Tonight I get to sleep in my own bed. That sounds strange, but it’s true; my parents return from their trip in a few hours.

On the writing front working off site has impacted the output a bit, although I did manage to squeeze out some pages at my parent’s PC, so it wasn’t a complete time drain. Considering the dogs like to jam their noses in my side whenever I’m seated, even 5 pages is a man vs. nature type of victory.

Lesson for me, I’m just more productive working at my favorite desk and chair, but a stark departure in environments need not be an insurmountable obstacle.

OK, despite my best efforts the first draft of Velocity is not done. Grrr. My projections called for Mid May, yet I’m not even 1/4 done, if even that far.

Why did the draft timetable slip so much? Hopefully for the right reasons. Based on some feedback received about the Ridge Runner, a 6th draft is in progress. 1st person is out, 3rd person is in.

There’s a bunch of caveats that come with the perspective shift, but essentially it boils down to this…

1) When I started the Ridge Runner, my sense of narration and description were weak which hobbled the story. Since my strongest suit at the time was dialogue, it made sense to go that route, forgo descriptions and dive headlong into 1st person. After writing more than a million words in the last eighteen months, my writing improved. It’s time to take advantage of that development.

2) The subject matter demands a certain balance between the characters. 1st person perspective has a tendency to dampen all the other characters, thus weakening the conflicts. To compensate for this, usually stories in 1st person are either tremendously funny or tremendously tragic. All well and good, but the subject matter of the Ridge Runner begs a more serious tone. Confessions of a Shopaholic Tracker this ain’t.

3) 3rd person is the best way to build suspense ( in my opinion ). Being close to the material, the story works best as a psychological thriller, rather than a next generation detective piece.

So that’s the holdup. Must return to my pages now…

I’ve been writing too much when I forget what day it is. That’s usually the signal to take an afternoon off. The last week, ( or was it weeks? ) was a giant blur of writing, revising and more writing.

Here’s some observations about the query process – i.e the part where I try and sell the agent on notion of representing The Ridge Runner.
1) It takes an agent anywhere from 31 minutes to 7 weeks to return an email.
2) Some agents won’t respond to email at all. After nine weeks I’m thinking they won’t respond, but it’s not impossible they will prove me wrong.
3) There is no correlation between the amount of time it takes an agent to respond and the likelihood of them requesting materials. One agent responded within 48 hours and wanted to see more, another took 6 weeks and 1 day. Conversely one rejection came back in 31 minutes. Huzzah!
4) Most agents like to say they are looking for a book that will make them miss a subway stop, even if they live in Los Angelos.
5) It is not difficult to get a maybe from an agent, if you can stomach hearing no a lot.
6) I’m not convinced getting a yes is that much more difficult, provided it’s the right material for the agent.

At present I’m wedged on step 6. The only choice is to wade through a lot more no’s trying to find that yes.

Perspective is a tricky thing. The original draft of the The Ridge Runner was in 3rd person, but never worked quite right, so I rewrote it in first. That made the story much better, but introduced a new set of challenges.

Now I’m knee deep in Velocity and a light bulb went on that begged a whole new question. Is perspective always a matter of either or? Or could perspective be a case of both? What if the scenes that involved Mike Brody were in first person, cause he’s a first person kind of guy, and everything else was in 3rd person. Sounds crazy huh?

Until I found a book James Patterson that did just that. And it sold big time. So it can’t be impossible. Perhaps a little unusual, but not impossible.

I decided to keep what I have in first person so far, about 170 pages, and go back and write some new material in 3rd person. It’s a little experiment. And if I like how it works out, I’ll do more of it.

So it begs the question – is perspective relative or absolute?

UPDATE: 4/14/2004 – Editor person just called to remind me that they told me to consider doing this about 6 months ago.