Adventures in Writing

Speed bumps

As March 2011 wound down, I was 33K into my WIP and loving it.  I'd managed the balancing act of keeping my family life in check, whilst pounding out 30,000 words in under 5 weeks.  All was going along swimmingly.  I was in a very Zen place.  

Cue the ominous music.  
Speed bump #1.  THE MOVE:  My husband and I decide to move.  No, not to another county (it was a possibility), but rather, 20 miles away to another part of Houston, hoping to cut my husband's commute time by 1/2.

Speed bump #2.  THE MOVE PREP:  As it often does, #1 brings #2 along for the ride.  Preparing to list a house is hard work.  That long honey-do list that waits so patiently suddenly can't wait another second.

Speed bump #3.  THE BREAK:  I discover that I'm far more clumsy then I'd ever imagined.  Through a series of laughable and slightly mundane actions, I break my leg while I am in the midst of hanging curtains for the upcoming listing.

Speed bump # 4.  THE SEARCH:  Because I'm kinda crazy, I decide to list my house anyway, broken leg and all, and consequently spend the whole of April searching out a new house while on crutches.  (Just for reference sake, I don't recommend this option.  With my absurd lack of coordination, stairs on crutches is just asking for a full-body cast––this leaves me only one way up and down:  the bum-scoot.  Again, not recommended, people.) 

Speed bump #5.  THE SHOWINGS:  Maintaining a clean house in the best of times is difficult.  Keeping the house immaculate for showings with three active boys and a very heavy cast on my right leg (which by the way, prohibits driving) is near impossible.  I get overwhelmed just thinking about it, so let's just say it's been a tad busy 'round these parts.

So, now May has dawned.  I've successfully found a new home.  I've navigated the listing, the showings and in 13 long days from now, I will get this blasted thing off my leg.  I have made progress, but just not on my WIP.  At all.  Not one word since March 31st.  

It bothers me, like that horrible itch under my cast that I can not reach.  I hear my characters' toe-tapping impatience in my head.  I just keep telling myself (and them) that life has forced me into a series of speed bumps, so steady as she goes, slow but sure, and all of that, but man, am I anxious for the open road again.  

My current thoughts of inspiration

Having begun the journey of writing a novel again after taking a break, I thought I had all the inspiration that I required but after finding myself whiling away several hours on agent research, I realized I needed a kick in the pants.  Let's be real, people.  My WIP wasn't even finished.  I needed to work and work and then work some more before I even thought about what agent to query.  It was a stupid bit of self-indulgence.  I came across this quote and it spoke loudly of just how indulgent I was behaving.  

"Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can’t not write. The rest is show-business. I can’t state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you’re writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business."

-Peter S. Beagle

I need to keep this in the forefront of my mind.  If I write what is beating down the door in my imagination, the rest will come.  Maybe I'll never be published, but I know that every day I write, is a day that I feel something real.  

Titles are Important, but how important?

Everyone knows that the title of your book is important, but how crucial is the title of your manuscript?  I've been playing around with titles for my WIP and have come up with a few that I like but nothing that I'm head-over-heels about.  It made me wonder though...while querying how important is a title, so long as the work (the writing) is good?  Can a title break a deal?  To me, it seems like one grain of sand in the sand castle that is your manuscript.  Later on, it matters a lot, but not during the query process.  Just my thoughts.  Here is Rachelle Gardner's take on the issue of titles.

Her basic belief is that your title should be good and you should take some time in making it the best you can, hence her blog post.  Your thoughts?  Was the process of titling your WIP a breeze, a battle or somewhere in between?

Be a Warrior and then...hey, where'd you go?

That video clip featuring Ira Glass was the last thing I wrote.  Or so it seemed.  The message was meant to inspire but it had exactly the opposite effect on me.  "Keep plugging away.  Be a Warrior," it said but I got a little lost.  

My then-current WIP was out on submissions.  I had two fulls and a request for an exclusive full, which I couldn't fulfill until the other two agents got back.  One did so rather quickly with a 'no' and the other languished in no-man's land.   I didn't do much better.  I didn't start anything new even though I had intentions to do so.  I stopped reading my writing blogs.  I didn't beta for anyone.  And I didn't write.  At all.  

I quilted.  i redecorated a bathroom.  I mothered.  I celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and finally Valentine's day and still, I didn't write.  

I felt zapped and overwhelmed.  I felt defeated.  At some point I nudged the agent that still held my full and got nothing.  It had been too long to hold out hope, so I considered it a 'no'.  I could have sent the full to the agent asking for an exclusive, but I didn't.  I just did nothing.  Why?

Honestly, I think I just needed to assess what was important.  i loved writing but when I write, I lose myself in the story.  it eats up all of my extra time and some time that isn't extra.  I needed balance.

Here's the sunshine in all the doom and gloom.  I think I've found some balance.  I am writing again.  I try to write a little every day but the majority of my writing is done on Tuesdays and Thursdays when my youngest is at preschool.  If I don't write much on the other days, I let that be okay.  I still have a life outside of writing.  I enjoy my family time without looking longingly at the laptop.  Maybe to some that sounds like I've lost my fire, but I think the opposite is true.  

Before, I burned bright and fast and went out just as quickly.  Now, I hope to sustain a long glowing fire indefinitely, sustained, not distracted by my family and life outside of writing.  

Balance, people.  It has saved me from myself.  

What works for you?  How do you keep your writing fire burning bright?

 

"Be fierce. Be a Warrior." Ira Glass

Great interview from Ira Glass, of "This American Life" on overcoming doubt and becoming great with whatever creative outlet you seek.  I found it to be very inspiring.  Enjoy and thanks to Stephanie Perkins for posting.

I won!

 Okay, so I didn't actually win first place.  I got third place, but still that's saying something, right?  About a week ago, one of the author blogs that I follow posted a contest to help title her newst manuscript.  Here's what she wrote about the third (that's me!!), second and first place titles:  

"Third Place THE ASSASSINATION OF MARVIN HERMES by Diana. Love this title. Really love this title. But if anybody’s name is going to be in the title, I’d rather it were Seth’s.

Second Place FEED DEAF by Too Cute (Penelope Wright), which I am taking the liberty of changing to STREAM DEAF. I didn’t mention it before, but sometime between now and when I first set up this contest, I actually came up with two titles I really liked. STREAM DEAF was one of them, so when Honey Bear read this one off, I just about snorted my ice water. I figured it was a sign:)

First Place WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS by Ben Spendlove. I honestly couldn’t decide between STREAM DEAF and WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS, but I decided to give WHOSE TEETH the win because it was the one title I couldn’t get out of my head. The phrase comes from a scripture in Proverbs (Proverbs 30:14), and that verse couldn’t be more applicable to Bob."

I have to say, I can see why she picked the first place title.  It has a certain feel or texture.  I like it a lot.  Good luck Krista with BOB, I mean WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS.

Well Said

I'm probably opening myself up to a whole lot of hate mail from either side of this issue, but I just have to put in my two cents.  The Twilight Series.  It's funny to me how polarizing this specific series of books has become. I will freely admit that I've read it and liked the series overall.  There is something about the pacing and the escapism that I really enjoyed, plus I'm a real sucker for love triangles––what can I say?  However, I wouldn't call Twilight literature. 

  The interesting part was that as the phenomenon grew to a fevered pitch there arose a choice--you either had to love it or hate it.  There was no room for appreciating the book for what it was.  Either it was total crap or the greatest thing ever written.   

When I read this post by Nathan Bransford about the Writing vs. Storytelling, I almost stood up from the computer to say 'Amen'.  

"What I meant by last week's post is not that every popular book is written phenomenally well, but a popular book is doing SOMETHING very well, and it's far more valuable to try to pinpoint what that writer is succeeding at rather than simply dismissing a book as being horribly written just because you don't like it or just because the prose isn't top notch.

It might be the suspense, it might be the tension, it might be the pacing, it might be the setting, it might be the characters, or even more likely a combination of several different elements. But if a book is phenomenally popular, something is working that is attracting readers, and no, it's not just the marketing....

Yes, good writing aids storytelling, you need a certain level of writing for a book to work. But just because you don't care for the prose doesn't mean there's nothing that's working and nothing to be learned."

Thank you Mr. Bransford, for again stating so clearly what I have been wanting to hear.

Something Surprising

 Everyone always says to have patience when querying.  I hear it everywhere, but I guess even that didn't prepare me for what happened this week.  On March 29th, I sent out one of my first queries for the newly revised manuscript that I'd been working on.  After two months without a response from this particular agent, I took the non-response as code for 'Thanks, but no thanks'.  

I move on, researching new agents and querying new ones every few weeks.  April, then May trickled by, during which several agents ask for partials and/or fulls.  As I wait for responses on those, I continue to work on other projects and research agents and agencies that I feel might fit with my completed manuscript.  Now, after four months, I get the most surprising email from the agent that I queried back on March 29th, requesting a full.  This was almost four months to the day of the original email.  I had all but crossed them off as a rejection.  

I guess the lesson here is to just keep on keepin' on, because if you're sitting on pins and needles the whole time, you're butt will get mighty sore.

The first page

 One of the writing blogs I follow is actually a blog written by an editor, or rather an editor's assistant.  This week Moonrat posted about the importance of the first page: 

“Just briefly, because I am up to my tailbone in manuscripts....when I read submission after submission after submission--which, let's face it, is everyday--my mind starts to dull...and this is making me cranky...The reading gets faster, and the disappointments stack up more quickly.

...There are different ways to create a crappy first page. Boringness. Cliche. Too many fancy schmancy words. Immersing your audience too quickly into the action. Immersing them too slowly...Yeah, I know, it's basically impossible to win at this game. But YOU MUST TRY.  Above all things, YOU MUST BE SPECIAL. Assume whoever is reading your submission is going to be in a terrible mood when they look at page 1. You just don't have until page 2.”

The funny thing is, I read through the comments to this post and someone commented the following:  “I think this is a good illustration of the difference between an editorial/agent type reader and my own reading tastes.  I frequently find myself incredibly annoyed when everything explodes on page 1...most of those books that I pick up in the book store and the first page explodes like that... I put it back down and find something else.”

So I ask:  As a reader are you much more like the first or second opinion?  Does that change if you were writing instead of reading?  I find that as a reader I'm willing to hang with a book for the first chapter.  After that I might put it down to change a diaper or some other wonderful domestic diva task and I may never get back to it. (Unless it's a book club book 'cause then I'm stuck.  See, I have this thing about finishing my assignments...and evidently book club books are assignments in my world. What?  I'm a rule follower.  Really, I am.  Fine!  Don't believe me.)  

As a writer, I guess right now I'm about the same.  My first chapter hopefully grabs the reader but I can't say the first page is a sheer work of genius.  It's something to consider though.

5 Stages of Querying

Okay, so I follow this writers' blog pretty intensely, called the Guide to Literary Agents.  It has guest bloggers covering subjects ranging from successful queries to how I got my agent to new agent alerts.  I've found it very helpful in my industry education thus far.  Recently, Anne Gallagher did a guest spot on the five stages of querying.  It was so spot on, that I had to reblog it.  My only adjustment was that I never really had a full #1 issue.  I hoped what I wrote was good, but I never believed it was earth shattering.  For those querying soon, or are in the process...you are not alone.

#1) Conceit – This is the beginning of the query experience in which you are convinced that any agent would be a fool to turn you down. You know deep in your heart this is the most fantastic book ever written and every agent who reads your query will request a full, (or at least a partial) immediately. And your mother, husband/wife and BFF beta's said so. 

#2) Fear – This second emotion is harder to contain as it encompasses a variety of anxieties at the same time: Is the query strong enough to get a request? Is the manuscript good enough? Have I revised enough? Did I find all my typos? Did I say everything I was supposed to say?  

#3) Bargaining – This is when you’ll do absolutely anything if an agent requests any part of your manuscript: Spend more time with the kids, your mother-in-law, the PTO. You’ll keep up with the laundry, dishes, dust bunnies. You’ll remember to make breakfast, pay the bills, feed the dog. And you’ll pass up the new shoes you saw last week at the mall … you swear, if you could only get a request. 

#4) Depression – This is how far you’ll actually sink before you start climbing up from the pit of despair. Some frequent comments in your head will be—“My query sucked, the agent will hate it. My book sucks. Why am I doing this? I can’t write a book. No one would read it anyway, it will never sell.” At this point, you must remember you do have family and friends who love you and care for you. Step away from the chocolate, get out of your sweats, take a shower and go for a nice long walk. A little fresh air never hurt anyone. 

#5) Acceptance – And this last stage is when you realize, the query is out, agents are looking at it, you gave it your 100% best shot and there is nothing more you can do. So relax. And I won't tell you not to check your e-mail account fifteen times a day because I know you will, (I do, too) just try and get it down to three. Breakfast, lunch and before bedtime.

Will Gatekeepers still have job when there's no Gate?

 
 One of my first entries on this blog dealt with how literary agents are the gatekeepers of the literary world.  I took this a step further and likened getting an agent to getting a college degree.  But as any author, aspiring author, editor, publisher, agent or stock boy will tell you, the publishing world is going through some adjustments.  Technology is changing way publishers do business.  Nathan Bransford recently took on the question of what that might mean for the gatekeepers if/when there's no longer a gate to keep.  Read the link, my friends...it may very well effect how you view the future of publishing and the role your agent or future agent will play...and by the way, I still stick by my analogy. 

Getting an agent is still like getting a college degree but there's these new start up companies that might not care quite as much that you have a college degree but then maybe without that college degree you won't get health insurance from the said start ups...you get the idea.  I'm still shooting for what I currently believe is the best path...the college degree with a top school.  'Course that is so much dang work.  Remind me why I'm doing this again?  Oh yeah...'cause I kinda love it.  

Something in the Water

Recently I've been noticing a disproportionate number of writers that are also Mormon, specifically writing for YA or Middle Grade.  Being a Mormon myself, I've come up with some of my own theories for this, but Kiersten White beat me to the punch and I agree enough to post her words on the subject:

If you read a lot of YA, odds are one of your favorite authors is Mormon. James Dashner, Brandon Mull, Shannon Hale, some chick (Stephenie something or other?) who wrote a vampire series that I hear is kinda popular, so on and so forth...This is such a phenomenon--and a growing one--that one editor considering PARANORMALCY heard I was Mormon and remarked, "That's the magic ingredient!"...clearly people have noticed and are trying to figure out why.... I have a different theory. In the LDS church, family is the center of everything, and women are encouraged to try and be home as much as possible with their children to give them the best start in life. (This isn't a requirement--everyone does the best they can, just like anyone else, Mormon or not.) We are also encouraged to get as much education as we can. AND we are encouraged to develop our talents and constantly seek to better ourselves.

So, here's the equation: Very Well Educated Women + Lots of Hours at Home + Needing Something to Do that Makes Us Feel Human and Improves Our Lives = WRITERS.  (Not just writers--also artists, and photographers, and any number of other clever ways to use their education and even bring in a little extra income.)

As for why so many of us choose to write YA...Let's face it: writing for teens is WAY MORE FUN than writing for adults. Sorry, adults. We're boring.

So that's my brilliant analysis of why Mormons are disproportionately represented in the YA book authorshiposphere. (Yes, authorshiposphere is a real word. Why do you ask? I never make up words.)

Post-Apocalyptic Skill?

So, I was cruising the web, via my handy-dandy Google reader (and no, this is not an ad for Google) and came across this new website, Ink:  In all forms, and it's cool contest.  I do so appreciate when contests have a bit of flare:  

"Who is your favorite author?" or "What is your post-apocalyptic society survival skill?" 

You only had to answer one, but I took on both: Author de jour: John Green. Post-apocalyptic skill: humor, mostly. Nobody kills the non-threatening, funny girl. It's that, or nunchucks.

If I'm super lucky, I'll get a dozen YA novels. (Yes, I said dozen--as in 12.  I know, right!)  The prize pack contains a mix of both hardcovers and ARC's.  There is something for everyone in this prize pack; from paranormal romance to contemporary to dystopian.

So, what would you answer to these two questions?

When Death is the Only Option

In my first manuscript, Read My Mind, there is a death, that although it happened years before, effects the choices of my protagonist.  This death was premeditated and necessary for the storyline and I accepted it as such.  However, I have recently discovered that not all authors are natural born killers.  About three weeks ago, I spoke to a writer friend of mine who was in the throes of the realization that her beloved character should/would bite the dust.  She was so distraught that the it was clouding her ability to proceed.   This post by The Authoress comfirms that she, too, struggled with killing her character.  Maybe her post will be helpful if you are bothered by knocking off a character or two.  I don't seem to have a problem...a recognition of which is somewhat disconcerning.    

 I guess I'm just a cold-hearted writer, but I didn't have a single qualm whacking my character, but it was just the first go around.  Maybe I'll be more reticent with the other figments of my imaginations that are still swirling around in my head, awaiting their turn to tell their stories.  Maybe their deaths will require a card and flowers... and possibly chocolates.

Where was this toy when I was a kid?

Where, oh where, were these dolls when I was a kid.  All I had was the dumb ole' Barbie and the overstuffed Rainbow Bright.  I guess advertising really does work, because man, I want a Bronte Sister!  My favorite is Anne Bronte, with her evil eye and menacing frown.  "Remember, Kids!  Use your brain and you can make history."  Ha. Ha. Ha.