Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Beginning Is Begun

For the first four days, the new version dragged. I had a couple of hundred words that I was fiddling with, but little real progress. And then, yesterday, the sluice opened. words started coming out in groups. You never know how long a good period like this will last, but I don't feel dry this morning. In fact, I've already added a couple of more word groups.

My current goal is to get through about 50 pages, which is the sample length most often requested by agents. I don't have a deadline in mind, other than getting it done as quickly as I can while doing a decent job of it. Once I have a big enough chunk to market the manuscript with, I can resume my sales effort. But we'll see what happens between now and when I get there.

Friday, September 19, 2008

A New Beginning

There has been something nagging at me ever since I finished the current draft of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. As the previous rewrite proceeded, I abandoned any pretense of trying to write a funny novel and started just writing a regular novel. And as I crept along, I discovered that the book I was writing was developing in literary terms, and while still readable as simply a story, it had also become a serious novel.

Which is all well and fine, except that this evolution of the book took place gradually. And that means that the first part of the book is written completely differently than the rest of it. The opening four or five chapters were still rooted in parody and comedy while the succeeding chapters, while occasionally amusing, were far more straight forward and real.

Therefore, I've started work on Drayton 4.0. the first paragraph of the first chapter came off the assembly line yesterday. I'm uncertain as to whether I'll continue marketing it while I rewrite or whether I'll just advise any agents I contact that it is receiving further revisions. I think I read somewhere that you can do that.

Anyway, this is a complete reimagining of the beginning. So much will be changed that it might not even seem to be the beginning of the same book. However, these new chapters will lead up to and link with the existing more serious chapters of the book, which also get a brush up over time. I am not expecting them to change this radically, though.

Some day I hope to be finished writing this book, but you never know until you get there.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

High Notes

So far, Drayton has been rejected by a handful of agents. That's not a big deal. All you can do is to keep shopping it until you find the agent or publisher who's on the right wave length, something which, I suspect, involves some level of luck. The right person has to come across it on the right day. And the more that you send your proposal out, the better the chances are that you'll come across the right person.

There's something to that "making your own luck" stuff.

Now, not all rejections are equal. Sometimes you get a form, if you mailed your submission, or some copy-and-pasted standard text, if you submitted electronically. And that's fine. That sort of rejection is not especially meaningful in any direction. You wrote something and they didn't want it. Fair enough.

On occasion--and it's an occasion that's becoming more and more frequent in my case--the rejection comes in the form of a personal note. This is a step up, first of all because you know that your stuff got some serious level of consideration. There had to be at least one glittering moment when the person evaluating the work thought "This might have possibilities." And, if you can get somebody to go that far, you just might be able to get the next person to go further.

At the least, it is encouraging.

I received just such a rejection from an agent this past weekend, and I took a chance and emailed him to thank him for his consideration and to ask him a couple of questions so that I could properly approach the rewrite I had started to realize was in order. In his response to that--and I really have to thank this guy some day--he noted "that the tone wasn't really hitting the high notes" in his opinion. Now, I had only sent him the first five chapters, and the high notes don't really start cropping up until Chapter Six.

I've thought it over, and three things occur to me. First, the opening chapters need a major rewrite in order to bring the tone in line with the rest of the manuscript. Second, while I'm at it, I might as well brush up the whole thing. And third, I have to approach this as being more than just a mystery. I need to turn Michael Drayton, Detective Guy into a great book.

Louis Armstrong used to get into challenges with other trumpeters at jam sessions, and he would rip off 200 high Cs in a row. I can do the same thing and need to.

What's holding this book back are the remnants of parody left from the early versions of the story. It's time to bury those for good. Right now, I'm ruminating. I'm hoping to start writing by the end of the week.