Turn Ons and Turn Offs

I’ve been thinking about tropes and clichés in writing quite a bit lately, both because of interesting posts I’ve read and because I’m trying to refine my author ‘brand’ (oh how I hate that term). After three rejections of my latest manuscript, I feel like I’m either not hitting the mark or I’m really going off into the writing wilderness. To be clear, I know I’m not writing the 'auto-buy' norm in my genre, so let’s just go with the idea that I’m avoiding the commonplace and blazing my own path. There, that feels better than just being a failure.

I was browsing at the fabulous Worthington Public Library, http://www.worthingtonlibraries.org/  this afternoon and realized it doesn’t take me long to reject a book and about ten times as long to find one to check out. So I can somewhat understand editors evaluating submissions making the same split-second decisions, but I do believe it’s incumbent on these gatekeepers to not offer up the same old storylines and archetypes time after time because they are missing new markets of people like me who avoid them as soon as I read the back cover. So this one goes out to editors, agents, and publishers everywhere; Lynn Rae’s lists of fiction Turn Ons and Turn Offs, since I know they are so desperate for my business.

As soon as I see these words or phrases I put the book down:

-any title with ‘Duke’ in it

-vampires or were-anythings

-billionaires

-a protagonist younger than twenty-five

-‘hiding a secret’, 'scarred', or 'walled-off'

-any allusion to psychological problems that warrant therapy/pharmaceuticals, not the magic cure all of sex and/or tracking down a serial killer

-made-up names with lots of paired vowels, consonants, and apostrophes. Can’t pronounce them in my head and can’t keep track of the characters as I’m reading

-protagonists having a fabulous career in unbelievable ways; cupcake maker, corporate art consultant, self-employed international terrorism expert, cocktail designer. Just no.

-a child in peril

Now that I’ve revealed my curmudgeon tendencies, I’ll lighten the mood and list the terms and topics that make me pick up a book instantly

-natural history. Give me dinosaurs, giant squid, sharks, fungus, viruses, and the genetic modification of any or all and I’m on board

-protagonists with appropriate amounts of self-awareness and life skills

-accurate depictions of small town life

-natural disasters and pandemics (but not most zombie apocalypses because the science is nearly always bad)

-protagonists who make clothing, art, food, or gardens as hobbies

-books set in places I’ve been, if only for me to see if the author can communicate that setting to me

There. Looking this list over, I can see I hit the reject button on about seventy-five percent of popular fiction. Hmm…does that mean I’m too picky or does it mean there are a lot of similar books on those shelves?

Rejected but not Dejected

My manuscript was rejected for publication. That hurt just a little bit to type, but not as much as it would have a few months ago. I didn't even get sad when I read the email, just a bit confused at the contradictory reasons the editor gave. There weren't any concrete criticisms or suggestions that would make it possible for me to even  re-write the thing so I'm not going to bother. It's not worth it because the response was so formulaic I know the editor has zero interest in my work. I can read between the lines and understand exactly where I stand (or don't with that publishing house). And that's okay because I wrote a good story, I wrote it well, and another editor will like it.

I'm like one of those knights, I'm just going to keep waving my sword (manuscript), hold up my shield (faith in my work) and fight again (submit it to someone else).
If anyone's interested in reading an excerpt from my unattached book, leave a comment and it might show up on a future blog post.

Here We Go Again

Isn't that a great picture? I took it last fall on my way to Chichen Itza.  Those are ceramic wall plaques on the most fantastic orange wall. I loved the contrasting colors and repetition.  It reminds me of all the colorful bits and pieces you need when readying something for a submission to a publisher.  Writing the story is one thing, making it fit for an editor to read is quite another.

Look at that, it’s been a  week since I posted.  There’s a reason for that; I’ve been hard at work on my new MS for the April Camp NaNo and revising another manuscript in the hopes of being able to submit it.  I had a pitch with an editor yesterday and she asked to see the whole thing so hopefully all those hours of editing, re-writing, blank stares, sore back, and despair are worth it. And if she isn’t interested, I do understand.  My book isn’t easy to categorize.  It’s a small town sci-fi romance with no space battles or aliens.  My heroine works as a trash recycler. It’s not dystopian or shiny perfect future. People on my world work and get dirty and don’t have many places to shop because the settlement exists to grow food and ship it away to more populated worlds. Definitely not something I could pitch as fitting very neatly into one of their lines. But I’m grateful she’ll at least take a look at it.

So I spent my writing time today doing a massive re-write of the ending (always the most difficult part for me to write), running that spell check AGAIN, and fixing everything on my knock list. Once I did that, I did a little happy dance around the room, drank a cup of tea, and returned to the computer to write up the dreaded synopsis.  Once I completed that, I started in on this blog post because I am done done done until I hit send tomorrow morning.  Or heck, maybe I’ll send it out tonight with a glad heart and return to my current WIP with a clear conscience.  And speaking of quirky Sci-Fi, the story I am writing now takes place on a world made of peat moss, animal-like trees, and a special epiphyte that makes the human brain VERY happy. I love it there and can’t wait to return to it.

From the Caribbean to Deep Space

So that’s a picture of a fan palm.  At least I think it’s a fan palm.  I took that picture last fall on a trip in the Caribbean because I love palms of all sorts. But this palm inspired a biological plot twist in my April Camp NaNoWriMo novel.  For those confused by the acronym, NaNoWriMo refers to National Novel Writing Month which is November.  But for those of us insane enough to want a novel in a month more than once a year, there are mini-celebrations in April and July.  I wrote a pretty decent novel last November that just needs some polishing so I decided to take the plunge again this month.

Because I’ve been doing so much ‘business’ over the last few months (editing, promoting, blogging, etc.), I was starved for something purely creative.  As the germs of my work in progress started to grow in my head and I began to make notes in a composition book which is what I do for every novel I’ve written.  I outline the story, make character studies, and diagram scenes in there.  Sometimes I’ll even write dialogue longhand to get a feel for the characters.  My last contemporary/paranormal buzzed to a halt because both of my main characters were just too, well, repressed, so I decided to indulge myself with a sci-fi effort.

When I write sci-fi, I am able to let go of so much that realism that I think is important when you write contemporary.  With sci-fi I can make up names and places and plants and devices to my heart’s content.  Plus I don’t have to abide by current societal norms.  Just an example of how wild my imagination can get; I am creating a world filled with symbiotic trees that have all sorts of epiphytes living on them.  Intrepid scientists have recently discovered that one of these epiphytes produces a compound that does something magical to human blood chemistry (one guess what that is) and now the race is on for people looking to get rich quick.  It’s sort of like the California gold rush except on a soggy planet very far away.

And this fan palm was the inspiration for the organism that hosts the epiphyte in question.  The waving of the fronds is an important part of the life cycle of the epiphyte.  The sad thing is that I have written pages of notes about the biology of these creatures and I know that hardly any of it will appear in the book.  But it’s my world and it’s safe in my imagination.

Mark Rothko has Themes and so do I

Yesterday we went to see the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art.  It was a very interesting retrospective of his work.  I ended up appreciating his later, more famous pieces after I was able to view his earlier work which the curators hung to allow the viewer see the evolution of some of his trademark themes.

It made me feel better about the themes I keep returning to in my writing.  I thought I was in a rut, but I realize that just like Rothko’s use of horizontal bands, floating backgrounds, and division of an image into parts, my elements of protagonists searching for something missing, men willing to speak their feelings first, and characters having jobs that interfere with their social lives are components of who I am as a writer.  Those are my building blocks and I shouldnt' be afraid to use them to build new tales every chance I get. Now what those themes say about me and my subconscious is anyone’s guess.  Also anyone’s guess is why in every story I’ve written, my female protagonist gets physically hurt.  It’s another common theme for me. Maybe it's just me working through some of my accident-prone anxiety.

In any case, if you are in Columbus, Ohio go see it.

http://www.columbusmuseum.org/blog/exhibition/mark-rothko-the-decisive-decade-1940-1950/

Tri Cars and My Lack of Imagination

Here is some writing/research trivia for you:

Campanga Motors T-Rex Tricar-I don't own copyright for this image but it is cool anyway. I want one. A T-Rex tricar, not a copyrighted image.

So here's the situation.  I am working on re-writes for the second in my series of (so far) three Sci Fi romances.  There is a fourth one but it's not done and I don't like where I've gone after about 60,000 words so I am ignoring its existence right now.  And I'm already planning another Sci Fi romance for my April NaNo book.  The thing is I don't have a contract on any of these books so I want to polish this one very brightly indeed and pitch it to an editor next month.  More on that whole thing later.  Right now I'm talking about research. Ah-hem!

So in my fictional future on my agricultural planet of Sayre, the inhabitants drive tricars. I had a vision of these things before I knew they already existed here on Earth.  In my story they are called carts and I came up with a neato spring-loaded propulsion system for them too.  Not that the propulsion system has factored in any of the stories I have written.  It's just there in the back of my head where the whole planet and everyone and everything on it exists.  My cranium is pretty crowded at this point.  So for inspiration's sake I have managed to find a few that fit the picture in my head.  Like the one above.

My male protagonist, Lazlo Casta, works in Security so he has to drive a patrol model.  The image of that one exists in my head but I am unwilling to spend much time scouring the internet to locate a picture that suits me, so here's a picture of what Lazlo would RATHER be driving:

I don't own the copyright for this one either but it's a pretty lovely looking machine as well.

Lazlo is a big guy, so I'm not sure how he'd fit in there, but I know he'd love to try as long as Del Browen, his love interest is along for the ride.

Now Del is a different sort of person.  She works as a recycler on Sayre and when she can get away, she likes to prospect for interesting minerals in the unsettled areas.  Lazlo has to hire her as a guide and that's how they meet and fall in luuurve.  He's nice, she's grumpy, he's tall, she's short, opposites and all that. So sweet. Anyway, research. Ah-Hem!

So Del can't drive such a super-cool looking cart.  Where would she put the bins of compost and bags of rocks?  So she needs something a little more functional.  Like this;

This isn't my image yet again, so if anyone anywhere objects to me using these, I will of course remove them.

My point is this; even though I think up all sorts of amazing stuff, most of the time someone else has already thought of something quite similar.  My job is to put together all sorts of ideas and themes and images in new ways. And that's hopefully what I've done well enough with these stories that someone else will want to ready them.



Ack! ACK!

All along I had thought that my release date for Bent Boot Road would be some time in March as per my contract.  So I’m working on all this new author/promotion/publishing stuff over the last few months; setting up a website, a blog, editing, writing a new scene and a blurb and a tagline, making arrangements with other newly met authors to be on their blogs to promote, etc.  All the usual overwhelming stuff.  This week as I am working on final edits I start to think I should maybe contact my publisher and see if they have a firm release date so I can include that in whatever I am sending out now.  But I’m busy with writing and bad weather and living my life (which seems to mostly consist of doing laundry and feeding people and animals) and I forgot.

I receive an email this afternoon to look over the final manuscript, write a dedication and bio and to get it back quickly because it WILL BE RELEASED ON FEBRUARY 25!!!!  Triple Ack!!

So look here on Monday to see if I can put in a  real live link to an actual book to actually buy.  Or at least an excerpt.