Climbing Plot Mountain

It's a rainy Thursday, and the Queen is in Richmond, and because they've closed our entire office block for security reasons (and the street between my building and Capitol Square, and my parking garage) I had time to finish up the edits I wanted to make to Cavalier, and then put together those queries I'd intended to send last week. I've posted five new queries and sent the requested partial manuscript off.

I'd forgotten how useful a significantly long stretch of hours could be when one is in a mood to write. *g* The edits were polishing, really, but I'd been dithering over them for a while. Once I sat down to work this morning, with corrinalaw's comments, they went quickly.

I'm not sure what comes next. It's still spring, and the design jobs are keeping me hopping in what there is of my spare time. Probably I ought to concentrate on those, since their timeline is finite, and let the two stories I have percolating brew a bit longer. The pirate story is not ready; I went awry somewhere, after a promising start, and haven't yet figured out where. Probably I ought to simply do the novel_in_90 thing again and just get it written, and worry about the editing later. The Bells story that I wrote this winter with novel_in_90's help has plenty of plot - shock! amaze! - but needs more characterization.

(In fact, I believe the problem with shooting for consistent word count is that I'm going to consistently miss out on the characterization I love so much but that takes a while to develop; I don't know if this dooms this means of generating words, or not. I guess we'll see how hard it turns out to be to flesh Bells out.)

A Mailing has been committed this morning. In addition to five more novel queries (that would be Dimo, ringing those doorbells), I've sent off a story to the F&SF slush bomb project, and another (the Xavier "short" alt history) to Paradox. Now to await the blizzard of rejection SASEs. *g*

One week, Eleanor Wood. She notes, for those who might be interested, that she's "taking on very few new clients."

Two down in this batch, three more to go.

Mailed more queries out yesterday. All of this batch got at least a sample set of the first five pages; one wanted the first chapter, and another wanted the first 50 pages.

Dumb move of the day: sealing up two of the envelopes before I'd signed the cover letter.

I want to talk about alternate history stories, but that's not querying, so....

Got the SASE back from Richard Henshaw - a very nice form letter, alas.

I should note that I got a "no thanks" email from Maya Rock of Writers House on Friday. I still intend to get some paper queries out this week, but haven't and won't be printing that material out tonight. I have to write the cover letters first.