Noah Zarc Rewrite - Again

I finished up the latest rewrite/edit of Noah Zarc last night. I'm really excited about some of the changes. I'm gonna let it stew a couple days then send it off to some readers. The plan is to have this be the last pass. Then it is time to start submitting it. I cut about 1,500 words, but it is still just a bit over 50k. Perhaps my readers can point out a few places to cut. But if not I'm pretty comfortable with that. I don't think any agent is going to throw it out because of a few thousand words.

Writing a "Big" book.

Just when I thought I was nearing completion on the editing for Noah Zarc, I read "Writing the Breakout Novel" by literary agent Donald Maass. He makes the argument that best sellers aren't made by good marketing and sales efforts, they depend more strongly on the writing. Duh! But it is surprising how often I read on the blogosphere about marketing, and how your novel will never sell unless you spend a vast amount of time promoting your book. Maass says a writer should be writing. If an author ever wants to move beyond average sales, or dwindling sales in the case of mid-career novelist, then they need to learn how to write a "big" story. He emphasizes this does not necessarily mean a long novel, but it should feel big. I call it "epic".

So, as I attempt to apply this to Noah Zarc, I find there are elements of "bigness" in it, but the plot could use some strengthening too. Where I'm struggling at the present though is with word count. Most sources I've read say that a middle grade novel should be about 30,000 to 40,000 words in length. Noah Zarc stands at about 54,000 words. I don't mind pushing the envelope a little bit, but I feel it is probably too long already and should be cut. However, I also have some ideas that I believe will make it much bigger, much more epic in scope. Except I'm sure those additions will push the word count even higher.

As I've said in previous posts, I am a firm believer of working within guidelines. That is why I became a graphic designer instead of a fine artist. One puts food on the table, one doesn't (as easily). So I'm not going to brush off the word count guidelines only for the sake of my "art". Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty constricted by it, to tell the story I want to tell. Perhaps the answer lies in the sequel. Hint at greatness in the first book, but then really open the spigot on the second. But then I risk not snagging my audience (agents, editors, and readers) by writing a book that doesn't really get going soon enough.

As you can see I'm pretty conflicted on the subject. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Ender's Game

At the SCBWI meeting yesterday I read a page or two from Noah Zarc. Afterward one of the members asked me if I ever read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. He said it really wasn't anything like Noah Zarc, but my story reminded him of it. So since I was at a bookstore anyway, I picked up a copy. I could tell after about 20 pages it was going to be good, because I found myself looking at the back to see how many pages it was, and thinking that it wasn't going to be a long enough book. By the end of the day (ok 12:30 this morning) I had read the whole thing.

It was an utterly compelling story. It had all the hallmarks of an "epic" story at least how I define epic. A small child is given a choice between an easy life with his family, or the chance to save the planet. He chooses the latter and goes to "Battle School". There he quickly rises through the ranks of the other kids to become the leader that the world needed, just in the nick of time.

Ender's Game had elements of Dune, and Harry Potter (although ender's game was before HP) and it sucked me in and I couldn't put it down all day. Finally I reached about 20 pages from the end and could not figure out how the author could possibly wrap the story up in time, then wham, the he hit me with an amazing twist. I highly recommend it.

scbwi

I am currently working on gathering a list of agents to query. In doing so I noticed that several of them were members of SCBWI, the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators. I checked it out and decided it would be worthwhile to join. After joining I was thrilled to discover that they have a local chapter that meets at the Barnes & Noble in Fairlawn. The first meeting is this Saturday. I am really looking forward to attending. They also have a conference coming up in September. It looks to be a pretty well-planned event. At this point I don't really know what to expect, but I have my registration filled out, and my two copies of the first ten pages of my manuscript ready for critique. I will definitely let you know what happens.

Moving closer to submitting

I just sent off the latest revision of Noah Zarc to a couple of my most honest and forth-coming critiquers. The plan is to take their revision suggestions, incorporate them into the manuscript, give it one more pass for grammar/spelling issues, then begin sending it out to agents. So while I wait for feedback, I am working on getting the rest of the needed "Novel Package" ready to go. First up is the query. This is the short description of the story that will go in a letter or email to agents, hopefully "hooking" them so they want to read more. Take a look. Please feel free (or compelled) to give me feedback.

Noah Zarc couldn’t imagine life without piloting spaceships through the solar system, dodging killer robots, and saving the earth’s animals from extinction. Life couldn’t be any better for the ten-year-old time-traveler, but he soon learns it could be a whole lot worse. His dad becomes stranded on Earth, ten thousand years in the past. A madman kidnaps his mom, taking her to Mars a thousand years in the future. All while Noah is stuck on the dark side of the moon in the 21st century. His only means of transport—a city-sized spaceship, filled with animals of every size and kind—but it hasn’t moved in years. Noah, along with his brother Hamilton, and sister Sam, know they will have to use every talent they possess to outwit a foe, bent on forcing their mother to destroy an earth that only recently became inhabitable again. At the same time keeping their dad from freezing to death or getting squished by wooly mammoths in the Ice Age. Along the way Noah discovers a dark, family secret, his mother and father aren’t who he thought they were.

Writing Software

A year or so ago I was reading a blog by a published author (Holly Lisle), and she said she was using a software package called Scrivener for her writing. It sounded rather exciting. It allowed you to create virtual "note cards" with ideas for your chapters, which you could then expand upon and grow into your actual story. So I excitedly went to the website to download it, only to discover it only worked on a Mac. Well a year later I'm happily working on my new MacBook Pro which I had purchased a month or two prior when I remembered Scrivener. Five minutes later I had it downloaded and installed.

After working with it a couple of months I can't imagine writing without it. I copied and pasted my entire manuscript for Noah Zarc into it for editing. It has a couple views for different tasks. An "Outline" view that allows me to see every chapter, and every scene in the chapter with a short synopsis of each displayed. This is great for locating key areas in the story to add in new scenes, allowing me to flesh out a sub plot I'm adding to the story. The other view is "Corkboard" with the aformentioned note cards. It allows me to instantly see each scene and drag and drop those scenes in different orders. This has been invaluable as I begin to layout the plot ideas for Noah Zarc book two.

The built in help system is a bit lacking. It took me days to figure out how to get the chapter numbers and titles to print out when I exported it. (all you had to do was turn off both Outline and Corkboard views.) Also the Search and Replace tools could be a bit more robust.

I know I haven't scratched the surface with what it can do. But overall I am extremely happy with it.

Great book on how to make your novel shine

I just finished Flogging the Quill- Crafting a Novel that Sells by Ray Rhamey an author and editor. I've read probably a half dozen books on editing, but this one by far has been the most helpful.

One of the great things about the book, is it can be used anywhere along the writing process. If you are just starting a novel, or have it complete, there are sound ideas you can use to make the story shine.

He's the author of the blog Flogging The Quill, that I've mentioned before, and many of his concepts can be found there, but the book goes quite a bit further and really outlines the process step-by-step. I highly recommend this, and if you order it now, he will actually do a free phone consultation, or free critique of your first 3 pages, just for sending in a photo of yourself with the book. You know I'm all over that.

Visions of being King

A post over on Patricia Wood's blog, got me thinking about writing. I posted this in her comments.

My dad is a great story-teller. Not the fictional, sitting around the camp-fire ghost story kind. Just the everyday experiences of his life kind. Ever since I was a kid I can remember listening to him tell stories of things he'd done in his life. I discovered around high school that I had no such gift. I couldn't remember what happened last week, let alone what happened five years ago.

So I started to concoct stories up about my exploits. I worked at Disney World for a semester in college (sweeping cigarette butts) and I had all kinds of story-lines I doled out. My favorite one was I went to the lady who made our name tags and told her I lost mine. And I had her make me a "Chip" name tag (My first name is Dale) and I went around telling everyone I was twins. "Yeah, my parents were huge Disney fans, and they named us after those annoying chipmunks."

Another time I was working at a rock concert selling T-shirts and I convinced a group of girls I had fled South Africa during apartheid because I didn't like how the blacks were treated. (I'm white, born and raised in Ohio but I did a pretty good South African/British accent.) I even took it a step further and told them I was number 364th in line for the throne of England.

Then somewhere around the end of my college years, I started to realize something. I wasn't telling stories, I was flat out lying. My conscience started to eat away at me a bit. So I gave it up. Quit cold turkey. Got boring.

Then I discovered writing. The beautiful thing about writing is you can lie all over the place. You can make up the grandest stories, and as long as you make it believable, you can lie, lie lie. I was hooked. I guess I never really thought about it before, but this is probably the main reason I like writing so much. While I'm writing I can at least capture a little bit of that feeling, back when I wasn't so ordinary, and had visions of being King.

I'm a real writer now!

I've finally achieved something that up until now I've only read about. I received my first rejection letter from an agent. Okay, I will admit that I was a bit disappointed, but honestly only a little. As I said previously I had very, very low expectations that I would land an agent this easily. I'm excited that I did get an agent to request pages on my first try, so I'm still pretty pumped.

I am still going to proceed with getting Noah Zarc finalized, and then I'm going to start sending it out in earnest. So for all my beta readers out there, if you can get your thoughts back to me, I'm ready to go.

Just how busy are agents anyway?

I just got a dose of reality today. I've read it dozens of times. I even told my friends who were asking if I heard back from the agent yet, that it could be weeks, or months. But we has humans don't seem to really believe it until it happens to us.

I got an email from the Secret Agent. "Thanks! I'll do my best to get back to you within two months."

I totally understand. We are all very busy people. I have clients (at my day job) that have to wait quite a while for me to get to their projects too. But still, two months! At least I can hold off checking my email every ten minutes... At least for a few weeks. I mean you never know, she may get to it early. :-)

In the mean time I am continuing to refine the query letter for Noah Zarc, and put the finishing touches on the manuscript. I hope to start sending out to other agents within the next month. So that'll give me something else to fret about.