Season's Greetings and such

It's time for another blog, and a Christmas one at that.

I continue to write over the festive season and I am currently working my way through a printed MS of the novel and adding any details I see to be missing. Should hopefully have it all done by the first week of the new year.

There's little else to report otherwise. Stories of the short variety are in the wind with magazines and I got (and spent) my first author payment.

I came across an interesting blog entry recently regarding mistakes amateur authors make when trying to approach an agent, mistakes supplied by actual agents. Now, I think myself pretty read-up on the subject but a few of these mistakes surprised even me.

For this month's blog book, I am currently reading The Braided Path, a massive book and so good for Christmas, a time when I know I won't be moving around much.

That is all.

Back to writing.

So much for make-believe

I have to give it to them, Shimmer Magazine were very quick to respond when I sent them RWBW. I only wish that they had accepted it. Editor Beth sent it back with the comment

"I've read quite a few stories where priests consider their faith; it's really hard to make such a classic story feel fresh."

A fair enough comment, I suppose. If that's how she felt about my story then that's how she felt. It was only to be expected as they have a long list of things that they don't want to see which will make me scrutinise their magazine much harder next time to find out exactly what it is they do want. They seem awfully picky (would I be saying that had they accepted? Perhaps not.).

The worrying thing about the comment, I guess, is that her comment which can be summarised as 'your story isn't original' is near the opposite of what Murky Depths said about the same story 'fairly original,' (or something).

It's strange having my work getting such mixed comments, so which of them is right? It's bringing a lot of worries to the surface about the novel. How will agents and editors look at it and decide whether it's good enough? All these writing tips pages say to get it as good as you can. But how good do they mean? I can keep writing and fixing and drafting but will it still get rejected if it has, say, 15 minor errors like typos and misplaced punctuation? Will it then get rejected, commentless, leaving me to wonder why it got rejected when all it needs is a slightly better copy edit rather than an extensive rewrite? Is it like a driving test? One major mistake or fifteen minors and you fail?

I can only try my best in the end but still it's causing me some concern at the moment. Plus, as each rejection comes and goes I'm becoming less and less enamoured with the stories doing the rounds at the moment and I don't think the next batch are any good either. Maybe the third generation shorts will have potential....

Oh well, bugger it. Back to work.

Thanks for reading.

A Lonely Business

The redraft of part one is printing as I type, so that means I'm a third of the way through the book. I decided that now is a good time to go back and edit so for the next few weeks I'm going to be reading through the print out and trying to make the whole piece as good as good can be before moving on to Part 2.

Things have been moving so slowly recently to be bordering on depressing. My head's full of doubts is this any good, is it too long, am I wasting my time? All that jazz. I tried reading some online writer's advice pages to see if I could find anything that would cheer me up, convince me that all these hours I could be out having fun at the pub / generally bumming around isn't actually a complete loss. If anything they depressed me more; talk of how some agents don't even read the manuscripts they're sent, how unlikely it is to get picked up by an agent at all, they get hundreds of manuscripts a week. It does make me want to scream. It's like being one person in a vast herd, all of us screaming 'I'm different!' to the agents up on their balcony, just another face in the crowd.

But I suppose I've just got to have faith in myself. I'll never know unless I try, eh? Plus, I've worked a slush pile before and a good 90% of the stuff was quite rubbish, sloppy and only half finished. People who have written the first draft and been so excited at finishing they've sent it off already. So, I'm convinced that sitting here taking my time over it is going to pay off.

Well, I'm not convinced really. There's still the chance this is a pants novel and no one will like it and I really aren't that great. But I think that about all my work and those nice people from Murky Depths seemed to like it.

Argh, tis a lonely business this writing malarkey.

Thanks for reading.