Category Archives: Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

“Send”

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I did it.

The agent I met with at the Write-To-Publish Conference last month said, “Send me your novel as it is, even unfinished, so I can evaluate it.” I didn’t quite do that. I’d written two chapters in the month before the conference, but had lost the file with the latest typed version. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about finding the lost file.

Being delayed in the finding and polishing, I decided to delay a sending little bit to add some more chapters, so as to get the book to the first plot point. That’s the point where the hero experiences the event that triggers him to go on with the quest. I finished to that point on Sunday, and have spent the last three days proof-reading and polishing. Those edits I completed tonight (bringing the word count to 21,200), saved the file with a new date. I had only to attach it to a simple e-mail to the agent and click “send”.

Fear entered in at that point. Fear of rejection? Fear of success? I don’t know. At our appointment at the conference, once the agent liked the concept of the book, she asked, “What kind of platform do you have?” “Platform” for a novelist means “ready-made audience.” What do I have? A blog with 14 followers and 350-450 page views per month, a new writer’s web site, a Facebook fan page with 6 followers, two self-published e-books with a total of 11 sales. A writers critique group of 6 regulars and 13 on the mailing list. In short, nothing.

This is a make or break time. Short of a financial windfall, I won’t be going to any more conferences, and almost no unknown novelists get discovered through the slush pile. My chances of being so discovered are quite low. So selling my book through a face-to-face meeting is probably my best shot. Since that might be my last face-to-face meeting with an agent, this is probably my last shot. Thus, clicking “send” carried a lot more weight that a simple mouse movement.

So I hesitated; re-read my e-mail and made a change or two; re-read some of a scene in the book but could find nothing I wanted to change. Finally I did it.  clicked “send”—and Yahoo e-mail said I had typed an invalid e-mail address. Ah hah! An omen! Or maybe a God-sent hesitation. Or maybe just a stupid typo. I fixed the typo and clicked “send” again before I could over think the hesitation.

So it’s gone, now sitting in the agent’s inbox, ready for her to open, read the simple e-mail, open the attachment, love the book, pick up the phone (or e-mail me) and say, “I love ! Let’s talk representation.”

Did I ever mention that my dreams are very, very big?

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Working the To-Do List

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It took me a couple of weeks after returning from the Write-To-Publish Conference to figure out what to do next. Well, not exactly. I knew the first this I had to do was to send thank you notes to the many people on the faculty, and a few fellow attendees, for the interactions we had. So that took first place on the to-do list. Next was to prepare the things I had to send, the materials requested by agents and editors I met with. Third would be to follow-up and send some of my works to fellow writers who asked to review them.

I have that to-do list somewhere, maybe in my yellow conference folder. If I recreated it now, without looking at it, I think this is what it had.

  • WTP Conference thank you notes
  • more work on Fifty Thousand Screaming People, then submit
  • a proposal to Timeless magazine for some genealogy articles [PARTIAL]
  • a proposal to Timeless magazine for a short story
  • a proposal to Wesleyan Publishing House for a series of books on John Wesley’s writings [SOME RESEARCH COMPLETE]
  • a proposal to SmallGroups.com for some small group studies [SOME RESEARCH COMPLETE]
  • submit some poetry to Advanced Christian Communicator magazine
  • a copy of Father Daughter Day to David and to Sally
  • a copy of Documenting America to Jim

That’s not too bad. I had sort of been bemoaning my lack of progress over the last couple of weeks, but when I list everything, and add it up, I have made some progress, despite taking a week off doing not much of anything, using my computer woes as an excuse.

This week I added about 8,000 words to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, bringing it to just over 21,100. More important than the specific word count is the place where I’m at. The last chapter added brought the book to the “first plot point”. As defined in a class on fiction writing that James Scott Bell taught, this is the event in the book that causes the hero to move out on the quest. Normally the event is at least partially caused by the hero himself—well, it doesn’t have to be, but it makes a better story if it’s his own doing that forces him on the quest.

In this case, the event is Ronny Thompson’s, pitching phenom with the Chicago Cubs, blow-up with his parents. He argues with his dad over farming vs baseball, and with his mom over family and small towns vs friends and the big city. He speaks harshly to his mom, who responds with her own anger, then Ronny leaves for spring training a week before pitchers and catchers are to report.

When I planned the book, I hadn’t quite worked out this plot point. As I added chapters and words this past week and weekend, it all kind of came together. I’ll re-read it tonight, and see if everything I’ve written makes sense, and look for the stray word, the unfinished sentence, the excessive modifier that all tend to make a first draft a first draft. I’ll fix those, then by mid-week I’ll fire it off to the agent that requested it.

Then, what next? If I work my to-do list, I’ll next complete the proposal for some genealogy articles and fire it off. I’ve already drafted a proposal; I just need to find it, polish it, probably run it by crit group tomorrow, and send it. Then, as time allows (since I don’t write in a vacuum but occasionally have to pay bills and update budget spreadsheets and deal with health insurance claims and help manage my mother-in-law’s retirement money), I’ll hop on the Wesleyan Pub House proposal.

To-do lists are great, aren’t they? It’s about time to re-make mine.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, technology woes

File Lost and Found

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The writing life is like a man who didn’t back up his files every day to a consistent, safe place. Then one day his hard drive on his ancient computer began acting up. A repair shop was able to clone the drive, but the file, with 5,000 new words not contained on a manuscript, was not to be found. So the man asked the computer to do an heroic thing: Despite the slowness of the ancient processor and the drive clone, the computer was asked to search for all documents with a certain four letter string. Not knowing whether the computer had the umph needed for the task, the man started the search, went to his newer computer, and began again on those missing chapters from the older back-up file. Later, with a thousand words of dubious quality added, the man checked the old computer, and found it had identified six files with that string. One of the six files turned out to be the missing one, saved with the wrong date. Does not that man, when he has found the file, contact his friends and associates who read his blog and say, “Rejoice with me, for my file that was lost is now found. The work is there, and the first writing is better than the second.”

Yes, my lost file is found. This was my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People file. About a week before we left for Chicago I took some pages I had written in manuscript and entered then in the computer. As will normally happen, I changed things as I typed along, and I went beyond where the manuscript had ended. I recalled that I had added two or three thousand words, but wasn’t sure how many. At the end of the session I saved the file, with a vague recollection I saved it to a wrong folder, but knew I’d remember that so didn’t re-save it to the right folder. Also, I didn’t do a poor man’s back-up by e-mailing it to my office. I think I was in a hurry that evening.

Back from the Write-To-Publish Conference, with an editor wanting the manuscript and a publisher also interested, I went to look for the file. Nothing. All the files with that name in the right folder were older. I though, Oh wait, I saved that to a wrong folder, but which one? I went through all the folders I might have been working in the day I typed that chapter. Nothing. Oh, I found a FTSP file in one of them, but it was also an older file.

Now, I typed this on our 2001 Dell, which has been my computer for at least the last six years. It has been slowly losing performance, and I knew I would have limited use of it. I was planning to move all my stuff to our 2009 Dell, since Lynda doesn’t use it any more. With no home network set up, I was going to do that through e-mails. But, two days before leaving for Chicago, the 2001 Dell gave me a blue-screen error, followed by a black-screen reboot, without rebooting. I dropped it at Computer Medic and went on the trip, telling them there was no hurry with it.

The medics took their time with it, and finally said the hard drive was dying, but that they thought they could clone it. Other projects pushed mine back, but they finally got to it, and I finally re-hooked-up the computer. It’s amazingly slow, much slower than it was with the original hard drive. So I was actually searching on the clone hard drive.

I searched and searched for that file, to no avail. It seemed to be gone. I began to wonder whether I had dreamed about typing that chapter rather than actually typing it. Finally, I decided to use the Windows Explorer search feature. I wasn’t sure if that old Dell could do the job. I searched for “FTSP” in file names only. It took literally twenty minutes for that poor computer to do the search, but came up with results as described in the first paragraph.

When I checked the original version against what I had typed that day, the original was much, much better. I’ve noticed this before on those few occasions when I started over due to something lost and later found. The original is always better. The found file actually had closer to three thousand words, in two chapters. Yesterday I added more than two thousand words to it, and the book stands a hair under 15,000.

Can 85,000 be more than two months away?

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, poetry, self-publishing

Stewardship of my Writing Time

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I posted recently that I was going through a dry time, not writing much. I also mentioned that the main creative things I wrote during this time was a haiku. The inspiration for this was the blizzard we had last winter. Early the morning after went out in the sub-zero temperature to shovel 16 inches of snow. I wasn’t going to work that day, and my truck was parked up the hill, not in the driveway. But I woke up that day to a glorious sun. Past observation has proved that the sun’s radiant energy will melt the residual sheen left on the driveway after shoveling, even in very cold temperatures. An amazing thing, radiant energy.

So I shoveled, taking frequent breaks due to the depth of snow. As the sun rose high enough, I noticed that ice or snow crystals were fluttering in front of it. The air was so cold (somewhere around -12F) that the little moisture in the air was condensing. Enough to have a few crystals or flakes, not enough to be called precipitation. The line “ice crystals flutter” stuck in my mind, and I realized it would make a good line in a haiku. As I shoveled I worked on it, but the full thing didn’t gel.

Over the last four months I kept coming back to it, convinced a short poem was begging to be released. Finally last weekend it gelled. The impetus for that is an anthology being put together by some Missouri writers groups to help replenish school libraries damaged in the Joplin tornado. They want short stories or poems concerning storms, any type of storms. That was a good motivator to get quiet for a while and finish my haiku.

What about my writing time in general? Yesterday evening went well. I began work on the next chapter of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I think I had less than five hundred words of text added, but at least I sent some words from brain to keyboard to hard drive. I figured out how I want to approach the chapter. I also brainstormed the next chapter, running scene and dialog through my mind.

I guess because the haiku captured my mind for a while, I went to Absolute Write and critiqued three poems. None of them took very long to do, maybe ten minutes each, a little more for the villanelle. Here are the links to those citrus (password is “citrus”):

“Uke’s Lament” (ninth post)

“Malicious Intent” (second and eight posts)

“My Fingers Softly Upon Your Cheek” (second post)

These are not earth-shattering creativity, but they keep my mind engaged.

Of course, since a writer is supposed to be their own best marketer. And a self-published writer is their own publisher. So part of my time must be dedicated to these. Today has included some marketing brainstorming. Tonight, after our BNC Writers meeting, might involve some more research for publishing with SmashWords. I’m close to completing my review of their Style Guide, after which I can begin to upload my two e-books to that sales platform.

So all in all, not bad with my stewardship of time. Still have a way to go before I can claim to have my act together, however.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Conference Assimilation: Doc Hensley Speaks

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The keynote speaker at the Write To Publish Conference was Dr. Dennis Hensley, director of the professional writing program at Taylor University, Ft. Wayne IN. This is not a well-known university, and I suspect Doc Hensley is not a household word in the USA, but he is well-known in Christian writing circles, and his program is highly thought off.

This is the third time I’ve heard him as keynote speaker at a Christian writers conference, including at this very conference in 2004. So I was a little worried that he would speak one of the same keynote addressed I’d heard before. Not that I remembered all of them so well that I couldn’t stand to hear them again, but it was a concern.

However, Doc Hensley gave a different speech than at any of the other times I’d heard him speak. He talked about being a writer, rather than writing what you want to write. He told of a time a couple of decades ago when he learned that romance novels were selling well, and gaining more and more market share. He did not feel particularly called to write romances, but he said, “I am a writer,” and began writing romances under a pseudonym. Not sure how many he wrote, but all sold fairly well.

Then he told about another time, when someone needed a certain type of article—or maybe it was about a subject he didn’t normally write on. But he said, “I am a writer,” and wrote the article and received payment.

His point was to diversify. Find out what type of writing is needed, and fill the void with your writing. This somewhat flys in the face of the conventional wisdom one hears at these conferences, that finding a good niche/genre and staying in it is the best thing. Your fans will want to have more of the same type of writing. So if you are writing thrillers, the conventional wisdom goes, don’t shift to cozy mysteries and expect your audience to embrace your new book. If you write romances don’t add horror to your portfolio.

In this conventional wisdom, diversification using pseudonyms can help, but can also distract you from writing the next book in your primary genre that your fans are clamoring for. Instead of two books in genre a year, you might only produce one, leaving fans disappointed.

Of course, you actually have to have fans for this to be a concern. I’m a ways from that at this point. I think Doc Hensley’s advice is good. Since I happen to have been doing that already, of course I’d think it good. I guess I’ll continue to write engineering articles and environmental articles and the occasional poetry article, even while trying to finish In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and e-self-publish Documenting America and add the next volume to that genre and perhaps add the occasional poem to my portfolio.

Somewhere, sometime, something is going to click.

Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Screwtape's Good Advice, Wesley

Time to Move to a Different Project

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Documenting America, Volume 1, is finished, all but the Introduction, which I started last night and should finish tonight. My attention will now turn in three directions.

One is to proofread Documenting America and get it ready for self-publishing. I intend to go through it slowly, both my text and the text I’m quoting, looking both for typos and better ways to say things. I’ll also hope my beta readers give me some comments.

Second is income taxes. I need one evening to file trading papers for the year (those not yet done; I have some filed), one to assemble all my documentation, and a third to actually begin. I think all my spreadsheets are built, so I’m ready to go.

Third will be to turn to another writing project. Unfortunately I don’t have time to rest on my success of completing Documenting America. Gotta keep writing, keep researching, keep pressing on. I will call the Buildipedia.com editor this week about my next batch of assignments, and I may write one or two articles for Suite101.com. Those are on-going freelance work and I don’t count them as projects. I also have a prospect to write for a legal website, concerning construction law. Don’t know if that will come through or not.

I have to decide on my next writing project I could divide my available hours between two project for a while, but one must eventually have supremacy. The projects I have going, in various degrees of completion, are the following.

  • In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, my baseball novel. I’ve written around 15,000 words on the way to about 85,000 words. Haven’t looked at this for at least two months.
  • Screwtape’s Good Advice, a small group study. I have the introduction and four chapters done, on the way to 32 chapters. Given that the Narnia movies are being rolled out, which gives a little increase in the interest of all things C.S. Lewis, maybe I should finish this and self-publish.
  • A Harmony of the Gospels, a non-commercial project. Last week I gave a copy of this to our new pastor, which has renewed my interest. The harmony is done. I have about 40 pages (estimated) to write to complete the appendixes and passage notes. It’s tempting to plow ahead with this, even though it’s not for profit.
  • Essential John Wesley, a small group study. I’ve done some of the research, and would love to get this done and teach it next time my turn to teach our Life Group comes around. We have about twenty-two weeks of lessons lined up, so that’s the time frame for completing this. This would be partly a labor of love and partly a ministry/commercial project.
  • To Exile and Back, a small group study. I’ve done “all” the research on this, and outlined the project. Time to start writing. I put “all” in quotes because I’m sure as I write it I’ll find holes in the research.

So, what say you, faithful readers of this blog, and drop by readers? Does any of these look like a good direction for me to go next? Anything that sticks out, positively or negatively?

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Editorial Silence

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In the seven (almost eight, actually) years I’ve been trying to be published, I think my biggest gripe against the publishing industry is what I call editorial silence. Let me think, though, if you include submittals to literary magazines I’ve actually been submitting for about ten years. There’s always a time lag between submittal and answer. Magazines, agents, and book acquisitions editors almost all state what their response time is: 6 weeks, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, whatever. It’s a little different if you meet an agent or editor at a conference and they ask you to submit something. That’s a little less formal, though I suspect their posted response times could be considered to apply.

From my perspective, I don’t mind the slow response. What I mind is non-response, or responses so long after the stated response time that it might as well be a non-response. That’s the way this business works. A non-response most likely means a no. Most editors say to send them a reminder e-mail once you’re a little past their stated response time. When you do you’ll get a no.

Some examples. I met with an agent at a conference in Kansas City in November 2007. He asked me to send him the complete manuscript of Doctor Luke’s Assistant, as he was planning to represent more fiction in the coming years. I did so about a week later, and heard nothing. The following April I learned this same agent was going to be at a conference I was hoping to attend the next month in North Carolina. I thought we could meet then to discuss my manuscript, if warranted, so I e-mailed him, now five months after he requested the material, and asked for a status report. He said he couldn’t find my mss and would I send it again. I did, and talked to him briefly at the next conference. He said, “Your writing is strong, but I don’t know if I can sell it. I’m still reading it. Send me a reminder e-mail every week until I respond.”

That sounded strange, but I did as he asked. About two weeks later he passed on my book. Looking back, I now suspect he hadn’t even looked at the book when I saw him the second time, and he was just giving me “agent-speak”.

Another example. At that same North Carolina conference in May 2008, I met with another agent and pitched In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. She asked me to send her a partial (30 or so pages) and a proposal. I did so promptly, and heard nothing for four months. I sent a reminder e-mail, and heard nothing for two months. I sent another reminder e-mail, and she responded, passing on my book because she already represented something similar.

How strange that these two agents, who I met with and who requested me to send them some material, should totally fail to respond. Add to that about thirty magazine submittals where I’ve either never heard back or heard back up to a year after submittal, and I’ve concluded that the submittal process is broken across the board. Some writers call it the “query-go-round”. Others have a less complimentary term for it.

It’s enough to drive an unpublished author to self-publishing. For now, I guess I’ll go do something that will make me some money.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Hate the Villain

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Since some readers of my blog might not click on the comments, they might miss out on the discussion I’ve had with my friend Gary concerning villains. This has to do with posts I’ve made previously about what I’ve learned in writing classes (at conferences) about heroes and villains. The conventional wisdom is that fictional heroes must have faults that they overcome, and fictional villains must have some amount of virtue lest they become cardboard characters, someone who is not believable. I began this discussion because of my observations of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, a villain who seems to have no virtues, and thus successfully defies the conventional wisdom.

I have concluded that the experts are wrong. The hero does not have to have any virtues. The villain must simply be someone the reader dislikes, even hates. As Gary said in a comment to an earlier post, let his/her evil traits be very evil, exaggerated even, so that we can see our own negative traits in contrast to his/her. “Yes, I have my faults, but Voldemort is much more evil than I would ever be.”

So now, what do I do with my villains? In In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People I have two villains: Tony Mancini, a New York Mafia Don, and Colt Washburn, a Chicago Mafia Don. Both have their eyes and hooks into the protagonist, Chicago Cubs pitcher Robo Ronny Thompson, a naive farm boy who breaks into the Big Leagues. I have Mancini as being too nice to be a Mafia Don. He grew up with some refinement and a distaste for violence. He dislikes having to resort to killing as a business solution. Yet Thompson’s success could mean his downfall, and so he sets in motion things that are evil, while hating doing it.

Right now I don’t really have anything in Colt Washburn’s character that would mitigate his evil. But Thompson’s success would mean his success. He would win his eight figure be with Mancini, bringing about his downfall and possibly take over his turf. So Washburn, who was a Chicago street thug who worked his way up to be the head of the Chicago rackets, employs the evil powers he has to try to guarantee Thompson’s success. The twist is that the nicer Don is doing all he can to bring about an evil result, and the more evil Don is doing all he can to bring about a good result. Well, if you consider the Cubs beating the Yankees in the World Series a good result, which most of America would.

So what to do? I’m only 15,000 words in to a planned 80,000 word novel. I could easily change either Mancini or Washburn. I could find a virtue for Washburn, or I could make Mancini more evil than he is. I guess I’ll think about it some over the holidays, and maybe get back to work on the novel in the New Year.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Still Thinking About Literary Villains

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In response to my post about literary villains, my friend Gary left some comments. The gist of what he wrote was the people like to dislike the villain. If you give them some virtue, the reaction will be that they feel sorry for the villain. Then they won’t hate him enough. Then their enjoyment of the literary experience will be reduced, because they will not be able to hate the villain enough. At least, I think that’s an accurate summary. Gary, feel free to comment if I didn’t get that right.

Part of this all must be the role the villain plays. In fact, perhaps the word villain is part of the problem. Take Scrooge for instance. He certainly starts out as a villain, but goes through a character arc that has him come out the hero. He is the protagonist who goes through a transformation. Darth Vader is the same. He is the antagonist who goes through a transformation from bad to good—or actually from good to bad to good when all six movies are considered. He is certainly villainous, but ends up good.

Voldemort fulfills a different function. He is a villain who stays a villain throughout the seven books, and in fact seems to get more villainous as the story progresses. In the back story, it’s clear he wasn’t always a bad guy (again, I’m basing this on the movies only, since I haven’t read the books). I understand he doesn’t go through a bad to good transformation, so remains a villain to the end. We hate Voldemort in the end. We love Scrooge in the end. We sort of love Darth Vader in the end, though he has less time to make amends than Scrooge did.

This all brings me back to my beginning point: Is the conventional wisdom, as taught in the writing classes I’ve attended, correct? Must we give our villains antagonists a virtue or two, to flesh them out and not be cardboard characters? I’m still working through that. Maybe I can leave Colt Washburn, Chicago Mafia Don in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, as a bad dude and not worry about giving him any redeeming qualities.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Literary Villains: Is the Conventional Wisdom Right?

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Attend any class on writing fiction and before long you will hear this mantra: Your heroes must have some faults and your villains must have some good traits. You can’t make your heroes so ooey-gooey nice and perfect that they are unbelievable. And you can’t make your villains so absolutely awful that there is nothing redeemable in them. Well, you can, but your novel will be the worse for your doing so.

This was news to me when I first heard this in a fiction writing class at a writers conference, but it kind of makes sense. Fictional characters ought to reflect real life to some extent. Few people in real life are totally good or totally bad. Actually, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say no one is totally good or totally bad. Even if a novel is fantasy, and doesn’t include humans at all, we human readers judge the novel by our human experience, and the non-human characters must be believable and real based on our human experiences.

But in literature, is this true? Do successful writers always give their heroes faults and their villains virtues? For heroes, I think this is probably true. A big part of any heroes’ quest is to overcome obstacles, both those that the world throws at them and those that are within them. But for villains, is this so?

I’m thinking of the Harry Potter series, and of Harry and Voldemort. Now, I must preface this by saying I’ve not read the books! I intend to, and will be doing so within a year, I think. I’m basing this on the movies. I’ve seen all seven, and those who have both read the books and seen the movies indicate the movies are fairly faithful to the books. Harry has his faults. We easily see this in his movie portrayal. But does Voldemort have any virtues?

I looked hard for Voldemort virtues in the movies, and haven’t found any. I suppose you might say he has a virtue of making an accurate assessment of his chances in a fight against Harry. He says he could not overcome Harry’s wand and that Harry has a type of wizardry, provided by Lily Potter, that he, Voldemort, needs something more to overcome. He doesn’t pump himself up by ascribing his failure to kill Harry to bad luck. But that’s a pretty small virtue, I think.

We might be able to have some sympathy for Voldemort based on the circumstances of his birth and parentage. But sympathy and virtue are not the same.

So, as I write my fiction and flesh out characters, I wonder just how much virtue I should add to the antagonists, the villains. What good characteristics should I give to Tony Mancuso, the Mafia Don who wants to prevent the success of phenom pitcher Ronny Thompson, the hero of my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People? Should I add a couple of good characteristics to Claudius Aurelius, the corrupt government official who want to stop Luke from writing a biography of Jesus in Doctor Luke’s Assistant? I’ve worked hard to give these villains some redeeming qualities, but I’m wondering if it’s a waste of time. Perhaps readers like their villains to be really, really bad—to hate them thoroughly, not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for them. Certainly, if Voldemort’s abject villainy contributes to the success of the Harry Potter books, one would think that is the case.

What say you, my few readers? Do you want the villains in the novels you read to have a virtue or two? Do you want to feel some sympathy for the antagonist, and think, “Oh, if only his parents had treated him better he wouldn’t have turned out so bad.”? Or do you just want to hate the villain and love the hero?

An inquiring novelist wants to know.