I am currently eagerly and very much not patiently awaiting beta reader feedback on Surrealist. All my ducks are in a row to start sending it out to agents, as I’ve already torn through creating my query list and both my query and synopsis are complete. Now all that remains is getting feedback from my beta readers and applying what I discern is helpful to the manuscript. The readers have a few days left, and I am holding my breath until that date.
Progress
I finished reading Surrealist and sent it off to betas a bit early. I revised Project C, which went very quickly, and I revised a short story twice, sent it out to literary magazines along with two other short stories I had sitting not on sub. I’ve received three rejections so far and all three stories are back out on submission. It has been nice to get some rejections because it means I am moving and getting my work out there. Sending out short stories has been a nice precursor to getting back into the query trenches with my novel.
One of my goals from last month was to get as far into Project D as I could. However, once the month started, I pivoted away from starting to draft Project D as I didn’t want to get partway through it and have to stop. The loss of momentum would not help the story, so I decided to wait until I’ve gotten Surrealist back from betas, edited, and sent off to agents to dig into Project D. However, that did not extend to outlining and brainstorming. I was able to get some of my thoughts down this month and set myself up for success as I dive into drafting later in June.
Due to the shift away from Project D, much of this month has been meandering. I’ve found myself a bit listless in between projects and perhaps suffering from the backlash of being burnt out. My word count is rather small this month, but that is alright, as I took some time to work on revising some shorter projects I’d continually put off for longer ones.
Liesure
My brother and I are currently watching The Three-Body Problem. He has already seen it, and he is definitely watching to see my thoughts, interpretation, and guesses as to what is going on. I am enjoying it so far and hoping it doesn’t let me down.
I also went to see the Mandalorian and Grogu movie and found it funny and altogether well done. I was surprised that they were able to make a Hutt that might be one of my favorite characters.
I just started watching You, and I am not sure how I feel about it. I love the bookish nature of it and the information on preservation of old books, but I’m not sure I find it a compelling watch. I like Penn Badgley, but the story might just not be for me.
What I’m Learning
No matter how well-written a story is, there will always be someone who doesn’t like it. Sometimes I go on Goodreads, look up a book I like, and read the one and two-star reviews. Is it mildly infuriating to see people fundamentally not understand a book I love, yes. Is it also something that helps ground me and proves that there will always be people who don’t like what I like (and by extension what I create), absolutely.
Stories are subjective and abstract. We use imperfect language to translate what is inside our head to a similar thing inside someone else’s head. Each person has a slightly different relationship to all the words in the English language. We all also have different ways of processing and “seeing” information in our minds. I have an extraordinarily visual mind. Someone can say the word “room,” and I am already furnishing it in my mind. But there are other people who do not see the room at all. The experience is a word (I’ll admit, I struggle to understand this because when this is said to me, I visualize the word “room” in my mind in courier font on a piece of paper that has just been run through a typewriter. I visualize their lack of visualization.) I can only imagine that readers across this Aphantasia to Hyperphantasia spectrum experience books in vastly different ways. I watch stories like movies in my head, even as I am writing them. The words and descriptions matter less than what they conjure in my mind. Those towards the Aphantasia side of the spectrum seem to need the words themselves to do and mean more than the images they inspire.
Writing is such a difficult art as we, the artists, have to thread the needle on how to make our books accessible to different kinds of readers on different levels at the same time. But, at the end of the day, it is impossible to please everyone, and some stories must just be what they are in the form that they wish. Some people will enjoy the books 100%, and others will hate it 100%, but I imagine that is significantly better than everyone enjoying it 50%. In essence, to make a strong hit for some people, a story will be a strong miss for others.
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Looking Forward
The first order of business this month is a final edit and a read-aloud of Surrealist. I am anticipating that this won’t take too long. My thoughts at this point in the beta read are that there are really only three scenes in the book that I will have to edit much at all, and even what I plan to add is not a significant change in the grand scheme of things. However, I am still waiting on a decent amount of feedback, but I am hoping nothing catastrophic happens. As soon as I am finished with this edit, I will start querying agents! Once Surrealist is out to agents, I will turn my sights back to Project D and go full steam ahead on that project, or as full steam as my time permits.
This week starts two of my master’s courses for the summer; in fact, I have to write an analysis after I finish with this blog (blegh). It looks as though I will have at least 3-7k words worth of writing per week for my graduate classes (who knew a master’s in accounting would require so much writing). This is on top of research, reading, and discussion posts. I am still hoping to get writing done on Project D, but it will likely be slow for the next ten weeks. If I do not finish the first draft of Project D in that time, I will likely complete it in August, when I have three weeks off between semesters, then it’ll be nose to the grindstone for another twelve weeks. I am entering what will be the longest busy section of my graduate program, but I am confident that I will get Project D done when I need to.
Wish me luck, because I think I’ll need it.
Naomi
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