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dr_pretentiousWell, the insurance adjuster declared my sister's house too unsafe for us to empty it ourselves--snapped rafters, etc.--so while we waited for professionals to do that job, Dan and I spent the weekend moving things from my parents' house into storage. Yes, Pru is moving her family into my old bedroom, even though the insurance would pay to put her up in an apartment while her house gets rebuilt. Her ulterior motive: to save my parents from their hoarding behavior. We're all hoping that, when she moves back out in 6-12 months, she'll leave a more livable space behind her.
We unearthed some wonderful stuff: my father's love letters to my mother from basic training; disturbing 19th century jewelry made of woven human hair, which entirely fails to commemorate whatever dead relative it was supposed to remind the living of; a handpainted scroll from the Shinto shrine at Tagata, home of the infamous fertility festival, with detailed illustrations.
After years of holding onto them, my mother has finally given me my earliest books. Not the ones I learned to read on, but the ones I wrote. Back in 1976, my first grade teacher organized the PTA moms for our class to type up our stories and bind them into books, complete with covers made of festive, waterproof wallpaper. We then illustrated the stories we'd written. My mother informs me that I was the most prolific first grader at Fort Knox. Something tells me the Vassar archive will not, after my demise, give pride of place to Little Billy Goat's Piano, The Island of Moloona Loona, nor even to Charlie Snake Reads a Book.
I had the biggest fight with old Mrs. Bennett when one of the PTA moms censored What I Saw at Monticello. My parents had taken me on a trip to Thomas Jefferson's very spiffy home, which he had designed and erected himself. Erected. The word was in the tour guide's patter, and when I got home, I looked it up. Apparently the word reminded the PTA mom who typed my manuscript of something she thought first graders ought not to know about, so she changed the word to "architected." I protested that I had used the right word, and that it had come back to me changed into something that wasn't a real verb at all, and it wasn't fair. Why, I wanted to know. Poor Mrs. Bennett. What was she supposed to do? She couldn't very well go to a PTA volunteer who was already giving lots of hours, and ask her to retype and rebind the book for me on my ungrateful say-so, and Mrs. Bennett certainly couldn't explain to me why the PTA volunteer had thought she needed to change the word "erected." On the other hand, she couldn't dispute with me over the word when I showed it to her in the dictionary. I loved Mrs. Bennett, but my attitude toward my teachers never recovered. From first grade on, I was ready to jump to the conclusion that I knew better than they did, anytime they disagreed with me. And this, when the list of things I was too young to understand about the situation was longer than the full text of What I Saw at Monticello.
I have mellowed out a bit since 1976.
Anyhow, the Bob manuscript is ready for beta readers. Anyone who reads it to the end will see why it absolutely cannot keep its current title, "Bob and the Black Head of Atho." I'm having difficulty getting past my affection for the title it can't keep. Proposals for alternative titles will be greeted with glee. Proposals for cuts will be greeted with gratitude. Proposals for additions to the ms will be greeted with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, because it's 37,000 words long at the moment.
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matociquala, who was very encouraging about the storytelling when she read the first few pages in the workshop session at the conference, sighed when I told her the word count--people are always sighing over my word counts--and said, "Don't bother cutting it down to 25K. It won't be any easier to sell at 25K than it will at 35K." She knows her stuff, and her advice is always worth listening to.
I suspect that, in my place, a sensible person would have resigned herself either to cutting it back even further than 25K, or to pumping the story up to 80K (the low end of the novel range), in the interest of appeasing the market, which is not especially welcoming to novellas. Novellas are problematic. Some magazines still buy them, but they eat up a lot of pages, and no editor is at ease dedicating a quarter of an issue to a totally unknown writer.
But do I have any sense? Judge for yourself. I received her advice with relief, because it meant that, instead of spending my energy on a desperate effort to cut the story back by a third of its length, I was free to concentrate on making the story good. If Bob is doomed to be trunked, I might as well please myself.
Probably this ms will finish making the rounds of the very few markets that publish novellas in my genre right quickly, and sooner rather than later will get trunked indefinitely. Let it be a lesson to me: if I need to carve miniatures, I should start with smaller blocks of marble. Read it now, if you're curious. It'll be a long time before I have the kind of name that makes a magazine editor want to look at a 37K novella.
We unearthed some wonderful stuff: my father's love letters to my mother from basic training; disturbing 19th century jewelry made of woven human hair, which entirely fails to commemorate whatever dead relative it was supposed to remind the living of; a handpainted scroll from the Shinto shrine at Tagata, home of the infamous fertility festival, with detailed illustrations.
After years of holding onto them, my mother has finally given me my earliest books. Not the ones I learned to read on, but the ones I wrote. Back in 1976, my first grade teacher organized the PTA moms for our class to type up our stories and bind them into books, complete with covers made of festive, waterproof wallpaper. We then illustrated the stories we'd written. My mother informs me that I was the most prolific first grader at Fort Knox. Something tells me the Vassar archive will not, after my demise, give pride of place to Little Billy Goat's Piano, The Island of Moloona Loona, nor even to Charlie Snake Reads a Book.
I had the biggest fight with old Mrs. Bennett when one of the PTA moms censored What I Saw at Monticello. My parents had taken me on a trip to Thomas Jefferson's very spiffy home, which he had designed and erected himself. Erected. The word was in the tour guide's patter, and when I got home, I looked it up. Apparently the word reminded the PTA mom who typed my manuscript of something she thought first graders ought not to know about, so she changed the word to "architected." I protested that I had used the right word, and that it had come back to me changed into something that wasn't a real verb at all, and it wasn't fair. Why, I wanted to know. Poor Mrs. Bennett. What was she supposed to do? She couldn't very well go to a PTA volunteer who was already giving lots of hours, and ask her to retype and rebind the book for me on my ungrateful say-so, and Mrs. Bennett certainly couldn't explain to me why the PTA volunteer had thought she needed to change the word "erected." On the other hand, she couldn't dispute with me over the word when I showed it to her in the dictionary. I loved Mrs. Bennett, but my attitude toward my teachers never recovered. From first grade on, I was ready to jump to the conclusion that I knew better than they did, anytime they disagreed with me. And this, when the list of things I was too young to understand about the situation was longer than the full text of What I Saw at Monticello.
I have mellowed out a bit since 1976.
Anyhow, the Bob manuscript is ready for beta readers. Anyone who reads it to the end will see why it absolutely cannot keep its current title, "Bob and the Black Head of Atho." I'm having difficulty getting past my affection for the title it can't keep. Proposals for alternative titles will be greeted with glee. Proposals for cuts will be greeted with gratitude. Proposals for additions to the ms will be greeted with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, because it's 37,000 words long at the moment.
matociquala, who was very encouraging about the storytelling when she read the first few pages in the workshop session at the conference, sighed when I told her the word count--people are always sighing over my word counts--and said, "Don't bother cutting it down to 25K. It won't be any easier to sell at 25K than it will at 35K." She knows her stuff, and her advice is always worth listening to.I suspect that, in my place, a sensible person would have resigned herself either to cutting it back even further than 25K, or to pumping the story up to 80K (the low end of the novel range), in the interest of appeasing the market, which is not especially welcoming to novellas. Novellas are problematic. Some magazines still buy them, but they eat up a lot of pages, and no editor is at ease dedicating a quarter of an issue to a totally unknown writer.
But do I have any sense? Judge for yourself. I received her advice with relief, because it meant that, instead of spending my energy on a desperate effort to cut the story back by a third of its length, I was free to concentrate on making the story good. If Bob is doomed to be trunked, I might as well please myself.
Probably this ms will finish making the rounds of the very few markets that publish novellas in my genre right quickly, and sooner rather than later will get trunked indefinitely. Let it be a lesson to me: if I need to carve miniatures, I should start with smaller blocks of marble. Read it now, if you're curious. It'll be a long time before I have the kind of name that makes a magazine editor want to look at a 37K novella.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 06:03 am (UTC)I'd love to beta-read. And I like novellas.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 04:49 pm (UTC)Thanks for the offer. It's on its way.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 07:24 pm (UTC)But I bet that the women on the PTA got a lot out of it. People tend to laugh at the PTA, but it's a bloody important organisation.
And, speaking of enlisted men's wives, my sister has joined the Marines base mother-and-baby group. She always laughed when P told her that women "take on their husbands' ranks", but she says it's very clear whose husbands are officers and whose are squaddies. Weird.
I shall read your novella with great pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 11:13 am (UTC)A 37K novella is long enough to publish as a small book, FWIW. *g* And some of the small presses loooove to do that, once you have a bit of name recognition. All is not lost!
Also, there's always the fix-up novel. *g* String together three novelettes and a novella and you have a book.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:36 am (UTC)I have notions about collections of linked short stories with the Rugosa Coven characters. I don't know if they'll come out to play for a novel. We'll see.
Indeed, all is not lost. Fortunately, I have the longest attention span to be found anywhere outside a Buddhist monastery, and I work well under conditions of delayed gratification.
Thank you again. Your declaration that, on the basis of Bob's opening paragraph, you would have bought the book, meant a great deal to me. Even more, now that I know that you didn't know that you (sort of) knew me.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 04:23 am (UTC)Just saying.
That was pro-quality writing.
Beta Reader
Date: 2006-07-11 01:06 pm (UTC)Re: Beta Reader
Date: 2006-07-12 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:43 am (UTC)It was time for Bob to break the news about the collection, but where to begin? "We have the Black Head of Atho."
She looked puzzled. "Should we see a dermatologist about that?"
"No, not the Blackhead of Atho. The Black Head of Atho!" He brandished it at his sister.
"Gah! Put that thing away! You'll poke someone's eye out." He set it on kitchen counter, and she leaned over it for a closer look. "I've seen that before."
"In the shoe closet?"
"No. In an old book. Why would I see it in a shoe closet?"
"That's where Amber found it. Among Mom's Manolo Blahniks."
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 03:16 pm (UTC)In junior high I once wrote an article for the school newsletter describing some event or other we held. The teacher who was in charge of it had the nerve to rewrite my article, pumping it full of extra adjectives. I guess she didn't think I was enthusiastic enough. So I sort of feel your rage.
I had already been convinced for years that I knew better than my teachers though. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 04:27 pm (UTC)However, your post brings up another issue that I'm keenly interested in. You commented that "no editor is at ease dedicating a quarter of an issue to a totally unknown writer." Discounting the literary magazines (that are under their own set of rules), what is a magazine willing to dedicate a quarter of an issue to? Advertising, of course. Most commercial magazines run well over 50% advertising. As I see more and more LJ sites that are "Advertising Supported" I wonder if there is a message in there somewhere. What you need is a corporate sponsor who will buy a quarter of the book as an ad and plop you story into it.
I have no doubt that I've offended your sensibilities with that comment, but there may be a reality in publishing that we will be facing whether we want to or not in the not-so-distant future. I can see agents shopping manuscripts, not to publishers, but to advertisers. There isn't a television show that gets on the air without a sponsor, and we've seen many a good show cancelled because the sponsor backed out or disapproved of the content. Could it be that we are about to see that point with publishing as well? Let's face it, if Microsoft told me they would sponsor my next book for a pop-up ad at the beginning of each chapter, I'd be seriously considering striking a deal.
A number of years ago, an acquaintance wrote a book about wine and sold it, of all places, to Chrysler Corporation. For the period of a year they put the book in a welcome basket for all purchasers of new cars of a certain model. It's just a thought. Maybe we will find a new way of marketing our novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry in the advertising age.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:55 am (UTC)I don't envision doing that, but I have to admit, I know exactly which corporation I'd approach for this ms. Post-it Notes appear so frequently in it, I probably ought to hit up 3M.
I keep reminding myself that a deep trunk becomes an asset after the first big professional sale, when one doesn't want to look like a one-hit wonder. If nobody picks Bob up on the first pass, I'm still sure someone will want him eventually.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 06:48 pm (UTC)A mark of true potential, that...
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 09:32 pm (UTC)But I have to say, when I started writing it was the standard thing with short stories. Then I'd pick up Writer's Market and dig through it for magazines that publish horror shorts. I, of course, had heard of almost none of them.
After a little while of doing this, it occurred to me that I had almost never actually read a short story in a magazine -- let alone purchased a magazine to read the short stories in it. Whereas I'd read who knows how many books -- this despite the fact that novels are ten times as long as short stories.
That's what convinced me most to switch over to novels (er, and other stuff).
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 04:07 am (UTC)When I was concentrating more on poetry, I'd mark up my annual copy of Poet's Market, but ultimately, there were very few poetry journals doing anything that interested me.
Wait a minute, do I hear you saying that you've been working on novels, in among the screenplays?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-13 12:37 am (UTC)Back when I was still trying to get published before I turned 25 I wrote two novels of the sort one writes prior to turning 25. But if I had just stuck it out for the third noevel...
Nowadays I find the screenwriting and novel writing styles different enough for it to make switching back and forth a challenge.
Beta-Read!!!!
Date: 2006-07-12 02:40 am (UTC)*waves hands in air*
ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME,
Over here, with the husband!!!
Re: Beta-Read!!!!
Date: 2006-07-12 04:06 am (UTC)Re: Beta-Read!!!!
Date: 2006-07-12 05:50 am (UTC)Electronically. I don't like to wait for my fix. Gimme, gimme oh dealer of that most excellent crack.
What parcel?
Loves
The cat that *has* to know what's in the box.
(You know with a cat person married to a raven person, surprises are difficult and shiny things are often fought over. *dthon days, send more shiny things*)
Re: Beta-Read!!!!
Date: 2006-07-12 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:48 pm (UTC)That's, like, a Justice League level superpower as far as I'm concerned.
And I'd love to read about Bob. Bring it on.
I'm in NJ with my mom July 21-25. No particular reason, just a little road trip for fun. Will you be around?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-13 05:07 am (UTC)But I've already crossed a state line since my return from Maryland. What with G in the hospital, C's shop recovering from the flooding on the Delaware, and the migration of a couple of my grad school friends down to Philadelphia, I'll be in NY and PA on little day trips at least half a dozen times.
I didn't even know your mom was in NJ. If you're around for three or four days, then yeah, I should definitely be able to see you. I win! I can put Bob in your hand then, or send him to you some other way. What's your preference?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-17 05:31 pm (UTC)I'd make a special trip to your neck of the woods to pick up Bob.