Evening, squiders. I’m making white bean chicken chili for dinner, so I’ll be in and out while I do steps for that.
(My food processor was a bit too small, so that made a mess.)
We talked last…Friday, I want to say, about iteration. Specifically relating to my submission materials.
Well, now I’ve reached an impasse on my newest query.
I posted it for the TDP people and crickets, except for one person who said it was much better.
I sent it to my critique group, who generally said it was good, except one person thought the first sentence could be punchier and another who pointed out that I’d used the wrong word (I’d used a similar but spelled slightly different word that essentially meant the opposite. Whoops).
And yesterday I posted it on my Discord server, where it, too, has gotten crickets, except for one person who came by again and said it was much better.
Now, one could assume that this is all a good sign. People don’t tend to comment if they can’t easily point out things that are wrong, so perhaps the query is good. At least serviceable.
However, I suspect that would be getting in front of the cart or whatever the saying actually is. A lack of feedback does not mean that feedback is not needed, it just means we’re not getting feedback.
(Also I do suspect things could be a bit punchier. I may attempt that here in a few days no matter what.)
I’ve talked before about how your goals can’t rely on other people because you can’t control what other people do–or decide. Feedback falls into kind of a weird place. Ideally you have some because you can’t always judge your own work that well. But, again, you can’t control if you get feedback, or when, or whether that feedback will be useful.
I love submission so much. We haven’t even started sending things out and it’s already frustrating.
But no reason to sit and stew. (Oh, my chili. Hold on.) Eventually we must move on, trusting in ourselves. We will get feedback, or not, and on we blindly stumble.
(Still need to do my comps. Sigh.)
Meanwhile I’m working on my scifi horror novella revision. It’s…kind of a mess. We’ve talked a bit about that, about how the worldbuilding and the characterization needs some planning and streamlining, but I went through the whole story the other day, and the whole ending is…not really working.
This is a problem, and not one I’m really familiar with. In general, my endings work. Hell, even with whatever draft of Book 1 we’re on, the ending has essentially stayed the same since the very first draft (motivations and action and who’s present has changed, but the ending itself has stayed very consistent).
But there is a logical fallacy in RaTs’s ending, and unfortunately a lot of the rest of the story is built up to lead to that fallacy. Sometime here soon I’m going to have to figure out how to fix it. I might be able to add some more background that makes it make sense, or I may need to move things around. Also, the ending comes a little too easily for the main character, so I need to think about that as well.
Sigh and double sigh.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to have this ready in time to take part in the winter critique marathon in my writing community, alas. Fingers crossed that I can have at least the first chapter done so I can send it out for the next in-person critique meeting.
I’m a little frustrated at how badly I predicted the length of this revision. I think, since this novella was the first thing I ran through the critique marathon that got mostly positive feedback, that I was thinking it was in much better shape than it is.
But on we stumble, and the revision planning will get done, and the submission material will get done, and everything will be fine. Eventually.
But, oh, I wish they were getting done faster.
How are you, squider? What did you have for dinner?
(Also, fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong with the site on the cusp of January into February.)
