The query for Angie's Choice I sent by mail came back today, the one that reminded me of how much work it took to send off a query in the old days. I sent it off to the Zoe Pagnamenta agency. She answered within two weeks. NO! I had high hopes for it because of the methodology of the query. Don't know why printing out and mailing my query and sample felt more hopeful. Emotions are mysterious things even though they command our every deed and thought. I need to push the sci fi novel, Ghoul World, more forcefully. I let it languish, but it's a very interesting idea that ought to get at least a moment's attention somewhere.
On a positive note, yesterday, this writer's blog which also goes to a page I manage on Facebook , The Silent Boomer, received 221 hits. People are watching to see what might happen to me in my quest to "get someone other than myself to publish a novel I've written." Or "to produce a movie I've written." Thanks to all who follow my journey. Many days now, I think it's time to fold up the writer's table and leave the dusty old bazaar to other scribes much younger than myself.
One very interesting thing about writing a movie script. The length of a 90 minute film takes from 90 to 120 pages. I've discovered that my elderly memory is able to keep track of 120 pages more easily than it tracks a plot and subplots through 400 to 500 pages of ms. I've already got several story lines in mind for films that I can't share because they are quite interesting. On my death bed, I'll tell all.
Currently reading The Moral Animal by Robert Wright for a second time while plowing ahead on my untitled sci fi screenplay. Nearly finished with first draft, I'm enjoying the process a great deal, and, I already have another idea for a film script. This is an odd trajectory because it's even harder to find an agent for a film script than a novel.
A couple of days ago, I sent off a query for my novel, Angie's Choice, to a New York agency. But the interesting thing was how I felt about the query process since it was an old fashioned agency and wanted a hard copy query in the U.S. mail service. As I took out the two pages of auto bio and 20 pages of manuscript and tapped them on the desk to align their edges, I experienced a bodily sensation that returned me to the years when all queries and manuscripts were sent through the U.S. mail. I recalled putting together and sending out whole manuscripts, boxed up and carried to the local post office. I felt connected to all the past writers of the world, through all the most recent centuries of the world when manuscripts were ink on paper.
My children, now all grown up beings in the world, suggested I ought to begin to make these "Silent Boomer" blog entries as videos. They say that many people have found multitudinous followers by doing blogs as video presentations. My oldest boy says that it seems the more awkward and unprofessional the video is, the better followers seem to like them. I'm intrigued and think about it from time to time. I ask myself if that would really help me to achieve the one item on my bucket list: to get someone other than myself to publish one of my novels before I kick it.
Addendum: Or film script.
I'm not making the suggested every other day entries in my blog. That pace is supposed to keep people interested in my bucket list quest to get someone other than myself to publish one of several novels I've written over the decades and recently rewritten... before I die. I'm still sending out queries while I continue to work on a nameless, so far, science fiction screenplay. Looking into buying software for script writing, but some appear to be so loaded with goodies they'll create a slowdown while I learn yet another software program. Slugline is quite simple, but it must be downloaded into a more complex script writing program to prepare it for electronic submission. Frustration, then I came across a simple macro-enabled format that will give me what I need to create a script for electronic submission... I hope. I'll have to become more familiar with macros. I've used them in the past, but not recently. I've had some really powerful internal moments lately that feel like the attitudes of a successful writer. Now... will that come true?
Reading: just finished Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask and have commenced to read a change of pace novel, Craig Lesley's Winterkill. Mask is a first person interior monologue while Winterkill is presented by a third person narrator. The first is full of confessional abstractions, the other full of concrete details. Thank you for checking in on my progress whoever you are, and if you're on the same quest as I am, good luck to you.
Here be Iam...clearly not keeping the every other day rule for blog-keepers, but I'm hard at work, writing away. Writing an adventure slash mystery is a fascinating process.
The
hard part about being an ancient sentient like myself is that
I've got to write a lot down so I can refresh my mind about what's gone before. I've got reams of notes.Today, looking ahead, in order to clarify the future, I wrote down several coming moments, discovering that plot elements require causes and create effects. I tried listing, separately, actions which Manning must take and the conditions that necessitate those actions and what conditions must follow after those actions. Actions are precipitated by the knowledge a character must have in order to do that deed and actions also precipitate further actions. Actions have consequences.
This problem is all about dividing the plotting process into categories of some kind. The categories are hard to describe and list. For example, I write down "Manning meets with McDaniel's representatives". Simple enough. Then, I've got to provide a clear reason for the meeting. Who called the meeting and why? McDaniel's or Manning? What does "who calls the meeting" reveal about the sorts of knowledge each party has in order to meet?
More than once, I've written an action into the plot that can't happen unless other things have happened before it. The actors must possess certain information that will precipitate the situation or the action can't occur. Sometimes a character will do something he can't be doing if he really knows what I've written that he already knows...and vice versa. If one is not careful, some ridiculous things can happen. Maybe even this last paragraph is hard to follow, eh?
Last year I took a course in blogging and self-publishing. Learned that one ought to make an entry every other day, keep it short and include a photo or picture to grab the attention of browsers. I'm perfect on the picture bit, far from perfect on frequency and not even close on length. I can only hope that reader interest substitutes for brevity.
I'm into the ninety-something in pages typed into the computer from the yellowed, hard copy of the The Man In The Mirror manuscript. Manning continues unabated and slow, and, tonight (throat irritant warning) I nearly gassed myself to death, making dinner. Made a skillet dish of seitan and cabbage to spoon over rice or potato. After browning the seitan in teaspoon of olive oil, I added two teaspoons of dried thyme, some garlic and red pepper flakes, but as soon as I dropped the thyme into the hot skillet, smoke ascended from the pan, and I began to cough. Am still coughing, hours later.
As I write Manning, more than ever, I see it in movie scenes. Nothing like my previous mss. Being a movie buff, I suppose the transformation was inevitable. I could easily do what is called a "treatment" in the movie business.
Speaking of movies, tonight, wife and I viewed Corpo Celeste. A brilliant Italian film with several references to the work of my favorite director, Federico Fellini. Like all my favorite movies from the 60s and 70s, the film ended in delightful ambiguity. Magnifico! Even more delightful, I have found myself discussing the evil/good false fantasy world of modern movies with several brilliant youths fully involved with the computer life. They give me hope, and I won't be around to feel it.
The query for Angie's Choice I sent by mail came back today, the one that reminded me of how much work it took to send off a query in the old days. I sent it off to the Zoe Pagnamenta agency. She answered within two weeks. NO! I had high hopes for it because of the methodology of the query. Don't know why printing out and mailing my query and sample felt more hopeful. Emotions are mysterious things even though they command our every deed and thought. I need to push the sci fi novel, Ghoul World, more forcefully. I let it languish, but it's a very interesting idea that ought to get at least a moment's attention somewhere. 
