Polishing and Procrastinating
I'm doing a fifth pass (give or take) of Within the Box, revamping some confusing or inexact paragraphs and redoing dialog that doesn't quite fit the character who is speaking at the time.
Here's one example from fairly early in the story - the character Gary developed into a coarser and more impatient person than I'd portrayed him here in his first appearance, and I finally took notice of that.
BEFORE
“The important thing”, Gary tells me, “is that you want a fresh start. It’s your life. You’ve got to reclaim it. We want to make this a safe place for you to rethink what you came in here with, which may be counterproductive, and consider everything anew. I like my work here. It is my job to work with the people who have been assigned to me and help them let go of habitual ways of thinking that aren’t helping them get on with their lives."
AFTER
“The important thing”, Gary tells me, “is that you want a fresh start. It’s your life, dude. You gotta reclaim it. You got a safe place here to rethink what you came in with, stuff that ain’t working for you, and find yourself some new paths. I like my work here, man. I take the people who get assigned to me and help them let go of what’s holding them back and give them a push in the right direction."
One of the themes that emerges in the book is that the main character Derek speaks the way he writes, and is thought by some to be putting on airs, and by others to be intellectualizing to avoid his real issues. I, of course, am Derek, and I do tend to use language in this way, and unfortunately tend to stick overly-intellectual-sounding sentences into the mouths of many of my characters. It's okay if it's Dr. Barnes, because he has a definitely double standard by which it's appropriate for him to speak that way, but it just doesn't work if the other characters do it too. So without making them sound unintelligent, I need to make them sound colloquial and their speech patterns normative, so that Derek's can stick out better.
For a second example, here's a bad description from later in the book, a combination of overly convoluted sentences and general lack of clarity. That's a different problem. I, as author, know what I intended to say. Sometimes that gets in the way of me realizing I haven't said it very well.
BEFORE
I dealt with Mountain View by starting my own local chapter of Mental Patients’ Liberation Front, and even though they were utterly coercive and we had no rights to speak of, I managed to get not only most of the patients in agreement that we should just listen to each other and be mutually supportive and reject the treatment they were subjecting us to, but also enough of the staff members, to the point that it disrupted their functioning and they decided I was a rabble raising psychiatric rights activist and booted me out like they’d caught me trespassing.
AFTER
I dealt with Mountain View by starting my own local chapter of Mental Patients’ Liberation Front, and even though they were utterly coercive and we had no rights to speak of, I managed to get most of the patients in agreement that we should just listen to each other and be mutually supportive, and reject the treatment they were subjecting us to. And I also got the support of a significant percent of the staff members, to the point that it polarized the staff and disrupted their functioning. Upper echelon staff eventually decided I was a rabble raising psychiatric rights activist and booted me out as if they’d caught me trespassing.
The procrastinating thing, meanwhile... I should really be working on a pitch letter, and perhaps sample chapters, synopsis, an 'about the author' paragraph, and the rest of the things I need to assemble in preparation for querying lit agents and seeing if I can get this book published.
I haven't done any of that.
It's certainly not a bad thing that I continue to polish the manuscript. It needs it. And I don't have any compelling need to be in a hurry, I suppose. But neither of those things are the reason I haven't made any effort to put together a querying package. I'm procrastinating because I detest querying.
Well, I've at least given some thought to how to position the book. From early on, I've viewed it as a psychological suspense tale, one that just happens to involve an LGBTQIA+ person as the main character (Derek being genderqueer), but where his unusual gender identity is not the central focus of the book. It's constantly there but the book is much more about whether or not he needs help, and of what kind, and whether or not the institution can provide it or if Derek is spot-on correct in seeing the place as coercive and oppressive despite its modern facade and claims to being state-of-the-art rehabilitative therapy.
That should shed a lot of light on what the components need to focus on. What I need to focus on. Well... I'll get to it...
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My third book is deep in tertiary drafts, and I'm seeking more beta readers for feedback. It is provisionally titled Within the Box and is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
Here's one example from fairly early in the story - the character Gary developed into a coarser and more impatient person than I'd portrayed him here in his first appearance, and I finally took notice of that.
BEFORE
“The important thing”, Gary tells me, “is that you want a fresh start. It’s your life. You’ve got to reclaim it. We want to make this a safe place for you to rethink what you came in here with, which may be counterproductive, and consider everything anew. I like my work here. It is my job to work with the people who have been assigned to me and help them let go of habitual ways of thinking that aren’t helping them get on with their lives."
AFTER
“The important thing”, Gary tells me, “is that you want a fresh start. It’s your life, dude. You gotta reclaim it. You got a safe place here to rethink what you came in with, stuff that ain’t working for you, and find yourself some new paths. I like my work here, man. I take the people who get assigned to me and help them let go of what’s holding them back and give them a push in the right direction."
One of the themes that emerges in the book is that the main character Derek speaks the way he writes, and is thought by some to be putting on airs, and by others to be intellectualizing to avoid his real issues. I, of course, am Derek, and I do tend to use language in this way, and unfortunately tend to stick overly-intellectual-sounding sentences into the mouths of many of my characters. It's okay if it's Dr. Barnes, because he has a definitely double standard by which it's appropriate for him to speak that way, but it just doesn't work if the other characters do it too. So without making them sound unintelligent, I need to make them sound colloquial and their speech patterns normative, so that Derek's can stick out better.
For a second example, here's a bad description from later in the book, a combination of overly convoluted sentences and general lack of clarity. That's a different problem. I, as author, know what I intended to say. Sometimes that gets in the way of me realizing I haven't said it very well.
BEFORE
I dealt with Mountain View by starting my own local chapter of Mental Patients’ Liberation Front, and even though they were utterly coercive and we had no rights to speak of, I managed to get not only most of the patients in agreement that we should just listen to each other and be mutually supportive and reject the treatment they were subjecting us to, but also enough of the staff members, to the point that it disrupted their functioning and they decided I was a rabble raising psychiatric rights activist and booted me out like they’d caught me trespassing.
AFTER
I dealt with Mountain View by starting my own local chapter of Mental Patients’ Liberation Front, and even though they were utterly coercive and we had no rights to speak of, I managed to get most of the patients in agreement that we should just listen to each other and be mutually supportive, and reject the treatment they were subjecting us to. And I also got the support of a significant percent of the staff members, to the point that it polarized the staff and disrupted their functioning. Upper echelon staff eventually decided I was a rabble raising psychiatric rights activist and booted me out as if they’d caught me trespassing.
The procrastinating thing, meanwhile... I should really be working on a pitch letter, and perhaps sample chapters, synopsis, an 'about the author' paragraph, and the rest of the things I need to assemble in preparation for querying lit agents and seeing if I can get this book published.
I haven't done any of that.
It's certainly not a bad thing that I continue to polish the manuscript. It needs it. And I don't have any compelling need to be in a hurry, I suppose. But neither of those things are the reason I haven't made any effort to put together a querying package. I'm procrastinating because I detest querying.
Well, I've at least given some thought to how to position the book. From early on, I've viewed it as a psychological suspense tale, one that just happens to involve an LGBTQIA+ person as the main character (Derek being genderqueer), but where his unusual gender identity is not the central focus of the book. It's constantly there but the book is much more about whether or not he needs help, and of what kind, and whether or not the institution can provide it or if Derek is spot-on correct in seeing the place as coercive and oppressive despite its modern facade and claims to being state-of-the-art rehabilitative therapy.
That should shed a lot of light on what the components need to focus on. What I need to focus on. Well... I'll get to it...
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My third book is deep in tertiary drafts, and I'm seeking more beta readers for feedback. It is provisionally titled Within the Box and is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts