Good Bad

Good and bad today in equal amounts.

The good: another Agent at the top of my list requested a partial.
The bad: the Agent who asked for one on Friday, passed on "Slayer".

Actually, even the bad isn't too bad. The Agent was very nice in her pass and I didn't take the rejection personally (Can it be that I'm --gasp-- maturing as a writer?) I wrote her a polite thank you for taking the time and didn't get upset, or down on myself. It's a business after all, and accepting that means I don't have to take it personally. Funny, but that only occured to me recently (after reading Miss Snark extensively!) In my regular job, I take nothing personally. I've been in some miserable situations, with many a pissed off person, in just about every job I've ever had. I never take anything personally. Yell, curse, insult . . . I blow that crap off because I know I have to work with these folks the next day. It never occured to me that the same attitude could be adapted for my writing. Hell, when the rejections are as polite as this one, it doesn't even take any effort to smile and say: "Thanks anyway"!

Slow morning again, only 800 words (a very bad day for me!) but the unexpected changes my characters (curse them all!) made in the story have pulled me off my outline and I needed to spend some time reviewing it to get myself tied back in, so I can hit the ending. It's still a ways off, but I think I'm back on course for that. One good thing is that the unexpected changes knocked off three chapters from the outline already; things that just felt wrong after the new stuff showed up. Hmmm . . . edits done by characters. Unique approach.

Another chapter down on "Fish" last night. I am discovering the truth about how writing improves with practice. Originally, "Fish" was a short story. I submitted it to F&SF magazine and got back a personal rejection from the editor which said: "I really liked it and almost bought it . . ." (paraphrasing). I meant to revise it some and re-submit, either to him or another mag, but that never happened. Instead, I got this wonderful idea on how to turn the entire thing into a novel. Essentially, it's a split-time novel: the same two MC's as both adults, and as children, in alternating chapters. The original short was simply the childhood stuff (I expanded it some, obviously) and I started writing the adult chapters last year. The original short story stuff is requiring a lot of editing, whereas the newer stuff is tighter, with a much stronger voice. It's kind of neat to see old work (3-4 years ago) put right up beside current stuff. It tells me I'm improving, which is nice to know!

Busy tonight - Boy Scouts, followed by the season finale of "The Shield", which I am not missing! That show is mind-blowing. It makes you cheer for the bad guys, even though you know better. That's quality writing!

Later!