Reader

So I'm considering finding a third person to read my manuscripts and provide feedback. I already have my Mom and Emily reading them once and giving me great feedback, but I think a third reader would be a good thing. Why?

Well, first of all, it's a pain in the ass to read a manuscript multiple times as a favor to a friend, so I don't ask. I have this suspicion that both Mom and Emily would agree enthusiastically while in their heads thinking "Oh God, not again, please, no."

Secondly it would be great to get a completely new perspective from a different source.

What am I looking for in a reader? I'm hoping to find someone with the following qualities or training:

1. enjoys reading fantasy, urban fantasy and science fiction, and has some experience with those genres

2. has taken some sort of exposure to this sort of 'work' before--whether it be from taking a creative writing workshop, working in the industry or being a writer him or herself.

3. has the ability to view a story as a whole and to see the details as well, and is willing to provide suggestions for addressing perceived weaknesses.

4. has the ability to keep the turnaround to a month or less, or even slightly more than that, but preferably not too much more.

5. And I want a pony.

What output am I looking for?

1. a rational evaluation of the major parts of a good story: characterization, plot, mood and tone, and the prose itself. Gud speeling or grammer not is needed.

2. The ability to be constructively critical. While it's always cool to know what's working, identifying what isn't working is really just as helpful. I know sometimes it's hard to level criticism at someone. The constructive part suggesting I don't really need "The whole thing just sucks, don't quit your day job", or "Your name really ruins the whole novel. maybe call yourself Jet Stevens instead?"

I actually know that some of my friends meet these criteria, with the possible exception of the pony part. But I am leery of asking right up front for fear that the following renumeration/barter offers would just be plain insulting to them. The first step in my search is to find out if what I'm looking for is even remotely reasonable.

Renumeration could include any of the following:

1. An exchange of services if desired. I enjoy reading for other people and will gladly return the favor.

2. A mention in the acknowledgements of anything that he or she reads that I manage to get published.

3. Some minor payment if neither of the above satisfy them. This would be very minimal, which probably excludes anyone who is in this industry professionally already :) But I can't really afford to throw much cash at this problem. It turns out there are some fairly restrictive child labor laws in Illinois so McDonalds had to lay off Theo. I can't understand it--he was only putting in a ten hour work day and was learning some valuable life lessons. Like don't go into the walk in freezer without blocking open the door, don't put your face on the grill and don't call customers "poopie-head".

Finally, another thing that would be awesome to know is, does this sound remotely reasonable to even pursue? Am I looking for someone that simply doesn't exist in this time-space continuum?

Anyway, I'm imagining that all of this will narrow the field to my Mom and Emily, but I figured it was worth a shot. I'm going to go wait for the Child Protective Services goobs to show up.

Drama! Stress!

So I've had my manuscript out in the hands of an agent the last two and a half months. Or so I thought. I finally decided it was time to see if she'd taken a look at it yet--just a gentle reminder/inquiry, etc. I agonized over the five sentence email, trying to combine just the right tone of respect, enthusiasm, and interest in knowing more. I also wanted to be careful not to sound aggressive or hostile. This is the kind of thing I get super neurotic about. I want this to work so much--probably too much.

Anyway, I sent the email and got back a response about an hour later saying that she didn't recognize the title of my manuscript and asked if I mailed it or emailed it. This was my second worst scenario. The first being rejection, of course. So we exchanged emails for a little while and I provided her with the name of the person who signed for it in her office, and a copy of the original email asking me for the manuscript so that she wouldn't think I was trying to scam my way in the backdoor.

She responded and asked me to attach the manuscript to an email, so I did and now it's actually in her hands. I can't decide if she's going to be positively motivated toward the manuscript out of some sense that her office lost it and was at fault, or if she's going to be annoyed at me for being such a pushy (albeit, polite and respectful) asshat.

The bottom line is that after almost three months of a strange mixture of excitement, desperation and terror, I didn't even have anything to worry about. NOW I do though, so I'm ramping up those emotions again at a frightening rate.

Yeesh.

Freaking out!

Today I have decided, is the day that I write an email to the agent who is reading my manuscript and see where they are at. I have no real idea how long this part of the process should take, but it's been around 8 weeks or so, and I've begun to wonder if I just dreamed the whole thing.

My first draft was obsequious. Here's an approximation:

Dear So and so,

Please forgive me for intruding upon your day. I hope you are having a wonderful week. I wanted to make sure that my manuscript arrived in good shape. FedEx claimed it did but we all know what liarheads they can be. If you did get it, that's great and I hope you're enjoying it. I look forward to hearing from you at your convenience. If you want. I don't mean to sound pushy.

thanks,

jeremy

Emily told me that obsequious wasn't a good thing. So my next attempt was a bit more assertive:

Dear So and so,

WHERE THE #!&^ IS MY RESPONSE. I SENT THAT THING TO YOU MONTHS AGO.

looking forward to hearing back from you. Have a nice day!

jeremy

This is about where Emily smacked me on the back of the head. I finally settled on businesslike and calmly assertive without being rude or pushy. Along the lines of:

Dear So and so,

I'm writing to inquire as to the status of my manuscript, which you requested I send to you a while ago. I'm new to this entire process so I don't know what to expect in terms of a response or if I need to do anything further.

Please let me know,

thanks,

jeremy

I sent it and now I'm shaking and checking email every ten minutes or so. Do you think I might want this too much?

Odds n ends

So I want everyone to breath a deep sigh of relief: I have successfully avoided a post concerning religion. I was considering it and then said to myself "WTF? RU RETARDED???!!! IDK WUT UR THINKING!!!11!!!ONE!"

So instead I'm going to just toss out a few odds and ends for your consideration:

I find myself annoyed by musicians who use their music as a forum for 'sharing' their political opinions. Yes, even when I am in agreement with them. Rationally I understand that they, like many people, want to share their opinions and thoughts with others. And I understand that their music is a natural method that they can use to communicate with us, the masses. So why do I still find it so hard to deal with. The band that flipped this switch for me is Filter. I've been listening to their last album and the entire thing is a huge political diatribe against the war in Iraq. Fundamentally I'm against the war too, and if the Filter guy and I were to sit down and share ideas we might be close to agreeing. That said, I really don't want to have that crap interfering with my enjoyment of the music. Discuss.

Anyway, that's number one.

Over the last 8 months or so, I've been averaging a few thousand words written each day. There have been periods where I am in between projects and doing editing or preparing query letters, etc, so the numbers aren't there. But there have also been days where I crank out in the 10k range. I feel really good about the whole thing: even if I never get published, I'll eventually die knowing that I pursued this dream hard core. I'm currently plowing into my third novel of the year. The second one is a rough draft, currently being read by my mother (God love her) and my first is being read and considered by an agent. If I fail, it won't be for lack of trying.

Finally, I find myself a Cub Scout Dad. How the HELL did this happen to me? Where did I go wrong? What crime did I commit that Karma has revisited this back on me?? In the last month, I've sold cub scout popcorn outside Jewel (grocery store), worked the concession stand at Bingo Night at the Moose Lodge (we get the proceeds from that for our yearly cubscout purse) and took Theo to a huge reenactment of pioneer days in America called The Trail of History (I wanted to rename it something more apt like The Day Where Grown Men Sit Around All Day Firing Off A Cannon).

I can't decide what was stranger: the bingo night, or the frontier days knockoff. They were both mega-freaky. Bingo night was EXACTLY like the stereotypes! I always thought that it was greatly exaggerated. For those who read this that actually go to bingo night somewhere, forgive me. I LOVE BINGO!! whew.

And the Trail of History. That was completely nutso. It was like Ren Faire for American settlers time. Everyone in costume, displays, things being sold and made. There were Red Coats and Minutemen walking all over the place. There was some guy who had set up his frontier days blacksmithy. There was a dentist from that time period (read: torture specialist). All kinds of other things like that.

Oh, and I go to a weekly pack or den meeting. Theo seems to love it, so I'll take the shot to my ever fading sense of coolness (which was tiny and pathetic to begin with...) on his behalf. The things we do for parenthood.

Anyone wanna buy some caramel popcorn? stop it me. now.

What the hell is this?

I forgot I had a blog!

Anyway, during the last year or so I've been working to change my career. I love being involved with designing and writing software, but I really don't enjoy doing it for other people, and having to do so has slowly but surely strangled my love of all things softwarish. So I decided to pursue a dream I've always had: to be a novelist, writing things I'd enjoy reading as opposed to things that can be considered 'literary fiction'.

For most of my life I considered creative writing to be an innate skill: either you have it or you don't. This has recently changed. I realized (and then felt quite foolish for not realizing it right up front) that writing is a craft that must be improved through practice. It's like playing the guitar: all the best guitarists spend a large part of their time practicing their craft. I read somewhere that Eric Clapton spent 5+ years basically locked in his house playing this guitar from morning to night with the obvious breaks during the day.

I guess that I still believe that an active imagination is still something that you have or don't have. I've always had that in spades. Most of the times I really value it and love it, and sometimes it's gotten me in trouble. I can't think of how many times I got myself in trouble in school by daydreaming. One such event was when I was in middle school and evidently the teacher had changed subjects to discussing Haiku. After a short silence when the students were paying attention, I was off in some dream world rescuing the damsel in distress and in general making a nuisance of myself to eViL everywhere. Suddenly the teacher asked me to share my feelings on baseball. I guess that was the topic we were supposed to be writing a quick Haiku about. So being completely out of touch with what was going on, I nervously started expounding on why I liked baseball. The entire class laughed and I still carry emotional baggage from that moment where my imagination got me in trouble. Let it go, Jeremy, let it go!

But other than the imagination, the technical aspects of writing, including learning to allow characters to drive the action, the ability to create and maintain a solid plot, and being able to allow what a character says and does give insight into who they are rather than freak out on adjectives and TELL the reader those things. Those are just a few of the things that I focus on every time I write, and over time I've gotten better at those things. Where I had to put a lot of conscious thought into doing the right thing, it's become more second nature. As my craft improves I find myself becoming more prolific. I'm sure that means I'm turning out a lot of complete shit, but the sheer enjoyment I find myself taking in telling a story is one of the things that makes me the happiest in life (kids & wife being others).

It's funny how writing used to be hard work: I always thought of it as the painful process of producing something that people will want to read. A story they'll find engrossing. But now, while it's still hard work and must be committed to entirely, it's not painful at all. It's joyous.

Anyway, I'm sure most, if not all of you, are sitting there saying 'Duh, Jeremy.' And if so, that's fine--it's well deserved. But this realization has dramatically improvement my relationship with my writing. Don't get me wrong--it's still immature and often I miss what I'm aiming for, but I'm taking a lot more joy in it these days and the dream feels much more attainable as a result.