It's been a little while...
Lessee... Amazon contest, first. Drained out with a workman-like pitch, not exciting enough for the pool of folks who review such things. I don't think I'll enter this contest again next year, it's too much like "American Idol for Writers". For what it's worth, none of the writers I know who entered made it past the pitch/review stage.
Okay, now to the motorcycle racing. March races at Arroyo were cold, and I was even colder. I was as bad as I ever was the start of an Amateur season, at 1:17 pace, frustrated as all-get-out, not feeling the traction, and showing it in my laptimes. DFL in every race but one. Ugh, that was harsh.
April races were only slightly better. I ran off the track in one race, just screaming in my helmet, mad that I blew braking so badly - my glove pinched my throttle, and I tried to brake with the throttle open. This is a setup issue, normally fixed by relocating the perch (mount), if there isn't lever adjustment left. I chose to sulk over it instead of fixing it... another really crappy weekend.
So, it's good to have friends. C-Bass (Sebastian), my pit-mate for the season crashed last fall, also. Both of us had a really bad start to this season, and it was entirely due to lack of confidence. The track owner in New Mexico would rather have both of us competitive and happy than not, and so we were able to rent the track (C-Bass and I) for some laps with the owner last Monday. With a little 'push' from the track owner, I made some suspension geometry adjustments that helped a lot, too. Only a few laps into it, on a warm April day, and both C-Bass and I were suddenly in the 1:15's, and I got down into the 1:13's. Hallelujah, and pass the ammo, Brother.
May races were much better. Now I can be mad at myself for mental 'race management' issues - failing to block one turn in a race I led from the green flag resulted in getting passed on the last lap without enough track left to catch up again. That got me mad, but in a different way, encouraging me to flog the bike. This had a really cool effect: I really began to feel the tires again, and the suspension action, and began seriously putting power down to drive out of corners while still leaned over - all things you HAVE to do to go fast. I haven't seen the laptimes from that last race yet, but I think I may have equaled my personal best.
This makes me look forward to next month.
I'll probably do a trackday in Pahrump, Nevada (Spring Mountain Motorsports Park) in late May, to keep the feeling current.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Feb 2nd Entry - ABNA Madness
Whew.
Seriously. Getting Specialist Sparks ready for the ABNA was a serious drag through broken glass, barbed wire, and antipersonnel mines. Okay, it was just painful.
I started three weeks ago with a MS that was 91,000 words, but only two acts of the story. I brought in some material I had from the sequel - completely unedited - for the third act (my friend Terry Mixon suggested a while back I use the traditional screenwriting three-act format. I've used the three-times rule in a lot of the subplots, but now applied it directly as the macro-plot). I added 23,000 words doing that.
Then, I added 4,000 more, for the 'pinch scenes', where I remind you, the reader, that there's a threat brewing over the horizon (in this case, in the Southern Hemisphere...) and that rust never sleeps... I won't ruin the story for you. This left me at 114,900 words.
The genre - Action/Adventure - wants less than 100,000 words, as close to 90,000 as a first-time novelist (I have no prior sales to point to to justify a longer book). This caused me to have to edit...
I lost about 2,000 words right off the bat in kicking out unneeded or too-heavy-handed-repetition-of-a-theme scenes. Yeah, we know Sandy's a great soldier, one scene's enough, not three... that sort of thing.
I then got painful, and got rid of some cherished scenes developing a relationship between Kate and Sandy, and trimmed even more from two really key monologues. That was painful, because they were strong, but the story still stands with weaker monologues.
Feeling bad, I then shifted the attack to wordcount, and started trimming descriptive clauses. Stuff that really wasn't needed - characters looking at scenery, wondering about inconsequential stuff. Figure I lost about 9 words a page that way.
Next, a purely mechanical attack on passive voice and contractions. I also broke up complex, multi-clause (run on?) sentences, making them no more than three, mostly two, clauses long. This lowered the Fleisch readability score a bit, too. I finished with 1% passive-voice: there are some phrases you cannot, especially in dialogue, make active. These include "the formation was dismissed", if you don't want to spend words on who led the formation (think a class graduation - the leader isn't part of the story), and "Sandy was shot". Oh well.
This got me down to 99,400 words.
More painful elides and minor scene/sentence edits.
98,700.
Then I got to write a bio, pitch, synopsis, anectdote, and other impedimentia for the contest.
The pitch was tough. This would cut the contest entries by a factor of 20 - from 10,000 possible entries to 500. I did my best to answer the points they asked for - and spent less on the synopsis than I might have. I also used the pronoun "I" in the pitch, something most other people avoided - but they wanted to know my motivation and qualifications for writing a novel, and who I aimed it at.
After the submission period's over, I'll post up the pitch here.
Anyway, after the game yesterday (there was a game? The Superbowl...), I hovered over my keyboard, and at 10:00 AZ time, got my entry into the 2009 ABNA contest in.
Whew.
A drag through rocky riverbeds, thornbushes, and pine forests. But I'm done... now I just get to wait until 16 March when I find out if the pitch was good enough.
More later...
Seriously. Getting Specialist Sparks ready for the ABNA was a serious drag through broken glass, barbed wire, and antipersonnel mines. Okay, it was just painful.
I started three weeks ago with a MS that was 91,000 words, but only two acts of the story. I brought in some material I had from the sequel - completely unedited - for the third act (my friend Terry Mixon suggested a while back I use the traditional screenwriting three-act format. I've used the three-times rule in a lot of the subplots, but now applied it directly as the macro-plot). I added 23,000 words doing that.
Then, I added 4,000 more, for the 'pinch scenes', where I remind you, the reader, that there's a threat brewing over the horizon (in this case, in the Southern Hemisphere...) and that rust never sleeps... I won't ruin the story for you. This left me at 114,900 words.
The genre - Action/Adventure - wants less than 100,000 words, as close to 90,000 as a first-time novelist (I have no prior sales to point to to justify a longer book). This caused me to have to edit...
I lost about 2,000 words right off the bat in kicking out unneeded or too-heavy-handed-repetition-of-a-theme scenes. Yeah, we know Sandy's a great soldier, one scene's enough, not three... that sort of thing.
I then got painful, and got rid of some cherished scenes developing a relationship between Kate and Sandy, and trimmed even more from two really key monologues. That was painful, because they were strong, but the story still stands with weaker monologues.
Feeling bad, I then shifted the attack to wordcount, and started trimming descriptive clauses. Stuff that really wasn't needed - characters looking at scenery, wondering about inconsequential stuff. Figure I lost about 9 words a page that way.
Next, a purely mechanical attack on passive voice and contractions. I also broke up complex, multi-clause (run on?) sentences, making them no more than three, mostly two, clauses long. This lowered the Fleisch readability score a bit, too. I finished with 1% passive-voice: there are some phrases you cannot, especially in dialogue, make active. These include "the formation was dismissed", if you don't want to spend words on who led the formation (think a class graduation - the leader isn't part of the story), and "Sandy was shot". Oh well.
This got me down to 99,400 words.
More painful elides and minor scene/sentence edits.
98,700.
Then I got to write a bio, pitch, synopsis, anectdote, and other impedimentia for the contest.
The pitch was tough. This would cut the contest entries by a factor of 20 - from 10,000 possible entries to 500. I did my best to answer the points they asked for - and spent less on the synopsis than I might have. I also used the pronoun "I" in the pitch, something most other people avoided - but they wanted to know my motivation and qualifications for writing a novel, and who I aimed it at.
After the submission period's over, I'll post up the pitch here.
Anyway, after the game yesterday (there was a game? The Superbowl...), I hovered over my keyboard, and at 10:00 AZ time, got my entry into the 2009 ABNA contest in.
Whew.
A drag through rocky riverbeds, thornbushes, and pine forests. But I'm done... now I just get to wait until 16 March when I find out if the pitch was good enough.
More later...
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Where did December go?
December, the holidays, flew by. November ended, with me not having a lot of words written on my NaNoWriMo project (Ilse). I shelved it for December, since work got busy.
Along with work, I had a lot of social engagements in the month (it's the holidays...), and I had a bike to repair for the races in Fontana, which were very early in January this year. My gym closed with only one week's notice, and I had to find a new one. I'm not sure I like the new place that much - it's about seven miles from my house, six miles further than the old one. My oldest daughter had dance performances all month long, which kept us running from place to place most evenings.
I haven't even had enough time to update my website!
What's new? Well, it's a new racing season. Please see my schedule page if you're curious about my plans. Also, Amazon has a new ABNA contest, and I'm rearranging SP4 Sparks to enter into the contest - I have only a few days' free time this month to get that done in.
Should I fail to get my entry into the ABNA in time, I'll post the story online.
What else? Races at Fontana! It was a hectic, and tragic weekend. See the Results page for the laborious details.
The Kids go back to school next week - can't quite come soon enough (sorry, Kids) for Mom and Dad. It's a good thing they like school - all three are A students - and a return to normalcy will be much appreciated.
Along with work, I had a lot of social engagements in the month (it's the holidays...), and I had a bike to repair for the races in Fontana, which were very early in January this year. My gym closed with only one week's notice, and I had to find a new one. I'm not sure I like the new place that much - it's about seven miles from my house, six miles further than the old one. My oldest daughter had dance performances all month long, which kept us running from place to place most evenings.
I haven't even had enough time to update my website!
What's new? Well, it's a new racing season. Please see my schedule page if you're curious about my plans. Also, Amazon has a new ABNA contest, and I'm rearranging SP4 Sparks to enter into the contest - I have only a few days' free time this month to get that done in.
Should I fail to get my entry into the ABNA in time, I'll post the story online.
What else? Races at Fontana! It was a hectic, and tragic weekend. See the Results page for the laborious details.
The Kids go back to school next week - can't quite come soon enough (sorry, Kids) for Mom and Dad. It's a good thing they like school - all three are A students - and a return to normalcy will be much appreciated.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)