September 17th, 2008
Current Mood:  determined
Never mind that I didn't mention this on Day One, Two, or Three. I only decided to do this on Day Three, having accidentally started on it two days before. From now until circumstances prevent it, I intend to spend at least an hour a night working on one or more of the Mâvarin books. The last two nights it's been an hour and a half; I didn't think to time myself on nights one and two.
The bulk of Mages of Mâvarin - a thousand pages, give or take a few - and some of Heirs as well, come from a period of about two and a half years circa 1999-2002. I was writing or editing every single night during that era, and hanging out on the old AOL fantasy & sf writers' board with Patricia C. Wrede and a passel of fellow unknowns. I only missed two days in all that time: the day I got my gall bladder out, and the night I was on suicide watch after my friend's husband ditched her. Most days I was handwriting scenes at lunchtime, and typing or revising at night.
Then in late 2002 I went back to school, and had a ton of homework to do, including a paper a week. Suddenly I had to channel all that time and effort and discipline to GEN 300 and the courses that followed. I didn't have time to put into the novels while doing all that, and in any case I was kind of stuck on the handful of scenes still needed for Mages. So I mostly stopped working on it. It's been three and a half years since I graduated from UoP, but since then I've spent my evenings blogging and doing other online stuff. Although I've worked on the books intermittently, and submitted Heirs to two publishers, I've never gotten back into the routine of writing and editing fiction on a nightly basis.
So here's the deal. I know from bitter experience that I'm not terribly good at carrying out my big plans and grand promises after I announce them. So I'm not promising that this will last. But right now I'm unemployed, and I'm getting adequate sleep; I'm interested, and I have the time. There is no reason I can't get some editing in on a daily basis, at least until I get another job. After that, we'll see.
Maybe this is the start of another long, productive streak of continuous effort.
Karen
April 25th, 2007
Current Mood: determined
Where I am in all the writing-related stuff I should be working on:
Heirs of Mâvarin - have not heard back from Tor; it's been 14 months now. According to what I've been reading, I should count that as a rejection and query widely. Haven't done that yet.
Mages of Mâvarin (trilogy) - I'm on chapter two in my edit, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Just last night I did a light edit on Chapter 33. This time I'll be putting chapters in a file as I finish, so that I don't keep starting over with Chapter One.
The Mâvarin Revolutions - still on Chapter One, but it's growing. It's up to 14 pages now, probably a third of that typed in the past week or so. This morning I planned the next bit in the "A Fire in Mâvarin" sequence as I walked to One Stop Automotive.
To Rule Mâvarin (alternate title Prince of Mâvarin (prequel) - stalled out for now.
I haven't been posting much on LJ recently, but I hope to start using it for benchmarking my progress. This is #1 in the series.
March 21st, 2007
Current Mood:  disappointed
I expect I'll write about this on both blogs tonight. I was going to try not to be too repetitious, but on second thought I think I'll just crosspost, mostly.
There is a Doctor Who episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace," in which the Doctor visits Madame de Pompadour at key moments throughout her short life. For him it all happens in less than a day, but, as she remarks, she experiences the relationship from the perspective of "the slow path." My contrasting experiences with my last two submissions of Heirs of Mâvarin has me thinking about the fast path and the slow path, and which one is better in this particular context.
A timeline of the slow path:
- February 20, 2006: mailed cover letter, three chapters and synopsis of Heirs of Mâvarin to Tor Books in NYC.
- February 23, 2006: the submission package arrived at Tor, according to the USPS, and was presumably consigned to the slush pile.
- February 28, 2006: eight days have passed, and the book hasn't been rejected yet, this time around. The last time I mailed it out (an earlier draft back in the late 1990s), it was back in my mailbox exactly one week later.
- June 23, 2006: the four month anniversary of the slush pile arrival marks the first date I can reasonably think that I might hear back on the submission, based on the "at least four to six months" mentioned in the Tor FAQ. Nothing happens.
- August 23, 2006: six months out, the "at least" part of that phrase kicks in. Hey, it doesn't say "at most." I consider whether it's time to query about the status of the submission, but decide to hold off.
- January 1, 2007: someone I admire but have never met offers to ask PNH of Tor about my submission. I say yes, and thank him in advance.
- January 4, 2007: I follow up by snail mail, politely asking the status of my submission.
- January 7, 2007 (date approximate): someone I admire but have never met actually does ask PNH about my submission.
- January 9, 2007: my contact reports back that PNH "did recall" the submission.
- February 23, 2007: I celebrate the one-year anniversary of the submission's arrival on the slush pile by designing a humorous anniversary card. I decide that the longer I wait, the more likely it is that it will not be rejected out of hand. It occurs to me that I once sold a logic problem to Dell over two years after submitting it.
- March 20, 2007: I celebrate the 13-month anniversary of the package's initial mailing by emailing a query to an agent who prefers to operate by email.
A timeline of the fast path:
- March 13, 2007: I read an article from Writer's Digest Online about agents seeking new clients. I save the info to a file, narrowed down to the three that match my needs (i.e., they handle Fantasy, SF and YA)
- March 17, 2007: after working on it in my head for a few days, I write Version 1 of the query, and send to a few friends for feedback.
- March 20, 2007, 8:54 PM: After good advice from my friends, careful study of the agent's guidelines and multiple revisions, I email the query. I spend the rest of the evening updating my mavarin.com entry page and my online bio, in case the agent peeks at either.
- March 21, 2007, 7:39 PM: I get an emailed "standard rejection letter," identical to the one the agent posted on her blog sometime in the past week. It's a nicely worded, encouraging letter, but it's still a form rejection, the same one I would have received had I sent a 20-page, misspelled horror of a query promoting a gerbil cookbook, a foundation document for a new religion, and fifty other unlikely projects.
So which is better, the fast path or the slow path? It's kind of hard to be sure, because I'm still on the slow path. If it ends the same way as the fast path, with a form rejection and no feedback, then it will be a far greater disappointment than the one received in less than a day. But like that logic problem, my slush pile submission may be making its glacial way toward a good result. Let's hope so, anyway.
As for the quick path, I'm thinking, as it begins to rain here, that it is possible to find at the end of it, not a pot of gold or even a rainbow, but a pewter lining in place of a silver one. At least I didn't have much time to get my hopes up. At least I've now worked out a pretty good query to send out, even though it didn't do the job this time. At least I have a few more places to try, and no more need to wait for this one to respond before trying the next.
And maybe it doesn't matter what I think, either of the fast path or the slow one. It's not as if I get to choose which one to travel on. Some publishers and agents tend to respond quickly, others slowly. Some individual examples may be highly variable in this respect, depending on the submission and the circumstances. Even if it is possible to find out which publishers and agents respond more quickly or more slowly than others, the info shouldn't be a deciding factor as one prepares to address the envelope or the email. I will gladly wait two years for a "yes" answer from a good agent or a mass market publisher, if that's what it takes. If it's a no, then sooner is better, but it's not something to aim for. Better to get on with editing Mages and writing Revolutions, and try not to obsess about timelines. The reply will get here when it gets here.
Dang, I'm depressed.
February 23rd, 2007
Current Mood:  hopeful
Today was the one year anniversary of my three chapters, synopsis and cover letter for Heirs of Mâvarin arriving on the slush pile at Tor Books in New York. I was reminded of this fact in a dream this morning, in which Patrick Nielsen Hayden got annoyed with me for temporarily storing ham and cheese in a Tor mailbox, and announced he would have nothing more to do with me. I don't have the nerve to do it, but for months I've been fantasizing that I could mark this occasion with an anniversary card, something like this:
The reason I wouldn't send it is not that I think Patrick and Teresa wouldn't enjoy the joke. They might indeed find it funny, which is why I have no fear about posting it where they may possibly find out about it and take a peek. But actually sending such a thing, as a physical card or in an email, strikes me as the kind of unprofessional attention-grabbing stunts that Carol Pinchefsky writes about in her posting "It Came from the Slush Pile." Unfavorable attention on me instead of favorable attention toward the three chapters and synopsis is the last thing I want right now. Yes, I do wish PNH would decide, and soon, to ask for the rest of the manuscript. But if a little nudge from John Scalzi and a polite follow-up letter from me haven't hurried things along, a joke card certainly won't do so, except possibly to encourage the issuance of a rejection letter.
In a way it's fitting that I be made to wait for this all-important reply. There's a reason why the Beatles' lyric, "It took me years to write, will you take a look?" resonates so strongly for me. Heirs of Mâvarin did take me years to write. Too many years, really, but that's what happens when a book slowly teaches you how to write it over the course of a few decades. Unless the bottom suddenly falls out of the fantasy fiction market, I don't really mind waiting a few more years for a publisher to buy, print and distribute my beloved first novel. Heck, it gives me more time to work on the sequels!
On the other hand, if this long wait for a response ends in a printed form rejection, I fully expect to cry for a week before sending it out again.
Karen
January 28th, 2007
Current Mood:  happy
 Well, this book, The Mâvarin Revolutions, is officially underway. The first scene I wrote months ago. The second one I started in my notebook several weeks back over a plateful of "yummy yummy chicken," and finished this afternoon in my fiction blog. The third scene started to come into my head a day or two ago. and began the transition to paper and pixels late this afternoon. I've even had some ideas for the book's main plotlines, which frankly doesn't happen for me very often. Usually these things only emerge from the fog when I get there.
Then tonight I got distracted for an entire evening by this long thread on Making Light. Dang. The gist of it: some woman promoted herself as an Editor on the Inside, whereas her only credits are in non-paying literary fiction circles. TNH called her on it and she got nasty, and then some proxy or sock puppet got even nastier - but meantime the not-really-an-insider's "Pitch Bitch" blog was taken down. My old thorn Mrk popped up to pitch some pseudonymous bile, which was deleted by the time I got there. Just as well. At least he hasn't taken his attack dog routine back to Wikipedia this time, for which I'm grateful. Then the conversation, as it so often does, turned to Inigo and Westley's sword techniques, Roman horsemanship and the question of whether calling something "vanilla" is an insult to the subject or an unfair denigration of the flavoring extract. Fun stuff!
Still, it's late again, and I must sleep. All I want to say here is this: the fiction is flowing again. And that is officially a Good Thing.
Karen
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