Guns & Magic

 

I’m now up 3 rejections from my original salvo of 7 Horse Girl submissions. Got a new one today (photocopied standard form rejection). I’ll get a new submission in the mail next week.

 

In other news, I’ve decided I’m going to revive the “Mask Stories” project I started for Nanowrimo 2009. This serves two purposes for me: It keeps me writing short stories, which I want to do, and provides a framework for a larger project, which I also want. I finished the first draft of my first new Mask Story today. I expect to have it edited and posted in the next few weeks.

 

Why a few weeks? Because I’m going to be editing and posting the long story I finished earlier this week first. The first part of that story should be available Monday.

 

My goal is to post 1 or 2 new stories each week (or, in some cases, parts of stories).

 

This week I decided to stop posting my “Now Reading” entries. From now on, I’m just listing the books I read in the weekly writing progress report. Should keep the clutter down.

 

-David

 

 

This afternoon I added a way to rate the fiction posts (1-10 stars).

 

For people who like to rate things. Please feel free.

 

-David

 

 

6 novel submission packages put into the mail just now.

 

There would’ve been 7, but my printer ran out of ink on the last one. Once I get new ink next week, I’ll get that submission in the mail too.

 

Then it’s the waiting game. And submitting to the next one on the list (which is mostly alphabetical; the best fits, of course, went out in the first batch) when a rejection does arrive.

Email really ramps up the speed of rejection, but I expect they’ll send me back the SASE’s rather than give out an email address.

 

The rejection doesn’t bug me so much. The title of this post is just me being (mildly) funny. No, what bugs me is the inefficiency of the system. I hate wasting my time. And my money (about $4.00 or so in materials and postage for each submission). I guess it’s just the cost of doing business. Maybe someday I’ll accept that cost in stride (much like I’m largely oblivious these days to how much I spend each month promoting The Journal; some things just cost what they cost).

 

Maybe I’ll get lucky, though, and I’ll have something show for the effort involved besides canceled stamps.

 

I have 19 publishers I’ll be sending Horse Girl to. If I get rejected by all of them, I’ll self-publish the book and move on.

 

If nothing else, I’ve now proven that I can send a letter.

 

-David

 

 

Last night and today I worked to get my submission package together for Horse Girl:

 

35 sheets of paper (according to MS Word). Should fit in a 9×12 envelope, I figure, along with an SASE.

 

I’ll be sending the package out to 20 publishers (from the list I created much earlier this year).

 

That comes to 700 sheets of paper. (Wow. Now it sounds like a lot of paper.) Plus the 40 envelopes.

 

But I’m not sending to all the publishers at once. Just the first 5 or 10. Then I’ll send out to the rest as I get rejections or the whim.

 

So, progress. Some.

 

-David

 

 

While I had some more good ideas for the Demon Dunot Candy project, I didn’t write anything today either.

 

I’ve just spent the last 45 minutes or so, though, trying to write the query letter for Horse Girl. I have it written…except for the part that summarizes the book in an interesting way.

 

I think my problem is that I’m “too close” to the material. I keep trying to stuff in details, when I should be working in broad strokes. But then I think I go too far the other way and make it too simple.

 

I figure the query summary should introduce the main character and the main conflict in a way that hooks the reader. Sounds easy enough. There’s a knack to summarizing, I think, and I have yet to develop it fully.

 

I’m not looking forward to writing the synopsis either, though at least for that I can use more than a couple paragraphs. And I still have the outline I wrote from. So maybe it won’t be too bad.

 

-David

 

 

…but I think I now have a good, if still skeletal, structure for the Demon Donut Candy project. I don’t have a lot of details in my so-called outline, but I have a workable “order of battle”. I expect to start writing the next chapter tomorrow.

 

I also put some time into creating a first draft query letter for Horse Girl. The tough part for me is adequately, and interestingly, describing the book in 1-2 paragraphs. To assist me with that, I’ve asked two of the people who’ve read it so far to please, please tell me what the book is about. In 2 sentences or less.

 

As I worked on the query, I stumbled upon the coincidence that both The Girl Who Ran With Horses and The Summoning Fire weigh in at 64,000 words. At least, I don’t remember noticing that before. My target for Demon Donut Candy is 90,000 words, that being considered (I hear) the more typical novel length.

 

Currently, Demon Donut Candy is just shy of 10,000 words. Which doesn’t seem too bad for a project I just started.

 

-David

 

 

I finished the 2nd pass through my list of potential markets tonight. I winnowed my starting list of 50 potential markets down to 20. Of those 20, 4 of them seem really promising. Those 4 will be among the first submissions I send out.

 

Remaining publisher hunt tasks:

 

Regarding the new “submission rider” for my revised 2010 goals: for Horse Girl, I’ll exhaust that list of 20 publishers. Then, if there’s been no interest, I’ll publish the book myself. That seems reasonable.

 

Late last year, as I was floundering my way through November and Nanowrimo, I decided that I would self-publish Horse Girl. I might even have mentioned that here on the blog. To that end (among others), I picked up Adobe Acrobat and Serif PagePlus and got to work.

 

While I was turning the Horse Girl manuscript into a PDF, though, I started seeing it as a book. A real book. A book that deserved an honest, actual try to get it published.

 

So the publisher hunt began.

 

And it continues…

 

-David

 

 

I’ve decided that I need to re-tool my writing goals for 2010. I’m an adult, so I figure I can change my mind if it seems warranted.

 

The biggest change is backing away from the ambitious 1500 words/day goal. This change ripples through the secondary and tertiary goals…but that’s OK. That’s why those goals were 2nd and 3rd tier.

 

My new writing goal is to write 1000 words of fiction each day, 5 days per week (at least 200 days in 2010)

 

Why the change? Mostly because I don’t think I’m at a point where I can easily carve 3 hours or so (2 hours of writing, an hour or so for submission) per day, 5 days per week to focus on writing. I do, however, think I can manage an hour of writing and 30 minutes or so of submission/marketing. Later in 2010 (particularly after Q1), if my situation changes, I can adjust my goals again to match.

 

My submission goals remain the same, but pick up a new rider:

 

This concept came at me from 2 different directions this week. First from a fellow writer-in-progress, and then again from a book I started reading this week.

 

I Truly Hate-Despise-Loathe wasting my time. If I think something I’m working on will never see the light of day, I see no reason *NOT* to stop working on it. In fact, I congratulate myself for doing so. Sadly, my current view of the publishing business is none too positive, so it becomes hard for me to think I’m writing something that will actually see print. With a promise to myself that I’ll at least self-publish the books I write, I can get past that. I hope.

 

Tomorrow is the first day of a new week of writing. Onward!

 

-David

 

 

What was I thinking? Launch ambitious new writing goals in January? In January?

 

January is The Journal’s biggest month. So I’m rather emotionally invested in that. Which is to say, simultaneously excited and worried. Excited that my sales do well. Worried that something has blown up (or is about to blow up) and I’m about to spend a stressful few hours fixing it. That sort of thing.

 

So, yeah, new, ambitious writing goals were probably not the best idea for January.

 

And, upon further thought, my “ambitious writing goals” might have been “too ambitious”. So, I’ll be pondering the goals some more, maybe leaving them as they are, maybe streamlining them some, maybe totally changing them.

 

One thing that’s been on my mind today is that I may have to, at least for the short term, focus on either getting published *or* (in geek terms, that would be an XOR) writing new stories/novels. Right now, those two things don’t seem to be capable of cohabitating in my brain.

 

-David

 

 

Which is to say: I’m thinking about it again.

 

My indie-über-alles tendencies rearing their heads again, making me pause and ponder.

 

-David