They're bloody hard to write, aren't they? And, with Miss Snark no longer venting her spleen upon all and sundry I have no-one else to turn to for help and advice except all of you wonderful people on the Intarwub.

So, after the cut, I've put the text of the query letter I want to use in my initial subs to agents/publishers/random people on the street who may have read a book at one time. What do you think?

( If you can be arsed, that is... )

Any words of wisdom are gladly received!

For the last few days I've been kind of blocked with my writing. I knew what I wanted to write (it's an addition to the end of the book that I figured was necessary), but I was opening up the document, looking at it and going 'urgh'. I just didn't have it in me to write anything.

However, coming into work this morning (on the Metro, I'm also not in the mood to cycle at the moment. Can you see a pattern forming?) I came up with the opening line of the bit. (Bit? Segment? Excerpt? Section? Bit.) It's partly due to going to Simon Morden's launch for his book The Lost Art last night. One of the questions was about what to do when stuck. To which the reply was to quote from Raymond Chandler: "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand". Simon said big explosions were equally good for breaking deadlocks. So, my opening sentence for this bit is: "Paré burned". And then I got 996 words to follow it. And they're pretty good, I think. I've got one more bit to write and then I need to re-write the end, and I think I know what I'm doing for both of them.

By the way, Simon's book seems to be rather good - I'm only about 10 pages into it, but they're a good ten pages. And it starts with a big explosion and a fire. And my copy was the first one he signed! Yay! That'll make it worth something when he's rich and famous! And, if I'm rich and famous at the same time, it'll make it worth even more, 'cos it's coming out of my own personal library...

And, I've succumbed. I'm on Facebook now. If you know my real name, you can find me under that. If you want to know, ask me and I'll tell you... Although I haven't yet worked out what use it is. Especially considering I've just deleted my Myspace account.

Well, I've come to the end of the story for the third time! I've completed this round of editing and I'm actually ready for other people to read it. I think. Well, whatever, it's going to them now. (Or will be when I've finished writing this entry.) I have to say, I actually enjoyed it. I think it works as a book and it's as good as I can make it at the moment. Hopefully when I get feedback from my readers I'll be able to make it even better. Actually, hopefully, the feedback will be 'No, it's perfect, you don't need to change a single thing and eveyone in the entire world will want a copy'. And for that to be true. But, anyway, I'm done.


So. What now?

I started writing this last night before I went home from work but got called away at the very last minute (almost literally!) to come and do a little bit of y'know... real work. So I'll finish it this morning and post it before posting what I actually intended writing about this morning.

The end of the working day is rapidly approaching and I'm off home in about ten minutes. This afternoon, though, I've been working on Down Among the Yla. I finished going through the manuscript yesterday and today I've started working my way through the 'lectric version, making the changes there that I had decided on in the paper version and, inevitably, adding more as I go along. I'm getting through it pretty quickly and I think I'm looking at getting it done by the end of the week. Assuming that no-one asks me to do anything silly like actually work or something, you know?

And, far from managing 750 words today, I've (this is as far as I got last night. Mid-sentence! I ask you. What is the world coming to?) actually cut about ten pages. However, it was ten pages that really needed cutting. Totally unnecessary stuff. In a strange way, it felt good to cut it.

That would be a no, there, really. Although, having said that, I've gone through another sixty or so pages and got to the end of part two. I have something like another hundred or so pages to go through and then I'll have to start on the actual re-write bit. Does it still count as editing if you just write next to a bit 'rewrite'?

The section I went through today is where the majority of business with the character I've decided to dispense with lies. And, apart from about seven or eight pages he never really got into the action at all, disappearing for pages at a time with no discernible lack of anything. I think that this has proven to me that he was a pointless addition and, hopefully, his death will be more interesting than his continuing life ever was. The only bit where he actually had a role was when Vivienne sent him out to do some scouting around for her. And I've worked out how to change that so I still get the same result in the end anyway and nothing much really changes.

I'm quite glad about that, really because I had this impression that he was there more than he actually turned out to be and it was going to take a lot more work to get rid of him than it turns out to be.

I've been editing. I figured that this was as good a use of my time as anything else. And I've caught up with all the posts on my friends list.

I've done another fifty or so pages so far and I think I may go back and do some more. I've made a few major changes - the speech patterns of one character has been pretty radically changed and I've killed off the character that I originally had as the third member of the group but who quickly became utterly useless. He only really lasted about 100 pages before disappearing anyway, so it's not going to be that much of a hardship editing him out entirely. Probably.

And I found a few extraneous apostrophes that managed to sneak in there. I have no doubt that shewhomust and desperance will find several more. Not to mention all those commas that I tend to litter my writing with. Although there are fewer ellipses in my fiction writing than in my blogging. Fewer. But still some...

I managed to remember my MS today, so I've started to edit it. So far there are bits and pieces that need fiddling with (some of it dialogue, some of it descriptive and a chapter break.)

It's going to take a while to do and then I will actually have to go and put the changes into the manuscript itself. Hopefully, I'll get most of it done over the Christmas break.

I forgot to bring my MS with me to work today. I printed it all out this weekend and everything. I briefly thought of editing directly on the screen but decided against it for various reasons that I can't be bothered to write about.

It's a big chunk of paper, mind you. I mean, obviously, 330 pages, you know it's a lot, but actually seeing it printed out and knowing that it's full of words that I wrote. Well, it made me proud of myself. Hope I can keep that feeling going as I work through it.
( Working through ideas about the dialogue in Ylahyem )