Blurred Line

My latest submission (this time I was sending out "Between Eternities" as reprint material) just came back for a rewrite request. The editor wasn't happy with the ending, for good reason -- I've never been happy about the ending myself. In fact, at one point I was submitting the story minus the final scene. I'm not going to write a new ending, largely because it's already been published elsewhere, but I thought I'd take a few minutes here to write about rewrite requests.

Mostly, if an editor requests a rewrite, do it. Believe you me, if "Between Eternities" was an unpublished piece, I'd be working on a new ending right now -- even if I was in love with it. If an editor requests a rewrite, they're already hooked, and that's most of the battle right there. I understand that some people get very attached to their stories, but the fact of the matter is, given insight from another perspective, almost everyone's writing can be improved.

As an editor, I've only requested a handful of rewrites, and I was kind of surprised when none of the authors resubmitted. And it's important to keep in mind that I never tell someone what I think they should have written. Instead, I focus on what I felt didn't quite work. Apparently, none of the writers felt it was worth their time re-work anything. What's up with that?

A rewrite request, in my opinion, is an opportunity, not a dismissal. I'm curious, though...maybe it's not looked upon kindly by most people. Opinions?

Also: Two new blogs worth a read -- Perhaps We Learned Something... and Words, etc.

As promised, here's my ripoff of this post from The Swivet. I think any list like this is going to be relatively similar from person to person, whether its an agent getting genre queries, a small press getting lit fic queries, or whatever. Still, it's probably instructive to drive a few of these points home. These are queries sent to Apodis Publishing that I've already responded to, from a stretch back in September and October.

#1 - Fantasy query. Well structured query, but it's not interested in those, as per my submission guidelines.
#2 - SF query. Well structured but fails to grab my interest.
#3 - SF query. Well structured but badly written.
#4 - High concept SF query. Novel described in one brief paragraph, and only two of the sentences in it actually talk about the plot. Lots of details on author's background.
#5 - Lit fic/mystery query. Long paragraph about book -- not much on the plot, though. Mostly on themes and style. Brief description of author's background. Liked the sample pages. Full manuscript requested.
#6 - "No idea what genre this is" query. Novel description full of praise (note: do not, under any circumstances, effusively praise your own novel).
#7 - Lit fic query. Only one sentence about novel. Writing sample is quite good. Full manuscript requested. (A good example that a solid writing sample is waaaay more important than the structure or content of the query letter itself.)
#8 - YA/SF query. Good description of novel with a large number of blurbs from various people who have read it. Writing sample is decent. Full manuscript requested.
#9 - Lit fic query. Good description of novel, but author opens by downplaying their own abilites (note: do not, under any circumstances, saying anything bad about your own novel).
#10 - Lit fic/bizarro query. Short description of novel, but writing sample is too out there for me.
#11 - Lit fic/SF query. Well structured query and writing sample is decent, but not something I can see myself publishing.
#12 - Lit fic query. Nice, short description, but writing sample is just blah.
#13 - Lit fic query. Decent query, but writing sample is just blah.
#14 - Lit fic collection query. Good description and some impressive publishing experience. Writing sample was quite good. Full manuscript requested.
#15 - Lit fic query. Blah query and blah writing sample.

Also, finished another book yesterday. Earlier this year I pledged to read more books than I added to my collection. So, here's where I'm at:

Books read: 5
Books acquired: 8

The book: Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill.
The plot: Alison's middle aged body is falling apart. She's got a bad shoulder. She's got hepatitis. Allison goes for a walk. Remembers her life during her late teens and twenties, when she was a model. Memories of debauchery, unhappiness and most importantly, of Veronica, an obnoxious, middle aged friend who dies of AIDS.
IMO: Another highly regarded book (this one was a National Book Award finalist and on a bunch of best of lists the year it came out) that I just couldn't connect to. A lot of the time, the writing was purposefully abstract. If characters in the novel are going to have realizations of some sort...well, let's just say it's a lot easier to write about it in a stylized, abstract manner. It's a lot more powerful when you can show it definitively on the page and that's something that Gaitskill rarely does. Unfortunately, I've got to hand out another thumbs down.

I realized today that Fusion Fragment has now been kicking around for almost two years. I've been reading stuff for Apodis even longer. Basically, that means that I've now been wearing the editor had for long enough to throw said hat into the ring and do one of those inevitable "Here's a list of stories I don't want, and if I get anymore of them I'm going to scream" lists. So, without further adieu, if these are in your story, you should probably look for a market other than FF:

An opening scene where a brilliant scientist is about to begin an experiment that will change/end the world (I get such a huge number of these, it's just plain frightening). You lose additional points if the scientist is working with another scientist who happens to be both female and hot. You lose additional points if the two scientists hook up at some point in the story (it always happens).
The first sentence of your story contains the rank and full name of your main character. For example, "Without regard for his own safety, Lieutenant David Johnson flung himself into the heat of battle". About 75% of military SF that I get starts this way.
Aliens invade Earth, resulting in hilarity. At what point did it become uncool to write an invasion story with a straight face? I'm pretty sure every single invasion story I've gotten has ended with a punch line. Let me lay this challenge down: send me an invasion story that's gritty and has a little bit of a kick to it. Don't make me laugh.
An alien race (or two alien races) become involved in a minor quarrel that result in Earth being destroyed, which of course results in hilarity.
A human lands on another planet and misinterprets all of their customs, resulting in hilarity.
A human lands on another planet and has sex with its inhabitants (often resulting in hilarity).
For that matter, an alien lands on Earth and has sex with its inhabitants (often resulting in hilarity).
The first paragraph of your story reads like the introduction to a Star Wars movie. A boring Star Wars movie.
The main character in your story discovers a way to give themselves superhuman powers (often the scientist from the first example) and then discovers that superhuman powers aren't so great. Destroys themselves/the world/the universe.
Your story, at some point, contains the crew of a spaceship having conversations that consist of nothing but launch/landing procedures. Additional loss of points if the crew contains a withdrawn guy and a tough but beautiful woman. Further loss of points if the tough but beautiful woman hooks up with another crew member.

If you're into this kind of stuff, stay tuned; on the weekend, I'm planning to mercilessly plagiarize this post from The Swivet.

It was a stat holiday here today, though I still had to go to work since my company has an American holiday schedule. It's kind of hard to muster up the motivation to really get down to work when everyone else you know has the day off. Also, went to an all you can eat sushi place. I mentioned before that I'm not the biggest sushi fan, so for the most part I abstained from that side of things, but the all you can eat menu did include lots of tempura, and various other dishes. Three hours later, and I'm still feeling the effects. Agh.

Blazed right through Crooked Little Vein on Saturday; it was one hell of a ride. The plot is just ridiculous, following a down and out private eye who's given the task of retrieving the other US Constitution, full of alien technology and meteor fragments, that'll save the corrupted morals of the current American landscape. The book attempts a commentary on sexual fetishism and how it has gone mainstream; I'm not sold on it being successful in this facet, but it didn't matter that much to me, since the rest of the book is so off-the-wall and enjoyable to read. I'll leave you with a few choice quotes from the back cover: "This book ate my soul." - Joss Whedon. "Stop it. You're frightening me." - William Gibson.

Keywords of the Day: "telephone number adrien brody". Yeah, Adrien and me go way back. I'll hook you up with him when you hook me up with Jessica Alba. "to kill a moulin bird by harper lee chapter notes". Trying to cheat on a paper when you don't even know the name of the book = bad idea. When it's a book that everyone knows the name of = worse idea.

Friday! That's about how I'm feeling right now. Not that it was a long week or anything, but sometimes the need for a little bit of rest and relaxation is still there anyway. So, I'm off to see Coraline tonight, and then some Valentine's Day festivities tomorrow, including a massage and a fancy meal complete with wine pairing for each course (I'm at a complete loss, by the way, as to when I became mature enough to enjoy those kind of things...it seems like only yesterday I was putting Spiderman Valentine cards into paper bags attached to people's desks). Hope everyone out there is going to have a good Valentine's Day a) doing fun stuff with their significant other, b) scoffing at how Valentine's Day is just a stupid holiday pushed on us by greeting card companies, c) scoffing at how Valentine's Day is just a stupid holiday made to make single people feel bad, d) getting blind drunk on whiskey and loneliness. I've done all four in my time. I don't think you've really lived until you have.

In other news, I finished Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and I have to say that I was pretty disappointed. I've heard nothing but good things about this book and I generally find it difficult to go wrong with a Booker winner. Oh well, I guess the day had to come sooner or later.

The plot centers around the tragic events in an Indian family during one day sometime in the 1960s. You discover pretty early on that one of the characters dies (the story is narrated from the 1990s), but Roy then makes the interesting choice of structuring the rest of the book in such a way that tries to wring every last bit of suspense out of what took place that night. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work. That said, Roy is a talented wordsmith, but, no matter how good a stylist she might be, it doesn't really translate into a quality piece of work. The main flaw for me was that she never convinced me to buy into any of her main character's actions. As for the characters that I did buy into, well, their actions just didn't seem to matter too much --they seemed there mostly for background colour. So, I have to give this one a big thumbs down.

On the Radioblog: Today I've got "One Body Breaks" by Patrick Park. This was one of those artists I discovered while trawling the 1 cent CD auctions on eBay. As it turns out, Park's become one of my favourites. This track, my favourite from his second album Everyone's In Everyone (am I wrong to say that that sounds like the title of a porn movie?), is pretty representative of his music; alt-country with a solid grounding in pop and rock.

Keywords of the day: "michael douglas movie where he goes on a rampage after losing his job and his car breaks down". You, good reader, would be thinking of Falling Down. Incidentally, it's a pretty decent movie, in my opinion. "accidentally dragged the clock to the trash bin". That's tough. I recommend this as a replacement. "godammit you have lupus". Yeah, I miss Mitch, too.

Found this via Paperback Writer, and it has to be one of my all-time favourite pointless links on the web. The Bonsai Story Generator basically takes your story, messes the words around, and gives you an entirely nonsensical story in return. Quality In, Garbage Out, as they say on the site. The interesting part is that, when I put in "Between Eternities", it gave me some really fascinating passages, included some I kinda wish I'd written for real. Enjoy.

What is this conversation, just black. So the subject didn't run.

She shakes her to run some checks on our doorstep. They couldn't understand why it's so I keep drinking the night before.

So the square, its shining through a haze of the kids curled into their rhythms.

Cats, dogs, pencil sharpeners wearing one of the bills from the ways of red tracing his path to find a minute. It's perfect monotone. Sighs impatiently when you wake up again, realize the game they're playing with you.

When you walk for a pile of lettuce. Yeah, I forget the police, right? Then one of what you know they've won, because you've got out, I was stuck between Nina and happy place. Lots of smiles. No one can be summed up with another one. She grabs my ear close to her mouth.

The occasional ant scurrying across the floor of my name into fetal balls on our doorstep. They always win.

And, because all randomized text will eventually give you zombie related material: The Warden will say your brain for a minute. It's perfect PR.

Fusion Fragment #8 has gone live. In this issue, we've got stories about mind-reading, crime-fighting children, a marriage where two people really are joined, and hallucinogenic tea. Something for everyone.

Go have a read.

Got back from California yesterday and spent pretty much all of Saturday working. Hell of a way to start a weekend. Anyhow, California was quite nice, even if the weather was only so-so (it rained the whole time), and I was working the whole time (the picture, complete with a helpful diagram to prove I was actually in California, was taken right before going into a meeting). Also, San Francisco pretty much closes up shop at 8 PM. What's with that?

Most of the trip, unfortunately, was spent in transit. So, some stories about that; first, both trips were pretty comfortable, since the flights weren't that full and I didn't have anyone beside me. I got to stretch out a little bit and watch a bunch of movies -- Air Canada has one of those little touchscreen monitors in the seat back with a nice selection of movies and TV shows to watch. However, they don't become operational until the plane is done its climb, which they really need to tell people early on. A woman sitting across from me kept pushing the screen, with more and more intensity, until I couldn't stand it anymore and I had to let her know that it wasn't going to work. Plus, I was a little worried the guy in front of her was going to bitch-slap her.

On the final leg of my return flight from Toronto to Ottawa, the guy who sat beside me was telling the woman on the other side about how he'd just spent a month abroad and was forced into an arranged marriage (some background here, he was an Albanian Muslim), and now he was going to have to tell the Jewish girl he was in love with that they couldn't be together. I felt bad for the guy, and even moreso when the woman he was telling the story to, who turned out to be one of the fundamentalist Christian types, made some vaguely anti-Semitic remarks, then spent the next half-hour talking about how incredibly hard it'd be for him and the strength with which she was going to be praying for him. By the time the flight touched down, the guy looked like he was going to burst into tears.

And, with complete disregard for any kind of segue, something I find really irritating as an editor: people who send queries or submissions that say things like "let's make some money together" or "send the check as soon as possible, I need some money". Yes, I understand that you're trying to be funny, but it just makes me feel cheap and dirty. Like a hooker. And not a Julia Roberts-in-Pretty-Woman-hooker. You can't buy my love, people. Well, you probably could, but you couldn't afford it. Not if you're a writer.

A little bit of unfortunate news; "Spam" was rejected by Electric Spec, although I did get a very nice letter from the editor. Apparently, everyone there really liked it, but it was stuck behind some other really strong SF submissions. Ah, well. It's off to another market now.

As for my current projects, things are slow going. I just deleted much of what I'd written on the short story; the section was basically a big infodump. I'm hoping it's largely a matter of working out the rust, though I'm also keenly aware of the fact that I have no idea what the story's even about. As for the novel idea, I'm slowly doing some outlining. I've got ideas of what the first six chapters are going to cover, if not any actual outlines. Still, it's something.

Anyhoo, that's all for now. Back to writing.