All right. I’ve sent off a batch of queries and my goal is to keep a fixed number of queries in the air. I’m not sending them all out at once because– what if inspiration strikes or I get feedback that I use to make the project better? It seems reasonable to me.

Also, researching each agent is time-consuming and I have a kid I neglect too much as it is.

Anyhow, now that there are queries and a synopsis and a partial and a completed novel, it’s time to head into other projects.

My ‘vacation writing’ really didn’t happen. Too bad for me. I had a chance and I wasted it meebling about queries. Now it’s time to start on Serial 13 again.

I have a 0th draft. I have two tasks next: to develop the locations where I want the scenes to take place, and to develop the voice of the narrator.

These are both tasks I’m not great at, and have wanted to work on for a while. Because I’m not a very visual writer, my scenes tend to lack much in the way of eye candy or even a strong sense of place. But I think I can fix that if I work on developing the locations before I write the scene– the few times I’ve written solid visual scenes, I’ve imagined it strongly before ever starting to type. So I want to go through each scene outline and figure out where they take place, then separately write strong descriptions that I can reference when writing the scenes themselves.

I’ve also spent a long time wishing that I had a stronger voice as a writer. I think I must have a voice; I just can’t see the forest for the trees. But I really admire books with a strong narrator voice– specifically third person stories where the narrator still manages to feel like a recognizable individual. Based on my experience writing for games, I think this is something I can achieve. I just need to have a point of view that isn’t firmly entrenched deep inside the protagonist’s head. So I want to experiment writing some material from various perspectives and figure out the voice I want to use with Serial 13. I have a tiny fragment of prose that I wrote as part of my initial scribble which I’ll use as a starting place.

Oh, and one more task: I need to go through the 0th draft and revise it, just like one would any other draft. I’m sure it’s full of just as much crazy stuff and bullshit as all of my other initial drafts. I’m a bit nervous about that and I think I need to really get myself into the paranormal anime-esque YA mindset again. Hmm.