The Name Game

So, as I mentioned in a comment on my last post, I am now considering changing the names of my characters (since their personalities have all changed anyway), stopping calling this project a "rewrite," and just think of it as a brand-new project working from the same basic premise as the original.

Which might be smart, because last night it suddenly took a sharp plot turn I hadn't seen coming, and now I'm scrambling to catch up and figure out where we're going now. I haven't had a story get this out of my grasp (and this far away from the outline) in ages. It's both scary and fun - I love that it's taken on life of its own, but I hate the uncertainty of not knowing where the heck we're going, and trying to figure out when I can make it intersect again with the outline.

Anyway. I'm keeping the Welsh flavor, because I love that culture, and because I've already done a great deal of study on it.

And here's where you guys come in: I need opinions on names!

MC Current Name: Tesni (means warmth from the sun).
New Choices: Catrin ("pure"); Efa ("to live"); Nest ("chaste"); Nerys ("lady"); Rhian ("maiden"); Tegwen ("fair and blessed").
(She is very tall and sturdy, plain features, crooked nose, muddy eyes, mouse-colored frizzy hair. She is extremely practical, with a wry sense of humor, and is self-sacrificing to a fault because she doesn't consider herself of any value at all.)

Romantic Interest Current Name: Gwyn ("white, fair, blessed").
New Choices: Wynn (same meaning as the first); Neirin ("noble"); Iolyn ("handsome lord"); Gethin (swarthy").
(He is short, stocky, curly black hair and bright blue eyes, square face. Reassuring type of person, calm and accepting of almost any situation without surprise, feels the need to do something for the world as he has lived in sheltered privilege his entire life and only recently escaped.)

MC Sister (also victim and sort of bad guy) Current Name: Elain ("fawn").
New Choices: Anwen ("very beautiful"); Elin ("moon").
(Beautiful in a traditional fairy-tale way, but weak and vapid. Is usually crying or whining.)

Those are the three main names I'm struggling with. The others I've either already chosen or don't need to settle yet.

Which would you pick? I'm also open to other suggestions, if you have them - my only stipulation is that they must be Welsh, and not modern!

Query Question

Question for all you lovely people with more experience and know-how than I have:

I sent out queries to a number of agents for the original version of The Eldest Sister. With the rewrite, almost everything but the character names and basic premise has changed - tone, plot, character personalities, even the title (I currently don't have a title, but I figure time enough to figure that one out when the rewrite is complete).

If, in six months or whenever this beast is ready to pounce upon an unsuspecting world, I send queries to the same agents I queried before, do I mention that this is the same MS as before (none of them even asked for a full, so it's not like they read beyond the first ten pages-three chapters which various agencies request along with the query) only substantially changed (and hopefully improved), or just assume that they have forgotten all about the bland query letter from however many months previous?

My hunch is to not even both to mention it, but I wanted other people's opinions before making the final call. And even though I'm not nearly ready to present this to agents yet, it's never too early to start thinking about it, right?

Influences: Diana Wynne Jones

Even though I only discovered her a few years ago, DWJ has ended up being an enormous influence on my writing, especially right now.

Every time I would pass her books in the store or library, I'd see the edition of one of the Chrestomanci books that has a cat on the cover, and I would think, "Ugh, feline fantasy. BORING."

(Note to publishers - if a book is not, in fact, about cats doing magic, you might not want to imply that on the cover.)

Then, in recent years, more and more of my friends started recommending her books. I was getting desperate for good YA Fantasy, since Lloyd Alexander was gone and my list of favorite authors was growing smaller and smaller. Finally, I picked up the very volume with the cat on the cover, and gave it a try.

You can imagine my indignation when I discovered this wonderfully witty, clever, pithy writer, with a delightful story that had pretty much nothing to do with cats! I felt so cheated. I could have been reading her for years, and I'd missed out just because of a dumb cover. Her twisty way of turning plots around kept me tearing through the stories, and then going back and re-reading them so I could pick up the little nuances I missed the first time around.

Even better, for me, than the Chrestomanci books was Howl's Moving Castle (I think it's that way for a lot of people, yes, no?), with the delightful Sophie who only figures out who she truly is when she's transformed into an old woman and no longer cares about society's conventions and her family's expectations.

I had already starting writing The Eldest Sister before I read DWJ, but I admit to being a little concerned about some of the superficial similarities between it and HMC. I didn't let it worry me too much, though, since TES was such a different story and different tone.

Then I re-read HMC just a few weeks ago, and realized that I would much, much rather read that than TES. The similarities were just enough to show me how far off I had gotten with my own story. And that was what prompted me to ultimately pick it up and start from scratch again, changing a few of the basics so that it wouldn't seem to be copying too much from DWJ, and determining to make it me, my voice, E Louise Bates as distinctly as all Diana Wynne Jones' books are hers. 

I freely admit that I am nowhere near as witty or talented as she is, but that's okay. I have my own voice, and thanks to DWJ, I am remembering how to use it.

Deep and Fun

A couple days ago, I tossed this out on Twitter:

Wondering if it's possible to rewrite my super-serious YA fantasy as more lighthearted/humorous w/out losing the deep threads. Thoughts?

The answer I received (the only one - thank you, Rockinlibrarian!) was a resounding yes, mentioning a couple writers I had already thought of, particularly Diana Wynne Jones (Lloyd Alexander was the other one that came to my mind, as soon as I wrote the Tweet).

This is the MS that I've been sending queries out on for quite a while, without even getting any requests. Not that that alone would make me change it, but when I realized that I didn't even feel like re-reading it because it was so gloomy, I thought perhaps it was time to do some serious, serious fun revamping.

The problem is, I think, that the story was mainly written when I was either pregnant or sleep-deprived from babies, and therefore had a pretty depressed outlook on life. It was great to get that out in my writing - probably kept me from going completely insane - but the end result was a very heavy story.

Some people do heavy really well. I am not one of them. My heavy was pretty much a slog through a thick and gloomy mire, with only occasional bright spots.

Worse than all this, it wasn't me. Ask anyone who knows me at all to name the first thing about me they can think of, and they will say "her laugh." I was cracking jokes in labor, for crying out loud, in between my shrieks of pain and pounding fists (I threw dignity out the door after the first ten hours). My entire family is known for causing scenes at weddings and funerals, because we cannot keep to an appropriate solemnity - in fact, something about that much solemnity makes us laugh even more.

So to write something so heavy and angst-y was just not me. Not Louise. Not, at least, the Louise I want to be. Maybe it was the sleep-deprived, exhausted, stressed Louise, but I'm trying to banish her from my life for good these days (which would be SO MUCH easier if my children would ever let me, you know, SLEEP).

But I also didn't want to lose the themes of sacrifice, grace, and love that were woven throughout the book. I didn't want to go too far in the other direction and write nothing but fluff.

My absolute favorite authors are those who make you laugh first, and then scratch your head afterward and go, "Whoa. That was deep."

It's a lot harder than just writing straight-up funny stories or straight-up deep, trying to blend the two. But when in my life have I ever done anything the easy way? And why would I start now?

I am currently two chapters in to the re-write, and already I like my heroine better. Already I like the direction the story is taking more. I like the new twist I added, because another problem with the story as it was was that it was too straight-forward, without any sneaky little bits added in, or any unexpected turns in the plot.

Yes, this means that I am re-writing from scratch one MS at the same time I am working on a brand-new story, and still researching that darn Renaissance fantasy (though in all honesty, that one is on a bit of a hiatus. I haven't cracked my history books for weeks). And yes, I am doing all of this while being a stay-at-home mom to a two year old and three (and a half, she would insist on me adding) year old.

Certifiably crazy? Possibly. But where would the fun be in being sane?

New Opening, The Eldest Sister

I've been thinking for a while about revamping the opening chapter of The Eldest Sister. I've been feeling like it's a little dull (seven rejections in a row will do that to you). So this morning, I decided my elbow was healed enough that I could risk some more typing, and I re-did Chapter One. I am quite thoroughly pleased with the result. What follows here is not the entire first chapter, but it is the part that most agents would see if they request a few pages along with the query (as many of them do). What do you think? If you were an agent, would this pique your interest?

&&&

Tesni was ten the first time she met one of the y Tylwyth Teg. She didn’t realize at the time that’s what the old hag was—after all, an Eldest-of-Three didn’t have harmless encounters with the Fair Folk, any more than a Wicked Stepsister or an Oldest Son. Had it been Tesni’s youngest sister Elain, now, nobody would have thought anything of the meeting. Just an old women walking past the ugly little girl working in her garden, nodding and commenting on how lovely her flowers were.

That sort of thing happened to Youngest-of-Threes all the time (except the ugly part). Had it happened to Elain, she would have offered the old lady one of her flowers, the old woman would have taken it, and a few years down the road given her a magical gift (one that would utterly discompose her two elder sisters, naturally) in return.

That was how it was supposed to happen. Tesni, though, just stared dumbly at the hag, curious about her unusual amber eyes, and didn’t say anything. Nobody had ever noticed her flowers before. The garden was the one place she could be where nobody expected her to be a proper Eldest-of-Three. Her plants didn’t care that before her mother died and her father’s second wife gave him a third daughter, Tesni had been happy and pretty and petted. They didn’t care that by the time Elain was sixteen, Tesni was going to have to be very wicked and cruel, and would be either banished from Glynbach or killed for trying to ruin her sister’s happiness.

They only cared that she tended them as carefully and lovingly as an Only Daughter or Princess-Stolen-At-Birth. The only times Tesni could fly into a proper rage at Elain without even trying were when her four-year-younger sister would destroy one of her flowers by stepping on it without thinking, or tearing it up by the roots “just because.”

Because of this, Tesni’s family decided the garden could stand as another example of her pride and selfishness, and never interfered with her spending time in it. So for the old lady to comment at all, much less favorably, upon the flowers, came as a shock to the little girl.

The hag waited patiently, but when Tesni didn’t say anything at all, she went on her way. Tesni mentioned the incident at the dinner table that evening, much to her father and stepmother’s displeasure.

“Nonsense!” the merchant said, spearing a piece of meat with his knife and transferring it to his trencher. “Only y Tylwyth Teg have amber eyes.”

“And the Fair Folk would never speak kindly to you,” the stepmother said, helping Elain with her milk before she spilled it all over her pretty tunic. “You are an Eldest-of-Three.”

Tesni bit her lip and nodded, looking at her distorted reflection in her cup of water. Frizzy mouse-colored hair—sallow skin—a long, crooked nose—small muddy eyes—pinched mouth—yes, everything about her proclaimed her an Eldest-of-Three. The stupidest person in Glynbach would recognize her as such. Surely the Fair Folk would do so as well.

“If it was a Fair Folk,” the stepmother said, a frown marring her pretty face, “she was probably expecting to see Elain out in the garden, instead of Tesni. Youngest-of-Threes are supposed to love flowers and growing things, after all. We’ll have to make sure she spends more time out there from now on.”

“But my plants!” Tesni cried in dismay.

“You can still tend them,” her father said. “Just not when anyone is likely to see you. It will have to look like the garden belongs to Elain, not you.”

Tesni wanted to protest, but she swallowed her words. What did it matter? Everything was going to end the way it was supposed to anyway, whether she protested or not.

She glanced at the middle sister, Alis, placidly eating her meal without paying the slightest bit of attention to anything else. Tesni wished she could be that complacent about her role.

It would make life so much easier.

Copyright 2011 E Louise Bates, do not use without permission.

Query Lethargy

I've reached that inevitable point in my querying where I start to doubt - well, everything.

Will I ever find an agent/publisher?


Is something wrong with my query letter, even though I've polished it a hundred times?


Is my style of writing just not what people are looking for these days?


Am I even a decent writer after all?


I don't think these questions are necessarily bad - so long as I don't let them paralyze me. It's not a bad thing to tighten up the query letter for the hundredth and first time. It's probably a good thing to look at the MS again with a critical eye.

It's not a good thing to give up. It's not a good thing to let a defeatist attitude rule.

There is a good chance that The Eldest Sister isn't what agents, publishers, or readers are wanting right now. That's okay. This was the third and best MS I've completed thus far. And if it's not publishable, it's still an accomplishment. I will work on making Starsong even better, and if that gets published, then maybe someday I can go back to The Eldest Sister and re-work it, make it better, and get that published as well.

Or maybe, just maybe, I just haven't found the right agent yet. Maybe the next one on my list is the one who will want it. Maybe the final one on my list is the one who will take it. If I convince myself that it's no good, I'll never find out, will I?

So I'll keep trusting to the story, keep sending out those queries, and in the meantime, keep working to constantly improve my writing.

As tempting as it might be to quit, rather than keep seeing those rejection letters, that just isn't an option.

Not for me.