Thickest brush behind me

The first five or six pages of my novels are always uniquely dispiriting (not to mention brainbusting). That's perhaps because they tend to be big on description and low on dialogue, and I find the latter much easier than the former - both to write and edit. But I'm up to page 11 of Truck Me now and things have evened out. The pages no longer look like a stabbing murder (perhaps just a bare-knuckled boxing match).

From the Asylum replied this morning - 'Level Two' is stuck in a backlog (as I had suspected) so it's anyone's guess how long a reply will take from here.

I notice also that this is my 100th diary post. Gotta get excited about something!

Lightening the load

I've begun a second draft on Truck Me - the first 30 pages of it anyway, which is what Allen & Unwin requires for novel submissions. As usual most of the first two or three paragraphs went straight in the bin (metaphorically speaking) as I have a habit of summarising the scene for myself before getting around to telling the story. Also, now that I'm editing at 'tree level', I'm surprised how dissatisfying some of the sentence structure is. It should get better as I go along, but right now there are a lot of flat, 'was-riddled' passages.

From The Asylum should have been in touch by now reagarding 'Level Two', so I sent them an email this morning. According to their website they are on 'hiatus' for two months (never a good sign, despite their protestations to the contrary), which probably explains it.

Truck stop

After a considerable layoff, the first draft of Truck Me is finally complete. All the dates and days and objects now jibe (I think) and I cut about 700 words even though that wasn't really the purpose of the first edit.

The heavy lifting lies ahead. Another 9,000 words are to be cut (theoretically).

This week I also got around to writing the new ending for 'Displeasures'. It will need to be tinkered into shape and polished, but it's much more satisfying than the old ending. The funny thing is, the idea that spawned the story no longer exists in it! Just goes to show what a convoluted, unpredictable process writing can be. It's like planting tomato seeds and a week later discovering a bed full of corn plants. Bizarre stuff.

Who Wants to be a Slush Wrangler?

While the frustrations of being a writer are myriad, we should all spare a thought for the largely faceless slushies who volunteer to perform their thankless tasks (usually without payment). Poor old Robbie Matthews at Andromeda took a week or so off for his 'real' life and has been hopelessly behind on submissions ever since. I received a confirmation of receipt for 'Other Intelligent Life' today - more than two weeks after submitting it. Were it Aurealis I wouldn't even blink, but Andromeda generally responds with in a day or two.

Highly informative

Opened my hotmail this morning to find a message from Chippewa Publishing - unexpected, since I had already received an automated reply. Maybe this is just their way of confirming receipt and making sure they aren't wasting anyone's time, but this was the content of the second email:

"Thank you for your interest in Chippewa Publishing. Please be advise[sic] we are an e-book publisher and do not offer advances for our publications. Should you wish to have GHOST KISS reviewed for potential e-book publication, please let me know."

I would have thought my subject line of SUBMISSION coupled with a manuscript and synopsis formatted to their specifications would have made my intentions clear enough. But anyway, I wrote back saying I was well aware of Chippewa's publishing model and that I had spoken to Sarah Dobbs about it and would indeed be delighted if they'd review it for potential publication ... as I had already inferred, rather plainly, in my covering letter. (Naturally I didn't add that last bit.)

Maybe I should be happy - it shows a personal touch I've encountered very rarely with other publishers.

Given up the Ghost

Bugger ... Macmillan New Writing rejected Ghost Kiss this morning. I honestly thought I had a chance - but then I guess 12 in 3,000 isn't great odds. Hmm. Well, time to find another market for it. Perhaps Allen & Unwin or a smaller OS publisher. The Americans have been fairly receptive to my stuff so far.

Turning to better things (and affirming my last post about impetuousness) yesterday I capped off 2,000 words on a short story that's been knocking around in my head for probably two months now. It's a mainstream philosophical drama with the inaccurate working title of 'Cheap Tattoo' (which was the first thing that popped into my mind). I imagine it will work out at around 4,000 words when complete.__

-- Supplemental--

The circle has neatly closed ... Ghost Kiss is with the people at Chippewa Publishing, where it was intended to go in the first place. Their response time is a soul-crushing 16 weeks. It could be 2007 before I hear anything!

'Cheap Tattoo', now operating under the more dignified name 'Wisdom of Death', is complete - about five words shy of the anticipated 4,000.

Recipe For ... Disaster?

I'm an impetuous fellow. This makes me good fun at parties, but as an approach to regular life, impetuousness turns out badly at least 50 per cent of the time. I've tried to recognise it in my behaviour and weed it out when it's not appropriate, but sometimes an event triggers it and my response is done and irrevocable before I realise what has happened.

Yesterday I revisited the site where I planned to send 'Recipe', Futurismic, and discovered the (non-specified) reading period was drawing to a close. Thrown into a panic, I began an on-screen polish of 'Recipe' at work, emailed the half-done document to myself, and completed the rest at home. Then, under pressure (we were due at my girlfriend's parents' place for dinner), I pasted my story into Futurismic's weird submission form and hit send.

Was it underdone? I don't know. What I have noticed over the years is that I do some of my best work under pressure. It probably has something to do with my day job as a journalist and editor. But due to the nature of the submission, I can't feel confident about it, which is a shame. Cut down to its basics, 'Recipe' has a kind of crime thriller aspect that sets it apart from anything else I've written.

On a happier note, I've come up with a new ending for 'Displeasures of the Flesh' which I'm giving its own working title of 'Demon Seed'. I think I might take a swing at it tomorrow.

Low fat Recipe

Gotta love those titles that make for easy puns.

Yes, well, anyway, with the major draft complete, 'Recipe For Nostalgia' has fallen below the 7,000 word mark - 6,791 to be precise. That's more than 2,000 words gone. No wonder it has been rejected in the past.

I planned to polish it and send it off this weekend, but with a vet visit and a tax return to do, I can't see it happening. Not a bad thing, perhaps. It'll give me a week or two away from Grant, Tracey and their little get-rich-quick scheme.

On the road with Jack and Hunter

With Mr John Wyndham now disappearing into the distance, I've started riding honest and dirty with Hunter S Thompson (Hell's Angels) and Jack Kerouac (On The Road). I've read a bit of Thompson in the past - Fear and Loathing, plus a huge book of his letters and correspondence - but I've never read Kerouac, mea culpa. I can't believe I've been spending my hard-earned cash in bookshops, often on junk, when our local university library has racks and racks of classics. I'm not sure what I'll do when my girlfriend finishes her degree at the end of the year. :(

Some industriousness over the weekend (while my girlfriend slept off a hangover) sees me with 90 of 147 pages worth of alterations made to the first draft of Truck Me. Pleasantly, the inconsistencies have proven easy to fix in most cases and it's been fun finding out exactly how many gears an 18-wheeler semi-trailer has and whether Griffith is north or south of Sydney.

Will try to make the final changes to 'Recipe' this afternoon in preparation for a final edit and submission on the weekend.

The 25% Rule

I've made changes to about 10 of the 14 pages of 'Recipe For Nostalgia' and what started out as a 9,000+ word tale is now down to about 7,400. As well as cutting away the fat, I've uncovered multiple plot holes and inconsistencies (which thankfully have been fairly easy to rectify). It's going to need a couple of polishes when it's done (two different grades of editorial garnet paper, you might say) so I think that will be next week's (or weekend's) task.

Time to focus back on Truck Me this morning - poor old thing has lain neglected and melancholy as I wandered off on my inevitable tangents.

All quiet on the submission front. Still another few weeks before I can legitimately start sending query letters out to anyone. Looking at the list of stories under consideration, the only one I don't think is in with a better than even chance is 'Lest We Forget', which is with the choosy, 'publish when we can be bothered people' at Borderlands. So by that reckoning, I could have another four credits before the end of the year! (Yeah, keep using those exclamation marks, loser. Why not add some unnecessary italics while you're at it? It works for Matthew Reilly.)

Wyndham-a-thon complete

Last night I finished my three-book tour of the late John Wyndham, which took in The Chrysalids, The Trouble With Lichen and a best-of collection of his short stories.

The Chrysalids started off beautifully - believable, interesting characters, potent themes - but it lost me a little in the final 50 pages or so, where it turns into a chase movie. Still, the central concept of normal vs freak, them vs us, is classic Wyndham.

The Trouble With Lichen is generally accepted as one of Wyndham's poorer novels and I'm afraid I must agree. Again, the core concept is excellent - the discovery of a lichen that slows down the aging process and its effects on the human psyche and society - but the narrative plods like a disabled hippo in parts. Entire passages read more like an essay on sociology and politics instead of a sci-fi novel.

The short story collection covered the spectrum of Wyhndham's career and was overall of high quality (no shock, since it was supposed to be a best-of anthology). Wyndham is most impressive when he is getting inside the head of an alien creature and imagining its perspective on, and interactions with, humanity. My two favourite stories fall into this category - 'The Walls Come Tumbling Down', where a group of sentient glass-creatures land in the desert and try to communicate with humans (ending in disaster) and 'The Lost Machine', where a robot commits suicide out of loneliness for the company of its own kind.

On the novel front: Macmillan has now had Ghost Kiss for 6 weeks, the minimum response time specified. It's tempting to enquire, but I think that could be counter-productive. I will, however, be sending an enquiry at the end of week 10. Meanwhile, Commune has started to settle and take shape in my head. I decided to take a slightly different approach than I had originally intended and the narrative - including an ending - started to reel itself off in my mind. It has some potent themes and character conflict and I'm really getting excited to start again. I'm thinking I'll probably begin some time next week. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I was going to take a break. But when the muse wants you to write, you write.)

Done bugger all on Truck Me in the past week, but hopefully I can rectify that tonight.

Recipe for Bloodshed

I'm up to page 5 of 'Recipe For Nostalgia' and the manuscript already looks like an autopsy. One performed by a near-sighted surgeon in desperate need of a new lens prescription. It's slow-going, not only because the writing is three years old, but also because I think I'm entering the first stages of burnout. I've been belting away furiously on one project or another since this time last year and in the past two or three months I've not only been burning the candle at both ends, I've pared down the wax in the middle and set that part of the wick alight as well.

When 'Recipe' is revised and sent off, I think I'll take a break from everything except the changes to Truck Me. No set time frame, just as much time as is needed for my creative urges to be repleted. (Is repleted a word? Well, it should be.)

Simplifying the Recipe

This morning I started my second, more in-depth edit on 'Recipe For Nostalgia' (which will continue on the train this evening) and judging by the revisions on the first two pages, it may lose its mantle as my longest short story. It is, after all, nearly three years old and I've matured and evolved considerably as a writer in that time - my 'editing epiphany' earlier this year being especially significant. Which is the roundabout way of saying that I have already cut out huge chunks of exposition, unnecessary description and character thoughts.

Reading it over again has been both a mortifying and exhilarating experience - mortifying because I once sent it to Agog with real hopes that it would be published; exhilarating because the story's central idea still seems rather vital and fresh to me. If I can get the narrative into similar shape, I'm confident (hopefully with reason this time) that a mag called Futurismic will take it.

A bit of a surf around for info on Macmillan's New Writing imprint (specifically response times) led to the dispiriting realisation that I am a long way from my ultimate goal, which is to write full-time. Even authors with two or three novels under their belts still need to hold down 'day jobs' if they expect to pay off a mortgage. It's the first time that I've found fault with Stephen King's book On Writing, as he claims that if you work hard and become proficient in your craft, you will be well paid for it. Paid yes, but not well. Not well enough, at any rate.

I guess I always assumed that having a novel published with a big publisher was tantamount to landing a well-paid job, but that's not even close to the truth. From what I can gather, I would need to sell 20,000 copies of a book in a year to make roughly the same money that I do in my 'civilian' life at the moment. The 20,000 copy mark is inching towards bestseller territory (not Matthew Reilly or Stephen King territory, no, but it is roughly what John Grisham's latest book sold in Australia). I suppose it would be possible if the book received international release...

Well, here I am again - about six years ahead of myself. I doubt I'm the only writer who rides this emotional waterslide. One day it would be nice to stop at the top of the ladder and just enjoy the view for a while, though.

As I think I've mentioned before, if patience were a commodity, The Fearless Writer would always be out of stock.

The good kind of -holic

Something unexpected has happened. Following Back Roads' acceptance of 'Trouble with the Locals', I have become a workaholic for the first time in my life. I am doing work on weeknights after my 'real' job, and this weekend is a good example of this newfound ethic - two stories edited and sent off to magazines. 'Blue Diamond Pool' went to Spinetingler and 'Other Intelligent Life is now in Andromeda's over-full slush pile. I might add that I subbed and sent 'Blue Diamond' while operating under the effects of a mild hangover - quite unprecedented.

Let's hope the old adage "The harder I work, the luckier I get" holds true!