Monday, October 14, 2013

On Relevant Blogging and Tucking in the WIP

I just read a post at shark literary agent Janet Reid's blog that talked a bit about writers and their platforms and whether or not agents read writer's blogs/tweets/tumbls, etc.  Ms. Reid says busy agents don't have time to muck about in social media unless they are toying with the idea of taking that particular writer on as a client.  She did go on to say that just because time-strapped successful agents don't generally blog-surf, a writer's blog should not be a mess.

In other words, the blog should be well written.

Also, the blog should have something to do with the writer's work, and that's where this blog is deficient.  Here, then, is a post about my WIP (including some hastily thrown-together artwork)—

My work-in-progress is a YA dystopian novel and the working title is Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead. I've spent the summer knitting it together after a rather long period which I will call a hiatus ("hiatus" is to "avoidance" as "research" is to "Netflix binging.") Here's the working blurb:

When a suspected international cyber-attack disrupts power and communication, bookish 13-year-old Lena Ladimer is stranded along with her mother and their neighbors in a small rural neighborhood on Tootin Hollow Road in Gibeon, Connecticut.  As her mother withdraws into an incapacitating depression  and death stalks a neighbor, she attempts to chronicle the neighborhood's day-to-day efforts to survive.  Armed with a blank leather book, a supply of pens and her great-grandfather’s 1947 Thin Paper Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, she tries to make sense of events by writing about them.

The fear, uncertainty and inconveniences of daily life seem as nothing when she learns her father is dead.

She sets off for New Reading, Massachusetts to exact revenge on her dad’s killer.  She enlists the help of her best friend, neighbor Gus Lennon and two others, but does not reveal the real reason for the twenty-mile journey.  Instead, she tells them she wants to make sure her father has been properly buried. They all have their own reasons for wanting to go, and when the others finally find out Lena’s intentions, a startling connection to her father’s killer is revealed.

Back in Gibeon, the neighbors have welcomed Dana Griggs, a refugee and old college acquaintance of Lena's mom. When the children return from New Reading, they discover that Dana also has startling connections, connections that could mean the destruction of the neighborhood on Tootin Hollow Road. Lena and her friends must play a dangerous game to thwart Dana's plans and time is running out for all of them.



Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead will be an entire first draft by mid-January.  My critique group in Windsor is now reviewing finished chapters and the feedback has been wonderful.  For the first time in my writing career, I'm starting to get smiley faces about pacing.  Pacing!  Me!  "Hello, my name is R. T. and I am a recovering info-dumper. I have come to believe I am powerless over backstory, and my penchant for exposition has become unmanageable."  Compliments on pacing is a really big deal for me!

There. I have now blogged about my WIP.  Soon, I have to figure out how to do a little tab so I can post the first 1000 words of Bury the Dead, which I'm putting in for a nap with eight chapters good-to-go for review.  That will get me through November when I'll be participating in NaNoWriMo; 50,000 words in 30 days makes for a WIRP—Work In Rapid Progress. Last year, NaNo was the perfect break from all my WIP problems and gave me an opportunity to write the NaNo way: wanton, unfettered and heedless of spell check.  Yeehah! I should probably put a tab on here for that effort as well, Drum Witherspoon and the Shepherd's Treasure.

(And Janet Reid ... if you ever read this post, I just want you to know I constantly abuse adverbs here on purpose because I totally love them and if I use them in my WIP, my critiquers gleefully slash them with red pens.)

10 comments:

  1. A little adverb love never hurt anyone with good critique partners. :)
    I loved reading more about your WIP! I've loved the story ever since hearing the very very first chapter read in front of the fireplace years ago...and it's been fun to see the way you're developing it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You guys were my very first critiquers! I will never forget that lovely evening and listening to your stories. You were pregnant with Lucy, that's how long ago it was! In a way, this story is still a redux of "How the Irish Saved Civilization," only we have a fashionably diverse cast of characters who, when they are not plotting revenge/thwarting power-backed change agents/ trying to find family, study Latin, math, music, history, English and horsemanship. Also hunting, a wee bit of engineering and um ... philosophy. All without the internet!

      Delete
  2. Oh, dear, then I'm in trouble ... I write far too much about religion, politics and pets.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Vijaya, when YOU write about religion, politics and pets, it smacks of the grace of God a la Hilaire Belloc's poem, "Courtesy." I think even a shark like Janet Reid would be hard-pressed to be annoyed with your blog!

      Delete
  3. Thanks for posting this. I need to kick it in gear.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh my goodness, Johnell ... don't we all! Now I have to learn more about Google+ as part of my "platform development" ... so glad to have found you there!

      Delete
  4. I could see where agents wouldn't have time to just read blogs for the sake of reading blogs...or discovering clients. They want to read the relevant work. However, I write children's books...and I don't think I'm going to write blogs for 12-year-olds! They wouldn't read them...and adults would be scared away.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Stephanie, the mere idea of a 12-year-old reading a blog written by someone as long in the tooth as I am is kind of, well ... bizarre. I picture a wizened, obnoxious prepubescent creature badly in need of some fresh air and some penny candy.

      Delete
  5. Maybe I'll never make the transition from "wanna-be-writer" to "professional writer". Heck, maybe I'll never even make it to "published writer". But I've decided to stick with writing because I enjoy it, and have also decided to reboot my blog from a long-neglected version of yet another "blog about a writer's quest to get published and other writerly stuff" to a general creative outlet.

    If Janet Reid is ever in the position to consider me as a potential client, I hope I make it based on the merits of my writing, not the content of my blog, but at least I know that my new blog is a fuller reflection of who I am.

    And I can happily, wildly, and haphazardly use any ol' adverb I want. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And really ... isn't a blog supposed to be just that ... a reflection of who we are? But I do get her point that a writer's blog should have good writing on it.

      And regarding adverbs, well ... I totally and unabashedly agree: "There once was a blogger from Cyprus / Who only typed prose in Papyrus/ And though she was told/ "Those adverbs must go!"/ She regarded her critics with silence." Actually, she STONILY regarded her critics with silence.

      Delete