SPOILER WARNING: Major spoilers for Rings of Power (obviously), as well as spoilers for House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings (if you haven't read or watched the trilogy yet, what are you waiting for?). Foreword: - I will be posting a video version of this review on Youtube soonish. - Whenever I mention the ‘Trilogy’, I am referring to The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson. It is capitalized because it is the Holy Trilogy. - ‘LotR’ refers to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Introduction The time has come for another review. Even before Rings of Power aired, I had prepared my first thoughts based on the posters and the teaser images that were released. I’ve put them below, followed by my thoughts on the series after watching. I’m sorry, I am an overwriter, and this post is very, very, very long. As long as LotR itself, some might say. But as someone who has been obsessed with Tolkien’s Middle Earth for the last seven years, I have some m̶a̶n̶y̶ things to say. And if you’re wondering about my credentials, here they are: Though I do not consider myself a middle earth expert, because I know the lore is almost never-ending, I have read The Hobbit, LotR, and the Silmarillion. Additionally, I have watched the Trilogy (extended cuts) approximately 6 times and read its script. My favourite movie of all times is The Fellowship of the Ring (2006), my favourite book of all times is The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), which I read in two days when I first got it. I have a box set of the LotR books and the books smell really nice. In the past I have learned some Quenya, I have built two sh***y versions of Minas Tirith in Minecraft and have also been on the Middle Earth server. Additionally, one of my planet coaster worlds has a LotR themed area where I rebuilt Hobbiton and the eye of Sauron H̶a̶l̶b̶r̶a̶n̶d̶. I can play Concerning Hobbits on the piano, and on the violin I can also play that song, as well as The Breaking of the Fellowship, the themes of Rohan and Gondor, and The Ring Goes South. I have been working on a painting of Rivendell and another of a hobbit house over the past years. I have painted Frodo, and drawn some LotR costumes. One of my first pencils sketches are of Frodo and Gollum. My laptop background as been Valinor from Rings of Power ever since the day the teaser image was released. On the merch side I have a tee-shirt, the one ring with necklace, two LotR calendars and multiple posters. And yes, I wrote PG self-insert LotR fanfiction back in 2015. And no, I will not share it. Last but not least, I watched the Hobbit trilogy in cinemas back in the day, trying to love them despite their flaws, which did not work. Since watching them, I have made my own edit of The Hobbit, reducing it to a one 4-hour film. The expert that I am, what I look for in content within the universe is somewhat of a story that follows Tolkien’s canon. More important, for me personally, however, is for the media to rekindle that original Trilogy aesthetic, while introducing more diversity. My one and only critique of the original Trilogy, after all, was that it was too white and that there were ‘too many men’, as Emma D'arcy would say! Before the storm (February 2022) It’s crazy how, already in February, thanks to the Rings of Power teasers, the internet was in an uproar. I couldn’t help seeing the piles and piles of comments and opinions on twitter. I was terrified. But then I remembered that us Lord of the Rings fans had already witnessed and survived the massacre of the original Trilogy. Does anyone remember The Hobbit trilogy? If not, good for you! I remember as a teenager forcing myself into liking those movies without being honest to myself: they just didn't cut it. They did, however, make for an interesting comparison. What was it between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings? What did they do wrong and what made the original Trilogy so magical? How can we compare the two? Besides all that is story telling, cinematography and use of visual effects, there are loads of other behind-the-scenes reasons for the Hobbit movies being so bad. I recommend watching Lindsay's videos on that if you're interested: Knowing what The Hobbit did wrong (in my humble opinion), these were my most important points that Rings of Power needed to accomplish to be better:
The posters... When I first saw the faceless posters, I had my first doubts: did these costumes feel lived in? Authentic? I'm not a costume expert, so, at the time, I still wasn't sure I had an answer. But then came the face reveals. Funnily enough, the first picture I saw wasn't an official one: it was en edited picture of Disa, where someone had added in a beard. It looked something like this: My opinion? Hell yeah! We finally get to see what Gimli was talking about and what we had never seen before. Plus, it's low-key trans representation in a way, or at least breaking the gender binary, because where else would we get to see afab dwarves with beards?! Then, I found out that wasn't the real picture. Needless to say, my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. From that point on, I had doubts they'd add female dwarves with beards. Another day to be disappointed in the inability of producers to look ahead and dare something, take a risk, go all the way. I was less disappointed by the elf without the long hair, but still a bit shocked. Cause it's like their thing. And on and on it went, with people pointing out the inaccuracies between book descriptions and images. Personally I'm just confused as to why. Why didn't they give Elrond black hair? Like, what was stopping them? I mean, it really isn't a big deal, it's just a hair colour, but I've only listed three things here. Three inaccuracies based solely on the pictures they released. Of course, this could also all just have been a commercial ploy to bring about an uproar, but to be honest, I was kind of tired of it all. I was hesitant to watch it when it came out, scared of the potential cringe. At that point, the hype has definitely died within me. The trailer Lastly, the trailer. What could I say? The settings looked great. The rest? Might as well have been a trailer for season 3 of The Witcher. Like lots of others, I think we can agree that the feel of Lord of the Rings wasn't there based on the trailer alone. All this material made me so disinterested that I actually didn't even watch the official trailer when it came out months later, as far as I can remember. But then, as the show came out, I felt that, as a LotR fan, I had no other option but to watch it... My thoughts on the showTL;DR: 😍 : the landscapes. 😕 : the aesthetic not fitting the Trilogy; not worth the billion budget. 🥱 : a boring intro. One can’t deny that the landscapes shown on screen look beautiful and aesthetic. But is that enough to be a good series? I must admit I would personally watch a whole show set in Middle Earth where it’s just shots of different places and landscapes. I'd absolutely love it. However, the Rings of Power landscapes didn’t give the same feel as the Trilogy, if that can be understood. There are some shots that really try to be aesthetic, but when I see them, I don’t immediately think, oh, that’s in Middle Earth from the Trilogy. The landscape that came nearest to something out of the Trilogy was Numenor in my opinion, but that was just because it looked similar to Minas Tirith. I'm just sad we didn't get to see more of the locations, to see them like they're lived in. In the Trilogy, it just felt different. We got to see more of places like Minas Tirith or Edoras, to give two examples. Here, it felt like the different locations just weren't explored as much. The village in the Southlands reminded me more of Game of Thrones than the Trilogy. The Valinor was beautiful, but still didn't catch that Trilogy aesthetic. Finally, all the landscapes from the hobbits made me think of the Hobbit movies, and let's just say, that’s not the best thing. Can we also for a second mention the powerpoint-level 'Mordor' revelation? Whose idea was that? It would have been so epic for Oren to say "Mordor", with rolled Rs and all. But no, we got a title change. Why?! There's also one shot of Galadriel riding her horse and for some reason, the shot is in slow motion. I believe it appears towards the beginning of the last episode. It looks... jarring. Let's just put it that way. Was the immense budget worth it? NO. While watching, I wondered sometimes where they put all that money. Together my family and I calculated how much money was spent on average on each second of the show. Turns out, every second cost more than I used to make as an English teacher in France - in two years! Sad! Where did that money go? Because it definitely wasn’t into the writing. Was it in the effects? It was interesting in any case, watching House of the Dragon in parallel. Because even though in HotD, one could sometimes tell where there was a green screen, it was easier to forgive because of the story: there was drama, it was intense. Every episode had a payoff, a revelation, a significant event. The only significant events I remember from Rings of Power is the battle in the southlands and the Sauron revelation. Nothing else stuck with me, but we’ll get more to the story later. A boring opening! From the very beginning, this one got me. The intro. Look, I know it may signify something, that there can be a real reasoning behind it, but at the end of the day, it’s just boring! For any arbitrary viewer, the intro is minutes long of sand, I guess. The music is forgettable, and the intro as a whole is just way too long. It’s funny how the stretching and uninteresting aspect of the opening predicted how the rest of the show would go... TL;DR: 😍 : The diversity; chemistry between some of the actors. 😕 : Styling problems with canon material; some casting choices. The casting in my opinion was one of the high points of the series. Even before the series aired I was glad to see the diversity in the casting, and when it did air, it was even better because for the most part, they fit their characters very well. Other reviewers had given me doubts about Galadriel before the show aired, but I absolutely loved her character and Morfydd's acting. Some of the dynamics were so much fun to see on screen, as some of the actors had great chemistry. Don’t get me started on Galadriel and Halbrand, or Elrond and Durin. As I said about the posters, the one downside was the fact that some of the styling choices didn’t align with the descriptions in the books. Like, I would love to know the exact reasoning behind the creators as to why the elves don’t all have long hair. Why not? Was the fashion just different back in that age? But worse still, the dwarven women not having beards!!! I feel like starting a revolution, my goodness! Sophia Nomvete was absolutely stunning as Disa and I loved the character, but why did she not have a beard?! Female dwarves having beards is not just canon in the novels, but it’s even mentioned in the Trilogy! While we’re on the topic of dwarves, why didn’t we get to see the dwarf children? I was so excited to see them! I hope we get to see them in a second season. Moving on to the dwarves, here are some other casting choices that didn't stick with me (though in some cases, it's also the styling and costumes that made things worse): Some of the actor choices just completely plunged me back into the Hobbit trilogy. Gil-galad looked like someone had taken an elf right out of The Hobbit’s Mirkwood and Bronwyn looked just like one of the characters from Lake Town. That’s not necessarily bad, but let’s just say, one might want to avoid anything reminding of the Hobbit Trilogy. I don’t think anyone wants to remember those happened – I sometimes even forget they did, which is great! I can’t imagine what it’s like being a hard core Star Wars fan. Gosh I’m sorry for them. (Says I, who learned the whole script to Revenge of the Sith haha). Two other character casting choices which didn't really fit, in my opinion, were Isildur and Celebrimbor. Isildur, for his part, looked like an off-brand younger version of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In of itself that doesn’t really matter, but I don’t know, he just didn’t feel like Isildur, or an ancestor of Aragorn. Celebrimbor just really didn’t cut it. I don’t know why. Maybe because he looked way more like a Hobbit than an Elf. But looking at the casting as a whole, I think they did a pretty good job. But what good is the casting if the characters themselves and their stories are just plain old boring? TL;DR: 😍 : Character dynamics; Elrond/Durin friendship; Galadriel/Halbrand dynamic/betrayal. 🥱 : Everything with the hobbits; the other stories for the most part. A bore there was, a bore, a bore… ^ Whoever got that reference, congrats. While House of the Dragon had me and my family on the edge of our seats at every turn, we were accumulating yawns watching Rings of Power. We even joked about how we all almost fell asleep at least at some point in every episode (perhaps with one or two exceptions). I didn’t know a show could go so slow! For the first three quarters of the show, we get no pay offs, no big events. As such, my sister and I were expecting that it was all building up to some epic battle that would last at least the two last episodes. So you can imagine our disappointment when we only got one battle in the Southlands and then, nothing else! The hour-long wait during all those episodes was not worth the pay-off! Why the hobbits? From the beginning, the general consensus with the people I was watching Rings of Power with, was that the story-lines were too all over the place. There were too many characters that were being followed at once. I think the series would have been much better off focusing on three, maximum four different characters, and make most of them cross each other’s path at some point, as they did with the battle in the Southlands. It’s like crossovers: it’s satisfying seeing seeing different characters and then have them all come together at some point. That’s the main problem with the Hobbits and… Gandalf? (I guess? Which doesn’t make sense but okay). If you edit the episodes and delete all the scenes with them, do you know how much that would affect the main plot-line? Not a bit. The Hobbits don’t have any impact on the other stories. Absolutely nothing. Nada. In the grand scheme of the first season, the hobbit story-line feels absolutely useless. If anything it feels like forced "fan service". I put that in quotes, because real fans know that Gandalf doesn’t go there. The fans this is directed at are the ones who have watched the films and are just waiting to see familiar characters. That’s the worse kind of fan service and again, in comparison, House of the Dragon avoids these problems by just not throwing nostalgia elements at us all the time. For one, we didn’t get to see Winterfell, or the wall. And that’s good! I’m glad we didn’t! In the hobbits’ defense, I am not going to lie, I did love the costumes and makeup for them. But my goodness was the story boring and stretched out, like butter over way too much bread. With all the characters storylines, the only ones I ended up caring about were Galadriel’s and Elrond’s. Galadriel because she had a mission, a quest, and I wanted to see her fight to get to her goal. Elrond because of his friendship arc with Durin. I apologize for those I might offend but I could not care less for Isildur’s story. Or the queen. Or whoever she is. The king of Numenor, for example, passed right over my head, I didn’t even know his name when he died in the last episode. Which is so contrasting with how they handled Viserys’ death in HotD. At least I knew his name lol. Though I started off fairly interested in Arondir’s character and story, that too diminished over time. I don’t know. The whole story just didn’t feel interesting. (I’m actually amazed I remembered his name!). Even in the episode with all the action (Ep. 6), there are still logical story problems. The volcano exploding is cool and all but water doesn’t make a volcano active – it just leads to an explosion (yes, I'm somewhat of a scientist myself). Secondly, in the wide shots, we see volcanic bombs falling far away from each other, like every 5 kilometers, but in the close up shot of the village, they seem to be falling every few meters. In any case, I might have to re-watch the show to provide more detailed comments on the different events that happen, seeing as I’ve forgotten most of them. Who is Sauron? A part of my interest in Galadriel’s story was that I too wanted to see Sauron in action. I was almost at the edge of my seat when they found the stronghold in the first episode. That the other elves decided to stop following her when they were there was very disappointing, but I was still looking forward to eventually have Galadriel cross paths with Sauron. Now, you may think I’m a bit stupid, but for the first few episodes, I didn’t stop to realize that Sauron could take on a mortal form, or might simply have a body underneath that armour. I guess always seeing Sauron in his fab attire just made me assume that was his daily wear. So I’m guessing I was a bit late on the train of ‘who is Sauron’, because I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him. It was when the orcs were calling that Oren ‘father’ that it dawned on me. He might not be wearing his armour! That scene made me fear that Oren was Sauron. Because from the get-go, I could tell he wasn’t. My reasoning, you ask? He was simply not giving Sauron vibes. By the way, did you know? Oren’s actor is the same actor as Uncle Benjen in Game of Thrones! Shocking, I know! After one of the men asked Oren if he was Sauron and he punched him, if I remember correctly, that was when I knew for sure that he wasn’t meant to be Sauron, and that maybe I should keep my eyes out. So I kept my eyes open. Sort of. Because at that point, Halbrand was already one of my favourite characters. He was giving me Aragorn vibes, more so than Isildur that I was confused and thought maybe Halbrand was in fact Aragorn’s ancestor. I don’t know what I was thinking, don’t come for me! In my defense, the fact that they are so similar is, in retrospective, super interesting because that would make the dynamic between the characters more interesting in the Trilogy, and would make battle in Return of the King all the more satisfying (even if they decided to not make Aragon fight Sauron directly). Either way, because I thought Halbrand was genuinely a new character for us to get an Aragorn kind of guy in the show (which I was really happy about), he wasn’t really on my radar. On the other hand, the theory that the wizard was Sauron? That was out of question for me, and I’ll tell you why. I knew that if the writers made Sauron as confused and disorientated as that character, his whole power dynamic would just diminish. The wizard’s character might have supernatural powers, but as a character he seemed helpless. If that had been Sauron, the whole idea of him being a deceiver would have just broken down in my opinion. So it was pretty clear to me that this Gandalf character was not Sauron from the get-go. It’s a theory, a film theory. Towards the second half of the season my sister and I had quite the time, as we decided to make one wild character theory after another – anything to make the series less boring. We started crafting these intricate theories, like how Theo was actually Gandalf, or Poppy Proudfellow was Sauron. Needless to say, we had a blast with our outlandish speculations. Though, again, I might seem a bit oblivious to obvious signs (I don’t know how fast others have been in figuring Sauron out), I’m glad Sauron’s identity only slowly dawned on me. Halbrand, as I said, was kind of off my radar mainly because I was happy just having a new character without dwelling on it too much. The first time I realized something was up was after Galadriel had captured Oren and he asked Halbrand whether he knew him (or the other way around, I can’t remember). In the scene, Halbrand looks back at Oren with a peculiar look before going out of the hut. That was the moment I realized Halbrand might be Sauron. From that moment on, the series was much more fun to watch, because I had something to keep a lookout for. I was obsessed with my theory being right. If the series was not going to reveal that Halbrand was Sauron, I was ready to throw it all out of the window. I felt as though I had figured everything out. I finally had a theory I was proud of and loved and I was going to be so disappointed if it wasn't true. I’m sure that there were other people who theorized the exact opposite, praying that Halbrand wasn’t Sauron. And I am very sorry for them. Bad luck, I guess. But to be fair, if I hadn’t realised Halbrand was Sauron, I honestly wouldn’t have minded him not being Sauron. Then the last episode aired. That was when I became 100% sure, figuring out that Halbrand had given himself the wound on purpose to get to Eregion. When I saw him go to Celebrimbor, my last doubts subsided – it was more than obvious. I must admit, the second half of that episode was one of the most exciting parts of the show to watch. We finally got to really see the process of the creation of the three elven rings – which is kind of in the title of the series! And of course, watching Galadriel figure it out herself was so much fun to watch. Ah, betrayal stories, they’re the absolute best. Halbrand finally revealing his true identity was sooo entertaining and satisfying. I would have really loved to see more of Anakin-Skywalker-Halbrand but I guess that would have to wait for a second season? (Sorry, but the shot of him simply walking into Mordor? I thought he was about to confront Obi Wan Kenobi over a river of lava). Either way, I love what they did with the dynamic between Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron. It was so satisfying to watch the enemy she had been searching for the whole series to have been with her the whole time – drama, I love it! This twist, of course, would be a potential reason to rewatch the series. But I don’t think I need to add that I will be skipping some of the other story-lines while doing so. I’m interested to see how having seen this series will influence the way I watch the Trilogy. I wonder whether I will look at Sauron differently, though I highly doubt it. The downside of all of this was that in LotR and the Trilogy, Sauron was more a symbol of evil and less a character in off himself. Now, for Gen Z, Sauron may as well become your usual Anakin Skywalker/Kylo Ren, aka hot bad guy (I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with other examples, I know there are thousands of others out there). I mean I knew he does take the shape of a "fair man" when deceiving the others to create the rings. But needless to say this changes the way the character is seen as a whole. At the end of the day I have one question: What have I done to deserve becoming a simp for Sauron himself? I used to be a respectable LotR fan. I didn’t simp for any of the characters. Not even Aragorn – yes, I’m superior like that. And now look at me. What would Tolkien say? Sad! My rating Of the eight episodes of the series, only two were somewhat enjoyable to watch. That is a success rate of 25% (yes, I did the maths all on my own, I’m also somewhat of a mathematician myself). That’s disappointing for a series that spent a billion on eight petty episodes. Was it predictable? Totally. To be fair though, the show is still better than I had anticipated, as I had expected something far worse. See, I’d prefer a really boring series to a really cringey series any day. Is it LotR expert approved? Barely. Is it worth rewatching all of it just for the good bits? No. There’s just too much boring to make it worth it. Though it might seem like I’m really mad at the series, but I’m not, I swear. I’m glad because, at the end of the day, this series doesn’t destroy any big aspects of LotR, at least not for me. As someone obsessed with LotR, I can live with Rings of Power. However, what I will fight against are new versions of LotR books being published with posters from Rings of Power on their cover. Get that away from me! Anyway, that’s my long review. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re insane!
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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: SPOILER WARNING: this post contains mild spoilers for Heartbreak High. Last night I finished watching season one of Heartbreak High. I don’t know what it is about queer high school dramas but I just love this stuff. Besides, I mostly write YA, so it’s right up my alley. After watching a few episodes and with the hype around it, I thought I’d finally do a first review/essay on this blog (since it's not all supposed to be about writing. Shocking, I know!). To be fair, though, this isn’t really a review per se. I just thought I’d talk about some ideas as well as similarities and differences between this show and two other prominent (in my eyes) teenage high school dramas, Euphoria and Sex Education, and their relation with the reality of high school. So this is maybe more of an essay, though a personal one at that, because I’ll also be talking about my experience of high school, as a student, but also as a teacher (yeah, I really did get to experience the best of both worlds!). realism and expectations... I know very little about the high school experience in America and even less in Australia. I was in middle school in the US for one tiny year and then spent all my high school years in a scientific high school in the middle of the Alps (taking a shot every time I mention the Alps in my posts would make a great drinking game haha). The media and, unfortunately, the news, is where I get my information about the American high school experience, which of course I take with a pile of salt. My seven year-old self, on the other hand, probably truly thought American high school students broke into song every lunch to sing Stick to the Status Quo. Needless to say, these shows are somewhat expected to hold up a mirror to the high school experience. My question then is, to what extent do these series really showcase authentic high school experiences, especially when it comes to relationships, sex, and drama? This may come across as extremely nerdy, but my experience or knowledge of drama in high school came nothing close to any of the above mentioned series. Maybe it was because I wasn’t interested in sex, or because I was just hanging out with geeks, but I heard and took part in like literally no drama at school. That is unless you count drama as in theatre drama in which case yes, I did dabble in that area, having been the co-founder of the school's drama club. There were no relationships or gossip thereof that I was interested in. Thinking back I knew only about one relationship as far as I remember between one acquaintance from my class and I guy I barely knew. Could I have produced any gossip about that relationship? Absolutely not. I knew they were together and that was it. Done deal. Finito. As you may have gathered this far, those years came nowhere close to what I’ve seen depicted in media. Maybe it's a difference between schools in English speaking countries and in France, but I’m suspecting that it’s just because the school I went to was pretty academic. Definitely not because I was (and am still) a nerd and had no interest in all that drama back in the day. On a somewhat related note, there's a similar aspect of unrealistic depiction when it comes to high school parties. Could any party depicted in these dramas have been an actual high school party in real life? I know that the budget of these shows is more than enough to create aesthetic and grandiose settings, but by going all the way, the shows inevitably lose the authenticity of mediocre but realistic school parties and shows. Especially the Snow Ball in Stranger Things is just clearly too good to be true. Pictured above: A party from Euphoria; the theatre show from Sex Education; the Snow Ball from Stranger Things. But back to all the drama, the worst of school I’ve personally seen pertained to middle school – as a student and as a teacher. Then again, all of what I witnessed was bullying and violence, towards other students and towards teachers. There wasn't really any other sort of drama. Speaking of teaching, having been a teacher for a year (more than enough!), I had a somewhat hard time seeing the treatment of Jojo Obah, the teacher in Heartbreak High, but at least I can say that that aspect was more than believable. Though, to be fair, if I had been in her place, nothing would have ever convinced me to return. After all, my students also told me I was a great teacher, and so did my colleagues, but my goodness, if you want to become a teacher you better have a heart of steel, because kids are evil. So neither my high school experience nor middle school experience came close to these series. However, that's not saying that there was never a time when life didn't feel like it was pulled out of one of the shows. As a matter of fact, my University experience definitely had a vibe more similar to Heartbreak High than anything else. Relationships were all over the place and my friends and I could draw relationship maps that would have looked just like those in the first episode. It’s kind of ironic, as Universities are so much vaster and bigger than high schools and yet, it was like we were living in this tiny world of drama in every corner. It was in that aspect that the show comes closest to my experience of ✨ reality ✨. But these shows don't portray University experiences: they're about teenagers in high school. So when sex is brought to the forefront of their experiences, this can lead to other questions. relationships and sex in high school dramas One of the downsides of the shows like the ones I am presently talking about is the sexualization of the teenage experience. I think it's really great that the shows really try to raise awareness about aspects surrounding sex such as STDs and consent. In the end, the shows are probably teaching people more about sex than school sex education ever did. But still, does this really reflect the high school student experience? And does that even matter? Whether the shows are realistic or not, they send a message of what might be expected of teenagers of that age. I'm definitely not saying that the shows are pushing a message that people should be in relationships at that age, I'm just saying that by portraying their experience as such, it makes it seem like not being a part of it means one is not in the norms, or missing out on the teenage experience. The people who are left out are the ones who don’t feel like delving into the waters of relationships and sex yet, or at all. I like what they did with Cash and asexual representation, but at the end of the day, the whole series, just like Euphoria and Sex Education, centrally evolves around the idea that most (if not all) high schoolers engage in sex, and a lot of it at that. Even in Sex Education, when we get characters who are scared of being left behind, they still end up being in relationships! I wonder how teenagers who watch these shows feel when they haven’t really thought about sex that much, or weren’t interested. Even if it’s subconscious, would it really be surprising if they felt a bit of pressure to be like the characters and not be left behind? I honestly don’t know how these shows would have changed my perspective on my high school years had I watched them at the age of 15-17. For context, back in the day I was watching Supernatural and reading Hunger Games. No real high school experience pointers there. The nearest thing I got to high school representation were either fantasies like H**** P***** and Percy Jackson, or just flat out depressing stories like Perks of Being a Wallflower. While pretty dark at times, these depictions really didn’t focus that much on teens having outright sex in their high school years, unlike the series at hand. I’m guessing it also has to do with a generational shift. Back in the day you couldn’t just bring out a series like Euphoria without probably getting a huge bunch of outrage and backlash. Whatever the reason, whether it had to do with how things tended to be censored before, or that writers are just more explicit nowadays, we can’t deny that explicit shows are more and more common and therefore less shocking to general audiences. Back in the day, the most explicit show I watched was Game of Thrones, and I thought that was, at times, a lot. So I can't even fathom my younger self watching Euphoria. Thank goodness it hadn't come out back then! That show has been, by far, the most explicit show I have ever watched. And I still don’t know how I feel about it. In that sense, Sex Education is much less explicit and does a bit of a better job using different situations to tackle different issues. Heartbreak High definitely doesn’t go the route of Euphoria-type explicit content, and that was, ironically, a nice break from the usual teenage series. Am I starting to sound like a boomer? I don’t know, but in any case, I stand by the fact that every scene needs to have reason to be there and tie in to the plot, and definitely shouldn’t just be there for shock value. Again, trust me, I’m a film graduate. Is Heartbreak High the Australian Euphoria?I’ve seen people talk about how they saw Heartbreak High as the Australian Euphoria, and while there are definitely similarities, at their core, they still differ quite a bit. Similarities exist, certainly. One can definitely draw the parallels between Euphoria and Heartbreak High, even visually. There’s one scene in particular that I'll use as example because while watching it I was like: 'that's Euphoria!'. It's a scene from the finale episode of HH that looks like it might have been pulled directly from the other show, both involving one of the main characters running away from cops down an almost identical looking street. I know that comparison is just based on visuals, but the scene really stood out as a visual parallel. On the story side, while there are overlapping elements, like high school relationship drama and drugs, the perspectives we get are quite contrasting. The shows differ mostly in the fact that Euphoria really centers around Rue’s experience and perspective as a drug addict, whereas HH feels a tad more decentralized from the main character. The general feel of the shows also differ. While there are dark moments in HH, Euphoria as a whole is much darker than the latter. Another notable element that differentiates the three shows is the setting. In Sex Education, we get a weird mix between Britain and America. Euphoria, on the other hand, is easy to recognize as taking place in California. But HH breaks away from both shows by being set in Australia. I know the series is a reboot of an Australian series of the same name, but it's still nice to get media from other English speaking countries. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I saw a show taking place in Australia. Needless to say, it’s a nice change from the usual. I love seeing series that really feel authentic and where foreign watchers will not necessarily get the jokes, references, or slang. That’s what I love about series taking place in France for example (and no, I’m not talking about Emily in Paris. I will never ever watch that show). That’s what I also enjoyed about watching all the different versions of SKAM back in the day. It gives viewers the opportunity to see how the cultures make the stories different. ✨ My rating ✨ So yeah, those were some elements I thought were interesting to talk about, let me know what you think! This definitely was neither a very serious essay, nor a professional review, but still, I thought I’d give the series a rating anyway. If it wasn't clear from what I've written above, I thoroughly enjoyed Heartbreak High. It had great casting, well developed characters, and a good plot that kept the story enticing until the end. There was also very nice representation, including authentic autistic representation which I don’t believe I’ve seen before. I could go on a rant about Good Doctor but I won’t. To put a long story short, I don’t see why neurotypical people should ever play neurodivergent characters. Though really rough at times, all in all, it was a feel-good series with a lot of wholesome moments. The ending was satisfying and didn’t leave too many loose ends, all while keeping enough elements open-ended to definitely garner a second season. J. Dietz’s certified rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 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! I recently stumbled upon a tweet asking writers whether they listened to music while writing, and if so, what kind of music it was. There's much debate to be had about listening to music while writing/working. It can set the mood, but it can also distract, and at times even hinder the writer from finding their words. In the past, there have even been occasions where looking for the right soundtrack took longer than the writing session itself! So is it wrong to listen to music? Or can it actually help with writing elements such as consistency in voice? The simple answer is that everyone writes differently, so it depends. Even for a single person many factors can influence how helpful or unhelpful different music can be. I've seen people talk about how even the weather can influence their choice on whether or not to listen to music. So without further ado, let me tell you about all the music I've come across and used in the past! The music of my current project For the project I'm querying, I didn't listen to any specific music. For the one I'm currently working on, however, I really do have particular playlist. Over time, I've curated a playlist made up of mainly ABBA songs, simply because they fit the vibe of the novel. A lot of their songs, in my opinion, fit well to a relationship between two characters that love but also hate each other. And, as the novel I'm writing is an ✨ enemies-to-lovers ✨, the songs couldn't fit better. "The Winner Takes It All", "Angeleyes", "Lay All You Love On Me", the list of perfect songs goes on and on. I'm really glad I found an artist (very niche, may I add!) where I could just pick out so many songs and put them together and create a consistent feel, all while having a variety of songs to work with. In the past, for other projects, finding music that fit the 'vibe' has generally been much much more difficult! Love them or hate them, I also enjoy listening to songs that people use for tiktok edits. That's simply because most songs used for these types of edits have a sort of particular aesthetic. As such, they can help with visualizing scenes of the story, and, quite honestly, they help make the writing feel more epic. Songs I've been listening to a lot in this category are for example Hayloft by Mother Mother, Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift, or Wannabe by why mona. Speaking of edits, I actually remember hoping to get published and have my novel(s) adapted just so that people would make these types of edits of my characters. This goal dates back to my days in high school but it remains something I'm looking forward to! 😂 Then you also have the classics (no pun intended): classical or soundtrack music that fits the mood of the novel or whatever specific scene you might be writing. Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones music is great for fantasy novels, Batman music for epic scenes, and Detroit Become Human soundtrack for sci-fi leaning stories, and those are just some of my favourite picks. Similarly, one can't forget ambient sounds and soundtracks. So many things are available on youtube these days, where you'll be able to find the most niche ambiences. From The Shire Ambience to Ancient Library Room Ambience, there are so many different sub-genres, you'll be able to find just about everything! Plus, most of the videos are long (over an hour, sometimes even eight hours long), so a video alone can be used for a whole writing session! When writing more specific scenes, it's also interesting to look for particular songs that fit the mood. Especially when writing sad, or 'rock bottom' scenes, there are some specific soundtrack songs that I always listen to. Classics such as Time by Hans Zimmer, or On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter never fail to set the tone. And of course I can't forget to mention my all time favourite sad soundtrack, Haunted Ocean, which is also by Max Richter. Similar to the ambient videos on youtube, an array of lofi-beats videos are available online. Most of these are also very long, or are simply livestreams. Lofi music can be helpful because it also has no singing (most of the time), and it's definitely interesting if you're looking for a more modern beat, rather than soundtrack music that can sometimes feel too 'classical', if you know what I mean. In any case, I'd definitely associate lofi music with more contemporary and YA novels for example. My one issue with lofi is that there seem to be a lot of lofi options to choose from on youtube, but you can still sometimes end up hearing similar sounding songs over and over again, even when you're looking for something new. TL;DR After having written specific scenes, or after wrapping it on a whole novel, it's also interesting to think about what music would accompany the reader, which is another story entirely. What song would play at which part? What soundtrack would accompany the novel's climax? After writing, it's good to go back and find the fitting music, especially when editing to check for consistency in tone. Additionally, there's also the question of diegetic music (yes, I am a film studies graduate, how could you tell?), meaning the music that plays in the novel itself. For example, what music would be playing at the high school party the main character goes to? What music is playing at the club? What playlist does the character listen to on the way to school/uni/work? This music, while associated with the novel itself, isn't necessarily the music you'd listen to while writing, but it's a fun exercice to think about afterwards. I have an example of a playlist I created which you can check out on the DREAMING page. It gives an idea as to what kind of music the character(s) might listen to. Well that's about it for the music, I'll see you all next week with a new topic. Until then, have a good weekend, and write well! 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! |