Just an Update

Still no news on the agent front. Well, not really "no" news; the deadline has passed for two agents who don't send out rejection letters, so that means I'm not getting picked up by them. There's one agent whom I'm assuming I've been rejected by (by this point), just because it's been two months since I queried; there's another one who evidently has erratic response times, so I'm not surprised I haven't heard back from him yet. On the other hand, I did send out a snail mail query today, and should know what's going on there in about two weeks.

This is the disheartening part of being a writer. I get to sit around and wait while other people judge my writing without really looking at a lot of it I know the instant I get an acceptance I'll be okay with the whole process again, but for now, these two months have been taxing. I haven't been able to write anything new, and it's driving me bananas.

No News is No News

To pull a quote from Lemony Snicket: "No news is no news."

It's been almost a month since I started querying. I haven't received any official rejection letters since the one I got on August 18th. One agent has a policy of not sending rejection letters; rather, queries for her "expire" after three weeks. So she's out. That leaves four more agents who have yet to get back to me, and the waiting is driving me crazy.

Honestly, I've almost forgotten that I've written Seafear. I haven't touched Book II yet, and I'm a little afraid to right now. I'm actually concentrating on schoolwork for a change.

In other news, today is my birthday. *phwee*

No Luck So Far

More rejections coming in. Well, by "more" I mean "two more" since I got my first one less than 24 hours after I sent it out. The second rejection letter I got was from someone who has a policy of not actually sending out rejection emails, and the third was probably the most polite letter I've gotten yet. It didn't say anything about my writing itself, they (it was sent by the agent's assistant) just said Seafear didn't seem "right for their current list of projects."

Curiously, the rejections I've gotten were from all three agents who specifically asked that I include the first five pages of my book with the query. After I got the first rejection so quickly, this really doesn't surprise me. I recognize that when an agent asks for sample pages, that's what they're looking at instead of the query letter. I also recognize that the first five pages of Seafear aren't the most exciting things ever written.

But it's essential to the story. Agents, editors, and other writers are consistently harking on "show not tell!" And I agree -- it's best to show something rather than telling it. So I say Matthias has seafear and that its effects are pretty bad -- do I just talk about this, or do I show it? I show it, of course -- I show why at 17 he's not okay at all with going on a ship, and why that provides a significant amount of tension throughout the novel. I have to show what happened to him when he was seven, simply because the plot dictates it.

And I have faith in my plot. I believe that it's good (and, I guess more importantly for these agents, able to sell). I don't have enough conceit to say that I'm the greatest writer who has ever condescended to transcribe his eminently important thoughts on paper, but I do know how to write well.

So I still have faith that my queries with other agencies will solicit some interest. I sent the first ten pages to one agent, and I think the second five more than make up for the first five, in terms of style and suspense. The other four agencies didn't ask for any sample pages, so I just have to hope that my query itself is enough to garner attention. If they all say no, I'll be querying more and more agents. Because it only takes one yes.

Sequels and Rejection

I got my first rejection letter yesterday. It was very prompt and polite, which I suppose is the most I can ask for in a rejection. It was more diplomatic than the rejection letter I got when I was shopping a short story around last year: "We can only accept the very best quality prose fiction in our magazine, and your submission fails to meet that standard." That one was rather clumsy, to say the least. (Incidentally, the story that failed to meet up to their standards is right here.)

In other news, I'm working on the outline for the sequel to Seafear. I'm reluctant to actually get much writing done on the sequel, because I don't know what's going to happen to Seafear. If, God willing, it's published, there will probably will be some changes made to the manuscript. I don't want to have to rewrite half a book because of one changed line of dialogue in Book I.

I like where Book II is going, though. It's not quite as frenetic as Seafear, but it's still got a lot of action and intrigue, and the all important character development. Here's hoping I'll get to bring this one to fruition.

Submitted

Sent out six query letters tonight.

One of the agents had an auto-response on, telling me that he was out of the office until tomorrow.

I still freaked out over it, thinking, "HOMG THAT WAS A REALLY FAST REJECTION!"

Now I play the waiting game.

Agent Hunting

Hunting around for a YA agent is difficult, especially because my book is geared toward a male audience. A lot of the profiles on AgentQuery have agents saying they specialize in women's interest and chick lit, and if they're looking for a YA book, it's something similar to that. Which is fine for them, but not for me, because it makes this process harder! (But hopefully more rewarding.)

Still, there's something really exciting about finding an agent who might just be the right one to submit to. It's especially great when they give interviews with places like Absolute Write, because then I can see a lot of information about this agent in a short period of time.

I've found five agents to submit to. My goal is ten; I'm wondering if I should do the first five and see what they say, and then do a second five, or if I should do all ten at once. Part of me wants to do the first option, because writing is a very slow business and I am very tired of waiting, but patience is a virtue. A virtue I lack. Which makes this business all the more galling.

And all the more fun.

Queries

Working on my query letter. I have a basic template that I've made; I add an introductory paragraph for each agent I plan on submitting to (after dutifully snooping around the Internet and reading up on the agent), but other than that, it mostly stays the same.

AgentQuery.com has drudged up three agents who are pretty legit -- I'm going to query each of them. My goal is to submit to five agents in the first round, and we'll see what happens from there. I'm not quite yet ready to start submitting. I have to wait for my early readers to get back to me and let me know what they think about Seafear. (Already Dylan caught an error where I had "hinds" instead of "hands.")

I'm particularly worried that my query is boring and stuffy, but I don't quite know how to spice it up. I don't think I should bother spicing it up -- just let the story speak for itself. I think I have a good story, and I think it stands up on its own. Now is not the time to be wracked with enough self-doubt to... do something good and analogous to whatever self-doubt does. It's late, I can't come up with a good analogy.

I have also discovered something interesting: "I want to read your book" is one of the most flattering things I've ever been told. "I am reading your book" is one of the most frightening.

Editing, Round 3

I finished editing the rough draft of Seafear the other day. I sent it out to nine different people to read, and when they get back to me on the whole thing, I'm going to start sending it out to agents. I'm starting work on my query letter now, but it's not going so well.

I am both frightened and excited.

The Tempest

I think, if there is any literary work Seafear owes a debt to, it is William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Hell, the only literary work to have a bigger influence on my life is Harry Potter, and that might just only be because I grew up with Harry and discovered The Tempest as I neared adulthood.

In my junior year of high school, the theater department put on The Tempest; I auditioned for it, having acted in childhood and the year before in Our Town. I didn't really expect to get any amazing part -- I initially read for the role of Antonio, but then I got really attached to the part of Caliban. I read for Prospero twice -- once, when my friend volunteered me to go, and once when the director asked me to read for it.

I'm told that after auditions, the girl who was essentially queen of the theater department at my high school (deservedly; she is an extremely talented actress, who lights up the entire stage with her presence) told her parents that my audition for Caliban was the most impressive there. "Oh good," I thought, "maybe I'll get that part."

The day the cast list was posted, I went to list and checked under Caliban -- I wasn't the one cast in that part. I was a little disappointed, but I looked at the other male parts, and I saw my name listed after Prospero.

Biggest shock of my life. I flirted with the idea of being Prospero shortly before auditions, but decided that he would go to a senior (there were four senior guys in the cast that year). I was only a junior, I still had to work my way up to a lead role, I thought. Evidently I thought wrong, and so I began what is, to this day, the singular greatest experience of my life.

The whole cast of The Tempest did a damn fine job, and I feel like that play marked the end of my awkward years (or at least gave me a shield of confidence to hide my gawky, pimply self behind). The Tempest gave me a stepping stone on which to build a great senior year of high school, and, as my mother put it, was "my shining moment."

I never intended to have Seafear imprinted with The Tempest. But when I reread the novel, and look at where I plan to take the other two books, I can see the Bard's paws all over the thematic choices I've made. One of the biggest themes in my series is the consequence of choices, and the power of forgiveness. Before we started rehearsals for The Tempest, our director (one of the greatest men I know) had us write in our scripts "Love and forgiveness are more powerful than the darkest of evils."

I spent the second half of my freshman year in college in an English class that the teacher based around The Tempest. (To my credit, I didn't know this when I signed up for it, I just needed an Honors credit for the semester and took the only class that was open.) We discussed the role of colonization, and the role of the "savage native" as portrayed by Caliban. The Orident Federation has human rights concerns with its natives; this was the only conscious call to The Tempest that I made when writing the book.

When I think about literary characters that are important to me, Prospero is one of the most impressing on me, chiefly because I had to spend such an intense period of time in his head, trying to portray him. His character arch is probably the one that I can tell the best, and I think that's why Prospero and Jericho Monday have so much in common.

When I work on the sequels to Seafear, I'm going to more consciously draw back to The Tempest. I've already picked the epigrams for both of those books, and, unsurprisingly, they're both from The Tempest. I feel it is a sort of debt I owe that play, the show that changed my life. My (hopefully) professional writing career, essentially, would not be the same without that show.

Editing, Round 2

I've been earnestly editing Seafear over the past few days. My goal is to do a chapter a day, but that's obviously falling to the wayside. I generally do a chapter in a sitting, which takes me about two hours. I have a pad of sticky notes, and I go through and read, line by line, and I mark anything that needs changing.

The majority of the changes I'm making right now are due to awkward phrasing. I think I've encountered the word "lad" enough in the past 70 pages that I want to shoot myself for ever having thought it a good, affectionate term for the older pirates to call my main character. I've gotten so sick of it by this point that I've just started excising it whenever I see it. A majority of the 33 times it occurs are in the first half of the book, the one that took me eight months to write sporadically. It only occurs twice in the second half (which I wrote in the course of a month).

Editing is obnoxious. Reading your own writing is interminably boring, and I can think of a billion things I'd rather do than read this book again (although I'm guessing I'll have to read it at least twice more before I start sending it out for publication). Which is probably why I'm blogging right now instead of doing what I should be doing.

Still looking for a layout... I imagine, in the dim and distant future, I'll want to incorporate this blog into my author website. Which I need to make. I miss having Microsoft FrontPage, because that WYSIWYG program worked really well for me, even if it was really, really, really bland.

Editing, Round 1

I am actually for serious editing this massive behemoth of a project. When I wrote The Apprentice Wizard back in 2007, I knew, in my heart, I wouldn't really publish it. So I didn't bother editing it.

But I want to publish Seafear. I really, really want to. I have faith in the story and the writing, and I think it could be a successful novel. And so I'm editing it.

Editing is a very boring process, and it's very slow. I reread Seafear over the past few days, and I wrote down my initial reactions after finishing it. The good thing is, I'm not embarrassed by it. I'd be fine showing this to friends and family (actually, my mother has picked it up and is 18 pages in). I found a few plot holes, but I think those are fixable.

Now I'm reading it for a second time. I've got eight pads of sticky notes, and I'm going line-by-line and reading Seafear again. Anything that sounds weird, or any inconsistencies I find, I leave a sticky note with some brief thoughts on it. It took me about an hour to read through chapter one (punctuated with watching some Michael Jackson documentary -- a guilty pleasure), and I have about one note per page.

This is going well. I'm excited. I'm not following one of the most basic words of advice I've heard from a lot of authors -- put the book down, don't look at it for a few weeks. But I'm afraid if I don't start now, I'm going to lose steam. I wrote more than half of this book in less than a month (it was a month ago today that I first got some real headwind on it and pushed through what I was stuck on), and I'm still running strong.

In other news, I've started a detailed outline for Seafear's sequel. I don't have the energy to do that and edit, so that's going on the wayside for now. I need to concentrate on Seafear before I think extensively on its little brother.

Epigraph

I've settled on an epigraph for Seafear, now that I've finished the damned book:

"Though the seas threaten, they are merciful." -The Tempest, Act 5, Scene I

It's from The Tempest, which is pretty much the definitive literary work in my life. I think the whole of my approach to storytelling -- or at least the telling of Seafear -- has been informed by The Tempest. I played Prospero in my high school's production of it in 11th grade, and that's when a lot of my literary voice was being cemented.

The line is spoken at the tail end of the play. The wizard, Prospero, has just united the King of Naples with his son. Both the king and his son thought the other had drowned in the titular storm, and it provided a significant amount of wangst for both Alonso and Ferdinand; but when they're reunited, Ferdinand says that line. I think it perfectly encapsulates the idea behind Seafear.

Let It Be Known

Let it be known, that in the early hours of the morning of Thursday, June 25, 2009 (4:08 AM to be specific), I finished Seafear.

Final statistics:

Chapters: Nineteen (one prologue, seventeen chapters, one epilogue)
Word count: 81,227 words (subject to change, obviously)
Page count: 362 pages

Sweet Jesus damn, I am excited. This is going to be something important in my life, I don't doubt it.

I need to get ink and paper to print this thing out...

Productivity

Have written quite a bit today.

Finished Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen. First time I've ever finished two chapters in a single day, let alone completed one in a day. I'm kind of drained, both physically and mentally, but I feel like I've done some good work today.

I killed someone and burned his ship, among other things. Seafear is picking up the pace and is rapidly approaching its climax. Actually, I'm on the last chapter that's action oriented, and all that's left is the denouement.

Villains

Introduced my main villain tonight, Orlando Valentine, captain of the Triton, considerably emotionless, very cool and calculated head.

As I'm writing his debut, I'm realizing that it's... very bad. Stilted. I'm not really conveying a sense of the character of Valentine, and he doesn't seem as menacing as some of the other villains in Seafear.

Granted, he's been on the page for all of 500 words, which is the barest sneeze of anything in this book (not that it's long... it's only 63,000 words, and that's getting me down...), but still, if I don't like how this chapter turns out, I'm gutting it and rewriting it. Aggressively.

Rewriting always gives me the shivers. I want to have this thing done with, but the damn thing isn't even finished yet. It's hanging over me like an agitating parental figure, constantly nagging me. When I finish it, I will be a happy camper indeed.

Characters

Characters surprise me sometimes.

I just realized that my male and female leads want to sleep with each other. I mean, they're 17 and 16, respectively, so it's no big surprise that two teenagers who spend a lot of time together -- and almost exclusively -- develop some pretty strong feelings.

But damn, that adds some undertones I need to write into the book.

Layout Change & Other Things

I've decided that, if Seafear goes anywhere in the world (and I sincerely hope it does) I'm going to keep this blog up. And I've decided that a generic layout doesn't work all that well for me right now. So I generated this free one very quickly. Yes, it looks very crappy, but I'm not so hot at layout design. Hopefully before too long I'll find someone who's actually good at technical nonsense like coding and image modifications, and they can make me a better layout than this.

In other news, Seafear moves along very... uh... swimmingly, but that's a bad pun. I'm sticking a new chapter in between Chapters 12 and 13. It's ostensibly because I want to branch off and show other points-of-view when my main band of bedraggled seafaring characters is split up, but in reality it's because I want to edge this thing's word-count to around 100,000 words.

The 100,000 words thing is sort of this test for myself; I make a big deal about reaching the 50,000 word point, but I think 100,000 words makes for something that is rather long (comparatively -- The Lord of the Rings is over 600,000 words long, I think!) and is a personal goal I've set for Seafear. The Apprentice Wizard was 85,000 words long, but there were nineteen chapters in it. Seafear has seventeen, plus a prologue... so never mind, I guess that doesn't really make a difference.

I'm not all together sold on this multiple viewpoints thing. I (very briefly) switched viewpoints in the Prologue, but that was out of necessity for the plot. I'm not entirely sure if this hypothetical Chapter 13 is entirely necessary; I'm writing it for now, but it's not in the main document. (Like that makes it non-existent or something.) If I like it, I can keep it in, but if I don't think it's working, I will excise it like a tumor and continue on my merry way through the "actual" Chapter 13.

In other other news, I'm trying to think of ways to build up a blog-reading audience for this thing. It's not something I've ever been good at, but Lord knows... If I can build up a grassroots following on the Intrawebs before Seafear (hopefully) hits shelves, then I will have some momentum going into sales. Which would be a nice feather in my cap. But I really don't know how to attract readers... so that will require some meditation.

ETA: New layout sucked. Need to find a good one.

Huh.

Well, howzabout that? I passed 50,000 words in Seafear without any sort of pomp or circumstance; nor did I, in fact, notice what had happened until I was at 50,102 words. Given that I place tremendous importance ont his milestone (for some reason, I don't quite know why) this seems funny.

I should also note that the 50,000th word in question occured around a dead body. How ominous and telling of how the pace of the book has picked up. I think that's why the writing has been so much easier lately.

Update for June

Things are going marvelously. I've written all of Chapters Nine and Ten and about 1/4th of Chapter Eleven, most of the work getting done in the past week. If I keep this frenetic pace up, I'll be done with Seafear by the end of summer. That was my goal anyway, but no matter.

Interesting things I've noticed from reading the notes I took very early on in the process (August 2, 2008): the first four characters I came up with for Seafear were Matthias Quick, Jericho Monday, Robert Beckwith, and Charlotte North. Their names have remained completely unchanged. Orlando Valentine was originally Orlando Underhill. The names of the islands have all stayed the same. The Scarlet Moon was originally the Pandora. The original title was What They Got By Knavery.

I'm trying to remember why I thought that was a good title...

Summer Vacation

I have, roughly, 40,000 words of Seafear completed. I wrote that from August to now. That's nine months. Granted, I had the entirety of my freshman year to complete on top of working on the book, so I think the lack of progress on Seafear is understandable.

But I have 117 days of summer vacation. Yes, I am working this summer, and taking a summer class, but that is irrelevant. I will have free time that I haven't had since summer to finish this book. It will get done over summer vacation.

My goal for today: Complete Chapter Nine. If Microsoft Word decides to work. Right now all of my Office suite is having problems. Frustrating.

Where I'm At

Huh. It has been over six months since I actually touched this blog. Nice.

Seafear has been making slow progress. As of right now, I am a page into Chapter Nine. By the end of September, I was just starting Chapter Five. That means that I wrote almost half of what I have in a month, and then spent the next six months trying and failing to be productive with my little project.

I've been busy. I had to learn to adjust to college (badly), I had school work to do (which I didn't), and I spent the entire month of February working on a play. That's no excuse for only having 40,000 words of a story written down eight months in, but who's keeping track right now? I'm not signed to any publishing company, I have no deadline I have to honor. Right now I can write at my leisure.

It's bothering me (somewhat) that I was further along in The Apprentice Wizard by this point than I am in Seafear. I wrote The Apprentice Wizard from May 2006 to January 2007 -- eight months. I completed an effing book in the time it's taken me to get 1/3rd of the way done with this sucker.

But then I remind myself that I had done almost all of the preliminary world building for TAW before I sat down to write the damned thing. With Seafear, I didn't do any world building before I started writing. I drew a map and named the islands of the Orident Federation, I came up with a bunch of pirate-sounding names (Secundus Mockingbird being ignored at this point in time), and then I just sat down and did it. I've been world-building as I go.

That's the problem with the genre I'm writing in. While it's not quite high fantasy and I don't need to spend a lifetime developing the sophisticated cultures of sixteen different races and chronicling 7,000 years of history a la The Lord of the Rings, it does require me to make some stuff up. There's no such thing as St. Chalice Island, the Tramonto Society, or the Kestrel Academy on Columbine Island. I had to develop all of those things.

I've made some earnest progress outside of the actual "book" aspect of Seafear. I've fully outlined both sequels, I've done some serious character building, I've reworked the timeline of the story, and I've updated the map of the Federation to make it more realistic. I really want to get one of my more artsy friends to draw the map for me, but I don't want to just go up and ask them. Oh well.

Hopefully I'll make some progress on Chapter Nine today; I won't be able to get it done because of homework, but if I can at least get 1000 words in before I go to class in at 4:10 I'll be happy.