Showing posts with label Travelers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travelers. Show all posts

The Quiet

Just moved everything. Still no internet at the house. Not much time for writing yet. Got two more rejections, though the quality of them seems to be getting nicer (maybe it's the new query letter?).

And as soon as I get internet at home I'll start working on the third transport. Ever hopeful.

Calculating Speed

I can type over 100 words per minute. That means, in theory, I should be able to write 6,000 words per hour and 48,000 words in an 8-hour work day.

While that's technically true, it's completely impractical. In order to write that many words in a day I'd have to think as fast as I type or plagiarize word for word. And to handle 8 hours a day, I'd also need superhuman finger strength and the sitting endurance of a tree sloth.

Physical typing speed is not what slows me down. In real life, I can write 500-1000 words per hour on a good day. That should mean I can write a full draft of a novel (80-120,000 words) in less than 3 weeks, but the problem is that most days I'm unable to write for even one hour. The rest of the time, I'm plotting, outlining, parenting, revising, teaching, parenting, brainstorming, playing Sudoku, blogging, decompressing, parenting, and parenting.

That's still just a theoretical rate anyway. In real life, it took me about 3 years to write the first draft of Travelers at 76,000 words*, a rate of about 100 words/day.** I started the first draft of Air Pirates last September and in 6 months wrote 16,000 words (130 words/day). The crazy thing is, after taking a break to do a bunch of querying for Travelers, I wrote another 7,000 words in the last two weeks, which is like 700 words/day!

Shoot, if I could keep that rate up, I could write a draft in 5-10 months. If only life were that simple. If you'll excuse me, I have to move the worldly possessions of eight people from one house to another, while simultaneously ensuring that the kids get to school and back, do their homework, obey Mom and Dad, go to sleep on time, and (in some cases) have a clean diaper and learn to classify a direct object.

* When I say word count, I mean only words left in the final draft. I don't count revisions, notes, outlines, brainstorms, or previous drafts. When the draft is done, I just ask MS Word what my word count is and record it. It's the simplest, most honest way to count, but it's not the most useful statistic if your question is, "When will the book be done?"

** Assuming 5 work days per week, 50 work weeks per year.

Christian Science Fiction

I often wonder, if Travelers ever gets picked up, what genre will it be sold as? It's essentially science fiction, obviously, but there's a fair amount of God and faith themes in the story too, and I honestly don't know how they would come across to a non-Christian reader.

Alex is an atheist. His wife was Christian before she passed away, and their son is kind of caught in between and attending a Christian school. In the future, many of the characters pray to God and believe the prophets are speaking for him. And then towards the end there's a Heaven-like scene and even an ambiguous image of a man, beaten and bleeding, hanging in the air with arms stretched out.

Is it too much Christianity for the secular SF market? I guess only an agent or an editor could tell me for sure. But is it also too secular for the Christian market? This book probably isn't, but other book ideas I have just might be.

Because of that, I'd rather not be categorized as a Christian author. Maybe I've heard wrong, but I understand it's difficult to shift genres, and I don't know if the Christian market is the right place for what I (usually) like to write. I've seen the books on Christian bookstore shelves, and most of them just aren't the kind of thing I enjoy writing.

There's something else too. I don't know how to say it exactly, so here's an example. I was reading a plot summary of The Oath the other day. It's got dragons, conspiracies, murder... everything a good urban fantasy needs. I thought it sounded like a cool story right up until the protagonist is told that he "must have Jesus on his side" to defeat the dragon.

Now this is sad (and worthy of its own blog post): why does the mention of Jesus automatically make the story feel cheesy to me? It says more about me than it does about the story, I know. Travelers borders on this, but I wasn't willing to go all the way and say, "You need Jesus to defeat Arad." I think because I wanted to sell, maybe even speak to, the secular market.

Besides which (and maybe this is why I find it so cheesy), I think a Christian reading Travelers would put two and two together without me ever having to be obvious about it, and I fear being obvious about it would automatically turn off a non-Christian reader. I'm not trying to evangelize with the book. If anything, I want both Christian and non-Christian readers to think - maybe for the first time - that there might be more to this life than we think there is.

I don't know if the story does that, but is it already too late anyway? Is the book already too religious for the secular market? I guess I'll find out, if it sells.

Status Report

For what few readers I have, this is probably what you actually want to know.

Following the excellent advice on Agent Query, I have been sending queries out in batches: no more than 10 agents every 2-3 weeks.

My first batch went out on May 14th. So far I have gotten a form rejection from 4 of these agents.

My second batch went out today. This batch is different in that some of these agents asked for a synopsis and/or as many as 50 sample pages (the most I sent out to an agent in the first batch was 5). I also have a revised query letter that I'm happier with. We'll see if any of that makes any difference.

I'll keep reporting here when there are things to report. In the meantime, I've finished outlining the air pirates story (which has a working title, but for the purposes of this blog I'll continue tagging it as Air Pirates) and am currently at 20,037 words on the draft.

Travelers: Mini-Synopsis

Only a handful of people actually know what Travelers is about, although a number of people have asked me over the years. I've always had a hard time summarizing it. After I finished it, I discovered that (obviously) you have to summarize it for agents and editors (and sometimes a slightly longer synopsis as well).

As it turns out, I don't know what my own book is about. That is, I had a hard time boiling it down to a single theme or even plot point. There's just so much that happens, and it's all important to me! Some of this is due to inexperience writing query letters, and the rest of it is inexperience writing period. When I wrote Travelers, I just wrote what needed to happen. I didn't have a theme in mind necessarily until I looked back at it and saw what it was about. And even then...

Anyway, here's the mini-synopsis in its current state. I had an idea this morning that I might use to change it, but this is a start for those of you who want to know what I wrote about.

Dr. Alex Gaines considers himself a man of reason – after all, it’s reason that helps him create a time machine – but when he meets an old man claimed as a prophet, has to save his son from a self-appointed dictator, and comes to care for a lonely girl with powers beyond her control, he finds that reason may not have all the answers he needs.

Alex and his son travel more than 100 years into the future, where Southern California has become a wasteland after a devastating war. A small group of survivors live together for protection under the control of a man named Arad, but if the rumors about him are true, Arad is something more than a man; some believe he is the savior prophesied before the war began, others call him the devil. Those who speak against him mysteriously disappear, and now only a small group of rebels remains.

It seems nothing can stop him, until one day a strange girl arrives in the rebel camp in a most frightening way – exploding through a cave wall, unintentionally killing innocent people. The leader of the rebellion wants her dead, but many believe she is their only hope against Arad. As it turns out, Arad has plans for her as well, and while she struggles to understand who she is, Alex discovers that he and his son may be her only hope.

The First Transport is Away!

The real catalyst for beginning to write here is that I recently (just yesterday) sent out the first batch of queries to agents for my novel, Travelers. About five years ago, I decided that if I really wanted to write a novel, then I needed to do it - if only to prove to myself that I could. I had two story ideas at the time: one about air pirates and the other about time travelers. I liked the air pirates idea better, so I figured I'd learn to write with the one I liked less.

Writing is freaking hard. I'm sure that will be its own post later. About a year ago I finished a draft of Travelers, and sent it to a couple of friends to read. A couple of months ago I began revising based on their input and now, though the novel is not perfect (they never are, just as George Lucas), I figured I needed to just start sending it out and seeing what happened.

And hurray! I already have my first two for-real rejection letters! Now, I'm not dumb. I've researched this business as best as I could from my desk, and I know the reality of rejections. What I didn't know is that, no matter how ready you think you are for it, it still bugs. It's like a mosquito bite. I know it's better to ignore it, but I can't stop thinking about them!

But if I don't stop thinking about them, then I'll never be able to get back to work on the air pirates story, which (as anyone will tell you) is the only productive thing to do after sending out queries.