Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Gettin' Close


Got the copy edit notes on Leonard back from Dustin (at last!). The notes are quite manageable so I'm incorporating them as I go through for a "final" polish/content edit. I'm about halfway through the manuscript and am quite happy with how everything's shaping up. The goal is to finish up by this Friday (10/31) then ship it off to Agent S for her perusal. She'll review the changes, then send our boy off to a number of publishing houses who've expressed interest. Keep your fingers crossed.

Nano's looming ever larger on the horizon. I'm simultaneously dreading and salivating over the prospect of starting on Saturday. I think I'm well prepared, but there's really no way to tell until my fingers hit the keys.

In political news, The Novel Project is officially tired of this endless campaign and is looking forward to it going away on Nov. 5th.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Coming Along Nicely

Finished the rough outline for Magic Man and will take the next few days to flesh it out. Ten days to NaNo! As of today, I've got twenty-five chapters. If it's anything like last time, I'm sure I'll discover things along the way and add a few more. The outline itself is a little over six pages.

In a surprising burst of creative energy, I also find myself with a nearly completed proposal for an animated show. The idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while and last week I decided to write a few things down. Amazingly, these "things" kept coming and soon I had enough good ones to organize into a pitch-worthy "mini bible" (5-6 pages). The idea itself is action based with a healthy dose of comedy. At my most delusional, I would hope to compare it to The Incredibles.

I like this idea so much that I've actually convinced myself that I can do both the NaNo challenge and write a spec pilot script for my animation proposal. How insane is that? Very. I still have to squeeze in the "final" polish edit for Leonard that Agent S expects by November. Good grief! That loud scream you'll hear at the end of November will be the sound of pressurized steam escaping out of my ears.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Busy Busy Busy

Well, this has been a very busy week. Commencing info dump in 3, 2, 1...
  • Crack agent's assistant, Dustin, has been doing a copy edit on Leonard. He's going over the manuscript with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to weed out my numerous typos and punctuation errors. That's a lot of work and I'm very grateful he agreed to do it. He hopes to get it to me next week. At that point I'll do one more content edit (character stuff and humor, mostly) before shipping it off to Agent S.
  • Finished a new picture book and sent it off to Editor Liz. I like it and think it will hit the sweet spot for early readers -- silly characters and age appropriate gross out humor.
  • Finished a polish draft on another picture book. Took out every word that absolutely didn't need to be there. I'm very excited about it and, equally as important, so is Agent S.
  • I'm about halfway through a very rough outline for my next NaNo novel. I'm doing brief, four or five sentence descriptions separated by chapter headings. After I'm finished, I'll keep going through it until the end of October -- fleshing it out and filling as many holes as I can find. I'm not a slave to the outline, but it helps calm my pre-Nano jitters to have some idea of where I'm going. I became an avid outliner through working in animation (where it's required) and through my own spec screenplays. I tried the "I'll just start writing and see where it goes" approach a few times only to discover that it usually goes to around p.30 and then stops cold. In my experience, some ideas have the juice to drive a full screenplay (or novel) others don't. Pushing an idea through the outline grinder helps me determine which kind I've got on my hands.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

NaNo 2: Electric Boogaloo


I'm going to give NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) another shot this year. It was such a positive experience for me last time that there's no way I could justify not doing it again. I plan on spending the rest of October writing an outline for my next middle grade novel, Magic Man. Once Nov. 1st rolls around, feel free to visit my NaNo page http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/226809 to see how I'm doing with my goal of reaching 50,000 words by the end of the month. I'll be providing updates here, too.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

End of the Road

Recently got the disappointing news that one of my picture books, Road Trip, will soon be going out of print. Sales, although steady, were not robust enough for my publisher to keep the book in stock. It will be "remaindered" which means that the remaining copies will be sold to volume discounters -- good for you folks who don't like to pay full mark up, bad for us authors who want to earn cash money. ;c)
Thanks to everyone who bought the book while it was still in stock. I really do appreciate your support.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Copy That



Agent S finished the manuscript and had some very nice things to say about it, including:

"The manuscript you sent is quite good. I enjoyed the tone and the character development, the fun and the action. It’s clever and a genuine page-turner."

Why, thank you very much! Agent S is a tell it like it is sort of person who lets you know right away when something isn't working for her -- in other words, her compliments mean something. She gave some relatively minor notes that included backing off on the self-referential humor. Breaking the fourth wall can be a dangerous gamble and apparently I was laying it on thick at some points. In other words, I was being too clever for my own good and needed to have that pointed out.

Another note was that Leonard needs a copy edit (grammar check, typos, punctuation errors, etc.) as she was distracted by writing bloopers throughout the manuscript. This was a vexing note only in that I'd been through the pages a number of times looking for just those kinds of errors. Oh well. Agent S lets me off the hook somewhat by writing:

"It’s impossible for a writer to do this for themselves in a thorough way, as you just know the manuscript much too well to ‘see’ it. "

She advises that I find a journalist, teacher, or editor to do a copy edit so I'm in the process of trying to find one of those who has some spare time. If you happen to know a trustworthy "red pen fanatic" who's up for a challenge, let me know.

All this leads up to Agent S beginning the submission process for Leonard as soon as I get her a cleaned up manuscript. Yahoo!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Info Dump


This isn't going to be pretty but I promised an update, so here goes:


  • Did the rewrite on my chapter book and sent it to my editor two weeks ago. She responded that I was "very speedy" and was looking forward to reading the new draft.

  • Sent "Leonard" to Agent S at the beginning of last month. Followed up a couple of weeks later -- she said she was still reading it and not yet ready to give comments but that the opening was "boffo".

  • Was quietly thrilled that my agent used the word "boffo".

  • Was told by Agent S that I could expect some information on my newest picture book submission "early in the school year."

  • Met with a small animation house that specializes in developing projects from Chinese production entities. Spent an interesting couple of days working up a script sample from a story board they provided. If I get the gig, I'd be helping them develop the shows bible. If the show sells, I'd be the story editor.

  • Kept finding reasons not to return to my screenplay. School just started so it's a little quieter around here and I'm hoping to get my mojo back.

  • Teamed up with an old buddy of mine and came up with a reality show idea that would be simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Positive early feedback from several entertainment entities that apparently like hilarious and disturbing reality shows.

  • Discovered cheesy clip art of an ancient computer of the kind I had in the late 90's and included it in this post.

That is all.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Slight Detour From the Momentary Change of Pace

Taking a brief break from the screenplay to address editor notes on my chapter book. More immediate potential income always trumps longshot potential income when you're self-employed. Screenplay's going well. I'm about ten pages in and like it so far. I'll update on the chapter book after I make the changes.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Organization, Baby!

Finished the outline for my screenplay today. I really like how it all came together and am looking forward to cranking on it starting tomorrow.

I use an outlining program called Dramatica Pro. Outlining programs are somewhat controversial in the biz with a few folks crying foul and saying that it's cheating as the program "writes the story" for you. Not true (and I suspect this claim is made almost exclusively by those who have never used an outlining program).

Here's how it works. You come up with the idea. The outlining program asks you questions to help you flesh it out. Every bit of creative data comes out of your mind and all the program does is help you keep track of it. When finished, I ended up with a groovy six page, thirty-two scene outline that I promptly imported into my script writing program (Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000). Sweet.

Monday, July 7, 2008

It's a Perfect World...Not


In a perfect world this post would be titled "Ha! I Sold It After Only One Submission!" but alas, thanks to that business with the apple in the garden (Eve was setup, I tell ya), it is not.

Therefore, it pains me to report that my picture book editor has passed on Leonard. It's only the first submission so it's no big deal, but it is a tad disappointing. She was very nice about it and gave perfectly reasonable reasons for passing, but the bottom line is that the publishing world is looking for the next Harry Potter and I'm serving up "Ivanhoe with Jokes". As we know, HP had a massively broad appeal (read by boys and girls) but our Leonard is a little more boy-centric -- something I did on purpose. The children's publishing industry frequently laments about how hard it is to get boys to read so, genius that I am, I decided to write something a boy would want to read. Lots of bravery, action, and humor, not so much on the emotional development side of things.

So the quest continues. I just sent the manuscript to the book agent who's shepherding around one of my picture book manuscripts. Hopefully, she can get it into the right hands and I'll be creating a post entitled "Ha! I Sold It After Only (X) Submissions!".

In unrelated yet still painful news...
Thanks to the relentless radio spots for "Mama Mia!", I now have "Dancing Queen" stuck on a permanent loop in my skull. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Momentary Change of Pace

I'm about halfway through the outline for an animated screenplay that I hope to start writing by next week. Set in my favorite world of medieval fantasy, it's got knights, imps, fairies, and an ogre as the hero (the real kind that eats babies, not a gassy one with a cheeky urban sidekick). I'm writing it for a number of reasons. First, I think it's a great story with some fun characters. Second, one of my day jobs is being an animation writer so I need to keep those muscles in shape. Third, I want to keep my writing agents supplied with current material that they can use to get me work. An important side benefit is that a 100 page movie script can serve as a very detailed outline for a novel -- with many of the kinks already worked out. I'm really jonesing to get back to writing novels, but I'm treating this is as a fun and necessary side project.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Hot Links Are Hot Again


A large percentage of my links were not working due to me not paying attention and accidentally adding some extra junk in the URLs. Yes, I'm a dope. An often well-meaning dope, but still a dope. They're functioning now and I recommend that you check them out -- especially if you're interested in improving your writing skills or learning about the business of writing. Special thanks to Mike T. for pointing out the errors.

Friday, May 2, 2008

A Dream for Some...

Well, I did it. "What?" you ask. Allow me to elucidate. I...
  • finished several passes that incorporated J.Z.'s high quality notes
  • did a polish pass (where I still discovered scads of typos and formatting errors!)
  • hunted down any editing debris (highlighted text, bits of cut text I didn't know if I wanted to get rid of yet)
  • ran a spell check (hmm, you mean "smellingly" is not a real word?)
  • wrote a query
  • sent the query to Liz, my excellent picture book editor (yes, I'm extremely fortunate to have a leg up on the slush pile)
  • was greatly relieved when she quickly responded that she'd love to read the manuscript
  • sent off the manuscript

What a terrifyingly exciting moment it was to press that send button.

My goal from the beginning has been to write something I was proud of -- which for me meant a manuscript that was a fun read and was good enough to send to a publisher. I feel I've achieved that goal. What's next? I'll continue to post here on any relevant news but I won't be sitting on my hands, waiting. I plan on taking a week or so off to clear my head. Then I'm going to start work on a screenplay (animated). That should take about a month and then I'm jumping right back into the novel game -- outlining one of the many "middle grade" ideas I have with the idea of completing another novel by the end of the year.

Word count a/o today's submission: 76696

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Hooray For Mistakes

Got the notes from J.Z. and was relieved to see that he's found many a plot hole, typo, logic error, grammatical error, and dead spot -- exactly what you would hope a beta reader would do. I easily agree with 90% of the notes. The remaining ten percent is all minor stuff that has to do with matters of taste -- a suggested line of dialogue that I don't agree with, etc. Overall the notes are very encouraging and I'm excited about putting them into play.

A good beta reader is worth his weight in gold (or in this case, fine cigars and Manhattans).

Third draft word count a/o today: 78588

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Beta Time


Finished the second draft polish and now the manuscript's in the hands of my trusted beta reader, J.Z. My method for this pass was to read it out loud. It takes longer, but this is a good trick for finding things like repeated words and awkward sentence constructs. If it gives you trouble when you read it out loud, the reader will have a tough time with it, too.
Toward the end of the rewrite, my brain was starting to pucker and I would alternate between loving it and hating it. Along those lines I am both looking forward to and dreading his notes (which are always both excellent and useful). Dreading only because I'm so close to the novel that I've lost the ability to tell if it's readable. Isn't that weird? The good thing is that he doesn't hold back if he thinks something's not working. That's the kind of feedback that I need. The bland "oh, it's great" notes given by people that are afraid of hurting your feelings or making you mad are next to useless. I like hearing positive comments, but I love it when holes and mistakes are pointed out as the ultimate goal is to produce a good book that people will enjoy reading. J.Z.'s providing the all-important fresh eyeballs read that will help me avoid an editor's disdain.

Second draft word count a/o today: 77990

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