Are ordinary people interesting enough?

I just wrote part of an interaction between two characters that I'm very happy with. I've been patting myself on the back since yesterday. But once in awhile I pause and wonder if reading about regular people with no huge tragic problems is really interesting enough.

When I was younger I lover to give all my characters depressing back stories, tragic circumstances and deep seated issues. As I've gotten older I find that I have tired a bit of constant melancholy and some of the anime I love the most have been sweet stories where nothing really terrible happens.

I'm sort of banking on the fact that I may not be alone in this. That somewhere out there are fantasy fans tired of having only having a few market choices. Epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and the occasional outliers like literary fantasy, magical realism, and steampunk.

But I find myself wondering if anyone will be interested and more importantly if publishers will be interested. Or if Tea Time Three is too hard to catagorize.

Halfway done!

My computer has been getting fixed for the past week except they couldn't fix it because there are hardware (the hard drive) issues.

BUT! That didn't stop me from writing! I am up to page 183 which is ten pages over the approximate halfway mark!

I have also joined Absolute Write http://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php and I have been poking around on the forum there. Well, I just got back.

Anyway, I'm very proud of myself :) I mean if I'm not who will be right? I gotta keep myself going somehow. This is a big milestone for my book and I'm happy I got there.

Oh Dear!

I don't seem to be keeping up with my blog as well I should be! And I am only marginally keeping up with Tea Time Three! Page 168 achieved today! Ideas on back story and motive! Also accomplished!

Often when I write I put in a sort of throw away line about something and then pages later realize I have solved a problem even before it arose. Does this happen to anyone else? I don't plan foreshadowing at all and I'm not even very good at it. I will even say I'm bad at it. But I seem to achieve a certain amount either by accident or or psychic premonition, I'm not sure which. Perhaps it is subconscious planning ahead. I don't know. But things magically click into place and I have foreshadowing!

Maybe that isn't such a good thing. Maybe I need to push harder to be a better writer. Or maybe I'm doing pretty well and don't know it. My friend, author Sunny Frazier, once told me "You don't know when you're doing well." Thar tuck in my head. I have an unwillingness to acknowledge any of my skills and accomplishments.

The almost halfway mark!

Well, today I reached page 160 of Tea Time Three and in 15 more pages I'll be at approximately 30,000 words and that mean the halfway mark! I'm going to shoot for 65,000 so that I hit Pyr's minimum. I may even submit to them!

Aside from just scoping out publishers that take un-agented submissions I am looking at agents too. I really hope to get on too. I think I'll write up a list on all the reasons I want one too and pot that.

I also have to scan in the layout I drew of the Tea Times Three tea shop which is uncreatively enough named Tea Times Three.

I also really want an "S" key that works! I do all my internet on my laptop. I have a separate art computer for my artwork but my laptop i my internet work horse and now the "S" key is super sticky. It doesn't type the 's' the first most of the time. I complained on LJ about feeling like the main character of Stephen King's "Misery" who had to fill in all the 'n's in his manuscript by hand.

I think my computer is going into the shop anyway, there are a few other things wrong too.

Word count

I was talking to a friend the other day and said that I had reached page 150 in Tea Times Three and that in another 25 pages or so I will reach 30,000 words (this estimate is based on another novel of mine- also handwritten, that is typed up to page 175 and the word count is about 30,000). She asked why that was important. I explained I just needed to keep track because most publishers have a minimum word count for novel.

But this bring up another idea. To submit to Penguin and DAW I need to reach 80,000 words. Pyr wants no less than 85,000 words. I have seen some small publishers with novel submissions that start at 60,000 words. My initial goal for T3 was to achieve a sort of NANIWRIMO result of 50,000 in a month. But that was two months ago or so.

So if I don't reach that do I start to pad? Will that weaken the story? Mot of my personal editing, on my short stories involves cutting out non-essential words, which I use a lot of. (My worst offenses are 'that' and 'really' and a few others, maybe I'll go into that later! SEE! LOL!) So I have to be careful with any padding I do. I'll need add meaningful detail about the characters and their lives. Maybe more descriptions, both of the characters physical appearance, and of the town. Perhaps even add a character arc.

But I figure I'm doing well if I'm doing well if I'm still going strong at 30,000 words.

Remind me next time- I drew a floor plan for the Tea Time Three teashop :)

The internet is my friend...sometimes...

It's hard to go through pages and pages of the Internet, following links, and finding doom and gloom at every turn. I remember a few months back following a link an article on the New York Times website all about how print was dead. I wanted to cry. I felt like I'd been born in the wrong age, a day late and a dollar short.

But then sometimes I find links to wonderful things, agent sites that look promising, a writers conference that looks like the perfect place to pitch when Tea Times Three is done and polished. I often wonder where my books will fit in. Or if they will.

I also got a very pleasant and heartening reply to a comment I posted on Stacia Kane's Livejournal

This was my comment: I sure hope the doom and gloom is an exaggeration too! I'm working on something really good right now, but every time I look around the Internet all it seems to say is "You'll never get a publisher/agent/book in print ever! So give up already" And then I feel my hopes and dreams start to shrivel and die.

And her kind reply: All those people saying that? They're WRONG. WRONG. I promise. They said the same thing a few years ago when I got published, and when I got my agent, and when I sold my second series.

I just read something on another blog about someone feeling multiple POVs are a cop out. Tea 3 has lots of multiple POV. Each scene is described from one characters point of view and I chose the character I feel can reveal the most about the scene. But I also have little snippets of their pasts at times and in either the blog or the replies another person said if it's important enough to be included make us feel it. But where is the line? If I include richly detailed past lives for everyone in the little town of Midswich I'd have a 900 novels to write. I'm writing a book about a town as much as anything else.

Well, I suppose a lot of these ponderings can wait until editing. FINISH THE BOOK! My mantra goes! I'm 142 handwritten pages!

And still no followers!

I'm inventing my own genre

I have decided to invent my own genre because I realized that Tea Times Three doesn't really fit into the general milieu of urban fantasy which usually involves guns, chicks in leather, detectives, corpses and lots of violence.

So the genre I'm inventing is called Cozy Fantasy and it's defined by books like Tea Times Three, slice of life fantasy devoid of lots of guns, chicks in leather, detectives, corpses and lots of violence. LOL!

There are a few people who would argue that there are such sub-genres of suburban fantasy, and rural fantasy. In fact I went to panel on that at the last World Fantasy Convention 09. It was a great panel. But I still feel like that doesn't really fit for Tea Three. But it is a cozy story, where nothing really bad ever happens.