Back of the Envelope

Remember yesterday when I said that I had finished the second revision of part one of Eyes and it had only gained 150 words? Well, it looks like I spoke too soon. I've been going through my writing group's comments on the story, and working in those corrections and suggestions which I feel work well, and after going through just one person's suggestions, it's gotten a thousand words longer. That took an hour, and I have four more to go through. Now the one I just finished had some of the most extensive comment, so I don't expect the rest to have quite the same impact, but it's going to take longer to go through them than I expected. I think for part two I'll work in my writing group's suggestions before I do the second revision. Which is what I had hoped to accomplish this weekend, but it looks like I'll still be busy getting through the part one suggestions. I'm not sure when I'm going to find time to work on that revision for the story I'd like to submit to another publication by next week.

I've finished the second revision of the first quarter of Eyes. (If you're wondering where I've been, that's where.) I expected, as I was working on it, that it would grow some, as I filled in gaps and made things clearer, maybe going from 14,000 words to 15,000 or more. Instead, it only gained about 150 words. On the one hand, that means I'm gettting better at telling stories without using a lot of words. The down side is that I need Eyes to get longer if I'm going to do what I want with it. A lot longer, at least 60%. I was hoping that the revision process itself would naturally add 10% or more, with the remaining 50% being things which I had previously just skimmed over being expanded into full-fledged scenes. It's beginnning to look like I'm not going to get that 10% from the revision. The thing is, I really want to be done with the revised Eyes by June so I can get Water done by the end of the year, and I'm beginning to doubt my ability to do that. I'll try, though, I really will.

Doc Rampage has an interesting post where he criticizes a list of The 100 Best First Lines of Novels, pointing out that many of the selections are the first lines of great novels, but not really great first lines.

One of my favorite first lines is "The black-robed alien stalked through the Library, leaving the quiet chaos of frightened scholars in his wake." Okay, so it's the first line of a short story, not a novel, and I wrote it, so I'm a bit biased, but, in the narrow field of my favorite first lines of short stories which I've written, that's my favorite. But short stories, as a rule, make a point of grabbing the reader's attention quickly, so they try to pack a lot in the first sentence. Novels figure they have at least the entire first chapter to get the reader's attention, and novel readers much more likely to pick up the book due to the picture on the book's jacket or the blurb written on it than anything on the inside. In most places where you find short stories, such as anthologies and literary magazines, they have just their titles and that first sentence to grab the reader. Thus, as a whole, I think short stories have better first lines than novels.

To demonstrate, here are some of the first lines I've used, in order not of how good, but from the shortest story to the longest. While there's not an exact one-to-one correspondence--I think the first one is particularly dull--I think you'll find that the better lines tend to be near the top:

1. "War was a bad thing." -- "Max's War," Short Story


2. "The Hunter moved through the forest with both care and grace, his footfalls gliding over root and brush to find firm footing without cracking either leaf or twig." -- "The Hunter of Shades," Short Story


3. "The black-robed alien stalked through the Library, leaving the quiet chaos of frightened scholars in his wake." -- "A Stranger in the Library," Short Story


4. "Quian’s serf village spilled out of the city’s grim walls like rotten apples from an overturned basket." -- A Phoenix in Darkness, Novella


5. "Ryan was at the mall, having braved Boston's cold and snow to get to the shops at the Prudential Center." -- Eyes in the Shadow, Novella


6. "He sat on his throne, a great chair shaped, not carved, from wood." -- Fire, Novel


7. "Victor watched the passing traffic with a mixture of horror and fascination." -- Water, Novel

Let me know what you think.

In other writing news, I received my second rejection on Monday. This one wasn't as encouraging as the last one, but a quick rejection lets me quickly submit it to somewhere else.

I also got stuck on the chapter I was revising for Eyes in the Shadow. I decided to completely reorder everything that happened in that chapter, which made it hard for me to do my read it aloud and see if it sounds stupid test until I had moved everything around and printed it again. It puts me behind where I had hoped to be, but I'm slowly making progress.

It didn't help that I was feeling sick yesterday.

I spend a lot of time browsing my Sitemeter referral logs. I know, it's narcissistic, but I like to know where people are coming from. The most interesting ones, in my opinion, are the unknown ones. The google searches, which make up at least half the visitors, are interesting, and I do like to see who's linking to me, but the visitors with the unknown referrals most likely came directly to my website in order to read it, not because they followed some link to it. Thus, when I see that, I check out the details: especially the entry page, the Referring URL (if it says blocked, rather than leaving it blank, then they just have very good spyware protection and probably came from Google or something). Usually, the entry page is my main page--these are my regulars, and I've come to recognize some of them by their ISPs or locations. Often, the entry page is a carnival I'm hosting, which means they probably followed the link in an e-mail announcement. Occasionally, it's an odd one, and I wind up wondering why. Oddly, though, every couple of days I notice one or two people coming directly to Eyes in the Shadow.

Judging by the diverse locations and ISPs of the visitors, they aren't the same one or two people, but I don't keep close enough tabs on my visitors to say how many there are. Maybe it's only five or so, coming by repeatedly in order to finish the story. On the other hand, maybe it's an expanding number of people... it's possible that the story's getting attention via word of mouth. E-mail doesn't usually show up in my referral logs.

While I'd love for Eyes to be an underground hit, I think that's probably unlikely. While I had fun writing the story, and I generally like how it turned out, I've been revising it recently, so I am very aware of its glaring flaws. I know that some people liked it, and I think it has potential, but it's going to be a little while before I get it to live up to that. Still, I am curious about who's still reading it. If any of you guys read my front page, feel free to let me know what you think.