Ooh!

An email from an agent who is interested in being sent the full draft of C&C!

:-D

And another rejection!

They're coming thick and fast now. :-D

Freshly Fuelled

Having had a long discussion in a car with Rach, I've finally nailed down some stuff about Gasoline that was bugging me. Put a lot more structure in place.

So, believe it or not, I'm now starting the second draft before the first is finished. :-)

Mostly because the first draft kinda lost its way, and a lot of the new structure really affects the half-way point of the story (which is where I was).

Second Rejection

...which was something of a nice surprise, because I had assumed the agent wouldn't bother to reply at all - it being nearly four months since I sent the manuscript.

Again, not a bad rejection, although I suspect it's a form note.

Death of Snippets

Well - it's been an interesting year-and-a-half.

But I've decided - finally - to abandon snippeting.

Partly because of the reasons in the last post - I don't have any more to say in the current story without drastic spoilers, which I think would be a shame.

And partly because I've decided to pull all the old snippets from this blog because it is rather too public. After taking a bit of advice from experienced authors, I think it's the right thing to do.

Which is a shame.

This blog will, therefore, only be updated sporadically for the time being, I guess, as writing-related things happen in my life. It may become no more than a personal record. Who knows?

Good luck with whatever you're working on! I'll try to keep reading other people's entries from week to week, assuming anyone else keeps going!

Accomplished

3 more submissions of Coin and Candle sent off, despite a small kitten sitting on the back of my neck.

Slight rewrite of the last few scenes of Gasoline to accommodate something which connects up all the plot of the story so far; a sudden inspiration which I'm really happy with.

All in all, not a bad day so far.

To post, or not to post?

Well, I missed the snippet last week for reasons which this post'll make clear.

I've hit a difficult story point with regard to snippeting purposes.

Something has happened in Gasoline. A real turning point, after which none of the characters will be the same.

Now, the purpose of these snippets - as I see it - is to give the folk reading something fun to read; to keep me writing, as I feel a certain obligation to deliver a snippet; and to hopefully get a few folk interested in my story worlds.

But how much of the story do I tell?

At this point, if I show you the story-changing episode, does that spoil the story for you? I've only skimmed over the tale to this point, avoiding a couple of pretty deep spoilers, but this is a biggie.

I could skip forward a bit (when I've finished writing a bit more). But then the world will have changed, and you won't be able to avoid noticing that change. Because the characters will talk about it and react to it. Whatever I do, spoilers abound, so to speak.

Personally, I think the story-changing episode itself is great, if only as catharsis for myself. It injects a huge chunk of life into something which I was struggling with.

So, what to do... do I:

• Post the story-changing episode and be damned with it, and continue showing you snippets and sequences for the duration of the story?


• Skip the story-changing episode and post other snippets from Gasoline as and when I get them done, risking you realising (pretty rapidly, I think) what the story-changing episode did?


• Stop snippeting Gasoline? I don't have anything else to put snippets in from really... so that would be the end of snippets for me, at least until November.

Any thoughts?