Ever wonder what the earth might look like if vegetables took over the world? Carl Warner has:

So has Octavia Butler. She wrote an entire sf trilogy that involves spaceships, genetics, aliens trying to take over the world, and interesting ways of generating food (and people). She’s one of my favorite all-time authors. Her novel, Parable of the Sower, made it on my top ten favorite apocalyptic novels.

Cornification

I saw Warner’s artwork on io9.com and felt inspired to share this with all of you. Something about his inventiveness and attention to detail captures my imagination and makes me want to write stories set in strange worlds like the ones he’s created. As I was writing this post though, I realized that while amazing, Warner’s foodscapes are not as novel as I had first thought.

Something about the nightmare idea of food taking over the world just-makes-sense.

Don’t believe me? Check out Shawn Hendriks post on Enslaved by Corn. Or The Ominvore’s Dilemma, or, or… well, maybe Warner’s artwork isn’t meant to be political. I mean, it is an imaginary world of broccoli trees, milk waterfalls, and biscuit mountains, but still, remember what happened to those greedy kids in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Bad things. Bad, bad things.

Thanks goes to io9 for finding Carl Wagner’s collection of foodscapes. Can’t say I’d want a bite out of Warner’s broccoli tree, plus the biscuit mountain looks a little tough to chew, but check out Warner’s full gallery of foodscapes. I wouldn’t mind spending lunchtime in his Tuscan Market.

Oh, My! (Final Thought)

Warner’s art looks like what might happen if the Smurfs had a threesome with the Twilight Zone and Charlie & the Chocolate factory. Come to think of it, UNICEF already imagined what that threesome might look like:

Your Turn

So what do you think? The Vegetable Apocalypse: a disturbingly accurate prophecy of our not-to-distant future, or does it make you want to keep a bowl of ranch dressing handy?

This post is a self-reflection. A realization:

Art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind by transmitting emotions and/or ideas.

The all important first draft (and maybe 2nd and 3rd drafts, too) is for myself and myself only, and then I want to share, I want to ‘transmit’ it to others. For right now, I believe the best way to accomplish that goal is to seek representation with a literary agent and sell my novel(s) to a publisher.

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be attempting to perfect the be-all-end-all sales letter (also known as query letter), I would have raised an eyebrow, thanked you for the information, and proceeded to wipe such an idea from my brain.

Now I know better.

Query Madness

The querying process seems so mountainous, so finicky, I want to shake my fist high in the air, laugh, and shout, “This will drive you MAAAAD!!”

When I am tempted into this fist shaking shout, I envision the Narcoleptic Argentinean in the movie Moulin Rouge! with his throaty MAAAAD! during the song El Tango De Roxanne (a remake of Roxanne by The Police).

I did not begin writing fiction with the idea in mind that I would need to be a saleswoman. In fact, I went into fiction with the idea that it would take me deeper into art and farther away from sales.

I don’t need to query a literary agent, I don’t need to sell my books to a publisher, but I would like to — and for money please. Not a lot of money, but enough money to someday make real the dream to write full-time without feeling guilty for making my family sacrifice things like, oh, electricity, hot water, fresh produce from the farmer’s market.

So I must put on my saleswoman’s hat and become skilled at writing pitch letters, because if not me, than who?

ALERT: Extended Simile

Querying a novel, or trying to sell any creative work is essentially selling your mind. A couple lines from El Tango De Roxanne:

Roxanne
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight
Roxanne
You don’t have to sell your body to the night

The Narcoleptic Argentinean begs Roxanne not to give in, but to hold herself to some higher ideal of love and chastity while going hungry and probably sleeping on the street. Art for art’s sake is a grand and noble idea, but it does not pay the bills or put food in my pound puppy’s bowl. Luckily, I do have a day job and do not count on my writing to bring in any income.

Yet.

Reality Bites, Now Move On

I do not hold my querying agony against literary agents, or even the publishing industry. I regularly lurk on many different agent blogs (and am very thankful for all the knowledge they’ve shared that has helped me be more savvy about the entire publishing industry).

I understand the reasons for form letter rejections, the passionate hatred some agents have of opening a query letter with a rhetorical question, how you can still land a great agent even with a rhetorical question in your query, why agents are looking for any reason to reject…

I understand this is how the game works. If I want to play the game I have to play by the rules.

How about you? How do you handle it? Comparisons encouraged. I’m always looking for new favorite lines to yell out when I become frustrated.

In my quest to write the best query letter possible I’ve found some great resources off and online. I’ll share them with you soon. In the meantime, check out my previous post where I talked about The Query as String Theory.

“Writer’s block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity.”

Is a blank piece of paper driving you crazy?

There are writerly ways of overcoming the blank page, or you can Hack Your Way out of Writer’s Block.

But if you had only one sheet of paper, you could…

…Do Something Like This:

or this

or this

Or this

Each image is made from a single sheet of paper and an amazing imagination (in this case, Peter Callesen’s).

For more beautiful single sheet art visit: A Single Sheet of Paper and Peter Callesen’s selected works.

Just Write

No matter how you try to overcome that blank page, keep in mind Steve Martin’s famous quote:

“I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”

Now please excuse me. I’ve figured out how to fix my first novel and I need to find a pair of scissors.