You’re Going To Be Eaten By Hyenas

Over at BookEnds, LLC, a writer asked, “Does It Get Any Better?”

My dilemma is this; I seem to have lost the joy to write anything. When I was writing my novel, I was divinely engrossed in doing so. I was so eager to see what was going to happen myself that I stayed up till 4am almost every morning writing (even though I had to wake up with my 2 year old and go to work). I continuously did research on writing, querying, etc. I loved it. After I sent my queries, I was excited every time I saw the light flashing on my blackberry. Then with each passing rejection, it felt like someone was twisting a knife in my gut a little more each time. Now, I literally hate opening my e-mail. I still have several more responses I’m waiting on, and I’m dreading them. It’s like these rejections are pretty much a slap in the face.

The replies in the comment section overflowed, so I will post my own thoughts here. Many of the other writers offer good advice.

My own answer? The more rejections you accumulate, the easier it is to deal with.

Except when it’s not.

I wanted to dig deeper into this phenomena, though. Why does rejection of a personal creative work hurt so much? Logically, it really shouldn’t. It’s not like someone has taken a hacksaw, amputated your left leg and rubbed the stump in unsweetened lemonade. It’s not even like you just caught your boyfriend with his pants down in the bed of the bimbo next door. But try telling that to your brain when you see the words, “After careful evaluation, I have decided that I am not the right agent to represent your work.” Sticking your bloody stump leg in lemonade made by your cheating boyfriend is starting to look pretty good in comparison. And that’s friggin’ crazy.

I think it dates back to when we all lived in bands of hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa. Back in those days, if you kept doing something meant to entertain and please the rest of your clan, and they replied again and again, “Get lost!” you would be in trouble. Because in those days, “get lost” meant you would literally get lost after the rest of the tribe kicked you out for repeatedly annoying them. If they rejected you, you would find yourself wandering all by your lonesome on the Serengeti. It would be only a matter of time before some Big Bad stalked you, chased you down, ripped your limbs off one by one and devoured you, perhaps while you were still alive.

So the horrible feeling where you want to crawl into a cave and hide, and perhaps throw rocks at strangers, is perfectly understandable. It’s just nature’s way of warning you social rejection means you’re going to be eaten by hyenas.

Trilogies, Quartets, Septets

I haven’t settled on how many books should be in the Dindi series yet. As I’ve said, the story arc is plotted, and much of it is written, but how much is “much”? Stories are fractal. I can always work in new complications.

When I broke the megabook into a series, for some reason, it would not work as a trilogy. I decided it had to be seven books, although I knew a septet would require quite a lot of additional writing. At that time, I was writing full time.

Now that my writing time is more constrained, I’ve considered this question again. I still can’t seem to work the story into a trilogy, unfortunately.

I wanted the number of books in the series to fit the “color magic” in the story. So the seven book series would have looked like this:

Book 1: Yellow
Book 2: Green
Book 3: Purple
Book 4: Blue
Book 5: Orange
Book 6: Red
Book 7: Black

I could, however, divide the series into only four books, highlighting the conflicts between colors:

Book 1: Yellow/Blue
Book 2: Green/Red
Book 3: Purple/Orange
Book 4: Black/White

One distinct advantage of the Quartet idea is that it means the series is automatically closer to completion. My hard limit on word count is 120,000 words (per book), but in theory I am aiming at a word count between 90,000 and 110,000. (You’ll notice I barely squeezed by on Book 1.) This means my drafts of the remaining books are substantial.

Book 1: 119,000 – Complete
Book 2: 86,000 – Needs new ending
Book 3: 68,000 – Needs new beginning
Book 4: 60,000 – Needs new middle

In the interest of completing the entire series this summer (ha), I think I might go ahead and work on the assumption this is how I’m going to go with it. I’ll drop some tangent plotlines, perhaps even a few characters I had planned on developing further. If I really feel so inspired that I can’t stop myself from writing their stories, that’s okay too. I don’t mind, in theory, going back to the seven book model. For now, though, I think this plan works.

Although it’s set in the “real” world, I am researching the background for it. So far, I have about six notebooks, a hundred index cards and an entire bookcase of books on the place and period.