Scripting, Marrying And Novel-ing

Just another one of those days where everything seemed to be moving forward, albeit in small, manageable steps.

The work on the 8 episode mini-series is now nearly half done. I’m almost through with episode 4, and I’m hoping I can keep up the pace with episodes 5 and 6, so that I’ll have a relatively clear window of inactivity next week for the wedding. Fortunately my work at the video game magazine is pretty light this month, so the few articles I need to hand over to them are easily handled within the deadline.

Clothing for the wedding has also been sorted out. The Fiance dropped her wedding dress off for the obligatory thorough dry cleaning and press, and I now have something black to wear, but it’s not a tuxedo, and doesn’t involve ties, ’cause I just don’t have the attitude to pull any of that stuff. Still this is definitely a step up from my usual barefoot with t-shirt and cargo pants sort of look so it’ll still be a mild shock to friends that know me pretty well.

And The Pale Summer is making some minor progress. My agent wrote back to me today to tell me he really likes the book and since he’s already sold two things with a similar vibe to Ace Science Fiction, he’s going to target Anne Sowards over there for this book and see what she thinks. He’s had pretty quick feedback from her before in the past, so I assume that, positive or negative, her reply about my novel will be in reasonable time.

He’s also going to be shopping it around at the World Fantasy Convention next month.

See, now THIS is why I love having an agent. The World Fantasy Convention is not only in North America, tens of thousands of kilometers away from where I live, it’s also darn expensive for me to get there. Thanks to the magic of literary representation, he can hoof it down there and peddle to the book to editors he already knows or is familiar with, something that I couldn’t possibly lay claim to. There’s also a possibility of mentioning it again to Tor, though if they take another three freakin’ years to decide whether they want the book or not, I’m not all that enthused about showing it to them again.

Still, the word from my agent is he’s pretty happy with the book and enormously pleased about the fact that, when dropped, it merely injures infants rather than killing them outright. Books that stun babies are always better than books that actually kill them.

Aloha, My Novel

And it’s gone.

I feel like a Kansas farmer sitting there watching his kid push up his glasses and hoist his suitcase to say, “Well, g’bye Pa. G’bye Ma. I’m off to the city.”

The Pale Summer has gone off into the big bad world to see if it can make it’s way. Or at least, gone off to my agent to see if he can sell it. And all the usual parental feelings–I would guess, since I’m not a parent–accompany the departure. There’s the hope it’ll arrive safely, there’s the hope it’ll find a good home, and there’s the hope that it’ll make something of itself and do something to be proud of, like end up on a bookshelf.

It’s a little sad, because I’ve nursed this thing for so long. It started as an idea a few years ago, that toddled around doing not much of anything except uttering the occasional lines, or suggesting a particular scene. And then puberty hit and the thing just grew and grew incredibly rapidly, finding a character, plot and voice. And now it’s ready to see if it can make it out in the world along with all those other books, and I’m proud of it, but worried about it too.

I’m hoping of course, that this will be the one, that The Pale Summer will finally be the book that gets into print, but if it doesn’t, there are other books to write. I’m hoping it won’t come to that, that I won’t have to invest more hope in another book, rather than writing with the knowledge that it too will see print, but I’m prepared for it. It just won’t be much fun.

And the other book, the non-fiction kiddy book is done and away as well. Nothing to do but wait on that too.

And, as promised, I am down to one cigarette in my pack, and it is my final one. I said when The Pale Summer was done, I would stop smoking, and since it’s off and away, and it can’t be much more done than that. So after a final cigarette, I am quitting smoking. Or going to try anyway.

Oh well, I suppose you shouldn’t be smoking while writing a children’s novel anyway.

Final Check

Well, that’s about it for The Pale Summer.

The changes to the synopsis and the manuscript itself have all been made. I went through them both one last time to find anymore errors that I might have missed the last few times ’round and, unsurprisingly, found a few. But then that’s to be expected to some degree. Even when you get as far as the actual printing of the book, with all those words, somehow a few always manage to escape even the most eagle-eyed proof readers.

The normal cover page has been printed out. If you’re not familiar with the format, all the pertinent information is at the top. In my case, this means I have the full contact details of my agent, and then right under all that, the tag “Representing: Wayne Santos”. On the right, I have an approximate word count. When the 1st draft was done, the thing weighed in at over 112, 000 words. After the revisions, it’s gone down to 109,000. That’s roughly 11 pages chopped out. It’s certainly possible that should an editor look at it, still more will go, but I’ll wait and see on that. Oh yeah, and of course smack dab in the center is the title of the book with my name under it.

The “good” book cover will also be included, though I’ll probably send an e-mail to my agent explaining why exactly that’s in there. Included along with the manuscript and a 9 page synopsis will be a CD with both the manuscript and synopsis files burned on it. Tomorrow both documents will be printed out, courtesy of some place near where the Fiance works, and then it’ll be mailed off to America and more or less be permanently beyond my control with nothing to do but wait.

Hopefully, third time really will be the charm.

It will be good day indeed when the sending out of a book is not a nerve wracking experience filled with the litany of “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…” running itself over and over again in my head.

But until then the writing continues.

Next up, reading more children’s books. Well, weird ones, anyway. I’m going to be going through Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always again to take more careful note of the difference between the writing he does there, and the writing he does in something like, say, Imajica, or The Great and Secret Show or Weaveworld.

Getting Close Now

Another day or two and I think the rewrite (At least this round of it) will be done, and I shouldn’t tool around with the book anymore until I actually get an editor at a publishing house weigh in with his or her opinions.

I’m now at that phase where I have been thinking and staring at the manuscript too long, and it’s starting to feel less and less like a story I was excited about, and more and more like just a meaningless jumble of letters. The initial fire that sparked off those passages of the first draft has had the water of editing thrown on it. Too much thought and calculation are hanging in the air, and it makes it hard to look at the story and wonder if it’s any good or not. I think this is normal if you spend waaaaaaay too much time on anything, be it a novel, a television show you’ve spent too many hours in edit with, or even a videogame you play beyond all reason, like an MMORPG. It’s kind of like taking any word and repeating it to yourself over and over again; do it too much and the word loses any meaning for you.

There are a few major changes left, and then some tweaking throughout. Then one final pass, a scan over the entire thing just to see how it all hangs together with these new changes, and then it’ll be time to walk on over to the printer at the shopping mall several blocks down, and let them exhaust an entire cartridge of ink or toner to print it out.

Getting there. Nearly done.

Them Damn Rewrites

I think it’s time to pay attention to The Pale Summer again. Here it is, September, and I am bound and determined to get this thing polished and printed and mailed off. After that, it’s all in my agent’s hands. For those of you who are curious, or just didn’t know, here’s the process of Trying To Get Published. Maybe someday that will change to How I Got Published, but for the moment, Trying is more accurate.

First, you have to write the damn thing. That is much, MUCH easier said than done, as I know a lot of people who have ideas for stories, but never do anything about it, citing lack of time, lack of patience, lack of interest, or a few other reasons, but the number one obstacle to getting a book in print is actually writing the book itself. Even if you manage to accomplish this task (Which is not easy, and congratulations to anyone that got even that far) then there is the sometimes even more daunting task of getting it published.

There are a couple of ways to go about it. The first is to just send it out to the publishers and hope that it gets read and liked. This is hard, but not impossible. Publishers have a term for unsolicited manuscripts–that is, manuscripts sent without being first asked if there’s interest in looking at it–and that term is “The Slush Pile.” That’s the stack of books from hopeful writers all over the world that would like to be published authors. More often than not, these slush piles are looked at by interns and assistants first to separate the chaff from the wheat, and if you’re lucky, your book will be wheat and eventually get looked at by an editor who will then decide whether to take your book on or not.

The other way to do it is to get a literary agent. That is the route I took. Agents represent you and take a cut of the earnings (American standard rates are 15% at the moment) and if they’re legit, you DO NOT PAY THEM A SINGLE PENNY. This is important. The agent works for you and represents you. If he or she starts billing you for anything, then odds are they in serious trouble, or they are not legit, as an agent should only ever make money from the sales made by your book. Agents bypass the whole slush pile issue by getting your book straight into the hands of the editor. They have relationships with editors, talk to them regularly, and keep a finger on the pulse of the industry. So it helps somewhat in that because they know what’s going, they can often spot or be informed of a need a particular editor has, and if your book happens to fit the bill, a quick phone call is all it takes for said editor to reply, “Great, send it over, let me take a look at it!”

Note this doesn’t guarantee your book will get published, but it raises the odds somewhat, and if your book does get rejected, this speeds up the process of getting back into circulation with another editor at another publishing house.

So what I am doing now is working on my novel with some of the comments I’ve gotten, trying to get it as good as I can for the moment. When that’s done, I’ll revise the synopsis that goes along with it, and then mail the whole package off to the States and my agent. Once it’s in his hands, he’ll make the calls, write the e-mails, and then get in touch me occasionally to tell me what’s happening with my book. Average response times for editors looking at manuscripts is in weeks, so it’s usually a month or two after getting a book that an editor makes a decision.

And hopefully, a few months from now, I’ll be able to make some kind of post about what it’s like to have a book accepted by a publisher. And if not, well, there’s still Lost In Loveless to write, and two more novels after that. I’m still set as far as knowing what the next three books will be, but after that, I’m kind of lost.

But in the mean time, it’s back to the book…

Days Of Labor

For the next few days it’s going to be all about the commission to do the kiddy book. There’s not much time, but it’s not a tremendously taxing job, so it’ll be a busy, but not maddening thing. Of course, the timing is perfect.

Comments from readers are starting to come in on The Pale Summer, and they are about what I expected. I wasn’t looking to get picked on too much for my technique, and I wasn’t. But there are structural problems and now that someone is pointing them out, I’m kind of staring at the manuscript and rolling up my metaphorical sleeves thinking, “Okay, you bastard, you and me we’re gonna’ tango for real now…”

Some of the changes will be painful, but I can see the wisdom in the suggestions. Other suggestions I’m not going to follow through on, as this is all a matter of opinion after all, and that’s the nice thing about being a novelist (Or wannabe) is that this is all really my call. It’s one of the reasons why writing books has such enormous appeal to me is that feeling that this is all your responsibility, and budgetary constraints, studio policy, or even actor’s prerogative aren’t considerations at all.

The plus side of this is I can see this bringing down my word count somewhat, and letting me flesh out some things that had really, really been bugging me. Like I love descriptive passages, but hamstrung myself in a big way for this book to keep it short. Losing entire chunks of narrative will give me the room I need to let some of those sequences breathe a little bit more. On the other hand, there are other chunks of plot that I wrote, had a great deal of fun with, and they’re not badly written at all. However, they aren’t always completely in line with the novel and if I take them out, it’s one of those things that no one will miss if they didn’t know they were there to begin with.

I’m thinking I’ll probably keep them on the side and if the book does well, flesh some of them out and release a short story collection, Interludes of Summer or something like that, kind of as a “bonus DVD” where people can see more of what was going on in the novel that they missed in the first book. At this point, length is still everything. I don’t have the luxury yet of being able to write books with no consideration for size, and so I have to keep my eye on making sure that this one is still in the publisher’s “safety/newbie author range”. The book’s not badly written, which is the first and foremost consideration for anyone looking to publish a new author, but I’m getting pretty sick of size being such a limiting factor and I’m not taking any chances with this one.

So first up, kiddy book. Second up, the reconstructive surgery on The Pale Summer. Third up, mail it (along with The Fiance’s incredible cover) and sit there twiddling my thumbs hoping this time I get a nice Christmas present in the form of a book deal.

Okay, and in the meantime, write Lost In Loveless, the children’s novel. It’s going to be interesting to see whether I find this to be too hard for me to do with my “Horrible People And Intense Scenes Of Violence” sensibilities, or whether I’ll find this a refreshing change from my usual schtick of making people incredibly miserable.

And on that note, it is time for some Turkish food. Mmm… Beef and lamb…

I Am Going To Cry

As most wannabe novelists are wont to do, I sometimes like to go into the bookstore and play the “Imagine-Your-Book-Is-There-On-The-Shelf” game. This mostly involves going to the Science Fiction and/or Fantasy section of the bookstore and finding the “S” area, and making a space in the shelf between surnames that begin with “R” and “Sc” and then… I win the game.

Okay, I never said it was a good game.

Anyway, while doing this, one thing was made abundantly clear. People who aspire to photorealistic painting or illustration techniques thrive on genre book covers. While not all of them are this way, for the most part, the vast sea of SF/F book covers tend to blend into each other as a result of a simple three step process:

1) Insert mystical/futuristic landscape

2) Insert mystical/futuristic building/ship in landscape

3) Insert main character(s) standing in foreground looking heroically off into the distance brandishing their sword/laser pistol

If Fantasy, predominant colors are green and brown. If Science Fiction, predominant colors are green and blue.

This is all terribly depressing. The novel I just finished, The Pale Summer, is for lack of a better term, an urban fantasy. At one point, for a chapter or two, it does have a fairly large tree (Of epic proportions) that appears in it, and since that’s the only recognizable “typical” fantasy element in the entire book, my fear is that the publishers are going to glom onto that one thing and give me a cover that has a mystical landscape with a giant tree in the background while the main characters stand in the foreground looking heroically off into the distance while brandishing their swords. Even though they don’t use swords. As a result, around the house, the new lament whenever I see another lushly illustrated, Tolkien-esque cover is, “Stupid, giant, magic tree…”

The fiance had warned me that she was in no way going to be happy with whatever cover I might end up with once the book went to print. To alleviate her own sense of design outrage, she said she was going to make her own cover for us to use on our house copy, one that she would actually be happy with. What she didn’t tell me was that she was going to do it soon. She made one yesterday, and now I’m incredibly morose because I would love to have this cover, and I know it’s never going to happen.

What an infintely depressing thought.

For those of you who are curious, here it is. You can click on it to see the full size version:

It appeals to my relentlessly 80′s aesthetic of having that Nagel-esque minimalism to it. If this book should actually get published, I am seriously considering sending this off to the publishers as a mock-up and asking them to at least consider this before resorting to the Stupid, Giant, Magic Tree cover, but I know it’s hopeless. Oh well, at least my consience will be clear and I can say I tried. And at the very least, we can still take this and use it as intended, for our own personal copy, so at least one book on the planet will have a cover I’m happy with.

Stupid, Giant, Magic Tree…

The Boomerang

It’s gone and hit me on the head. Twice.

The first boomerang I threw over to America, specifically to my agent. That was the synopsis for The Pale Summer. He’s gotten back to me on it, and has given it the thumbs up with a few caveats. He likes the story, but feels I should make a notation of the particular structure for it right at the start, and then, once the convention has been established, simply get on with the story proper.

The second, far more nebulous and tricky to both throw and catch boomerang, was in the form of the niggling question I had in my mind about whether or not there was anything more to be done with some of the events towards the end of the novel. I had wondered briefly about it, and had an itch that something else could be done, or changed. I kind of shrugged and looked off into the horizon of my subconscious (since it seems to know how to write better than I do) and grabbed my slippery inquiry in hand, to toss away into the depths.

As expected, it kept going and going and disappeared from view.

Earlier it came winging its way back in stealth mode and hit me on the back of the head with a message scrawled on home made paper in charcoal. I will not divulge the contents of said message, suffice to say that it made me rub my head, go “Aw, man…” and realize there’s a chance my word count may go up a notch. Still, the change, while not effecting the ultimate ending, goes away towards altering some of the events in the end game, and changes a critical event by a few degrees.

It will be something of a minor pain.

But I like this change and think it’s worth it.

Bleah. More work on the synopsis and more work on the book…

Edits & E-Bay

I am not allowed to have an E-Bay account.

This was decided very early on in the relationship. At about the same time it was decided that I am not allowed to have a credit card, or any great amount of money in my bank account. The reason for this being it tends to get spent immediately on games, DVDs, or other gimmickery that is not rent, utilities or food. I am perfectly content with this arrangement since I have no head for finances and what money I do keep is sufficient to the task of buying cigarettes and hamburgers.

However, E-Bay does have it’s uses. For example, there’s a game that I played once on the X-Box that is completely amazing and fun. The game is called SSX 3 and I had to review it for GameAxis once. I was completely engaged by it and to this day recall it as one of those games that is very nearly perfect in execution; you can marathon it, you can take it for a quick spin, you can fool around, you can practice hardcore, you give yourself goals, or you can just take a leisurely trip down the mountain, and the music kicks Super-Ass.

After hemming and hawing for the last couple of years, we finally decided to track the game down on the PS2, only to find that Singapore’s fear of the old had once again taken hold, and no one carried the game here anymore. On E-Bay, however, we managed to track it down for the unbelievably reasonable price of $4.75 American. So in just six weeks more snowboarding fun than you can shake a stick at will be MINEMINEMINE!

With permission from the Fiance, of course.

The line edit to The Pale Summer is now done. I went over it with the metaphorical fine toothed comb and fixed the errors I could find, meaning that there’s still probably a 20% margin of things I missed. I’ll probably try and go over it one more time when I’m doing the big rewrite. The page count has gone up by two. That’s not as frightening as it sounds. All it means is that some chapters ended right at bottom of a page and the insertion of a “he said”, or “that was” bumped the line into the next page. What is frightening is the urge to embellish more details here and there, and that would bump the word count up significantly so I’m having a mighty struggle to resist that urge.

Still waiting on comments from readers. I’m hoping they’ll see things that I don’t, since I’m at that stage where I look at the manuscript now and think “I just don’t know…” There’s a lot in there that I’m proud of, and a lot in there that I think may or may not require adjusting. I’m hoping some of them will point these things out, especially in the “You can lose that” department, because the whole point of the exercise at this point is to cut things down. If they start telling me that I really cut too close to the bone on some parts and need more development, then I’ll know for sure this book was meant to be somewhat bigger than what I sheared it down to, and that’ll be complicated…

The “What The Hell Was I Thinking” Hat

At least that’s what I think I put on my head when it comes time to comb over a novel looking for all the errors.

This is why I think that anyone that believes they’re so wonderously talented that a novel is done when they type “The End” is deluded or simply drunk. Unless you’ve been meticulously editing and going back over it again and again while you’re writing, you’re going to miss something, errors are going to creep in, and you’re going to realize that what you have at the end might require tweaking at the beginning or the middle to keep things more in line.

I’m halfway through my line edit. I still have no major rewriting to do yet, as I’m waiting on comments from other readers, but in the time that I’ve been trawling through my book I’ve discovered all kinds of things that make me smack my forehead. Continuity errors are the biggest thing, like people putting down glasses of wine, only to be staring at them in their hands three paragraphs later. Or cigarettes that get lit, and then are forgotten about and remain in their fingers, unsmoked, as another is lit.

And of course, my personal favorites, typos. It more or less completely changes the context of an entire conversation when someone casually remarks, “That’s a hard on” as opposed to “That’s a hard one” which is what was supposed to have been said. Still, the former does open up some potentially interesting avenues of dialogue, but not in this book.

And then there is the rewrite itself. I see some things that I might need to tweak, and other things I suspect I might need to change, but I want to wait on confirmation from a few people first to see whether I’m being objective about a change, or just needlessly fussy. Like my initial reaction is, “I need more descriptions here and there” but that instinct is curbed by the past comments that I often have a tendency to overdo it in the description department and perhaps this time I’ve gotten it in reasonable amounts.

It’s funny though how wildly opinions can vary.

I’ve had some early feedback, and already I’m seeing some divirgent opinions. Some people think certain characters should act a particular way, other people think the character in question is just fine and that to do more would wreck empathy with said character. Some people find that there are too many explosions and action sequences, other people are scratching their chins and saying, “Why’d you cut down? I really like the action oriented stuff.” I’ve also gotten some comments that there’s not enough dialogue, and other comments saying I could afford to shave some away, so again, it’s a fascinating process seeing what different people bring to table, getting their take on how they’d do it, and seeing how much in conflict that might be with another person’s ideas.

But at least no one is saying it sucks, and a few have already cursed me for writing something they couldn’t stop reading, so that’s always a positive sign.

And my obsessive quest to end Psychonauts on 100% completion draws nigh! I AM THE KING OF BRAINS!

Right. Back to editing.