On Secret Identities (or problems I never realized I’d have)

I’m currently juggling two secret identities as well as two public identities, and for the record this gets confusing because these identities are all secret from each other.

I don’t talk about my work here (seriously though, snore fest). I don’t talk about my home life at work. And I have book contracts under two different pen names. Talk about problems to have! :-)

Obviously, this blog is hosted by one of my pen names, and my other pen name doesn’t have any internet love. No blog, no twitters, no facebook. Which brings me to my dilemma:

I’ve seen that most writers have two names that they’re very upfront about, the name they publish traditionally with, and the name they use for their self published stuff. I’ve seen that system work pretty well, where authors go through and very openly acknowledge both writing aspects to make it easier for fans to find their other works.

But that’s not the case with my two names. They’re both traditionally pubbed (though through a small press), but they are a bit night and day. One is magic and explosions, and chase scenes, and the other is awkward teenage moments leading to a rip-your-heart-out-break-your-soul tragedy―well, at least, that’s what I’m aiming for, but I think I’m a bit wide of the mark.

But really one book is all: 

And the other book is a little more:

 

So the question I pose to the gallery is what would you guys do? Would you build up a whole separate online presence around the second pen name, or would you tack the contemporary pen name onto an already existing social media network?

The Wait Game, or LEARN from my FAIL

I’m sure many of you unagented writer types are like me right now: biting my nails hoping to get into a couple of contests.  Turns out I’ve done this contest thing once or twice, and I have some advice for you if you make it to the agent round.  It’s really simple advice:

WAIT.

After you get a request from an agent, wait. I know this sounds really simple, but trust me, wait a day. Read through your submission, and then hit send.

But Rena, aren’t the agents all hot to trot? They just requested material!!!! I might die if I wait another second!!!!

Oh hyperactive me from the past*, I know how that feels, but let me just say, you will hate yourself tomorrow morning if you hit send tonight.  Shoot, you might hate yourself in thirty seconds if you hit send right now.

Story time:

There I was twitter pitching my little heart out when LO AND BEHOLD an agent favorited my pitch. I almost died. I jumped up and down like a fool, I did the happy dance. I ran a quick research run on the agent. It was someone I wanted to query (reps a couple of super awesome writers I love), and I was over the moon.  The agent wanted to see my work. MINE! I mean how could that even be possible. I could almost see myself floating up out of the slush pile masses to join the luminaries of the writing community: agented writers.

In the thirty minutes of research, my heart thumped and thumped in my chest. My adrenaline made my fingers shake, but I felt like I was taking too long to ship off the requested material. I read faster, I went to the agency website and read up on all of the agents and who they repped and what kind of agency they were. And then I hit send.

Only to realize that there were two agents with names that started with the same letter and I’d just sent it to the WRONG ONE!!!!

AND THEN! Like a complete idiot who has taken a vacation from what little senses I might have had, I tweeted to the agent.

That’s right, I was so nervous I tweeted to the WORLD how I’d screwed up submitting the requested materials and addressed it all to the wrong agent.

It’s unlikely that this really killed my submission (it just wasn’t quite ready, close but no cigar), but it sure didn’t help. I’d kick myself more, but like I said, the project wasn’t quite ready. I tried not to feel like such a fool for the rest of the month, but every time it came up, I just wanted to crawl into a hole.

My point is that if you get a request, sit on it overnight if at all possible. It was such a simple mistake, and I could have avoided it by not jumping the gun. Learn from my fail. Patience. Wait. Think about contests a little bit more like when you get a guy or girl’s number. You don’t call them the morning after the party, you wait (until at least noon).

Good luck out there, and I mean it, wait. You can do it. You’ve already waited a week or more to find out if you made the agent round, what’s another day?

*This is totally paying homage to CrashCourse History because John Green is awesome. 

Insecure writers, or where I talk too much

I’ve avoided joining in on these. I don’t know why… Yes, actually I do. And that’s why I’m joining in today.

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that people will mock me, laugh at me (rather than with me), that they will call me a fake and a fraud and otherwise inform me that I am worth less than they are. I’ve been afraid for years. I’ve been so afraid that I haven’t been trying.

That’s right, I haven’t been trying. I could pour my heart out into the world, but I haven’t. I’ve turned in half-hearted work, taken the easy way out, and when it doesn’t rock the rest of the world, I shake it off. After all, I hadn’t really tried. I didn’t really do my best, so it doesn’t matter that no one’s foot wear was threatening escape, I hadn’t even tried.

Because what would happen if I did try and I still failed?

Would I shrivel up and die like the wicked witch of the west?

If I never put my best work out there, then no one is ever rejecting me. They’re always rejecting my C+ game. Competent, but not the A game I know is in there somewhere.

C+ is a lot easier than A, too. I mean, all I have to do is come up with something competent and I can ship it off into the world. The rejection doesn’t hurt (well, it hurts, but it’s bearable), and there’s the sort of self congratulatory feeling of “See how well that did, and I didn’t even try.”

But I’ve been called out. A dissertation can’t be your C+ game. It’s A time. So for the first time in my life I’m pulling out everything, and I’m scared. I’m pouring out my heart, and it’s not enough. I’m so frightened that my A game isn’t an A game at all. My hardest might not be good enough. I’m staring down the barrel of true and complete failure, and it makes my heart race just to think about it.

Shit, I try not to do this sort of thing on my blog. How do I come back from telling the world that I’ve been faking it? I’ve been the fraud I’ve always been afraid other people would see and uncover. And now that it counts, I’m so scared I’m petrified that my best will only be tiny bit better than my phoning it in. My Real Effort isn’t going to be any better than my faking it. My fraud to protect my heart has backfired. I’ve been caught out by my old habits, and now I don’t even know if I have an A game at all.

What if they still hate it?

All I can do is do. I'd love to try, but Yoda might be on to something. I've been trying. I've got to do.

The Whole Package: Part 1 Voice

The Whole Package is a series describing the whole writer. This is part 1 of (n+1) where n equals the number of posts that I think it takes to cover the topic (subject to change)

Finding my voice (or Learn From My Fail)

When I started blogging (not all that long ago), I think I did it because it was the expected thing. I didn’t put too much into it, and I really REALLY didn’t want to be directing agents to my super secret blog where I’ve clearly shared too much, and in all the wrong ways. But when I started blogging what I noticed was that all the blogs I read were written by writers about writing. At first I thought, oh, I’ll use this as a way to update people on what I’m doing. I can just talk about the whole publishing process (and won’t my future fans be pleased when they can read all this crap online?). But then I read somewhere that I wasn’t supposed to post about the trials and tribulations of querying. Besides, it would get boring “I queried agent XYZ today, and I got another form rejection letter.” Yeah, that would get old quick.

*Sigh*

It was hard to put all of that away though. In my mind’s eye, I was just a successful query letter away from finding Agent Awesome, and that was just a tiny stepping stone away from the book deal. I really felt like I was knocking on the door to the greatest party on the planet. But if that’s not what I’m supposed to do in a blog, I decided to play along, but finding something else to talk about, or ways to talk about how the querying process sounded more like a side note in my life and not the crushing defeat that it felt like at the time was grueling.

I had to dig deep and find other things to make it worthwhile. There were blog fests (One of my all time favorites was Elizabeth Poole’s 50 follower blog fest, OMG that was fun) and the friends. There were silly contests. And there was the talking about the process. Lots and lots of talking about the process. What I’ve learned from blogging about my process is that I have no clue how my process works. Every time I think I have a process, I go and do everything differently, and I mean everything. The whole thing was a struggle. Being involved and not talking about how I got my thirtieth (I know that's a baby number for rejections) rejection on the same day where I read about some writer who whipped out a query letter for her first novel ever and landed an agent a week later, that was a struggle. 

But for me, struggling is good.

It’s stupid, but it’s true. I don't like to struggle, and so I do everything I can to not struggle the next time through. I knew I needed to work on my craft (and oh boy, I am not saying I'm 'there' yet). I knew my grammar and storytelling had some issues. I worked. And I started to realize that the project I was working on was not going to cut it with anything shy of a full rewrite. When you find yourself with your back against the wall, the truth will out. With a pile of rejections at my feet, I was able to look at my writing in a new way, and to realize something very important:

I might never be published.

Seriously, I could write awesome stories and through the world’s crummiest set of luck--poor timing, bad ideas, wrong market, not the greatest writing, never finding the right agent, never selling a book, you name it—I could really and truly never be published. It became a real possibility for me.

Before that moment, I’d sort of taken it for granted that given enough time and effort, I could open any door on the planet, and publishing just had a tricky lock. But with my stack of rejections, the other option looked startlingly real.

I guess here is where I should say something like, “No, I haven’t given up. I haven’t even given up on the project that brought this home for me. I’m still writing, and I’m still going to try to get published.” So there’s no need to send in a rescue mission full of chocolate and red wine—I’m okay, I’m just sharing (probably too much, as usual).

In that place where I faced the cold reality that luck, completely beyond my control, is part of the road to traditional publication, I took a step back and looked at what I was writing. I wrote a book I was just sure would take off like a rocket. I wrote it in a way I thought an editor would like. I put it in third person because I thought that’s how the more serious stories are told. That’s “how it’s done” so that’s how I did it. I should have known better. For years I’ve been writing stories to please editors. I have nearly thirty little stories that have, in one way or another, been through the hands of an editor, and not one of those stories has ever pleased the people I’d written them for. Not once has an editor said “Wow, I can see that you wrote this for me, so I’m going to buy it because I’m sure there are tons of other editors out there and they’d like to read this story too.”

Not once. Not ever.

Staring down the barrel of maybe never finding my name in print—at least when it wasn’t right under a title like “Heterogenous alteration of Allende CAIs, constrain parent body alteration conditions,” a real bestseller there, I tell you—I realized I’d been writing everything all wrong. I had a moment where I said to myself, “Well, if I’m never going to be published, then I have a simple choice: I can give up now, or I can write for me.”

And something happened: I found my voice. I’d been suppressing it for years because I thought that the luminaries of publishing would frown on my down and dirty telling it like it is, laugh in the face of tragedy, and flip the bird to any asshole who tells you you're not good enough. My sarcastic tongue could be better put to quoting Hemingway, or at least Silverberg. Wouldn’t my tributes to Frank Herbert at least catch the eyes of the serious editors and agents?

It’s one of life’s most basic lessons, and I continue to ignore it at every opportunity. Do things for you, not for other people. You can sing till you’re blue, but until you sing for yourself you’ll never have anything worth listening to. Writing is no different. I went back through some of my old work and the parts my old crit partners loved were always the places where I let my voice through. Those moments were usually only for a line or two because I had some “serious” writing I needed to do, but every time the me in my writing snuck through, everyone wanted more.

And here’s where things get interesting. So, I’ve started writing for just me, and that means I’ve now alienated some people. Not everyone wants down and dirty, tell it like it is (with a side of humor). There are plenty of people who want the world wrapped in pink tissue paper and carried in a nice little gift bag. I wrote like vanilla ice cream to please as many people as possible, but let’s be honest, I’ve always been a bit more pralines and cream (you know, a tasty blend, with some rough edges).

I know agents and editors always go on about voice, but it really is just that simple: Voice is you. It is the only bit of you your novel really gets to have. The story you’re writing? someone has already written a version of it, probably a couple hundred times. The words you’re using? Those are someone else’s too (unless you’re a word forger, but chances are one of the other 1.6 billion English speakers has come up with it once or twice already). It’s kind of like a building—yes, this is the cheesy analogy to writing—we’ve already made a ton of buildings; mostly buildings are put together with a standard set of building materials: nails, screws, bolts boards, metal I beams, etc.; but every building that is well designed is different. That’s voice. It’s the difference between the Guggenheim and your next door neighbor’s house.

Guggenheim, see, it's all pretty and different.

Possibly your neighbor's house.

The difference is Voice.

The book I shouldn't be writing

Oh, I can almost hear the internet grown under the weight of yet another writer posting about their process/journey.

I started writing a book. Then because it wasn't working out, I sort of waffled around and stopped. Yeah, I know real original, right? Well it happens to everyone. I posted a little while back on why my projects stall out, and by rights, that should be that, right? Write the book or move on. But for some reason neither answer seemed to work for me. I really felt like I had this book buried in me, somewhere.

I needed to read about ten books before I wrote it (seriously, there’s been some awesome writing in this category in the past, and I don’t want to walk on people’s toes). You’d think that I’d put those ten books right at the top of my list, but nope, I've just procrastinated away. I thought maybe it was because I wasn't getting it, or that I couldn't do military science fiction any more. Then it hit me, those books were exactly the kind of book I don't write: deep, dark, serious, heavy on the science, and all about the trials of war.

Now, considering that I was planning to also write a book about war, it’s a genre I should be cool with. And at some point I was, but nowadays, I need my horror of war mixed liberally with a side of ironic humor. Which is my problem. I loved the concept of the deep, poetic, novel about the choices given to the lowest class of citizen (rogue AI) in the time of interstellar war to determine the continued existence of humanity. It was going to be about sacrifice and finding our places in the universe (even if you are a rogue AI based off the memories of a teenage girl).

Turns out, I’m not that deep.

I couldn’t stand writing from the angsty position of the downtrodden AI. There wasn’t enough conflict. There was no humor. Now, it might come as a shock, but I think humor is the way to go. When my family comes into crisis, it’s like the world stops turning. Then out of the darkness, someone cracks a joke, and we can somehow move on. It’s a thing of magic, the strength of humor. There we all are, thinking the worst thoughts, paralyzed by the sheer tragedy of the situation, and then someone kicks it out into the realm of funny. That’s the moment everyone talks about, laugh or cry. My family has always laughed, sometimes while we’re still crying, but we always laugh. So I need humor.

And as such I’ve started a new project. It should be about the strength of humor and how it saves lives and brings us to a new understanding of our place in the universe. My novel should be about the strength and perseverance of the human race in the face of certain tragedy.

But I’m still not that deep.

This is the semester I plan to defend my big, serious, deep dissertation of doom. I need something a little less “greatness of humanity” and a bit more Sailor Moon with a box of bon bons. So here it is, I’m announcing my newest Work In Progress:

Midlife Super Crisis

It’s knights of the round table meet Green Lanterns (minus the smurfs) plus one sleep-deprived mother of two. As soon as she gets the kids to bed, it’s time to save the multiverse.

Do I think this is salable? Oh hell no. Do I care? Nope. See, I know about the zeit geist, and I’m telling you, this concept—the whole middle aged person finally coming into their superpowers—is about to sweep through the world, so I already know it’s doomed as a project. I’m cool with that, and it takes the pressure off (and I really have enough pressure with the whole Pass This Exam or Leave In Shame thing coming up). Writing for fun is supposed to make me a better person (read: better writer). Besides, writing it is like dipping chocolate in chocolate, then chasing it with chocolate and red wine. Guilty pleasure.

Mmmm chocolate…