Hope

First, a rant. My kindle broke. I've only had it for 5 weeks and it's done for. No idea why - it's stuck on some weird gray-shadowy-screen and won't turn on with no real explanation for why it would do that. I'm calling Amazon support ASAP, but waaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!! I've been taking notes on my ms and now they're LOST. Did I mention waaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!??

Okay, on to the actual post for the day: There are a lot of reasons to feel dejected during this game we call writing. There are even more when it comes to the business of publishing. A friend of mine, one that has been writing for several years and has submitted to agents and editors, has a non-fiction book published, and has lots of partial and full requests under his belt, announced this week that while he will write, he will no longer seek publication. It's just too heartbreaking. Sound familiar, anyone?

Sometimes, though, we feel hope. That's what I wish for you this weekend - to remember those moments of hope and move forward with whatever you're doing right now for your writing or journey toward publication. Think of all the things that writing brings to your life and that - while the business side is, well, yucky - becoming published would be the very bright light at the end of the tunnel. Here are some of my (erica's) reasons to feel hopeful about my future as an author:

-the feeling of "Wow, this is a great idea. I should make it into a book."
-getting past that dreaded 50-page mark and realizing I really am making a book out of it
-writing that last sentence and knowing I made a book out of it (even if there are hundreds of revisions coming up)
-having someone tell me that what I wrote made them happy
-the first partial request
-while editing, thinking "Holy cow, I really made that part better."
-and, of course, the constant dream of my big Oprah moment

(btw, I got a good review from the secret agent at Mother. Write. (Repeat.) Crossing fingers for the announcement of winners on Tuesday!)

when honesty is just plain mean

I'm not one to make waves.  Nor do I like confrontation.  I'm not a woman of many convictions and tend to be easily swayed by other's opinions.  I like to think of it as being open-minded.  BUT I'm often embarrassed that I'm not more opinionated.

HOWEVER,

sometimes opinionated, or rather, judgemental people are just MEAN.  What opinions and beliefs I do have, I tend to keep to myself.  Cowardly, definitely.  The MC in my contemporary YA novel is going through a simliar dilemma.  How to be true to herself by sticking up for herself by being herself.  And just not worrying whether somebody else will disagree or laugh at her or think she's ridiculous or stupid. 

One thing I admire about Taylor Swift is this:  Plenty of people make fun of her.  Her singing isn't good.  She sings off-key.  She's annoying.  BUT it doesn't stop her from being HONEST in her music and her songs.  She's naive and innocent and HONEST.  Her lyrics are from her heart, her real-life experiences and they hold messages for other young girls. 

She inspires me and my writing.  Her music helps my YA themes and protags.

I'm trying not to worry about what other people's opinions of me will be when they read my writing.  EVEN THOUGH IT SCARES THE S**T OUT OF ME. 

One example comes to mind. Stephenie Meyer is a very successful writer who is not at all well-respected.  I think even if I sold millions of copies of my novel and made an equal amount of money through the sale of books and films, I'd want to crawl in a hole and shrivel up if my supportive writing community bashed my writing, characters and story.  As I sit here and write my first two novels and plot a third, I just want them to be on a shelf one day and hope that a few people read them and enjoy them.  I'm sure that's all she hoped for.  I certainly never plan to be the next JK Rowling or Stephen King.  I doubt she did either.  Yet she's constantly compared.  And found waaaay lacking.  So far the writing community online has been AMAZING, but they seem to have turned on her.  Even if MANY writers dislike her writing, and all it consists of, WHY put her down so much? 

I hope by the time my 12th novel is written and stands a chance at an agent my writing will be stellar (and only because you, my writing friends, will have shown me the way) and I won't have to suffer quite the amount of criticism she has.  THAT SAID, I know there will ALWAYS be reviewers who dislike my work, my style, my characters, my pace, etc.  I KNOW harsh criticism will always be a part of my writing future and life in general.  I KNOW writers need to be thick-skinned.  I guess I was just thinking about it the other day and wondered if she wondered why so many people felt compelled to take the criticism of her work to such extremes.

THAT SAID,

I've sat at Mother. Write. Repeat.  (see yesterday's post for link!) for the past few hours and have become ADDICTED to reading the queries.  Critiques of the queries are posted online. I don't even comment because I have little confidence in myself as a critiquer.  I'm learning, though.  I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the queries along with the first pages.  The commenters have been honest and helpful and constructive.  AMAZING, like I said before.  Plus, the take of the agent is interesting!  Sometimes in line with the other commenters, and sometimes not. 

A few things I came a way with:


-There seems to be a new trend in starting a story with an accident of some sort (usually car).


-There are STILL some writers who want to start with that all-too intriguing dream scene.  ;0)


-An MC (especially females) need to be strong, smart, good role models (no damsel in distresses). 


This seems easy, I think, but often enough we may tend to play the weak card in the beginning so our MC can grow into the strong person hiding within them.  BE CAREFUL WITH THIS.  It may really turn an agent off to read weakness in your MC in the first page!  Don't make "weak" the character flaw your MC begins with.

I had totally planned for this to be a short post.  Sorry! (erica interjects - this is great, christy. erica's post tomorrow about mean people will be much worse. Or better. Or different (and completely unrelated). Something. :)

Why I could never be an agent

I (erica) tend to enter a lot of online contests with my query and first page and I've gotten a lot of good advice that way. Since I have a pretty thick skin (and can be critical myself, so I like that in my own reviewers), it works for me, especially while I'm working on my new WIP and not actively querying A New Day.

This week I was lucky enough to enter an "agent inbox" contest (I'm not sure if she calls it a contest, that's just my word) over at Mother. Write. (Repeat.) and so far, so good (I'm #24, btw). I've been told before that I should leave out the information about Lincoln's surgery off the query since it isn't important in the first half of the book, but I've left it in there so far - mostly for sentimental reasons since it's exactly that event that drove everything else in the book, but also because I don't want an agent to read my sweet romance book and suddenly think wth? sci-fi?? But um, yeah, in the comments poor Lincoln has had a sex change and is a probable CIA agent. Something's gotta' change...

And it also showed me (again) why I could never be an agent. I tried to read through all the queries, but it just didn't work for me. I tried, I really did. Now it's 8 hours later and I've done less than half of the 25. No fault to the writers AT ALL - they were all really good and I wish them the best of luck. It's me. I can't read more than one or two and then do something else. It's hard work, man! When I swore I would read 5 in a row without doing anything in between, I resembled this (and I only made it through 2):



(my eyes are blue, but otherwise exactly like this)

How about you? Could you do it? Is your dream job being an agent (or intern) and reading queries over and over and over and...? And what's the ruling on contests? You guys participate? Why or why not?

When Writing Becomes YOU

• You'll watch tv a lot less.
• The bookstore will become a wonderland.  You will walk to the section your genre is housed in and stare at a fixed spot on the shelf imagining what will happen the day your book sits there.  You imagine what you might say.  "Have you read this amazing book?"  or  "I.  Wrote.  That."  "I can sign that for you.  If you want."  Until someone who works there, or shops there, or cleans up after hours walks by to ask if you are okay.  Or need help.  Or need an escort out.
• Your kids will become a lot more independent.  Like your three year old might learn how to climb to the top shelf of the pantry to feed himself.  And his big brother.
• Your house will be hideous, but you won't care because you'll never invite anyone over.
• Nor will you go out.  Much.  You'll find excuses why you can't meet your friends after dinner.  Or after the kids are in bed. Or for coffee.  (Don't they know that you write BEST when the sun comes up?  Is highest in the sky?  Is setting?  Has disappeared?)
• You'll miss an exit off the highway because your mc just whispered the perfect line in your ear and you've just figured out how to move past the writing block in a scene and now you'll have twenty more minutes to imagine what happens next as you drive on and on and on to the next exit just to turn around and get to where you were supposed to be getting.
• Your best friends know your name and your characters' names and your plot, BUT NOT what you look like or what your voice sounds like or what your house looks like or what kind of clothes you wear or if you have an accent or bad acne or what you used to be like before writing took over your whole universe.  But they understand your innermost dreams and cheer you on and answer questions for you at one in the morning or noon or off and on for three hours at a time, and they read your work and tear it to shreds just to help you perfect it until it sparkles more than a vampire in full sun so you can fold it into a paper airplane and send it off....  And they will be there when you are rejected or accepted or not replied to.  They will never ever say, "Why aren't you published yet?"  or "Didn't you start that book two years ago?"
• You will have more documents opened and saved on your laptop than you ever thought possible.  You will have notebooks and paper with frayed edges and pens and pencils and post-it notes scattered throughout the house so you will ALWAYS be prepared in case that moment of inspiration hits. 
• Your mom and husband will wonder why you never finished the 25 page master's thesis you were supposed to write while instead you wrote your first 116, 000 word novel only to rewrite it into a 65,000 word novel in addition to the 40,000 word novel you started to get through the writer's block that kept you from the 65,000 word novel for two months.  (They didn't understand that since starting your master's three or four or six years prior, and had two kids, that you were no longer interested in the topic of the paper and, well, fell out of touch with the university after your advising professor went on sabbatical and recommended you find a new advisor and that you WILL complete your master's.  One day.)
• Books will take on a whole new meaning.  You may enjoy them less.  OR MORE!
• You may choose a Kindle over a Nook just so you can annotate manuscripts on it.
• Some weeks you may enjoy writing your own scenes and characters more than you enjoy reading the ones you bought at the store or won online or uploaded on your Kindle from Amazon.  Because they're YOURS and you can't wait to find out how their story ends.  Because you love them and you have hopes past the moon that one day others will love them as much or more than you do.  Because they'll be on that shelf in the bookstore. And the manager and staff and customers will stand in long, long lines out the door and into the parking lot just to shake your hand and get your autograph and stand next to you saying cheese and to BUY YOUR BOOK!
• You may exercise less, eat a bit more, and gain a little weight, but feel good about it because your characters love you that way and so do your newest friends.

*MOST of these items have never really happened to me.  I'm just not saying which, except you need to know my kids are always 100% supervised and safe and well-fed and I am a careful driver that you need not fear if you pass me on the highway or any other road.

It's Tuesday already?

Yeah, we um, missed Monday. It was Sunday. And now it's Tuesday. Whoops. (no, drugs were not involved. just families and kids and movies and sunshine)

July and December are heavily rumored to be the slowest months in agenting/publishing. Neither of us are actively querying right now - we both have completed mss that we enter in the occasional contest or query with the occasional agent/editor, but we're concentrating on completing our WIPs by the end of the summer for now. (yeah, we know - we said we'd be done by the end of June. it's nice to have goals...making them happen is a whole different story sometimes! but if you're an agent, don't worry - we'd totally make any deadlines you give us!)

How about you guys? Any July progress on querying or submitting? Are you planning on it yet this summer? We love success stories! Here are some of my (erica's) favorite places to research agents - share yours in the comments and I'll add them:

Query Tracker is an absolute must for any writer. Their database is full of agents you can sort by genre if you're generating a list of potentials, but also more specific information (including a comments section) on specific agents. I do all my, well, query tracking right from their site so I know who I've queried and what their response was. They also have a forums area and their own blog (shout-out to Stina, who contributes to their blog).

Agent Query is another helpful database that includes a little more detail for each agent than Query Tracker does, like their special interests/wants and recent deals from Publisher's Marketplace.

Preditors and Editors is your go-to source for finding out if an agent/publisher is legit. Have someone who contacted you about your work. Check here first!!

Absolute Write water cooler has a lot of topics - you could seriously get lost in there. I like the "Bewares and Recommendations" thread - lots of reader-supplied information on agents and publishers, including turnaround time and examples of responses/form/non-form letters.

Krista V.  has done quite a few agent interviews. Check out her "interview with an agent" tab for a list.

Literary Rambles does the research for you - tons of information on tons of agents (primarily for YA/MG)

Middle Grade Ninja interviews agents for MG authors (most of which will also take YA/children's). The list is on his sidebar (and beneath that is a list of author interviews).

Guide to Literary Agents is chock-full of information helpful to any writer. I especially like his new-agent interviews, which you can find on his sidebar as New Agent alert, although you'll find many other helpful labels there, too.

Happy Monday Tuesday! And Good Luck!