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.