"A familiar set of tropes, done perfectly."

I just got my contest package back from the RMFW contest. Would you believe I'd /forgotten/ there was actually a cash prize involved in it? Pretty cool, hee hee hee.

TNH wrote All Over my manuscript. In red pencil. I have never been so happy to see so much red pencil on my writing in my life. *cackles of laughter* Well, except where it's green pencil. She even made notes on the synposis, including, at the last paragraph, "Don't!" Which... I understand, although I'm going to be cryptic because I don't want to spoil the end of the story. :) Anyway, the way the story is wrapped up, from the synopsis, it looks sort of... plot devicey. I don't think it is, in the actual book, and I'm *really* curious to see what she thinks of the end now that she's got the complete ms. There's also a note in the synopsis about something she brought up when we had lunch, how she was worried that separating the kids from one another would be plot devicey, and when I explained in brief how it worked, she seemed satisfied with the answer, so possibly the way it comes out in the end will be all right, too. :)

(notes! all! over! desire! to rewrite! strong!)

The RMFW contest scoresheets have scores 1-7, where 1 & 2 are 'needs significant work'; 3 & 4 are 'average for a writing contest', 5 & 6 are 'above average for a writing contest' and '7' is 'of publishable standard'. My lowest scores from TNH are 5's -- one on character development, where she put a note that says, "Five kids, twenty pages, only so much you can do with that," *laughs out loud* and also on "genre elements" and "synopsis: plot development" (which only go up to 6, actually). Everything else is a 6, except for "storytelling craft" which she gave me a 7 on.

Which, y'know, basically adds up to a lot of numbers, but it's really, really cool to read feedback from her (*and* from the other judges, who also had some very useful commentary, and one of them had a question which I should've thought to answer in the synopsis, so I gotta email Jessie and have her tell the judge what the answer is *laugh*), especially lookign at her edits on the manuscript, because I can see almost entirely that yes, yes, she's right, okay, good point, okay, worth considering, okay, yes...

Amusingly, she re-wrote my first sentence so that it was nearly exactly what it had been in the rough draft. *laugh*

(Now, please, let her enthusiasm sail all the way through to buying the book!)

Chipper, chipper me!

Rejection letter from Luna on HEART OF STONE. Too romancey. Not surprised; that's what I thought they'd say, but as Angie said, fie on them!

It's a personalized rejection letter, though, and that counts for something. :) "I did think there was a nice sense of energy and feel to the story, but the tone and the scope was too intimate for it to work for us." So, y'know. :)

Fie! Fie! Fie on them!

Still in a very good mood, though. *laugh* I was looking at the stamp on the envelope, thinking 'ok, what kinds of stamps was I using last month? no, this stamp is too old to be a rejection letter on US'. *laugh*

Work's slowed down for the afternoon, so I'm going to sit here and babble about writing and stuff for a while.

Talked to my artist about artwork for Chance; she's going to try to finish up the last 2 pages (of the first 5). I'm going to submit to Image -- well. That'll depend on whether she's up for doing a piece of cover art, probably, and I'm going to pitch it to Terry Moore because it can't /hurt/. :) If I had time/money/resources/a brain? I might try to go a self-publishing route. Actually, I'm virtually certain what I'd want to do would be to try to collect maybe five titles (heh, and artists for the same) and make a move into trying to actually produce a small line of comics myself. I'm not sure it'd be financially worth it to do less, if that makes any sense. But I don't have the resources or the time, which is kind of too bad. And I don't know where you start with self-publishing /anyway/....

Which kinda ties into this discussion we were having today about writing fan fic vs. writing original stuff and the venues of publication. I have a disconnect somewhere in my brain about the idea of writing in somebody else's universe. Writing a hundred thousand word novel (say, Harry Potter fan fiction) that you know can't get published. I don't get it.

(This is the point at which everybody looks askance at me and says, "Uh, hello, IMMORTAL BELOVED?" Yes, it's a book I wrote in somebody else's universe, but when I wrote it, they were still publishing Highlander novels. I submitted it. They discontinued the Highlander novel line, but I did, in fact, write that novel for publication, not for the sheer joy of writing the Methos character, no matter how much I love him. I have two more Methos novels I'd really like to write, and, you know, someday when I've got a backlog of about fifteen books waiting for the publishers to catch up, MAYBE I'll go ahead and sit down and write those just for the sheer fun of it, but I can't imagine doing so otherwise.)

I mean, I understand the appeal of playing in somebody else's universe. I understand that it's fun to take characters and bring them down new paths. I've done it myself lots of times, primarily through on-line role-playing on MUSHes set, in fact, in somebody else's universe. It's fun, and I'm not trying to harsh on the idea. I just ... it boggles my mind that people are willing to write, sometimes write entire novels, without any publication intent. I can't imagine why they'd do that! Writing that much is a lot of *work*! Why on earth would you do it without wanting to be able to publish it?

And, okay, yes, they do publish, on the web. It's not traditional publication, but it's publication and there's the delightful instant-feedback aspect of web publication that you don't get with traditional publication because for one thing it takes months and months to hear from publishers, much less get a book actually published once it's bought. With traditional publication, by the time a book hits the shelves, you've moved on.

So I listen to myself say that, and I think, well, it's not that I think e-publication is an invalid method of publication. I'm not, however, convinced that I think fanfiction.net is a particularly valid method of publication. Valid publication requires quality control of /some/ degree; this is why vanity presses aren't valid publications. You're paying for your material to be published. Well, great, you're published, but you're *paying* for it. You can *pay* for anybody to say anything nice, or do what you want, with the right amount of money.

And /that/ sounds like I think it's all about the money. Well, no. It's partly about the money. I want to grow up to be an author who lives on what she makes writing. If, however, my options were to have absolutely no chance of paid publication or to stop writing, well, hell, I'd write for non-paid forums, because I like to write. But this brings us back to the Highlander novels: I like to write, yes, but apparently my intent is to write for money, and while I don't quite agree with Heinlein's "anybody who writes for any other reason than money is a fool", I once more can't imagine putting the effort into a 100K word novel that you knew you could never publish. I mean, even *bad* original 100K novels get published all the time, so why write one set at Hogwart's that you're never going to be able to publish?

Some of these writers are very young. Under twenty. Okay, everybody needs to get a million bad words written (and I'm not actually suggesting they're bad, because they're not all bad, but bear with me). Practice words, as it were. There are almost certainly worse ways to write practice words than by writing novel-length fan fiction. But...

I wrote my first novel when I was under 20. It never would've occured to me to write it in somebody else's universe. Not, at least, in a universe in which I couldn't be *published*. Star Trek? Okay, sure, I can see that. Buffy? Okay, yes (although there was no Buffy when I was 19. Work with me.). TV or movie spin-off, basically: yes. I can see that. Because you have a slender chance of publication, if you go that route. But... Harry Potter? I just think it's so very, very *strange*.

And obviously it comes down to a matter of... personal expectations. Personal ambitions. Self-identity, perhaps. Lots of things. It's fairly clear to me that I've *never* had anything but publication as my end goal -- I started writing my first novel when I was about 8, and it was a mystery novel that was going to be an ongoing series, like the Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. I had 5 main characters and they may or may not have been a family, I don't remember, but the whole idea of writing that kind of book was I had an idea and I knew people *published* that kind of book. (I think I wrote about 20 pages. I wish I had it now!)

Somebody said during the discussion, well, isn't NaNoWriMo basically just an exercise in people writing 50 thousand words for fun?

Buh.

I mean, yes, I suppose in fact that's possible. But... why would you do that?! Writing is work! *Fun* work, perhaps, but 50K is a whole lot of writing, and... wouldn't you want to *do* something with it, when it's done?

Evidently in my world 'do' equates with 'publish' which ultimately equates to 'I want to hold this book in my hands, and have a cover blurb, and a cover artist, and my name in print, and a publisher stamp on the spine', and it appears many people do not share this ambition.

Which I think is just really, really weird. :) And, see, if people want to write these stories (I keep using HPFF because Ted reads a lot of it, and I specifically refer to novel-length work because I think short stories are another topic) and want to share them with the world, well, then they *do* have *some* kind of publication ambition, right? So why on earth wouldn't they want to write something original, and try to share it with a larger audience via traditional publication?

Marith said the answer to this is, "Maybe I do, but not right now," and all *I* can say to that is, "But why *NOT*!?!" :) It's not that I'm trying to diss the attitude; I just don't *comprehend* it. I'm not even trying to say, "You must see this my way!" I'm just going on about being utterly boggled by the whole thing. :)

Now, to bring this all back around to self-publishing and comics and web comics, which I do gracelessly and with no closing arguments for the many paragraphs of rant that precede this: web publishing is becoming a more and more respected way for comic-book writers and artists to tell their stories (I think the same is true for novels as well, but I think comics being a graphics-driven storytelling format has made the transition a little easier for comics. Possibly the actual truth is I'm not connected enough to the comic book industry in any way to really know. Certainly there's as much absolute crap being published as web comics as there is absolute crap being published as web fiction. It becomes a question of standards again; quality control.

Truth be told, my standards for quality control don't get as far as the actual content on 95% of the sites out there -- it's the web design that makes it or breaks it for me. If it's bad web design, I assume the material inside is going to be crap, too. Pretty much like a book cover, and I realize they say don't judge a book by its cover, but really, who doesn't?), and, interestingly, while I wouldn't be willing to start out by publishing my novels online, I'd be willing to start Chance out as a web comic, if I had, y'know, the artistic talent (or the money to pay an artist with).

I'm sure there was a point to all this somewhere. I think the point may have been, "Gosh, not everybody is like me!" Which will probably come as a shock to everybody. :)

Um. Yes. Well. That's all, then, I think. :)

That was quick! The Jubilee submission for Marvel arrived there today (I sent it Friday). Yay!

Hey, I was right. There /was/ a rejection letter in yesterday's mail (from St. Martin's, on Heart of Stone). It's just that the mail got there very late, so I didn't find it until this morning when I went out to put some bills in the mail.

Total form letter. Dear Sir/Madam. You know, if wanna-be authors sent Dear Sir/Madam letters to publishing houses, they'd get docked points for it.

OTOH, wanna-be authors don't have to deal with five thousand unsolicited submissions a year.

Onward!