The Year of Showing off

I recently wrote a post about themes for real life. I mentioned that I was going to try it myself and that this would be my Year of Showing Off. By which I mean that I’m going to make an effort to get the things that I make out into the world.

Showing off is way harder than it ought to be. My fear of rejection and my shitty self esteem mean that I’m reluctant to show people stuff that I’ve made and I tend to assume that no-body wants to see it anyway. It can also be surprisingly hard to get people to look at stuff. Even if your stuff is free. Even if you’re trying to show it to someone who likes the kind of stuff that it is. Even if they’ve said that they want to look at it.

However, this Year of Showing Off is going surprisingly well. I’ve asked one of my brothers to read the novel that I’ve been calling Project Kindness and he has actually looked at it. I’m trying not to regret that decision as I sit here cringing at the thought of some of the stuff in that novel. I also showed the opening couple of chapters to one of my writer friends because I wanted to be sure that I hadn’t started in the wrong place. She seems to think that I have avoided this particular trap. I’m not sure I believe her, because I always have trouble believing the good things, but I’m not changing the beginning now.

I’ve also started querying Project Kindness. I’ve approached four agents so far. Each time I hit the send button I immediately regret it. My mind is drawn to all the peculiarities that I’m sure they’re going to hate. I become convinced that the novel is doomed.

It’s taken so long to send each query because agents all seem to want different things. So far I’ve been asked for four different combinations of query letter, synopsis, outline and sample of the book. The requested sample size has been variously the first three chapters, the first 50 pages and the first 10,000 words. That means that each query package has to be put together separately. That’s without considering the time it takes to find the agent, research the agent, and tailor the query letter to the agent.

For my next novel I’m going to write it so that the first three chapters are 10,000 words long and fit onto 50 pages. And then I’m going to reformat them so they fit onto 40 pages because some agents ask for that.

Eventually I’ll have queried all the agents on my list. My novels are weird so it’s not a long list. Then I’ll need something else to focus on. What should be my next thing to show off?

I mocked up some book covers as practice but that seems a bit previous. I’m not nearly ready to start self publishing. I haven’t even had a single rejection yet. It usually takes ages to hear back from agents. Nevertheless it is comforting to know that I can put together a not totally awful book cover. Even so I can’t share the designs just now.

I’ve almost finished crocheting a jumper for my son and once it’s finished I will take photographs and I will share them on my Instagram and probably also here. That’s still showing off but it feels like it’s showing off that isn’t leading to anything.

I’m unsure what to work on. I have a previously completed novel, Singularity, that I stopped querying because no-one showed any interest. I felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with it that I wasn’t seeing. I could go back to that and try to figure out how much work would be required to get it ready to show off. The only reason that I’m reluctant to do that is that it feels like a backward step.

There’s the first draft and the outline, working title Project Locke, that I completed during NaNoWriMo last year. I could work on that but it’s quite a long way from being ready to show off.

There’s the Parlour of Doom blog. It’s been inactive since last year and I’ve not been in the right frame of mind to work on it. Maybe I just need to suck it up and force myself to produce some content for it.

Another thing that I could work on would be short stories. I could focus on writing shorter stories that I can turn around in less time and share via either this blog or the Department Y blog. That would be one way to build readership. I’m just not sure that I remember how to write short stories. I’ve trained my imagination to tell longer stories. Maybe I should try short fiction precisely because I’m not sure I can do it? Maybe I need the challenge?

On being a clueless white person.

I try to avoid being a clueless white person but the fact is that I am white and I grew up surrounded by white people and consuming media that was mostly created for white people. I try to be aware of my own clueless privilege. Sometimes I fuck up. This is the story of me catching one of my fuckups before it could do any damage but still way later than I should have caught it. If you’re a white writer reading this then learn from my mistake.

This week I’ve been preparing to submit Project Kindness to agents. In fact I finally queried an agent today. Most UK agents want the first three chapters or the first 30/40/50 pages as part of the initial query. In the US they’re more likely to only want a letter with maybe a synopsis and possibly 5-10 pages. That means that as part of the process I’ve been focusing on every single word of the first three chapters.

Project Kindness is currently on draft 3.2 and I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve read the whole thing through from start to finish. The early chapters have been read and re-read much more than the later ones because they’re so important to hook the reader and lay the groundwork.

Earlier this week I was re-reading it yet again and I came upon this, “Abigail, the Boss’s top flying monkey. No. That was unfair to both the Boss and to Abby. Abby was the Boss’s strong right hand.” It seemed ok to me when I wrote it. It seemed ok to me the dozens of times I’ve read it since. I seemed ok to the three people who beta read that bit. I knew what I meant and so did they. That Abigail is loyal and terrifying, that she does what she’s told, and that maybe she doesn’t have much say in that.

I picked the phrase ‘flying monkey’ as a colourful descriptor for someone loyal but unthinking because the point of view character is something of a man out of time. It’s not obvious at this point but there will be hints later on. The Wizard of Oz is the most recent pop culture reference he makes and it’s not clear if he’s inspired by the book, 1900, or the film, 1939. It’s a reference that would be appreciated by that other man out of time, Captain America. It’s a cheeky little hint. An easter egg in gamer parlance.

So what’s the problem? Abigail is black. Referring to a black woman as any kind of monkey is super racist. A fact which I somehow missed through all those re-readings because I’m white and I knew what I meant by ‘flying monkey’ when I wrote it. However, even the underlying suggestion that she’s mindlessly loyal carries problematic connotations of colonialism.

Some of you might be wondering what the problem is. It’s clearly not meant in an insulting way and the point of view character immediately withdraws it. The problem is how reading it would make a reader of colour feel. That little phrase might hit a reader like a kick in the ribs. They’re all ready to relax with a good book and then the point of view character, the character they’re supposed to identify with, is calling a black woman a monkey. Goodbye immersive reading experience and hello being reminded that racism lurks everywhere.

This is not about me not wanting people to think that I’m racist. This is me wanting readers of colour to be able to enjoy my story. So I had two choices. I could retain the line and make Abigail white or I could change the line. I chose to lose the line and keep Abby as she was, as she’s always been in my mind’s eye.

I hope that any other clueless white writers reading this will learn from it. Remember that it’s not just what you write it’s who you write it about, it’s who says the lines, it’s who hears them. It’s important to write books with diverse casts but if you’re not careful you can end up just loading them up with microaggressions to assault your readers with.

This could have been avoided if I’d hired a sensitivity reader but, as I keep saying, I don’t have any money. I’m sure sensitivity readers are worth their fees but I can’t spend what I don’t have. Unless there are any writers of colour out there looking for a disabled scottish bisexual to do a sensitivity read and then we can swap.

The dodgy line is fixed. They query is sent. All I have to do now is endlessly fret that my first three chapters are trash while trying to prepare the next query for the next agent.

Narrative blues

I’m still deep in the rewrites of Project Kindness, the sexy spies and celtic gods novel, and I am pissed off with modern narrative conventions. In theory there are many options for the narrative point of view but if you pick the wrong one you risk any prospective agent assuming that you’re a rank ammateur.

I assume that most of my readers know what first, second and third person are and are aware of the different types of each but not everyone does. Also I don’t have an English Literature degree and it’s been a long time since I passed my higher so I’m almost certainly using some of the terminology wrongly. Therefore I’m going to start with an explanation of the terms I’m going to be using. Feel free to skip ahead if this stuff bores you.

First person

“I did, I saw, I felt.” The Narrator is a character in the story. They might be the main character (Hunger Games), or they might be chronicling the deeds of a friend, (Sherlock Holmes) or they might be documenting events that they lived through (War of the Worlds).

With some narrators the reader feels like they’re inside the narrator’s head experiencing things as they happen like in the Hunger Games books. Stories like these are sometimes written in the present tense and they tend to feel very immediate. The foreshadowing happens in events and dialogue or in the mind of the narrator, there’s never any of that “If only I’d known then what I knew later” stuff.

Some stories have the feel of the narrator having experienced events and then gone away and written about them later. All of the first person Sherlock Holmes stories feel like this. These stories can have a kind of meta narrative going on because the narrator already knows how the story is going to turn out. The Final Problem, the story in which Sherlock Holmes goes over the Reichenbach Falls, is shot through with Watson’s grief and anger.

Some stories feel more like they’re being told to you by the narrator either during or immediately after the events. It feels like you’re down the pub with them and they’re full of this thing that just happened and telling you all about it with accompanying hand gestures and funny voices. Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant books feel like this, particularly if you listen to the audio books.

Second Person

“You did, you saw, you felt.” Mostly used in choose your own adventure books or in short stories. I’m sure there must be some successful Second Person novels out there but I wouldn’t have the first idea how to write one. I believe there’s a fair bit of sexy, second person, fanfic out there where the reader is a character in the stories. Taking the self insert character to its logical conclusion.

Third Person.

“He/she/they did, saw, felt.” I think this is the most diverse narration and there’s multiple kinds of Third person with actual names that writers are expected to know.

Third person omniscient – the Narrator is God, or at least godlike. The narrator knows all and sees all and they get to decide what the reader gets to know. If the narrator dispassionately describes what everyone in a scene is thinking as well as what they’re doing then it’s third person omniscient.

Third person objective – the narrator is a person reporting on the narrative from the outside. They’ve done research, spoken to the survivors, read the clippings, and if possible visited the scene and they’re telling you what they found out. Very popular for true crime and faux true crime stories. Also used by CS Lewis in some of the Narnia Chronicles, particularly The Magician’s Nephew.

Third person limited – the narrative follows a single person’s point of view, everything is seen through the lense of their experiences, but since that person is not actually narrating we don’t get to know exactly what they’re thinking. It’s as if the camera of the novel was following that person and only that person.

Third person variable – very like third person limited but the narrative isn’t always following the same person. Usually the point of view switch happens at very clearly delineated points such as with a new chapter or at the very least a new scene.

Third person multiple – like variable but the point of view switch happens inside scenes. Easy to screw up, hard to get right. When done badly it tends to read like a failed attempt at third person omniscient. Either that or as ‘head hopping’, which just confuses the reader about who’s doing what and to whom.

The Blues

So much choice. Surely there’s a narrative option to fit any story? Yes and no. If you’re writing a novel and you’re not already a respected professional and you’re planning on submitting it to an agent then you might have to stick most of those options straight in the bin.

Third person omniscient, for example, used to be super popular. A lot of literary classics were written that way – Jane Austen was fond of it for one. In recent years it’s fallen foul of the oft repeated advice to show, not tell. It’s the same with third person objective. You can’t get away from the fact that that someone is telling a story and for a busy agent that might lead straight to the rejection pile.

‘Head hopping’ is a complete no-no so it’s best to avoid third person multiple. That also means you have to be careful with third person variable. If you don’t make it clear enough that the point of view has switched then a hurried reader isn’t going to look back up the page to check. That way leads straight to a form rejection email.

I want it to be clear that I’m not criticising agents. I don’t even know for sure that they do react that way. I just know that it doesn’t feel worth the risk. It’s not enough to avoid amateurish mistakes. You also have to avoid stuff that might look to the hurried glance like an amateurish mistake. With so many other writers clamouring for attention why would they spare the time for a second glance?

There’s a part of me that thinks that the real problem is quality. I just need to ‘git gud’ and then I can write things how I want to write them. There’s another part of me that disagrees with that. That part thinks the problem is time. From the moment a reader starts reading there’s a timer counting down to the point at which they lose interest. I your story doesn’t grab them somewhere tender before that timer runs out then you’ve lost them.

The author name on the front of the book affects the starting time on that timer. My name isn’t Neil Gaiman, or Sir Terry Pratchett, or JK Rowling. I don’t have much time to prove that my story, my writing and my characters are worth sticking around for. Part of that is demonstrating that I’m a professional. And that means that sometimes I have to choose to rewrite a scene so that it’s not as good but does more closely conform to the current narrative conventions.

Sunday Update 21/10

Well this has been a week of disappointment, anticlimax and annoyance.

I already wrote a detailed post about the Wednesday from hell so I suppose this is the place to talk about the fallout from that day. I knew when it happened that I’d be useless for the rest of the week and this has proved to be true. I haven’t been able to do much around the house at all and I’ve been on painkillers and vaping CBD for pain every day since. Things are beginning to get a bit easier but I reckon it will be next week before I’m back to normal. And let us not forget how shitty normal is for me.

No major news about my mother and although I hear that she is continuing to recover there’s still no timetable for her getting back home. I’m still working on a lighter weight poncho for her. It’s taking so long because it uses much finer yarn which takes longer to work up. Also the ongoing problem with my hands is slowing me down.

I finished part 5 of my current novel this week. Well… I finished it enough to show it to my beta readers. That means there’s still a lot of work to be done but at least I’m not fixing this part on my own.

Sharing a file with my beta readers always feels like a huge anticlimax. Not because my beta readers are bad, or lazy or cruel, just because there’s no reaction that would match the build up. There’s so much work in getting my writing to a state that I’m happy to share and it feels like a major milestone but it’s not. The story is very slightly closer to being finished. It’s just another step along the road.

This week I’ve had trouble shaking the feeling that it should be possible to find an agent and get published. Other people do it. There are supernatural thrillers and occult police procedurals being published all the time and my work isn’t that different. I am undecided about what to do.

And another excellent new episode of Doctor Who. Rosa marked a new high point for th series as a whole. I predict that people will be talking about it alongside episodes like Vincent and the Doctor for years to come. I’m sure there are people who’re going to complain about how political this episode was and to them I say, “Have you not been paying attention at any point in the history of the show? It’s always been political.”

Pitching blues

This year’s Bloody Scotland is bearing down on us. There’s a pitch competition that I’d like to try but I’m having trouble working out which novel to pitch.

Until recently I would have assumed that I’d have to pitch a finished novel but that doesn’t seem to be hugely important for the competition. That’s confusing to me since every published author’s top piece of advice is “Finish your shit”.

For this competition I have to write a 100 word pitch and submit that and if they’re interested I get to pitch in person in front of actual publishers and agents and a paying crowd. The live pitch will be in late September at the Bloody Scotland festival. It’s dedicated to crime writing so the publishers and agents will be looking for crime/detective/mystery fiction.

I have to decide which novel I want to pitch because that’s the novel I should be focusing on just now. Let me describe them for you.

Firstly there’s the one I’ll call Project Kindness. It’s the one that’s closest to finished. Close enough that I could have a complete 3rd draft to show anyone who was interested by the end of September. However it’s a supernatural spy thriller. There are some murders and there is a mystery but it’s not what they’re looking for.

Secondly there’s the one I’ll call Project Cecil. It’s the furthest from being finished and I don’t really feel ready to work on it. However it’s the closest to the kind of novel they want. It’s a modern epistolary novel told through emails, chat logs and blogs. It follows a group of friends as they investigate the disappearance and murder of a mutual friend and eventually come to realise that one of them did it. I think I could do a killer pitch of it but it’s the one I feel least able to finish.

Thirdly there’s the one I’ll call Project Dingo. It’s about half done. It’s the funniest. It’s set in 2012 and it’s about a locked room mystery that nobody wants to solve. It’s the closest to a traditional mystery novel in structure but it has witches and other weirdness in it that might make it a harder sell at Bloody Scotland.

I can’t make up my mind. I feel like I should pick Project Cecil because it’s the one they’re most likely to want. But I don’t want to work on it. I’m not ready yet. Then I want to stubbonrly pick Project Kindness because ‘Finish your Shit’ and because it’s the one I’ve been working on recently and it’s in my head. But then I want to pick Project Dingo because it’s the balanced one.

I don’t know how to make up my mind. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

And if you have enjoyed this indecision you could show your appreciation by buying me a coffee with Ko-Fi.

The invisible wall

It feels like there’s an invisible wall between me and my novel. Some part of me doesn’t want to work on it and I’m not sure what it is.

It’s not because I don’t know what to write, or because I’m having plot problems. I know where the story is going and how to write it. It’s not because I don’t like the novel or because I’m tired of the characters. I like it and them as much as I ever have.

It feels like I’m scared of something. Or at least reluctant. Could it be that I’m scared of finishing it because that would mean I’d have to query it and that would mean more rejection?

I’ve invested a lot of hope in this novel. I’m hoping that, because it has a better opening, it will have more chance of attracting an agent. I think the opening is good but it doesn’t solve the problem of writing that doesn’t fit easily into any genre. Agents just don’t seem to be looking for the stories that I write. I’ve been trying to build contacts but so far the contacts that I have don’t link up with the kind of stories that I write.

There’s also the problem of my, apparently, terrible grammar. I say apparently because every grammatical problem that gets pointed out is stuff that I can’t see even after it gets pointed out. I know there are rules to formal english but prose isn’t formal. In prose you’re allowed to break the rules. Unless I’m wrong. Unless I should be following the rules of formal English just so that agents will know that I know what they are. Are agents laughing at my terrible comma usage?

It’s tempting to just give up on the idea of ever getting paid, stick a plain cover on it, self publish and then try to find something else to do with my time. It is just so frustrating to put all this work in on stories that nobody wants to read. I believe in them but I don’t know how to communicate that belief in any useful way.

Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome is something that most creative people experience at some point. It’s that feeling of not being good enough, of not being a ‘real’ creative, or that you are somehow performing your creative endeavors in the wrong way.. For successful creative people it might also come with a fear of being ‘found out’.

I don’t have a ‘hot take’ on Impostor Syndrome. But I either have a bad case of it or I’m a genuine impostor. And it’s so hard to know which.

In the last week I’ve found out that I’ve been formatting my manuscripts wrong and that I’ve either been using commas wrong since forever or the rules have changed since I was at school. That might seem like a small thing. Surely a slight difference in formatting and a few stray commas won’t drive an agent away? Well… Maybe.

Agents are looking for excuses to stop reading. Of course they are. They get hundreds of queries. It makes no sense to read all the way through something if they can’t sell it, or don’t want to work with the writer. The formatting and the commas alone wont stop them but that’s already two strikes. It makes the agent less likely to overlook any other little weakness they might find. It makes me look less professional. It also makes me question whether I have any business attempting to write as a profession. What kind of an author doesn’t know how to format a manuscript or use a comma.

And while worrying about all this I discovered that part of the opening of the current novel in progress isn’t nearly clear enough. I had a beta reader read right through the death of a character and part of their wake and then ask me why they were reading about all these other characters and not the dead one. And this is an intelligent person. That means that 1 in 4 readers didn’t get a pretty major plot point. I can’t just decide that this person is an idiot. I have to make the scene clearer somehow. And I don’t know how.

So in the last week I’ve found out that I’m failing at punctuation, formatting and clarity. How’s your week been.

If you have enjoyed this post why not buy me a coffee with Ko-fi or visit the Shop Of Doom to purchase objects.

The last rejection

Well it’ll be the last rejection for a while at least.

Today I got the form rejection letter from the last agent I queried. I’m not going to query again straight away. I know that the standard advice is to query 100 agents and not to start panicking about your work until you’ve been turned down at least 80 times but I’m not sure there are 80 agents representing Urban Fantasy in the English speaking world. Good agents, anyway. And what’s the point in pissing off potential agents by querying them with a broken novel?

I don’t know if my novel is broken. I’ve had conflicting feedback. I need to think about it for a while. I probably need to sell a kidney so I can afford a development editor to tell me what’s wrong with it.

Or I could stick the whole thing out somewhere for free. Give up on the idea of ever earning anything back for my effort.

Or I could give up on it. Just stick it in a virtual drawer and try something else. I really don’t want to do that because I have plans for the characters and for the world. I have other novels that I’m working on that are linked to it. I wouldn’t just be giving up on that one story but on literally dozens of others.

At the moment I’m trying to work on one of the other stories in the hope that I can pitch that as the first in the series instead. If that one doesn’t work there’s maybe one more that I could use as the starting point but it’s a lot more work and maybe the whole thing is just doomed. Maybe these are stories that would never sell.

Perhaps it’s presumptuous to assume that there is a solution. That would be to assume that I can succeed at something and so far there’s no evidence to support that assumption. I’m not going to stop writing. I have to fill my time somehow. But I might give up on the idea of trying to get anyone else to read what I write.

Getting back on the horse.

Yesterday I posted about my latest rejection from an agent. It never gets any less painful but I did manage to query the next agent on the list before the day was out.

I don’t know how many more times I can manage to query. There is a finite number of agents in the world and eventually I will run out. I’m also running out of fucks to give and it’s starting show in my query letters. Is there any point in sending a query if the letter is only going to piss off the person reading it.

The latest submission included the following paragraph:

You’d probably like working with me. I’m funny, hard working and resilient. Also my life is just so horrifically awful that it will make you feel great about your own life in comparison. I know this isn’t the sort of thing I should put in a covering letter but this way I can blame your inevitable form rejection on my terrible letter and not on the novel. Which is great.

That’s not going to help but I I no longer believe that there’s any point in trying to get an agent. I’m just doing it because that’s the path I’m on. I’m querying the next agent on the list because I don’t know what else to do.

I’m trying to change course. It feels like trying to turn a supertanker against a strong current and a high wind. I’ve been working on another novel so that I can start querying that but I’m starting to feel like that’s pointless too. I’m trying to get up the enthusiasm for the move to self publishing. Once I’ve found the enthusiasm I’ll have to find the money.

Anyone need a kidney?

Rejection yet again

And so we close out the year with another email from an agent who isn’t passionate enough about my novel to represent it. More than a year of querying and I haven’t even got a detailed rejection yet.

I know that there are famous writers who got rejected a lot before they got their first agent/publisher.  I also know that there are a lot of deluded people sending terrible novels to every agent and publisher on the planet and wondering why no-one is backing a dump truck full of money up to their house to publish it. It’s getting harder to believe that I’m in group one and not group two.

From here I think there are three options. Keep querying this novel in the hope that further down the list there might be an agent who’d be interested. Give up on this novel for now, finish something else and query that. Give up on traditional publishing and self publish it.

There are problems with each of these options. I’ve already queried most, maybe all, of the agents who’d actually be interested in such a weird novel. It’s the first in a series and most of my other novels are in the same story universe. If I can’t interest people in the first one they’re unlikely to care about the rest. I really don’t want to self publish and once I’ve self published the first in a series I’m unlikely to find representation for the rest unless the first one is a huge success. I don’t have the resources to ensure that success.

Am I nuts? Could it be that I’m just not very good at writing? Are my novels bad? Have I been deceiving myself? How do you know if your novel is bad?