Genesis Earth Trilogy – Page 16 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Sick (blegh!), submitting, and thoughts on self-publishing

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently; I came down with a nasty fever this week, and I’ve spent the last two days recovering.

It really sucks, because my two temp jobs just finished, and I was hoping to get into another writing routine. The jobs were sucking up all my time, though it was definitely awesome to have money flowing in.

Anyhow, I caught Brandon Sanderson after his 318 class and asked him about submitting to agents while I’ve got my full ms out. He said I shouldn’t do it; that it would look bad if I had to turn down another request because it’s already out. So for now, I’m just going to sit on it and send out Genesis Earth to other agents.

Genesis Earth keeps getting turned down, but the vibe I get is that it’s more because of the agents’ tastes, not because of the poor quality of the book. So far, I’ve gotten one request for a full, one request for a partial, two personalized rejections, and several variations on “I don’t feel I’m the right agent.”

Even if all of the latter are just nice standard form rejections, that’s enough to tell me that Genesis Earth isn’t a crappy book. So I’ve been thinking, if I run the rounds and fail to find an agent or a publisher, maybe I should take the plunge and publish it for $2.99 as an e-book on Amazon.

Speculation about e-publishing is rampant, and opinions are wildly mixed right now. According to Joe Konrath, everyone (including new writers) should self publish their works–to wait even a day is to give up large amounts of potential earnings. According to Dave Wolverton, however, new writers should definitely not self publish, but try to break in through traditional publishing with as big of a deal as they can possibly get. Both authors have had huge self-publishing successes, so which is right?

Well, I read an interesting guest post by Lee Goldberg on Joe Konrath’s blog that takes the middle ground: start out with a traditional publishing deal, in order to build a name for yourself, but self-publish a couple of e-book lines shortly thereafter.

So far, that seems to make the most sense to me. The science fiction and fantasy community is very tight-knit, and I don’t see myself becoming a major part of it through self-publishing alone. At the same time, it’s very difficult to make a living through traditional publishing in these genres, so once I’ve built up something of a name and a fan-base, it would be good to start self-publishing a couple of e-book lines.

But then again, why not try it out now with Genesis Earth? Well, a couple of reasons. I’m worried that self-publishing would make me look bad when I submit my other stuff. E-book sales tend to take a long time to build momentum, so even though the starting costs are low, the returns don’t start coming in until later–if they come at all. And that’s the second thing I’m worried about–that my stuff will get buried under the flood of drivel that’s swamping Amazon and other e-publishers right now.

The main reason, though, is that I feel I need to do more research to figure out what’s going on. Probably the most valuable thing I can do is get an e-reader and dive into the market from the consumer end, just to figure out how the system works. Without some hands-on experience and a good working knowledge of the field, I’m probably not ready to take the leap.

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to break in through the traditional route. I might not make as much money as quickly this way, but I hopefully will build my name faster–and at this point, that’s more important to me than revenues.

What the…?

I sent out two queries this afternoon, about an hour apart from each other. The first was for Genesis Earth, the second for Bringing Stella Home. Both agents responded within the hour. Genesis Earth got a form rejection, and Bringing Stella Home got a request for the full manuscript. Yeah, I was shocked too.

So I was planning to query Bringing Stella Home all over the place in the next few weeks, but with the full out…I’m not exactly sure what to do. I know it’s okay to send out multiple queries, so long as you only send the full ms to one place at a time, but what about querying when the full is already out?

I’m assuming that it’s okay to keep sending out queries, so long as you don’t send a second copy of the full while the first agent is considering it. If someone else requests to see it, I should probably say “so and so is currently considering it, but I’ll let you know once they’ve gotten back to me.” Is that right?

Needless to say, this is very encouraging.

Racing along

Ugh, why do I always stay up until 2am? And then I don’t get up until ten. Man, I need a job–either that, or more self discipline.

Just a quick post before I hit the sack. I’m making excellent progress with the revision of Mercenary Savior, regularly hitting between 7k and 8k per day. Most of that is polishing work, which tends to go fast, but I’m also rearranging a few chapters, deleting scenes and putting others in a different order.

One thing that’s surprised me a lot so far is how much I’ve managed to cut. The first draft, which I wrote on MS word, was about 135k–which runs around 145k by open office’s (flawed) word count method. The second draft was about the same, the third a little shorter, and the fourth around 120k by open office’s algorithm. By then, I thought it was as lean as I could get it–but no, that’s not the case. It’s all for the best, though; a 100k word novel isn’t nearly as daunting as a 145k monster, especially in science fiction.

Anyhow, today I got some feedback from C.A. Jacobs, a friend from World Fantasy (which she mailed to me…from HAWAII…), and I’m thinking I ought to change the title of this work. She suggested something like “The Fall of Karduna,” but the book is more about the individual characters than the world, so I’m thinking of something like “Saving Stella,” or even reverting back to “Bringing Stella Home.” Any thoughts?

In unrelated news, a ton of job opportunities have been opening up recently. I interviewed for a position with the BYU Political Science department on Monday, and I’ve got another interview with a local marketing company Friday. My sister also says that her work needs a new cook, so that could be good if the other stuff falls through. And as for phone delivery, I’ve got until the 17th to keep up with that.

So, life is good. Writing-wise, I’m having a very productive revision of one of my better works. Job-wise, a lot of promising options seem to be popping up. Social-wise, I’m doing pretty well, too; Utah is a great place to make new friends.

Oh, and English 318 starts TOMORROW! Holy crap, I am excited!!

gnight

Q4 report, 2010

For those of you who don’t know, I do a report on my blog at the end of each quarter, giving a progress update on my writing. I like to think it helps me keep things professional. Whether or not it does, it’s certainly helpful to look back on how I did.

So anyhow, here’s the word count chart:

The red line represents daily word count, and the blue line is a running total for the previous seven days. The chart includes revisions as well as original material; for revisions, I just do a wordcount of the finished version, whether or not I’ve cut out significant chunks of the text or left it largely as-is. Maybe that skews the picture a bit, but it’s the best I can do with the tools I have.

At the beginning of the quarter, I was working 40+ hours per week at a seasonal job, so the writing was pretty slow, averaging a little less than 15k per week. My main project was the fourth draft of Mercenary Savior, which I was struggling to get ready for World Fantasy.

The job ended October 28th, and I didn’t do any writing during the conference, which is why you see the dip at the end of the month. But I took November off to work entirely on my writing, which is why things took off again rather quickly.

That huge peak in the middle of the quarter is from the fifth draft of Genesis Earth, which I completed in about two weeks. The draft was already pretty well polished, but one of my hard sf friends did a read through and got back with a few major science issues which I needed to rectify. Also, I figured it was in need of a language polish, since I finished the last revision almost a year ago and my writing (I hope) has improved a lot since then.

I was pretty surprised at how quickly it went. The book is definitely as good as I can make it, and any further revisions without professional editorial assistance would be a less effective use of my time.

Things dropped off rather sharply, however, because I spent all of Thanksgiving week either on the road or with family. Ah, how I love road trips…but they sure can throw a kink in the writing schedule. I also had a hard time settling on my next big project, which is why things took a while to take off again after I got back.

After starting a sequel for Mercenary Savior and toying around with a short story idea, I decided to do a major overhaul of Worlds Away from Home. Unlike GE, however, WAFH really, really sucks. It took me two weeks just to read through the rough draft and pick out all the troubled spots, after which I rewrote the outline from the ground up and decided to completely scrap half the book. I started the second draft in mid-December, but it’s taken a while for things to really build steam.

Right as I was starting WAFH 2.0, a couple of other writer friends from World Fantasy got back to me with their comments on Mercenary Savior, and pointed out a few problems that I hadn’t noticed before. I started the revision on December 21st and have been plowing through ever since. That accounts for the huge spike at the end of the quarter–like GE 5.0, the draft has a lot fewer story problems, but does need a few things fixed for consistency, as well as a language polish.

Overall, I wrote or revised through about .25 million words this past quarter–some of which were easier than others. I started a new project (Into the Nebulous Deep), polished one of my manuscripts to the very best of my abilities, and made significant headway on revising and polishing two others. In terms of publications, I had a major article published in Mormon Artist, and a short poem accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Leading Edge.

Not a bad quarter. Now, let’s see if I can find an agent and/or publisher in 2011.

Encouraging realizations

So today I realized something about my writing process that encouraged me quite a bit. With every project so far that I’ve finished, revised, and polished (or will soon be polishing), I went through a depressing period where the draft absolutely sucked and I questioned whether I was just wasting my time with the whole project. I went through it with Genesis Earth, I went through it with Mercenary Savior, and I’m going through it right now with Worlds Away from Home.

None of that is new, of course; what’s new is the realization that this phase is an essential part of my personal writing process. In other words, it’s not a distressing thing that I’m going through this phase–it’s actually a sign that things are normal. The story has potential but needs a significant overhaul, so until I complete that overhaul I’m only going to see how much it sucks.

The trick, of course, is keeping momentum. I’ve found that if I consistently write 2,500 words per day, my mind is so absorbed in the story that I can make good headway on it. I only revised through about 1.4k today, but I cut off at least another 2k of useless fat, so I suppose that works.

I also submitted Genesis Earth to two agents, so overall, today was quite productive. I’ll probably count those as my submissions for this week, to allow people time off for the holidays. Of course, I won’t stop writing!

Out of it

Man, I feel like I’ve been so out of it recently. I’ve been getting up around 9 am or 10 am every day, going to bed every night around 2 am or 3 am, and running around so much that I hardly seem to have time to write. Life is good, and between plasma and phone book deliveries I’m earning enough to get by, but my days are very unstructured and that’s not good for my writing.

So here’s what I need: a stable job that facilitates my writing. For the past year, I’ve been working random odd jobs and temporary jobs, and while they pay enough to get by (just barely), the variability and lack of long-term security is just too much to juggle on top of writing. I’ve got to find something else.

Trouble is, I’m afraid that if I settle for a dead end job, it’ll put such a stigma on me that I won’t be able to get a better job later if the writing career doesn’t take off. I’m pretty confident that I’ll eventually be able to make a living off my writing, but I don’t know how late or how soon that’s going to happen. The last thing I want is to end up as a wage-slave without a future.

Anyway, despite the lack of daily structure, I really love the flexibility that this phone book delivery job is giving me. Pay is on a per route basis (like newspaper delivery), and the supervisor is really awesome and easy to work with.

If I want, I can take the mornings easy, do personal chores for a while, deliver a couple hundred phone books and write in the evenings. That’s basically what I’ve been doing these past three weeks.

I really hate going to bed and waking up late, though. That’s not sustainable. If I come to my writing only at the very end of the day, it’s going to be a wash. I might get a thousand words in, but if I’m not consistently crossing the 2.5k threshold every day, my heart really just isn’t in to it.

In any case, WAFH 2.0 is coming along fairly well. I’ve got a good idea where I want the story to go, and the characters seem to be working out. Also, I think I’ve found my big reason for wanting to write this story–I’ll write more about that in a later post.

This next draft isn’t going to be perfect, but hopefully I can get rid of all the major story problems (and there are a TON of major story problems!). I suppose my goal at this point is to make it good enough to send out to my first readers. The rough draft is so full of crap, I wouldn’t let anyone read it if they paid me. Blegh!

Also, I know it’s only been a month, but I think I’m going to do another cover to cover revision of Mercenary Savior in the next few weeks. I really want to get it polished enough to start sending it out–preferably by the end of the holidays–so that’s probably going to take priority. If it goes as fast as Genesis Earth 5.0, I should have the entire manuscript done in about three or four weeks.

And another thing–I’m going to set a new goal: submit at least one thing to an agent/editor every week. Right now, I tend to go on splurges where I’ll send out half a dozen queries, then sit around for a month without really doing much to try to break in. I feel like I need to be more consistent on that front, because submitting is definitely one of my greatest weaknesses. They say everything comes better with practice, so I might as well send stuff out more regularly.

Anyhow, that’s how things are going right now–disjointed and all over the place, but somehow things still get done. I just wish I could get more done, but who doesn’t? Anyhow, there’s always next week–may it be better than the last.

Getting back into things

So yesterday, I wrote through 4k words in WAFH 2.0 without even realizing it. I didn’t feel very productive, because I only did about 500 words at a time before something came up and I got distracted, but by the end of the day, ended up accomplishing a lot. That was a pleasant surprise.

In terms of my writing, I’ve been really out of things since Thanksgiving. I finished Genesis Earth 5.0 right before the vacation and started outlining WAFH 2.0 immediately after, but…man, the rough draft REALLY sucks. Like, sucks so bad I’ll have to completely throw out part III and start from scratch.

Fortunately, I think I’ve got a good idea what to do. I’ve outlined about eighteen complete plots and subplots, so that’ll probably help out with keeping things tight. The rough draft has a lot of shotgun writing, which means I have a lot of stuff to cut out–and now that I see where things are going, I know how to cut it.

One thing that worries me, however, is that I don’t have a strong driving reason to write this book–or maybe I do, but I just haven’t noticed it yet. I’m hoping that’s the case, but I don’t yet know, and it’s really bugging me.

For Genesis Earth, it was the first line (“Earth was a ghost that haunted me”) and the cryo scene. For Mercenary Savior, it was the ending, and the way it resonated with an old Western I saw as a kid. With both projects, I got to a point of desperation somewhere between the first and second drafts where I wanted to throw everything out and never work on it again–but with both projects, that driving reason kept me going until I made it work.

With WAFH, however, I’m not sure what it is that’s driving me to write it. For now, though, I’ll just press through until I find out. I really hope I’m not just wasting my time writing this (because the rough draft sucks REALLY bad) but past experience has told me to ignore my own self-doubts at this phase.

Which reminds me: this week’s Writing Excuses podcast is really amazing. I just listened to it an hour or two ago, and the advice this time around was exactly what I needed to hear. Brandon’s advice in particular is very good: he basically says to stop worrying and enjoy what you’re doing.

So do I enjoy all of this? In spite of all the angst I’ve spilled, I think I can say that I do. When you’ve got a good story, and you know that it’s good, and you tell it in a way that moves someone else in a personally meaningful way–man, there’s nothing that compares to that. I look back now on stuff I used to think was absolute drivel, and I’m amazed. It takes persistence and drive and a little bit of crazy, but once you can get to that point, it makes everything you did to get there worth it.

The only thing now is to find out why WAFH is worth writing, and to hang onto those reasons at all costs until the story comes into its own. Wish me luck!

Slogging through a funk

Just a quick update, since it’s 3 am and I’m kind of in a daze after playing Halo: Reach on Xbox live with my roommate. Whoa, decompressing…

This whole week, I’ve been in a weird funk. It sucks to be unemployed, especially since I can’t commit to anything long term because I’m waiting to hear back from the wilderness job. Man, I really hope I get it–but even if I do, I’ll need to raise some cash to keep me going through January until the paychecks start coming in. And if I don’t get the job, I have no idea what I’ll do.

But mostly, it has to do with my writing. I’ve been running through the rough draft of Worlds Away from Home, and…holy crap, it REALLY sucks. It sucks to the point where I’m not sure exactly how to fix it.

Part of it probably has to do with my initial ambitions for it, which I probably set too high. I originally wanted to write a science fiction romance that turned the “romance” element on its head by having the sex be the thing pushing the characters apart rather than bringing them together. I got a little too didactic in the rough draft, though, and failed to tell a story that, at it’s root, is meant to entertain.

That’s probably the most important thing–to tell a story that’s fundamentally entertaining. So I’ve been looking at that, and I’m finding that there are significantly fewer plot threads here than there were in Mercenary Savior. That, and there’s considerably less suspense. The character arcs are still sufficiently complex, I think, but there aren’t nearly as many hooks and cliffhangers as my other work.

This whole week, I’ve been vacillating between “alright, I can do this” to “this novel sucks and I should just throw it out and never work on it again.” In fact, I drew up a chart today of all the novels I’ve started, finished a first draft, and finished a polished draft–and the results are a little stark.

I only just produced a fully polished draft for Genesis Earth, so at 2010 I’ve finally gotten one novel to the point where I think it’s as good as I can make it without an editor/agent to help. One freaking novel–and that’s after two years of work. Mercenary Savior, I’m finding, isn’t quite where it needs to be, though it’s close–probably I’ll nail it down in early 2011. But other than those two? I’ve got nothing.

I started Worlds Away from Home back in 2008, and I’m wondering whether I was even good enough back then to craft a story that could carry through a complete novel. Ashes of the Starry Sea was probably a bit too ambitious, and Genesis Earth, while it ended up working out, was so small in scope that it wasn’t that hard to pull off.

Is something fundamentally flawed with Worlds Away from Home? Did I bite off more than I could chew? Is the story premise so screwed up that I should just abandon it and reuse it occasionally for scraps?

I have no idea. Maybe I’m just being too angsty–after all, I started Genesis Earth BEFORE I started Worlds Away from Home, and that one turned out great. It took two years, of course, but it worked out in the end.

So will this one work out? Probably, I suppose–but only if I can solidly get behind it. I’m trying to put together a detailed plot outline to figure out what the story needs, but if I can’t find something else–something on par with the cryo scene and the first line of Genesis Earth, which for the longest time were the only two things keeping me from trashing that project–if I can’t find something redeemable like that, I might just drop this monstrosity and let it die.

Blarg. I hate this. I might just take a break from things and write a couple short stories. This whole week, I’ve been writing nothing but outlines and revision notes–I need to do something a little more creative.

Anyhow, that’s what I’m currently slogging through. Before the end of next week, I’m hoping to find out whether I’ve got that wilderness job or not. Let’s hope…

Change in direction

Just a quick update on things before I go to bed.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to put Into the Nebulous Deep on hold for the time being. The main reason for this is that it’s a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior, and if the first one doesn’t sell…yeah, not the best business decision.

I figure the best way to do it is to have a series of indirectly linked standalone novels set in the same world. That way, a publisher could pick up any one of them after rejecting all the others, but if you want to bundle them into a series and sell them together, you can do that too.

That’s my strategy–I like the universe I built for Mercenary Savior, and I’m going to keep it for the foreseeable future, but for now, the trilogies and duologies will have to wait. In any case, I’ve written down my major ideas for ITND, so I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up where I left off if/when MS sells.

Instead, I’m going to start working through the second draft of Worlds Away from Home. It needs a ton of work, but having finished the rough draft, I know that the story has potential. At this point, I’m actually very enthusiastic about it, so hopefully that will help drive momentum.

Right now, I’m in the outlining stage. I’m taking a page from Dan Wells and using his seven point story structure to draw out all the plot lines and character arcs. When I did this for MS 4.0, I had to outline about fifteen arcs before I felt it was sufficiently tight; it will probably be the same for WAFW 2.0 as well.

Currently, I’m in the middle of outlining chapter six. If all goes well, I’ll finish outlining and start writing by the end of the week.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of submitting. Sent out another short story to Leading Edge–oh, and by the way, they accepted a poem of mine, so expect to see that in a forthcoming issue. I also submitted the latest draft (5.0) of Genesis Earth to a few agents, so hopefully that will lead to something positive.

In other news, I’m looking for a job again. Oh joy. I’m hoping things will work out with the wilderness job, but if not, I still need something to tide me over for the Christmas season. It’s stressful, but at least I’m not broke yet, which is good. If I can’t find work and have to buy gear for the wilderness training, however, I just might be.

I’m confident things will work out, however. I’ve found that they always do, even if not in the way I wanted or expected. Just keep swimming.

In the meantime, check out this AWESOME 8-bit remix of one of the tracks leaked from Daft Punk’s upcoming album for the movie Tron. Dude…this makes me so incredibly happy. And the 8-bit art! I nabbed it and turned it into my avatar for the Quark forums. In case you want to use it, here’s a copy.

8-bit Daft Punk FTW! The only thing more epic would be if Daft Punk and E.S. Posthumus joined forces–but if that happened, hosts of heavenly angels would descend upon our planet and usher in an era of global peace and universal prosperity. But dude, I would give my firstborn son to acquire that music.

You laugh, but I’m only half joking…

Genesis Earth 5.0 is finished!

That’s right; the fifth draft of Genesis Earth is complete. It was a quick, easy edit, but there were quite a few problems with the last draft, mostly having to do with the physics and timing/distances.

Anyway, here are the stats:

ms pages: 335
words: 71,500
file size: 164 KB
chapters: 16, prologue & epilogue
start date: 2 Nov 2010
end date: 20 Nov 2010

And the wordle:

I used to describe this novel as a “hard sf romance,” but after this last revision I can see that it’s not hard sf at all–though the science (or pseudo-science) plays an important role, the story really is driven by the characters.

Thanks to some of my recent first readers, I also realize now that Genesis Earth is solidly YA. Based on their recommendations, I lowered the age of the protagonists to sixteen and seventeen, and made some adjustments to the query letter.

I’m not sure what this means for agent hunting, since it seems that many YA agents do YA exclusively, and while this novel is definitely YA, my other ones are much more adult (at least in terms of content and character).

Anyway, the song that was playing when I finished this draft was The Mummer’s Dance by Loreena McKennit, one of the songs from the soundtrack that Charlie put together a couple years ago. I think it’s very appropriate, especially for the last scene with the Icarian natives before the epilogue:

Finally, I thought you guys might want to see the “map” of the Icarian star system that I drew out on the whiteboard on my bedroom wall. Man, you have no idea how much I’ve been geeking out to this in the past few days. It’s a map…of a star system!