{"id":24,"date":"2007-01-15T15:55:42","date_gmt":"2007-01-15T19:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/15\/a-tale-of-two-novels\/"},"modified":"2007-01-15T15:55:42","modified_gmt":"2007-01-15T19:55:42","slug":"a-tale-of-two-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/15\/a-tale-of-two-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Novels"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m actually working on two separate book projects. I’m writing one book and marketing another. After reading Miss Snark<\/a>, Holly Lisle’s<\/a> writing blog and PBW’s<\/a> writing blog, I think I have a clearer idea of how to write a query. I have decided, however, to look for an agent instead of trying to get That Damned Book published myself because I hate selling with a deep and bitter passion. I’ll do it long enough to get myself an agent, but am happy to pay someone else for that part of the job if I can swing it.<\/p>\n

I’m leaving At the Foot of the Throne<\/a> up for another week, but then I need to take it down so it can be sold. Read it if you want. If not. that’s cool. I do ask that you do NOT pass this copy around. You may forward the link if you like, but after it’s down, please let it stay down. Thanks!<\/p>\n

I don’t know what I was thinking when I had planned to start Stoneflower<\/em> while still in the early phases of recovering from surgery. I suppose the story about Margaret Mitchell writing Gone With the Wind<\/em> while laid up with a broken ankle caught my imagination. I don’t think Mrs. Marsh was on the “good drugs” during her writing phase. Just sayin’. I like to write and have a nice glass of something, but morphine doesn’t do it for me for the writing of good prose.<\/p>\n

However, I did nibble at it. I have some 30-50K of notes from years past, and did sit my ass down right before my surgery and notecard<\/a> the book. I do it slightly differently than the way Lisle recommends. I’ll decide how many scenes each character gets, write their names at the top of the card, then shuffle the stack and start brainstorming. Later, I go back and put them in the order I think will work. After that, I open a new document, set it up with title and all that, then do a bulleted list of each scene. When I finish a scene, I delete it from the bottom of my list.<\/p>\n

I know some writers outline in detail, but that’s never worked too well for me. Writing with no plot at all, but a vague idea of the end never really worked, either. This is a happy medium that I like a lot.<\/p>\n

Because I want to balance having a life with writing more than I did when I wrote At the Foot of the Throne<\/em>, I’m having a weekly quota of 5,000 words instead of 7,000. I dove too deep into the last novel, and I don’t think it did my personal life any real good. Certainly it didn’t help me focus on my day job. Right now, I still need the day job. Here’s to the day when I don’t any more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m actually working on two separate book projects. I’m writing one book and marketing another. After reading Miss Snark, Holly Lisle’s writing blog and PBW’s writing blog, I think I have a clearer idea of how to write a query. I have decided, however, to look for an agent instead of trying to get That … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Tale of Two Novels”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}