Category: writing

Agent Submissions

I wish agents submitted to my will, but they’re impressively resilient.

That’s not what I’m writing ’bout, as you know. I’m addressin’ the other sort of submissions, the one that requires you to send agents your writing, seeking a pinkiehold on the path to traditional publishing, which, as we all know, also brings us fame, fortune, and immunity from ever doubting ourselves again.

Right?

As I’ve refined my submission process in this go-around, I’ve come to think of it as job-hunting. Instead of a novel or proposal, you’re submitting a resume when you’re job hunting.

They have other similarities.

You peruse every source you find for potential places to submit.

You submit as much as you can.

You wait and hope for positive responses.

You keep going until you’ve signed somewhere.

What ’bout you? How’d you approach it?

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This Phase

I began a new novel project at the beginning of the new year, April Showers 1921. I’m in the exploratory phase. While the character, story, and its cover popped up in a dream, and I can see it and hear the characters and story, sometimes ‘watching it’ like I’m seeing it on a television or movie screen. Then I’m scrambling to capture all the details, translate them to words, get the order right, and get it on paper.

It’s difficult. The pace is fast and relentless. My brain power lacks the capacity to absorb it.  Stopping to do and enjoy other things is hard because novel scenes are always popping out. Details spring into mind in the middle of conversations with other people. When I’m in an actual writing session and everything is channeled into a coherent order, the inexorable flow quickens. The faucet is opened but I have no control over the volume that pours into me. Becoming intense and exciting, I fall behind again, forcing me to break off and pace to regain control, take a deep breath, and go at it again.

I also want to jump ahead to learn more about the villains. They intrigue me, but my muses are being coy about them. They offer tantalizing glimpses but won’t let me see the whole thing yet.

Yeah, weird, but it’s my process. If I could, I’d just stay here with this novel, hour after hour, watching, listening, shaping and writing. I’d probably deprive myself of sleep and exercise, but not coffee, water, and food – a man needs to know his limitations.

I remind myself of my basic writing approach.

  1. Discipline: write every day.
  2. Patience: it’ll all come. Just keep writing.
  3. Persist: stay with the story and keep moving it forward.
  4. Write like crazy: capture what I can as I can, and then edit, polish, revise, and re-order scenes and paragraphs as necessary.
  5. Finish. The goal isn’t just to write but to tell a story in a novel.

These sessions leave me spent, as you can probably understand. I vex others because most energy is being diverted into writing this novel while I submit my last finished work to agents in search of publication.

The coffee shop is closing, and they’re kicking us out. It’s their usual Sunday thing. Done writing like crazy, at least for now.

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Next

You’ve slip into another life, putting on their skins. You pick up on their words. Their thoughts and feelings float into you. You begin to appreciate who they are.

Surroundings emerge. The plot rises. Events become clearer with a sudden squirt. You’ve followed paths that you didn’t know existed. They twist into surprising turns. The characters become deeper than you’d known. Sharper edges develop on their worlds. Their love and pain quickens as their direction grows crisper.

You walk with them, feeling it all, wanting to cry, and sometimes laughing, standing aside as you witness their existence and embrace them. Insights into their relationships develop stronger pulses. Typing and thinking, picking through words, you strive to keep up the best that you can. Their lives and times overpowers yours, and then, you stop for the day and think with a soft, private sigh, I miss them.

And you wonder, will they be okay? What’s going to happen to them?

What’s going to happen?

You think you should know because you’re the writer, the artist behind these ideas, but really, you’re just transcribing. It’s all going on whether you write it down or not.

That’s what happens when you write like crazy.

 

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