is why I always considered it to be a character driven novel. And while I still believe it IS one of those novels, I can't help but wonder if I've kinda stuck my foot in the door of Women's Fiction. On the one hand, I'm not sure if it is or isn't, and I don't want to advertise it as such if it's not real WF. On the other hand, if it is Women's Fiction, I've got a much broader market in terms of agents, and probably publishers, too. I just kind of wish I knew what to consider my own manuscript... I also feel as though I should start making my rants pretty.
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Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:35 pm
PHADE RANT #20
October 5, 2010
Author-Mode, Engaged!
First of all, HOLY CRAP IT'S OCTOBER!!! Where's my devil costume? I need it! I am literally small and cute enough to pass off as a twelve year old! I wanna go trick-or-treating, damn it!
I love October. It's like, the epitome of Autumn for me. Nice cool weather, lots of sun, occasional rain, fantastic foliage! (I'm a leafer, I'll admit it. But I'm a native leafer, so there).
Anyway, I finally got back into working on the book I'm trying to get published. I thank my dear friend Ashley for that. She was bored, and I had mentioned that I finally felt like I was making some headway in the new chapter one of my book. She asked to read it. Ten minutes later, she's kicking me out of her room and telling me I need to go lock myself in my shrine room and write because she wants to read the rest of it, she loved it so much.
This was a total epic win for me, and I swear I'll grow out of saying that at some point (I hope). She's an avid reader and she's big into literary fiction. She knows good fiction from bad.
Tangent:
She had actually told me she was considering reading the Twilight series. I got her to download the first chapter of the first book onto her kindle, took it from her, and read it out loud. The kindle gives you a percentage of how much you've read down in the corner. By the time I reached 35%, she was pounding her head against the wall. I got to 75% before she took her kindle back and told me if I didn't stop, she was going to chuck her beloved kindle against the wall.
And she bloody loves that thing.
End Tangent
Anyway! I've always tended to work better when I have a deadline. Sure, I procrastinate more than anything, but when the pressure's on, my best work comes to the surface. Now that she's all "Gimme gimme gimme," I'm all "Gotta Write gotta write gotta--ewww, I need to fix that!"
This is not the first time I've been in such a mode. There was a week last year where I was insane because another friend had my book. This girl, Manda, then proceeded to say that I was annoying as hell when I was like that and officially named it "Author-Mode."
Needless to say, Ashley has pushed the big red button.
*Insert psychotic maniacal cackling*
This latest version of my book is phenomenal, in my opinion. It's 13770134170237134756452075q097523745927 times better, and yes, the variable 'q' is in there. Can't wait to finish it--I wanna start querying again!
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:04 pm
PHADE RANT #21
October 9, 2010Hyperbole and a Half Tribute: Plot Point!Holy Crap! I just actually figured out what a plot point was! Now, now, I know what you're thinking: How the bloody hell do you NOT know what a plot point is? I've always known, somewhere in the deep dark back of my mind where all the cobwebs are and the dust covers everything. I think I just got too caught up in what I was doing to really want to go back there and get the answer. It's like cleaning the attic. You purposely find other tasks to do instead of going through all that long-forgotten useless stuff up there. ANYWAY! I'm back to writing queries again while I wait for the powers that be to tear my revamped chapters to absolute shreds that I'll meticulously stitch back together into a hopefully fabulous looking quilt of sorts. Part of this query-writing thing is writing a synopsis. And I hate writing synopses. They suck. I do think that Hélène Boudreau is an absolute genius with this breakdown of outlining/synopsis writing, but for some reason, I could never quite get it to work for me.  --------------------------------------------------------- I was sitting here agonizing over it for maybe ten minutes or so, hating how it looked just like my last attempt at a synopsis, and suddenly it hit me. --------------------------------------------------------- I was summarizing character-building moments. Cut the character-building parts of the summary, and you're left with nothing but the plot points. The things I'm supposed to be outlining. Ho. Ly. Crap. This synopsis-writing thing is suddenly not as difficult as it I once believed it to be! heart Hyperbole and a Half heart
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:38 pm
I love that blog.
But I also know what you mean about knowing things in the back of your mind, and not realizing you know them.
One of my favorite original characters used to be bad enough to annoy even me. I kept changing her to make her less annoying and cut off useless traits and honed existing ones. Honestly, the phrases "bad character," "Author Darling," and "Mary Sue" never came to me, but I think I understood my character could be described in exactly those terms.
Her overhaul turned her from a headache into a favorite character.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 2:02 pm
I think it has a lot to do with our desire to continually hone our skills. We write and read and research and improve to the point where we're like, "YES! I AM AN AUTHOR! MUAHAHA!" But we get so caught up in the improvements we forget the mistakes we used to make. That comes back to bite us in the a**, because when we make it again, we wonder what the hell is going on. It shouldn't be that hard. It just shouldn't!
But it is.
It takes a bit of scrounging around, or at least just sitting back and letting it stew to finally come to the surface and scream "SOLUTION!" It's a facepalm moment when you get to that point.
But I think we all need that kick in the a** now and then to keep us humble.
And thank you for not bashing my dreadfully horrid attempts at mimicking H&a1/2. xd
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