Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to enjoy the latest HOT Internet meme: THE NEXT BIG THING! That's right it's where your talk about your next big project. Now, as with all memes, there's some open interpretation to what exactly that means. I've seen some writers talk about the project they are working on now, the one they are editing/revising/rewriting now, the project they are going to work on next, the project that's out in the wild seeking representation or being shopped to publishers....it takes all kinds.
The thing that makes me happiest is that I was actually TAGGED by another author. Jeff Salyard, the author of the very good looking epic fantasy series The Bloodsounder's Arc, tagged me. (To be fair, it's on my reading list and I should be getting to it soon.) I'll talk about who I'm going to tag after I finish the meme. So, here goes:
I'm going to go with WINTER'S DISCORD, the first book of my YA epic fantasy series SEASONS OF DESTINY. It's been a while since I've talked about it, so why not give it a shot.
1) What is the working title of your next book?
Winter's Discord
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
The actual genesis of the book, the first thought was simple. I had just bought and was reading the brilliant THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND and wanted to write something that was kind of a deconstruction of a lot of the ideas in that book in a story very similar to George RR Martin's A GAME OF THRONES. I was sitting in the parking lot of St. Joe's hospital waiting for my wife to finish her shift at the gift shop where she worked, looking over the city of Syracuse and the hills to the east of the city. The opening scene of the novel popped into my head. I know, it sounds cliched (and a lot like the GRRM story about AGOT) but it is true. I scrambled around my wife's car looking for a scrap of paper, found one and started scribbling away. Now that scene is very, very different in a good way.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
YA fantasy with an epic taste.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
The main POV characters are all teenagers and I have to be honest, I'd want all unknowns to play the kids. But for the adults, I'd seriously want the Frat Pack to play most of the adult roles. No, really. For the Bachelor Prince I'd want Ben Affleck, his brother the King would be Vince Vaughn. Ben Stiller would maybe play the spymaster Yvan. It's very hard not to try and cast Sean Bean as my Ned Stark expy Thomas Grange. His lady wife Emma would be played by Christine Taylor. I'd pepper in all the other Frat Pack/Apatow guys into different roles. The only teen role I'd cast by someone somewhat famous would be Veronica Maglore, who HAS to be played by Allison Scagliotti. She was who I imagined in that role when I wrote it.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Ben Grange and his friends are thrown into a dangerous situation they do
not entirely understand and made to pay for the transgressions of their fathers and
mothers as winter of discord threatens to tear apart everything they love.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I am represented by the amazing Bob Mecoy.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
About seven months. Rewrites took much, much longer.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. The Seven Kingdom's Series by Cinda Williams Chima. Dragonlance Series by Hickman and Weis. Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce. The movie Your Highness (no, really).
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The desire to write a young adult epic fantasy worthy of the title "Game of Thrones for teens."
10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
Come on, it's Game of Thrones meets DeGrassi...what's NOT to pique your interest????
As for tagging, I have plenty ideas of who to tagged, but I didn't want to go nuts and impose on anyone, so naturally I asked two of my closest writing allies: Mike Winchell and Kenneth Mark Hoover. If anyone else that reads this here blog and wants to do the meme, feel free to "tag" yourself. Enjoy.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Time Has Come
When I started this blog I had made the decision that, unlike my old blog, I was only going to blog about my writing and things associated with my writing. I wasn't going to gripe about my job as a high school English teacher at a difficult inner city school in upstate New York. I wasn't going to complain about the trivial minutia of married life, being a dad, why old people leave their blinkers on for miles and miles after they've made their turn. I wasn't going to put up random posts about my favorite goofy video of the day. I wasn't going to pontificate about the things I think I know more about than you like politics or sports. I was going to keep this about my writing. And I've done a pretty good job of that so far. But this week is a weird week and I'm excited about it. On Thursday, I'm having my hip resurfaced. I won't chronicle the lead up to this here, but if you're interested, here's a link to the old blog where I talked about it. My hip has gotten to the point where I am in constant, unrelenting pain and it effects EVERYTHING I do. It sucks and I'm miserable. So, finally, I'm getting it fixed.
Now, this means for the next 3-10 weeks my life will consist of recovering, reading, writing, matching movies and playing videos games. It's very exciting that this is happening and while I'm nervous about what will happen to my freshman while I'm gone, I'm looking forward to feeling better.
And I'll be able to blog more.
Now, this means for the next 3-10 weeks my life will consist of recovering, reading, writing, matching movies and playing videos games. It's very exciting that this is happening and while I'm nervous about what will happen to my freshman while I'm gone, I'm looking forward to feeling better.
And I'll be able to blog more.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Fear Leads To Anger, Anger Leads To Hate, Hate Leads To Suffering
In the past few weeks, I've been smacked in the face with hate and I thought I'd blog a little about it because, quite frankly, it's bothering me. First, from the real world.
Do you ever read the comments section of anything posted online, especially newspaper/news outlet comments section? If you want to be able to identify where and when Western civilization began to fall, you'll be able to pinpoint this as the beginning. An anonymous place for the ignorant, bigoted and downright evil people to comment on something, whether it be people on Welfare or people that are just different than them. The catalyst for this was this article in my local paper about our Muslim Student Association. It was a beautiful piece that represents everything that I love about where I teach. It was also the most commented article on the paper's website the day it came out. Reading the comments makes you understand just how messed up our country is. Sure, there are great comments in it, but most are just deplorable. It upset me greatly. We fear anything that we don't understand and then lash out at it, but we do so under the guise of an internet avatar. It just fills me with sadness. We will never be happy as a country or a world until we learn to respect and love one another. Bigotry and inequality are far more concerning to me than what's happening in our economy...because if society falls the way everyone is predicting it will, all we'll really have left is the way we treat one another. That's all I have to say about that.
A few days later, I'm trolling around the Internet, checking out some of my favorite blogs when I come across a review for a book from a reputable reviewer that I respect a great deal. I'm not going to link because normally I don't see this from the site. Now to be fair, they review mostly traditional genre books, meaning "adult" not "YA." There were a few things about this review that bothered me. It came across as particularly snarky, angry and bitter. I get that reviewers can't love everything, but the way this reviewer seemed to go after the author and the book they wrote just rubbed me the wrong way. If you don't like the book, fine, but that doesn't mean you have to trash the writer as much as you did. Then the reviewer took a swipe at YA, suggesting the book straight out of a "how to" book for writing epic fantasy for the teen audience. (I'm rephrasing and paraphrasing here.) The suggestion that YA can't and isn't as sophisticated as more adult oriented fantasy. (I dare the blogger, actually TRIPLE DOG DARE him to walk up to Tamora Pierce and say that.) The most annoying part about this is that his review was based on "skimming" not reading the book. Well, that's highly effective reviewing right there.
Why are people so afraid of young adult? Is it that they think it somehow distills "traditional" or "adult" literature? Is it because they fear that people are going to mock them or treat them differently for reading it? Is traditional or adult fantasy that much more acceptable than YA? Didn't Tor try re-packaging the Wheel of Time books as YA books in a blatant money grab a few years back? Didn't it backfire because most of their target audience was already buying the books?
I go back to something that Blake Charlton once blogged about and, what he called, the "crossunder" effect. Books like Wheel of Time, or Charlton's Spellwright, or Rothfuss's Kingkiller series or most D&D tie-in books be considered crossunders? Or would that be insulting the authors? Or is it more insulting to the readers?
I found this great list of the Top Ten Tropes in YA. Pay attention to #2. It brought out the comments (well, a few of them). Listen, ladies, I get that for 400 years, men have dominated the business of publishing. I get that the male perspective has been dominant for longer than yours, but that doesn't mean you have to be so angry about it or decide that there is no longer a place at the table for it anymore. Look, I'm a white, heterosexual man, so I'm pretty much EVERYONE'S villain right now (If I were a WASP, I'd definitely be EVERYONE'S villain!) and I have to word everything carefully right now because I don't want to appear sexist, misogynistic or anything like that. But as much as you don't want to hear it, the modern female protagonist has become something of a trope. It's hard to differentiate between Katniss and Katsa sometimes and I'm not just talking about their names. The basic framework is there with some tweaking based on the setting but other than that it's becoming the same character in every book. And being a trope is not necessarily a bad thing, either.
But what's wrong with a male protagonist? What's wrong with the idea of a "boy book?" But that's not the Pandora's Box I want to open right now. That's another entry.
Do you ever read the comments section of anything posted online, especially newspaper/news outlet comments section? If you want to be able to identify where and when Western civilization began to fall, you'll be able to pinpoint this as the beginning. An anonymous place for the ignorant, bigoted and downright evil people to comment on something, whether it be people on Welfare or people that are just different than them. The catalyst for this was this article in my local paper about our Muslim Student Association. It was a beautiful piece that represents everything that I love about where I teach. It was also the most commented article on the paper's website the day it came out. Reading the comments makes you understand just how messed up our country is. Sure, there are great comments in it, but most are just deplorable. It upset me greatly. We fear anything that we don't understand and then lash out at it, but we do so under the guise of an internet avatar. It just fills me with sadness. We will never be happy as a country or a world until we learn to respect and love one another. Bigotry and inequality are far more concerning to me than what's happening in our economy...because if society falls the way everyone is predicting it will, all we'll really have left is the way we treat one another. That's all I have to say about that.
A few days later, I'm trolling around the Internet, checking out some of my favorite blogs when I come across a review for a book from a reputable reviewer that I respect a great deal. I'm not going to link because normally I don't see this from the site. Now to be fair, they review mostly traditional genre books, meaning "adult" not "YA." There were a few things about this review that bothered me. It came across as particularly snarky, angry and bitter. I get that reviewers can't love everything, but the way this reviewer seemed to go after the author and the book they wrote just rubbed me the wrong way. If you don't like the book, fine, but that doesn't mean you have to trash the writer as much as you did. Then the reviewer took a swipe at YA, suggesting the book straight out of a "how to" book for writing epic fantasy for the teen audience. (I'm rephrasing and paraphrasing here.) The suggestion that YA can't and isn't as sophisticated as more adult oriented fantasy. (I dare the blogger, actually TRIPLE DOG DARE him to walk up to Tamora Pierce and say that.) The most annoying part about this is that his review was based on "skimming" not reading the book. Well, that's highly effective reviewing right there.
Why are people so afraid of young adult? Is it that they think it somehow distills "traditional" or "adult" literature? Is it because they fear that people are going to mock them or treat them differently for reading it? Is traditional or adult fantasy that much more acceptable than YA? Didn't Tor try re-packaging the Wheel of Time books as YA books in a blatant money grab a few years back? Didn't it backfire because most of their target audience was already buying the books?
I go back to something that Blake Charlton once blogged about and, what he called, the "crossunder" effect. Books like Wheel of Time, or Charlton's Spellwright, or Rothfuss's Kingkiller series or most D&D tie-in books be considered crossunders? Or would that be insulting the authors? Or is it more insulting to the readers?
I found this great list of the Top Ten Tropes in YA. Pay attention to #2. It brought out the comments (well, a few of them). Listen, ladies, I get that for 400 years, men have dominated the business of publishing. I get that the male perspective has been dominant for longer than yours, but that doesn't mean you have to be so angry about it or decide that there is no longer a place at the table for it anymore. Look, I'm a white, heterosexual man, so I'm pretty much EVERYONE'S villain right now (If I were a WASP, I'd definitely be EVERYONE'S villain!) and I have to word everything carefully right now because I don't want to appear sexist, misogynistic or anything like that. But as much as you don't want to hear it, the modern female protagonist has become something of a trope. It's hard to differentiate between Katniss and Katsa sometimes and I'm not just talking about their names. The basic framework is there with some tweaking based on the setting but other than that it's becoming the same character in every book. And being a trope is not necessarily a bad thing, either.
But what's wrong with a male protagonist? What's wrong with the idea of a "boy book?" But that's not the Pandora's Box I want to open right now. That's another entry.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Cry Havoc and Let Slip The Dogs Of War
I love Shakespeare. I mean in every way possible. I don't care that he might have been and was probably a thief. The man knew how to write! So I stole today's blog title from Big Willy.
It's November. It's hard to believe is over a year old already (and I didn't celebrate at all last month). And so much has changed...and stayed the same. Anyway, I've decided to wade into NANOWRIMO...again. I'm mildly suicidal sometimes, but I decided I needed something new to write since I've sort of been in this JAIMAN/SEASONS cycle for the last year or so. I needed to get away from those projects for a little while to look at them with fresh eyes. Sort of.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through a pretty good rewrite of THE SISTERS OF KHODA. I think I've added some required depth and scope to the story that I was asked to do so. The only problem is that I think the end was something of a mess, which means I'm setting very large charges and blowing up huge chunks of it. Almost a whole new rewrite. I'm thinking that last quarter or so is going to be in the 25-35k range, mostly of all new words. I rushed that part of the novel and I need to work on it. I'd like to spread that out over November and December and have it off to Mr. Agent man by January. That's the plan. I'd love to get it done earlier and then work on something else in December (I'm going to talk about December in a minute...it's very exciting).
As for the NANO project....I don't have a title yet, but it's YA contemporary SF. I was strongly considering a very contemporary YA/ Tobias Wolff-esque fictional memoir kind of thing but changed my mind (for now, though writing this out that is suddenly much more appealing to me). Instead I'm thinking something like a Kyle XY/teenaged supersoldier/football kind of book. And the scary part of me is that I'm pantsing it. I have no plan. No outline. I'm just going to write. I've been reading the brilliant Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix and thinking it could be very, very similar to those books in length and structure. I'm aiming somewhere in the 60-70k range. Keeping it simple, one POV with some "interludes" of official documents, emails, etc related to the MC being a supersoldier. It's very nebulous, we'll see how it plays out. (I'm on the NANO website as Ebenstone, my old handle.) I'm going to try and cap my daily writing at around 2k a day and try and finish the whole thing in November. We'll see how that goes.
As for December, I'm finally getting my bum hip fixed. Surgery is slated for December 6th and I cannot be more excited. I can't wait for this pain to stop and I'll be able to do things again. The super exciting part of it is that I will be home for the entire month of December. A whole month of reading, writing, playing video games and catching up on TV shows. It's like I'm going to be one of the 47% that just mooches of the rest of you SUCKERS!!!!
I'd like to dive into one other project during this time period: my epic fantasy Santa Claus story. The Elevator pitch for that one? The Santa Clause meets Game of Thrones. I'll tell you more later about that project.
It's November. It's hard to believe is over a year old already (and I didn't celebrate at all last month). And so much has changed...and stayed the same. Anyway, I've decided to wade into NANOWRIMO...again. I'm mildly suicidal sometimes, but I decided I needed something new to write since I've sort of been in this JAIMAN/SEASONS cycle for the last year or so. I needed to get away from those projects for a little while to look at them with fresh eyes. Sort of.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through a pretty good rewrite of THE SISTERS OF KHODA. I think I've added some required depth and scope to the story that I was asked to do so. The only problem is that I think the end was something of a mess, which means I'm setting very large charges and blowing up huge chunks of it. Almost a whole new rewrite. I'm thinking that last quarter or so is going to be in the 25-35k range, mostly of all new words. I rushed that part of the novel and I need to work on it. I'd like to spread that out over November and December and have it off to Mr. Agent man by January. That's the plan. I'd love to get it done earlier and then work on something else in December (I'm going to talk about December in a minute...it's very exciting).
As for the NANO project....I don't have a title yet, but it's YA contemporary SF. I was strongly considering a very contemporary YA/ Tobias Wolff-esque fictional memoir kind of thing but changed my mind (for now, though writing this out that is suddenly much more appealing to me). Instead I'm thinking something like a Kyle XY/teenaged supersoldier/football kind of book. And the scary part of me is that I'm pantsing it. I have no plan. No outline. I'm just going to write. I've been reading the brilliant Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix and thinking it could be very, very similar to those books in length and structure. I'm aiming somewhere in the 60-70k range. Keeping it simple, one POV with some "interludes" of official documents, emails, etc related to the MC being a supersoldier. It's very nebulous, we'll see how it plays out. (I'm on the NANO website as Ebenstone, my old handle.) I'm going to try and cap my daily writing at around 2k a day and try and finish the whole thing in November. We'll see how that goes.
As for December, I'm finally getting my bum hip fixed. Surgery is slated for December 6th and I cannot be more excited. I can't wait for this pain to stop and I'll be able to do things again. The super exciting part of it is that I will be home for the entire month of December. A whole month of reading, writing, playing video games and catching up on TV shows. It's like I'm going to be one of the 47% that just mooches of the rest of you SUCKERS!!!!
I'd like to dive into one other project during this time period: my epic fantasy Santa Claus story. The Elevator pitch for that one? The Santa Clause meets Game of Thrones. I'll tell you more later about that project.
Friday, September 21, 2012
A Song For Every Story, A Story For Every Song
What started this music kick for me wasn't just The Ring Cycle, it was a simple, innocent tweet retweeted by someone I follow. The tweet simple said: "If you could adapt an album or song into a movie, which would you pick?" I tweeted two quick answers back, but thought about it for a little more and came up with a list of songs that might make good stories and the story I would tell.
1. Let Her Cry by Hootie & The Blowfish.
I love this song and think that Hootie is highly underrated. This is their best song and I could see me writing one of my melodramatic modern fiction attempts from my early 20s. I think I tried a story like it with a character named Finbar with a floozy-ish girlfriend that kept breaking his heart.
2. Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton
Fellas, we all know the frustration while we wait for our ladies to get ready that Eric was feeling in this song....but I once lived this song many, many moons ago and I still think that there's a short novel in it somewhere for me. A friend has a big party where big things happen (first kisses, admissions of love, infidelity, etc)....with big consequences.
3. All Along The Watchtower by...well various.
The very definition of epic-ness in rock music. Written by Bob Dylan but made famous by Jimi Hendrix, my favorite version is probably the live version as performed by the Dave Matthews Band. My second favorite? This version by Bear McCreary for the classic television show Battlestar: Galactica, mostly because it became a motif within the mytharc of the story:
The story I would tell? A big grand epic involving the siege of a great city and how two prisoners may be the key for the Princes of the realm to survive.
4. Two Step by The Dave Matthews Band
I am an unapologetic fan of DMB. I love this song and freak out when I hear it live. The version above is a classic version recorded live during a thunderstorm at Giants Stadium. I remember reading something about this song being about two people in love and one having to go to war. In my mind that's what it always was to me....and in my mind that became the story: a young man and girl are in love, courting one another. The boy is sent to a war in a faraway land while the girl is left to deal with loss and what is going on at home, meeting another boy along the way. It works right?
5. On The Turning Away by Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd is another one of those bands that are incredibly important to me in general, but for some reason this haunting song left a mark with me. The story I would tell is actually in the same world as my trunked novel THE FALLING DARK and the present rewrite SISTERS OF KHODA. It would be a NEW SPRING like prequel novella, but not even as recent in that world's history as NEW SPRING was in Randland's history. "By the Turning" is a curse in my world based on an event called "The GReat Turning Away," where a king turned away the refugees of a war that would eventually swallow that nation. I think it works more in my mind more than it does written out.
Would YOU buy these? DO they sound like good stories? If they do...don't steal them!
1. Let Her Cry by Hootie & The Blowfish.
I love this song and think that Hootie is highly underrated. This is their best song and I could see me writing one of my melodramatic modern fiction attempts from my early 20s. I think I tried a story like it with a character named Finbar with a floozy-ish girlfriend that kept breaking his heart.
2. Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton
Fellas, we all know the frustration while we wait for our ladies to get ready that Eric was feeling in this song....but I once lived this song many, many moons ago and I still think that there's a short novel in it somewhere for me. A friend has a big party where big things happen (first kisses, admissions of love, infidelity, etc)....with big consequences.
3. All Along The Watchtower by...well various.
The very definition of epic-ness in rock music. Written by Bob Dylan but made famous by Jimi Hendrix, my favorite version is probably the live version as performed by the Dave Matthews Band. My second favorite? This version by Bear McCreary for the classic television show Battlestar: Galactica, mostly because it became a motif within the mytharc of the story:
The story I would tell? A big grand epic involving the siege of a great city and how two prisoners may be the key for the Princes of the realm to survive.
4. Two Step by The Dave Matthews Band
I am an unapologetic fan of DMB. I love this song and freak out when I hear it live. The version above is a classic version recorded live during a thunderstorm at Giants Stadium. I remember reading something about this song being about two people in love and one having to go to war. In my mind that's what it always was to me....and in my mind that became the story: a young man and girl are in love, courting one another. The boy is sent to a war in a faraway land while the girl is left to deal with loss and what is going on at home, meeting another boy along the way. It works right?
5. On The Turning Away by Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd is another one of those bands that are incredibly important to me in general, but for some reason this haunting song left a mark with me. The story I would tell is actually in the same world as my trunked novel THE FALLING DARK and the present rewrite SISTERS OF KHODA. It would be a NEW SPRING like prequel novella, but not even as recent in that world's history as NEW SPRING was in Randland's history. "By the Turning" is a curse in my world based on an event called "The GReat Turning Away," where a king turned away the refugees of a war that would eventually swallow that nation. I think it works more in my mind more than it does written out.
Would YOU buy these? DO they sound like good stories? If they do...don't steal them!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing
Welcome to the Music Extravaganza Weekend. I'm going to try and blog for four days in a row about music and writing.
Last week, I carried on and on about Wagner's Ring Cycle and how it was moving me towards inspiration. Well, I started thinking really deeply about the influence of music on my writing and was preparing an entire blog post about a "soundtrack" mixtape I made many, many moons ago for a trunk novel I'd written...the one that I thought was my opus back in the day. I remember sharing it with my girlfriend at the time...we're talking close to 20 years ago, by the way. It was a mix of soundtrack stuff and modern songs even though the book was an epic fantasy. The funny thing was that the book wasn't even done. In a lot of ways that soundtrack was a very abstract outline of the story I wanted to tell. It's amusing and the only reason I thought of it was a conversation I had with a friend about Pink Floyd....I was really into Pink Floyd at the time and had included a lot of their music in the soundtrack. Oh, the halcyon days of the early 90s! Mixtapes were a romantic concept that has gone the way of the love letter.
Now a days, I know there are authors that post their writing playlists on their blogs so people know what helped put them in the mood for writing. I'd never done that, usually relying on Pandora radio to set me on my way or set my iTunes up for Shuffle and whatever comes up comes up. I've used You Tube as well, creating whole playlists heavy on Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica soundtrack. But recently I discovered Spotify and set up an entire writing playlist for me to listen to when I'm in the throes of writing. I've included all my favorite soundtracks and a lot of my favorite artists to get me in the mood. My playlist is made up of everything from Mumford and Sons to James Horner, the symphonic Pink Floyd and John Williams. I've shaken my curmudgeon-y shackles and moved into the modern era. Will I organize a WINTER'S DISCORD and SPRING'S TEMPEST soundtrack? Maybe, just for fun in the next couple of days. Who knows?
Last week, I carried on and on about Wagner's Ring Cycle and how it was moving me towards inspiration. Well, I started thinking really deeply about the influence of music on my writing and was preparing an entire blog post about a "soundtrack" mixtape I made many, many moons ago for a trunk novel I'd written...the one that I thought was my opus back in the day. I remember sharing it with my girlfriend at the time...we're talking close to 20 years ago, by the way. It was a mix of soundtrack stuff and modern songs even though the book was an epic fantasy. The funny thing was that the book wasn't even done. In a lot of ways that soundtrack was a very abstract outline of the story I wanted to tell. It's amusing and the only reason I thought of it was a conversation I had with a friend about Pink Floyd....I was really into Pink Floyd at the time and had included a lot of their music in the soundtrack. Oh, the halcyon days of the early 90s! Mixtapes were a romantic concept that has gone the way of the love letter.
Now a days, I know there are authors that post their writing playlists on their blogs so people know what helped put them in the mood for writing. I'd never done that, usually relying on Pandora radio to set me on my way or set my iTunes up for Shuffle and whatever comes up comes up. I've used You Tube as well, creating whole playlists heavy on Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica soundtrack. But recently I discovered Spotify and set up an entire writing playlist for me to listen to when I'm in the throes of writing. I've included all my favorite soundtracks and a lot of my favorite artists to get me in the mood. My playlist is made up of everything from Mumford and Sons to James Horner, the symphonic Pink Floyd and John Williams. I've shaken my curmudgeon-y shackles and moved into the modern era. Will I organize a WINTER'S DISCORD and SPRING'S TEMPEST soundtrack? Maybe, just for fun in the next couple of days. Who knows?
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Waiting SUCKS
Seriously? Three days of blogging in a row? I'm hoping this means that there is a loosened mechanism somewhere in my head that is going to start the machine that all of us teachers have to get rolling every September. This is the problem with going from long block classes to shorter periods....I really can't get anything overly constructive done during my free blocks....48 minutes and my wonky hip prevent me from doing things like walking up to the main building for stuff and the canned curriculum I've been handed doesn't need much in the way of copies, so....wait, I'm whining about teaching and that's not the purpose of this blog. I want to talk about writing and maybe the worst part about being a writer: waiting.
To say that the publishing industry works at a glacial pace doesn't do justice to how slow it really works. I think of the line from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Kirk is asking how long it will take the Enterprise to be up and running...and no, I'm not talking about KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! (It's hard to believe how hard it is to find that clip on You Tube!)...and Spock says, "Admiral, if we go "by the book". like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days." Well, each day feels like a million years passes and it's just awful.
It was probably worse when I was still seeking an agent, but it's just as frustrating now that I am represented by an agent. I know I probably drive my agent insane with all my little email notes about what is going on. I'm working very hard at avoiding sending him something unless I absolutely need to. But it's hard. I'm not patient and this is my first run through on all this, so naturally I have questions about what the heck is going on. But it's part of the game. Trust me, people aren't laughing at you, saying "Heh, let's see how long I can keep this sucker strung along." It's just the nature of the business. It's expected to be this way and you just have to sort of work through it. I'm not saying it's easy and it helps when you have something to work on, but sometimes it wriggles past all that stuff and works it's way into distracting you from getting work done.
The worst days are the ones when there seems to be a flurry of reports on deals on the various places where those things are announced: Twitter, Facebook, Galley Cat, etc. Now, I don't subscribe to Publishers Marketplace...and thank God for that. I would probably be homicidal reading about the deals being made and that is even less productive than sending the email equivalent of those notes you used to write to girls in class back in the day: Do you like me? Check Yes or No. Today seemed to be one of those days where people were talking a lot about book deals. But, if my recent eagerness to blog is any indication, I may have found a second writing wind and may be at the edge of a writing flurry for the rest of 2012.
So, it's time to take a deep breath, dive into what I need to do and really contemplate if my daughter deserves a co-author credit on my YA version of Wagner's Ring Cycle....
To say that the publishing industry works at a glacial pace doesn't do justice to how slow it really works. I think of the line from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Kirk is asking how long it will take the Enterprise to be up and running...and no, I'm not talking about KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! (It's hard to believe how hard it is to find that clip on You Tube!)...and Spock says, "Admiral, if we go "by the book". like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days." Well, each day feels like a million years passes and it's just awful.
It was probably worse when I was still seeking an agent, but it's just as frustrating now that I am represented by an agent. I know I probably drive my agent insane with all my little email notes about what is going on. I'm working very hard at avoiding sending him something unless I absolutely need to. But it's hard. I'm not patient and this is my first run through on all this, so naturally I have questions about what the heck is going on. But it's part of the game. Trust me, people aren't laughing at you, saying "Heh, let's see how long I can keep this sucker strung along." It's just the nature of the business. It's expected to be this way and you just have to sort of work through it. I'm not saying it's easy and it helps when you have something to work on, but sometimes it wriggles past all that stuff and works it's way into distracting you from getting work done.
The worst days are the ones when there seems to be a flurry of reports on deals on the various places where those things are announced: Twitter, Facebook, Galley Cat, etc. Now, I don't subscribe to Publishers Marketplace...and thank God for that. I would probably be homicidal reading about the deals being made and that is even less productive than sending the email equivalent of those notes you used to write to girls in class back in the day: Do you like me? Check Yes or No. Today seemed to be one of those days where people were talking a lot about book deals. But, if my recent eagerness to blog is any indication, I may have found a second writing wind and may be at the edge of a writing flurry for the rest of 2012.
So, it's time to take a deep breath, dive into what I need to do and really contemplate if my daughter deserves a co-author credit on my YA version of Wagner's Ring Cycle....
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