Of mice and men

Cow Watching
Don't ask me how, for I honestly don't know, but I found this article on escape characters while strolling through Wikipedia:

In computing and telecommunication, an escape character is a character which invokes an alternative interpretation on subsequent characters in a character sequence. An escape character is a particular case of metacharacters.

I couldn't help reading it as a writer (In writing, an escape character is...) and immediately something went "aha!" Into the the baby's toy bag it goes, for somewhere, somewhen I'll actually start working on the New (and as of yet still nameless) Project.


Sockbooze
Last month two stragglers stumbled into my gmailbox, a year after the sockbooze was sent. Both made me laugh:

Analysis of the first (one year later, nearly to the day): opens with a polite but impersonal greeting and explanation how the sockbooze got lost and why the necessity of the impersonal answer (fair enough) and then style-breaches right into a warmer and more personal explanation why it's a pass (schizo much?)

Analysis of the second (13 months later): three short lines that rollercoast from sorry > spam > catching up > resubmit whenever open again ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME? HAHAHA

Anyways, with all my sheep returned, I find it's nearly a year after I said "I'll wait till summer and then we'll see..." The sockbooze returned Dreams of Cold Stone to my attention, and I'm weeding through it for the last time (Really. Promise!) Cutting down some more kudzu. Fluffing up and patting down the eiderdown. And then we'll see for real.


Stuff of life
Two weeks ago changes were in the air.
I quit my job (but I've already landed a new job, I start on Monday, wahay!)
But more importantly: my dad had a thrombosis-stroke, which all-in-all could have turned out far worse for a 75-year old. For now he lost the left hand side of the world (irremediable), and processing speed (remediable). We're all happy/lucky there are no mobility problems. And while after revalidation he probably could live independent (with some ambulant care), we (his not-living-in-girlfriend, my brother and me) have decided his place is too far away and too big to let him return there, to live on his own.
Factoring into that story, is how my dad always has had a thing of finding stuff in the street and keeping it for when it comes in handy, a bolt, a screw... A cute and quaint little tick, you know? Dad always had a thingy if you needed a thingy. And economic household tips, like keeping a couple of water kettles on the stove during winter, which means you don't have to spend extra gas/money on warm water to do the dishes. Cute and quaint, but he was born in 1935, after all, and the war and the consequent scarcity must have made a serious impression on a child who'd become the eldest of seven.

So, two weeks ago we went to his house, mainly to clean out the fridge, since he wasn't going to return soon. For me it had been some time ago, see, I usually see dad when he and I are visiting my brother's. My parents divorced ages ago, so it's sorta, I keep an eye on mom, and my brother keeps an eye on dad. After we decided he wasn't going back to the house, we kept on going to start cleaning up and putting some order into his affairs. From the first day we've been utterly baffled by the OCD levels of hoarding, and how extreme a weakness he has for promotional sales. Seriously, you could keep whole battalions going for months on the clothing, food, wood and tools we've found there. You could stock a nuclear cellar for a large family, cheap shirts and sheets still wrapped in foil included. It shames me, in a shoulda woulda coulda way and makes me feel horrible horrible horrible. So there, that needed off my chest.

Rejection Rant

And then some; the subject is the nth iteration of the Famous Rejections, and the repeated remarks/comments they get.  It started out as some thoughtful responses, I swear.

Rejections build character!

Rejections build character?
Serious *snort* now!

I'm not averse to character building. I suspect that forced revisions and editing (AIIEE MUTILATION OY SHARP KNIVES CARVING THE FLESH FROM MY SOUL!) will be far more character building than an impersonal note from either editor or agent. I frown upon the idea that being denied something that you want and know you should have because you are worthy should be seen as character building, how the hell did those people ever get past their fifth birthday? That ever first no I had to swallow as a toddler prepared me well enough for: no, nyet, nope, nada, nix, nougat-balls, and just because, you figure it out.
It doesn't help finding it not fair (oy Calimero) that my genius is denied; it's not like I can wait until mommy leaves the house and sneak into the cupboard and take the cookie I so deserve.
An explanation would help making me bristle less at the no--we all have that same child still with us, and as everybody knows, some children are louder or more stubborn than others; I must confess to having a very headstrong and petulant child within, but I cope nowadays without pouting and stomping my feet and crying in public. But my character was built enough way back when to deal with an unexplained nope (mind you, not until I figured out that mommy notices cookies disappearing and it would do me no good ignoring that no). I'd like an explanation, but I can live without. But without explanation you don't have anything to build whatever with.
Now, if an agent would send me some flaring remark (what kind of drivel is this, you idiot, with which you disturb my most exalted thoughts?) I might not be happier, but at least I'd have something I could call character building.

I look at the digital stack of impersonal form rejections (stack, pfeh, let's not be overly dramatic: I only have like 9 or 10); I accept why these must be such, though I'm not fully convinced by the arguments (see later). But since I don't have to do that work, who am I to object? No is a no, and stomping my foot ain't gonna get me cookies.
Now, said digital stack of rejections first and foremost remind me I'm a storyteller, nay storyfinder. I can't look at them and not have Cow Watcher award those impersonal words voices, give them faces, and have them speak in a certain tone. When another incarnation of the List popped up on the Rejectionist's blog, I commented that at least those rejections are personal. My digital impersonal stack simply make me feel like a leper trying to sell skin lotion. Thank you but no thank you and have a nice day! Leper moves away from door, with difficulty negotiating the two small steps to the path, then the flagstones towards the street. Before reaching the next door, arm drops off... Oh no, whispers the lady in the next house, Quickly children, hide behind the couch. It's that leper from last year again!

But honestly, I was looking for a short explanation of my feelings when making that comment. What the stack really does is make me feel like a girl scout making her cookie-selling rounds and getting met by kindly smiling faces and a chipper: "Sorry! Not today!" and "Oh how awfully sorry, but I can't."
Brave Girl Scout will not be persuaded by a little adversity like that, but after wandering through many streets, she grows weary with the chipper folk. More and more she has to bite down on a slightly evil grin so as not to blurt out "You're awfully sorry, I know. Bye!" as soon as the door opens.
Surely there are better ways to use/lose time, she feels. It's such a lovely day, and if nobody wants these cookies, what's she trying to prove? But no, she's committed, she's hard working, she'll do this, the right way. So she soldiers on, no matter that her feet hurt.
But Girl Scout is also mere human, and hence prone to petulant inner monologue. She knows slinging cookies through people's front windows will not help the sales, but wouldn't it at least make her feel better? Her fingers are starting to hurt from knocking on doors and pressing doorbells, and pain is hard to bear if you cannot see its reason.
Being somewhat paranoid of nature, Girl Scouts ends up wondering if those chipper folk are all too kind to mention they bought cookies from another Girl Scout, and well, lovely as the cookies are, people have to think about health and diet and money these days. What she would not give for someone to say: "Oh no chocolate, I can't have any says the doc." At least then she would know that the cookie-selling-route-snatching-bitch-that-spoiled-her-day is only a figment of her dark side.

Another recurring remark/sentiment is the one that states it's a rite of passage. I find that one even more disturbing. At least a tribal rite of passage has rules for the ceremony that are clear, or I should say, that clearly state what they're about. In preparation for your rite you won't be told you need to show courage during your test, and then dropped unprepared into a pit with a hungry lion. No, you'll be well warned that you'll have to fight a hungry lion to show courage. To say those two things are the same would be showing a lack of intelligence, or of common sense.

A comment in Bransford's post on the list mentioned that every failure is a step towards success:

a reminder each time, that you are a submitting writer ever one step closer to your goal.

I'm not quite sure how to interpret that. Failure can teach you many things, but failure itself is not getting yourself any closer to whatever goal you've set. And without a teacher, a mentor, a direction or even a glimmer of an idea what causes the failure, how can you learn? Or should I cherish impersonal form rejections for another reason? Is this person perhaps hinting at the greatest secret in the publishing industry there is: might there be some wizard, some AI out there, that counts my form rejections, and if I reach the right number without blowing a fuse or letting slip a petulant remark, the doors of heaven will open and I will be taken up amongst the Angels of the Art?
Well... Crap on the Holy Cow. If only someone would have told me that years ago...

Bransford gives his reasons for finding fault with such lists; I'm slightly disappointed that all remarks and comments in whatever blog on the subject so rarely point out that comparing those rejections with current ones is comparing apples with pears. Why will nobody of our shepherds say out loud: those rejections have nothing to do with how the business is run nowadays. Why not slap down comments like "rite of passage" and "character building" like the fluff they are? Instead their silence only reconfirms the mantra: queries are the pain you must suffer, the ablutions you must do before being deemed worthy to the inner circle of the craft. So, write some more, it's good for your character, it's good for your soul.
You know, carrots are also good for you, but I'm no donkey, and I know when I'm strung along.

Those dear shepherds of the wannabe-writer masses pussyfoot about while they'll write page after page of detailed and thoughtful advice on queries. However, they won't say that the business has changed over the years, that their business has changed along with it, and that while they would love to find the next great artist writer they won't get his books sold. Perhaps even worse, that while they would love to find the next great artist writer, they no longer look for him.
Craft, they mutter, you must learn the craft. But it's not craft, it's not the potter forging beautiful dishes. The publishing industry is about factories copying the design and cranking out as many they can. Nay, it's not craft you must learn, it's industry. It's neither good or bad, but it is what it is and I feel more should be said about it.

Craft? Piffle. And this does not come from my frustration as querying wannabe-writer, but as reader. There's good stuff being written, but in the field of SF/Fantasy I haven't seen the likes of great storytelling like LeGuin's, or Zelazny's yet. Doubt we'll ever see something like him again and this makes me sad; I'll steer clear of questioning they would have broken through nowadays (which is like trying to argue whether aliens will like us or kill us when they come). No, honestly, I'd rather buy and read the next Zelazny than get my own stuff published. The system isn't broken because you need to rack up piles of form rejections, the system is broken because it fails to mention time and again it's first and foremost about selling copy nowadays, and less and less and even less chances are taken. It's sensible, logical, but not quite talked about as much as how it is about style and voice and craft.

It's not about writing, and it's not about craft, but about whether you can carry a platform. Will you go out and talk and do things having nothing to do with writing, and everything with selling? Will you humor fans? Do you understand what makes this business tick? Will your title sell enough within a short amount of time (and too short an amount of time to make a success of most of those writers mentioned in those lists), to make it worth it? I was just about wondering whether it might come to big boops being assets in getting published, but then this happened making it all too clear what the industry is about. Oh laugh at it, mock it, sure, but me, I'm laughing green, because I understand quite well who this particular joke is on, and illustrates so well why I'd better give up now. It's not about writing, it's about the person. And instead of giving me hope and courage, strengthen me in the idea that I simply must have an agent, simply must have an editor, simply must have a publisher, to do this the right way, they make me question if this is the right way. I'd like to get famous and rich overnight just like the next person, or whatever approximation I could ever dream of befalling me, but I'm not sure I want to pay the price. I just want to tell my stories, whether the world will buy them in masses, or not buy them at all. Just like proving courage and being chucked to lions or doing it the other way around, there's a difference between editing geared to making a manuscript into a better novel, or into a more salable novel. It is what it is, but is it what I want?

One of those things that makes me bristle when the shepherds speak of queries is the advice to personalize. I get that when thanking people when you do get published, you name the people that have helped you, whether they were paid for it or not. It's only polite, and makes perfectly sense. Just like writing a story is more than stringing words into sentences, jobs done with heart and good effort are more than something you can pay for with money.
I also understand the need to get a name right, the genre, and perhaps the preferences too. But why should I agonize over personalizing what should be an objective polite request to a stranger, while the addressed is perfectly aware that whatever I say is just a sugar-coating ploy. Something small, like "I like your blog!" or "loved that book you sold" in my weird head always get said in that immortalized tone of: I can see Russia from my house! Surely such fake sentiment will not help my book getting published? Couldn't we just go all out then and turn this show into America's Next Bestselling Author?
Another test of my character then perhaps: can I lie and fake interest in their person even if they promise their response (being 90% to 99% of the time the negative kind) will be an impersonal form rejection?

It annoys me and then some. I'm not a great people's person. Especially when strangers are involved. I pick and fuss over my words, lay awake at night wondering about certain glances, certain expressions I noticed. I HATE making telephone calls if it's my business, but I'll call to wherever if my job demands it, no problem, and I'll be polite and outgoing and not such a bad people's person but it's mostly FAKE. Why do I need to pretend to like strangers if they do not show me the courtesy they expect from me? N.B.: only a third of my rejections use my name in the response. And that simple little effort, an objective polite courtesy asked and returned, makes me feel less like a leper or a Girl Scout who can't get rid of her sodden cookies.

So all in all I'm wondering hard and deep now, reminded of the promise I made myself over Dreams of Cold Stone. I'll wait till summer and then we'll see...

Rant on order and queries

The part of query guidelines that always gets my brains turned inside out is when the demand is made to indicate the market. How am I supposed to know the market? I'm even loath to consider it part of my job as writer. When I can put a stamp on my manuscript, like "science fantasy" or something along those lines, I'm already humongously content with myself.

I don't wake up with the need to fill a certain niche, not even when it's a hot niche. I get ideas for stories, not ideas for things to sell. My brain soaks up words and then spits them out in some sort of order, mainly to the Cow Watcher's beat.

I know that this attitude (is it merely an attitude?) hurts my work's saleability tremendously, I know. It sucks. I get that a lot of writers have this ability or skill (or aptitude?) to take a story idea and then spin it in a totally different direction if that's where the market is going. I even picture it working like that for me in a handful of years. Okay, more like both handfuls with perhaps some help from the feet. See, there's a long list of projects I have been dragging along since ... ever, and I can't concentrate on new stuff until at least one of those dungeon-crawling monsters is out.

Why? Don't you know that every writer has The One that stays in the drawer for years but comes haunting? Or don't you get new ideas for new stories then?

That's the sad part: aaaaaall the time. But the Dungeon-Crawlers are vicious beasts, and Cow Watcher won't let me forget. Can't really blame the sucker, because CW and the DCs share the dark recesses. But whenever I seriously work on something new, it's like having John Cleese's BBC Announcer stuck in my head. "We interrupt this programme..." or "And now for something completely different." Come to think of it, a disproportionate amount of criticism voiced by the Inners sounds like Monty Python. Another favourite is the "Oh, get on with it already!"(1)

So, why can't I concentrate on new stuff? Simple: Cow Watcher won't let me be. Even at night I wake up with CW whispering to me: KILL KING MARGOR AND THAT SOLVES THAT NO?, or, THE HORSES COME ALIVE TO THE ROAR OF THUNDER (I know: wtf, right?), or, THE PROBLEM YOU HAVE WITH CYBERPUNK INVOLVING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES AND ALIENS IS THAT BOTH SERVE AS HOLY GRAIL AND NO STORY CAN HAVE 2 HOLY GRAILS (like, dude! Let me sleep already!),
And then there's those moments I really hate: WHY DOESN'T HE KILL HER WHEN HE HAS THE CHANCE?, with Cow Watcher laughing at little imbecile me, shaking its head and making me want to weep because it is sooooooo obvious a plot problem that undermines any inkling of logic, which I totally glossed over in the months if not years, the gazillion times I've gone over the draft to add, rewrite, reshuffle, and if I can't figure out a reason why Evil Guy doesn't kill the Heroine that one singular moment he can, I'll have to rewrite like 700 pages. And then I'm set for a night of no sleep and a lot of tossing about.

Most of those whispers get scribbled down by the light of my mobile or simply in the dark, and end up looking sort of looking like this:


And all my notes are like that. Some scribbled, some typed, some with little pictures or very expressive exclamation marks. Some not legible at all come morning (writing in the dark can do that), others don't make sense in first light (or ever). But they make sense to Cow Watcher, and I keep them about as talismans against the powers of the Master of the Dungeon-Crawlers.

No, order and categories get my brains twisted inside out alright. For years I've been trying to compile a Companion to the Barynn project, first to keep track of names and dates but then also of affiliations and alliances and historical background, and even there I break my teeth on categorization. I have a deep-rooted problem with categories. I understand why some people find them more important than others, going from economic ease to finding yourself at the short end of an -ism. But I don't *get* them. It's weird, because categories are simply a stronger form than labels, and I use labels all the time. It's like having all these little labels lying about, but all the boxes are missing. I guess that psych test test(2) that detected schizoid tendencies wasn't that far off the bat, hmm?

It works something like this:
Let's say, you have this nice box with 24 colour pencils and after using them with fervour and panache, you need to put them back into the box. And since parental units always complain about order and discipline, let's try to put them in some order (see, already compromising here and not saying: exactly as they were. We're not super-extra-rigid on discipline and order, okay?)

So, "easy" you think, right?

From white, over yellow, over orange, to red, purple, blue, to finally black. D'oh, where do I put my greens?

Okay, start over.

From white, to yellow, over orange to red, to brown, and... Green?

Zeus! Don't try this at home, you'll be at it all night!

The most helpful invention would be a 3D box for colour pencils. Multi-layered matrix of colours. Seriously, I would be drowning in my own tears.



(1) I blame the lonesome mornings spent at my father's, when everybody was still asleep and simply had to entertain myself (from somewhere 6am till 10am) with VCR or a commodore64. Lots of mornings were spent with the Holy Grail. Lots. Obviously too many lots.
(2) as in, helping out a friend's brother who was devising a test for his university thesis in psychology, so a test of a test

I hate sockbooze + Holy Cow, wtf?

Because rewriting queries and synopses to fit the parameters makes me think about "what the hell is this novel about" and then I get all these crazy ideas about how to make it even better and surely I could do a rewrite of a couple of chapters to make sure this or that theme sparkles and dazzles* and--oh happenstance--also easier to write the flipping query/synopsis.

* sorry, been procrastinating by reading about Twilight during breakfast and seem to have picked up some bad habits. Meanwhile the Cow Watcher has snatched up some stuff from there and relayed pages and stored it with all the other scary behavior on the internet stuff.

And to think only this morning I was trying to figure out why a very special cow was suddenly at the center of my dream that was about a cool labyrinthine old house with huge garden the hubby's parents bought (because they have nothing else to do with their money) for us (because they love us bestest) and we threw this party (with a conspicuous amount of ex-colleagues of mine being present: wtf?) which was cool until it started to rain very hard (yes, even in dreams it is April) and the rain soaked through the roof (did I mention "old"?) which fucked up the beautiful interior (did I mention "cool"?) so we had to go out into the garden because the ceiling was all getting limp (don't you dare go Freud on me!) and the party was turning into a real deluged Ark-fest while I was still trying to figure out how to tell the in-laws we messed up the pretty gift (because, yea, in my dreams I am the goddess of wrath and weather, or something)(I blame Storm imprinting (* again) because I was such a geeky Xmen fan). Then, while I'm trying to get people to stop their end-of-the-world freak (of course I'm a natural leader, because... just coz, 'kay?), some of them told me there was this cow I had to save (ixnay on the Eud-Fray) and it was this almost like a holy cow so really, saving in order! And when I found it, it was long haired with long, almost straight horns, something like this but more slender and elegant and beautiful (perhaps it had weird powers like charm and glamor?). Okay, it also might have been a long haired horse with straight horns and an udder. Actually, didn't see much udder because of the long hair (love it when everything comes together like that). But there was also a second cow, just a regular one, the black-and-white variant and slow and fat and stupid as normal cows and not speaking telepathically (uh, that I did forget to mention, 'ey), and I nearly saved that one but that was the Wrong One and somehow a flash of Denis Leary (see quote here) passed through the dream at that moment and then it got really confusing with rain and cows and people and the in-laws about to visit.

So Holy Cow, WTF?

But the house was real nice (real real nice, sort of like wish-it-were-true nice, though I probably wouldn't fuck up a nice gift with a deluge in the real world). And the garden was real nice too, and I'm especially in love with the colors of the world in the deluge scenes, you know that sort of bluish twilighty predawn light that gives extra luminosity to pale colors? Love it. If the light hadn't been that extra special I probably would have decided that being awake would be a better idea.
Extra points for the art director and the director of photography. Seriously, gold stars all round.

Sockbooze and fruit salad

Okay, done with it. The vapors make me nauseous so it's time to click the send button.

And I bet I'm gonna see a typo the second after it's gone.
And yes, I do first mail myself a test version. But I nearly flunked math in high school because sometimes my brain refuses to see what's out there, and in such a case 10-2 equals -12 every time I check, no sweat.

On another note, the query is longish, but well within parameters (near 500 words). An instance of first making sockbooze (with improved recipe), then using it to make fruit salad. Yummy fruit salad, I hope.

First I had to improve the recipe of the sockbooze, though. Only after I sent the first version, I realized it might give the wrong impression, seeing how most of the names involved are bible-derived. Nope, the novel is not about the bible or God, or Christian values (except the ones we share with all humans, no matter their religion). So having only bible-related names as anchor points for the wordblitz that is query, and considering the medium I'm sending it out in (U.S.), there might arise issues of hypersensitivity.
It might or might not be why the query met with a negative, but I adapted and improved the recipe nonetheless.

Then, while checking the next agent's preferences, I realized the improved query doesn't align well with the sample (first pages). It might when chapters are asked as sample, but not with the first pages.
So I wondered (read: agonized over) whether it mattered. Not all stories have to start with the protagonist (whether or not connected with the prologue issue), do they?
When an agent asks for a couple of first pages to check your ability to pour words into a sentence, does he expect to see a high corroboration of the "story" in the query?

I figured it wouldn't hurt if the package made some sort of sense, so I started out with 250-words counting sockbooze and ended up with fruit salad.

N.B.: I was going to add some personalization, but I hate personalizing without direct feedback because it only adds to my agony and then I don't sleep well and all my creative energy goes (without my say-so) into making up the scene at the other end of the line. Exactly why I hate telephones.
But if I had added it, the personalization would include mention of the Smeg C9GMXU and Sabre fencing, and how there might be some common ground. Ick, now I must go and wash my soul because I feel all prostituted.

Tricksy business

Perhaps writing queries can best be likened to distilling your own booze: you might end up with a heart-strengthening fine liqueur, but most often you'll end up with something that tastes of old socks and jockstraps.