I’m back from my hiatus! Yay! As I have said before, I have been so lost in writing that I’ve neglected this blog to some degree – and I apologize profusely! DREAMING updates I have done what I set out to do in January and sent off my queries for DREAMING to a couple of more agents. The other week I got another rejection. Yay! Querying is so much fun and rejections definitely do not get to me! Either way, a handful of queries have been sent out and I am still waiting to hear back. In the meantime, I plan to do much more reading, as I am exploring new genres but also am aiming at looking for books similar to DREAMING and other projects to hopefully get to use them as comps in future queries! New project alert! As of this month, I am working on a new project to see if I can work on it as well as I have been working on my fun project these last few months. If I manage to get it done as quickly, I’d have a first draft done in March and a final draft done in April, ready to be beta’d and critiqued! If all goes according to plan it could be queried by this autumn! All of this, of course, is theoretical. But it could work. Given the time. And motivation, of course. The question now of course is how to divide the time. Whether I should focus on DREAMING and the queries, or focus on new project(s). Or work on both at the same time... If the project thrives, I'll add a pitch in the projects page of this here website. For now, I'll leave you with this: it is an enemies-to-lovers slow burn set in a fantastical world! Hopefully soon I'll have updates to share for the project! Hopefully hopefully!
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I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t wait to get my hands on the free version of Sims 4. Anything to keep my mind off all the writing projects I’m working on!
Polishing my DREAMING querY
Show of hands, who here really likes writing query letters?
See, inna da bennningning, I thought I did. Because I love writing emails and presenting my story professionally. Little did I know that the pitch would break me. Is this the villain origin story? Ah the pitch… What can one say? How can one to put this frustration to words? Ever since I started Uni, I realized I am an over-writer. 2000 word essay? Oops, my fingers slipped over the keyboard and I accidentally wrote 4000 words instead. 80% of my University time was spent not writing essays, but trying to trim them down. So you can imagine the frustration when I was faced with cutting down my 78,000 word novel, aka, a 312 book-page novel, into 200 words, aka less than half a page! Call an ambulance! (and yes, for me!). And don’t get me started on the fact that it has to flow well, make sense and entice the reader. Help, I do not know what I am doing. - I sent out my first batch of queries at the end of August. That’s more than a month ago. I have sent two other emails since but not a full 5-agent-batch. Why? Because I want to re-examine my query after having been rejected three times at this point. That doesn’t mean anything of course, since three rejections is very little. Too little, in fact, to know if the problem is: 1. I just wasn’t a right fit for them, 2. They didn’t like the first three chapters or 3. They didn’t like the query. It’s frustrating not knowing which of these three elements swayed these agents to reject. But I believe that anything can be perfected, so I set myself the goal of rewriting my query before the second batch, and reviewing my first three chapters before the third batch. In related news, nobody warned me just how cringe it would be to reread the first chapters after having sent them in. I don’t know if it’s just because of my crippling self-doubt, but from one moment to the next, my first chapters just read so badly! But I’ll take a deeper dive into those chapters later – now I’m focused on the query. In order to rewrite it, I assembled different query drafts, polished them, and then gave them to my family, who then had to rank how likely they were to read the novel based on each query. I got feedback from two people. Yay! Contradicting feedback. … … Yay? Though both readers ranked the queries quite differently and so the feedback was somewhat contradictory, one of them stood out a little bit, so I worked from there, deleting sentences I didn’t like and molding together a solid paragraph from bits and pieces. Then I refined everything down to every minute word choice. Yes, I am a perfectionist!!!
Though I am quite content with this new version (until probably like tomorrow, when I will rewrite it all, again), I still have an issue with my comparable titles. One of them is pretty old. It’s The Neverending Story. But for goodness sake I can’t for the life of me find a novel that's less than three years old where the character falls into a book’s world. I’m starting to even doubt that I should go in the plot-related-comp direction at all. So if anyone knows of a recent YA portal-fantasy or even high fantasy, let me know! In any case, I will be doing research in that direction this week.
If you want to have a look at the query (in progress), here it is:
Getting trapped in a world of her own imagination and battling her demons is not what 17-year-old Evelyn Asherwood has in mind going into senior year. When Evelyn discovers the Alter, a world where she can create anything she could ever want by simply using her imagination, it’s no wonder she prefers it to mundane high school drama. After all, being trained by the mystical people of the dreamlike dimension is no match for real life. Never having felt more alive, Evelyn spends more and more time in the utopian world while boring reality fades to the background. But everything changes when Evelyn’s demonic alter ego, Solyce, appears. Consumed by inexplicable rage, Solyce starts to burn the Alter down and distorts Evelyn’s reality with psychological games and hallucinations, all until Evelyn is unable to tell reality from fantasy. To stop Solyce and save her new friends, Evelyn must gather the strength to stand and fight her own darkness, or give in to the pain and sacrifice herself, killing Solyce with her. I am currently looking for new critique partners for it, so send me a message in the contact form if you would like to exchange queries! End of year progress plaN
As these next few months may be the last where I am completely free to work independently on my novels, I plan to make the most of it.
I will be sorting out all of my novels and really go through them. Since I have technically always been a panster, now comes the difficult time of facing my demons: organizing novels into sequences, beats, and scenes. That means I will be basically reading through all of my projects and organizing them. And I suspect that will take a while. Stay tuned to see what progress I (don’t) make! What about NaNoWriMo?
I still haven’t quite figured out my NaNo plans yet. As a perfectionist, I can hardly not participate, and yet, I already have so many projects in the works. 13 projects, to be more precise, according to my master document. 13 projects of over 15,000 words.
An idea I had was, instead of writing a novel in November, to instead plan, script-write, and film a 0-budget movie for youtube. But for now that’s just an idea. Otherwise, I do have my fair share of ideas for new novels. Sometimes, the issue remains that the ideas are there, the spark is there, but as soon as I'm sitting in front of that screen, my mind just goes blank, and I can’t expand the idea through words on the page. I don’t know, I’ll have to see. Other times, I have project ideas but mentally can not work with them, especially when they deal with heavy stuff. This April for example, I set out to write a novel where the main character looses her mind. The story is very gory and has very dark themes and I found myself unable to write more than a few pages before realizing that writing more of it would really be pretty detrimental for my mental health, which at the time was already almost at an all time low. So I stopped and worked on something else – which I’m glad I did! So yeah, we’ll have to see what I come up with in the next 15 days! No stress at all! TL;DR
As always, here’s my tiktok recap of this week. I’ll see you all next week!
Hi! I’m back again! This week has been very productive so I’m excited to share with all of you what I have been up to!
Update on my current WIP
I finished going through the quasi-first draft of my WIP (which still needs a name, if you couldn’t tell). As I mentioned previously, I cut up the novel into five documents to have a better overview and to make it easier to organize the story. Now that I was somewhat happy with how the story and plot was sorted out, I allowed myself to merge all the documents into one.
And I don’t know if any of you have done this before, but it was scary to say the least to cut 15,000 words from a document and then paste them into another. I made sure to do the maths and check that the word count updated correctly on the new document, hoping Word wasn’t going to do something weird and delete passages for some reason. But from the looks of it, it all went find, and I ended up with a manuscript of a whooping 124,264 words, a.k.a 334 pages. For those unfamiliar with A4 to book page ratio, that’s about 668 book pages. That is more pages than Crooked Kingdom has (the most recent book I’m proud to say I have read). And I am more than happy to state that all of it is just raw enemies-to-lovers slow burn and that I, dear reader, am the author of this masterpiece. (Can anyone tell I've been watching Bridgerton? ??) Of course, before I get ahead of myself, I should probably remind myself that this is a first draft. As a matter of fact, I doubt I can even call it that! It’s much, much rougher than a first draft, and it goes without saying that no one would be able to read it as a normal manuscript at all at this stage: there are scenes missing, cuts that are abrupt, and honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are a handful, if not a mountain’s worth, of passages that end mid-sentence! Not to mention, there are characters that just appear halfway through or towards the end of the novel, who are supposed to be part of the story from the beginning, but only pop up later since I only came up with them later in the revision. Don't even get me started on the potential inaccuracies and logical problems in regards to character development. As I head into a second revision to hopefully be able to call the manuscript a first draft, I’ll be working on fleshing out the characters and the world background. I set up a character document listing all of the characters mentioned to be able to keep track of their physical description and relation to other characters, and, later, to keep track of wounds and scars. Because my goodness do those appear and disappear as though by magic sometimes! It’s crazy how easy it is to forget stuff like that when writing! Connecting with other writers
As a goal for the week, I also wanted to join a new writing discord server. I really enjoy using those to get to know other writers and of course to use the sprinting bot which makes writing so much more intense (and fun, I should add).
I found a group with over a hundred members and joined without hesitation. When it’s such a big group, you’re sure to always find at least one other person online. I guess that’s also kind of the downside, as I get to wake up every morning to over ten discord notifications, mainly because I live in Europe and a lot of the members are from the US. Half of that is on me of course, mainly because I haven’t gotten around to turning the notifications off yet, haha. Anyway, I already got to talk to some people which was really nice, and I’m looking forward to using the platform to share ideas, and have discussions about writing. I also talked about the sprinting bot, which I use a lot. If you don’t know, sprinto is a bot on discord which basically allows you to set up a writing sprint. In the writing community, writing sprints are generally well known. The concept is pretty straightforward: you agree on a time limit, say for example 10 minutes, and then you try to write as many words as you can. So yeah, it's basically a literal sprint, but instead of your whole body running, it’s only your fingers running over the keyboard. Sprints are all the more intense and stress inducing (in a good way), when others are competing too. In any case, it’s a helpful tool to sit down and write, even if, at the end of the day, it may just turn out to be garbage and you delete half of it. Sometimes it’s just what you need to get out of a writing slump, which is why I enjoy them so much. Definitely not because I’m super competitive and want to win every single sprint I join. Of course, sprinting isn’t for everyone. I know there are some people who literally tense up from the stress and get writer's block because of it. So yeah, it really depends, but in any case, it's definitely worth a shot! TL;DR
So yeah, that’s it for this week's update! You can find a short video version of my week here:
Self-promo, yeet
What is a blog post without some self-promotion? I mean, technically I promoted my tik tok account just above, but still, now it's time for my youtube channel to shine. Why, of course I am an influencer! I'm definitely down with the kids!
Besides, I uploaded the video this week so technically it was part of my week, and, as such, has its place in the weekly update. For any Star Wars fans out there, the video may very well be of interest to you, as in it, I recite the whole script of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith blindfolded. Yes, you read that right. If it sounds like something you’d enjoy, here it is: Wow! I'm back again, right on time! Who would have thought? Not me! Without further ado, here what I've been up to this week: Writing my new main Wip! ... for which I desperately need a title! Even just a working title!!! If you haven't seen it already, I have added my October accountability calendar on the homepage. This weekend I plan on finishing part 6/7 of my book. Yes, you read that right. I broke the book into seven parts to have a better overview of things, because believe me when I say a lot of things happen in the story. Not gonna brag, but my novel isn't very conventionally structured. I know this can pose a problem, but why do writing rules exist if not to break them? Basically, you'll usually have your story structure with start, climax and finish. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about, I graduated in Film Studies as well! In other words, it'll look something like this: (Image taken from www.mightybytes.com) You have the usual inciting incident, the complication, climax and then the end of the story. But boy oh boy, I would not consider this novel to fit in there. If a usual structure like the one above looks like a lonely mountain, I imagine my novel as looking more like a panorama of the Alps (trust me, I know what I'm talking about, I literally live in the Alps). So yeah, basically I am currently editing the finale, even though it's not really the finale since it's not the big battle at the end of the story. Let's just say it's a big battle preceding the finale one. I wrote in a post months ago about how I first started this book writing it in a non-chronological way, for some reason starting the novel in the middle of the story. Well, I've finally come to that part after putting everything back in order. And let's just say that the writing is somewhat outdated. Back in the day, the characters weren't fully fleshed out, nor was their history, or the worldbuilding. Meaning that most of what I had written is now unusable. Meaning that I'm going to spend most of today editing, editing, and editing some more - yay! But as they say, better to be editing than writing from scratch, right? ... Right? Now I know I am bragging, but I'm also quite a fan of what I've written, because I have been playing with a trope I haven't really tried out yet. And trust me when I say I've been having a lot of fun with it. Basically, my novel is an enemies to lovers, but I love complications, so it's much more complex than just a progression that looks like this: Enemies -> Lovers. To avoid spoilers I won't look up my notes, but the relationship between the two main characters goes a bit like this: Enemies -> Archenemies -> Enemies -> Accomplices -> Friends -> Enemies -> Accomplices -> Friends -> Almost-lovers -> Enemies -> Friends -> Lovers -> Enemies -> Friends -> Lovers -> Enemies... I think I'll stop there hahaha, you get the gist. In any case, I'm pretty proud of it and I'm excited to get to the 2nd/3rd draft stages and then be able to send it to critique partners! Besides, it's always good to have a project to keep the mind off rejected queries... Yes, Dreaming got rejected again... Maybe I shouldn't have queried one of my favourite agents at such an early stage of my querying journey but whatever. What's done is done. So far, I've sent out about 6 queries and received 3 rejections, which I think are all form rejections, as far as I can tell. Yay? Again, as you can see on the accountability calendar, my plan is to send out a second batch of queries next week. Until then, I will be re-editing my query letter, for which I have already received really helpful feedback. If you are also querying, don't hesitate getting in touch for a query letter exchange! In any case, for anyone else in the query trenches, I highly highly recommend working on another project you really love, because it does take your mind off things and reminds you that you have so many more potential projects to be published. But then again, take all of this with a grain of salt because, after all, I have really just entered the trenches, and I have only sent out so many queries. Meet me again in a year and I bet my opinions will have changed drastically! But now to a more fun thing I did this week! I read my first arc book! Yes, again, you read that right! This week, I got to read my first ARC book! An ARC book is an Advanced Reader Copy of a book that hasn’t been published yet. It is shared to reviewers so that they can get their reviews in before the book is released the general public, and to create a hype around the publication. I got the opportunity to read BIANCA TORRE IS AFRAID OF EVERYTHING by Justine Pucella Winans, a YA murder mystery with a wholesome array of queer characters. Needless to say, I absolutely loved it and downed the whole book in a day! I’m going to be posting small reviews on my goodreads and on twitter soon, and then, in March/April of 2023, nearing the official publication date, I will be posting a full-length review on this here blog (with memes, of course!). I also hope that this opportunity will push me to try and get more of a following on here and on my twitter (and on my tik tok? Maybe?), because what is a review without an audience? Haha. In the meantime, if you're lucky, you might have the privilege of getting another blog post in this coming week (shocking, I know!), because I did also want this blog to have reviews on it and so far we're at zero on that account, oops. Anyway, I was thinking of publishing my review of the series Heartbreak High while it is still relevant, before I dive more into books and keep up to date with the newest trends on that end. If you have any recommendations for books that have been published recently that you really loved (or hated, why not), be sure to let me know, my specialty being YA SFF, but I do enjoy anything contemporary, and, of course, anything LGBTQ+! Until then, have a good week, and see you soon! Another week has come and passed. How time passes quickly when you're revising your novel! I am currently organizing the very novel I had been revising a few months ago. Anything to keep myself distracted from the DREAMING queries I sent out! To be fair, I've been on somewhat of a row with this novel, as I've found some new ideas that I'm trying to squeeze in. For the time being, I have titled the project Love and Hate, though that will obviously not be its final title. You can find some more information about it here, even though I haven't yet created a page dedicated entirely to the manuscript yet. That's because it's far from being in its final form, with whole sections that still need rewriting. Then the whole novel needs to be edited for a first final draft. Then edited maybe two or three more times before I send it out to first critique partners. Then to some beta-readers. Before and after sending it out it will be of course re-edited. Then it would enter the querying phase. Woah... I've just summed up how a book gets written! X'D This novel has sure been a handful. Unlike DREAMING, this story has not been waiting around in my computer files for years. I started this project for a camp NaNoWriMo three years ago. Within the month I had written 50,000 words. And then I just kept going. Fast forward to three years later and it's gotten even longer. And I absolutely adore it. But it's very long. I've had to cut it up in 5-6 part documents to keep an eye over everything. I'm not even sure if it will work as a single volume or if it's better to be cut in two. Don't even get me started on the fact that I have ideas for a sequel to that as well! Over the last week I've listed all of the parts, sequences and scenes chronologically. Now all I have to do is go through the whole thing and makes sure that everything is in order, and that all the parts naturally move from one to the next. Basically, I'm going to have to check whether the story is readable and logical. All the while I'll be filling in the blank spots: the scenes and even sequences I haven't written out yet. There's nothing more beautiful than coming to a sentence that explains the scene and a whole blank page underneath it. <3 And one thing for example that I haven't written yes is the finale. Don't get me started on that. The writer's block of writing the finale One of the reasons why it's taken me so long to get to the point of having the whole story planned out is because something was missing. To be more precise, the finale was missing. Which, as you might have guessed, is a pretty substantial part of every story. The reader wants something grandiose. Something satisfying, something cathartic. I had a lot of trouble finding that finale because in my novel, it's two humans against a monster more powerful than both of them. I had to figure out how they could face it and win, obviously. I would never dare to kill my main characters... What I really wanted was a satisfying climax, a big battle. But it still had to be logical all things considered. The characters couldn't just waltz in and destroy the monster, knowing full well that they had fought against it numerous times before and lost every time. However, I also didn't want the 'battle' to just be this tiny event between three people. I wanted something bigger. It took a while, but I managed to find a solution that brings in a big, epic finale. Unless, of course, I later on decide that I want to change it! So yeah, that's what I've been up to. I realize that this post went up quite a bit late, I've been working on said novel and I'm also prepping a new DREAMING query letter. Last but not least, I am also in the midst of preparing a travel to Ireland! That'd be something to write about, I'm sure of it! See ya next week! Two weeks. That was all it took before I got my first response. With agents mostly having a 6-8 week waiting time, I really hadn't been expecting something this soon. The context...I sent off five queries for my debut novel DREAMING on the 24th of August. The agents I queried were all taken from a master list where I assembled and listed 80 agents based on what types of manuscripts they accept and want to read. All of these agents could accept my novel based on their MSWL, with some matching more to my novel than others. I put these agents in a list and divided the list into five tiers (first tier being agents that would really match and that I really want, second tier being agents I want but who are not that much of a match, etc, until agents that are barely a match). The five agents I sent queries to are all from a variety of tiers, meaning that some of them I really felt a real connection to and others less so. You can guess which agent sent the rejection. Yup. The agent from tier one. The very second agent on my list. The second agent I most wanted to represent my book. Am I disappointed? Slightly. Is my day ruined? Maybe. See, I don't even know if it was a personalized response or not because this is the first time I'm dipping my toes into the querying trenches, as they say. However, it looks to be a rather generic rejection. Aka, the novel is "okay" but "isn't a personal fit" (not their words). It nevertheless gives me hope, even if it is a generic rejection, because there's a real possibility that it really was just a personal fit problem. That's because I know that my novel will really not be a good fit for just anyone. I even wonder sometimes if it's a good fit for me, ha. The reason behind that is that the novel takes on some pretty heavy stuff. There's a good bunch of mental health themes going on, and the imagery gets pretty dark at times (with things like torture, SH, or hallucinations). So yes, my journey finding the right agent continues, all while I continue the writing process! |