Re: Balthazar as Antagonist

[rynling]

Anyway, Balthazar's goal is right in the story summary on AO3, but I decided to state it more forcefully and with less comedic ambiguity about halfway through the story itself, right at the end of the fifth chapter.

The story has ten chapters, and I'm about half done with the first round of edits. I should be able to meet my projection of finishing by March 15, a month after I completed the first draft. The draft is only about 30k words, but the psychic damage I'm taking from finding typos and inconsistencies and unintended repetitions cannot be exaggerated, so progress is slow.

After that, I'm going to let the story sit unmolested for another month before writing a formal query. I'll then do another round of edits before participating in several pitch events starting in late May.

As for constructive feedback from my first readers, what I have is basically "I don't like how Balthazar is such a sadsack" and "I don't like how Ceres is so mean." To which I have to respond that this is not YA fiction, and they're both difficult people who are only protagonists by virtue of their narrative roles as point-of-view characters who drive the plot. I already pulled my punches for both of these characters in a major way, and I'm not sure how much softer I can make them without losing the texture and flavor of the story. Also, my real-life friends are just going to have to trust me (and my Twitter feed) that there's a sizable audience of readers who are primed and thirsty for stories about powerful wizards who make shitty life choices while being ambiguously romantically involved with each other, and I hope that this is something a potential agent will be able to recognize.

Comments

[drmarcus]

Woot, good luck with querying!! Also, meant to tell you if you haven't seen it already--Uncanny Magazine will be accepting novella submissions in April (https://uncannymagazine.com/submissions/).

I finally started reading The Demon King this week. I'm a little over halfway through (I've been reading a chapter per work break, which has felt like a treat) and while I admire Ceres, I'm very very fond of Balthazar. I hope things go well for him.

[rynling]

Thank you so much for the heads-up! It's good to have a friend in this endeavor, and I'll try to return the favor and pass it along when I can.

Here is a true story: Yesterday I went to the Barnes and Noble in Center City, the one at the corner of Rittenhouse Square, to buy a copy of Writer's Digest. I found it immediately, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it, much less buy it and take it home. The process of submitting fiction on the market feels so utterly alien to process of writing that it would be genuinely amusing if it weren't so anxiety-inducing.

My experience with academic writing is that I no longer have to "submit" anything because editors now come to me, which only took ten years of having my work being constantly rejected. So I guess this is sort of a comfort in the sense that all it takes is time, but also, ten years is kind of a long time. May good fortune and a lucky break come to both of us sooner rather than later!

[drmarcus]

Oh, do I ever feel you about the fiction submission process. When I first started several years ago, I found it incredibly anxiety-inducing and vaguely humiliating, and I hated how much time it took (time I considered essentially wasted). Now, I feel low-key the same, but I'm more familiar with the different journals and agencies/agents and have a system to track submissions, so it's less time-consuming, and I'm more relaxed about it (or just jaded). I set aside an hour a week to submit/resubmit short stories or queries and update submission spreadsheets, which doesn't feel too horrible (plus submitting things can be a tiny adrenaline kick). But I can only dream of the day when I reach where you are with academic writing, and I sincerely hope we'll both get a lucky break with fiction much sooner than after ten years.

Re:submitting fiction being simultaneously anxiety-inducing and amusing: I got an "almost-but-not-quite" rejection of a short story yesterday from a sci-fi/fantasy journal, where they told me that the story had made it to the board of associate editors and that they had all liked it up to the ending, which they didn't think work as it stood and for which they gave some very specific feedback. I wrote a polite response thanking them and asking if they'd accept a rewrite as I'd be willing to change the ending, then got a snippy email back saying that if they had wanted me to rewrite it, they would've told me so. Two years ago this would've made me undescribably anxious but now I think it's kind of funny.

[rynling]

> I set aside an hour a week to submit/resubmit short stories or queries and update submission spreadsheets, which doesn't feel too horrible (plus submitting things can be a tiny adrenaline kick).

I am absolutely taking notes here.

Especially regarding spreadsheets. I expected to receive rejections, of course, but I didn't have a good idea of how quickly this process would move or just how many rejections I would thereby accumulate in a relatively short span of time.

That editor's email has strong Well excuuuuuuse me princess energy, but I'm excited and energized by the fact you're getting personalized rejections. Nice!! And hopefully - soon!!!