Imagine

A Perfect Circle's cover of John Lennon's imagine.

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Starting over

After a lot of thought, I've decided to listen to the advice of my editor and rewrite my first novel. The whole thing. From scratch. Oy.

Yes, I'm really going to rewrite the whole thing. I've actually already started writing and finished the first two chapters. All things considered, it's going fairly quickly. While I say I'm rewriting the whole thing, I don't mean I'm making up a new story. The story is generally the same, and all the same characters will grace my pages, but I'm rewriting because, obviously after the rejection, something needs to change.

One of the biggest problems with my first novel, I think (as does my editor), was that when I started writing it I hadn't learned my own writing voice. I found it by the end, but the beginning of the novel has always suffered as I tried to keep it as close to its original form as I could. Though I wanted to keep what I could, ultimately I wrote it with a different style and no amount of tweaking could ever fix that. Starting over, using my old book as a guide more or less, I'm going to bring my book up to my new standards, and I think it will be better for it.

Of course, once I finish rewriting this, I'm going to have changed things. This could mean that I'll have to rewrite, or at least seriously revise, all my books. Or it could mean that when I finish my first novel and reread my second novel, I'll find that the voice sounds similar enough that I can ignore that and get back to trying to get published again. I'm not really sure.

All I know is I'm enjoying rewriting my book far more than I thought. I think it's been long enough that I can admit to myself that my first book, while it had good ideas, wasn't well written. I have the opportunity to fix that, and so I will.

It's still probably going to take forever and drive me crazy at points, but ultimately, I hope, it will all be worth it.

In several months anyway.

REJECTION WATCH!

Novel rejections: 1.

Short Story rejections: 1.

Agent rejections: 0.

Publishing: fail.

So my first submission to a publisher has been rejected. This is not surprising. Everyone gets rejected initially, and I am no different. It's unhappy, sure, but I'm really not that bad off. Given the craptacular state of the world, including the publishing industry, it's extremely hard to get published. This is all part of the process. It's not like I've stopped writing.

I've decided that, while looking for a literary agent, I'm going to adjust my focus to trying to submit short stories. Apparently, they're a better way to break into the industry than whole novels. If you've been following my writing blogs, you've probably seen my shorts slowly evolving from pieces of crap to less crappy bits (or you think I'm just a horrible writer). I haven't posted some of my better works because I'm going to be submitting them to different online and paper magazines.

As I submit to different places with short stories I'm sure I'll update with my new blog feature: Rejection Watch! I've already been rejected by two publishers, so let's see how high I can get that number! If I get rejected by agents, I'll count those towards my Rejection Watch as well. And, yes, I'm turning rejection into a joke, but it's much more fun to find this amusing then to actually get upset or care.

Worry ye not... I'll be published someday.

If you don't watch Castle you should be ashamed of yourself

Castle!

This is one of the best new shows ever. Aside from the fact that the main character, Richard Castle, is played by Nathan Fillion (that's Mal from Firefly), the show is impeccably written as if tailored to amuse writers. The basic plot of the show is that someone starts killing people using the scenes from Castle's books, and then Castle himself is called in on the case to assist Detective Beckett in finding the perpetrator. After helping with the first case, Castle then finagles his way into being a consultant with the NYPD to research his next book.

What makes this show so amazing is that Nathan Fillion is an extraordinary actor and he plays this part and makes Castle both incredibly likable and incredibly frustrating, making the interplay between Castle and Beckett all the more entertaining. All of the main supporting characters, including Castle's mother and daughter, are well fleshed out and great sources of humor. The show is very funny as well as clever and not entirely predictable. There hasn't been a show yet where I haven't laughed so loud I had to rewind a bit to catch the next piece of dialog.

Castle is on ABC on Monday nights at 10:00. I love the show and you probably will too. Check it out!