The Next Circle of Hell, Vol. 2

I'm sorry, January. I hope the money situation improves fast. Being on sub is stressful enough without money issues weighing you down.

Thanks, all. The MS is still out with a few editors from round 1, who will soon have the new version, plus we're going to sub a few more editors, so maybe someone in this group will want the MS.

I brought more root beer and rum. Plus some cookies to go with the ice cream Pinkbow provided for the floats.

Radio silence broken! Heard from agent for the first time in six weeks, and feeling relieved. I can't believe I still get middle-school feelings like "what if they just don't LIKE me any more??!" Nothing constructive, but just good to hear from them.

Had a good day over all. I even wrote about 500 words and might punch out some more later, especially with all of this rum and ice cream around. Woo! Get this party started.

*pulls himself out of revision hole by the skin of his teeth*

HEY EVERYBODY! (If you even remember me at this point! It's been six months since I've been on!) I've been crazy revising book 2 for my agent, and it's about to go on sub like... real soon! As for book one, which has almost been on submission for a year now, I had completely given up on it and was banking on book 2 (a couple of editors were super enthusiastic to see it) but then out of no where, a couple of days ago, I got an interesting update in regards to some stuff. I'm trying to be realistically optimistic, though I know I may still get rejected.

But anyway, I hope everyone is well! I'm glad to be back. It's been too long since I've talked to my writer friends. (Revisions and depression will do that to you!)

Also polishmuse -- I get like that with my agent as well.

Thanks guys. The money stuff is kind of an extension of "can I even do this am I good enough what have done" lol. I'll figure it out somehow! I have so far.

I wrote TWO SENTENCES of my WIP yesterday. But hey that's 2 more than I had the day before. I think I'm still trying to shake off the voice of my last book (I somehow keep end up writing in first person even though I prefer third; the stories just require first, ugh sigh) and so Page 1 of the WIP is the hardest page, finding a new MC's voice and such.

*still on the floor, starts passing out snacks. can't have drinks without snacks. floor snacks.*

Yay Ksav! You and I are in pretty identical boats (though 8 mos on sub vs. 1 year and no possibly promising news yet--- crossing fingers for you). I just shipped off the revision of MS 2 to agent on Monday and am hoping it is what they were looking for. The revisions were drastic, exhausting, and amazing.

Etiquette question: do people put more than one MS on sub at the same time? How does that work? Personal stories?

Thanks! All my fingers are crossed, but I'm trying to be realistic as well.

So I'm not sure if there's a standard or not, but I have an agent sib who has three books out on sub right now. Not sure how all that works, but I'll let my agent deal with the nitty gritty haha.

polishmuse said:

Etiquette question: do people put more than one MS on sub at the same time? How does that work? Personal stories?

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Yes. Different genres. One MG and one YA. So no crossover of editors.
Twice the insanity.

KSavoie said:

*pulls himself out of revision hole by the skin of his teeth*

HEY EVERYBODY! (If you even remember me at this point! It's been six months since I've been on!) I've been crazy revising book 2 for my agent, and it's about to go on sub like... real soon! As for book one, which has almost been on submission for a year now, I had completely given up on it and was banking on book 2 (a couple of editors were super enthusiastic to see it) but then out of no where, a couple of days ago, I got an interesting update in regards to some stuff. I'm trying to be realistically optimistic, though I know I may still get rejected.

But anyway, I hope everyone is well! I'm glad to be back. It's been too long since I've talked to my writer friends. (Revisions and depression will do that to you!)

Also polishmuse -- I get like that with my agent as well.

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Those updates sound so exciting! Everything sounds like it's moving super quickly. GOOD LUCK!

KSavoie said:

*pulls himself out of revision hole by the skin of his teeth*

HEY EVERYBODY! (If you even remember me at this point! It's been six months since I've been on!) I've been crazy revising book 2 for my agent, and it's about to go on sub like... real soon! As for book one, which has almost been on submission for a year now, I had completely given up on it and was banking on book 2 (a couple of editors were super enthusiastic to see it) but then out of no where, a couple of days ago, I got an interesting update in regards to some stuff. I'm trying to be realistically optimistic, though I know I may still get rejected.

But anyway, I hope everyone is well! I'm glad to be back. It's been too long since I've talked to my writer friends. (Revisions and depression will do that to you!)

Also polishmuse -- I get like that with my agent as well.

Click to expand...

Oooh how exciting!! GOOD LUCK on both accounts!

Anyone else get a pop in activity? Maybe people are coming back from vacation?

Nope. Still in Cricket Land.

Not a peep. I still get days where I get twinges of emotion that no one wants the book, but I'm approaching "meh" territory. Been trying hard these past couple weeks to find the fun in writing again. Not easy sometimes, is it? My WIP feels kind of wooden, so I'm going to play with another project for a while and see if it feels more fun.

Been trying hard these past couple weeks to find the fun in writing again. Not easy sometimes, is it? My WIP feels kind of wooden, so I'm going to play with another project for a while and see if it feels more fun.

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You and me both. I can't seem to get past my chapter one. I'd decided to do this WIP in first person POV, as a sort of challenge, and because I thought it might be fun, but I might switch back to my usual third person POV to see if it gets me motivated to write.

Crickets over here too. BUT. I think I'm finally inching toward being able to dig into this WIP. It all just takes so much worldbuilding. But my CP said she thinks that my brain is doing lots and lots of background work and that this book could be way better than my last. Trying to take that to heart and remember that even if there's no writing, that doesn't mean there's no work being done.

*back to staring at the wall*

I'm realizing the less I think about the "market" and what the editors want to buy, the more I come to enjoy my writing again. When I'm totally in my element and writing the kind of stuff that excites me and drives me, that's when I'm happiest. When I think too hard about, "Is this commercial?" or "Does this make sense?" I freeze up and feel stuck.

I just finished a scene I'd been struggling with, in part because I let myself write whatever came to mind.

While I love having one foot in the business, it's also hard to be creative. We know too much about industry wants and needs, and when there's too many outside voices, it's quite difficult to combat both those and the ones in your head.

writeonleanne said:

Anyone else get a pop in activity? Maybe people are coming back from vacation?

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Any good news in your activity, writeonleanne? Not even crickets chirping on my side. Ear-ringing silence.

On the plus side, I did hear back from agent. Still six subs out on first round of nine on MS 1 (from Jan/Feb). After an excellent request rate on the first round of pitches, agent pitched another half dozen editors a month ago, AND poked them—with absolutely NO response! She's hoping everyone's on holidays, and the first round spending their time reading.

We've agreed to give the editor with the exclusive on MS2 two months, so that runs out early August. But I'm not very hopeful on that front-which is making WIP awful slow going. It's supposed to be a follow up to MS2 (which is actually MS 6 or 7, but who's counting?) because that's been marketed as a series. But, after one good weekend where I got down about 15k words, I've foundered for a month, just re editing old stuff. Today I've stared at WIP for four hours, fiddling with chapter one. Really only tweaking words. Need to move on and write the damn thing. Now, if someone could just tell me how the last third should go, maybe I'd not be avoiding the middle?

An aside, so sorry to those who've sent me private/direct messages for my non-replies. I see them flash up as a notification when I open AW, but the moment I've opened them, they disappear and are nowhere to be found??

I've been thinking...do any of you guys need a beta or CP for a recent MS? Even if it's not to do deep-dive revisions, but just give general impressions of the work.

I would post in the CP/beta forum but I know you guys lol

I'm reworking my YA sci-fi to take out the fantasy elements, leaving it solely sci-fi thriller. I'd love a beta/CP (whatever it needs) read when I'm through, Pinkbow, which I'm hoping will be in about 4 weeks. My agent would like to take it out for another round of sub. But I realize it might not be your thing. I can send you a pitch and first chapter, if you'd like, and we could proceed from there. I'd be glad to return the favor.

Sounds good, Martina!

I've been struggling with my WIP like many of you. With MS1 on sub feeling dead for so long, it felt impossible to get anything down. (I'm still convinced it's dead in the water.) So for now I'm just beta-ing a couple of friends books and trying not feel guilty about not getting any words down.

If only I had something I needed a beta for! Maybe in the future?

I don't know how many of you write--if you go from beginning to end or jump around--but I find that when I'm in a funk, if I jump around to write the scenes I'm most excited about, the ones that made me want to write the MS in the first place, it gets me jazzed to work on the whole thing. Like writing a bunch of shorts, so they're small goals. Yeah, I may have to go back and tweak those scenes to fit what the end result needs to be, but they make me excited for the WIP. Those are usually my favorite parts of the book.

Just a thought for all of us struggling to get into a WIP while waiting to hear on other things. Now to try and take my own advice...

krashnburn said:

I'm in a funk, if I jump around to write the scenes I'm most excited about, the ones that made me want to write the MS in the first place, it gets me jazzed to work on the whole thing. Like writing a bunch of shorts, so they're small goals. Yeah, I may have to go back and tweak those scenes to fit what the end result needs to be, but they make me excited for the WIP.

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This is... genius. I don't know why I didn't think of this. I usually write very linearly, however in MS2 for me, I wrote a scene I was excited about first and it got me really into writing it. (I did have to edit it to get it to fit correctly, but it worked!) I think I'm going to try this out again. Thank you!

Pinkbow, if you're up for beta-ing, I just finished a YA contemporary (needs some smoothing, but I'm thinking it should be ready for betas in a week or so--if you want, I could shoot over my first chapter, just to see if it's your thing--no worries if it's not!). And I'd be happy to do a beta-read for you in return!!!

Thank you so much for the offer!!!

Long time no see, everybody! I've been totally bogged down in finishing up book 2, then moving to and decorating a new house, and then having a book 3 deadline creeping up on me much too fast. Most internet stuff fell by the wayside, including this forum.

But this has always been a fantastic place to turn whenever I get writers' block. I just want to say that each and every one of you is an inspiration!

As to the question of writing linearly or jumping to the exciting scenes, I have to say I can really only do the former. I wrote one book a while back where I wrote out of order and it was fun - but when I read the exciting scenes back later, they all missed the little details and added thoughts that come from getting to that point in the story linearly.

Not to say others would have this problem! If it works better for you that way, great.

Nice to see you, Bryan! Good luck with book 3! And good luck to everybody waiting.

On the linear issue: Maybe it's best to use both approaches, each at its proper time. Draft an exciting scene to get yourself into the ms.; then, once you're hooked, write a rough outline; then start from the beginning and write linearly, revising the earlier drafts as you go; then, if you get stuck and need motivation, jump ahead. Revise, rinse, repeat.

Right now I'm working on a nonlinear ms. that alternates between "Now" and "Then" chapters. Last time I did something like this, I wrote all of Then, then wrote all of Now. It didn't go so well. So this time I'm going linearly — in theory. In reality, every time I meet with my CP group, I get new ideas and go back and revise a bunch, which changes everything. If I really got stuck, I might try jumping to the climax and drafting it, just for fun.

It's so complicated — I can't believe I once wrote a 100-page ms. on a manual typewriter with no do-overs! (I still have it. It will never see the light of day. )