I’ve had mixed results when it comes to paying manuscript consultants to help me improve the text of my novel. Too often, they get all snooty on me and won’t even help me at all. I’ve long assumed that between finishing the novel and querying it, I would pay a literary consultant to look over the final copy of the novel.
I spent all my money on booze. Wink
Well, I just don’t know if that’s going to be possible.
I live in poverty and I just don’t have the hundreds of dollars necessary to pay someone to look over the novel. And, really, I’m well aware of problems with the first novel. I think — think — I can self-correct those problems without having to pay someone.
I sure would be nice, though, to get someone to look over the novel. I have to accept that I’m a broke ass motherfucker and I just have to make do with what I got.
While it’s still at least possible that I will finish not one but two novels by my hard deadline of July 22, it’s beginning to sink in that maybe I should cool it talking about that possibility so much. It’s possible, just not probable.
I have a huge amount of work to do on the first novel and the only way I might finish both novel is if I do a lot of work on the second book while I work on the first. I may not finish two novels by my hard deadline, but I can DEFINITELY finish two novels by the end of the year.
And I hope to start to work on a third novel, a scifi Western, this year as well.
I continue to stew in my juices about how, exactly, I’m going to “comp” these novels. I really don’t read a lot these days and I can’t just comp the two mystery thrillers I’m working on to Stieg Larsson’s stuff. I have to find other novels to compare them to as well.
And, what’s more, I continue to be very worried about what is going to happen when the white liberal women who make up literary agents do “due diligence” on me, a freaky weirdo. At least I’m not a drunk crank anymore, but, rather a sober one.
I can’t help who I am.
One of my biggest concerns is that me being a drunk loser for so long will, by definition, prohibit me from ever — EVER — being a published author. But you have to have hope, no matter what. While there’s life, there’s hope.
I have a number of reasons for splitting the novel I’ve been working on into two stories. The now two different stories can be written faster. The two of them now are a lot more coherent. And, what’s more, each story will be about ~100,000 words if things work out the way I hope.
I hope my heroine is as interesting and compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
But there are risks.
One is, who wants to read a novel that is, for the most part, a story about a woman struggling to own a newspaper? So, in a sense, my first novel would be if The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was about a power struggle over the Millennium magazine, rather than solving a decade’s old murder.
But I do think that because the story will be really interesting, character driven — and does have a murder in the third act — that it could be interesting enough to be successfully queried. And, what’s more, because of how I’m splitting the novel, I have the original murder mystery story that I can write out pretty quickly.
(L to R, foreground) DANIEL CRAIG as a stranger with no memory of his past and director/executive producer JON FAVREAU on the set of an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: “Cowboys & Aliens.”
So, rather than one novel done this year, I could have two.
And, given that I want to write a third novel, a scifi western, I could soon have three novels to pitch in some capacity within the next year.
Sometimes, I feel like I should just lie in my bed, twiddle my thumbs and wait to die. I’m old and I’ve wasted way too much of my life grieving over a dumb zine in Seoul. But every time I get into this mood, I immediately think, “Well, once more unto the breach.”
I hope that the heroine I’ve come up with is as interesting as Lisbeth Salander.
It’s just not my nature to give up, even though that’s exactly what I should probably do — give the fuck up.
So, I’m going to keep going with this novel as well as a back up novel. All I can say in my defense is I’m an eccentric and, as such, I willing to throw myself into something which objectively will never happen successfully — querying my first novel.
But I just refuse to self-publish, no matter what. I would rather fail on a spectacular level than self-publish because to me self-publishing is a huge co-out. I need and crave the validation of a third party — in this case a literary agent — so I can turn to people who have told me I suck as a writer all these years.
I’ve decided to just write the story without worrying about word count. Once I actually finish the novel, I will assess things. I will either split the story in two and have it connected by a cliffhanger, or I will try to pitch a backup novel that is the “proper” length.
I hope my heroine is as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
I just don’t know yet. It could go either way.
But I am really interested in a scifi-Western. I think that is going to be my backup story. It shouldn’t be too difficult to bone up on how to write a Western then use the scifi universe I’ve thought up in the same story. The Western element would allow me to have a number of ready-made plots that I could fuse with scifi elements.
(L to R, foreground) DANIEL CRAIG as a stranger with no memory of his past and director/executive producer JON FAVREAU on the set of an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: “Cowboys & Aliens”.
I do know I have to hurry up, though. I can’t keep screwing around. I now have just about six months to wrap up this third draft of my first novel, regardless of how long it turns out to be.
I try to do what is right, I really do. And when it comes to developing and writing a novel, there are all the unexpected landmines floating around that you have to avoid.
Lisbeth Salander is the type of name that is so great I wish I could think of something as strong.
One is the subject of names.
In general, I feel pretty safe with all of my character names. And YET it is inevitable that somehow, someway along the process there might be a hitch. There is one character — a huge character in the project six book series, in fact — who has a surname that MIGHT be a problem.
But I’m really, really being paranoid, all things considered.
And I’m not attached to that specific name. If I have to, I have a few backup names I’m willing to switch to. I’m very pragmatic about such things, I just want to be a published author and if it requires a significant rethinking of some element of the six novel project to become one, so be it.
In general, things are going pretty well with this first novel. I’m rather pleased. I just have to press forward. I can’t keep just driving towards my goal. I have to give my life focus and structure if I’m going to wrap this thing up by no later than around July 22th.
I first arrived in South Korea around July 22, 2004. So, if I can return to South Korea for a few weeks in honor of that event, I can at least be content that I’ve finished the third draft of my novel. I hope to finish the third draft of my mystery-thriller a lot sooner than that, but lulz, I want some slack in the chronology in case things don’t work out.
Me in 2004 with my students.
So, July 22, it is.
That will give me some time to find the money to pay a manuscript consultant to look over the draft and then start querying in either late 2024, or early 2025. Then, of course, I could find my self languishing for y e a r s in the querying process. If that is the case, I’m going to piviot to working on another novel while all that is going on.
Of course, AI could make all my hard work over the years moot as could the fucking Fourth Turning. But, who knows. I just have to believe, you know. I have a really good story and I just have to focus and trying to finish the damn thing before I either die like Stieg Larsson or World War 3 happens. (Or AI simply makes humans writing novels comically quaint.)
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
They say if you have time to write you have time to read — or watch. And, now, 10 years after everyone has finished watching House of Cards, I’ve finally gotten around to watching it. And one thing is clear — I really need to up my game when it comes to my villain(s).
House of Cards
I don’t really show my villains that much and I really need to give their scenes more thought. I need to squeeze their hate out of them as much as possible while they’re on the screen — or page. The audience of the type of genre I’m working with — mystery-thriller — expects a lot more hate and nastiness form their villains than I’m showing them at the moment.
As such, I’m going to keep watching House of Cards and mentally take notes as to how to SHOW how hateful the evil people in the story are. I think some of it is just the natural transition from second draft to third draft. My storytelling ability is getting better and, as such, I’m feeling something of a learning curve that is going to slow me down some.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
But I can’t slow down. I have to press forward. I’ve given myself a hard deadline of about July 22 to wrap up the third draft of this novel. That will be the 20th anniversary of my first trip to Asia. I want to be able to think to myself, at least, that I’ve written a mystery-thriller that I can be proud of, even if I then will have to piviot to querying.
So, that’s the goal — a finished third draft of my first novel by July 22, 2024.
As far as the first act of the novel goes, I’m just about to the point where there — hopefully – won’t be too much change on a structural basis. As such, that will really aid in editing and writing the rest of it out.
My novel is meant to be a homage to Stieg Larsson’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Once I reach the second act, then things will slow down again because even though I know, in general terms, what the story is, I’m far from locking things down. But the general “Fun & Games” part of story — the first half of the second act — is, in general terms pretty stabilized.
One structural problem I have is the first half of the novel may be significantly longer than the second half. I don’t quite know what to do about that. And I’ve had at least one Reader suggest that my chapters are too long. While I understand where the person is coming from, they were the only person to complain about the length of the first chapter and Stieg Larsson’s chapters were about the same length — if not longer — than what I showed them.
And, really, shit to do with chapters is something that can be figured out in post-sale, post-production.
I just need to get the story done. And the word count is something I really worry about at the moment. I hope that I can come in at no more than 140,000 words — the length of The Girl on The Train — but I fear it will be closer to 160,000 words, which would be about the length of a Larsson novel.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
But, in general, I’m very pleased with what I’ve come up with. One concern is how much sexxy time there is in the first act, so I’ve decided to embrace the issue by suggesting my heroine is a sex addict. So, rather than, being coy about that particular element of the story, I hope readers will simply accept — “Oh, ok, I should accept a lot of sex in this novel.”
The whole second half of this novel is in a great deal of flux. Especially in regards to the third act — I have only the vaguest idea of what is going to happen.
But, in general, things are moving a lot faster than they have been. I have to admit that I’m kind of embarrassed by how fucking long it’s taken me to get to this point. But, I’ve been doing all of this in a vacuum and that slowed me down a great deal.
Whenever I get a little nervous about having my heroine be a part-time sex worker — stripper — I remind myself how freaky most Hollywood actresses are. And, what’s more, I don’t even really have anything all that bad happen to my heroine compared to, say, what Stieg Larsson puts Lisbeth Salander through….Jesus Christ.
So, I think that while a certain portion of the reading public will be turned off by this particular element of my heroine’s character, the people who might actually one day adapt it into a movie — if it ever became that popular, natch — will really dig it.
Having her occasionally strip to relax adds a lot of complexity to her character and evokes an emotional reaction of some sort, which is what all good storytelling does. I am well aware of how some people will want to throw the book across the room the moment they realize that it’s a smelly CIS white male writing from a female POV instead of an undocumented trans woman, but, lulz, slings and arrows and all that.
It will be interesting to see what happens, regardless.
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