I met a girl who sang the blues, and I asked her for some Happy News

I can't bury this deep within the post like I'm typically inclined to, because I'm just too excited: I have an agent!!

Ahem.

I actually got two offers of representation, the first of which came on June 10th, so I've been keeping this under my hat until I'm fit to burst.

The first agent tried to call me on the last teacher work day before summer vacation. I had left my desk to run some errands--drop off paperwork and get signatures, and I very consciously left my phone on my desk, because what could I possibly need it for, right? When I came back, I saw I had missed a call . . . hm, New York/New Jersey area code . . . as I played the voice mail, it gradually dawned on me that I was receiving The Call. I'm surprised I didn't kick my desk over in my excitement. I let out a whoop that neighboring teachers could hear in their classrooms--and let me assure you, I am not generally given to whooping.

That call came from an agent I had met in person at Backspace--so you see? Go to Backspace!--who works at a fantastic house that is closed to queries unless they meet you at a conference--you see? Go to Backspace! This house was high on my list because they rep not only what I've written, but everything I could see myself possibly wanting to write some day, and because they had a fantastic reputation everywhere I looked.

For the rest of the day, I was not fit to work at all--but I still had a deadline! I had to call Lisa to come over when she was done and help me, and while I got my grades turned in on time, I was about five minutes late turning in my keys and had to wait until Monday to turn them in and get that last paycheck of the year.

So I went home and informed the other agents looking at my work that I had an offer now, and stood back and watched the flurry of activity. I did have one vaguely snarky reply, slapping my wrists for my presumption in nudging, but otherwise everybody was nice and enthusiastic. Even the agents who stepped aside did so with very kind words for my writing and my story, and a few said they simply didn't have time to get back to me within the time frame that I intended to get back to the offering agent. Within a week I had a second offer! Yay! Proof the first agent wasn't high on crack when she called me!

I always thought having any offer at all was a dream come true, but that having more than one--having a choice of agents--must just be sitting on cloud nine. I confess I wasn't terribly sympathetic when my wife went through this several months before. Now I know. You may not, though, and if not then you probably won't get how much anxiety this caused in me. For one thing, with choice comes the possibility of regret. Would I make the right choice? Almost more importantly, in this case, is I really have little stomach for letting people down. Here are two professionals who both loved my novel enough to offer to invest their time and resources into helping it see the light of day! Before last week I could count on one hand the number of people who'd read the full manuscript of Vanishing Act. To have somebody read it and love it and tell me what they loved about it . . . I just can't tell you what it meant to me. I wanted to hug them both; I wanted to give them both whatever they wanted.

Instead, I had to tell one of them that she wasn't my choice.

It was probably harder on me than it was on her. Agents know this is a business, and they know some other book'll come along that they'll love and want to sell. I can't help but feel like a bit of a jerk, though, even though rationally I know this is just how it goes.

Choose I did, though. I can't imagine anybody reading this doesn't already know from facebook or twitter or just from hearing me whooping all the way cross country, but I am now represented by Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency! :) I chose Cameron for a variety of reasons. Cameron had some ideas on how I could make my novel stronger that really resonated with me. As I read her e-mail, I found myself nodding my head and saying, Yes! That would totally make my book better! Also, I like the idea of being agent-cousins with my wife, who is also represented by DMLA. I don't know if most husbands and wives who write are at the same agency or at different ones--the only pair I know offhand is Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier, who are both represented by the Jill Grinberg agency--but it just seems cool to me to keep it in-house, so to speak. And heck, DMLA is also an amazing agency with a fantastic reputation--an agency that represents a boatload of my favorite speculative fiction writers. I'm thrilled to be agent cousins with so many amazing writers!

Progress Report Time (Contest Win Edition!)

Allergies have got me up a bit earlier than I'd prefer this morning, so it seems like a good time to get down to something I never quite seem to make it to on my priority list--this blog. Insert here the standard whinge about what a difficult school year this has been in terms of powers that be putting new requirements on our plate that weren't there before without relieving us of any of the old requirements. The smart course of action would be to figure out which of their directives I can get away with ignoring, but I'm too obsessive/compulsive to know how to do that, so instead I drive myself into the ground trying to do every single damn thing. I put in twelve+ hour days every single day, and that's no hyperbole. You'd think that would be enough to be ridiculously together and on top of everything, but really it's just barely enough to tread water. And the worst thing is most days I'm not sure anybody notices how much I'm doing at all.

But enough whining about work--I want to talk about writing!

I've actually done a pretty decent job of making time for writing in spite of the work madness. I've got a new idea for a YA fantasy novel fleshed out and hope to get a running start of several thousand words written before the summer begins. I wish I had a title for it, if for no other reason than so I could come up with a meaningful label for this post.

My most exciting news right now is still about Vanishing Act, though: my query letter and opening pages won Janet Reid's Backspace Contest! My biggest frustration is how few people appreciate what a big deal that is, to me anyway. Lisa went to the Backspace Writers Conference in 2009 and it was an amazing experience. The chance to workshop your query and opening pages with scores of agents, in-depth and all in one venue, seems to work wonders for helping aspiring novelists master that step on the road to publication. I don't know if anybody's tried to collect data on what percent of their participants go on to secure representation and eventual publication, but, anecdotally, their numbers seem to be phenomenal. Indeed, Lisa arrived at Backspace unrepresented, but left with an offer from an agent. She's not the only one.

The Backspace folks have already been in touch with me and they've already been unbelievably enthusiastic and generous. I've won other prizes before--vacations and such--where I felt on arrival that the attitude was, "You're already getting this for free, so don't expect any frills at all." Not so with the Backspace conference. They've made it clear to me that my prize includes any and all parts of the conference that I'm interested in, including the parts that would normally be an extra charge. They've also made me feel as welcome and as valued as any paying customer.

It occurs to me that in all this gushing about the Backspace folks, I really ought to express more appreciation for the folks at Fine Print Lit and Nancy Coffey Lit & Media, not just for choosing me, but for holding this contest every year. I'm not certain who's picking up the tab for me to attend this conference, but we (teachers in my county) haven't had a cost of living increase to our salaries in three years, and now we have to deal in the coming years with attacks on our profession and our salaries from Republicans in our state legislature, and times have gotten increasingly tough for us as the years have passed. Every year it seems we tighten our belts a little more, and only occasionally do we look back in awe at just how much spending power we've lost, bit by little bit. Used to be we could go to the occasional writers' conference, or, hell, take a vacation or something. Used to be we could afford to buy tickets to Disney World right in our own backyard. Used to be we could eat out with some frequency. Now we cross our fingers that next year will still find us living in the same house. It's safe to say there is no way we could afford to send me to a $750-$800 conference (not counting airfare or hotel). This is an awesome opportunity that I would never have if not for this contest. Also? Janet Reid sounds totally nice on the phone, and not like a shark at all.

I can't wait until the end of May!

Relax Mom, It's a Joke

A few words of explanation: Veronica Roth is holding a contest for an ARC of her new book, Divergent, on her blog. You could get a second entry by posting a picture illustrating a difficult choice. Unfortunately for me, I just found out about it this morning, and I got this idea at 12:15, just minutes before the contest closed. So the only camera I had handy was on my phone, the only prop gun I had handy was from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I'm not sure if you can tell that's one of those tiny rejection slips some agencies send out so they can get twenty rejections out of a single sheet of paper. I'm not sure if it comes across that the choice is between continuing to write and violent action, but that was the intent.

As for me, things are going much better than this photo implies. I'm still a finalist in the contest-that-must-not-be-named, and while I'm receiving my fair share of rejections, I'm getting a respectable amount of not-rejections as well. I've been way too swamped at work to blog much, but I'll try to get back on it soon.

Checking In

I basically haven't looked at my blog since school started, so I figured I ought to check in lest people think I fell by the wayside when it came to writing too.

This school year has been brutal--the hardest I can ever remember. There is so much paperwork and jumping through hoops. Some of it is punishment for having been a D school for two years--clearly we teachers aren't doing enough. (I'm sure the powers-that-be would take exception to my labeling it a punishment, but the shoe fits, you know?) We also have new textbooks, and I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel at every turn. I've never worked so hard, nor felt like I was accomplishing so little. I feel like the sacrifices I make, the time I put in, the things I do well, are all largely unnoticed. The things I don't get around to, though--because there's so much to do I can't possibly get around to it all--are immediately noticed and commented upon. I get to work at 6:15, on average, and leave at 4 on average, and still feel constantly guilty for every second I'm not working.

Through it all, though, I haven't let the writing slip. In fact, I've done a better job this year of being dedicated to my art and craft than I did last year. Since I'm getting up early to do schoolwork, I'm giving myself the evenings to write. Every night I put in at least a couple of hours, and progress is slow but steady.

Good News: I think I mentioned that Vanishing Act was a finalist in the Royal Palm Literary Award in the category of Unpublished Young Adult Novel. Well it won! First place! So my record in contests continues to be pretty good.

As for the submissions process--some up, some down. I'm submitting to agents at a snail's pace, because it seems better to fire them out in small bursts and be able to use whatever feedback I do get, rather than to blanket the literary world and see what happens. I can still count the number of agents I've queried without taking my shoes off. I've had a grand total of one form rejection, which I think is some kind of awesome, even with as few queries as I've sent out. I got a rejection today from an agent I'd really been crossing my fingers on. It had good feedback on it--good points, though I'm going to have to sleep on things for a bit to figure out how to make the improvements she said the MS needed. (See? Querying slowly was a good call!) To be unbelievably arrogant, I kind of have a feeling someone's going to want to represent this book, but if it doesn't happen, hopefully this agent will like my next manuscript better.

Anyway, I feel like a loser for not updating this blog more, but right now my priorities seem to be work, parenting, writing, and reading. There pretty much isn't room for a fifth thing on my list right now, be it television, going out with friends, tweeting, blogging, or reading other people's blogs. I have a feeling next year won't be much better in that regard, because I'm helping to kick off a new IB program at my school, so I'll be reinventing the wheel yet again. Hopefully someday I'll find myself teaching courses I've taught before, using materials I've used before. Certainly I've been in my career long enough to have reached that point. Now I understand why my father, late in his career, didn't want to take on the opportunity of starting a new Computer Science program at a school that didn't have one.

Speaking of reading: I've been reading Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness trilogy. Why is it so hard to find in bookstores? I thought How to Ditch Your Fairy was fantastic, but I think these are better. Razorbill is not exactly a small house, so what the heck gives? Among YA authors, Larbalestier and Janice Hardy are the ones most writing the kinds of books I want to be writing. (Among science fiction writers, in case anyone's keeping score, the list would be Steven Gould--whose writing is often so close to YA as to blur any meaningful distinction--Mary Robinette Kowal, and Elizabeth Bear. I'm probably forgetting someone, but that's who comes to mind.)

Not Dead Yet

I bet one can tell a thing or two about how school's going by the spikes and troughs in my posting here.

I've gotten optimistic signs on a couple of my stories that are out looking for homes. Maybe I'll have good news in the next month or two. Or maybe not. The writing's not going so well right now, mostly because I'm working on schoolwork fourteen hours a day. Spring break's about twenty-nine teaching days away, after which I'll be shifting into review mode with my AP classes, so hopefully things will get better soon. And hopefully all my hard work will pay off. Some days, I swear I wish I knew how to phone it in.

I've been reluctant to send out "Spacelift." I just can't decide if it's ready or not. I did some pretty extensive revising since I posted the first draft under password protect here. I just don't have access to a lot of critters. There are places like OWW, of course, but I'm not in a position to reciprocate right now. So it goes.

I haven't been reading anybody else's blogs either. I think I'm about ready to dip my toes back into that sea. I hope people still remember me. :)

In other news, we lost Fraemie, our oldest dog, a couple of weeks ago. She was sixteen, and we knew the end was near, but it was still hard. I carried her downstairs that last morning, playing with her, and she seemed pretty chipper. We had been struggling on and off to get her to eat, but we seemed to have turned the corner with that. I fed her her breakfast, which she dug into eagerly, and went off to do some last schoolwork before getting dressed. A couple minutes later, I heard a weird noise coming from the kitchen. A couple days before she had accidentally pushed her bowl under the lip of a cabinet, and needed help getting it back out where she could eat. I initially thought the same thing had happened, and that the noise was her kicking on her bowl, trying to dislodge it. I walked into the kitchen to find her on her side in a puddle of pee, running in place. She'd had seizures before, but none like this one. We took her to the vet, where she went on to have another half-dozen or so seizures, showing signs of pain, and so we ended her suffering.

In a way that was my first experience of death. I've had (a very few) relatives pass away, but I've never been there as it happened. It was . . . well it was something that will stay with me.

This was much more my wife's loss than mine. She had the dog for a year before she met me. I was deeply saddened; she was devastated.

I was a bit disappointed that none of my coworkers asked about my emergency absence. I'd typed in my emergency e-mail that my dog was having seizures; nobody asked if it was okay or what had happened. Kids in a couple of my classes asked and expressed sympathy when they found out, but as far as the adults at my school were concerned, my unplanned absence was nothing but an inconvenience for them to deal with.

So it goes.

In happier news, today we are driving to Melbourne, hopefully to get a new puppy who was co-bred by the same breeder who bred Fraemie. She looks cute as hell in her photo. I'm really bad about taking pictures, but hopefully I'll get off my lazy ass and take a couple and maybe post one here.

New School Year, 1/4 down (Self-Analysis Edition)

So the new school year is 1/4th past now. Now I have two AP preps, as opposed to last year, when I had one (and the year before, when I had none). In some ways, Calculus AB is like a new prep to me too, because I'm approaching it rather differently this year than last year. Last year my students' pass rate wasn't what I hoped it would be, so I'm trying different strategies--different and time-consuming.

Still, I tend to find the first quarter the most draining, in terms of my personal time. The reason for this is that I don't believe in spending a ton of time reviewing material from previous classes--especially when teaching honors or AP classes. So I tend to fly through the early parts of the curricula, hoping that in so doing I can free up time for me to go more slowly later on in the year, when we cover material that is actually new to the kids. The consequence of that for me is much more frequent quizzing and testing, and so a heavier pile of grading. The fourth quarter gets rough too, but that's just at the very end.

So it's time to get off my ass when it comes to writing. I've hardly done any writing or revising at all since the start of August, and I am properly ashamed about that. (In my defense, I have done more than you could tell by looking at this blog. I sacrifice blogging before I sacrifice writing. Since my last blog post, I have revised two short stories and done some preliminary planning on a new YA novel. Not a lot, I know, but not nothing.)

A huge problem of mine, and one I need to work on, is my tendency toward perfectionism--more in teaching than in writing, actually. For the past nine weeks, I have averaged around four hours of sleep a night on school nights. When I grade, I don't just mark stuff wrong--I make detailed comments explaining where student work went wrong. But most kids don't look at that; they just look at the number at the top and put the thing away. So I need to find a way to help the kids that want help, but not spend my whole life on grading. I also operate a forum where I answer questions from kids, but I tend to spend too much time on silly details. For instance, the forum doesn't support LaTeX or any other mathematical mark-up features, so I make mathematical expressions with other software, capture it as an image, and upload it that way. But then I waste time trying to get the typeface and the background to match, so that it will look as if it were actually native text instead of an image. Who the hell cares? Well, besides me, that is.

(Not all the things I spend time on are that silly. I spend several hours each weekend on lesson planning, where other teachers tell me they spend maybe a half hour. I almost never give kids seatwork in class, which means I can't get my work done while they're doing that, which means all my grading and lesson-planning and communicating with parents are always take-home work. I tutor kids four afternoons a week. I think a lot of these things make me a better teacher, but it's time for me to start thinking about bang for my buck, and about when I get time to be more than my job.)

It's not perfectionism, exactly. It's that I'm very detail-oriented. As a consumer, I appreciate that tendency in the art and craft I most enjoy. That's what I love about Disney--both their movies and their architecture. Always that little bit of extra "Ah ha!" for those of us who are looking out for it. Maybe that's why I'm such a big fan of the Indigo Girls--those amazing harmonies are like that little bit of extra detail that most artists don't bother with. That's what I loved about the original Star Wars trilogy: the sense that there was a greater storyline, and that someone behind the art already knew where this was all going. (That's probably why I'm more of a plotter than a pantser.)

I have a difficult time giving myself permission to not get the details right. I think as an artist, this leads to some of my strengths. I think I use foreshadowing well. I also think I'm good at throwing in little self-referential "symbols," for lack of a better word. Of course, this also leads to my tendency to spend too long revising.

As a teacher, this focus on details may be hurting me, and, ironically enough, making me less successful. I spend so much time doing things that nobody notices. Things that nobody particularly appreciates. I may be the hardest-working teacher I know; but I don't necessarily work smart. Who appreciates that I stay up until 2 am or wake up at 4 am to grade or lesson plan? Am I crankier or less effective during the day because I'm tired from working so hard? Am I crankier or less effective because I put my artistic dreams on hold for so much of the school year?

I had a bit of an epiphany at the end of the last quarter. I tend to fall behind on my projects because of my perfectionism. If I don't have time to do it perfectly, I'll wait until I do. Eventually, some things become emergencies, and that's when I finally give myself permission to cut corners, to do less than a perfect job. It occurred to me that perhaps on some level I fall behind on purpose, as a way of giving myself permission to cut those corners. (Ironically enough, nobody notices the difference between when I cut corners and when I don't, though they certainly do notice when I'm behind.)

The trick, then, is to learn to back off on the things I do for my day job without waiting until things are emergencies.

We'll see . . .

What have you done for me lately?

I'm really struggling to keep my focus on Vanishing Act right now. I've been immersed in this for so long, and I've learned so much that what I really want to do is write something new. I want a chance to put the lessons I've learned about story structure and character motivation and what makes short stories work into practice, not as an afterthought, going through and fixing an existing project, but from the get-go. And, on the grand scheme of things, it probably wouldn't be awful if I took a break and wrote two or three short stories to get it out of my system, except for a few things. First of all, I've got beta readers who are awaiting chapters from me, and I'm trying to go through my own tight edits before I send anything out to them. The more I lose my steam, the more they will lose theirs. Second, I've got agents who've expressed interest in this story, and I haven't followed up on those opportunities. That borders on criminally stupid. And possibly most importantly, there's this little voice in my head telling me to trunk this book despite the fact that I haven't sent a submission to a single agent or editor, telling me that I could make the next one so much better. And I don't want to be that guy--the guy who writes tons of stuff but never sends anything out. I've been that guy in the past; it's an easy pattern to fall into. So I need to make myself push on ahead.

I got a rather gracious rejection on "Unintended Consequences" the other day. The editor complimented my writing and expressed interest in seeing future work from me. The negative side of me can come up with all sorts of reasons not to take that as a positive sign, but I'm going to try to ignore that destructive voice.

That's part of what has me so motivated to write a new story--I think I'm close. This time the writing was there; the story just didn't do it for this editor. I'm inclined to believe part of that comes down to the fact that I'm trying to rework and improve old stories; in the end, they're still old stories. I think if I write some new ones now, I may just be crossing the gap between where I was and publishable.

Last week grades were due, and I was so focused on my day job, and how stressed out and behind I felt, that I had little time for anything else. Now the workload should ease up for a bit. I have no backlog. I have work to do, but I'm completely caught up. So who knows? Maybe I can stay ahead of my critters on VA and still manage to crank out a story or two.

Good thing I waited a few days to make those resolutions

After being pretty successful with my New Year's resolution for 2008, I had some pretty ambitious plans for 2009. Then Monday came and reality slapped me in the face. I'm now sitting here at my desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork I need to get through, and coming to the realization that I need to reprioritize. I know what you're supposed to do when you finish one writing project: begin the next one. Writers write. Duh. But I've got four preps, two of which are new to me, and way more work each week than I can get done in a measly forty hours. It isn't fair, but that's the way it is: I need to devote more of my off-time to my day job.

I'm deeply conflicted about this. I don't want to be one of those people who say they want to write but always have some excuse for not doing so. How many times on this very blog have I commented on how much of this year's growth could have come sooner if I'd just pushed a little harder? But until someone wants to pay me to sit around and write, I need to make sure I keep giving my employers reasons to keep me around. Hopefully what I've done this year will keep my internal self-critic quiet for a few weeks.

Twenty, to be precise.

So here are my scaled back resolutions for 2009:

• Finish revising Vanishing Act, including the feedback from my critters.
• Send Vanishing Act to Moonrat for the critique I won, and incorporate her feedback into my submission.
• Begin sending Vanishing Act to literary agents, starting with the ones who've asked to see it.
• I can't control whether or not I sell any fiction in 2009, but I resolve to either sell something in 2009 or have rejections for at least five different works to show for myself. This isn't as ambitious as it sounds, because I have a backlog of completed and unsubmitted stories.
• Do the preliminary work for my next novel.
• This summer I will begin writing that novel.
• Complete a first draft of that novel.

That last one may be a bit iffy, if I don't even get started until June, but I can work pretty solidly for almost ten weeks over the summer, and then I'll still have about twenty weeks left in 2009.

No specific goals for writing short stories or for attending conferences and such.

EDIT TO ADD: One more resolution I nearly forgot:

• I resolve to stop bringing up my blog traffic stats anywhere else, no matter how fascinating, troubling, or just plain weird they are, because it makes me look like a total goober.

Killing my darlings

I learned a new phrase this week. ::points up:: That's what I'm doing right now. Well, actually, right now I'm blogging about killing my darlings, because actually doing it is too hard.

And of course, my productivity has plummeted since school began. Hopefully I will reach some sort of equilibrium with that soon, and be able to be at least as productive as I was last spring. I've got too much interest in this book for me to fall off the face of the earth now.

I'm contemplating doing one of those dreaded mirror-gazing scenes. Mine would be different, of course. I'm not doing it as a cheap way of giving you a full visual without breaking POV. Nothing like, "She gazed in the mirror on her way out the door. Her long, brown hair framed her green eyes and freckled skin, and rested on the shoulders of her green turtleneck. 'Too fat,' she thought disapprovingly, despite the fact that she weighed barely over a hundred pounds." But I've killed the scene in which I established that Chris looks young for his age, and that's a fairly important plot point. So I'm thinking that he can be annoyed over a scene offstage, just before this scene, in which someone told him he looked like he was X years old, where he briefly examines his reflection in a car window, wondering if it's really true, and when it'll stop being true. That doesn't seem quite as egregious to me.

On the other hand, in a prepublished author, I'm not sure it's a good idea to even skirt by a cliché. Will editors and such be paying attention to the nuance, or will they say, "Ugh, a mirror scene. How trite!" and toss it?

Cutting: Icarus's Labyrinth goes emo on you

I needed an impartial person to help me go through my MS and find scenes I could cut. This week, my brilliant wife helped me do just that. There were some tough decisions. Some scenes I love that aren't strictly necessary. Scenes that serve a purpose, but where the purpose can be served by another scene. A whole freaking character. Luís, who went from being a very important character to being a minor character to being left out altogether. Sorry bro. I like to try to work at least one Latino character into everything I write, but now this story's just about all white.

But still, it wasn't too hard to make the cuts--on my outline.

Now I'm trying to implement those decisions. And it's not as easy as highlighting scenes and pressing the delete key. Scene one established my protagonist's age and physical appearance, and some sense of what the chip on his shoulder is. But it's too similar to scene eleven, really, and scene two has some nice, tense action that will make a good opening hook. But now I've got to find a way to convey the information that used to be in scene one. I've got to look closely at the good stuff I'm taking out and think about making the story work without any obvious gaps. Sorry for going gruesome on you, but it's the difference between having your dog put down and doing it yourself.

And now I'm back to getting up at six every morning, and staying up late grading and lesson-planning. It's finally Friday . . . and I'm exhausted.

(Say, why do places like Writertopia only make counters for counting up to a certain goal? What about those of us trying to make works shorter?)

Ding-Dong the Warlock's Dead

The title of this post has nothing to do with my book . . . folks who know me IRL may get it, and that's all I have to say about that. ;)

One more chapter done! One more, plus epilogue, to go! Craploads of revision to follow! Exclamation points for all!!!!!1!

At some point, I need to post a list of all the things I've been putting off until my draft is done, so I can keep them straight. Most of them will have to take place more or less at the same time, so I'll need a place to remind myself.

Thursday I'm helping to facilitate a discussion (how's that for eduspeak?) about query letters even though I'm unpublished and know only what I read in books and online. I reckon I should have a draft of my own query, so I plan to spend tomorrow working on it. What the hell--I should post it here. Of course, I really really want to finish the damn thing before worrying about a query letter, so I desperately want to knock out the last chapter y todo tonight. That should be doable--the last few chapters have been so short. Not easy, because I wanted to pull off the climax right, but not really long either. I still feel like I have plenty of writing left in me today. Now that I've hit the climax, everything left is pretty much resolution, and I'm hoping that will be a lot easier to compose.

We'll see.

Summer, and the living is easy

So I can finally concentrate on writing without that pesky day job interzzzzzzzz . . . Uh? Oh, sorry.

After some much needed R&R, and some even more needed contemplation on Where The Hell My Plot Is Going, I'm making progress again. For the second time in as many weeks, I've re-outlined the rest of Vanishing Act. Or maybe I completed a drastic re-outlining that I was only halfway through last week, though I didn't realize it at the time. My stalkee (I don't know whether it's better to give credit where credit is due or to avoid the appearance of name-dropping but the name is elsewhere in this blog) was kind enough to point out about a half-dozen holes in my remaining plot, and rather than fix those, I came up with a way to streamline the ending, eliminating a lot of them in the process. It also improves some stuff she hadn't even commented on--the fact that my climax was being brought on by a very minor character, instead of by the actions of my principals. I wrote that minor character out of the story altogether, replotted the rest of it, and I feel like I've got something a lot tighter and more manageable now. I wrote a lot last night and this morning, and it's coming so much more easily now. I finished chapter 16 today, which is why I'm giving myself permission to spend time blogging. ;)

I'm actually looking forward to doing a big revising sweep once this draft is done . . . finding ways to make my language less clunky and to incorporate all the different good tips I've been getting from authors' blogs and from the online class I'm taking. I think I can be done with this draft in a little over three weeks without pushing too hard. Hopefully if I push just a bit harder, I can substantially decrease that. Then the challenge will be coming up with readers.

All of the various readers that Cor had--including her so-called crit group--have pretty much quit keeping up. There's nothing wrong with her novel--I think it's a hell of a lot more marketable than mine is--but people are busy. They have their lives to live and even those that see themselves as writers are not necessarily as devoted to the idea of getting stuff done now at all costs, with no excuses. So what are my chances of avoiding the same fate? I can probably get a dozen people or so to read the first chapter, but I'll be lucky if I have one (besides Cor, of course) still reading by the twelfth.

I got some exciting ideas for my short story nugget. I hope I have it in me to pull this together, and that I can find the time without sacrificing progress on Vanishing Act.

In other news, our air conditioner is crapping out. Florida in June without functional air conditioning . . . fun. I don't know where the money to fix it is going to come from. Hell, I don't know where the money for WorldCon is going to come from, and I very badly want to go.

The calm before the storm . . .

In three minutes I give my first final of the spring. For now, though, all my grades are done. These stress-free moments are far too fleeting.

I've still been writing, though, even if I've been too busy to update here. Still, I'm embarrassed and reproached by the length of time between updates, lately. That should get better within a week, though.

I've spent my writing time this week doing tons of revisions on chapters twelve through fifteen--fifteen was actually more of a rewrite than a revision. I've also re-outlined the remainder of my novel to tighten it up a bit. Hopefully that compression won't cause narrative problems--as in, is enough time in the story passing for these events to take place?

My subconscious mind's tendency to not let me write scenes until I fix whatever is wrong with what I want to write is rapidly ceasing to be charming and becoming frustrating. I'm grateful that it helps me avoid some mistakes, but I wish it could point out solutions as well as problems. Grrrr . . .

I'm taking an online writing class (sponsored by the RWA, of all things, but taught by Linnea Sinclair) at the same time that I give and grade finals. I must be insane.

(You know, those romance writers are a cool bunch. I wish I had it in me to write in that genre--they're so supportive of each other. At least, that's the way it appears from the outside.)

Still . . . *gasp* . . . alive

Work is killing me . . . two nights in a row going to sleep after 2 am. (And that's all I'm going to say about the time). But still I've managed to find some time to write, if only a little bit--fifteen chapters done so far! Senior grades are due Thursday and my professional development binder is due more or less now, and then I'll get a (relatively) quiet week or so before it all starts again, but for underclassmen.

People don't realize the extent to which the last week of the school year is hell for a high school teacher. (And if you teach a mix of seniors and underclassmen, it's two weeks of hell.)

But this blog is about writing, not about teaching. So let me talk about that. Once again I had the experience of finding a scene impossible to write until I realized that I was keeping a character from acting consistently with his motivations. It's freaky and awesome all at once how the story won't let itself be railroaded. If I'm doing something wrong, I just sit there, paralyzed, unable to write.

I had another cool (to me) experience last Friday. I was on a plane and hoping to take advantage of the time to get some writing done. This was when I realized that I had totally failed to consider my protagonist's mental state and motivation in the scene I was struggling with, and had the epiphany that made it possible. But I still wasn't ready to write. I needed to re-envision the scene now that I better understood how my protagonist was feeling. So I daydreamed, basically, trying to get in his head. Well, Chris, my protagonist, had just been through a pretty awful experience, something humiliating and heart-breaking. As I put myself in his shoes, I found myself becoming more outwardly angry and sad. Intellectually I knew these were not my emotions, but I found myself genuinely feeling Chris's, and I had this sudden realization of what I must look like if anybody happened to look my way--I bet it was scary!

Anyway, I'm probably the only person who finds that interesting, but that's the whole reason I started this blog. So I could gush about quasi-mystical experiences like that without boring anybody who might find him- or herself my captive audience. Those are the moments I'm finding astounding and rewarding. I need a blog label for the posts that have these rambling reflection. Maybe "gushical."

In other news: Fifteen days! Fifteen days until vacation! :)

Torturing Characters, Students, and Prose

I finally finished chapter 14, a week later than I'd hoped. 26 intense days of work left before vacation, and I hope I can juggle both my day job and my writing and not fall any further off the pace. I know I'll be able to write faster once I'm on vacation, but I don't want to count on that.

I know part of why this chapter was hard to write was my work demands. Every week from here on out has at least one big task that I must accomplish. Formal observation tomorrow, write finals by Friday, finalize Professional Development Plan by the end of the next week, then grade senior exams, and then everyone else's finals. And, of course, the usual stuff. But I think this chapter may also have been intrinsically hard to write . . . it might not be all about the day job.

This chapter, I took Chris, my protagonist, out of a setting that was tense because of what he was bringing to it, but, in many ways, idyllic. Idyll is not the stuff of good stories, so he had to go. But it was hard, you know? I really like the characters he was spending time with, and don't like the characters he's with now--as people, that is. The conflict is getting ratcheted up as I head for the ending. Hopefully now that the transition is done, it will get easier.

I've been giving thought to where I can cut. I think the bad guy that sets the plot in motion needs to appear earlier . . . like about five to seven thousand words earlier. I'm pretty sure I can spare the wordage, so I'm looking to cut stuff. (I suppose I could also move some stuff that comes before this point to after it, though.) I think I see where the cuts can come. I'm also finding that the later chapters are getting shorter, which I think, at this point, is a good thing. To me it suggests that the pace is picking up, which it should at this point. I don't think I need to worry about my novel being too short at this point.

I spent several hours last night waxing the cat by thinking about a story concept for Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas's new horror anthology. I'm desperately trying to finish this novel by August, so what the heck am I doing thinking about other stories, but an open call for submissions for an anthology like this seems like a golden opportunity. And I have an idea I think may be unique. Do I have the horror chops to pull it off, though? Therein lies the question . . .

Cheating

I cheated on my novel this week.

I had all sorts of out-of-town company last week--including the in-laws, who are still here--and I'm still struggling to meet my writing goals for last week, so, in order to still get to feel some sense of accomplishment, I worked on my short stories over the weekend. I revised "War Crimes" and resubmitted it, and pulled out an old short I'd never submitted and found a market to submit it to.

I think the changes I made to "War Crimes" make it stronger. They help avoid one source of confusion and they make the ending stronger. I'm pleased with the commentary I got from Baen's Bar. That said, I don't think it's going to find a home there. It doesn't seem to be generating any interest. I think a problem with the model over there is it discourages interest in longer stories. People will read a 9,000 word story that has already been vetted for quality, but not so much an unpublished one by a stranger. So almost nobody reads it, and if almost nobody reads it, how can it possibly generate the buzz necessary to get published? They seem to be looking for short little action stories, not long morality studies with literary pretensions.

Of course, it would help if their site could stay up for 24 hours straight.

The other story I submitted was "Unintended Consequences." Yeah, that's a terribly trite title; I wish I could think of a better one. And it's the dreaded time-travel story, which makes it doubly cliché. But it's not a bad little story, I think. It's not really a trunk story, because it's not like it has made the rounds and been rejected; I literally have never submitted this story anywhere before. So typical of what I'm trying to move past . . . I've written so much stuff that I've either never submitted or only submitted once or twice. It's hard to motivate myself for that side of the art. Anyway, UC is a less ambitious/pretentious story. It's just a good old-fashioned (or, at least, old fashioned) sci-fi story about scientists and the uses/misuses to which they put their discoveries. It's got what I think is a nice twist in it, and a pleasantly frisson-ish ending. And unlike almost everything else I write, it's short. I hear OSC's IGMS is looking for short science fiction--apparently they're just inundated with fantasy--how's that for a turning of the tables?--so hopefully this will be right up their alley.

Not to wax too lyrical about the process of writing--but then again, that's the whole reason I have this blog: so that I can hide these raves where nobody who isn't interested can see them--but I've really been struck by how much better my life has been since I rededicated myself to actively pursuing my dream. Better in ways totally unrelated to writing. I've noticed I'm less stressed at work. I'm not investing myself in it twelve to sixteen hours a day anymore: eight is all you get, sorry. Whatever doesn't get done today will get done tomorrow. Or at the last minute. And that's okay. But the biggest thing I've noticed is that I've lost weight. I haven't made any effort to lose it; I haven't dieted or exercised, at least not consciously. It took me until later to piece this together, but here's what I realized: I tend to snack when I'm stressed or bored. When I write, I am neither of these things, and thus, I haven't been feeding my face as much. The weight loss hasn't gotten drastic yet, but it has gotten to the point where stuff that just barely wasn't fitting now just fits, and stuff that was just fitting before now fits better. How cool would it be if this kept up?!

And work rears its ugly head

This week my day job reasserted itself, and reminded me that writing is cool, but I still need to please The Man if I want to keep food on the table. Well, big surprise: there are only seven weeks left in the school year. Things were bound to get stressful. I had hoped to get ahead of schedule on my writing one of these weeks; at this point I'll be lucky not to fall behind. I'm behind on everything else, including sleep. ≥_≤

But hey! I'm caught up on lesson plans!