Querying SF novel with only four chapters?

[Paradox 99]

Originally Posted by John Jarrold

you have to be able to react objectively to your writing - one reason I always suggest newer writers should put their book away for one or two months after finishing, then re-read with a cooler, more objective gaze

I've done this a number of times and found it to be very effective.
It helps to have another project on the go whilst you've put the older one aside, because it's just too tempting to keep dipping back into it. Once you're absorbed into a new story, it helps to let go of the old one a little, thus making it easier to be objective.

However, after reading Sue's post in connection with this, it gave me a shocking revelation:

The reason; well, the current project I am working on, is to me, at that time, the best. After awhile I see the faults and errors and only them.

The key phrase there - "at the time".
I'll put a novel away for a few months and when I go back to it, I find that I feel exactly the same way as Sue. I can no longer see what's "special" about my novel. I can tidy it up objectively in technical terms, but have lost my love of the story because it's "old" and I know it too well. And so, having lost my confidence in it, I find it hard to motivate myself to send submissions.

I wonder how the flame can be rekindled, or perhaps that's a sign that it shouldn't be? Maybe, that very special novel I'm trying to write will not lose it's lustre after a break and an objective re-read.

Hmmm.... wanders off in deep thought.....

[SJAB]

Originally Posted by Paradox 99

And so, having lost my confidence in it, I find it hard to motivate myself to send submissions.

I think that is when you need to develop a stubborn streak. You have spent so much time and energy on a project you need to push it to some conclusion. Sending it out is only going to cost you money and chip a piece off your ego After a dozen or more rejections you have no ego left and using your overdraft ROFL!

Seriously though, the fact that the story was special to you at the time, that you had a belief in it, got you through the process of writing it. You wouldn't have done it if it wasn't special.

Paradox 99; I suspect, you, like me have dozens of half started ideas. It's only the special ones that make it from beginning to end. To get that far is more than most do, to get it edited and out there is another hurdle many don't commit to. If you don't try you will never get there. Maybe that's part of the point of writing and submitting, the trying.

Or maybe it's the heat this morning making me ramble.

[John Jarrold]

Here is a quick overview of the major debut fantasy novels published in the UK this year, to give you an idea of how the market stands..

GOLLANCZ

THE BLADE ITSELF - JOE ABERCROMBIE. Dark and witty, featuring cowardly officers, cynical but fascinating torturers and a magi who may be a fake.

THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA - Scott Lynch. Set is an analogue of Italy around the fifteenth century, with a protagonist who might be called a mixture of the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist, times 100. Wonderful background and characters, and deeply funny.

THR STORMCALLER - TOM LLOYD. Young outcast 'white-eye' is called to replace the charismatic Lord Bahl, as prophecies wind around him. Very dark. Good sense of place.

TOR UK/MACMILLAN

SCAR NIGHT - ALAN CAMPBELL. Real tour-de-force, compared to Mervyn Peake and China Mieville, but more central to the fantasy genre. It does feature swords and witches, for instance. But setting is all, and wonderfully conjured. Campbell has designed the GRAND THEFT AUTO computer games.

ORBIT

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW - MIKE CAREY. First UK author to join Orbit's burgeoning 'supernatural thriller' stable (which includes Laurell K Hamilton and Kelley Armstrong). Sleazy, down-at-heel and witty. Carey wrote the graphic novels HELLBLAZER and LUCIFER, and has written for Marvel and DC over a number of years.

VOYAGER

TEMERAIRE - NAOMI NOVIK. Horatio Hornblower meets Anne McCaffrey's dragons. Good characters, interesting plot-lines.



As you can see. there is a wide spread there. And there are no elves or dwarves, or Dark Lords. Be aware of your market...

[Paradox 99]

Originally Posted by SJAB

I think that is when you need to develop a stubborn streak. You have spent so much time and energy on a project you need to push it to some conclusion. Sending it out is only going to cost you money and chip a piece off your ego After a dozen or more rejections you have no ego left and using your overdraft ROFL!

Thanks for the encouragement Sue. You're right, I do need to be a bit more stubborn. I've got the stamina to keep on sending out submissions, but I'm very conscious that they have to be as good as I can possibly get them. Each time I manage to view my work objectively I see where it could be improved, so I improve it and then think.... hmmm, I bet another look in a couple of months will make me change it again. And that's why I hesitate sending it off. It's a terrible chasing of the tail!

Originally Posted by SJAB

Paradox 99; I suspect, you, like me have dozens of half started ideas. It's only the special ones that make it from beginning to end.

Unfortunately I'm like a dog with a bone! I always finish the books and stories I start (at least, that's been the case so far). So far, I've never started on one and lost interest in it half way through, which I admit, seems unusual. There are times (obviously) when I struggle through particular parts, but I'm always encouraged by how I imagine the end result to be of the story as a whole. At the moment, I have four on the go at various stages - they won't get abandoned, but naturally, they'll take longer to complete.

[Paradox 99]

Originally Posted by John Jarrold

Here is a quick overview of the major debut fantasy novels published in the UK this year, to give you an idea of how the market stands..

In your experience, do the trends gradually morph over a period of years, or does the market taste change relatively suddenly? I'm just wondering if there's a pattern to how they change.
Thinking of things like cloathes fashions, there seems to be a cycle where trends today are very similar to the ones 20 years ago. Is there also a sort of cyclical trend in the S&F market?

[John Jarrold]

It's a slow, organic change. No one suddenly thinks 'I'm not going to publish fantasy with elves and dwarves any more'. They've just disappeared from the class acts' fiction over a ten-year period or so...Tad Williams found analogues for them in THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR, almost twenty years ago...but those basics I mentioned earlier in the thread remain vital.

[SJAB]

Originally Posted by Paradox 99

Unfortunately I'm like a dog with a bone! I always finish the books and stories I start (at least, that's been the case so far). So far, I've never started on one and lost interest in it half way through, which I admit, seems unusual. There are times (obviously) when I struggle through particular parts, but I'm always encouraged by how I imagine the end result to be of the story as a whole. At the moment, I have four on the go at various stages - they won't get abandoned, but naturally, they'll take longer to complete.

FOUR!!! I have trouble with one at a time!! least ones that I plough through to the end with. I need to be single-minded. Only the one set of characters/plot in my head at a time when creating. Editing is a different matter as I am working from a completed draft.

As for abandoned work. They are mostly abandoned because the main characters didn't jell with me, they never become complete people in my head, if that makes sense. I still have the working outlines, and beginning drafts of about half-a-dozen. A couple I might return too one day, don't know. I would love to return to the very first attempt at novel I wrote, bad as it is, and make it readable lol....