I’m racing through my last sweep before test-readers.

10 out of 39 sections done and a morning of work available tomorrow (kids invited to play at a house where I then get to hide out in the office and work with the kids nearby and happy.  Best of both worlds).

I’ve dropped the prologue and still have to get to the section of story where Garm (the main character’s dog) disappears.  That is, There’s this dog present until about scene 17, and never mentioned again.  So this sweep is fixing that.

I’m strategizing how to do that without jacking my word count.  Have some reasonable ideas.

And I’m making my reader/editing question lists, noting frequently-used words (so someone else can tell me if they think the words are used to much– I’ve reached the point where I don’t trust my judgment on them any more), and asking about levels of description.

That has consistently been my Achilles’ Heel: description.

So I’m down to 105,500 now, and until I finish this sweep I won’t know how much of that I’ll cut.  I might leave it all for now, though I feel sorry for the testers.  (It’s a good thing you already love me.  Remember you volunteered for this.)

I think it’s going to be good, but I’m being reminded that no realized art ever matches completely the imagined hope that instigated the work.

This is the first fiction query I’ve ever written (I’ve written a number of non-fiction queries, between my mag-article writing class and applying what I learned for the the bit of time I thought I still wanted to write non-fiction).

Dear Agent-whose-Name-I–Actually-Know,
~
Linnea is 17 years old and a single mother when she is asked to marry a monstrous snake so the prince can get to his own arraigned marriage. Not usually the type to be brave, Linnea thinks unaccountably of fairy tales when she considers the situation, and a mysterious old woman with odd instructions seals the deal.  Linnea disenchants the beast who turns out to be Kennett, the elder prince of a twin birth.  To prove his loyalty to his younger brother, Kennett joins him on a quest, unknowingly leaving Linnea to face new monsters alone.
~
Let Evening Come is the novelization of the Scandinavian folk tale “King Lindorm.”  It appealed to me as one of the less common tales that doesn’t end at the marriage but goes on, requiring characters to adjust to new requirements, in-laws and the demands of children, along with the more traditional fantasy elements of the fantastic.  Among these is the mixing of Arabian Nights magic with the folklore of Scandinavia, and summer solstice, when the sun never sets and often shares the sky with the moon.
~
Many people are aware of Dawn as a turning point toward hope, but in each day there is also Twilight with its promise of coming rest. Living in the Far North I have experienced my whole life the extended daylight of summer and the weariness of newcomers who can’t rest during the unending light. And as a mother myself, I identify a great deal with Linnea, a young mother knows what it means to long for rest while continuing to fight because there is no one else.

Thank you for your consideration.
–Amy Jane

It ends pretty abruptly, and sound more hubris than cooperation, so I’m afraid it give the wrong impression.  But I’m cool with it for a first try.  The format I followed was the 3-paragraph model: Hook, Background, Bio.

That is, say something interesting from your story, flesh it out a little, and explain your connection to it if you have one.

I slapped this together (with 5 pages left to go on my 4th revision) because there’s this contest going on here and since I have no actual feedback/experience with fiction queries I was hoping I’ll be one of the 50 he chooses to get ripped on.

Maybe I’ll get something useful out of it.  Anybody else do comment here.  Are you interested yet?  What questions does it leave you with?

Actually this is old news.

Only the post I wrote to describe my glee seemed nearly cruel, so I decided not to run it.

Let me show you what I mean.

I don’t have for every character a tight visual beyond hight and build and hair-type.  Like in real-life, I’m more interested in how their brains work than in what they’re wearing or the curve of their noses.

So when I was watching a YouTube my mother-in-Law sent I was shocked to see a man I *knew* was Kennett (never mind that he was in his 30s instead of his 20s).

Things I hadn’t consciously identified were there in front of me: medium-length hair smoothed back and tied at the nape of the neck, *slightly* slanted, almond-ish eyes (no, not the Asian kind.  I’ve never noticed eyes like this before), a large, excuse me, strong, straight nose and narrow cheeks, proportionately broad chin. And a look that I could imagine resembling a friendly snake.

I hope by now you can understand why I didn’t name the fellow, or post the pictures I have collected from the internet for Kennett’s file.  The description sounds rather uncomplimentary, and even assuming I protested he’s quite handsome in his own way (because of course, Kennett is), I have never been comfortable with discussing public-ish people any more freely than non-public people.

Which is why you’ll never (I hope) see anything on this blog critiquing an Actor/tress’s appearance for him/herself.  It makes me cringe whenever I see that on someone else’s blog.

Anyway, Kaye Dacus has talked about this before (excellently), and I have clipped magazine pictures so I’ll be more concrete in my own mind, but (other than Irene– my wicked stepmother) I’ve never had this *match* happen before, and I wanted to note it, because it was quite fun.

Weeks and weeks, maybe months, ago I read a blog article about “episodic” writing.  I duly noted that I might be susceptible to that, since my most-frequent story-intake is television (first time in my life: Yay Hulu and SageTV!), and I created in chunks and scenes even before I watched 3 shows a season.

Then, waiting to go to sleep last night (it is so. not. fair. I don’t fall asleep instantly), I was reviewing the sequence of activities in my novel and couldn’t find my cohesive arc.

Lots of interesting happenings and character building and block-laying, but for a clear beginning-to-end….

Trying not to panic.

This could be another one of those shaping moments like finding my three strands.  Maybe it’ll just make the book much shorter than it is now.

Or (this is the most scary option to me) I might have to scrap half the work and create new material to make this a marathon rather than a relay race.

I’m trying to say, I know the relay is a legitimate race, and I know the story is a good one now.  But just like you’d be called a cheater if you shared the marathon with 5 other runners (You did not run a marathon!) I’m afraid this isn’t can’t be called a good novel.  Yet.

Still going to finish this revision.  Only three scenes left.  ~ 35 pages.

Then we’ll see what can be done.

(I wonder how many of my posts have that title…)

Just finished section 34 and 35 out of 40.

34 was quite the feat, integrating two previously-separate scenes and “adding” over 3,000 words.

Just in case anybody wonders, my husband built a home-server that (among other things) backs up my computer regularly.  My laptop gets creaky often enough I’d have the heebee geebees about losing these years of work if it weren’t constantly being backed up.

~

As it is I plan to keep this laptop till it finishes dying or until I sell a book and can use that most-appropriate income stream to upgrade.

I have no problem throwing my characters into… challenging situations (purple blood, anyone?).  The problem I have is letting them make stupid decisions.

As a young (as in, new-to-this) novelist, I can see I have a hard time separating myself from my characters at times. Writing advice encourages me to get my characters into bigger and bigger trouble–preferably by hard choices backfiring and making worse what they were supposed to fix.  Since that’s the exact thing that would curl my toes in real-life, I find I’m not even sure how.

I’ve been griping wondering for a while how to work past this, and really appreciated a suggestion that is much more usable for me: put the characters in a situation where they must make a decision quickly.  In that context bad decisions would have less shame.  And, to me at least, be more believable.

I mentioned a while back my list of favorites and antitheses when it comes to stories this was one thing on my *dislikes* list.  That is, if I know better how to behave in the world than the character who lives there… well, I have decidedly less patience for events that happen (in my interpretation) just to rack up the tension.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

[The original post included a giveaway that is now closed.]

Finished 28, 29 and 30 this weekend.

28 and 30 were *total* slogs. I’m going to have to add a question to my pre-readers questionnaire: Do any chapters make you more tired than others. . . ?

Because they surely did for me.
So glad they’re done.