Contract

Sold both Anneka and Jessamyn in a two-book deal to Berkley.

Yeah!
This is so cool.

Superagent has been unceasingly supportive.
"It takes a while."
Well ... yes.
I have not gone mad.

In case there is someone in the outer reaches of Alaska who hasn't heard me mewling about this ...

Once upon a time, I got myself an agent and she began the submission process for ANNEKA.

While she was doing this, I'd keep writing on the next ms -- JESSAMYN -- and try not to think about the business of selling.

I worried about ANNEKA's inherent marketing problems,
(it's set in France, for instance, and its got that plot twist,)
and whether it would be publishable at all. So I figgered I'd need to finish and sell JESSAMYN and maybe another historical Romance ms before I could bring ANNEKA back into play.

Then I polished ANNEKA, last time polish, and Superagent sent it out on December 16, to Berkley.

Christmas intervenes.*

January 11, I'm typing away in the hallowed halls of Panera, where I can work, as opposed to being at home where I keep doing things like walking the dog or washing the floor in the kitchen.

Phone call. Could I pick up orange juice on the way home? Oh. And the agent called and left a message on the answering machine. She asked if you'd call her back.

So I headed home to call her back.
Hoping.

And I got better than I'd hoped for, by golly.
Not just ANNEKA sold.
The 'next book' sold. Not even on proposal. Just .... sold.

Gee.

We discussed stuff like the dates I would have to turn in revisions of ANNEKA, when the synopsis and three chapters for JESSAMYN would be due, when the completed ms of JESSAMYN could be ready.
(Oh my.)

The agent wanted dates I would be happy with that more or less matched what the publisher was likely to need.

I think agents must lead difficult lives.

We did a quick tour of advances and royalties. Advances are more and more coming to be paid in three parts. Less advance money comes up front on acceptance.

le sigh


Then she turned her charger and headed back into the fray, off to finish the negotiation, my favor streaming in the wind behind her.

Yesterday, I got a call from Superagent saying the deal is done. It'll be a while before the contract arrives, but basically, it's done.

The revision process begins.

(Exaltation and fear.)


So,
-- I have to do revisions on ANNEKA.
-- Write a synopsis for JESSAMYN.
-- Finish the bloody JESSAMYN ms.
-- And I need titles for ANNEKA and JESSAMYN.

If I could think up titles for manuscripts I wouldn't calling them after the female protagonist.



JoB

* Which is why I wonder about this received wisdom of not submitting over the Christmas Season. Maybe everyone refrains from submitting and that means it's a good time ...

Technical Topic - Adverbs of Merit

Strong Adverbs

Adverbs are unhappy if continually seconded to shore up weak verbs.

Not – ran quickly. But – Raced or speeded. Not – fell clumsily. But – stumbled or tripped.

Clear those extraneous adverbs out from underfoot.

What adverbs really like to do is contrast with their verb, or add something unexpected. Adverbs love to pair with a perky verb that's doing all the work it possibly can. Then the adverb twists its tail.

Raced inanely. Speeded futilely. Tripped open-handed. Stumbled slyly

Technical Topics -- Strong Verbs

Strong Verbs

Build your sentences on strong verbs. Replace flabby generic verbs with vibrant, exact, sturdy verbs. The right verb doesn't have to be fancy, but it should ring with the clarity of its intention.
Strong verbs save us from the perils of the appended adverb.

Not – ran. But – jogged, hurtled, skittered, made a break for it, dodged, raced, ate ground, escaped.
Not – moved. But – winced, slid sideways, avoided, eased past, twitched, jerked.
Not – sat down. But – flopped into the chair.

Novel in 90

I'm doing the 90 day write-a-thon over in LJ. Novel in 90. 750 words a day.

I'll be keeping track of words. It's going to be the devil to assess word count when I'm doing revisions.

I did about 200 words today, spread out across the first five chapters. I've skipped right past that infamous breakfast table conversation. I will, like MacArthur, someday return.

Tomorrow I'll begin to create Chapter Six, presently empty. That chapter's going to hold an interior and domestic scene, probably involving Claudia. My first step will be to assess just what I hope to get out of that scene. I'm too tired to do that tonight.

Back to work

I haven't done any work since before Christmas. In fact, I haven't sat down and done serious work since my laptop died (gick, yurbblle, plonk) somewhere around the 22 Dec.

I had to warm up a little bit today to get started.

Got a new computer (a pretty little Averatec that weighs four pounds even) AND loaded Microsoft Word on, AND all my Word documents, AND my favorites list. Even better, transferred my normal.dot which contains most of the mods I make to Word.

With Word ... it's about five hours work to track down and kill all the Word 'features', starting with the ulcer generating animated paperclip and ending with the idiotic 'smart quotes' and 'smart cut and paste'.

Transferring my normal.dot preserved nine-tenths of my lengthy, careful mods. My custom tool bar up top of the screen contains the icons I've chosen for the functions I actually use. My custom keyboard preferences do only what I need doing. No more weirdo Word garbage infesting the keyboard. Yeah!

That 'custom keyboard' is largely a matter of deleting the 800 blankity-blank inherent keystrokes that come set as standard with Word. I erase them all ... and then I don't accidentally hit control H or Alt M and start doing a bloody hanging indent or some other incomprehensible weirdness that takes an hour to figure out what it is and another half hour to turn it off. Then I add the two dozen key shortcuts I actually need.

There was still a little work to do on the new machine. This morning I cleaned up everything that didn't transfer with normal.dot. I went into 'Tools' and unchecked roughly ALL the boxes, everywhere. My laptop and I both sighed in relief.

I am still troubled by the weirdness that my single and double quotes do not spring into existence unless they are followed by a space. If you don't do a space immediately following the quote, it follows you down the sentence till you do a space and THEN it appears.
So bizarre.

This is a Weird Little Glitch that I do not remember every encountering before. Help has naught to say aneunt this. It does not appear as an item in any of the 'Tools' choices. I cannot imagine why any default would be set to do this or where this preference exists in the vast irresponsible and garbage-y complexity that is Word.
I'll see if I can find a Word complaint forum that deals with this.
(ed not ... I finally figured out it has something to do with my international character options and patched a fix.)

My extensive custom dictionary and my extensively customed autocorrect didn't make the transfer. I will try to find those files on my old computer. If not, they'll generate again. No big.

I'm not quite used to the placement of the keys on the Averatec yet. That too will come.

I generally pop the physical keys off CAPS LOCK and INSERT. I don't use these features, ever. And they are cuddled up close to, respectively, the SHIFT and DELETE keys, which I do use all the time. Haven't done my key poppin' yet, but I will. Will do.

In re writing ...played around, adding the internals to the suspense plot. Jess solves the problem ... step one ... step two ... and so on.

Post Christmas

It is entirely possible I will not cook anything till 2008.

So. Today. Cleaned out the refrigerator which was full of Thai food for some reason. Yum yum. Ate yellow curry leftovers for lunch. Gave two overlooked sushi to the cat who proved enthusiastic about the concept. Gave the last of the Ziti-and-mozzarella to the dog, equally enthused.

Refrigerator is now empty except for (1) a huge jug of cranberry juice, (2) the usual condiment suspects. (3)some lonely-looking yoghurt. The fruit-mixed-through-yoghurt group out-ate the fruit-on-the-bottom contingent, so that is what we have left, (4) a half-dozen corn muffins, and (5) a half bottle of very strange champagne from someplace like ... Oregon.

The tree has been stripped and pushed out into the cold of the back porch to await a hopeful, and probably futile, replanting. The creche has been packed away in bubble wrap and nestled into its plastic tool chest home. Christmas decorations and lights are stowed up in big plastic boxes in the attic. Ad inserted in Freecycle for some kind soul to come take away Christmas paper and etc. not worth storing till next year but too good to throw away. Air mattresses deflated and brushed relatively free of cat hair, bagged and stored in attic. Futon transformed to its couch avatar. Bedding ... truly unending amounts of sheets and comforters and duvets and towels ... washed and folded and put away ... (only one set yet to go when this load finishes.) Trash is sorted into its appropriate bin and wheeled down to the road.

Boxes and boxes have been addressed and packed into the car -- that's stuff to be mailed to folks who could not carry everything home on the airplane -- I'll do that tomorrow when the post office is open.
I also have to fast-mail a recharger that was left behind. I am inclined to UPS that one, recent experiences having given me a jaundiced view of the US Postal Service.

If I had sufficient energy left I would vacuum the carpets everywhere and sweep what wasn't vacuumed and mop everything else and wipe down all the kitchen cabinets which have become mysteriously covered with jelly fingerprints.

But I think I'm going to just collapse on the sofa.

Tomorrow ... back to work. I've become involved in the suspense plot a bit more. Looking forward to approaching it.

Insert chapter

Finished the insert chapter of the party scene today. It's now Chapter Twelve.

I went streaming onward through the draft, adding a word here and there to reconcile old draft with the new and simplified plot structure. We're cool up to Chapter Sixteen (new.) Stopped there for today.

Jess shows up at Meeks Street. Some fact mods. I'll have to shift and shade some of the emotion too, I think.

Ran into a member of my crit circle at Paneras. Small towns ...

Oh. And I'm recycling Anneka's boyfriend for Jessamyn. This lets me salvage some writing. Yeah!

Now with Anneka I originally wrote it that she had this idealistic young Dutch soldier boyfriend and the two of them snuggled madly in a horse barn under the moon when they were sixteen. All very tragic, him getting killed.

Which left my Anneka NOT a virgin when she meets Grey, but with no troublesome boyfriend hanging about, which is what I wanted, virginity being so bloody cliched.

But when I tried to make this play with the spy setup
ARRGGHH
Sauvignon and Soulier would have had her EARS if she'd done anything that stupid --
army camps being impossible for even the chancy contraceptives of the era
and pregancy being about a surefire result of unprotected sex over a period of months.
Which would leave Anneka out in the field with no way of getting an abortion except among the whores.

I have to be at least a little realistic about this.
So -- no Dutch boyfriend in the horse barn.

But with slight changes he will do very well for Jessamyn, who needs to dispose of HER virginity, virginity being such a cliche and all.

But that left me with poor Anneka, of course, being all virgin.

I piddled around with changing the boyfriend to Rene and then killing HIM off -- which was some more nice writing that I can't use AT ALL now. But that never really worked with the spy setup either.
Nobody would pair a a lively, warm-hearted 16-year-old up with a boyfriend-handler and then send them to work hundreds of miles apart.

And I couldn't see Lucille sanctioning this. Lucille's always thinking she might send Anneka home if the war ever dies down.
She's also keeping Anneka ineligible for courtesan duty, not wanting her to take that professional route. So she'd watch the girl like a hawk when she wasn't in the field.

Just too many reasons Anneka wouldn't have casually misplaced her virginity.
She's not that kind of woman.

And I absolutely refuse to have Anneka raped.

Oh well. I made her a very uninnocent virgin. No coyness underlies the plot anywhere.

And I picked up the barn scene whole and recycled it, which is tidy of me.

Inserting a chapter

I'm repeating myself, but the polishing of Anneka was just about the most valuable exercise I could have done. It's given me insight by the bucketful in dealing with Jessamyn.

I'm worked my way through completed ms, making small but significant changes. Simplifying. Improving the narrative drive of the suspense plot. Some places I'm working these small changes through to final form. Some laces I've just left blue notes and I'll clean it up when I do the final substantive draft.

Today I began inserting a chapter of new material after Sebastian in Jess's Office and the Adrian-and-Sebastian-search-Jess'-room scene. That's where I insert the chapter about Jessamyn not being a virgin that I stole from Anneka -- who ended up being a virgin, poor chick, because her nasty spy bosses didn't like her boinking all and sundry.

Not sure what I'll do with the rest of this new chapter It'll come to me tonight maybe.


Superagent got the ms I mailed on Dec 2.
Today.

Post office rant

Super agent did NOT receive the manuscript I sent her on December 2.

I drove all the way into town, found a parking space, waited in line, mailed it by handing it directly to the nice woman at the main post office. Used Priority Mail.

The ms never arrived.

[jo tears her hair out]

About six months ago the post office somehow lost five or six letters for me. These were picked up by the mail carrier who comes whipping around and takes them out of the post box at the end of the road when I put the little red flag up. I figger he must be the one who lost 'em, since it was a little handful that all disappeared together.
Nothing interesting ... just six payments of things like the water and electricty. Puzzling, but not serious.

The manuscript disappearing in transit from the Main Post Office is much more worrisome AND IT MAKES ME LOOK LIKE A FLAKE.

Heck.

Anyway, printed up the manuscript again. Put it in a box. Addressed it carefully.
This time I took it to the UPS place.

In other news ... still vilely sick.

Cat again

I let the cat out.
"You know it's raining, don't you?" I say pleasantly.

The cat comes yowling at the window, "Let me in let me in let me in."
I let the cat in. Her fur is full of wet leaves.
This is not the smartest cat in the police lineup.

She gives me a dirty look.
"Why do you keep doing this to me," she says.

I can hardly wait till she encounters snow.

Rewriting for plot - Chapter Four bites the dust

Moving along in Jessamyn.

I also made the decision to drop Chapter Four. In toto. All that lovely dialog. Gone.
Ouchouchouchouchouch. That hurts.

But this plotting overview makes it obvious Chapter Four has to go.
It has beautiful, lyric internals, yes. But it never held vital plot action. Nothing that occurs there drives later events. All action in the scene is easily incorporated into the end of the Chapter Three, the Sebastian POV scene. When Chapter Four is excised, the story still makes sense.
The standard measures of plot action say to leave it out.

This is my Ghenghis Khan raid on the ms. Ruthlessness is my watchword. The naked sword is my calling card.
Snick. There goes Chapter Four. See its severed head bouncing across the open field.


Chapter Five, some changes. The internals must be rewritten. Just the internals.
It's like having the river bank and the bottom of the river all in place and the rocks unchanged, but instead of the stream flowing grape juice it's going to flow Hawaiian punch. Cool.

Eliminating subplot tra la

After a day and a half jiggling and niggling with every possible plotting of my opening, I have finally conceded what I doubtless knew in my heart from the getgo –

Chapter One is now 2110 words, lean, mean, and essentially backstory-free. That's down from a loagy 3700.

I took the evening doing a crit/comment for the Forum. I'm slow tonight. I think it's this bloody cold. I still haven't shaken it. I have discovered that when you cough hard enough, it makes your back hurt.

Knowledge, they say, is power.

It is not that I suffer. I simply do not want to know, so well and thoroughly, what the contents of my lung look like.

Slaughtering Subplots

I set back to work on Jessamyn today.

While I was doing the polish of Anneka in two weeks, I had one of these exponential mental growth thingums. It was the first time I'd actually looked at an entire ms, the whole shebang, all in one piece.

I am now ruthless. I reapproach Jessamyn with a large clippers and a thirst for structural simplicities.

This means I'm going back to the beginning. I must shift some of the foundations an inch or two. But this is right. This is necessary. This is not merely quibble.

First ... I want to pull the conversation with Doyle out of Chapter One and replace it with a conversation with Kedger. I think. But then I have to get rid of Kedger somehow ... Maybe I'll come up with the answer when I'm asleep tonight.

Quiet Weekend

Mailed the ms of Anneka to Superagent Saturday morning, driving all the way into town to the Main Post Office. I paid money to send it fast. No real need to do so, of course ... but I still have this residual guilt for not being quite on time getting it done.

Then I took the weekend off. No writing. I reread Windflower by the Curtises ... and what a sad day it was when they stopped writing. Scrubbed the floor. Cooked everybody decent meals. Did loads and loads of laudry. Paid bills. Caught up with some of the writing critiques I had put off. I still haven't finished two of the crits yet. Tomorrow, I hope.

I had intended to indulge myself in TV ... but the cable went out. One of those ironies, I'd call it. Comcast took over our local system and does not yet have its ducks in a row.
It would be more correct to say they don't even have their ducks in the same flock.

Anyway. No TV.

I slept late.

The dog has started scratching again. Why am I perfectly certain we have not -- with two complete courses of antibiotics -- conquered its skin problems?
Why would a dog get skin rashes? This is so peculiar.

I dreamed last night about JESSAMYN and the need to reorganize it came to me. I must be ruthless. I must throw stuff out. I must suppress whole subplots.
Attila the Hun of plotting, that's me.

I'll head out to a coffee shop tomorrow. Just have to decide which one ...

Day 15 of Anneka polish -- done

Finished the Anneka polish about 2 o'clock.

Then sat down to print 407 pages.

(no. you don't really read this. It just shows my day.)

Add paper. Discover that printer is set for draft rather than display presentation. Figure out how to fix this which takes an incredibly long time. Print a while. Jam. Jam. Jam. Add paper. More problem with jamming. Decide to open a new ream of paper that will not be as DAMP as the opened ream. (Virginia climate) Add paper. Discover that for some reason pages 10 to 28 were never printed. Print them. Machine jams. Add paper. Reprint page 78 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Machine jams. Re-ink cartridge. Add paper. Discover that page 10 was, unfathomably, printed twice. Machine jams. Something wrong with the cartridge which involves taking it out and re-re-inking it. Add paper. Reprint page 235 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Page 171 has stange shadows of letters upon it. Reprint. Machine jams. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Reprint page 379 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Machine jams. Add paper. Add paper. Take entire manuscript and go through, checking to see that every page is actually there, in order, right side up and legible. Remove 11 blank pages that have wandered into the manuscript. Sit down to rest. Remember that I need a cover page and try to print it. Cannot print it because The Kid (through whose computer I must link to get to the printer) has her computer turned off. 'It's breaking up!, say's she, sounding like Scotty. Fiiiiinaly print cover page.

Look at completed manuscript. Wonder if I made the right choice of font.

It is now too late to go out and mail this puppy. Will do it tomorrow, then drop superagent a line to say it's mailed.

And so to bed.

Anneka Day 14

End of Day 14 out of 14

I did not finish the polish. I'm 101K out of 110K. 91.7%

Heck.

I will start printing the ms out tomorrow morning. Maybe by the time I get that first part printed I'll have polished the last part.

Is that cheating or something?

Anneka polish Day 13

On Day 13 ... we stand .. .


91K out of 111K

83%

The final, late, desperate polishing of Anneka ... I find myself obsessing over commas.
That is probably diagnostic of the last time you should look at a draft. When you find yourself obsessing over commas, it is time to move on.
Not that that's the only thing I'm obsessing about, you understand.

Anneka polish Day 12

And we finish up day 12 of 14.
Not doing too well

73K of 111

66.2%



At Panera, I stood, waiting for the coffee urns to free up so I could nip in and get another cup of coffee.

My heroine is saying ... "The moment I deliver you to safety and perform one small final task I have set myself, I shall slip away to become obscure and harmless as a hedgehog."

Unfortunately, I have used the word 'hedgehog twice already in the first 50K words. To wit –
'She jerked away, flung herself to the far side of the bed, turned her back to him, and tucked herself tight as a hedgehog.'
'There would be, in those flowery fields beyond the wood, berries and many rabbits, even hedgehogs, if one were lucky.'

I simply cannot use 'hedgehog' in both the 'curled up' ref and the 'harmless as' ref because it is so vivid both places.

The 'in the fields' ref, thank God, passes under the radar. I don't have to go back and pull that one out.


So I said to the nice woman standing next to me ... 'What's an obscure and harmless animal that lives in England?' She offered me beavers, shrews, geckoes and chinchillas. Nice lady. Is it only me, or is everybody else in the world clueless?


Hmmm ... 'harmless as a dormouse' maybe. I prefer hedgehog in that spot, but if I can only use it once ....

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving.

Turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, acorn squash, corn, sauteed mushrooms, apple pie, pumpkin pie, San Pelegrino, and an excellent margaux.
Candles in Grandmommy's silver candleholders. Mommy's Doulton plates. The walnut table from Grosspop. Grandmommy's crystal goblets. Grossmom's tablecloth.

Talk and talk.

Anneka Day 6

Last polishing. Day 6. No progress made today at all.

I went to Panera, settled down. Picked up my cup of coffee and began working. My machine blew up. Blew up every time I went into Microsoft Word.

AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH.

I ran a virus scan. Went back to a sixty day old restore point. Defragged the disk. Looked for disk error.

None of this was the problem. I think it's Microsoft Word.

I've backed up. Now I'll head back into Word and see what happens ...


edited to add --


All the jiggery pokery with disk scan may have done some good. Word stopped blowing up around 6.

I finished the polish of 42K out of 118K. Good, for the amount of time I could devote to it.