I haven't blogged about my book, Writ in Blood, since I proclaimed that I was done with it and wouldn't pick it up again until it was published. Embarrassingly, I'm now going to blog about it, even though I'm not any closer to my publishing goals now than I was in 2013.
What happened was this: Twitter.
While shopping around my manuscript, I followed some of the agents whom I'd queried. Not too much after sending off to one particular agent (I won't say who, mostly because I can't remember), I saw a mini Twitter-rant among two or three agents about the size of queried stories. Mine came in at 289,000+ words, and the tweet specifically raged about 290,000 word submissions.
A little later--once the sting of knowing I'd ticked off some agents had faded--I mentioned to a different agent the size of my manuscript. She'd replied with a glance askance. (Looked like this, if I remember right: 0.o) She then recommended that I try splitting it up.
For a long time, I've resisted the idea. Writ in Blood is a big book. It was designed to be big, complicated, and deliberate. (That it may also be rather slow moving and plodding is a potential side-effect, though I'm not sure if it really is or if I'm imagining it.) To break it up is to defeat the whole structure of the story.
However, this is still the book I feel most confident in. Since I finished it, I started--then set aside--and started--and finished--other projects. I've learned a lot about writing since I last looked at WiB and I still think there's something in it.* Despite my more cynical judgment, I've decided to work on it again.
It really has helped to view this book with fresh(er) eyes. I started this book before my second-born was, well, born, and he's turning five next month. Much of my teaching career has involved this book, in some capacity or another. I've completed a number of life goals with this book hovering over me, tickling the back of my mind, or cropping up in a class or two. I can't seem to really let it go.
As a result, I have just finished, over the last couple of months, revising the first half of the book. Originally, I structured the book to set up a major dilemma--the theft of the Writ--that pulls the characters to the ending. Additional subplots and tangential ideas were fleshed out during the telling. However, I had put in a major break in the action almost exactly halfway through the book. It didn't have a full ending to it--more a lull in the action than anything else--but it had a semi-natural stopping point there.
I'm now 10 chapters or so away from turning the halfway point of the original book into the actual ending of the book. It has taken quite a bit of deletion, editing, and rewriting to get to this point. I still have a lot of very difficult work to do--getting back into the voice, tone, and style of Writ in Blood is much harder to do than I had expected. I don't expect to finish this much work until about my birthday at the end of April. Nevertheless, I'm excited to see progress in it as I hammer it out and try to keep its core while shifting its focus.
The biggest thing I'm gaining from this process is the idea of learning to love revisions. I have a shirt that I showed off before that pretty much encapsulates my feelings. I love to write. Fingers on the keyboard. Butt in chair. Music playing. But I really don't like to revise what I've written. Part of it definitely comes from the sound-of-my-own-voice syndrome of reading a book and being unable to read it as someone else's. It's like when you hear your voice recorded; you can't tell what you're actually trying to say because you're so mortified that you sound like that to everyone else. The problem is that I'm driving through hundreds of thousands of words, so it's like the tape never ends. Add to that a long-standing (and probably poorly earned) belief that I can write well--rather than rewrite well, which is very different--and revisions are a capitulation to all sorts of very human flaws that, for whatever reason, I felt didn't actually apply to me.
But this last weekend, I went to the Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium in Provo. There, I listened to Howard Tayler talk about how important growing, working, and trying are to gaining a level of livable success. In particular, he picked on people who don't love writing but love having written--a common malady, apparently--and told them that they need to change. I realized that I may not have their problem, but I do have mine: I really hate revising. I do it because I have to, not because I want to.
So that's my reason for this title. I want to improve. I want to write better. I want to be published. I can't do those things if I don't start taking my writing more seriously. And since I've already got a passion for the creative part, it's time to find my passion for the practical part.
We'll just have to see where that leads me.
*That being said, I think of people becoming fans of my work because of this book...and I can't see it actually coming to pass. Not because there isn't a good story or interesting world or characters, but it's not the kind of book that, I would think, inspires a lot of geeking out. "I'm going to ComiCon as my favorite Poet, Nicomachus!" said no one, ever.
What happened was this: Twitter.
While shopping around my manuscript, I followed some of the agents whom I'd queried. Not too much after sending off to one particular agent (I won't say who, mostly because I can't remember), I saw a mini Twitter-rant among two or three agents about the size of queried stories. Mine came in at 289,000+ words, and the tweet specifically raged about 290,000 word submissions.
A little later--once the sting of knowing I'd ticked off some agents had faded--I mentioned to a different agent the size of my manuscript. She'd replied with a glance askance. (Looked like this, if I remember right: 0.o) She then recommended that I try splitting it up.
For a long time, I've resisted the idea. Writ in Blood is a big book. It was designed to be big, complicated, and deliberate. (That it may also be rather slow moving and plodding is a potential side-effect, though I'm not sure if it really is or if I'm imagining it.) To break it up is to defeat the whole structure of the story.
However, this is still the book I feel most confident in. Since I finished it, I started--then set aside--and started--and finished--other projects. I've learned a lot about writing since I last looked at WiB and I still think there's something in it.* Despite my more cynical judgment, I've decided to work on it again.
It really has helped to view this book with fresh(er) eyes. I started this book before my second-born was, well, born, and he's turning five next month. Much of my teaching career has involved this book, in some capacity or another. I've completed a number of life goals with this book hovering over me, tickling the back of my mind, or cropping up in a class or two. I can't seem to really let it go.
As a result, I have just finished, over the last couple of months, revising the first half of the book. Originally, I structured the book to set up a major dilemma--the theft of the Writ--that pulls the characters to the ending. Additional subplots and tangential ideas were fleshed out during the telling. However, I had put in a major break in the action almost exactly halfway through the book. It didn't have a full ending to it--more a lull in the action than anything else--but it had a semi-natural stopping point there.
I'm now 10 chapters or so away from turning the halfway point of the original book into the actual ending of the book. It has taken quite a bit of deletion, editing, and rewriting to get to this point. I still have a lot of very difficult work to do--getting back into the voice, tone, and style of Writ in Blood is much harder to do than I had expected. I don't expect to finish this much work until about my birthday at the end of April. Nevertheless, I'm excited to see progress in it as I hammer it out and try to keep its core while shifting its focus.
The biggest thing I'm gaining from this process is the idea of learning to love revisions. I have a shirt that I showed off before that pretty much encapsulates my feelings. I love to write. Fingers on the keyboard. Butt in chair. Music playing. But I really don't like to revise what I've written. Part of it definitely comes from the sound-of-my-own-voice syndrome of reading a book and being unable to read it as someone else's. It's like when you hear your voice recorded; you can't tell what you're actually trying to say because you're so mortified that you sound like that to everyone else. The problem is that I'm driving through hundreds of thousands of words, so it's like the tape never ends. Add to that a long-standing (and probably poorly earned) belief that I can write well--rather than rewrite well, which is very different--and revisions are a capitulation to all sorts of very human flaws that, for whatever reason, I felt didn't actually apply to me.
But this last weekend, I went to the Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium in Provo. There, I listened to Howard Tayler talk about how important growing, working, and trying are to gaining a level of livable success. In particular, he picked on people who don't love writing but love having written--a common malady, apparently--and told them that they need to change. I realized that I may not have their problem, but I do have mine: I really hate revising. I do it because I have to, not because I want to.
So that's my reason for this title. I want to improve. I want to write better. I want to be published. I can't do those things if I don't start taking my writing more seriously. And since I've already got a passion for the creative part, it's time to find my passion for the practical part.
We'll just have to see where that leads me.
*That being said, I think of people becoming fans of my work because of this book...and I can't see it actually coming to pass. Not because there isn't a good story or interesting world or characters, but it's not the kind of book that, I would think, inspires a lot of geeking out. "I'm going to ComiCon as my favorite Poet, Nicomachus!" said no one, ever.
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