What to do when things go wrong in a pitch contest

I made a video from the Writing Cave. I talk a little bit about revisions but mostly about Pitch Wars and what to do if you don't get picked for PitchWars.

Good luck, and happy writing!

The “Right” path

I’m still in revision land. I thought I was almost ready for prime time, and then it’s back to rewriting chapter one. The most amazing thing about this book is that every time I get a new idea for it, I get more excited. I remember my other books as being more of a “Oh no, now I have to rework the whole thing, and then proof the whole thing all over again,” feeling. With this book it’s more of a “OMG! Why didn’t I think about that? Curse you driving which doesn’t let me also write at the same time! Why can’t I be typing RIGHT NOW!!!!”

This is an unusual response to my brain monkeys and their ideas (no, they aren’t quite up to flinging poo yet, but they are monkeys, we know where it’s going).

And then right on cue, that little voice spoke.

“What if you already had it right? What if you’re destroying your novel by tinkering too much? What if you had it right the first time, and all of this is just messing it up, destroying your baby?”

Umm yeah. That voice.

First: Shut up stupid voice. I don’t need you and your downtrodden ways.

Second: There is no one right path.

I know, blasphemy, right? Nope, I’m gonna say it again: There is no right path in a novel. There are some stories that are stronger than others, but just imagine if Doc Brown had used a VW Thing instead of a DeLorean for his time machine? I know things wouldn’t have been the same, but I bet the story still would have been good (not to mention the resurgence of the Thing, my personal dream car, in case you’re wondering). Go here if you want tosee a bunch of Things.

(I know they don’t look like much, but they even have a spot to mount an outboard motor on the back… sigh.)

What I’m saying is there is no right path to drive to the grocery store, so why should there be a right path to get to the climax of your novel? Sure the scenery might be better on one road, and another path might be more efficient, but only you know which is most important for your story. Of course, ideally, you want a path with both efficiency an scenery, but that's not always going to happen. So yeah, I’m rewriting the first chapter, then it’s back through for the ripple effects throughout the rest of the story (why is this so much fun? Shouldn’t I be annoyed that I’ve made more work for myself? And seriously, I’m rapidly approaching having rewritten every word in my novel. Silly inefficient process.)

Oh, and little voice in my head? Consider yourself gestured at in a rude fashion by yours truly.

Routine and how it's okay to suck at it

I strive for consistency, but I fail.

I spent weeks gearing up to start revision, and nothing. It’s not writer’s block (something that I don’t really believe in; I mean really? No one ever talks about Sculpter’s block, so why should writers be special like that?). But it was less productive. There were things that I dreaded, so I didn’t start. Once I started, I moved at a slogging, tummy-turning speed. That first day I called myself awesome for making 200 words (go wonder writer!).

The next day it was another 300 words that got me the pat on the back.

Then I turned out 3000 new words, just like that. And since then, I’ve been flying. Of course, it’s a revision, so not everything needed to be rewritten from scratch, but the first 10,000 words are brand spanking new. This is pretty typical for me. Super slow, then super fast.

Getting started was the hardest part. For the beginning, I felt like I’d never get going. I felt like there was no reason to get started. It was like the very idea of working on the project was stupid. I have a Shiny New Idea, surely I should be developing that into a novel instead of wasting my time revising. Does any of this sound familiar? I’m neurotic enough that I know I’ve talked about this before, but sometimes I feel like we have these ideas about how writing should work.

When I draft, I have an idea of how much I should be able to write in a week, a quota if you will. But how I get to those words is a jumble of sprints and flares of note taking, punctuated by long hours of not getting stuff done, doing laundry, and doing the day job. I wish I could say that I really have the discipline to just sit and work, but I don’t. I work hard, and then I don’t. I have stretches of incredible productivity followed by absolutely nothing.

I’ve come to accept this about myself because if you set goals for yourself that you can’t (or don’t) reach, something happens. You get down on yourself, and then it’s harder to make any goals. I know people talk about having a daily quota. I can’t do that, I have to have weekly goals so my goals are flexible enough for me to get lost cleaning out closets or grading exams without going through the I’m-not-getting-work-done crazies.

What works for you, slow and steady wins the race? Or do you take off like the rabbit only to find yourself napping at the end? I always thought it was funny story since they both ended up at the finish line at about the same time…

More Boring talk about my process

I haven’t had a project update in a while.

I spent the first few weeks of revision sort of pretending like maybe I wouldn’t have to actually revise. As in, if I could find enough people who liked my manuscript then I wouldn’t need to fix anything. This is not a productive mindset, in case you were wondering.

What it needed was a rewrite of the first few chapters. So I rewrote them, one sentence at a time. I agonized over the tone and the voice and whether anyone would ever want to read about a frumpy woman who stumbles across something extraordinary. For those of you not familiar with the ordinary character gets sucked into extraordinary circumstances, this is called a portal fantasy. It’s basically the kiss of death. There are numerous agents who say they’ll consider anything except portal fantasy. And worse, it’s actually spec fic. Portal fantasy spec fic.

Sigh. The reason portal stories (a character goes from their everyday normal life through a portal to another world) are the kiss of death is because they are, well, to say the least, boring. They start with an average joe who finds the special book/ring of power/realizes they’re the son of zeus and then the adventure begins.

What’s hard about the portal story is that you have to know a little bit about the character before their choices make sense. Oh, and they’re usually pretty boring because we want them to seem like an everyday sort of person. So imagine trying to pitch a book where the first part is about Joe Nobody who gets lucky enough to find the portal to another dimension/power ring of awesome/suddenly can cast lightning from his nostrils. It’s like trying to sell ice to the Inuits, agents don’t want it, don’t need it, and they have it coming out their ears.  

A lot rides on the first couple of chapters. That means pressure. Pressure means I write like zoo dirt (it’s nasty stuff), and I know it. I hemmed and hawed over my first three chapters. I rewrote them. I rewrote them again. For fun, I gave it one more stab. That’s the hard part of revision, knowing where the most scrutiny will be, and floundering through a revision because of it.

But now I’m in the part of the revision that’s all butterflies and rainbows. It’s the part that I love (I love writing action and anything that should be accompanied by the Bhum Bom Baaah! sound effect).

How about you, are you a portal story fan, or does the stink coming off portal stories make your nose hairs curl? (Don’t worry, I won’t tell the literary luminaries if you like portal stories, and I won’t blame you if you hate them—I’ve read some stinkers in my day too)

Revisions

Funny thing about good feedback, it’s always naggingly similar to what you were already worried about. Okay, well, good feedback is, but not so good feedback lights up the OMG CRAZY alert. So I have this manuscript… Oh, you’ve heard this one before?

And you’ve heard how the intrepid writer says “Krakatoa! How could I have not seen that flaw in my manuscript before????!!!”

Right, well, I’m not here to talk about that, because it’s pretty simple: Either you’ve felt that way, or you haven’t been letting other people read your manuscripts long enough to have had it. I’m not dissing the young writers out there, I’m just letting y’all know about an experience that’s coming your way, whether you’ve just finished your first or your tenth novel, whether you’re unpublished or a NYT bestseller, you are going to have this experience. If you haven't had this feeling, make a note in your calender: it's coming.

Today I’m going to talk about courage.

I don’t have much. In fact, I’ve called myself a coward before (you can read about it here) and I have to say, I haven’t had a single experience to convince me that I qualify for any courage medals. So imagine my surprise when I realized that what I needed to make a particular change in my manuscript was courage.

Yeah, heavy. I had something that was a crutch. It was something that would come out in the first ten pages or so, but I’d stated it—bold as moonlight—in the very first paragraph. The concern: cut it and I’d have readers who didn’t have a clue about what was going on. Keep it, and I’d have every lit. agent rolling their eyes at the demi prologue.

It was when I realized I was using it as a crutch to kick my readers in the gut that I knew it was time to cut it. Sigh, so I took the plunge, held my nose and cut.

So, have you needed to be courageous lately?

I had a post...

... but my good senses told me not to post it.

I whined

I vacillated on whether to rewrite, revise, or shelve my current project.

I tried to be deep and philosophical.

Lucky for all of us, I realized I'm just a writer going through the normal crazies, and no one needs to hear my ramblings.

But now I'm really curious about something:

So often, I see people going on about how they worked on the same book for a coon's age. revising, rewriting, retrying, the whole nine yards, and I want to know: How do they do that?

Am I defective because I'd really like to move on to the next project? Am I lacking in some integral brain warping gene that lets people tread the same ground over and over again, 'cause I'm not gonna lie, my dissertation was rewritten four times, and I don't know that I could do a full top to bottom rewrite of a novel four times. I'd be ready to pack it in and get on the next train, go see the next SNI in action.

That's why I decided not to make any decisions about my Query Bait. Maybe a little bit of time  away from it will make it look less like the murky flood waters of ramble land, and more like a fixable problem.

So I ask, How do you keep going when your manuscript is starting to look like the cheap parlor trick you suspect it is?