K.A. Wiggins's Blog, page 17

Book Geek Time aka Queries Round 1

Geek writing/publishing craft time: basically my first day after deciding to join this year���s Pitchwars, I won a (luck-of-the-draw) query critique from the amazing Alicia Clancy! Alicia���s an Assistant Editor at St. Martin���s Press, Pitchwars mentor for the YA group and happens to be on my on my shortlist of mentors to sub to, so score! But then I had to scramble to actually write a query and synopsis lol. I���ll post Alicia���s version first, a few notes on how it works better, and then my original last for reference if anyone wants to get that geeky with it!

In a world where hope kills and dreams are deadly, obedience is the only way to survive. But seventeen-year-old Cole isn���t like the rest of her authoritarian state Refuge���s citizens���no matter how hard she tries, she simply cannot follow the rules. being haunted by a ghost named Cadence certainly doesn���t help her situation.

When Cole once again fails her probation, Refuge abandons her to the Mara���nightmares that devour the disobedient. But with Cadence on her side, Cole flees her oppressive state, and falls into the hands of a Freedom rebel group. Ravel, the group���s charismatic leader, brings Cole into their underground world and their mission to topple Refuge���s control.

But Cole finds herself distracted by visions���visions of a silver-shrouded boy taking on the Mara. A boy that Cadence seems to know. And when people started dying in more than just her visions, Cole must risk her hard-won status, her home, and maybe even her life to expose the truth���that her society���s absolute control and guarantee of safety are both illusions���and that it���s up to them to defeat the Mara.

Combining the flawed, challenging voice of PLACES NO ONE KNOWS with the supernatural chills of ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD and the dark fantasy dystopia of THIS SAVAGE SONG, my debut novel BLIND THE EYES is ultimately a story about a girl who���s terrified of never being good enough and the lengths she will go to overcome that fear.

(Add in a 1-3 sentence author bio here)

So. For one thing, I obviously forgot to put in wordcount (shame) and skipped the bio paragraph entirely.

I���ve actually been using that first line forever, but one of the Pitchwars mentors made a point of saying how you should lead with the main character, so I pushed it to the extended syopsis. Love that Alicia brought it back to the forefront!

Another thing she does is really bring a more colloquial (younger) voice to it. I was really focused on trying to write tight and brief, to the exclusion of voice, so while the tone feels a bit off to me (because now it���s someone else���s voice, lol), it definitely gives me a push to make sure not to strip out all the tone from my queries.

And finally, Alicia really tweaked the focus on action and motivation. It got a little too far from the actual plot (which she���s never read, so of course,) but gives me a good push to both be clearer on what���s actually happening in the story and forefront motivation and stakes in my final query letter. Stay tuned for future updates, since I���m working with my editor on queries right now (see ���hooks��� post) and will post further revisions/finals!

& Here���s my rough first version for the super geeks in the room!

Dear Alicia,

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this - I was so surprised to win the query critique after last night���s live video! It���s the first time I���ve really worked on query materials, so thanks for the motivation to get it together and start polishing.

Seventeen-year-old Cole hides a dangerous obsession with death from the repressive, authoritarian tower-state Refuge and Cadence, the ghost who haunts her. Cole has failed to obey in the past; if she can���t pass probation this time, Refuge will abandon her to be devoured by the nightmarish Mara.When Cole flunks her trial, she discovers Refuge has been lying all along. Obedience to the state never guaranteed safety from the Mara.

Fleeing, she finds an ally in the charismatic leader of the underground club and rebel enclave, Freedom. Ravel offers the power to expose Refuge���s lies - along with a hedonistic new way of life. But as Cole struggles to fit in and earn Ravel���s help, she finds herself drawn into visions of death - and to the silver-shrouded boy in them who fights back against the Mara, a boy Cadence claims to remember from her former life. In the waking world, Ravel is more focused on transforming Cole into his ideal consort than toppling Refuge���s control - and people are dying in more than just Cole���s visions.

BLIND THE EYES combines the flawed and challenging voices of PLACES NO ONE KNOWS with the supernatural chills of ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD and the dark fantasy dystopia of THIS SAVAGE SONG in a debut novel about a girl who���s terrified of never being good enough.

Best,

K.A. Wiggins

kaie.web@gmail.com
https://kaie.space

Synopsis follows:

In a world where hope kills and dreams are deadly, obedience is the only way to survive. But when one girl learns her society���s absolute control and guarantee of safety are both illusions, she risks her hard-won status, her home and her life to rebel and expose its lies.

Probationary surveillance technician Cole is determined to cast off her reputation as a failure and pass probation in the ascetic, totalitarian tower-state Refuge. If she fails, she���ll be abandoned to the Mara, the nightmares that devour disobedient workers. But to be accepted, she���ll have to suppress her forbidden obsession with the dead, hiding it even from the ghost who haunts her, Cadence.

Cole���s fascination with death torpedoes her probationary trial when she touches a corpse and witnesses a vision of its final moments. Trying to hide her failure, she discovers Refuge has been lying; its endless regulations can���t protect anyone from the deadly Mara. Cole flees Refuge enforcers and follows the ghost Cadence to allies who will help her expose Refuge���s lies, recognizing that no one will ever listen to or follow a failure like Cole. But Cadence lied; there are no allies, and Cole is nearly taken by the Mara instead.

Cole turns to Ravel, leader of an underground club and rebel movement. He teaches her to reject Refuge���s programming. She struggles to earn acceptance in his alien society while suffering visions of Mara attacks. She���s drawn to the silver boy who fights back in the visions, Ash. Cadence claims to know him. When Cole tells Ravel of the visions, and the ghost who haunts her, Ravel blames them on Cadence. But Cole discovers Ravel���s rebellion is restricted to preaching radical self-indulgence. He has no plan to expose Refuge���s lies and abuse. Worse, the illusion of safety Ravel provides is based on a tithe of human sacrifice to the Mara.

Then the Mara attack in the waking world and Cole discovers Cadence isn���t the one lying; Ravel is. The visions are real. Cole finally chooses to stop looking for a leader to follow and fight on her own. She infiltrates Refuge to help Ash. Interrupted mid-mission by another Mara attack, Cole fights back with powers like Ash���s, powers Cadence claims Cole has been absorbing from her. Cole���s secret obsession with the dead has been a side effect of Cadence���s haunting and Cole���s growing powers. Captured by Refuge after the fight and high on her recent success, Cole tricks an enforcer, sneaks off and contacts Ash. She selfishly demands Ash join her mission instead of heading to his location. But the enforcer was watching all along, and shoots Ash on arrival. Ravel kidnaps Cole and drugs her to keep her docile. Cole realizes her priority has never really been on saving people, but rather taking revenge on the system that made her feel like a failure. Cole overcomes the drugs and her guilt-ridden despondency when she discovers Ash survived and sets off to rescue him from torture and execution.

When Ash���s escape is threatened, Cole sacrifices her own safety and hopes for acceptance to turn back and distract the pursuing enforcer. She uses her newfound powers to catch the enforcer in a Mara attack. But the enforcer is possessed by the Mara and Cole loses control of the fight. Then Cadence reveals a truth she���s only just realized herself; the ghost Cadence is what remains of Cole���s own memories and identity before Refuge captured her and wiped them. Cadence helps Cole recognizes her past failures and flaws as strengths that keep the Mara from twisting her hopes and dreams and devouring her. Teaming up with this part of herself she never knew she���d lost and owning her desires and wants, Cole defeats the Mara.

Cole is reunited with Ash, who helps her accept her fragmented self. He affirms her broken and flawed identity as Cole seeks healing and her lost memories while struggling with the implications of Cadence���s separate existence. Ash commits to partnering with Cole and breaking Refuge and Ravel���s abuses to free the people and save them from the Mara. Their journey isn���t over, but Cole has overcome her programming and learned to choose her own path and fight back. Series potential; could be tweaked to show an ultimate defeat of the Mara and destabilization of Ravel���s rule and Refuge���s supremacy for standalone publishing.

Day 221

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on Jul 26, 2017 at 8:16pm PDT

News to no one, but yeah, definitely falling behind due to my Twitter addiction and obsession with everything #pitchwars right now. Which, I mean, priorities I guess? ���Cause technically BtE is in pretty good shape and the best thing I can do right now is widen my community/audience/reach and get all the query and pitch material shined up, but it���s eating at me that I might not get the rewrites I want to done in time. I mean, not enough to actually motivate me to prioritize them, but��� lol.

I agreed to cat sit for someone next week, before all this, and now I���m deeply regretting it, as they only wanted daytime but they���re an hours walk away or !40m by bus because local transit sucks and I���d spend 1/3 of what I���ll bring in on it just on the bus rides each day b/c it���s not overnight and why did I agree to this? So I have to go over there tonight and do the whole meet n greet orientation thing and I���m just annoyed that it���s taking away from writing/revising/Twitter time (but really: I said yes b/c it���d force me to actually go outside on a regular basis��� plus spare change.)

Drowning under the flood of resources Pitchwars is stirring up, including a SUPER depressing one on how you should really only expect to get offered around $10-$20 for your book and even if you���re super lucky and get 6 figures for a two book deal it breaks down to about $20k/year. Which, I mean, I did know and it���s part of why I was moving towards the whole indie publishing thing, but still, the details had thankfully faded in my mind and I was having fantasies of my future actually working out, lol. It really is a super crowded field; my TBR pile is as long as all the books I���ve marked done on Goodreads and only getting longer (1k+) with amazing sounding stories, so I can see how it���s a stretch for everyone to get paid, but it���s pretty insane when compared to the amount of work put in. Justine Larbaleister had a thread about how working writers should get businesslike with it and stop bleeding onto the page, but I can���t imagine cranking out material so cynically (not to mention productively.)

Anyways, got the first draft hooks and comp titles off to my editor yesterday, and she hasn���t chucked ���em back, so I���m gonna take advantage of the couple hours I can grab to dive back in on rewrites!

Thursday

Start Time: 2:15 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; chair

Day 220

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on Jul 24, 2017 at 6:56pm PDT

Huh. That was interesting. So I got back my first query critique from the #pitchwars pre-competition micro contest. The mentor who offered it is an assistant editor at a big 5 publisher.

It was��� really different than I expected, so I guess probably my business background has been showing too much, ���cause she tweaked things to sound quite a bit younger and less��� polished? Direct? More, like, conversational or something. Which is probably more YA. She did push the hook that I���ve been using to the front again after I���d buried it in the extended synopsis b/c one of the #askmentor comments was that the letter should frontline your MC, so that was a plus. And in hindsight, it���s probably not surprising that she shifted it all around to feature more of the character���s journey at the forefront. So, lots to think about on it and clearly lots of revisions in my future, lol.

It���ll be really interesting to see where my editor comes out on things now that I���ve booked a query package with her - and I should probably post it to the #pitchwars forums as well to collect any other feedback. Frustratingly, the whole thing seems to be a lot like sending a book draft out to readers; conflicting feedback b/c everyone has different preferences, and you have to piece it apart to see if you can find what���s not working at the heart of the comments, lol. But everyone has pointed out that this whole process is hard, so it���s all to be expected.

I���m having trouble prioritizing and making progress between social media (so addicted to Twitter) and Pitchwars and rewrites and life��� I mean, I could basically be on Twitter all day, just learning and interacting with the massive writer community there, and then Pitchwars posted a forum where you can give and get feedback on genre-specifics, and I also need to scour the blogs, tweets and comments of all the mentors to find which ones to submit to and then start interacting with them���

On the work front, I���m definitely trying to protect my time and get at least a few hours in of uninterrupted writing sprints a day, but probably shifting gears from prioritizing the rewrites to getting the query material done first, maybe with a split of daily work between the two, in case I can���t get through both in the next��� whoa. Week and a half. Yikes! And my editor���s booking up into next year, so I should really be scheduling stuff for book 2, but without any sales or even a sense of whether I can afford to keep doing this from a financial or a time perspective, it���s hard to make that commitment right now��� Probably gonna myopically focus on what���s right in front of me in order not to get sidetracked! And on that note, the author that was in touch wanting a sequel audiobook produced responded with sales from the first audiobook and��� yeah, I just really think there���s no way I���d make any money on it. Like, maybe $5 for a month���s work, lol. So I should probably get back to her and say no, but��� if it pads out my experience and gets me more work in general, will it be worth it? Possibly? There���s so many things like that right now, where I could gamble on them paying off down the line, but then they take away from investing in anything that would pay off sooner, so��� yeah, lots to think about! But I���m not gonna because whee! time to revise and get some work done!!

Part 2

Right, so I���ve got a handful of loglines/hooks worked out for my editor to review, on to comp. titles! Which is both harder and easier than it sounds; I���ve got a long list of authors and books I���d like it to be like��� whether it is or not is another question, lol. Tweeted out the hooks for opinions too, and I tried a FB live video by hated it & deleted immediately so no exposure via that route. Getting so, so addicted to Twitter. Also need to get back to my editor re: next book editing slots for next year; I hadn���t realized you book the first full edit at the same time, and I have no idea when I can be read for that!! But anyways, I need to power through and get some actual rewrites in today!!!

Revision notes: Need to set up the alien idea of friendship earlier between Cole and Cadence. Then have her push against it, reconcile to it, transfer it to others. Demonstrates her innocence or cluelessness when it comes to relationships and human interaction.

Wednesday

Start Time: 10 am & 2:45 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; chair

Drinking: water & Yorkshire black tea with milk

Pitchwars 2017

Oh man, news, news, and more news you guys! I was trying to save it all up to release by newsletter first ���cause I need motivation to keep up with that, but the thing with news is that you���re too busy doing newsworthy things to have time to shout about it! ���and THAT doesn���t sound arrogant at all, lol. But moving on���

So I got final edits back from the amazing Lisa Poisso, which turned out to be a gracious and generous blend of Substantive and Line Edits ���cause I couldn���t make up my mind about what I was asking for. Still some tuning up to do, but overall the manuscript is in amazing shape and I���m already working on the early stages of query materials with her��� and then this happened.

Pitchwars. It���s a (mostly) Twitter contest to polish and submit your manuscript. In the first round you submit to industry insiders like published authors, editorial assistants etc. If one picks you, you have two months to work with them on refining your book and query materials, and then there���s the agent round. If magic happens, you get an agent! At the very least, it���s a great way to make connections and learn a ton - which I have. For instance: apparently BLIND THE EYES is Urban Fantasy, not paranormal or horror or dystopian or dark fantasy or all the various other things I���ve stumbled around thinking it was. Who knew?

Anyways, while it���s slowing down my final revisions (though, lol, we all knew they were going to take me longer than I expected because OF COURSE), I���m super excited to be participating in Pitchwars this year and getting BtE in even better shape for publication in whatever form that looks like! So, no newsletter this month, but I���m being hyperactive on Twitter & IG, so go ahead and follow me there instead. :)

Day 219

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on Jul 22, 2017 at 6:34pm PDT

Wow that happened fast. So I decided I definitely should enter #pitchwars and participated in my first Twitter Live event where the YA mentors did sort of Q&A, and then in post-event questions ended up winning a query critique. Which is awesome because already I���m building connections and exposure and getting help and all that good stuff, but��� now I really need to write/rewrite a query, which kind of sucks timing-wise, because I���m paying my editor to help me with it too, but in, like, a week or two. However! This is all moving in the right direction, so yay! And I now have so much work/deadlines that I���ll have to force myself to be more productive again, so bleh & yay at the same time!

Rewriting yesterday was good in the sense that I actually did some, and terrible in that I���m moving through the manuscript slow as mud. So again, pushing for more hours and more progress will be the main target for this next two week stretch. Today���s plan: draft up some sort of query to send for early review. Then solve the plot holes around eavesdropping and switch gears to do the condensing of early chapters in case someone asks to see them!

Part 2

Drinking: Yorkshire black tea with milk

Ugh, so that took forever. 2 hours of research and rewrites and I���m STILL not sure if my query letter works or not - but I think I���m picking up on a bit more than I did before, and thank goodness I actually have quite a lot of support through this part of the process between my editor & #pitchwars, so yay! Now to do the extended synopsis, and hopefully actually complete some novel rewrites at some point!

Tuesday

Start Time: 10 am & 2 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; chair

Drinking: water & Yorkshire black tea with milk

Day 218

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on Jul 21, 2017 at 6:42pm PDT

Getting started considerably later than I meant to today, but TWITTER, lol. It���s hard to balance author platform early marketing stuff with, like, accomplishing anything else in a day - I pretty much just flitted from FB to Twitter to IG back to Twitter to Goodreads to FB to more Twitter, and then more and more and and and��� yeah. So #pitchwars is coming up and I���m 98% committed to diving into that wormhole. The 2% concern is that if I don���t tone down the social media and other distractions, I���ll never actually finish rewrites in time. And I���ll probably simultaneously query agents during the process. And it could drag things out a fair bit longer, but! It seems to be a great way to build connections within the YA community and be part of the sort of cohort and critique partnerships that all the YA stars seem to be in, not to mention if it actually contributes to a better book and/or getting an agent, that���s a definite plus. The major downsides being, more opinions mean more changes mean more rewrites mean more angsting and time spent and deadlines pushed and��� I���m possibly not enthusiastic/outspoken/interactive/social enough for the whole thing. IDK, I mean, everyone has a digital persona, so I���m probably ok, but I definitely feel insecure about the social aspect of being a YA writer and being engaging/exciting/fun/funny enough��� but yeah, like with any career there���s the stuff you���re sure you���ll suck at that you have to do anyways, so here we go!

On a writing note, if I can just master my schedule a bit (a lot) better, I���ve regained quite a bit of confidence for the actual rewriting. I don���t agree with the ���write every day��� maxim; it���s too absolute, rigid, and in my mind, unhealthy, but��� too long away from writing, and I forget that I can actually, you know, do it. So getting in there and back at it tends to be a tough hurdle to cross, but really affirming and encouraging once I push through. And while there���s a lot to integrate at every stage of editing and rewrites, it���s pretty cool to have the tools to take another pass and improve. One of the bigger problems for me being that I can���t resist tangling my fingers all up in the entire draft again! This is the first time I���ve really tried to spot target different sections, and while it���s good practice for zapping out big plot stuff that needs to be resolved, I���m almost certain that I���ll be sifting down to a word-by-word, line-by-line rewrite before this is all through. Super hard to get an objective view when you���re down mucking around in the language though, so I���ll do what I can to be strategic!

Monday

Start Time: 8 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: water

Day 217

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on Jun 29, 2017 at 12:21pm PDT

Still working through renaming and sidling up to the larger changes, lol. Lots going on in the real world; major fires in the interior and some family members getting new jobs, which may or may not mean lots of change in my world over the next little while. Allergies aren���t so bad today, though, so that���s a plus! I need to get this month���s newsletter written up and do a bit of a push on IG, my FB Beta group, and a proper news blog post ���cause otherwise these journal entries end up being the world���s most boring, worst written blog, lol, but also it all contributes to general procrastination and not moving BtE forward, so��� yeah. Priorities.

Been more involved on Twitter lately, which I enjoy the most out of the various channels, but which is also the most inflammatory (closely followed by FB comments section!) Particularly concerned about discourse issues lately; seems to be a lot of hyper ���woke��� peeps out there railing against authors for failing various litmus tests, and it���s getting so they seem just as bigoted as the original hyper conservative crowd. Writing���s hard, kids. Seeing your own prejudice and breaking out of the lanes the whole industry���s been running in (and you���ve been familiarized with/reading in) your whole life is hard. Getting published and/or getting anyone to read your book is hard. Which isn���t to excuse bad behaviour or bad content, but generally empathy and understanding work toward change more than accusations and attacks. Want to see more #ownvoices diverse authors and stories? That���s awesome, but maybe don���t go around screaming at authors for not going far enough (oh, dark skin but no ethnic backstory? shame!!) and recognize that there are a lot of ���privileged��� white authors too that aren���t making a living and are desperate to even get a ghost of a career out of their work. I understand that anger is a big part of discrimination (um, woman in business?), but it really looks terrible when the strongest voices on attack are white kids too; like it���s one thing to get upset over your friend���s raw treatment, but don���t go making things worse for them out of your own privileged sense of outrage. Keep discourse open, help people learn, don���t shame them for ignorance. And respect that your opinion isn���t necessarily truth whether or not society applauds you for it at the moment. Also it seems offensive that the push for racial equality and diversity has so quickly been coopted for gender/identity/sexuality diversity - like, I understand if you feel like you got a raw deal within your lifetime, but that���s not the same as multi-generational disadvantages and discrimination. Especially with orientation, you may not feel like you should have to hide your preferences to be treated equally, but that entirely discounts that you have the remarkable privilege of being able to, where the instant, long-standing discrimination towards visible minorities is something they have no capacity to opt out of or put on hold, whether or not they���d be willing to make that sacrifice.

I dunno, for the most part I don���t want to get into the unending battle royale of this stuff online, but on the other hand it gets scary when you look at the way America���s headed and see extremist behaviours and a lack of true seeking to understand on both sides of the equation��� I get that you���ll be creamed for proposing a ���moderate��� voice, and I���m kind of a crusader by nature, but really, seems like we all need to be reminded that it���s both ok to disagree and fight for what you believe in, while at the same time required not to just try to obliterate your opponent. Seems like there���s quite a bit of historical precedent for letting both sides keep some dignity in the fight, for one thing��� #worldhistory

Anyways, today���s project: deal with naming conventions/renaming for Refuge costuming sp. uniform, headbands, hood & mask. Justification? Binding? Trade? Sub? ���brainstorm, lol. And then maybe actually do the bigger rewrites like I desperately need to���

Friday

Start Time: 2 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: water

Day 216

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on May 5, 2017 at 12:04pm PDT

Probably gonna end up pushing this deadline as well; it takes a surprising amount of time to do even simple things like find>replace updated names/terms, of which there seem to be an increasing number, and I could stand to put more time in tbh. The flip side of that is that time away from the computer triggers the creative problem solving side of my brain, so my subconscious can worry away at all the little issues that need to be ironed over and come up with brilliant solutions (lol) that I���d never be able to brute-force my way to. ���Course then I have to actually plant my butt and do the work, but hey, one thing at a time. Spoilery revelation for today:

Move overhearing Morristu being abducted to an encounter at the bottom of the stairs; Morristu covers for Cole to escape (background, Ange was trying to reach Morriswan and that���s why she���s available to help Cole. Confused at first - wasn���t paying attention to the code on her uniform?

Thursday

Start Time: 7:30 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: water

Day 215

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on May 22, 2017 at 6:45pm PDT

So my major accomplishment yesterday was rereading the editorial report and Googling forms of headcoverings for a couple hours, lol. It really feels like past time to tweak the terminology and world building to be a little more meaningful than just upper case versions of mundane nouns, so, yeah. And also anything that needed researching to flesh out, it���s really time to get on that. But it���s also a form of procrastination, in that I���m trying to digest suggestions, wrap my head around the story again after a month away, and generally work my way back up to some forward momentum.

Watched the final Sherlock episode yesterday, which was inspiring from a drama-storytelling perspective. I think the villain in particular offers some characteristics to both Serovate and Ravel. Moriarty���s tics and over-expressiveness just the wrong side of appealing are so creepily weird. I���m insecure about my villains, since I have a track record of not writing them well, and I���ve never liked them much. At least the editorial feedback really affirmed that I fixed the structural and plot issues around having the villains/antagonists hanging around in the background without doing enough. Actually, on a second reading, I do feel more confident in the upcoming rewrites. Everything always seems so overwhelming at first, and then I just have to grit my teeth and dive in and make it to the other side. So, here goes nothing! Plan of attack:

Terminology issues: find-replace for all terms that need updating
Plot issues: address items of confusion
Pacing issues: condense or expand indicated scenes
Language issues: rewrites/review edits to slow/speed pacing as necessary, improve power and clarity

Wednesday

Start Time: 2:30 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Drinking: water

Day 214

A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | �������� bookaholic (@kaie.space_author) on May 17, 2017 at 6:44pm PDT

As chronicled ad nauseam before, getting back into the swing of things with a book is miserable and near impossible. However! The great thing about walking away for a month at a time is that I get a little more distance from the work and a smidge more perspective. Which is good, because I love to fight and wrestle with every round of edits and feedback. And by love I mean hate but can���t leave alone���

My excuse for distraction today was good though; woken up a couple hours early, and then glued to the computer tracking forest fire news - crazy year with flooding and fires in the interior of BC. But since there���s not actually anything to, you know, do about it, I mostly just Googled, tweeted and then, of course, needed a nap. So. Here we are post-supper and I���m finally forcing myself to log a couple hours doing what I apparently really want-but-don���t-want to do.

Editorial feedback was awesome���and as per usual, challenging and disappointing. Amidst effusive, ornate praise, I think I detect a warning signs that more needs to be done. On a story level, I���ve solved the major problems set forth by previous rounds of editing - the plot is tighter, motivations clearer, tension higher, characters more engaging��� but. But. Always with the but. There are still some problems with what I think of as pretty key plot points that need a fix - and though my editor seems to think that���s a quick and easy thing, inevitably I seem to see those quick fixes as an opportunity to radically overhaul and come up with new and exciting twists. Which is hopefully long-term good, but means some short-term misery for me. And since there was a line edit kind of snuck in on the side of this round, I���ve got quite a lot of work to do shrinking scenes, simplifying the language and trying to figure out when I���ve over explained and left readers lost in a sea of words, and when it���s just confusing to cut any further. So, yeah, lots of work and the promise that, if I do go with trad pub, agents will probably want to see major rewrites. Which is not terribly surprising given how different people are, but is concerning if it���s an indicator that the story���s not there yet, and doesn���t bode well for my hopes of being nearly done this process, lol.

So yeah, I tend to ignore praise and dig straight into the warning signs beneath the surface, which is unnecessarily dark and anxiety-ridden, but also very pragmatic as there���s always more work to do. The good news is, the story is getting awesome and closer all the time to being in the hands of readers (and freeing me up for future projects!) ���the not so good news is, I still don���t know when that time will come exactly, or what-all needs to come in the intervening period. But hey, at least I managed to get around to rewrites today. Small victories!

Before I let go of the story for the month of editing, I made a bunch of potentially spoilerriffic notes on what needed work. Now I can���t quite remember what they meant, but for posterity:

Reveal earlier, Cole resist identity, come to terms during climax

Ash pushes Serovate in? Or otherwise contributes

Repeat remember lessons

Revise the Tower or the Towers of Refuge to just Refuge. Name the uniform and masks and headbands with meaning. Justification? Protections? Modesty?

Tuesday

Start Time: 6:45 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; chair

Drinking: water