Epigrams are half done and I'm also giving each chapter a title.  It might be overkill but I'd rather have them and need to cut them than have to make them up under a deadline.  I won't say it's easy to come up with 69 epigrams that are short but touch on the theme of the chapters but it hasn't been as hard as I feared.  In fact, skimming over the chapters again has made me a bit more comfortable with the book overall.
  I should be starting my new job next week which put an end to this experiment in full-time writing.  From now on, I'll be writing from 7-10pm 4 days a week.  I MAY be able to squeeze in some additional writing time on the weekends but that is usually family-time, so I won't count on it. 
  So what's next?  Well, tomorrow I'm emailing Angel Odyssey out to some first readers.  Once they come back, I'll do a final line edit (and likely miss a ton) and mail it off.  Editors first but I may ping one or two agents who represent authors who write similar to me. 
  Then, I start a new book.  I already have some ideas, we'll see how they shape up.  I play on doing a few experiments in March, maybe re-writing a prologue for Angel Odyssey that I cut early in the project. I am write an epilogue from Jacob's POV or just re-write the first two chapters as an experiment.  I'll also do a few writing exercises and fiddle around with some scenes for my next book idea.
  Here's hoping for a good March.

  Well, two days past deadline but I found only needed to rewrite one chapter from scratch.  The other chapters just needed some tweaks, I think.  Today is IM gaming day but I'm going to try to get some writing in first.  I have one speech to write and possibly change the ending and then I'm 'done'.
  And then I have about 50 chapters worth of epigrams to write.  I may also want to give each chapter a title but that might be overkill with the epigrams.  We'll see, I can try to come up with chapter titles.  If an editor thinks its too much, I can chop chapter titles easily enough.
  What are epigrams?  Well, the dictionary definition refers to a short thought, comment or poem.  Emphasis on the short.  I use the term to refer to the brief (again that word) quotation that provides world building details and telegraphs, a little, the theme of the chapter.  I take my model for this from Frank Herbert's Dune.  Other writers do this was well, Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn had a neat twist in that he was telling a story in his chapter heading epigrams.  I like them and so do most of my readers.  The challenge is to come up with quotes that are relevant to the chapter actions.
  Once I have the epigrams done, Angel Odyssey will be 'done'.  I'll fix typos, send it off to four very talented writers I know and consider any final changes before mailing it out.  Again, my goal is to have Angel Odyssey in the mail by the end of March.   Wish me luck.

  A little snag as I charge towards the finish line.  The plot changes I made is also change the context of Jacob's time at the fortress.  Previously, he was just being detained, now the castle is under seige.  So I'm pondering rewriting the fortress chapters from scratch.  The nature of this challenge and obstacle is different.  I've been chasing that thought around in my head.
  I want to keep going and get this draft done but I need to make sure this last challenge is just as exciting or frustrating as the previous.  So I'm spinning my wheels a bit.  Just one chapter done yesterday and I'm not sure how I want to proceed.  I may end up doing some practice chapters and see if just writing it out will kick my subconscious into gear.  My subconscious is a much better writer than I am.
  Once I have this done, I think all I'll have to re-write is the ending chapter.  We'll see.

  So how did I do yesterday?  Well, I wrote three chapters from scratch and edited a fourth to fit in with the new plot changes.  The battle scenes seemed to go well.  I'll let those chapters set a while and then go back and take a look at them.  I did not get done, though.  I'm not sure if I should blame myself or if I had too aggressive a timeline.  I know I underestimated the amount of new content I'd have to write.  My thought was I'd just have to re-work three or four scenes.  Ah, no.  Many, many, many of the chapters were either re-written from scratch to better fit in or were so laboriously re-written that writing them from scrartch would have been faster.  I tell you revising takes SO much longer than just writing does. 
  Still, I did pretty well impersonating a full-time writer.  I did not do a full eight hours a day, more like 6. I am more and more convinced that I can do this, professionally.  I didn't lose my hunger and love for either writing or my characters.  I need to keep my nose to the grindstone a bit more but video games were less of a distraction that I'd feared.

  Which brings me to my other topic, getting it out.  I wrote a bunch of new content yesterday.  It is probably not going to go out to publishers like it is.  It doesn't matter, I got it out of my head and onto paper.  It may be too much 'telling' instead of 'showing'.  That doesn't matter either, I can fix that in revision.  I got it out.  You need to tell first in order to know what needs to be shown, I think.  Don't worry about typos, plot holes, charaters misbehaving or dialog not going the way you intended.  Get it out.  Just write.  You NANOWRIMO writers know what I'm talking about.  Charge forward, never back up, forward momentum is everything.  Just write, just go and keep going.
  There's always time to go back and fix it.

  So today was supposed to be the deadline to get this fourth-ish draft done.  How am I doing?  Well, I'm not sure I'll make it.  I have a big rewrite to do today, the battle at Basal Mount and the aftermath.  I should be able to pile up lots of pages but my concern is that these new pages will be rougher than if I were just editing existing chapters and snipping and padding bits here and there.  But who knows, they say writers are never the best judge of their own work.  Maybe it will be great.  I'll update tomorrow and let you know how far I got.

  Moving on, I had some quick thoughts about alienating readers.  This is all just my thoughts and opinions of course, I'm not telling anyone what they should or must do. 
  We live in highly polarized times.  As a reader and writer of science fiction and fantasy, I want to go somewhere else.  I want to escape and dream.  I don't want to read thinly-veiled diatribes against Republicans or Liberals.  That's just me.  There is a tradition of the polemical in Science Fiction and some reader love that.  I don't even think it's a problem, so long as your objectives are clear up front about where you're coming from and what your goals are in your story.

  However, I want the maximum number of readers possible.  I want people to enjoy my stories, not worry about who I voted for and what my views are on any of the hot button topics.  You shouldn't know too much about my politics or my beliefs from my work.  Yes, I will consciously, or more-often unconsciously, have part of myself in these novels.  That's part of my voice, part of who I am.  I don't want to be bland.  But I don't want to be preaching.  I may, in fact I do, have character who espouse beliefs that are the exact opposite of what I myself think.  I need that character to feel as real as the ones who I'd like to have over for dinner, so to speak.

  Arg. I'm writing and deleting way too much here.  I don't want to gossip and I don't want to tell writers they need to keep their mouths shut at conventions and interviews.  So I'll just say this:  Be courteous and considerate towards your potential readers and editors.  Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Atheists all buy books.  Don't get between your readers and your work.  And If you really do believe that shape-shifting lizards control the world, I wouldn't share that belief with the world.

  Accountability first.  I slept late today, painkillers work but there are side effects.  I also had errands to run this morning.  That means I'm likely only to get a half day's work done, 4 hours instead of 6-8.  On the other hand, I'm hoping today's 4 hours will be very productive. Stranger things have happened.

  Ok, let's talk marketing and agents.  I'm going to just touch lightly on this topic.  This is just my thinking on things so far, not a definitive take on the topics.
  What brings this up is PNWA meeting I attended last night.  The speaker is a former/current marketing consultant who is also selling a memoir.  That's not genre and for all I know her advice is quite valid for non-fictions writers.  Me, I write fantasy and science fiction.  That's what I read and what I love.  The rules may be different.
  So what did she say?  She said before you even pursue an agent, you need to have a marketing plan in place.  Since marketing is one area where I know I don't know anything about it. I was willing to give her a listen.  Again, for all I know, she might be right but I'm a little skeptical.
  Her suggested marketing plan did have some good thoughts.  Let me go over them first.

• Purchase your name as your website domain. (Done and yes, try hard to own your name online)
  
• Set up a web site (done, I used ipage.com for now)
  
• Blog consistently and productively.  (um, trying?  I try to update four or five times a week.  By some standards that's pretty good.)
• Be active in the writing community.  (eg: Joining PNWA, attending writer and sci-fi conventions, running a critique group)
  

  She suggested wordpress as a backend to your site.  I do have that as an option through ipage but their drag and drop site editor looked easier.  I may take a crack at updating the site in April, around my 1 year blog-iversary. 
  She also hit the social media sites hard: Twitter, Facebook, Scribd.  I hate those sites.  They feel either like a huge time sink or I feel like a whore sending out updates like (check out my new blog post, buy my book)

  Now, I realize this feeling of pimping myself out is something going to have to get over.  Just like my introversion at conventions.  So I'm saying social networking isn't important in promoting your work.  It is.  Following and developing a following on facebook and twitter IS a good way to stay connected.  I'm just concerned about how much of a time sink it could be.  I need to be WRITING, not just blogging, twittering. Still, if I want to do this full time, I need to master it.  So that's a to do for me.

  Ok, that was the good stuff.  The other half made me cringe.  She related that she had a difficult time getting agent attention because she didn't have enough of a 'following'.*  Don't get me wrong, once you have a book out, it IS your job to pimp that bad boy as hard as you can. It is very, very unlikely (so far as I can tell) that the publisher is going to do much or spend much on you.  Our success is in our own hands. But that said, I have hard time believing that's true.  And I have a harder time trusting an agent who rejects me on that basis.
  More agent warning signals: Her agent refused to send her book out to publishers UNTIL she had her marketing plan in place.  I mean, WTF?  What is the point of having an agent if she's not going to frelling submit your work.  I worry about her and her agent. 
  I wouldn't work with an agent who refuses to even frelling submit my work.   I realize that agents are trying/are evolving into the gatekeepers for publishers.  But  I don't think that's what agents should be doing, in fact I plan to submit my stuff to editors instead of agents...I may need to figure a way around the 'no unagented submissions' boilerplate but maybe boldness will work.

  In fact, that's what I'm going to end on for now. Be bold.  As Gothe said, "Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."  Own your name online, set up your website blog about writing, send your manuscripts out and trust in your talent and in your ability to improve by reading and writing.

Ok, enough for now. Time to go write.



*(Now again, this may be a memoir-specific problem.  Frankly, unless you've had a pretty amazing life, I don't see why I should read your memoirs.  I mean, there are 25 year old strippers who are trying to convince me her 'life's story' is worth reading.  Personally, I find that hard to swallow.  I think a memoir is only appropriate once you've lived for a while and accomplished something, but hey, that's me.)

  We are getting close now.  I have one big scene to re-write a few more to monkey with but I am getting closer to getting this draft done.  That's a good feeling.  This has been a productive week.  I can't honestly say that I put in a full 8 hours each day, more like 6 (need to work on that).  But this week at least, I've gotten into a good writing groove. 
  One thing I am fretting a bit is the romance angle in the book.  I think Jacob's desire for Jael is very clear and realistic.  I'm a guy, I understand what it's like to love someone 'out of your league'.  I just hope Jael's chapters ring true.  Fortunately, most of my first readers are women.  If I'm screwing her POV up, I'm sure they'll let me know.
  Another thing I'm fussing about, is making sure something 'happens' in each chapter.  I said before that I want/need all my scenes to do multiple things: Reveal character, build the world, advance the plot.  Sometimes I worry that I'm only hitting two of those.  I also feel like I need more conflict in some of the quieter 'personal' chapters. On the other hand, maybe after some extremely action-filled scenes, it's right and proper to slow things down and let the character's deal with the aftermath of fear, death and raw emotion. We do in the real world and I'm not writing a Thriller-paced novel.  For better or worse.
  Still, like Jacob, I can see the peak, now I just need to climb it.  Good stuff still ahead, battle, love, sex and the pain of losing a loved one.