32 posts tagged “rfm”

Well, you want it alphabetically or in order of importance?

Specifically, this is how it is:

I was just making a spreadsheet to help me keep track of my WS queries. I sent what I thought were "a bunch" on Sunday. Turns out I sent six. But I put in a lot of research as well, which is probably why it felt like a bunch. Of the six, one is closed to subs through June 1. That info wasn't on the agency website so that was a bit of a surprise. I'll try again June 1 if I haven't heard from others by then. I don't expect to.

So anyway...

I decided I'd use my RFM queries spreadsheet as a template. The date on my most recent query-related activity? 5/15/08.

WTF is wrong with me? I sat on two completed mss for a year? Granted, I was revising and also doing fresh writing on Nine, "Inheritance" and some other shorts, plus articles and editorials and TC editing. But still. What am I waiting for?

At least I can say I have some queries out there now and if/when rejections start rolling in, I have to remind myself to kick my own ass about staying with it.

People talk about having playlists while they write or songs that make a soundtrack of a certain book. WS doesn't have a soundtrack. I used a lot of classical music while I wrote WS b/c I like to use period music and when I wrote the early drafts, it's not like I could get evocative 1930s music. I did use some contemporary stuffto write certain scenes, stuff that made a reaction in me that translated to paper. I also listened to a lot of Tori Amos when I wrote the diary bit, which helped give it a different feel than the parts Jake narrates.

"Nine" is being written almost exclusively to "American Idiot." I don't know how that started. Probably b/c it was the CD in the laptop. I'm branching out now and when it's complete, I'll post a "soundtrack."

This evening I was supposed to get my hair done and I didn't get the phone call canceling the appointment (hairdresser had a wreck & is fine but had no transportation). As I walked back out to the car, I thought, "Well what shall I do w/ my free evening?" When I got in the car and the radio came on, the song playing was "Don't Bring Me Down." The Great Mother was giving me an answer to the question I posed inside my head; "Don't Bring Me Down" is the "theme song" of RFM (which I may have mentioned here). BTW: When I told Hawk this story and I got to the song title he said, "So you robbed a convenience store?" Yes: that's how RFM opens. And no I did not.

So just now I thought, "Hey, I could put the RFM 'soundtrack' on my writing blog b/c I've made a rough playlist." Keep in mind I didn't use iTunes or anything while I wrote RFM. I just put CDs on. I then got a little free mp3 player and I put some music on it and I've since added to it. These are most of the songs that helped me create RFM. Music, especially lyric, figures heavily into the symbolic structure of the story.

The ones before the little break actually figure into the story and I listed them here in the order in which they appear. The other songs I think came up alpha by artist. See if you can tell offhand in what what year RFM is set.

Don't Bring Me Down                             ELO     

867-5309/Jenny                                     Tommy Tutone

Bodies                                                 Sex Pistols

Baba O'Riley                                         The Who

Smells Like Teen Spirit                           Nirvana

April Come She Will (live)                       Simon & Garfunkel

Enter Sandman                                      Metallica

I'm Too Sexy                                         Right Said Fred

Rockin In The Free World                       Neil Young

Drain You                                              Nirvana

One                                                      U2

Purple Rain                                           Prince

Silent All These Years                            Tori Amos

 

God Only Knows                                                The Beach Boys           

With Or Without You                                          U2                   

All Along The Watchtower                                   Jimi Hendrix

The Wind                                                          Cat Stevens

How Soon Is Now                                               The Smiths

Been Caught Stealing                                         Jane's Addiction

Atlantic City                                                      Bruce Springsteen

London Calling                                                   The Clash

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For            U2

I Will Follow                                                       U2       

About A Girl                                                      Nirvana

So Lonely                                                          The Police        

Behind Blue Eyes                                              The Who

The Chain                                                          Fleetwood Mac

America (live)                                                     Simon & Garfunkel

King Of Pain                                                      The Police

Girl                                                                   Tori Amos

Crucify                                                              Tori Amos

Redemption Song                                              Bob Marley

Absolute Beginners                                            The Jam

Nothing Else Matters                                          Metallica

In Bloom                                                           Nirvana

Come As You Are                                              Nirvana

Breed                                                                Nirvana

Lithium                                                              Nirvana

Polly                                                                 Nirvana

On A Plain                                                        Nirvana 

Something In The Way                                       Nirvana

Down By The Water                                           PJ Harvey

I'll Stand By You                                                The Pretenders

Brass In Pocket                                                 The Pretenders

Losing My Religion                                             R.E.M. 

Beat On The Brat                                               The Ramones   

You Can't Always Get What You Want                The Rolling Stones

I got this idea from Kristen, who got it from Jen. It's "Teaser Tuesday" where you post a bit of your ms to your blog. I won't do WS b/c it's currently in the ABNA contest. So I guess this week, I'll do RFM.

The narrator (Seth) is a homeless 20 year old who's been dumped in State College, PA by a trucker (the opening scene is Seth robbing a convenience store). He's spending his time following students to different auditorium-sized classes on the Penn State campus. He's just come out of Rec Hall with the idea that, until he decides where to run to next, he could live on campus and blend in with the student population (sleep in the library, shower at Rec Hall, stay up all night and read at The Diner, etc.). Here he's sitting on the steps of the library eating popcorn and looking for someone else to follow. It's January 1992.

I saw her walk before I saw her. She had a book bag on one hip and the flap wasn’t latched. So every other step, the flap bounced. Hard. She was swaddled in a neon green ski jacket so it was hard to tell how her body was. If she had the hips to match that walk. From my experience, I guessed that she probably did. I wanted to keep enjoying her so I made her my target for the next round of classes.

Frizzy ringlets of hair poked out from under a stretchy wool hat. It was black. Her hair and the hat. It was hard to tell one from the other. She wore bright aqua-blue gloves. One hand coiled around the strap of her bag. The other hand stayed pretty much motionless at her side.

She went up two flights of stairs and down a long hallway. Mesmerized by her walk, I wasn’t paying attention and I walked right up to the door. It was an old room with a lot of dark wood. The desks. The teacher’s desk. The trim around the windows. The door. And it was small. Too small. I took a step backward.

“English 213?” The guy wore a tie, an open collar and glasses. His question hung in his eyes.

I stood there like a dope. The girl put her bag down and took off her hat. She had great hair. Curly-kinky and kind of short but a lot of it.

“Excuse me.” A guy in a black jacket eased past me and into the room.

“I… um…”

“Are you here for poetry writing?”

Oh that’s fucking fine. Poetry writing. With like twelve people. “Um… I’m not really registered for this class, no.”

Tie Guy started rolling up his cuffs. “Are you here to audit?”

The girl I followed looked up. I didn’t want to let her go just yet. It’d be sad and obvious to hang outside a door she might not use. So I said, “Yeah. That.”

Tie Guy motioned to the desks. He didn’t seem pissed. I don’t know what he seemed. I sat in the back left corner, away from the others. “Let’s get started. How about we put the desks in a circle?”

Metal scraped linoleum. Chalk scraped slate. He wrote “English 213” and printed “Jason Braddock” underneath it. Then he pulled a notebook out of a leather bag on the floor, turned a desk from the front row around and joined the circle. I inched my desk forward and swore at myself.

“We’re all going to get to know each other pretty well. Not just because it’s a small class but because of the nature of what we’ll do here. There’s no book for this class but you will have to buy a poetry journal. I don’t care what it is. It could be a binder or a steno pad or a spiral notebook. But I will be reading everyone’s journals as part of your grade. Now let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves.”

Fuck.

“Just tell us your name and maybe where you’re from, your major and why you’re taking this class.”

Fucking fuck.

The guy who came in after I did went first. While he talked, a smoosh of snow fell off his shoe. His name was Mike. He was from Philly. He was an English major and taking poetry for a writing credit. No one elaborated much more than Mike had.

The girl I stalked was a seat away from me. Before her turn, she pressed her lips together and crossed her ankles. “I’m Natalie. I’m from, um, near Pittsburgh and I’m an English major too. I’m taking poetry writing because I want to learn how to economize words.”

That went over big with some of the class. I couldn’t read Braddock. He just looked at the guy next to me and waited. I coughed into my fist and thought about what I’d say my major was.

“I’m Hal. I’m from just outside New York…”

“What part of Jersey are you from?” Dan from Camden asked.

Hal smirked at him and kept going. “I’m a history major and I signed up for poetry writing because I thought it would be a good way to meet girls.”

It was like a drop of water on an over-filled glass of water. Everyone shifted and laughed, even Braddock. Once we were suitably tense again, he looked at me and said, “Go ahead.”

“I’m Seth,” I said without thinking. Brakes squealed in my mind. For fucking fuck’s sake. What is wrong with you? Jee-zus. I coughed again to cover my brainfart. “I’m from…” Quick, shithead. Answer the question. “a lot of places actually. I don’t, um, really have a major.” That got a couple small laughs. “And I’m here because, ah, I got lost.”

They laughed again and seemed to like it. Braddock just moved on to Corrin from York. I didn’t hear any other names or places. I felt like stabbing myself in the head. I hadn’t spoken my name aloud in three years now all of a sudden there it was. Thanks to Hal and his big joke making me forget to lie. God damn it. I’m following him out of here and beating the shit out of him.

I ran over the confrontation in my mind. I wouldn’t say anything. Just walk up behind him and shove him. He was bigger than I was but I could take him if I surprised him. I imagined his bloody face and what it would be like to pick his bone fragments out of my knuckles. I could kick him in the stomach while I did.

What are you pissed at him for? He didn’t do anything to you. Hal leaned back and I caught a glimpse of Natalie. Which would be better? Following him and beating him unconscious or following her and fucking her in some mud-slushed alley under an orange streetlight?

I weighed my choices for a while until Hal elbowed me. He handed me a couple sheets of paper and indicated the old “take one and pass it down.” I did. It was a list of homework that Braddock expected. And he wanted a poem by the following Thursday. A love poem. He was telling us what he wanted – three stanzas of four lines each in free verse with no words of endearment or adoration.

“Think about your pacing. Be particular. Give it a storyline. A motif. Create an image and show it to us. Make,” he paused to count, “fourteen, no, fifteen copies. And work through it in your poetry journal. Pretend it’s math class. I want to see your work.”

People started getting their things together, packing up notebooks, folding the syllabus and putting it inside notebooks and folders.

“And read every week. I want to know who you’re doing your anthology paper on by March 1. Make notes about who you’re reading in your journal. See you Tuesday.”

Tuesdays. Thursdays. At 2:30 in the afternoon.

I stumbled out as part of the crowd. I lost Hal and Natalie somehow. But I caught sight of Mike from Philly and Camden Dan. My subconscious latched onto them and without thinking I followed them across the campus to a different bookstore. They blathered about the upcoming Superbowl the whole time.

The campus bookstore had high ceilings and looked to have more clothes and souvenir crap than actual books. I poked around a few aisles. Considered buying a used book or two. In the end, I bought a stenographer’s pad, a mechanical pencil and a Hershey bar without almonds. I put it all in my duffel, between the dirty laundry and the rubbers.

I have to admit that I know sometimes I'm shooting for the top and that the top is, well, most likely out of reach. But aiming for a certain goal (or over it) costs me nothing so I go for it.

You might remember that I queried an agent at a certain agency and that he fell off the face of the earth. Then the namesake of the agency got back to me personally. I hadn't heard from her but someone with that level of agentitude, I didn't want to push & pester. She was kind enough to ask for the first 100 pages so I was beyond myself with glee at that.

That said, she finally got back to me today with good and bad news:

Thanks so much for giving me a chance at this – and my apologies for taking so long to get back to you.  You’re right, there is a Tawni O’Dell quality to your writing and to this story – which means that I’m very impressed by the way you set down sentences.  But it also means that in many ways this story feels too familiar to me.  I know you’re going to get a wonderful agent, but I’m afraid I’m going to pass.

So just when I was beginning to think maybe I should give up on RFM and that I might have better luck querying WS, I got some wonderful encouragement, the first really encouraging thing I've had on the piece for a long time. I'm not surprised she'd pass (I think I might have melted into a puddle of goo if she'd said, "Send me a whole") and I thought it was very nice for her to write a personal note instead of a general rejection or something that's like what agents say in lieu of "no thanks" (like "this piece isn't right for me").

I have some more queries out and I wrote a couple of sentences on Nine this afternoon. I really need to reread it b/c I'm blanking out on what's happened in it. Then I can do some new work provided the kids stop dragging chairs around the kitchen in order to get snacks out of cabinets or play "tower."

That's the state of things. Plus the kids are playing semi-quietly in Zoe's room and Hawk is supposed to bring us dinner from McD's. Things are pretty good.

I just sent a new query. Maybe I'm not supposed to pore over every single agent, research the agency, figure out if the agent might actually like my stuff, etc. but I really do pick and choose the agents I'm querying. So I think sometime in the next 10-20 years, I'll be able to exhaust the querying process for RFM and switch over to WS.

I never heard back from the one who still has the full via e-mail. I wrote and asked him if he could tell me that he got it & never replied to that either. So I don't know to be passive-aggressive and sit back & wait in a case like that or get all up in his grill. I think I'm going to do some more querying and then if nothing pans out, I'll send a brand new e-mail asking if his silence means he's passing or what the deal is. *sigh*

Ah, querying. ;)

I currently only have one active query out there and it's in Dream Agent's hands (or more accurately, his inbox). As I said before, I don't query far & wide. I research carefully and look at who's a good fit for what I write.

The rejection on the partial includes this: "Though I found your material to be unique and intriguing, unfortunately I've decided this project is not right for me. As a reader, I did not connect to your narrative enough to take on the project." Then he said he was sorry it wasn't a good fit and it was signed.

So that's a pretty good rejection. I know the story isn't for everyone and it's going to take a certain agent with a certain level of chutzpah to say "Yeah, I'd like to shop this around to publishers." More than WS would take, I know.

What else I take from the letter (and maybe I'm reading into it) is that it's the story he didn't dig, not the writing. Thing is, as an editor you can help fix up bad writing. You can't really change the story and if you don't like it, there's not much that can be done to remedy that.

But I was waiting to hear from this guy b/c I sent out this ms (land mail) on the same day I got the "yeah send me a full via e-mail" from Dream Agent. So I'm hoping that's a sign that I'll hear from DA sooner rather than later. He never responded to my nudge but I'll give him until March before I nudge him again.

I got a request for a full from my #1 choice of agent.

*deep breath*

Of course it stings a little but it's most definitely not the end of the world. WS spoiled me. The first query I sent asked for a full; the second they wanted a partial. Maybe it's worse to be rejected on the work than the query. It was also a form letter. So it goes.

But hey, nothing to lose. No time wasted and one agency to be crossed off the list. I didn't expect to get picked up by the one that's already responded. They say they want lit fic but their site was full of chick lit. I figured it was worth a shot anyway since maybe they were looking & just didn't have anything yet (or sold yet). It was a beautifully-worded and encouraging rejection though. The only other form rejection I got was cold & had a note scribbled on "20k too long," so I got something useful out of it.

If I could change one thing about the rejection it wouldn't be that it is a rejection but that there'd be a note like that. Not for us. Not my style. No lit fic kthxbai. Hate your name. Hate your font. Badly-written synopsis. Whatever.

Back to editing...

Upon trying to remember if Emma was one of my readers, she replied that she was and added:

"My father was a truck driver when I was a kid.  I don't think I will ever forget the beginning of your book.  LOL"

This is hilarious. Trust me.

... which is slightly different from the welcome wagon.

I've been working on a short story and it's been like trudging through thick pudding to get from one line to the next. I'm pretty sure it sucks but I'm going to write through to the end and let a friend tell me whether it sucks or not and how much.

More importantly, I've been querying! I sent three e-queries this afternoon and printed one. For the printed one, I need to include my first three chapters. So I'm taking a break from the computer (after I write this) and I'm going to sit & edit tonight. I thought my edits had taken but apparently not. I may have done them in Word instead of Open Office or something and just printed the wrong version when I went to print a copy not long ago. In any case, I needs to be editin'.

Maybe I'm too picky about querying. Maybe I should just blanket the entire literary agent marketplace with my query. I don't. I've been using Agent Query. I do a search for "literary fiction" and "accepting queries" and I go from there. I read the agent profiles. I go to their websites, when available, and I read what they're looking for and what they've sold. And if it sounds good, I write up the query and I say why I think it sounds like a good match. And I send it. And maybe it'll work.