Waiting Games

Deciding to query is terrifying. What comes after is...kind of anti-climatic. It's mostly waiting. You send out queries everyday (or every week, whatever your chosen schedule is) and then you wait. Some agents might respond to say no, some might not respond at all, some might get back to you with more optimistic answers (like asking for a full manuscript). But in the end, a lot of it is just waiting, and there's nothing you can really do to make that go faster.

I thought waiting would be horrible. I've never been very good at it. I sucked at waiting for my viva and got more and more anxious as the weeks went by. I was pretty bad at waiting for exams to happen too. And I've never been great at waiting for vacations, especially when they involve international travel.

But I've gotten much better at it now. Hurry up and wait is pretty much a motto of this whole thing, I'm discovering, because even once you're signed there's waiting for publishers to be interested, waiting for editors to get back to you, waiting for the launch, waiting, waiting, waiting. Patience is definitely a virtue of the publishing industry. There's mostly long stretches of nothing, interspersed with short moments of exited terror. Which is life in a nutshell, isn't it?

As always, however, waiting is much easier when you keep busy, and I've definitely been keeping busy. Formulating a business plan is a long thought process and one I'm very familiar with, even if I'm not familiar with business plans. PhD-ing is 80% in your head and only 20% content to show for it (or less, some days). This feels the same way. A lot of months of thinking and planning before there is any pay-off, and publishing appears to be the same way. I am not surprised by this fact.

So I am waiting, hopefully for a good day to come. Until then, I'm keeping busy doing things that I hope will also one day lead to good things. After a year of feeling stuck in the mud, it's good to be walking along the trail again, even if I don't know where that trail is leading.

Business Plans

I have something to admit. I don't have a head for business. I never have. I've never wanted to. Having said that, I've always been fairly decent at math.

I've spent the last two weeks reading about business plans. They are simple, at face value, but actually crafting one is much harder! So far, I've got the headings in place, and a short paragraph about what I need to include in each section. But there are sections I haven't even been able to give thought to yet. In other words...this is going to take a while. But that's all right. Business plans should not be rushed. I want it to be a good, solid plan as I go forward, because that's the foundation I want to build on.

It is simply the first step in a long process. I am going to start keeping a document with blog posts about what I'm going through, and once I've gotten further in this process (realised my mistakes) I'll start posting them on a new blog, so other people can learn from my stumbles and also what worked for me! I hope it might be useful. So look out for that in a couple of months (probably the autumn). I'm also going to try my hand at setting up a whole website, with a blog page, and several other areas that can grow over time. I shall also have to learn how to do that.

Just like everything else in life, it's a learning curve. I kind of feel like starting my PhD all over again, except instead of a degree with an end point, this is the rest of my life! But that makes it more exciting.

So, further up and further in. One baby step at a time.

Trying Something New

So, for those of you who might be humanities buffs, I'm tweeting over at the @WetheHumanities twitter account this week. We call it 'curating', although that's a word choice argument for another time (tomorrow). But I'm managing it, and using it to spark conversation about museums and digital. If that's up your alley, come join.

Surprisingly Exciting

I got my first rejection! And it was both exceedingly polite and encouraging. I feel, well, rather happy about that. It's entirely a positive thing.

I've only queried about 10 agents so far, and most of their websites said 4-6 weeks' response time, so I was rather surprised to hear back from anyone yet (or at all...) I actually hope I get more rejection letters in this vain, because it was at least semi-personal and friendly, rather than just a form. I appreciate the response, anyways, and it gives me hope. And that's really what this is all about. Keep hoping until someone says 'yes!' [And then keep hoping until a publisher says 'yes!']

The Start of...Something

I signed up for Camp NaNo this year (April), but only set my goal as 'edit one novel', which I did. First edit, I mean, because I've a long list of things that need to be done with it now. But I made the list. And I finished the last round on another novel, so I guess I can say I 'achieved' NaNo this spring. It was a month filled with other things, and sometimes that happens.

But it's now May, and I promised myself I would start querying in May. So I have. My goal is to send a query letter out every week day until...well, until the end of the month, at least (which is how many agents I have in my Excel spreadsheet to query to). After that, I have to go looking for more. So that's about 20 or so agents. I'll start looking for more now, though, so I have 20 or so to query in June, and then etc. I could be doing more than one a day, but finding and researching them takes even longer than actually sending out the queries.

[I'll let you know what happens. Maybe I'll be one of those lucky people that doesn't have to send out a 100 before they get an agent. Maybe I won't be lucky at all (lack of luck going around in my life right now).]

I already have Book 2 lined up to query, so I figured I'll give Book 1 a few months, then try Book 2. Often you have to wait up to 8 weeks for a response from an agent anyways, and that's just for them to ask for your manuscript, not read it and report back if they want it. So the agent I queried yesterday might not get back to me with interest until mid-June or later. Or will probably not get back to me at all. Reality check.

I'm gearing up to have a go at the list for the next novel (see first paragraph), though there is A LOT to fix in this novel before I even send it out for beta-reading. And then there is Book 3, which I am blatantly ignoring for the foreseeable future, because it might be borderline crap (the story isn't, the writing is, it was my first novel) and need to just be scrapped and written again. And I can't deal with that right now. I already have another book for NaNo in November already lined up, which needs to be written AND edited that month (it's Middle Grade, it's like 40k). So I think I should just concentrate on editing this one between now and November. And querying the other two.

And if I hear from an agent, all bets are off on that schedule. :D

Further up and further in!

Creativity Update

My, it has been a long time since last autumn when I posted a picture, hasn't it?

So here's an update. I am - mostly - finished. I wanted to leave it to dry for a week to make sure it wasn't still tacky when I did the last part, as the last part goes overtop of half the painting. It's a big red tree on the left in the foreground. But for now, here's the rest of it.

I'm rather pleased with it, I think. I definitely like how bright it is.

Titling or Tilting

You know, words are important for an author. The most important thing, in fact. It's what makes us writers, after all. But if the choice of words that is important; the order, number, and tone are often even more so.

This was no where more apparent to me than when I did my PhD. Novelising is one thing, academic writing another. I found 'tone' to be easy to come by. It was something that either comes naturally or you have to learn it (which is entirely possible). It wasn't hard to hit the right tone, for academia. I'd done a lot of academic writing before the PhD, and it came back naturally. It is mostly characterised by a formality not found in prose and a more traditional (and larger) vocabulary.

Voice is also, like tone, something that can come naturally or must be learned. It is harder to learn. I know people who have never figured it out. That's alright, as that's what editors are for. But when it comes naturally, it certainly makes writing easier. 'Voice' is no where more important than in a PhD. There is an academic voice that is needed, just like there is in academic tone. But within that are other voices: the active and the passive. They each have their place. Many people will say a research paper should only use active, but passive is important, and combining the two at the right point in time, even more so.

But this is also important in prose, and passive voice is not good for a novel. Time and again you will hear 'take it out!' shouted loud and clear. Novelising is active. But passive has it's place too, in historical books, in reflecting, and character introspective. Don't just throw it out and be done.

And although vocal and word order is important in academia, it doesn't make or break it I've found. Going over board is as bad an idea as being too simple. But in prose, sometimes, that one word can change an entire scene, or explain a character trait. Or have everything click. Word choice is hugely important, and how those words are presented, even more so. But that is, after all, why words are so important to writers and why they call to us from out in the wide universe, demanding to be put on paper. And it is, in the end, why we write.