Archive for January, 2008
My Entry to Nathan Bransford’s First Page Contest
So I planned to continue posting about queries today, but I want to talk about the contest Literary Agent Nathan Bransford is now running.
He’s asked people to post not more than the first 500 words of a novel, work in progress, or prompt based passage. He and Holly Burns will pick their favorites. There are prizes for the winners.
As of now, the entries stand at just over 400. You have until today (Wednesday) at 5:00pm Pacific Time to enter. You can read the full details about Nathan’s contest here.
Contest Drama?
Now some might say (and I would agree) that a blog, almost by definition, is a public forum. Unless the blog is by invitation, everyone can see the posts and comments.
A few very gracious (some might say crazy!) bloggers offered to critique every entry! You can read Nathan’s own discussion of it here. Some people complained about not wanting feedback from anyone but Nathan.
My take – I posted my entry to a public blog knowing full well I might get skewered. I would like to extend thanks to anyone who decides to critique my entry, whether you did or didn’t like it.
No need to tell me “you suck”, my inner editor already does a great job at that, but constructive criticism is always welcome.
Let me make it clear – I think you are WONDERFUL for providing feedback!
To that end, I’m reposting my entry here to make it easy for anyone to comment on it. You can also check out the current version of my pitch for Rhinoceros Summer to give you a better idea of the scope of the story.
Update: JJ from OxyJen was kind enough to provide feedback on my entry. I’m #119 in the post.
Update: Chro from Journey of the Scribe was kind enough to provide feedback on my entry. I’m #9 in the post.
RHINOCEROS SUMMER
Chapter 1
The two men knew it was dangerous, driving into the crater in full daylight, a hunter’s gun and camera resting on the backseat.
Barry sat in the passenger seat, mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief. “Hey, maybe we should wait till it gets dark.”
Paul didn’t say anything at first. His sweaty hands gripped the steering wheel as the Landcruiser snaked its way down. He kept the speed slow. One wrong move and they’d plummet over the edge of the switchback, a three thousand foot drop.
The volcano’s sides had collapsed to shape the crater millions of years ago, but he liked to think this bowl of tropical vegetation and wild animals was his personal African snow globe—he would shake it till he found what he was looking for.
He threw a quick look at the trembling cameraman. “How you gonna get video in the dark? Don’t fuck out on me now.”
They reached the crater floor and continued past the soda lake ringed with pink flamingoes and tourists, then through the lion and tourist infested grasslands. Not until they approached the edge of a wooded thicket did Paul find what he was looking for.
Rhino spoor.
The men left the tourist road miles behind. Biting flies landed on their bare arms and face, and buzzed in their ears. They marched through thick swamp grass, let mud soak their legs, allowed flies to bite them, wiped sweat from their foreheads, made sure to keep their equipment clean. Both men knew getting caught would destroy their careers. Getting caught meant jail.
They saw the six gray bulks feeding on swamp grass near a small grove of acacias. The bark from the trees seemed to glow in the slanting sunlight. Paul broke a three hour silence. “I’m gonna make one of these big shits charge us.”
Barry seemed about to faint from heat, fear, exhaustion. Paul wished he had brought someone else instead of this coward.
They crept into thicker bush, moving near a rhino sleeping separate from the group.
Paul gripped his rifle, careful to not let the sweat of his hands make the gun slippery. “You keep ready.”
“Yeah.”
Paul yelled. “Hiyaa fucker!”
The rhino’s ears perked up.
Paul stood his ground. Less than a thousand left in the whole world. It was enough to make a man weep for the glory coming his way. This was going to fix everything.
They heard the chuff-chuff of the rhino’s angry breath as it swung around.
Paul almost lost his grip on the barrel. “That’s a fucking square-lip!”
The rhino charged from twenty yards. Paul fired, plugging the animal with a huge tranq dart near the spine. But the rhino kept flying through the air, its head lowered, its horn ready to put a softball-sized hole in a man so his intestines had nowhere to go but the ankle-deep dirt.
The man with the gun got out of the way.
The man with the camera did not.
Disguises for Everyday Escape
I was reading my daily dose of blog posts when Paperback Writer turned me on to the Morphases Editor. It’s a supercool real-time “face manipulation generator”.
Paperback Writer used it to better imagine what a character in one of her novels looks like.
For Research’s Sake
I search through magazines, TV promo shots, movie images, and more to find visuals of key character features, clothing, attitude, setting, etc.
Some writers may think that’s cheating(scroll thru the comments to find differing opinions), but I think of it as collecting resources for inspiration.
I usually select a special music playlist, as well as a ‘bucket’ of images that help remind me of the tone and look that I want for one of my novels. I don’t always find what I’m looking for, but now I have one more resource for my list.
Alert!
This online editor may take up hours of your time. There are so many different tweaks and combinations to choose from. The images blend well together. And it’s free! You’ve been warned…
If you check out the Morphases Editor, let me know what you think!
Go One Step Further?
After acknowledging how helpful the generator might be in imagining characters for my novels, my next thought was of all the personal disguise possibilities.
The main website (www.Morphases.com) allows you to submit your own photo for manipulation.
What might you look like with a longer forehead? A different nose?
Think of the possibilities!
Maybe you’ll like the new manipulated you enough to hand the picture over to a plastic surgeon, and then you could become an international spy, or at least trick your mother…
Ok, ok. For disguises that do not involve pain and permanent damage, check out this fun WikiHow article on How to Disguise Yourself.
(No, this is not me in disguise. I wish. This is going into my character bucket for a future novel.)
Create Your Art Space by Waking Up Early
This first Friday post is about the practicals of writing – of producing art – every day.
No Exception
I’ve found through much trial and error (including weeks of ‘not finding time to write’), that I must make time to write first thing in the morning, every morning.
I always thought – I am the exception! Don’t people know that creatives, us true artists, stay up late and do all their best work at 3:42am?
Discipline Set Me Free
I run my own home business and before I learned to discipline myself I would head straight to my business computer to figure out if there were any emergencies I needed to handle.
After that, I might work on a project or two, run a couple of errands, eat lunch then think, if I work really hard and fast for the next two hours I’ll get done WAY early with work and have HOURS of time to work on my novel.
Reality Bites
Guess how many days I finished early and then had enough energy and self-discipline to write? Not many. So I decided to change a few things.
(This makes it sound instantaneous, but it took a good three months of misery – lots of work, almost no writing – before I made the changes stick).
2. I don’t tell people I get up early. (Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.)
3. Therefore, people don’t expect me to even know about an emergency until after I’ve already been awake for hours.
4. I turn my phone off and I DO NOT let myself check my work email until the work day begins. (Ok, I’m not 100% on this, but I’m trying!)
5. Every day that I fail to wake up early is a day that doesn’t turn out as good as the day I wake up early. Without fail.
That Tricky Pavlov
How did I get it to ’stick’? By realizing that I am an animal, much like Pavlov’s dogs were animals.
I reward myself.
Every time I wake up early I get to:
a. Enjoy a peaceful cup of coffee.
b. Do nothing I do not want to do (except write). I don’t have to look at email, worry about a project, clean the dirty kitchen. Nope. I got up early – I’m exempt.
c. Not feel guilty about not being productive (this takes a lot work).
You get the idea. A bell let Pavlov’s dogs know food was coming. My reward trigger is an alarm clock – at least, that’s what I keep telling myself to believe 
What I do know is when I wake up early, my life feels balanced. I have time to earn money, pursue my writing goals, eat a good lunch, walk the dog, practice the piano and not feel stressed.
Check out ZenHabits blog post on 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It. And the post on Write to Done - How to Write First Thing in the Morning. Both posts list a number of benefits as well as methods for waking up early.
My favorite tip is number 3 in the second post:
Topic. Don’t wake up in the morning with no idea what you’re going to write about.
Have your topic chosen and give it a little thought the night before. It’s great to sleep on it anyway — let your subconscious do the work for you.
Of course, if you’re one of those superhuman people who works all day and still writes in the evening… well, I’ll still like you, even if I don’t quite understand you.
When is your favorite time of the day to write?
If you wanted to make waking up early a habit, what would your rewards need to be?
The Query as String Theory
To sum up all my wonderful expert knowledge on string theory and query writing:
– It is a theory of everything
– It involves lots of extra/alternate dimensions
Query as Theory
The query is supposed to be the end-all-be-all letter. It is how you get a literary agent to look at your novel in the hopes that he or she will represent and sell it to a publisher.
THE MISSION is to create an exceptional query letter – and do it in less than 300 words. I have accepted this mission, even with the more than 90% probability of failure.
The Art of the Query
There is an art to this, but everyone seems to have his or her own definition of what this ‘art’ should look like. And by everyone, I mean literary agents. Under no circumstances should you assume that anyone else knows what they’re talking about when it comes to query writing. So don’t take what I say here as the only way to write a query, because it’s not. I’m not a literary agent. I’m just another writer trying to get published.
You can visit these literary agent blogs and see what each has to say about how he or she wants the query to be written:
Nathan Bransford II Pub Rants II Bookends, LLC II Lyons Literary, LLC
You might notice several things:
1. There is overlap in what each agent wants in a query letter (title, word count, genre, pitch or hook)
2. Each agent prefers the information tweaked a certain way
3. Most agents will admit that they have signed a client or requested a partial from a letter that did not follow their query rules.
Alternate Dimensions
What genre is my book? Women’s Fiction? Action Adventure?
The simple answer: make sure the genre you use in your query letter is one the literary agent actually represents.
There are plenty of books that fit into only one genre (think category romance, etc.). There are also plenty of books that crossover.
If I really like a literary agent who only represents women’s fiction, then maybe my novel is women’s fiction. If the agent represents multi-cultural fiction, then suddenly my novel is multi-cultural fiction — because it is, and because it’s also women’s fiction and it’s also action adventure and maybe even the classic hero’s journey. The reason I’m trying to get a literary agent to represent me is because I want professional expertise on how to sell the book.
Check out the BookEnds, LLC post about figuring out the genre of your novel. The post and comments discuss how various publishers and bookstores will categorize the same novel. Now think about how that might apply when you query a literary agent.
The Point Is
The publishing industry is a not so friendly place for new writers. Do things that will open doors of opportunity, not close them.
If you are in the midst of querying, or will be soon, I wish you lots of good luck!
Next Time
For the next few Wednesdays, expect links, books and other resources related to
writing a query letter for your novel
and some tips and tricks that might help
prevent a query writing breakdown.
Survive Monday with My All-time Favorite Apocalyptic Novels
Sometimes, a day just turns out bad.
Sometimes, there’s nothing a person can do to stop breakfast from burning, being late for work, dealing with horrible clients, fighting with a friend, getting in a fender bender, finding your dog ate a new pair of $50 shoes.
Invariably this will all happen on a Monday.
Mondays are awful, awful days.
I could whip out a top ten favorites list for almost any genre of fiction, but my most effective remedy to combat the end of the weekend is to search for an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic gem where the world ends, or is ending, and the-fate-of-human-existence hangs-in-the-balance… It puts my life in perspective.
I decide my day wasn’t too bad after all: I do not have thousands of flesh-eating zombies surrounding my house, I am not the last woman on earth, I do not have a brain cloud.
This all serves to remind me that I have a pretty good life. A damn good life.
So here is my current list of all-time favorite apocalyptic novels (all titles subject to change as soon as I read something better):
Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
Blindness by Jose Saramago
1984 by George Orwell
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Stand by Stephen King
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Have you read any of these?
These novels are exceptional on three levels: strength of ideas, strength of story, and strength of language. The only possible exception on this list is Stephen King’s The Stand: the Expanded Edition, because it did read a little loose to me, but the scope of the story more than made up for a few sloppy paragraphs.
Do you disagree with any of my choices? Do you have any favorites you’re surprised didn’t make my list?
Kindred Apocalypticists
Many apocalyptic novels follow the survival of a small group of people who would never have spent time together in normal life.
These characters often form a new eclectic family to better survive – and make the reader nervous about who the author might kill off by the end.
I believe a special relationship exists among people who both read and love the same books. I could get all Jungian and discuss subconscious archetypes and the like, but basically, I figure if you love one or more of these books as much I do, we probably have other things in common.
While there are lots of good people I know who have not read the same books as me, I hold a special place in my heart for those people who know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the world Jose Saramago creates in Blindness just plain scared the shit out of me.
So if one or more of these books has been on your ‘to buy’ list for awhile, don’t hesitate any longer.
Feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you think.
If I can help you better survive the end of the world, err … weekend … I’ve done my job.
One caveat regarding Blindness – it was a hard book to sink into. Jose Saramago writes with only periods and commas. No quotes surround dialogue. I almost always hate books where the author experiments with language to the detriment of everything else. Not the case with Blindness.
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