The No News is No News Purgatory Thread, Vol. 7

Yay, my Amzn order showed up. I haz new reading material.

I survived the training class. Not only had the instructor NEVER heard of decaf, I'm almost positive she spikes her coffee with meth. (Or snorts pixie stix, maybe) I am exhausted just from listening to her for four hours.

Did learn a lot, though, so I guess I can't complain too much. Better than 90% of the training I have to go to that doesn't even apply to my job.

Good insights, Blue. You are a wise woman. Parts of the industry are moving at blinding speed and the other ones are frozen while they wait to see what happens.

Hey y’all!

Chapter 10 done! WOOHOO!

My tiny awesome for today:
I emailed the editor with a question about word count and suspects and a general “this is what I’m doing, let me know if you don’t like anything in here,” last night. Just heard back:

I think your track is spot on, focusing on character development all around as your style, settings, and voice were well done. It all sounds pretty exciting -- I like the idea of a TV reporter being a true rival, and punching up the mystery. That will make the reader turn those pages, trying to figure out who the bad guy is.

No real target on word count, but target 85k - 90k. ... Don't worry about what number you hit when you get it back to me. If it all works out, we'll smooth it out during the editorial stage.



Ended with "July is great, just make sure it’s what you want before you hit send, and I’m really looking forward to reading.”

So that’s all good. So long as I don’t blow it.

Weird, this simultaneous squeeing and worrying.

Nutty business, publishing.

I’m enjoying all your garden talk, but as I have a terribly black thumb, I have nothing to add. So carry on.

callalily61 said:

Tas, Caleb has behaved, has taught us things about plant interaction, and has come up with a delightful story idea because he'd never, ever really do it in real life. Right, Caleb?

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I plead the 5th

There are rumors that around the Christmas season last year I snatched off a pack of box cutter blades from the impulse rack at lowes and shouted "Look they have stocking stuffers for the emo in your life"

Blondchen said:

Lily, call the police and report a suspicious person in the neighborhood.

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LOL. I like this.

Caleb, somehow, I'm thinking you probably did just that.

Woot, LynDee!!!

ETA: I'm dictating this morning and it's actually working out rather well. Used the program for my article and started the other prequel short story. Talking out loud in my 1st person MC voice is really easy. Wordage count TBA when I'm done for the day.

LOL, Caleb

Good luck, LW!

Dragon the voice software is fascinating to me but I don't know if it would work for me. I tend to talk to the dogs while I type. I can only imagine how that would work. I would be dictating the story then start talking to the dogs in the middle of the story.

Lily, grr! This is why I've stopped opening our front door. The only people who use it are the ones who have no business bothering me.

Caleb, ha!

lwalker, yay!!

Yeah, Caleb and Lily, it's definitely different from what I'm used to. The upside is the strain it's taking off my arm. However, I'm used to typing and not consciously concentrating on what I'm going to type before I type it. This is forcing me to think a little before I type. I hope that doesn't translate into less effective writing. We shall see, but I'm slowly settling in and now just talking my story. So far, it doesn't feel like I've written crap. I'll let you know in a few days, when it's had a chance to set.

One thing I really like is the time I save from correcting typos. I have a tendency to invert a lot of letters. Talking rather than typing is changing that.

I keep refreshing to see if a friend has sent an e-mail yet on formatting for Cre@teSpace. She said after the weekend and it's after the weekend, and I'm bored...

Blondchen said:

I'm too old to survive on 4 hours of sleep.

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if i had a dollar every time you said
this blondie... haha! *hugs*

KT THANK YOU for that SKYFALL preview.

MEOW! i am so excited for that film!

arranging ALA stuff with pub and SO excited
for this con! just a month away now...
/bootay shake!

Yes, fun first trailer.

and lily pie, i would be SO annoyed
by that ploy. augh!

KT, i think daniel craig > tom cruise
at the running.

blondie, can i get back up here? ha!

LynDee this is AMAZING NEWS!!! She's definitely invested. I just want to reemphasize...

lwalker said:

Ended with "July is great, just make sure it’s what you want before you hit send, and I’m really looking forward to reading.”

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This is the most important thing she said.

I think we get so excited, so anxious, so time driven as writers wanting to get our idea out there NOW, we sometimes forget that writing takes time. Edits take time. Not just to do them, but to sit on them and let the flavors marry together for a bit before we read it again JUST TO MAKE SURE.

For me, this is what's been missing in my own writing for the last year. I've had no time to sit on anything, no chance to let things marinate and develop and BLEND for fuck's sake. I hate it. Sometimes I wish I was back writing before agent, before editor.

Sometimes.

And I have too many author friends (and no, I'm not referring to anyone in Purgatory) who have rushed off to query projects that weren't ready yet. It was like they couldn't help themselves. They had this imaginary ticking time bomb where they were just DESPERATE to start querying! In several cases, I'd read at least a partial of the story and it wasn't ready. It didn't work yet. In one case, the writing wasn't even polished! In another, it had been edited pristinely and yet, the manuscript had no life to it.

It made me sad because I think both authors had something really special on their hands, but they just couldn't - or wouldn't - wait.

Neither got an agent. Both self-published manuscripts that were not ready for the public. And I feel like the publishing world missed out on books that could have been really fantastic and special, if the authors had just given themselves a little bit more time.

Wow. I totally didn't mean for this to turn into a rant. I've just been really in tune with the frantic nature of trying to get published these days, and I feel like some authors are shooting themselves in the foot.

xiaotien said:

if i had a dollar every time you said
this blondie... haha! *hugs*

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HA.

I guess you're right. But some nights/mornings when I'm just turning off the light at 3am thinking, "I need to be in the shower in 4 hours..." I seriously wonder about my decision making process.

xiaotien said:

blondie, can i get back up here? ha!

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GET AWAY FROM MY BOYFRIEND, YOU HARLOT!!!!!!!!!

Heh. Revision speed. Heh. Heeeeh. I am really worrying that I'm taking OH MY GOD SO LONG!! to finish this book and that those agents who requested material last May (yes May. As in a year ago last May *sigh*) have long forgotten me (really, they have, but that's okay) and will be like "What, we gave you our cards? Wait, what conversation? What do you mean we were excited about this? Really. Yeah. No." once I actually finish this epic neverending rewrite.

To put it into my brother's gf's words (who knew me for all of two days when she said that to my brother) "Is she ever going to finish this book?" Ouch.

Anyway, inching closer and closer to the finish line. This book will be done soon. And it will go out to betas. At which point I'll want to hide under my duvet, because people will wonder why the hell they ever volunteered to read this in the first place.

Sorry if this comes off snarky (really I'm actually quite serious about that being my current state of mind on this, lots of meep! going on here, but I'm also excited for it to be DONE soon and hopefully people won't hate it and then I can worry about query-tweaking and synopsis writing and stuff.)

But yeah, I think it's really important to let stuff simmer. I whine about not having enough time to write a lot. And I often don't. But I also often need to do something different for a bit to let stuff simmer in order to try and not make a complete idiot out of myself in front of my betas (ask Para and WD how well that one works...er.)

In other news, just spent three hours at my favorite coffee place talking books and writing with WD and am feeling much better about the world now. Nice how friends can do that.

Also, the car thing is mainly me not knowing jack about cars, which makes me wary and uncomfortable. And given how I don't know where I'll be in another two or three years I would hate to invest a lot of money into my current car (which frankly wouldn't be worth it) or having to pay off a "new" used car when I may have to sell/leave it behind in a matter of years anyway.

If there's a submarine thing I think of Rick.

Looking at new fall shows. Really shouldn't add more to my schedule, but I know I'll look.

dystophil said:

Also, the car thing is mainly me not knowing jack about cars, which makes me wary and uncomfortable. And given how I don't know where I'll be in another two or three years I would hate to invest a lot of money into my current car (which frankly wouldn't be worth it) or having to pay off a "new" used car when I may have to sell/leave it behind in a matter of years anyway.

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You can sometimes find a course for women with an intro to cars and how to not get screwed over by a mechanic. Or at least they used to be offered. Cars aren't scary, really, and despite the computer enhancements they still need the same stuff to work at the core. One of the simplest first things to learn is changing your own fluids, and tires.

Blondchen said:

Wow. I totally didn't mean for this to turn into a rant. I've just been really in tune with the frantic nature of trying to get published these days, and I feel like some authors are shooting themselves in the foot.

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I totally hear you about a lot of projects needing time to marinate. But it's tough to do that when the industry moves so fast. You read a cool book and you get inspired to write something similar, but the trend was already dead by the time you picked it up. An agent seems like a good fit, but by the time you're querying they've stopped handling fiction at all. Everything is always over and dying and too late.