Some Go Softly

I’m so glad that we all agree that I shouldn’t be expected to make the book “work”. That is surely someone else’s job. Someone that won’t change each little thing and over-analyze, like I have been. I’ve done the hard part. I made some stuff up and put it ‘on paper’. Now to find an editor. The going rate appears to be a penny a word. It’s abstract accounting at best. Will there be more or less words when all is said and done? What if there’s a typo that makes one word two? Who are these people anyway? Am I going for quality or content? I can’t be over 60,000 words, so the price seems reasonable considering I don’t even know what I’ll get in return. What an adventure!

Next, submitting to publishers. There are a lot of little publishers. I’m going to try ‘going local’ first. Always a camaraderie-type thing. If no one in San Diego wants me, I can pretend I am local “Seattle” where I was working on the editing, or local “Austin” where I wrote the first book. Most publishers that I’ve found will accept a synopsis via email, which apparently is unusual? I’ll take it. My goal is to start finding them and getting myself out there. I think I know how to sell, but this is different, it’s personal. I think having a place to ask for help (here) and admit that I’m lost is a great big help.

There are a couple reasons I’m waiting to explore self publishing. One is the husband, who takes the doing it myself idea as a last resort that is only acceptable if no one else wants my book (in my mind in that case why bother…). It’s going to cost more, of course, since I would want to use every resource they offer to give myself a best chance, and so few books make it big that go that way, and I’m sitting here thinking I have something good to work with.

We’ll see…

The story so far: Last November, I wrote a book. This November, I wrote another book. A much better book. Each of them are just over 50,000 words and were finished within a month. I spent the past year editing the first book. I got to Chapter 4, of 12 chapters. I asked for help. Not so much. Editing does not equal writing, it is a lot less fun and how do you ever stop editing yourself? Yawn.

Now I’m over the first book, a romance-y just trying to get published kind of a thing, and obsessed with my second book, a Fear and Loathing crazy-style marriage of good writing and interesting action. I know I’m a writer, that these books could sell. In what form? Probably an edited one.

What do I do? Keep editing the first book? Jump to the second? Hire a real life editor? Hire an agent? Burn them both? (The books, not the editor and agent…) Send them out as is?

I’d like your thoughts.

The book totally would have been done by now!! Right…

How To Write A Book

1. Do absolutely nothing until you can see the whites of your deadline’s eyes.
2. If you’ve got cowriters, try to disagree as much as possible. If you’re of the same opinion regarding a section of text, bicker about dinner choices.
3. Criticize what little progress you’ve achieved and doubt what little talent you possess.
4. Do not write any new words when there are still old words that have only been rewritten twelve times. No sentence is complete until it’s lost all traces of your original thought.
5. Complain about the pressure of a looming deadline to everyone you know. This will ameliorate the jealousy and bitterness felt by friends without book deals. It will also put an end to social invitations that may hamper your writing progress, as your former friends will now hate you.
6. Stop sleeping. Complain about how tired you are too.
7. Never have a mental breakdown before 11 p.m.
8. Do not postpone other projects so that you can focus on the current one. It’s better to spread yourself so thin that you produce an evenly distributed amount of complete crap.
9. If you’ve gotten this far without a single technical foul-up, now’s a good time to download something viral.
10. Make a schedule for yourself, but do not even remotely follow it. Instead, continually do some mental math that divides your remaining pages by the rapidly dwindling number of hours.
11. The best writing is that which is compiled from dozens of different documents, including things you’ve e-mailed or text-messaged to yourself. Try to create separate documents on as many different computers as are available. Some things will be irrevocably lost, and hours will be spent cursing. Learn a lesson about orderliness, but do not act upon such knowledge.
12. Some terribly constructed sentences always make good low-hanging fruit for your cowriters to edit, thus protecting your awful idea from their meddling.
13. Were you napping? Stop that. It’s 11 o’clock already. Start freaking out, hard.
14. If you’ve worked hard three days in a row, take a hard-earned day off. And it looks like snow tomorrow, so you might as well take the whole weekend. But a day off from writing is not a day off from complaining!
15. If you haven’t drastically gained or lost weight, you’re just not writing well.
16. Assume your sources are reputable. When some accidental research reveals the source that serves as foundation for your work to be as reliable as grandma’s memory, briefly consider the amount of work it will take to correct things at this late hour, then fuck it and move on.
17. Pick up any book on your bookshelf, skim a few pages, and admit that it’s a terrible book… but better than anything you’ll ever write. Cry.
18. If one of your cowriters is something of an optimist, steal his hat.
19. If you’re not panicking, call your agent and request they he or she panics. You’ll have no problem panicking afterward.
20. Call your mom.
21. Your time is more valuable than your money. Spend as much cash as you’ve got in your pockets.

via yankeepotroast.org

This seems like a bad idea. Last year, I discovered NaNoWriMo. Then I signed up.
Then I spent a month writing, in between all other events. Here’s that month in case you weren’t with me for it.

Am I crazy enough to do this again? My plan was to be finished with the first one before starting the second. Not gonna happen. Trying to publish a book is hard. Even for an extraordinary writer like myself…

I’m not even halfway through professional editing. But that’s the rough part, right? And if I’m going to be famous, I’ll need to write more than one book - if I want to be rich I need a thousand…

NaNo got me going. The deadline, the camaraderie, the force to write, the adventure. So yes, it’s a crazy, incredibly nerdy, unrealistic thing to do. And I just signed up.

I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to drag you through it with me.