Friday, August 31, 2007

British curses are cool

Watched Hot Fuzz tonight with Ken. I'll have to watch it a few more times to be sure, but it could be my New Favorite Movie. Good guys win, bad guys lose, there's a cool plot, it's funny, and there's great cursing with british accents to boot. What's not to love? Get thee to a video store and rent it forthwith.

On the writing front, I've thought of a few more teen ansty/plotty scenes to add. After I do that, I need to go through the draft, fill in more flava, flesh out a few plot points ... and then I'll be dangerously close to being done, I think. Dear sweet Jesus, I could actually query agents with this thing soon. I find myself thinking "No, no, it's not ready yet, I just need to do this... and this ... and this over here needs work..." and while all that might be true, at some point it's going to be less about polishing the manuscript and more about my rejection angst. Can't fail if you don't try and all that. I've been working on this book off and on for two years (I first thought of the idea at WFC 2005), doing hardcore writing for the better part of this year, and it would royally suck if it got nowhere. Sure, I've had positive feedback from several people ... ah, hell. I'm getting off the negative train right now. I'm gonna finish Stormy Weather, I'm gonna query dozens of agents, they're gonna fight over me, and one of them's gonna sell this puppy.

And then the question will be: what to write next? I had thought about going back to my "trunk trilogy," but now I think I'll leave those sleeping dogs lie. I'll work on some new short stories to throw out into circulation and the AI/autism thriller outline. Maybe another YA novel outline or something ... I dunno.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Send it out, SWails. SW will get rejected. It will get rejected and rejected and rejected.

Until one day it doesn't, because it will have sold.

But by then you'll already have written the next tale, and sent it out to battle dragons, too, beacuse it's what we do. We aren't here for the rejections, but we have to know they're going to happen.

Besides, think what SW will do for your reject-o-meter in those early days!

Kelly Swails said...

You're right. I know you're right! Last night I was sort of in a funk but today I'm in a "Reject at will! I triple-dog dare ya!" sort of mood. SW is hitting agent's desks hopefully in a few weeks. Most likely by the end of September. No more horsin' around.