Potential addendum to the Plan

[annathepiper]

So, as previously posted, my new Writing Plan is:

1) Finish Lament
2) Take one more pass through Faerie Blood and decide whether I need a fifth draft
3) Start editing the hell out of Lament to get it ready to go out
4) Start thinking about the Persephone project

However, I have this big ol' manuscript sitting here waiting for me to do something with it, and I am still waffling as to the wisdom of sending it back out again while I'm working on Lament.

Arguments for:
1) Potential to see whether, although one editor says no, another editor might say yes (i.e., a second opinion)
2) Considering my usual writing speed, I expect it'll still be a while before I finish Lament anyway, so it'd be good to have FB out there rather than sitting around gathering dust
3) I'm on the fourth draft already, and quite a bit of me is saying "let it go and MOVE ON"--I need to get multiple stories into circulation so that I can start improving my chances of getting one of them picked up

Arguments against:
1) My gut's still strongly telling me that the "hero and heroine not proactive enough" issue is asking for attention, and it would be annoying to be shot down for that a second time when I could have fixed it first and then sent it out again

Now I realize that I have three arguments For here and one argument Against; however, the Against is big in my head, and the Fors are not quite so much, at least individually. So they're sort of hitting me as almost balanced.

What do you think, folks? Hit me with your opinions!

Comments

[shadowhwk.livejournal.com]

Personal opinion only, but I'd say:

Let it sit for a month or until the first of the year, even. Work on and finish Lament. Take a month after Lament is finished, look at FB again and re-edit it. Send it out. Then edit Lament.

My .02

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What s/he said. One needs to at least take a swipe at the criticism before Jim Baen gets a look at it. But not yet.

[annathepiper]

Actually, I think I'm going to wind up sending it to Daw. :) Part of what's influenced my decision here is that I know that Daw has published material of similar feel to Faerie Blood in the past--i.e., some of Tanya Huff's stuff. Whether or not they will be interested in more of the same, anybody's guess, but it feels like it's worth a shot to me.

Also, stickmaker recently had a manuscript turned down by Baen after almost an entire year... and their web page specifically says that the expected turnaround time is 9-12 months. I think I want to give Daw a shot to give me a reply faster than that.

But thanks for the suggestion about Baen, anyway! If Daw tells me no, maybe I'll hit them next.

[annathepiper]

Trying to get caught up on my LJ comments--they really pile up during Nanowrimo. ;)

This has settled out to be my plan, for certain. Thanks for chiming in on the matter, though! It's nice to get others to reality-check these things for me.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

I would say that since you feel that the criticism offered by Luna is valuable and valid, and since you seem to have some concerns yourself about the story... BUT it was good enough that Luna says they want to see other things you can send their way then obviously it's /worth/ the effort to make better...

Given all that, then I would say that the book deserves the time it would take to fix it up before sending it out again. If Luna noticed issues and you noticed issues then what's the chance it'll get bought without the fixing? Or, if you were me, I wouldn't *want* to see it in print with issues I knew I could have addressed.

So. If you're on a roll with Lament, then keep working on that for now. But plan to set aside some time in the near future and work on Faerie Blood. Budget yourself some time, maybe, and stick to it, so that your other projects don't suffer and you don't start feeling all bogged down.

My $0.03 anyway. ;)

[annathepiper]

I think this is indeed what I'm going to wind up doing. Now that I've let the matter mull for a few days, it feels right!

Thanks for chiming in, though, I deeply appreciate it. :) It has helped me think about this all!

[wrog]

seems to me editors are all different; everybody has their quirks. I've seen plenty of books out there where the main characters are not anything close to "pro-active", whatever the hell that really means. And if Faerie Blood was good enough to send to Luna, it ought to be good enough to send to other folks.

Unless there was some specific customization you wanted to do for whoever you were planning to send it to next, and maybe there is, but I doubt it. Your plate is pretty full anyway.

[annathepiper]

The proactive point, I think, specifically means that Kendis and Christopher spend a whole lot of the plot reacting to things I throw at them, rather than seizing the initiative, making decisions, and taking actions that ultimately affect the outcome of the plot. This was certainly an issue in earlier drafts for Kendis, one which some of my beta readers did bring up, and one which I tried to address in revisions. And I think that a decent argument could be made that while Christopher does make a critical, proactive decision in how he will handle the things that happen to him, he is still primarily reacting rather than taking action.

I think that a way I might fix this is to think about whether there are ways I can change things such that both characters step up and try to do things more often through the plot to deal with what's going on--possibly making the wrong decisions sometimes, like you do. ;)

I'm going to do that read-through when I'm done with Lament, so we'll see what happens. Thanks for chiming in, though! All of the comments on the thread have helped me work this out in my mind. :)

[wrog]

see, I like stories where people get kicked around, so I'm thinking at least some editors might, too.

Yes, they should make decisions and, yes, it's best if the decisions they make actually make a difference (or at least seem to), but it seems rather unrealistic to me for people to immediately try to take charge of a situation (especially one in which they're clearly out of their depth). Most people just aren't like that IMHO (... well okay, maybe Christopher is like that -- on the other hand if he were, you'd think he wouldn't have been spending all this time running away from what he is, but anyway...)

[annathepiper]

Ah, but when you talk about people getting kicked around in a story, that's actually exactly what I'm thinking about here. :) I'm all about seeing a character get kicked around by the circumstances in a story--but I also want to see that character figure out a way to win through those circumstances. There has to be some point at which that character actively decides "I'm going to beat this". Even if that only means they're going to figure out a way to survive the scenario.

Sure, it's totally reasonable for both Kendis and Christopher to not try to take charge of things, since they're both initially out of their depth. But I can't keep them in that state. They are the main characters, the ones I want the reader to identify with, and so at some stage of the game they have to actively choose to deal with what's going on. This is exactly why I had to punt Millicent off camera in the latter half of the story--because having her around made things too easy for Kendis and Christopher. You can't be proactive and deal with stuff if the person who has more clues than you do is right there to fix the problem for you. ;)

And I think what Mr. Wilson at Luna was trying to say to me is that perhaps I have not dealt with this issue enough. I'm kind of wondering if I need to kick Kendis and Christopher around harder in the first half of the story--possibly delaying Millicent's arrival on camera, or perhaps changing it such that she doesn't immediately reveal herself for what she actually is, possibly if she's upholding a promise to Kendis' aunt not to reveal herself to Kendis. Maybe Kendis thinks she is an enemy, too. ;) There are a variety of things I could do... things that would let Kendis and Christopher try to deal with what's happening, fail, and then make it harder for Millicent to step in and try to fix things.

But anyway.

I'm still musing about it some. I don't think I'll be able to decide this until I do the full read-through of the fourth draft. One of the big pieces of advice I got at Writer's Weekend was that if an editor takes the time to send you a personal rejection letter and feedback about why they turned you down, it does behoove you to put serious consideration into what they have to say. Doesn't mean their word is gospel--just that it's worth thinking about it. So I want to do at least one serious read-through with this issue in mind and see how it hits me and if I think I need to change anything. I may ultimately still decide to leave things as they are. :)

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

Send it. No story is ever really going to gbe finished, but getting it out is important.

[annathepiper]

I've been letting this sit quietly for a few days--I have a guest in town right now anyway, so I figured it was okay to let it mull--and right now, I think that while I really agree with you on that point, the matter of "heroine and hero not proactive enough" is possibly important enough to go ahead and warrant that read-through as soon as I'm done with Lament's first draft. I think I have definitely decided that it would annoy me if I sent it out again right now and it came back from a second editor with that same problem identified!

So I'll put up with a few more months' lag time, for the sake of a read-through to think about that specific issue. We'll see what happens.

Thank you for chiming in on the thread, though! It helped me think about this. :)

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

I'm excited for you that you're getting your work out there and getting some response. :)

[annathepiper]

Thanks! It's deeply exciting to me, too, I can tell you! :)

[wildshadowstar.livejournal.com]

I'd say finish Lament first, and then revise Faerie Blood with possibly the suggestions from Luna.

[annathepiper]

Now that I've let it sit for a few days, this is feeling right again. I guess it helps that I'm chugging through Lament in Nanowrimo mode now. Thanks for chiming in! :)