A Few Irrelevant Rejections

After months of not bothering, I went through the rejection letters for Bitter Cold. There were four of them, and they had no impact. Reviewing my work on that particular novel, I was quite disappointed. If someone had replied positively, I would have been quite confused, because I definitely wouldn't have accepted something in that condition.

Hopefully, some heavy revision will be able to work it into something a little more worthwhile. Of course, that's after I get to a better place on my current projects, which hopefully won't be too distant a time.

Debts

In theory, I just made the final payment on one of my college loans. Were it the larger of the two, this would likely feel rather liberating, but it was much the smaller.

Still, forty bucks a month. Woo!

Disappointment

I started reading Unraveling, the first time I've read it since I finished my revisions a year ago, and I'm not very happy with it. I disagree with everyone who said it was ready for prime-time. Were I an agent receiving this, I would reject it.

The problems are numerous:

1. Info-dumps are polluting the landscape
2. Excess words leave many sentences bloated
3. Paragraphs are in desperate need of splitting
4. Character introductions are too heavy-handed
5. The voice is not sufficiently engaging

Problems 2 & 3 require fairly basic revisions to be solved. Problem 5 requires a re-write with minimal changes. Problems 1 & 4 are where the serious issues arise.

The poor character introductions are essentially the same as info-dumps: the book is just throwing a lot of information at the reader, rather than letting things be discovered in an organic manner. There are several possible solutions to this:

1. Remove elements of the world, so there is less information to dump
2. Lengthen the novel, extending the first section
3. Start the story one book earlier

Solution 1 would require a re-write of the entire book. The story could remain essentially unchanged, but facts that differ from standard reality could be cut. The main problem here is that the events take place completely isolated from the world at large and after a great deal of major events. Adding a world-at-large would remove some of the awkward info-dumps, but would still require a lot of extraneous information. Trimming back the preceding events or weaving them in later would leave Ayla's initial situation feeling implausible.

Solution 2 would be the easiest to do, but also has the largest problem: the introduction is already bordering on being too slow, so any stretching of it could be problematic, and the novel as a whole is already fairly long. I'd need to re-read it in its entirety (I'm still quite early on) to decide if starting a little earlier in the chain of events would make the overall pacing palatable.

Solution 3 seems to have no major flaws. The cause of the info-dumps is that many important events have already happened, so there's plenty of story-line to work with, and then the overall story I have planned would come out as a trilogy, which is standard for a reason. There's the unfortunate side-effect that I would have to re-write a majority of Unraveling, but that's easier done than said.

All told, I'm leaning towards solution #3, but certainly haven't decided yet.

Some Finalization

I finished a (hopefully) final revision of Bitter Cold. Once I have a printed copy to read, I'll not do so for several months. These last few weeks of revision have been very exhausting and I don't want to touch this book for a long while.

I think that I'll read Unraveling and start writing its sequel, soon.

Rather Direct

I just received a rejection from Valeria Smith, Literary Agent, which should always be said like it's coming from a super-spy. It was short and direct and had a scanned-and-reprinted signature, which really isn't a signature.

I suppose it's proper to do that, giving a personal touch or some-such. I can't really argue. It didn't add anything, but it didn't detract, either. There's probably someone out there who prefers a reprinted signature to nothing-at-all.

2.5 Months

So, I basically stopped any form of communication for two-and-a-half months. It might seem like I just stopped writing on my blog, but it's quite a bit more than that. I've only checked my email about five times, and I've checked my mail even less than that.

It is my assumption, based on what I've seen from others, that this is not normal behavior, but I find it quite relaxing from time to time.

And, during this incommunicado period, I finished writing Bitter Cold. I've still got to give it one more look over before I start sending it out, but I'm feeling good about this version. I only had to delete two characters and rewrite the entire second half of the book three times, and it's feeling fairly complete.

Yay!

Just the Right Phrase

While most of the agents that have replied haven't quite hit the note that would make the rejection gentle, Spectrum Literary Agency just managed. The reply is short and to the point, clearly just mass-printed, not personalized, but it does include the phrases, "I was not sufficiently enthusiastic to feel I'd be the right agent for your work," and "I'm taking on very few new clients so I must turn down a lot of good submissions."

Yes, I know it says that no matter how terrible my submission may have been; it's just a generic rejection notice. That doesn't change the fact that those sentences convey the idea that my submission might have been plenty good, just not the right thing on the right desk at the right time.