Panning For Gold

August 21, 2008
At this point in time, I've got a nonfiction book proposal being read by an agent. I have a middle-grades novel manuscript out in the ether, I'm trying to wrap up a book-length business report, I'm in the middle of editing an issue of a technical journal, and I have two assignments due at the end of September, one a trade journal article, the other a couple profiles and directories to pull together.

So I'm also looking for work, sending out queries.

But I'm also trying to figure out what to do for the fiction and nonfiction book thing.

I've got a file going on a nonfiction book topic that is out there, way off my areas of expertise about a Dutch ship that sailed to Australia in the 1600s and had some very bizarre things happen to it and its crew. It actually might make a better historical novel, but this sort of falls into the this-is-so-weird-it-caught-my-attention category. I don't know if I'll actually do anything with it, but it's interesting.

I've got about 200 pages of a novel that takes place in China done and it's more or less stalled. I don't know what the problem is, but I can't seem to bring myself to work on it. Either it's an orphan or I'll get inspired in the future to finish it. I don't know.

An idea for a character and a setting (Galveston), but no real plot, at least not yet.

A handful of novel ideas, including a police procedural I haul out every 6 months or so and tinker with. A tech thriller that I tinker with from time to time as well.

And I've had an idea for another middle-grades novel and last night I started it. It was fun and at the moment, that's more or less what I'm looking for until some of these other things gel.

Of course, there are multiple things going on here. One is that I'm looking for the idea that inspires me the most. In fact, the idea for this book is one my son had, but I discussed his idea for it (since he "borrowed" my idea for iWolf, which I was calling I, Wolf) to see how different our ideas were and he's cool with me running with it. I'm also, naturally, hoping that whatever I dig into might be publishable. This is becoming a bigger and bigger concern for me because I'm getting tired of writing novels that don't get published. Yeah, you, too? Well, imagine that you did get novels published for a while and then it stopped for a bit. Trust me, it gets harder after that point, not easier. In theory it's easier because you know it can be done, but you're perceived a little differently by publishers at this point and there are both pros and cons to that perception.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

How about you? What's on your plate?

Cheers,
Mark Terry

Goals & Faith

August 20, 2008
I wrote this post in November 2006 and it's just about true now as it was then. (Except the screenplay part. That was a passing fancy). Enjoy.

Cheers,
Mark Terry

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2006

Goals & Faith
November 22, 2006
I'm going to make an assumption that the majority of the readers of this blog are people who are writing novels but aren't yet published. I know some readers are already published. If you're in that first category, I imagine that you have been through a fairly typical experience of having been repeatedly rejected by agents, repeatedly rejected by publishers. I've been there. Although I don't often advertise the fact, I have something like 10 unpublished manuscripts laying around. It puts me in a big club--Jonathan Kellerman, Stephen King, Joe Konrath and a whole bunch of others who have a trunk full of unpublished (and probably unpublishable) manuscripts.

I'm here today to tell you that you can make it. That if you have the goal of eventually getting your novel published, that yes, persistence and constantly trying to improve your craft will eventually win out and you will get published. I believe it and you need to as well.

I'm quite confident that any of you CAN get published. I'm not as confident that you WILL get published. That's up to you, mostly. Luck definitely plays a factor, but you can mitigate luck by working the odds in your favor--be persistent and learn to write well. Changing CAN to WILL is tougher and only you can control that.

Then you're on to your next goal, aren't you?

Which is kind of where I'm at today. After spending most of two decades wanting to get published and making my living as a writer, I'm now regularly getting published (novels as well as nonfiction), and I'm making a living (quite decent) as a writer. My dream come true in so many, many ways.

But...

I, naturally, want more. Seems to be human nature. Not just more money (which would certainly be nice, but is not required), but my goal is to make a living as a novelist. Another goal is to publish more than one book a year, perhaps the second under a pseudonym. I might write at some other time about this compulsion to write more than one novel a year, but since I don't completely understand it myself, it will just have to wait for another time. I have gotten it into my head lately that I would like to write a screenplay. After all, I have 10 or so unpublished novels sitting around, most of which are perfectly good stories just not told well enough, and I might have the writing chops now to figure out what I did wrong and be able to do some of them in a different format. Maybe. We'll see. My initial approach to that is to read a number of screenplays to see if I can get that type of storytelling straight in my head.

Anyway, I was having a down moment yesterday for no other reason than because a writer is often his or her's own worst enemy, and I was thinking, well, the Derek Stillwater novels are doing reasonably well and you have a good career going even if some of these clients are driving you nuts, and this ISN'T going to happen, and this ISN'T going to happen, and you're kidding yourself with the screenplays, and...

There can be a pretty pessimistic, gloomy bastard of a dark angel on my shoulder from time to time, and I'm better off telling that prick to fuck off and go away.

Which is what I did this morning while fixing my breakfast of Corn Flakes and toast. I started getting into the "what are you wasting your time for" thought processes, and thought:

"This is bullshit. You didn't get to where you are now thinking this way. You were convinced it would happen, you were willing to work hard and do what needed to be done until you achieved your goal, no matter how long it took."

Ahem. Get it?

So I told myself, "Just do it. Work on these things. You'll get there."

And I'll see YOU THERE when YOU get THERE.

Best,
Mark Terry

Come For The Writer...

August 19, 2008

Stay for the monkey.

Hey, if I had anything to say, I'd say it.

Cheers,
Mark Terry

Loyalty?

August 18, 2008

My friend Erica Orloff and I had an e-mail conversation this weekend about violence in fiction. She calls it "torture porn" and we both agree that there are limits and that a lot of it bugs us. To read her thoughts on it and my over-long comment, click on the link.

But that's not what what I'm writing about today.

I got to thinking about this because of the author in question (Not Erica, but JA Konrath). I, like many of you, have favorite authors. You probably have a bunch that, when their books come out, you've either ordered them in advance from Amazon or you rush out to the bookstore on the first day or first week and pick up their books.

Even, maybe, if you haven't liked their last couple books. This could be because the books sucked, or as I've noticed in myself recently, I've changed and seemed to have grown out of some authors. (A topic for a different day, I think).

Stephen King is an example of this for me. I still respect him a lot, but I don't really read his new books too often. From time to time he'll get one out where I think, "Hmmm, that sounds interesting" and I'll go pick it up, but I used to buy his books in hardcover as soon as they came out.

Ridley Pearson, same thing.

A better example for me is James Lee Burke. When I discovered him around his 4th book or so, I ate them up, hunted down his earlier books and couldn't wait for the next. And abruptly, I stopped. In this case I can pinpoint it. He started another series featuring a Texas Ranger, and I reviewed it. And for some weird reason, it killed James Lee Burke for me. Part of it was the realization that Burke was using pretty much the same tricks and they were suddenly transparent to me. But there may have been other reasons.

What I'm getting at here is that sometimes I feel a loyalty to an author and I buy their books for reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with the book. I felt that way about Tom Kakonis, who wrote a couple brilliant thrillers than wandered into some areas I didn't enjoy, but I kept buying his books because I felt I owed him--we'd corresponded a bit when I was trying to break in. 

This is more common now with blogs and the Internet because we feel like we know the writers when they respond to an e-mail or respond to a blog comment. But I've been going through an odd period in my reading life where authors and genres I used to obsess about aren't satisfying me the way they used to. I don't think it's the authors, I think it's me. I'm changing and so are my reading habits. And yet, I'll pick up a book by them...

Even when maybe I don't want to.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Mark Terry

Women Of A Certain Age...

August 17, 2008

We watched the Olympics last night. The winner of the women's Marathon was Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who, as it turns out, is 38 years old.

We also watched some swimming and watched the amazing Dara Torres get the silver in the 50-meter splash & dash. Dara is 41 years old (older than the combined ages of the gold and bronze medalists!).

To which I can only say, Women Of A Certain Age...

You Rock!

Cheers,

Mark Terry