Researching the Next Step - or - The Wild and Woolly World of Publishing

While waiting for feedback from TJ (oh, the suspense!), and getting a good start on my new work in progress, I have been starting to research What Happens Next.

It began innocently enough:

I determined from a book on writing that the recommended practice was to query publishers. Now, first, this was a book from the 90's, and second, it didn't give an example of a good query - so of course I went to Google.

At this point I have learned the following:

• Querying publishers has only the slightest chance of working - it's much more standard practice to instead query agents.
• Querying agents is a black art.
• If you have a successful query, you are then expected to send a synopsis - also a black art - and partial manuscript.
• If this is also successful, you then send the full manuscript, and pray. Even if you're an atheist.
  
• If you are very lucky, they will sign you - and then they get to go out and try to pitch the project to publishers, which will probably result in quite a bit more rejection.

Oh, and my book is too long. It's currently at about 185K words; turns out that the standard is ~100K. There's some more wiggle room for Sci-Fi and Fantasty, but I'm still way over the limit of what is likely to get picked up. I might be able to slip by with 130K. Sigh.

In other words, I have learned that I'm peeking over the edge into a world about which I know nothing.
So I am now educating myself.
Fortunately there are lots of on-line resources. It'll probably just take me a couple . . . or a few . . . or several . . . months to sort everything out.

As I do so, I expect to be putting up posts on the nature of these various arcane steps.
Stay tuned!

The Joy of a New Project

Having been bogged down with eternal editing for months, it feels good to actually be writing again. I am now a day and three whole pages into another book. I think it will make a nice change of pace; this time 'round I'm going to do a nice rollicking fantasy instead of a thoughtful science fiction story.

No matter what the subject matter, it's fun to be spinning out a new story. Of course, I'll then have to edit it, and so the cycle will start once more. Oh, well. Maybe it will be faster this time (I can hope).

TJ-Ready Draft Complete

Written 7/25/09

Well, I finally have a draft that is ready – or as ready as it’s going to be – for eyes other than my own. It has taken me a mere 9+ months to get from my first draft to this TJ-ready draft. Once he’s had a chance to look it over, I expect to have another round of editing before I pass it out to a broader group of friends. It is both an exciting and terrifying prospect.

How do I know the book is ready for other eyes, anyway?
Because I’m sick of editing it, that’s why.
Besides, any additional polishing that I do now might just be wasted, since I know that I will be making changes based on people’s suggestions. My goal was to get it polished enough that they wouldn’t be distracted by little (or not so little) problems. This way they will – hopefully – focus on the story itself.

To get here I’ve gone through a variety of editing rounds:

1) Quick read-through on the computer. The goal of this was to get an impression of the book as a whole, and to fix any really minor problems.
2) More extensive read-through on the computer, noting more extensive problems that needed to be addressed (things that needed clarifications, transitions, more information, etc.).
3) Go through and actually make the changes noted in #2.
4) Go through and make sub-headings noting what was going on at a given time (usually 3-4 per normal Word page).
5) Print out table of contents showing chapters and sub-headings, and try to adjust the story line’s flow with this meta-view.
6) Go through and make the changes that came out of #5.
7) Print it out and give a quick read-through, jotting notes.
8) On same print-out, do a more thorough read-through (out loud where possible), making more extensive notes of changes large and small.
9) Go through and make easy changes noted in #7 and #8.
10) Go through and make the harder changes noted in #7 and #8. Ad nauseum.
11) Print it out again, in spiral-bound book form ($50 from Kinko’s – I was rather amazed at how expensive it was, but for a 400-odd page book plus binding . . . well . . . couldn’t cavil too much. It did make me go looking for a different source for my distribution copies, though).
12) Try to read it as a book, rather than an editing project.
13) Make minimal fixes noted in #12.
14) Make formatting changes and tweaks to get a copy printed at Lulu.com (as a real book!) for the TJ editing round – both cheaper and snazzier looking.

Whew!
I’m ready to get back to some actual writing, now. I’ll probably start on the next story sometime next week.
This time I’ll probably try to do a little more editing along the way (e.g. 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of writing). Maybe that will cut down on the 13 month turnaround from project start to TJ-edition. I can hope.