This is a more poignant Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Memorial Day — than usual for me. It’s been a couple of years since my mother, an Auschwitz and death march survivor, passed away. Life for many years before her death lost relevance, obliterated by Alzheimer’s Disease.
She survived. She returned to her hometown of Sosnociec, married, moved to Sweden and then the United States, and had two of children. She raised them and, when my father was struck by a series of brain aneurysms, was his caretaker for the last ten years of his life.
She survived but was never truly free. She left chunks of herself behind in her home town and in the death camps. For all the freedom she enjoyed, it was a brittle construct, always with a tinge of fear, of anger, of worry that it might all slip away. My sister and I experienced very different childhoods in the same house. My takeaway was that those feelings drove her vituperation, her xenophobia, her need to manipulate and control.
Not all who lived survived to be free again. For some, only death frees from struggle, the rest of oblivion.
Now, as we grow the next generations of traumatized children and young adults, let’s consider how their lives will color whole generations in places like Syria, Myanmar, and, yes, in America. How their pain will inform their lives, their hates, and their legacy, in turn, to their children.
We have to stop the cycle. As best we can, with the tools we have.
In the throws of editing (yet again) a manuscript after paying for a professional editor to go over it. In the process of trimming the piece, I realized how much a countersink. Say the same thing and then say the same thing. Over and over. Each time differently. But don’t just make the point, screw it in tightly. And saying it a different way to be sure the reader knows what I’m trying to say.
Words have power and meaning. Cancer patients after their treatment are “survivors.” So are those sexually assaulted. It implies strength. Victimhood implies disempowerment, helplessness, and weakness.
I suggest we consider replacing “victim” with “aggrieved.” Someone that a criminal has wronged. Someone with a grievance. Someone, as “grieve” also implies, has suffered.They have a grievance against the aggressor, with the protest and anger that that might imply.
This isn’t going to change crime statistics, nor reduce the suffering of those assaulted, burgled, mugged, or scammed. But it changes that person, in description, as someone not weak or disempowered, but as someone against whom a wrong has been done that must be righted.
Back from hiatus, and starting, edits on my second Shmuley Myers book. It builds on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Austin police homicide detective in a world (soon to be real, apparently) where every non-birth pregnancy becomes a murder investigation, contraception is illegal, church and state prance together in an evil waltz.
Shmuley needs to balance his roles as a pious Jew, a loving husband, his job as a civil servant, and…
Sure, caffeine in all it’s glorious incarnations does wonders. Sometimes, however, I prefer something with more zing than zap. Hence this recipe:
1/4C Stevia (or sugar, your pick)
2C lemon juice, preferably something with pulp and flavor
8C water
~1.5T vanilla extract
~1t ground cardamom
Add ingredients in that order, stirring before the vanilla and then continuously while cardamom is added. Excepting sugar, this is a very low calorie, low carb drink. It’s pretty dang awesome.
Last post I talked about the uncertainty of “that time” between an agent submitting a manuscript to a publisher and when a writer gets a response from the publisher in the form of a rejection or a contract.
Is there a correlation between the number of requests for a full manuscript and the possibility that it’ll get picked up?
Are there months where publishers generally make decisions on contracting to publish a novel?
…
How long would a publisher sit on a manuscript they’ve asked for before coming back with a decision? I’d heard a few snippets back at the last ‘Con, but… you’ve been through the grinder a few times now.
The following is a quote, edited to preserve anonymity where necessary, of Marshall’s response:
“Man, let me tell you, that interstitial period in a writers career, where you’ve made that massive level-up achievement of Getting An Agent, but still haven’t sold… it’s rough. And it is just because you’re in limbo. You’ve got people asking for it, so that’s good. But it can just take forever. I mean, it was about two and half years for me. [Author], I think four. As for months when things happen and when they don’t? I mean it all depends. I hear that a lot DOESN’T happen in the summer months, for example, because editors are often going to cons and such each weekend. I know that it was about a year between when my agent sent Thorn to [publisher] and when she started reading it, and she really didn’t read it until I went up and said a polite hello at WorldCon. And my agent was just telling me a story of one editor who kept going, “Yeah, I know, I’m going to read that soon” on someone else’s manuscript for years. I think Martha Wells made the joke of “glaciers honk at the publishing industry to move faster.”
“(But, on the flip side, you get something like [another author], whose agent sold his manuscript a week after signing him.)
Thus, the big unhelpful answer is, “Who knows, man?”
Well… okay, then. The crystal ball continues my future opacification. All I know is Marshall has a glass of a good scotch coming his way.
Thing the Second: Odds of Getting Agent Representation
Someone posted this article on Austin’s Indie Authors Society Facebook page [link to Nelson Literary Agency here]. Keep in mind this is from an agent, not a publisher. So the numbers and “successes” only mean the author received an offer of representation, not a publishing contract. The crux of Kristin Nelson’s post was this: for four agents, the agency received over 20,000 query letters. Of those, they requested about 440 manuscripts. And of those, a quarter of those authors received an offer letter from the agency to represent the author and try and get their manuscript published.
Bottom line: The agency looked at the manuscripts of 2.25% of the query letters they received. And only 0.56% of all query letter writers were given offers of representation. I strongly recommend reading Kristen’s full blog post for precise numbers and more (and funnier) odds.
Wrapping This Up
Neither of these items is directly connected, except to make a single point: the odds of an author, even with a great book and query letter, are literally minuscule. Not lottery minuscule, but certainly nothing you’d want to pin your mortgage payment on selling that Great Novel. Sigh.
My agent’s gotten ten query letters out to qualified publishers. Three of the five sent out around Thanksgiving asked for full manuscripts. This past Monday my agent sent another five. Two of those five asked, within a day or so of the query letter, for a complete manuscript. Don’t have feedback on the other three. So now there’s five publishers looking at the novel, all of which imprints for the top publishers in the fiction biz. And while on one hand this sounds like “great progress” and is nice to hear, I don’t have any way to quantify this. Previous Armadillocon panels addressed the time to acceptance, but not the numbers part of publishers in waiting. While JK Rowling sugarplum auction fantasies dance in my head (but I harbor no delusions as to any comparisons between that and my novels), I don’t know what this “top five are reading” means in terms of getting closer to closing a deal.
Calling on wise women and men if they have ideas. Comment, or blog on your own and let me know.
While I’m sure that WordPress’ new post editing mechanism is a cool, slick, thing, it’s enough of a jump from the old way that I’ve heard several authors complain. Which is stupid. And that one needs to download (yet another) plugin to disable it is even sillier.
I should NOT have to wrestle with my blog editor to put pictures in-line with a list. Or have to manually decide to place a list when I’ve started a paragraph. It interrupts the flow of the writing and it makes for a rockier experience. Matt Mullenweg, I’m looking at you. Microsoft used to do these self-goal moves, and this is a big one.
I can’t speak for others, but as a tech professional I know that releases need to set expectations and listen to users. And if the user population isn’t asked, then expectations can’t be set. I’m not talking about avid beta testers and early adopters. I’m talking about folks that use the WordPress platform to facilitate their work, not be their work.
End result is that I’ve put off a number of posts simply because I got bogged down in the formatting and didn’t want to put out something that wasn’t to my liking. (Yeah, I know, the theme itself needs a wrecking ball, but that’s something else…)
Goals people make are frequently not SMART. And that makes them all fuzzy, and frustrating, frankly, when trying to assess progress. 2018 has been, for me, surprisingly good, exciting, and charges me with hope and excitement for 2019.
Creativity
It’s been a year. I worked as a contractor for two months, and had the amazing, humbling, and powerful experience of writing full-time. It’s thrilling. I’ve got a spreadsheet of data (see below), but I wrote approximately three in four days this year, with an average daily word count a bit over 1,600. I developed three separate “universes” and three of the six manuscripts draw from them. The last, for a project named “Qoch,” is my first true fantasy foray. Worldbuilding is a whole different matter than alternate history timelines. Wow.
I now have a literary agent: Martha Hopkins, of Terrace Partners. For traditional publishing, agents are a critical success factor, and Martha’s got the power and panache to find the right deal for my work product.
Novels were definitely my focus. That I have four novels in progress isn’t a good thing. There are logical reasons for why they’re that way, however.
Ken Yirbu is on hold pending my agent getting the first novel in the series, A Day at the Zoo, sold.
I had an editor do a developmental edit on Last Run, so the start of next year will be consumed with getting that out to my agent. It’s done, but not ready for publishing.
Brightly Needing I’ve rewritten from scratch five times, but I’m only counting the last. This might be a trunk novel, but the universe and some of its characters have promise. Call it on hold for now.
Qoch has three novellas/novels outlined, and I’m well into the first of them. It’s always a good sign when my characters wake me up to tell me what they want to do.
On the short story side while I’ve done some writing, it’s not been at the forefront of my writing. And zero acceptances for twenty submissions isn’t indicative of anything–too few to be statistically important. On one hand I’m bummed, but the time cost in shifting from one project to another, be it small or large, is expensive. Better to focus on a single novel plus edits than get creative in a few ways all at once. The one short I started and completed in 2018, Selection Bias, I’ll shop after getting it through the Slugtribe group’s review.
Certified Scrum Master
Certified Scrum Product Owner
Work
I dragged my heels for years before getting a degree, and worked at Charles Schwab for a year as a product owner without any formal training. While I’m not a fan of official stamps of approval that I know something, employment site AIs and corporate recruiterfolk are increasingly buzzword scanners rather than resume readers. So my investment in Agile-related certifications will, I hope, pay off in the new year. I’ve enjoyed doing development, but I’m more attracted to working with humans than screens. (Said the man who types in front of screens for hours on end…)
2019 Goals
I like my goals to be SMART. So here they are:
Creative
Write two novels in the Qoch universe (~70k words each). One in 1H, one in 2H. If the Shmuley Myers mystery/thriller series sells, possibly finish Ken Yirbu.
Write two novellas/short stories in the Brightly Needing universe. A minimum of 100k words between the two. I still think there’s at least one full novel in it, but the shorter works might (finally) kick that off. Timing: one in each half of 2019.
Have Last Run off to my agent at Terrace Partners by the end of 1Q.
Redo this web site so it’s mobile-friendly.
Write a minimum of one web post per week.
Restart my ceramic painting creativity such that I’m putting ten hours/week into it by the end of 2Q.
Work/Life
Get a position in a company with a great culture and good folks by the end of 1Q. Work/life balance very important.
Based on where I get the job, buy a house, possibly with acreage and possibly for sustainability as a goal, but that’s income-dependent.
I worked hard in 2017/2018 to get my weight down from heavy to just big. Need to continue that progress so I can (goal here) do a twenty-mile hike in a day without turning to mush and my weight down by fifty pounds from current weight.
It’s a new swing around the sun…
I’m looking forward to applying the momentum built up so far.
A bit of early juvenalia. Sometimes a passing stirs up what simple thoughts I left behind. No one gets out of here alive.
