Queries are more fun than usual, IWSG

After a lengthy hiatus, I've returned to the world of querying agents. I have to admit, I did not miss all the anxiety and crazy feels I get when I'm querying. I hate that I'll attempt to tweet something, you know, to interact with an agent then fret over the interaction for hours. I hate that feeling of "Whelp, now that agent thinks I'm a crazy person, auto reject in 3... 2... 1..."

Generally, that doesn't happen, but the feel is there.

The funny thing is that I didn't worry about these things when I wasn't querying. I interacted with agents (various reasons) while not querying, and it was amazing. I didn't worry about how my emails sounded (other than sounding professional, but not written by a robot), and amazingly, finding agent email in my inbox didn't fill me with one part hope and three parts demon riddled anxiety. They were normal emails saying they could or could not do a thing.

My point is that all the insecurity I've been feeling lately is wondering if an agent will love my work. After publishing, I thought I had crossed some magical landscape and found myself in the valley of self confidence. Alas, that wasn't the case. Even as I'm getting super good news, I'm still struggling to feel confident in my work.

When I was first starting out, I didn't have much feedback for my work. Now I have reviews for published works to give myself a counterpoint to the inevitable rejection, but the last time I queried, I didn't have that, so I wanted to offer up some quick thoughts.

I have hundreds of requests for a sequel to my book. People FB me all the time and ask if it's going to be a thing, and I still get down about rejections.

In short, anytime you put yourself up in a situation where someone could reject you or your work, it's going to mess with your head. Your writing is probably good, maybe even great, you just haven't found your lobster. That doesn't make you a bad writer, that makes your work not what those agents are looking for right now.

Okay, I could talk about this for a very long time, but I want to know how people manage to handle the feels that come with querying. I art. (yes, I verbified it).

Also be sure to stop by the Ninja Captain Alex, and to thank this month's Cohosts: Christopher D. Votey,Madeline Mora-Summonte, Fundy Blue, and Chrys Fey!

Doubt Colored Glasses: An Insecure Writer's Support Group

Oh Insecure Writer’s Support Group, you’ve taught me things. When I first started down this journey, I was so very jealous. I was trading manuscripts with people and our work seemed to be on par. Then, very quickly, those people all got agents. Then they got book deals. They were suddenly the shit, and I was twiddling my thumbs (if you count writing five more books twiddling).

I was so jealous of those people. I assaulted myself with all the feels because I couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand my own jealousy. I let myself think the terrible thoughts: I’m not good enough. I’m completely delusional about my talent. The world is out to get me. It really is about who you know. I thought those things and more, my jealousy festering inside me. It was dark, but those times were tinged with another darkness that had nothing to do with writing. Doubt fogged every pair of glasses I used to view the world.

I went on to publish my first book, and I’ve written about how I didn’t think it was a really real success. In fact, it’s been the problem all along. I can see the success of others, but never my own. I think that all the success I receive is part of some participation award, and everyone else was living the highlife. Better published, better written, better agented. Everyone seemed to be posting their Agent call, or their call with their editors—somehow, all of my success came with an email, never a phone call. Was I defective? How come my success looked different? That’s right, because my success wasn’t really success at all.

Then, publishing turned, as it always does, and those people I was jealous of started to be ground under the wheel of publishing. I had thought those people had made it. I’d thought their dreams were coming true. And for many of them, it did. But for others, Publishing did the thing publishing does, it moved on. Agents left. Books died in editing. One of those people had a whole writing career—agent, books, big promo—and then said peace out and deleted all of her social media profiles. She no longer publishes. (Odd side note, there are three people who fit this description, five if you relax the circumstances a tad to just let those sites go dormant).

Which is to say, Publishing is hard. It takes people’s dreams and destroys them on occasion. I don’t see their paths as successes anymore. It must be hard to get an agent and then lose an agent in the span of a couple months. I know more than one person whose book died in editing at a major house—these are the stuff of nightmare—but I coveted their place and success because I have always had a hard time seeing other paths as successes.

It’s been hard to learn to look through my doubt colored glasses and see the world. There’s more ways to success, and it’s important to remember that what looks like success on the outside might actually be a complete pile of dog poo on the inside. Doubt changes what you see in others and yourselves.

Be sure to visit the Ninja Captain, Alex and to thank this month's Co-hosts: Tamara Narayan,Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson!

Happy Writing, everyone. (Psst, did you know next month is A to Z??? Where has the time gone!)

The Envelope Please: Son of a Pitch

Now it’s time for my votes.

I can’t even begin to tell you guys how hard this was to choose. I read through every pitch and there were 12 that based on the query and first page, I would have bought the book, so Go forth and get published so I CAN buy your book! There were more books that were just *this* close to being ready to go. Guys, I’m serious, you have to polish the spirit gum out of those manuscripts (note, though, if you aren’t one of my picks, that doesn’t mean you need to go through your manuscript—THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE POLISH!). If I didn’t pick yours, it’s not that it wasn’t super awesome, but I only get five slots. It’s like being in a book store that only takes cash and only having a twenty. This was brutally hard to pick. The writing was amazing, the concepts: awesome.

It has been an honor to host and participate, and I really don’t like that right now, people are scrolling through and being disappointed that they weren’t my top five. I feel you. I’ve been in your shoes. My only hope is that you got good feedback on your query and your first 250 and that you can now move forward to make your writing better and even more amazing than it was before. Good luck out there, and keep your chins up! Publishing is a rough business.

And now my picks, in no particular order:

Virtual Space: I picked this one because I loved the concept and the writing. LOVED. I really enjoyed all the numbers in it. They made me laugh because I do stuff like that.

On The Edge: Oh, I love me some figure skating/hockey player drama! I loved the concept because, among other things, it reminds me of some of my favorite themes that come up around the rink.

The Bookshop: I love this concept so hard, and the writing made me so sad when I got to the end of the words. I wanted more words!

Light Witch: I loved the premise and the writing blew me away. I loved the protag the moment he started sneaking out.

Scales: I loved this one because I seem to really fall for the slacker turns it around and starts putting in the effort stories. And then the writing was really strong too! Ah, love!

So there you have it, my five picks. The biggest thing I can think to say after this is that it’s pretty clear I picked stuff that sort of got under my skin. There were other pitches that were amazing, maybe even better, but these ones had me thinking about them long afterwards. Good luck to everyone, and I want to hear from you guys in the future. Please let me know what happens with you and your books! May the Force Be With You! 

Welcome to Son of a Pitch! #TeamRebels

Welcome to my blog! This week, I’m happy to host some writers and their queries. For those of you new to Son of A Pitch, the only people who should be commenting on these posts are the approved judges and the author of the piece. All other comments will be deleted by me. (don’t make me do it!)

Other than that, look around, read some entries and have fun.

#TeamRebels

Revise and Resubmit

I have a lot of hard feelings on revise and resubmit. I had a book that everyone thought they could rehabilitate into the book they wanted. Alas. This never worked out. Many times tried. Many times failed. Many near misses.

As you might imagine, enough tries and fails makes me think this is a classic case of me not being good enough. They keep giving me a chance, and I keep not being enough. I don’t know if you guys have gone out and read what agents and editors look for, but they want you to be able to make magic with a revise and resubmit. Agents talk about how they want to be surprised in a revise and resubmit. They want the book to go someplace magical.

They want magic.

Right, so I have tried slavishly doing the things I thought were asked. Close, but not enough.

I have tried taking a new direction (as suggested). Oh, that changed the story in a way we didn't like.

I’ve tried fluffing up the world building. I’ve tried cutting out the world building.

I drew the line at completely rewriting a story to take all of the important parts of the character out.

Since they all ended in various shades of “nope,” I’m sure you can imagine that at this point, I think it’s me who sucks at revisions. Here I am with another revise and resubmit, and all I can think is “NO! Please, please, please! I want this one to work.” I’m riddled with doubt and insecurity. I want this one. But I had wanted the other one, too. I’m really worried that I’m the one the agents talk about when they say “I don’t want to work with someone who can’t take direction.” Because I worked REALLY HARD on those other revise and resubmits (I rewrote 75 of the 90,000 words for one of them), and it was still, somehow not what they were hoping for.

But what else can I do? And I really agree with this one. It really resonates with me, as they say. Oh boy. fingers crossed.

That’s my insecurity quotient for the day. Have some art:

Watercolor brush pens on watercolor paper. ©Rena Rocford

As with every IWSG, be sure to go jump on the link and hop around. Thank our cohosts,  Misha Gericke, LK Hill, Juneta Key, Christy and Joylene Buter and most definitely thank Ninja Captain Alex for hosting an awesome idea for so many years. 

The Face of the Resistance

Life is sometimes really hard. I’ve been in what can best be called a rough patch for the last few weeks, and no I don’t plan to talk about it here. But I will say that for me, when things get too hard, I revert to art.

When my master’s degree started to kick me in the pants, I wrote a novel. When my defense came and there was nothing else that could be done--I was literally just waiting for the day to arrive--I started painting again. I hadn’t painted since high school.

After these bursts of art, I always “settle back down” again—as if the pursuit of art is some sort of uppity, agitated state. As if the act of expressing ourselves is somehow a threat to the establishment.

One of my coworkers was looking at my art and asked me “why do you work here?”

Good question (more on how I like to live in a nice home and having electricity and heat at the bottom). It made me think, What does the world gain by me toeing the line and coming into my day job day after day? What would I do if I weren’t going to work all the time? Well, the last time I wasn’t going into work, I wrote two novels in just a couple months. I advanced my craft in writing and I took up dancing. When I started working again, I didn’t write as much and I’ve almost completely stopped dancing.

I stopped making art. I stopped doing the things I wanted to do to make sure I could do the things I HAD to do. Imagine if I’d stayed in that heightened state of making art? I’d have ~10 more novels. I’d have too many paintings to even fit in my house (well, I already do). At this point, I’d probably be making real money with my art. Probably not enough to live on alone, but there’s a potential. It makes me wistful to think of that life free of having to do the daily grind.

Free of the daily grind. Ah, there it is.

Then it dawned on me: art is a form of resistance. It is a threat to the establishment. If enough people make art and make art a way of life, it disrupts the drudgery work required for the oligarchy to function. The rich men in the world don’t need art. They need someone making their stuff that they sell to other people for double the price. They need the middle men. They need art to not compete with the products they sell, that they tell us we need in order to live the lives that they tell us we need to live. They don’t want you spending your money on that cute dragon you saw on etsy. They want you to buy the products out of the big box stores, the ones that are made overseas by the thousands and cost them pennies on the dollar.

Art is a threat.

Let that seep into your brain for a second. Art is the threat in the world of oligarchy. Art is the resistance.

Welcome to the resistance:

And about paying the bills: You have to do what you have to do. In general, there’s room for doing the things that make you feel alive. I have a day job, and it’s not something I’m giving up anytime soon for reasons of practicality. But just because I’m working a 9 to 5 (or more specifically, a 6 to 5), doesn’t mean I can’t be dedicated to making art as well. Do the things that bring you joy. That saying about the only real revenge is to live well? That’s the truth. 

Fill the box

Art has this funny way of being really hard on beginners. I think most people have heard the quote from Ira Glass about how a lot of artists get into the creative business but drop out when what we envision isn’t something we can manifest into reality. This is the most frustrating thing.

With drawings, if you take every sketch you’ve made, and you put it in a box, once you’ve filled the box, you’ll have improved your drawing skills. It’s simple, the more sketches you do, the better you will be at making sketches.

On some levels, we think this should work for writing, but it isn’t that simple. With visual arts, it’s sometimes easier to judge it because you have this sort of third eye in your mind. You can see it in your mind and compare it to the thing you make in reality. When you start making the paintings look the way they look in your mind, you know you’re close. But how do you do that with a novel?

 Encompassing an entire novel in your mind isn’t an easy thing to do. There are parts, ideas, feels, but the whole thing? Not so much. With a sketch, the whole thing can be judged in one moment, but it takes hours to read a novel. Even though they don’t compare to paintings or drawings, one thing remains the same: the more novels you write, the better you will be at writing novels.

Does this make them good? Being competent at an art form does not make a person good at it. For instance, I’ve been watching Bob Ross painting shows. That man is amazing at how he takes shapes and boils them down quickly into things that can be put together into a painting. He’s got composition, and the colors go together very nicely. I have enough craft that I could probably reproduce his tutorial pieces by following along and being stubborn.

I could do that with novels, too.

I could (and have!) sit and diagram out my favorite novels. I’ve studied the way the plot unfolds, the way the characters are presented, and I could reproduce them if I were to go painstakingly through them. Bit by bit they could be remade. But you know what that makes? It makes a sort of puppet novel.

And that’s why paint by numbers offends some people. You can do what Brandon Sanderson calls the cook method, “Oh, I need a mentor and he needs to die so the main character can grow his wings and fly.” Those are perfectly acceptable forms of novels. Some of them even do very well, but if you’re in writing because you had a vision about the kinds of stories you wanted to tell, making your book according to a recipe isn’t going to work out.

Which brings us to the problem of going from competent to great. I am certain that anyone with enough dedication can reproduce something they love in the same way that a photograph reproduces the view from the top of half dome. But the view just doesn’t compare to the way the wind slips up the cliff like it’s going to suck you off into the void. I doubt the photograph makes you feel as if your life is in danger by standing on that razor edge between two feet firmly on the ground and the better part of mile drop to the valley below. The picture is beautiful, but being there will change your soul.

With novels it’s harder to know if we’ve lost someone in the woods, or the path took a wrong turn until we’ve gotten to the end of the novel and had others read it. They didn’t get to the mountain top, or they felt like it was more of a mole hill. Always so vexing when our vision isn’t understood, but those attempts have given us something. At least the reader felt the rise. Maybe they saw bits of the view between the forest of melodramatic metaphor (such as this bit here). The point is, you have to put in the effort. You have to fill the boxes with your art.

Oh but Rena, my best friends, sister’s ex-girlfriend wrote her first and only book and it sold a bajillion copies. She had ten agents offer her representation—the only ten agents she sent her query letter to!—and she now lives in Scotland with a castle and a staff to see to her mandatory hiking breaks.

Wow. Welp, that’s super awesome for your best friend’s sister’s ex-girlfriend, but I also heard about this guy who got struck by lightning 19 times. I don’t use that as a reason to assume the first rumble of thunder is going to nail me in the back of the head (though, to be clear, I definitely practice lightning safety as I am a coward!). My point is, yes, some people are really lucky and everything falls into place perfectly. For the rest of us mere mortals, the way to making the art we envision is through practice.

You will have to write more than you ever dreamed, and before you think about how you’re done with that nicely polished novel and its three major edits, just wait until you get an editor and they ask you to rewrite most of the end… and most of the beginning… and maybe we could do something different with that middle bit?—but that’s a discussion for another day.

It's Friday the 13th, and there's nothing scarier than politics

If you’ve been paying attention to US politics, you know the US is currently pretty strongly divided. I don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that our marginalized people—the artists, the LGBT, the disabled, the children, the freelancers and entrepreneurs—are going to suffer under this administration.

I am a very lucky person. I currently have my health and a full time job. My full time job is something I don’t talk about because most of it is confidential in nature, so it doesn’t come up. My job is largely underpaid, but it comes with my favorite feature: healthcare. It comes with healthcare for myself and my family (to the tune of ~500 a month out of my pocket). Until I meet my deductable (500!) I have to pay everything out of pocket. I went to the doctor for pink eye (that I got from my job, no less), and it cost me $100 to speak to the physician for 5 minutes before he gave me a prescription and sent me on my way.

I don’t tell this story because I think people want to know the perks of my job. I’m telling this story because that’s what it costs to treat pink eye. Conjunctivitis. This was at the local, rural health clinic. When a kid goes to school and they have pink eye, they get sent home.

Right now, with the ACA is still going (they have voted to repeal it, but it will still take time to trickle down to the home front as it were; besides, people already paid their January premiums), so many people have coverage, specifically the working poor. I’m talking about your nearly full time employees of Walmart, McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc. These people are supporting their families, their sick spouses, their three kids from a traditional marriage. Very soon, when their kids get sick, they won’t have health insurance. Very soon, when their kid gets sent home with pink eye, they will be looking at a $100 doctor’s visit plus the $35 dollars to get the drops (and the time off work to take care of their kid who can’t go to day care because they have a highly contagious disease).

A bit of math, if you’ll hear me out. So this person makes minimum wage and works, oh, let’s say 30 hours a week (because 32 hours and their employer would have to provide health coverage), so they are making 300 dollars a week. If this is in my home town and they have a one bedroom apartment, that means 800 dollars is going just to rent. Let’s say this person is super frugal and is able to feed their family on 200 dollars a month. That means there’s only 200 dollars left for EVERYTHING ELSE: electricity, car, gasoline, clothes, toilet paper, diapers if there’s a baby, babysitting/child care costs. And they have to come up with $100 to take the kid to the doctor and the school won’t let the kid come back to school until they’ve been to the doctor.

Before anyone tells me these people, these working poor, don’t exist, let me assure you all that they do. My entire job is going through the earnings of people who have applied for medical aid, temporary aid for needy families, and food stamps. Yes, I am an eligibility worker, and I have yet to meet a welfare queen, but I’ve met plenty of people working multiple jobs who don’t have coverage for themselves or their children through their work. And before anyone tells me “but wait, they qualify for food stamps!” that’s not how it works. Food stamps is a supplemental program based on income, which means, the more they earn, the less food stamps they get. I picked a 1200 a month job on purpose. If this person has one kid and 1200 a month in income, they are going to qualify for roughly 50 bucks of foodstamps. Sure, it’ll help, but not much. With the repeal of the ACA, those margins for people receiving medical assistance gets even smaller. Fewer people will qualify, including people making about 1200 a month. For real, if you are making minimum wage and not quite working full time, you do not qualify for state based medical assistance.

Or my personal favorite, you have two part time jobs and you work a total of 50 hours a week. Neither job provides you with health coverage, and you now make enough money that No One in your family qualifies for medical assistance from the state.

These are the people who will not be covered now that the ACA is gone. People who are working their butts off. People who are crushed between just trying to make ends meet, doing the right thing and being told on every side that they are the lazy ones destroying the system.

Without health coverage, more children will be sent home from school for contagious diseases and not go to the doctor. The parents will wait a couple days and send the kid back to school, infection still raging and still contagious.

Children will not be treated because it is too expensive. Children will die.

Children.

They didn’t ask to be born into a poor family. Literally, their only crime is that they came from a family who was too poor. That’s it.

We, the citizens of the United States live in an oligarchy, and we are too stupid to realize it. The insurance companies wanted out of the ACA because they weren’t making enough profit. Not that they weren’t making profit, but that they weren’t making ENOUGH profit.

And children will die from this because their parents can’t afford to take them to the doctor.

Children.

I am so upset, I don’t even have words. More on that soon.

I'm waiting for Vicini: an IWSG post

Wow, it’s been four long years since I started Insecure Writer’s Support Group---wait, hold on, I can’t count. It’s been FIVE YEARS!

Five Years.

It seems impossible that so much time could have passed since I decided to jump in on these Insecure Writer’s Support Group. When I started on this journey, I imagined I’d be farther along by now. Little did I know, publishing is VERY slow.

Did I mention slow? Glacial would be more accurate.

It takes forever to hear back from agents. Then it takes forever to hear back from acquisitions. Then it takes forever to hear back from editors. Always the waiting. When I remind myself of how much time I spent just waiting to hear back, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s taken me this long to get a book out into the world.

So, if I could give any new writer one piece of advice, it would be to not wait. Write more, wait less.

That doesn’t mean skip directly to self publishing—that can take a long time too! What I mean is that while you’re waiting for responses, don’t just sit on your thumbs. Get back to the writing, it is the only thing that will help your career as a writer that you can actively work on while you are waiting. #LearnFromMyFail

Don’t forget to visit the Ninja Captain, Alex, and this month’s co-hosts: Eva @ Lillicasplace,Crystal Collier, Sheena-kay Graham, Chemist Ken, LG Keltner, and Heather Gardner!

Status Update, just like the last status update: Life after contract

Yet another reason writers tend to fall off the radar is that it takes a long time to write a book.

And for the whole time we're writing, we are painfully aware that most of the book doesn't exist yet. The problem with that is it's rude to talk about something that literally no one else can share in. I can talk about it sure, but it ranks on the same boring scale as people telling you about what they dreamed about last night. Some people will find it interesting, or they might find parts of it interesting because they like you and are interested in what your dreams tell them about you, but otherwise? Nope, not really the stuff of riveting conversation

Sadly, the same is true of a book that isn't even a book yet. In fact, in some circles, it's considered rude to talk about unwritten novels. No one can even read it. There's no use in pitching it because it doesn't exist yet. There's no use in talking about the plot because, well, that could change dramatically too.

And yet, there's this ongoing need to do a sort of check in.

Many writers move to the talking about word count, or the "wrote a great scene" sorts of posts, but those aren't exactly the stuff of legends either. So there's the writer, a book in their mind, a blog full of blank pages and they've already talked about the--still imaginary!--book enough to push the boundaries of politeness.

Which brings me rather nicely to a status update:

Everything is uncertain in a writer's life. I currently have one novella that is in production. Everything else is in various states of maybe or not finished. I'm waiting to hear back on one novel. I'm finishing up edits on a rough draft to send off to my early readers. I'm plotting the rest of a rough draft for a novel in a completely different world. And I'm researching self publishing and if I want to go that route with one of my books.

Which is a guarantee of exactly nothing (another reason writers tend to clam up). It looks like I have a lot going on writing wise, but it could literally pan out to nothing (except the self publishing bit). And every time a writer finishes up a book, that's where it might be headed. All that work, seemingly for naught.

Life Goal Met! Now what do I do? Life after contract

This post is pulling double duty as a continuation of my Life After Contract Series, and Insecure Writer’s Support Group. So pop on over and say Hi to Alex, and give a big hand to this month's co-hosts: Jennifer Hawes,Jen Chandler, Nick Wilford, Juneta Key, JH Moncrieff, Diane Burton, and MJ Fifield!

Sometimes writers talk about how the first half million words suck. Yeah, that was me. I was well past that mark before agents and publishers started requesting partials. All of those early requests landed in the rejection pile.

My most recent break in writing lasted until the summer of 2009. I hit September and started writing like a woman possessed. Over the next 18 months I wrote over 350,000 words, all of it crap. I spent the next six months after that writing another novel, so two full years in. Then, a year after that (!!!) I got my first partial request. It came back a week later as a form letter rejection.

As you can imagine three full years of busting buns to get a thing going, and the best I had to show for it was ONE partial request. Ouch doesn’t begin to cover the moment when I started questioning my life choices. And, as a side note, writing was not the thing I was doing for my daily bread. Writing was a major sacrifice for me and my family. I had believed in it—believed in me!—and all I had at that point was a partial and a quick rejection.

Yeah, things were dark, so I did the thing that many writers do: I picked a different goal. I stepped back from my writing and asked myself “What would be worth it? What would be worth all of this sacrifice?”

Fame?

Well, to be clear, fame has its own problems, and I’m just not interested in playing that game.

Fortune?

Well, pretty much no one makes a fortune in books (which reminds me of a joke: Wanna know how to make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a big fortune). Okay, so money isn’t on its way.

So if fame and fortune aren’t goals that I can work towards, then what is the goal?

After much soul searching on the Do I cut bait and run or do I stick this out scale, I came up with another reason to write stories. I wanted to write stories so that other people, people who found them could know that they are not alone. Specifically, I wanted people to be able to read my books, identify with something or someone inside the book and think “I’m not the only one.” Because, honestly, I was very lonely growing up, and books were my salvation. So I chose that. I told myself that if just one person could ever have that feeling after reading my book, I was good with the effort I put into it. That thought carried me through years of rejections and hope and revisions, it was what kept me from diving into my writer’s cave to never come out. I could always write and not share it with the world. But I held the hope of sharing the light of not being alone in this great big universe with someone else, someone I would never meet, through my books.

And then my book came out into the world, and someone said that reading my book made them feel less alone—on the very first day! A complete stranger no less!

That’s right, life goal met on day one. Now what?

And there was this mad scramble in my mind because I had never prepared for success. Not once, not ever. There were plans and contingencies for failure. Failure I knew how to handle, but this unqualified success, this light in the darkness thing? What was I supposed to do with that?

There’s a StarTrek saying that’s confusing until you experience it: Having a thing is not so pleasing a thing as wanting a thing. It means that sometimes the pursuit of a goal is more fulfilling than have accomplished the goal. I know, pure insanity, but for me, the journey had become tied up with my identity as a writer.

And by having accomplished that thing, I fell into a sort of shock. Now what? I thought. I’d done the thing. I’d managed the impossible. Now I needed a new dream, and I hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to the other dream. It caused some major discord in my life to have my identity stripped from me by success. I’d failed so much that not failing had become out of character.

How about you? Did you ever accomplish something big and have that moment where you’re looking around for the things that define you?

One Year Later

It's sort of insane to write this, but one year ago, my first book was unleashed on the world.

Like Wow. I don't even have words. That statement feels simultaneously long ago in a galaxy far away, and like it happened just a couple days ago. And it's still such an honor to have my work out in the world, and supported by the amazing people at Curiosity Quills. I am amazed and humbled by the reception my book has received. Fan mail and reviews, all of it has been amazing, and I count myself lucky to have connected with some many wonderful people along the way.


The thing I get asked the most is: "When is the sequel coming out?" Coincidentally, this is the biggest compliment anyone can give a writer, to express excitement about future work. Thank you all for making the last year unbelievable!

(And yes, there is a sequel in the works!)







(Also, you can buy the book here or here if you don't already have a copy!)

The least life could do is Wave as it passes: an IWSG

Yeah, publishing takes forever. For those of you who are very patient, this might work well for you. For those of you who are not patient (like me), publishing in all its forms will drive a writer to fits of the crazies. Publishers can go months at a time without any word. Agents? Just as long. I’ve had a project that sat in someone’s in box for nine months before being read and have a revise and resubmit requested.

Then the project sat for another six months. UGH!

And during that time, we writers are constantly aware of the fact that the market is shifting. The readers are leaving (or if you write YA, Growing UP!) And pretty much each tick of the clock might as well be the death knell of your writing career. Projects that were awesome a year ago, two years ago, four years ago—well, they aren’t awesome anymore.

I’ve watched this. The only condolence I can give is that while we’re watching the clock tick by, some things will cycle back around. People couldn’t give away paranormal romance a few years ago, and now I’m starting to see those move (slowly, but WAY more than the nothing from two years ago).

So that’s the first advice—it all comes in cycles.

Dystopians were huge. Now they’re dead. Everyone expected Sci Fi to take off, it’s still very hit or miss. And largely, YA fiction has this feeling that if it could just find the thing that got people excited again… Alas. No new Harry Potters (did you read Cursed Child too?). No new Katniss Everdeen. And it’s not like there aren’t Amazing books out there, it’s just that they aren’t getting traction.

And then there’s the feeling that no matter what the category or genre, I’m missing the boat. It’s a really hard feeling to shake. I’ve been sitting on a novel that needed a few edits before it would be ready for submission for months. I needed to write a different book first because the two tie in, but months. I’ve been waiting for months, and it’s still not ready. Even if it was ready tomorrow, I’d have to wait more months before I got any sort of word. RRRRRRGH! So yeah, sometimes, when I’m in the middle of the publishing cycle, I get caught up in how slow I’m going and how fast the rest of the world is going. I’ve got no good answers, but I can say this: never turn in shoddy work.

Ever.

Ask for more deadline time. Figure something out—bribe people. Nothing but your best will suffice later when you look back at your works. Nothing.

Now, off to go turn in a lousy start to NaNoWriMo (I think I participate so I can watch myself fall behind).

Don't forget to visit ninja captain Alex, hop on the linky, and say hi to the cohosts: Joylene Novell Butler, Jen Chandler, Mary Aalgaard, Lisa Buie Collard, Tamara Narayan, Tyrean Martinson, and Christine Rains!

I used to be a writer like you, but then I took a contract to the knee

I know I’ve sort of already talked about how the time for writing shrivels up as soon as you sign a contract, so people stop writing on their blogs, but life after contract can really mess with your ability to produce words of all kinds.

And when the words don’t come, a writer doesn’t feel like a writer. All over the internet—right now—there are memes that basically say you’re only a writer if you write EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! I know, that’s sort of a gold standard, but it’s also, for some of us, completely impossible. I simply cannot write every single day. I work 10 hour shifts, ride herd on a child reluctant to eat dinner/brush hair/teeth/do homework/clean her room, cook the foods, and other wise do all the things that make a normal house a normal house.

So yeah, sometimes, I don’t have any words at the end of a day—after all, I can only throw hot dogs at my daughter for dinner so many nights in a row. It happens. But the world is busy stuffing this idea that only true writers—writers who really deserve success—are even capable of writing every day. It’s as if I’m only a really real writer if I punish myself by toiling on my novel every single day. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s a word for that—insane. Because that’s what I’ll be if I write at the end of every day.

And this impossibility adds to the impostor syndrome many writers are already feeling because not only is the editor “just being nice” but now I can’t even manage to write every day? Total fake.

Oh, but there’s more (there’s always more). When I do have time to write, instead of running off into the sunset capturing some new novel, all that “free time” is now shoveled into editing that novel that just got the contract.

And editing is something of a shock initially. Every comment from the editor (you know, the one just being nice?) feels like a personal attack. So not only are the words not coming, there’s independent confirmation that all the words you ever made sucked. It all confirms the self fulfilling prophecy of mediocrity.

This, to some extent happened to me to the point that I haven’t finished a new novel in two and a half years. I’m hopeful to finish a rough draft real soon, but this is a big reason why writers with newly minted books seem to dry up and blow away with the dust.

In truth, like all things in publishing, it’s different for everyone. Good luck, and keep your chin up (it’s easier to breathe when the water is closing in over you if you keep your chin up).

Being my own third wheel: The Bio

Welcome back to my weekly series about Life After the Contract where I talk about the things that happen after you have a contract that largely go untalked about. Last week I talked about how as soon as a contract exists you need a bazillion things previously not needed, causing a huge emergency time rush. One of the most agonizing things is the biography.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t mind talking about myself. In fact, I tend to think of myself as a key eyewitness in my life. Perhaps my deductions into the reasoning behind certain actions are somewhat amateurish leading to the occasional emotional outburst (hey, if I were a professional, I’d be able to channel that stuff properly), but otherwise, I’m something of an expert.

But once there is a needed to describe myself to other people as though it isn’t me doing the describing… let’s just say it got interesting. Oh, and did I mention that I basically needed it yesterday?

In a nutshell, the bio has to tell the world who you are, why anyone should care, and what you’ve done. And you have a very short space to do it in. Oh, and did I mention that there are literally millions of people who have written bios, and no one is ever going to pick up your book base off your bio? But everyone knows that some people might pick up your book based off your bio, it just depends on if it can stand out (which is different for every person, because, you know, some people like Papyrus font and some people would like to burn Papyrus from every word processor).

And it’s traditionally done in third person.

I talk about myself as though I am not myself? Which sort of makes me feel like I should wear a sign along the lines of “Pay no attention to the writer behind the curtain. She is in no way biased about this bio currently being read.”

In short it makes me crazy to talk about myself like that. Worse, if a writer had been at all prepared—and as people will no doubt recall, I was not—this should already have been written. Which means a writer with contract in hand has a sudden need to talk about themselves as if they were someone else bragging about themselves and might potentially be suffering from the solid sting of embarrassingly knowing they should have done something sooner. This knowledge that you should have written it already REALLY give the imposter syndrome some nice material to work with. And, because you’re rushing, it’s not your best work. Which means, you might be pushing that imposter alarm a few more times. *sigh*

In short folks, learn from my fail.