The Desert Mermaid

It can be frustrating to have to wait to get an agent and then get editors and publishers and things. But the good news is that the intervening time gives you a chance to have BRILLIANT IDEAS about how to fix some of the problems in your manuscript.

Oh, yeah. Today's a good day.

Trying to decide if this being the end of November will help or hurt my Author Quest. On the one hand, I don't want to put off agents who are going to be receiving thousands of pages of word barf over the next month or so from misguided NaNoWriMo winners.

On the other hand, it might be a good time to send it, because compared to a stack of word barf, my book's going to start looking pretty good. So I'm torn.

Not gonna stop, though. One of these agents has GOT to recognize my brilliance before long.

Special Note To NaNo Buddies: Don't get me wrong, output is good. But it is not the only measure of a novel. Planning and editing are also important steps.

Well, dammit.

I just realized exactly what Doctors! needs to make it work—how to fix that nagging sense that something is wrong with it.

Editing sure is a fine art, isn’t it? I make all sorts of minor changes that ultimately make a better story, fine-tuning and fiddling and WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID I NEEDED AN ENTIRELY NEW NARRATOR? OH, SHIT.

Even though I’ve got an excellent candidate already in place, with an engaging voice and clever ideas and an actual sense of humor,* there are two major problems with this:

1. It will mean a massive overhaul of the entire structure of the story, so I’d basically be rewriting it, and
2. I really, really like the narrator I’ve currently got.

I mean it. He’s a great character—a real sweetheart, and smart, and so very earnest. But as a narrator, he’s just fucking boring. The dude thinks in parameters and infodumps. Plus, he’s not human, so there’s no frame of reference like there would be if I switched to the human. He’d benefit from the switch as well, it’s just … I also think his worldview is really fun to write.** I’d miss him if I were no longer in his head.

I’m definitely going to change it—what do they say about being ruthless and tearing out your heart for the sake of the story—but by god, it’s tough sometimes to get these darn things right.


*As versus the bitchy contrariness that so often gets mistaken for A Sassy Sense Of Humor in narrators.

**Especially that one time he got a concussion. That was a blast.

I can get up a full head of steam when writing a 68,000 word YA novel, and yet I get stuck for a week writing the synopsis?

C'mon, man, I just WROTE the story, and it took me 68,000 words. And now you want me to cut out 65,000 or so of them--and then make you want to read those other 65,000 anyway? How the hell am I supposed to do that?

Man, this writing shit is hard, yo.

Oh, SHIT, y’all, one of these agents I queried wants to see more pages of Doctors!

I was getting used to flat-out rejections! What the hell happens if she likes all those pages? Then what do I do?

I realize it’s a bit soon to celebrate, but hey, I at least made it to Level Two with somebody! This is a first!

My Info

Their Info

The Header: Dear Mr. or Ms. Literary Agent,

The Hook: I WRITE BOOK!

Synopsis: IT GOOD BOOK.

My Background: I WORK HARD ON BOOK.

Sign-Off: YOU HELP ME SELL BOOK?

Regards,

Amelia