Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Agent fear

The day draws near where I will have to start sending queries out to the agents I have been stalking on twitter, and have added in small manageable groups in my excel file. For the past few weeks I have been putting the whole thing off as much as possible and quite frankly, I don’t know why. When my friends ask me (the one or two who know I write) if I’ve had any replies from agents, I tell them I’m waiting for summer to send any queries, so I won’t have to stop working on Through Stranger Eyes (my current WIP) and start on revisions a potential agent may ask. I don’t want to tackle that part of the process with leftover baggage from my current WIP. Sometimes, I answer that I’m holding back to avoid having to revise and edit in the middle of a heat wave on my mobile phone instead of my PC again. I don’t think I could work on a novel-length manuscript on my mobile phone for another summer. (Hint: No A/C for me. PC’s exhaust sends air exceeding 60 C. Not a nice work environment).

However, a few days ago I think I realised I may be a little bit afraid and uncertain about my synopsis and my query. Yes, these two culprits again. I don’t know. Maybe they are not to blame at all.  So now I’ve set a date, a self-imposed deadline. Apparently, I work better when I have deadlines for things that are not directly related to creative work (like attaching files to an email and hitting the send button, as opposed to having to finish a 100k word novel by a specific date, no matter what).

I will send the first query on 10 June. Hopefully I will have finished Through Stranger Eyes by then, and I’ll be able to focus exclusively on the agent hunting process. Fingers crossed.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

No mistakes, only happy accidents

A few days ago, I twitted about a mistake I made (Ok, maybe not a mistake as such – to quote Bob Ross, “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents“) and neglected my outline for just a little bit. By a little bit, I mean a large part of a scene. The result was almost a thousand words of half-decent first-draft quality prose with very interesting character interactions. Alas, I had mixed the characters up. Shameful, I know. In my defense, it was an easy mistake to make, since I almost never name filler characters when I outline, and the two characters shared a few things, like age and lifestyle. The only difference is the character I intended to write about was supposed to have no more than one line of dialogue and appear for maybe half a page, and the one I ended up writing about is an important character, which made the first one a filler, or rather an obstacle to the MC’s progress. A nameless character. Of course you might say that a thousand words for a filler character are too many, but keep in mind there are descriptions, POV character’s thoughts, reactions, and of course the stuff I had on my mind about the important character. Plus, the POV character and that filler one ended up having a long conversation, which was not part of the original plan, but stemmed of how I pictured the important character. My face once I realised what I did was like Arnold’s.

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I don’t know how many of you have read G. R. R. Martin’s book, A song of Ice and Fire, but those of you who have, if you watched last week’s show (season 6, episode 1), would probably have something to say about it. Actually, if you have read the books and watched the show, you probably have a lot to say, but that’s a different story. I’m not going to go into it. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to lose track of something planned in advance, if you miss or change one little detail. For Game of Thrones, it was Martin himself, if I’m not mistaken, when he mentioned of the butterfly effect and how the show and the books have diverged because of them. I had read that blog post earlier in the year, and I know he considers himself as a gardener-writer rather than an engineer-writer, but only after my mistake did I appreciate how easy it is to deviate so exponentially by one single mistake, like a few lines of dialogue.

So, any happy accidents you made throughout your writing career that changed things so much for your stories, you had to change everything and rewrite them?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 5 Comments

Thoughts on the upcoming publication

It’s been a while since I wrote a short story. The reason is I’ve been busy with life and drafting the next novel. I’ve also been editing my synopsis, my query letter, trying to find more agents that might be interested for a story like The Darkening, etc. The list goes on and on.

So I’m really excited that one of my older short stories is only five days away from publication. This coming Friday the 22nd, Bride of Chaos will publish my story, Whisps of Memory, in their 12th issue of 9 Tales told in the Dark, along with eight more stories. As the title of the publication suggests, this is a collection of horror stories, and the genre may not be something everyone likes.

But thinking about this story and how long it took to get published, how many magazines I had to research through The Grinder before I found one that was a good match, I couldn’t help but notice how few magazines there are out there compared to the number of writers. And again, to a certain extent, I think it comes down to the fact that magazines and small presses need our support to survive. I talked about the importance of these presses and magazines in an older post, so I won’t bore you by repeating myself. But I will stress the need for these markets to carry on doing what they do. A few weeks back I learned that yet another magazine, one that had published one of my stories in the past, closed permanently. The main reason was lack of readership, which of course resulted in lack of funding.

If you’d like, talk to your friends and families, ask them if they can spare the money to occasionally buy an issue from a lesser known magazine. This upcoming publication also needs our support. Just to be clear, I’m not trying to make you give me money by buying the issue my story’s included. No. I was already paid for my story, and I intend to return some of that money by buying the issue, just like any other reader. There are no royalties involved or any other form of gain for me, except knowing my story will reach an audience (you can check their submission guidelines if you don’t believe me). What I am saying is that it’s important you help and support small magazines, so writers like us – all of us – can continue publishing our works and experiencing that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. You know the feeling I’m talking about. I know all of you experience it every time you publish something, be it self-published or otherwise. If you still think I’m trying to make you buy this particular book, go to amazon, type “magazine” in the search bar, choose your favourite category from the list on the left, and buy whichever literary magazine you like. Who knows? You may come to like some of the stories there, perhaps even discover a writer whose style is closer to what you like.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Minor update

I have finally managed to get on track with the new WIP (provisional title Through Stranger Eyes) and be as productive as I want to be.For the past couple of days, despite every distraction imaginable, I have managed to produce 2k words solidly. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel. Yeah, I know it’s no big deal, but I had started doubting myself and the story I was trying to write. I mean, it took me hours to put 1k words down, when for my previous book (it feels so nice to be able to say “my previous book,” doesn’t it?) I used to churn 1k words in a little over an hour and a half, maybe two, if I was distracted.

The draft (so far about 21k words) is still not as great as it could be, and chances are I’m going to have to revise and rewrite to similar extent as I did with The Darkening (honestly, I hope not), but I’ve come to accept a simple fact; I can not produce a good first draft. That’s fine. First drafts are what the phrase implies, meaning only the first step of something better. It’s like digging a hole in the ground. It’s not pretty when you’re done, but what matters is what you build afterwards. I still don’t have a good feel for the characters (which was the case with The Darkening as well), but I’m getting there. I might also need to take a step back from the tight POV I’m using at the moment (the same as I used for the previous book), probably choose a more traditional POV, one where the main character can have after their dialogue the invisible tag “s/he said.” But I’m not worried so much about that now. The transition, if I do end up making it, will not be as hard as it was for The Darkening. I think I have also figured out which of the first scenes I’ll delete or merge with others, which means the story resonates better with me now, hopefully even more as I keep going. Overall, I’m satisfied, mainly because I feel productive.

I think one of these days, I’m going to have to publicize the board I’ve been using on Pinterest with images related to cyberpunk and the setting as I imagine it. Are you using any such boards or images when writing about another world (those of you who write fantasy or sci-fi)? Perhaps Google street view when you’re writing about places in other countries? I have found this method to be very helpful.

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Lessons learned from Twitter pitch events

If you’ve been following me on twitter, or if you noticed my twitter feed to the right of this page (no, I’m not trying to make you follow me on twitter, but it doesn’t hurt to point out that I do have an account there, does it?), you probably noticed some strange things I posted. They were my pitches for the latest event, #pitmad, organised by Brenda Drake. Have you participated in any twitter pitch recently or in the past? If not, I can tell you they are fun. If you have, then you know it’s heartbreaking not to receive a heart icon (heart icon stands for “favourite,” which means the agent/editor who favoured your pitch wants to see more of your work).

BUT

Through rejection you can pinpoint some of your weaknesses, which in turn means you can improve your skills. For instance, a week or two prior to pitmad, I participated on #p2p16 for a chance to work with an editor for a month before a new round with agents would begin. Two out of the four agents I submitted my work to gave brief but very helpful feedback. They both said the same thing: my query sucked. But they also said another thing about the actual writing, which had me worked up to that moment. They said my sample pages were good. In fact, one of them called my writing “strong with great intensity.” Now, to a new writer like me, these are probably the best words any professional could ever say (yes, I did save that email for the rainy, self-doubting days). But they also pointed out my weakness, which is more important.

I’m not going to lie to you, I was angry at myself for not getting the query right after almost fifteen, if not more, rewrites. In fact, I honestly thought the last version was THE ONE.

Errmm… No! The joke was on me.

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Thanks to p2p16 I now know where I have to focus my efforts. Can you imagine what it would be like to constantly have that nagging feeling at the back of my head that maybe my writing was the one that sucked, which would mean I’d have to rewrite the whole book again? For the fourth time? As much as I don’t mind editing, I don’t think I’d be able to change the entire book again.

Thanks to pitmad I now know my twitter pitches also suck. The good thing is, I don’t fret over it much. Why? Because most people can’t pitch something nice in 140 characters, minus the characters for the hashtags. Likewise, most normal people can’t tell if something’s good or bad from 140 characters of text. I’m in the same boat as everyone. It’s also a small, albeit valuable, taste/lesson of the rejections that are bound to come once I start querying the agents on my list. It helps toughen up in ways that rejections from magazines could never do.

So even though I didn’t make it through to the next round of any of those contests, I still got to gain and learn something.

If you’re interested in participating in any twitter events like the two I mentioned above, have a look at http://carissa-taylor.blogspot.gr/2013/01/contest-madness.html for the dates of some of the upcoming pitching events. It’s not a complete list, so if you have found another one, please share with the rest of us here 🙂