Persistence or Lack Thereof

Isaac Asimov is quoted as saying: "You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist." Easy for him to say. Right?

I mean, Asimov was not only one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years or so, but he also wrote during a time when not just anybody could whip out a manuscript and send it out to a hundred potential buyers via email. (I've also heard he never edited, but that may be an urban legend - and it's a moot point anyway.) He also wrote when people genuinely wanted to read.

But that's not the point of today's post.

I read that quote again yesterday and was struck by the idea of it. Persistence. You have to have it in order to succeed in anything. (And yes, I am aware of the rare instances where success falls into someone's lap, but those are the exceptions to prove the rule.) The problem is, I'm just not that persistent. Not only that, but I do have a manuscript just eating it's head off in a metaphorical drawer. (Several, if you look at the lack of success for my other books.) I never really submitted Blink. I sent off five queries, to which I only got one reply. I sent out those queries and got distracted by RTL.

But was distraction really a good enough reason to let Blink lounge? Looking back now, the answer is: not really. I could've easily been querying while I was concentrating on writing. They're two completely different skills, after all. Instead of pushing to see Blink get its day in the sun, I shoved it into the shadowy recesses of my hard drive. A severe injustice if there ever was one, let me tell you.

The funny thing is, I still love Blink. And maybe that's part of the problem. I love it so much, I'm terrified of sending it out. I'm so afraid of people saying mean things about it, I'm unable to run the risk she'll be hated and rejected - which, of course, means I'll never know if she might actually be liked and published. (And yes, I have started thinking of that particular book in terms of 'she'.)

But let's forget about Blink for a second. When I really think about it, I haven't been all that persistent with my other books either. I send each one through the gambit of agents and then shove each one into its folder - never to be heard from again. I still think about them. Sometimes I lay in bed at night reminiscing over a particularly well-written scene or wondering how a book would've sounded from a different perspective. I never act on these thoughts, though. Oh sure, every once in a while, I'll get a wild hair and send Spectacle or Caldera out, but it's more a matter of desperation than of persistence.

You see, I still believe in every one of my books*. Not a single one of them can be classified as a 'practice book'. I don't think any of them should be left to rot in a trunk or under my bed or at the back of the closet. Each of them deserves to see the inside of a bookstore. (Yes, I am biased, but just because I am doesn't mean I'm wrong.)

So, if they are as publishable as I think they are, the problem then comes down to a lack of persistence. They aren't published because I haven't really tried hard enough. Instead I've allowed them to eat their heads off in a drawer while I play at writing another one to sell - which will most likely end up joining them because I'm not persistent enough.

Starting after the second week in January - because now is the beginning of the holiday season and the first two weeks of the year are catch-up time for most people - I'll start sending out manuscripts again. I'll beat the bushes looking for an agent. I'll revamp all my query materials in order to write the letters that will get my books noticed. I'll go directly to the publishers if I have to. I will be persistent.

I'm not a resolution maker, but that seems like the best one I could make for the coming year.

I know it's early yet, but have you given any thought to your plans and goals for 2009? Any resolutions you'd like to share?

My Surreal Life

Lately I've been feeling like I've taken a trip to the Twilight Zone. One week away has shifted everything into the surreal. I'm left looking at my life and my writing as though I'm getting a glimpse into the life of some other woman. She writes books. She teaches homeschool. She crochets. She's me...

And she's not me.

Maybe it was the trip back to Michigan. I left almost eight years ago, and I hadn't been back. So many things have changed, and yet jammed in between all the changed things was something so familiar it was like a blow to the chest. For instance, I went to see the house where I grew up. It's still there. It looks pretty much the same, but it's not the same. The new owners put a white picket rail around the front porch. They sided our old chicken coop with bright red plastic. The tiny Jack pine my sister and I planted is now the tallest tree in the yard. The house sits at the top of a hill, and the valley across from it has always been a wide open space. It used to be a horse pasture. Now, it's working on becoming a forest. Tall, fast-growing pine trees have taken over. You can't even see the pond in the middle any more. But the tree we buried my dog under looks the same.

The nearby town of Goodrich has exploded with people. All the fields that used to lay around it now have big beautiful housing developments. They moved the post office. They closed the old IGA store that my mother once worked at, and that I spent a great deal of time in when I was younger. The old 'stop-n-rob' convenience store was torn down and a modern brick gas station took its place. But the mill pond where my father took me ice fishing looks the same.

Grand Blanc - where my mother now lives - now has a Walmart where the deer park used to sit. The Halo Burger was torn down and a Starbucks is in its place. But the old high-school hangout - Hotdog Heaven - is still serving customers out of its ramshackle little building. (I'm guessing the hotdogs are still the same, too.)

I think it all started at the airport. When I lived in Michigan I was at Detroit Metro frequently - if not to fly myself, then to pick up visiting sales managers for work. I knew DTW like the back of my hand. Now it's all changed around. (Of course, I left before 9/11, so it was pretty much a given.) But the trip down I-94 toward Ann Arbor looked the same. Hell, since the last time I was at DTW it was snowing, it really looked the same.

Is it any wonder I came home to this unreal feeling?

At this point, I'm guessing I just need some time to be home and get back into my old routine. I need to wrap myself in normalcy to feel like myself again. At least I hope that'll work, because right now, I should be writing and I don't feel like a writer. I feel like the kid who left Michigan in 2001.

And she wasn't a writer. She was just a gal who thought maybe someday she would try to write a book.

Dealing with Self-Doubt

Self-doubt (SD) can be a killer. It stops us from asking that cute guy or girl to dance. It keeps us from applying for jobs. If it hits us at the wrong moment, we could make a horrible decision that could effect us for the rest of our lives. (Like the time my best friend pulled out of an intersection in front of my brother and hit the brake instead of the gas. They both made it out okay, but it could've been so much worse.)

In writing, SD isn't so drastic, but it can be the one thing that keeps a person from finishing a book. Or it could be the thing that makes a book so-so instead of amazing. I know it's a factor in whether we get the words out, or we spend our writing time editing and re-editing.

Should I move the story down this path or that one? Is this premise really working, or do I need to re-write the whole damn thing? Should the MC be gutsy and a little butch - which could turn some people off - or should she be sweetness and light, and as such unable to do the things the story requires?

Every decision we make both on the page and off can be turned in another direction by SD. So how does one deal with it?

Personally, I try to shove it into a box and push the box into the back of my head where it won't bother me. It doesn't always work, and sometimes SD leaks out to poison my ability to write, but most of the time I'm safe with it back there.

Of course, on occasion SD can be your subconscious telling you something. Perhaps the scene really doesn't work in it's current incarnation. Maybe your heroine is too butch, or your hero is too wimpy. Take note of the things it's telling you and move on. Do not let the hint of suspicion rule your writing. Make actual physical notes of its concerns for later editing. If the problem is bad enough, go back and fix it, but don't let it stop you from reaching your goals.

I used to let SD run the show. (With my writing anyway, and it used to play way too big a part in the rest of my life, too.) That's part of the reason Spectacle took me so damn long to write. On the other hand, when I wrote Blink I knew something was wrong with the middle the whole time I was writing it. And after I finished the book, I went back and rewrote like 6 chapters. If I had waited until I knew what the problem was with the middle, Blink probably still wouldn't be finished. If I let SD take the reins, I wouldn't have finished the book, and got the flash of insight on how to fix the middle. I needed to see the end to know where the problem lay.

If you're a plotter, you probably don't experience this problem so much. You have the whole story laid out before you start, and presumably have confidence in the plot lines you've crafted. I guess SD could still come up and slap you while you're plotting. I wouldn't know. (If you're a plotter and SD has caught you mid-plot, tell me about it in the comments.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: If you really want to succeed at this writing thing (and by succeed, I mean complete a book you can be proud of), then you need to stop doubting your abilities. You need to grab some measure of self-confidence and kick your old nemesis to the curb. In the end, that's the only way to really deal with it. At least, that's how I managed to get out from under the clutches of SD.

Does SD factor into your life? What do you do when it's got you? Share some tips and tricks for dealing with SD in the comments.

*Don't worry. I'm not currently in the grips of SD. Yes, I think the majority of my WIP stinks on ice, but I also know it can be fixed, so I'm not letting it stop me.

That Ain't It Kid

Hello. Yes, I've been absent for a few days. No, I wasn't sick, hurt, maimed or dead. I was just tired (or at least I think that's what's been my problem). Not sleepy-tired, just wore-out. Or maybe the tired that usually has 'sick and' in front of it. Most likely a combination of both.

You see, the writing lately just hasn't been coming out. I've started several scenes and a couple of new stories, but I get a few paragraphs in and am overwhelmed by the urge to set fire to it all. I even thought about getting a day job (which is impossible since I homeschool, but the thought was there). I didn't even want to blog.

Sounds like my usual semi-annual thing, right? Kinda, but this felt much worse.

Have you ever seen the movie version of A Chorus Line? There's a song in there called 'Dance Ten, Looks Three' that seemed to sum it all up for me over the weekend. (My subconscious even got it stuck in my head, so I could review the lyrics all day Saturday.) The especially poignant part goes something like this: "Dance 10, Looks 3, and I'm still on unemployment, dancing for my own enjoyment. That ain't it, kid. That ain't it, kid." Rewrite it so it's this business instead of dancing, and you get the gist.

About the same time the song popped into my head, it occurred to me that it's now been four years since I started querying for my first book. Four f'ing years. Still unpublished and, in essence, dancing for my own enjoyment. That really ain't it, kid. I didn't start doing this to end up doing what amounts to little more than mental masturbation. I started writing to be published. And sure, I had the same ol' newbie belief that I would write a book, and selling it would be the easy part. Silly me. Or maybe naive would be more correct. My own naivete astounds even me sometimes, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, the whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks. Four years and five books (five totally finished, six if you count the one I never edited). Three books sent through the query machine wherein my confidence was folded, spindled and mutilated. And I'm just now starting to send the fifth book through. (The third book never went through - not sure why at the moment, but I just never queried for it. But that's a post for another time.) Sure, I'm getting some positive attention on Manhunter, but I'm also getting some negative, and for some reason the negative seems to overshadow the positive. Which is what hit me, knocked me down and kicked sand in my face.

So, what did I do?

I quit. Or rather, I took a mini-vacation. I stepped away from the computer and the notebooks and the pens. I took out my crochet hook, and my skeins of yarn. Friday I just sat on the couch and crocheted until my hands cramped. I didn't think about anything writing related. I watched television and let myself get lost in the repetitive motion of a single chain stitch. By Saturday, I decided I was making another blanket and had a good start - and had that song stuck in my head. Now I did start thinking about writing, and the thoughts weren't good. This is when I thought about chucking the idea of ever getting published, and therefore chucking the idea of ever writing another damn book. Instead, I considered what I would have to do to sell my handiwork, how much each piece would be worth, and whether anyone would want to buy this other product of my creativity (because if I was honest with myself, no one was buying the other products, if you know what I mean). I thought about finding myself a good eight to five job with a real paycheck and forgetting this writing thing.

On Sunday, I figure I was halfway through crocheting the blanket, which was now going to be a gift for someone. (Because setting up an online store to sell crocheted things would mean I would have to crochet some stock ahead of time, and these blankets usually take me weeks to finish.) As I continued to crochet, I started thinking about the actual work again - not all the peripheral stuff, but the actual putting word on paper part. I just let my mind wander over the stories. I thought about all the problems I'm having with Nano, and I saw some ways to fix what's wrong. I wondered where I was going with the story and what to write next, and some key things fell into place. Between strips of color, I picked up the notepad and pen - jotted notes to myself on these issues.

As of yesterday, the blanket is about 80% complete. I have three pages of notes on Nano. The worst of the crap is over (for now) and I think I'm almost ready to get back to work. Hey, I'm blogging, and that's gotta stand for something positive, right?

It may still be Dance Ten, Looks Three, and I'm dancing for my own enjoyment, but for right now, that'll have to do. Quit writing? That ain't it, kid.

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Pondering and Mental Wandering

Last night as I lay on the couch semi-watching the Rays beat the BoSox*, I let my mind wander. The new house blues have me, and writing seems so far away. Sometimes if I just let myself drift, I can catch the current and get back to work. I was hoping for that last night.

Instead I started to ponder over the books I've already completed. Things I could still tweak to make them better. Things I may be able to do to improve their chances of getting published. I also went back over books I started a while ago and never finished. The cute mystery series still deserves to be written. The book with SF undercurrents is still waiting for me to find the right path. And then there's the new books I have waiting for me. The Untitled Somethin-Somethin, for instance.

I thought about Blink, and wondered if it might be better served if I warped it into a YA. (For the record, this is the book I finished but never really submitted because I was hot to write RTL.) I thought about the submission materials for everything that went before and wondered if those were the cause of my unpublishedness.

And I doubted myself. In fact, the longer I pondered, the more I doubted my ability to write.

So I went to bed.

Feeling better this morning. Of course, this post by Diana Peterfreund helped. Nothing gets me fired up faster than hearing about some idiot who has decided to make itself the authority on the ONLY right way to write books. (Not Diana - she's awesome.)

I don't know what I'm going to do next. Probably revisit all my query materials to see if they're as lame as I was thinking last night or if that was just caused by a case of the squirms. Then I'll decide whether to jump backwards into an old story or forward into something new. I did decide to leave Blink alone. Turning it into a YA would undercut the plot, and wouldn't serve any purpose except to jump on the 'hot YA' bandwagon.

So, what's on your plate? Ever get to pondering and wandering? Does yours lead to self-doubt or self-realization?

*found out later that the BoSox came back after I went to bed and beat the Rays... dang it.

New House, New Book

As many times as I've moved in the past few years, you'd think I'd have a handle on this 'writing in a new place' thing.

Let's just say, I'm working on it.

Every time I move, I have a devil of a time getting back into whatever project I was working on before the move. This didn't seem like it was going to be any different. Trust me, I had every intention of getting back to work on Nano, but every time I thought about it, the taciturn beast would stick her tongue out at me and refuse to work. So, today I decided to do an end-around on my muse.

She doesn't want to work on what needs to be worked on? Well, tough titties. I'm not going to let that stop me. Nope. Instead of sitting down and staring at Nano for countless hours, with nothing to show for it, I started work on another story that's been playing at the edges of my mind for a while now.

So, you'll notice an as-yet-untitled work meter going up soon. I got just over 900 words out tonight. (I would've done more, but we were still wrestling over how to restart Nano when this idea hit me.) This idea started out as the next book in the series that may possibly start with Manhunter. And if the series doesn't fly, a few tweaks should make it into a stand alone.

We'll see how it goes.

As an aside, do you have any idea how hard it is to NOT smoke while writing when you've been doing it for over a year? This new house is a non-smoking one, so now I have to go outside to grab a cigarette. It's killer. Like I need another speed-bump to my writing right now. Even as I type this post, I'm longing to light up. But the landlady will kill me where I stand if I smoke in here. You should've seen me trying to play poker earlier. Ugh. Chewing gum and twiddling with a pen do not work. They didn't work when I actually tried to quit back in '01, they aren't working now. *shrug* I wrote Blink without smoking, and I did it in six weeks. I can do this, too.

Oh, and if you didn't read the post from earlier today, I started querying for Manhunter today. Scroll down and wish me luck. =o)

Aarrgghh

I hate everything I'm writing. Every friggin' word. I'd burn it all, but it's on my hard drive and it seems like such a pain to print it all just to burn it. (And I'd have to get permission from the city to burn anything anyway.)

I'm trying to work. Damn it. I'm trying to put the words in my head onto paper. But it's all coming out crap. That's why I had Flaubert's quote posted. "I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within." I figure if Flaubert went through it, it's not fatal.

It feels like it, though.

I've sat down numerous times over the past few days (weeks, months) to try and make the words come out. I've tried it here at the keyboard. I've tried it sitting on the couch with my trusty notepad. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

Aarrgghh!!

Every time I think I have it in my head, it disappears like so much dandelion fluff caught on a stiff breeze. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the words in my head.

It's fucking pissing me off. Seriously.

I thought if I took my meters down, and stopped thinking about how badly I needed to get x-number of words done, the words would come back. I thought maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself, so if I laid off, it'd come back. Ummm....

NOPE

I thought maybe I was pushing too hard to write for the market. (I even theorized as much in an earlier post.) I went back to a weird ass book I was trying to write a couple years ago. It's weird-ass, but I still think the story deserves to be told. So I thought if I went back to the 'book of my heart', the words would flow like they used to. Again....

NOPE

I even tried just sitting down with one of my unedited pieces and through reworking one of those, it would get the juices flowing again. I hate to repeat myself, but that was also a big fat No.

I'm really starting to tear my hair out here. I want to write. I need to write. I'm fucking jones'n to write. This may even qualify as the DTs soon.

Last time this happened, it was 9 months before I could write again. NINE MONTHS!!!??? Not going to happen. Someone or something will have to die before I make it through three-quarters of a year without writing again.

So I keep trying.

Stephen King is quoted as saying: "Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position." Yeah. Right. I tried that. The shit just kept getting deeper, and I can't hold my breath that long.

And it's not even that I don't feel like writing. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing right now that churning out some fiction. I want to write, that's not the problem. The problem is I feel like everything I write is pure crap, and I hate that I can't put together a coherent sentence to save my ass. Every character is BORING. Every scene feels trite. I want it to flow out like RTL or Spectacle or Caldera or Manhunter or Blink. I don't want it to drag out of me like Justice did.

Maybe I'm just not feeling it. But I can't figure out why. I love the ideas I'm working on. I love the characters and the scenes and the premises. I want to finish Nano, but I'm terrified that if I work on it again, I'll just screw it up. (And I really like what I've written so far.)

Perhaps it's a lack of self confidence. Yeah.... That's a definite possibility.

Not that I don't have justification for it. I mean it's not like it was four years ago when I finished Spectacle and I was so certain it would be published immediately. (Like three years ago, at least.) When it didn't draw interest, I thought maybe it was because the premise was a little out there for the world at large. I set it aside and went after the world with Caldera. (After I got over that nine months stretch of writer's block, that is.) I thought for sure it would get published...

Are you seeing a theme here?

After the absolute certainty that I would get published, and the years since those early days without even getting an agent, it's no wonder my self confidence sucks. I mean, christ-almighty-whitey. It's been four damn years. :POUNDS HEAD REPEATEDLY ON DESK:

You know that irritating little voice in the back of your head? It's the same one that told you you'd never get that cute boy to ask you out, and you'd never get that job, and you'd never amount to anything. That's the one that's been whispering into my ear that the reason I haven't gotten published is because I suck. I suck, my writing sucks, my submission materials suck.

"Don't quit your dayjob."

Little too late for that. This IS my dayjob. And my nightjob.

Remember how it's okay to suck? Remember how I've been a big proponent of giving yourself permission to suck? Well, I did that tonight. I gave myself permission to write crap, and that's exactly what I got. Crap. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes writing crap leads to a break in the log jam, and good stuff comes out. Not this time. Crap crap crap crappity crap.

I just keep telling myself: "This too shall pass."

I just wonder how sane I'll be when it does.

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Lost in The Woods

Tonight I've been thinking about something my husband says - something his own father taught him on one of their frequent camping excursions. "If you're lost in the woods, just stop. Get your bearings. Don't just wander and get yourself more lost." (I'm going from memory here and dear hubby is sleeping, so it's not an exact quote - but you get the gist.)

Basically where I'm at with my work is lost in the woods. I don't know how I got to this point, and I don't quite know how to get out. All I know is the more I try to find my way, the worse it gets.

So, I've made the decision to take a sabbatical. I need to stop writing so I can find my way again.

Don't worry. I don't envision it will be a long stoppage. I just need to get my bearings again. In order to do that, I think I need to set all of the books aside for a while. I need to let my focus shift to teaching my daughter during the day, and letting my brain free to wander at night.

During the past couple years, I took the stance that whenever I had a writing problem, I just needed to push through. Up until now, it's worked for me. Otherwise I couldn't have written RTL or Blink as quickly as I did. Those were easy books to write. Not quite sure why, but they were. Even when I had to completely rewrite the middle of Blink, it came so much easier than anything has come these past couple of months.

I think pushing through has exascerbated the problem this time. I had problems with Nano, so I pushed through until I got stuck. I switched back to Justice - which I knew already had problems - and in pushing through that manuscript, I think I've only made them worse.

So, I'm stopping in the woods.

Maybe I'll take this time to try submitting Blink. Maybe I'll use this to get Manhunter ready for submission. Or maybe I'll just chill.

I know... I made a vow to do something writerly every day. But this vow is going to have to be put on hold or I'll just keep churning out crap and making myself feel worse about this career I've chosen. In a contest between keeping a vow and or protecting my writing, the writing has to come first.

I'll still be here - blogging and visiting blogs. I'll still be keeping up with the industry and making sure I don't fall behind on the latest news. I'm just not going to be writing or editing anything until this passes. (Or until the time comes when I know I can make it pass without doing irreparable damage.)

Maybe I'll write a short story... That worked the last time. (And that is when Fire was born.) We'll see how things go.

Until then I just have to keep my stick on the ice.

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Round and Round and Round We Go

I feel like a friggin' hamster this morning. I'm running in circles inside my head, and while I know I'm not getting anywhere, I can't really make it stop.

You see... I'm blurbing again.

In the past couple days, I've written seven different versions of a possible blurb for Manhunter. Seven versions and none of them feel right. After six books, you'd think I'd have this down by now.

Heh. I wish. I wonder if any writer has this process down. Do the big name published authors even have to do their own blurbs? Does Nora Roberts write the backcover copy for her novels any more? Did she ever? What about Stephen King? James Patterson?

Not that I'm those people, but I'm just wondering if there'll ever be a day when I won't have to obsess over blurbs and synopses.

Don't worry about me. I'm just a wee bit frustrated. There's so much information I want to convey about the book, and I really only have two paragraphs in which to do it. I find myself wondering if I should stick with blurbing about the heroine and the villain, or whether I should focus on the heroine and her relationship with the hero - mentioning the villain only as she relates to them. Or whether all three characters should have their own spotlight. Decisions, decisions. The merry-go-round of indecisiveness. Weeeeee.

Ummm... Not.

Do I mention the heroine's fear of fire - because it's integral to her character - or do I leave it behind because it's not overly integral to the plot?

Oh, and another thing... If I try to sell this to suspense agents and also to romance agents, I'm going to need two different blurbs. :sets own hair on fire and runs naked through the streets screaming:

Any hints on what you would do in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated. Or even a little sympathy would be nice.

Anyway, enough of my daily neuroses. How's things in your world?
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The Gangly, Awkward, Unpopular Kid Strikes Again

Twenty years ago I was the gangly, awkward, unpopular kid. (Okay, twenty-five years through twenty years ago... Or maybe more. Think of it as the entirety of the teen years.) I didn't have many friends, and looking back, even those people I called friends I wasn't as close to as I thought. I lived in my own world, did things pretty much my own way, and suffered the consequences of being different. It's not a story you haven't heard before, so I won't delve into it too deeply. The teen years were unkind to many of us. If we're lucky, we've grown and left it all behind to become the confident and stable adults we are today.

But here's the problem. Every once in a while that gangly, awkward, unpopular kid seeps into the present day me. There's a long explanation, and after typing it - then deleting it - I realize it's too pathetic to post. Suffice it to say, I'm not feeling like the confident and stable adult I ought to feel like.

It's days like these that make me want to curl up under my rock and let the world go on without me. These are also the times when I want to take all my manuscripts, start a bonfire in the backyard, and roast weinies*. Then find something productive to do with my life. Something that has me behind a desk working on someone else's projects and nets me a biweekly paycheck. When I long for the days of typing the boss's correspondence and answering phone calls from irate customers, I know I've hit a bad place. When I'm looking through the local want-ads and 'Administrative Assistant' at the local pig farm sounds good... Well, you get the idea.

As I've said before, part of the key to solving the problem is figuring out what the problem is in the first place. So, I guess knowing that I'm pert-near the bottom means I can begin to climb back out again.

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you suck, everything you do sucks, and the world sucks in general? Any tips for climbing out of that place? Were you ever the gangly, awkward, unpopular kid?


(*Don't worry. There won't be any bonfires and I'm not quitting any time soon. Besides, there's a city ordinance against bonfires in backyards, and my landlord would object anyway.)
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Persistence or Pestiness?

You may recall back in April I wrote a SQUEE post about a request for partial I received. Now it's been two months without a word and I'm wondering if this agent even received the email I sent her.

Oh, I know some agents take months on partials, and I'm willing to wait if I have to. But see, here's the thing... On a popular writerly forum, several people talk about her quick lead times. It seems that usually this particular person usually responds to a partial in 4-6 weeks. And I'm at 2 months.

Last year... or was it the year before?... I got a request for partial on Caldera from an agent with a stated 4 month lead time. I was patient. I waited. The four months went by with no word and I began to wonder if my partial disappeared into whatever black hole the USPS uses to lighten their bags. (Ever watch Seinfeld? Newman stowed mail in a storage garage so he wouldn't have to carry it.) After five months, I sent said agent a polite nudge via email and within a week, my SASE came back with a rejection in it.

My first thought was that somehow my submission materials got lost in a stack somewhere, and the nudge prompted her to dig out my SASE for the rejection that was waiting all along. My second thought was that my nudge pissed her off. That somehow she was sitting on the fence about my manuscript and my email pushed her over to the rejection side. (I mean, who wants to work with a pest?)

This morning I sent a polite nudge to the agent who requested a partial on RTL. We'll see what happens from this one.

The question in my mind, even as I was hitting the SEND button, is when does persistence cross the line into pestiness? If an agent has a stated lead time of 4 months, is it appropriate to send a nudge after 5 months? If an agent has no stated lead time, but other writers are saying she's gotten back to them in 4-6 weeks, is sending a note after 2 months being pesty?

Pardon me while I slip into the paranoia phase of my writing life. Yes, I know I should just chill out, but the thought of my stuff being lost somewhere in cyberspace makes it hard to relax.

PS. If you haven't seen it yet, Jessica Faust wrote a blog post about this very thing on Friday: The Art of Persistence. Scoot on over and check it out.

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Stall then Panic then Resolution

Last night I was plugging away on Manhunter. Everything was flying along nicely. People were dying. The MCs are getting one step closer to catching the villain. Birds were singing, bunnies were wiggling their noses ever-so cutely, and all was right with the world.

Then I hit the end of the chapter, and ran face-first into the brick wall hiding there. The birdies got laryngitis, the bunnies flipped me off, and the world tilted on its axis. I had no friggin' idea where I was supposed to go next.

Okay, I had a general idea, but the specifics wouldn't come. I knew I had to get from point A to point B, but I was clueless about how I was going to get there. So what did I do? I panicked. I did the mental equivalent of running around the house with my ass on fire. It wasn't pretty in my head, trust me. And I was on a roll, too. I had over 2K written for the evening, and I was headed for a record night (with this book, anyway). I mean, geez. It was only 8:30. I still had a good hour and a half to write.

I pushed. Nothing happened. I pulled. Nothing happened. Mulish damn book. In a total huff, I saved my work and flopped in front of the TV. I didn't know what was on, and I didn't care. I was in a funk. My husband was only semi-watching himself, mulling over his own work while almost kinda paying attention to some show or other.

So there we sat. Each of us in our own little private mental warehouse, sorting through boxes and trying to make something come out right.

Bedtime for my daughter came and went. The cat did her usual thing, which is to say she demanded to be let out onto our front foyer, and then demanded to be let back in. Occasionally he changed channels, and occasionally something caught my eye enough that I watched for a second or two.

Shortly after my darling child went to bed (I could still hear her up there, but I wasn't in the mood to push it), something clicked in my head and everything fell into place. I sprang from my chair (as much as I can spring these days) and raced over to my desk. I pulled out the scrap paper I keep under my keyboard for just such occasions, and began writing. (Screw the computer - it would've just gotten in the way.) I didn't write a word toward the actual book, but I got down a whole page worth of plotting. I now know what the general plot points are for the rest of the book.

They aren't anything I'd ever share with anyone. The notes themselves are chicken-scratched bullet points that probably wouldn't make sense to anyone but me. But they are done. The course is mapped, and I'm ready to get going. "Sailing for adventure on the big blue wet thing!" (If you haven't seen Muppet Treasure Island, run out and rent it. It's a hoot.)

After plotting out the rest of the book, I know I'm going to fall well short of my projected 80K first draft. Still, with the stuff I still have to go back and insert, plus the sections where I wrote nothing but dialogue for pages and pages, I'll probably end up at over 90K for the final draft. I think I projected the end of May for the first draft finish on this one, and I'm on target. (Provided I don't hit any more stalls.) I should have the final done by the end of the summer, at the latest.

And since I'm letting optimism take hold for a moment, look for this sucker to be published sometime in the next couple years.

Now, I need to go run errands. Weee. Have a great day, everyone!

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Letting Fear Drive You

Well, I finished Corpse Pose earlier, and started No One Left To Tell. I watched The Kentucky Derby (if you didn't watch it, it was both exciting and tragic) and the latest round of the National Heads-Up Poker Tournament.

During the tournament, poker legend Doyle Brunson made an interesting comment. I don't remember the exact wording but it was something to the effect of not letting fear drive the choices you make. This is my problem in poker. I let fear dictate the choices I make, and lately those choices have put me on the losing end.

I've been thinking about Doyle's statement ever since. Not just in relation to poker. I've been wondering if I let fear drive me in my writing choices, too. I don't really know the answer to that. I know I can't think about fear or it stalls my writing, but does fear enter into the other choices I make? Am I writing what needs to be written without fearing someone will get their undies in a bunch over the subject matter? Do my query letters stink of fear? Am I putting my best foot forward, or is fear making me torpedo myself?

This whole thing bears some serious consideration and deep introspection. I don't think fear invades my writing choices, but my subconscious could be doing an end-around I'm not really aware of. That's where the introspection comes in. (It's a really effective tool, but I'll save touting the wonders of introspection for another day.) So, I've got some thinking to do.

Meanwhile, I have some more writing to do tonight. I'm trying to hit 30K before I finish for the day, and since I'm about 700 short at the moment, I need to get back to work. If the meter over there -------> says 30K plus when you read this, I succeeded. If not, there's always tomorrow.

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The Tenth Day

Nine days out of ten, I'm a optimistic about writing. It's the tenth day that wrecks me.

As I said at the bottom of yesterday's post, in the comment that never got left on Karin Tabke's blog, "...if I sit and think about all the little things there are to be afraid of in this business, I freeze." Well, that's usually what happens on the tenth day, and yesterday was that day.

My morning rejection (which came shortly after yesterday's post) didn't help. One rejection--not a form, but not very personal; not nice but not nasty either--derailed me. It was something along the lines of 'this agency doesn't handle that, but thanks for thinking of us.' Innocuous really, but it hit me and knocked me off-kilter.

I started to think about every little thing. Like the cliched snowball, it started small and by the time I got to writing last night, it had grown to overwhelming proportions. And I didn't even see it coming. Just heard a rumble and then whoomp! Every word I wrote was wrong... or if not wrong, at least not perfectly right. Type a sentence, delete it, rewrite it. Worry over whether this word or that word would be better, change the word, repeat with next sentence. I meant to write the hospital scene last night. It should've been a couple thousand words at least. Instead, I got the lead-in down, and after 800 words, I stopped.

90 minutes, 800 words. That's what I meant yesterday about my output being effected by my confidence level, or my optimism level if you will. I have to maintain a certain level of assurance about my work, or I can't do the work. I get all 'deer in headlights'.

Thinking about it now, it's like those rare times I worked as a commissioned salesman. You see, working on commission-only means: if I didn't sell, I didn't get a paycheck. If I didn't make a sale right away, fear would creep in, and I would begin to doubt every little thing I said in my pitch. And then I wouldn't sell. Needless to say, I never held a commissioned position very long. Give me a base plus, or a base with bonuses for performance and I'm selling slushies to the Inuit. Let fear enter into it, and I can't sell parkas for a penny in Siberia.

Not the best analogy, but the fear and the failure are the same. Boiled down to its bare essentials: Fear of failure causes failure.

This rejection reaction happens to me about once a query session. (More on the first book, but I was new to the biz.) I recognize it afterwards. I just never see it coming until it hits and I'm left under a pile of excrement several yards thick. I've learned recognizing it is half the battle (and if I could see it coming, I could probably avoid it altogether). Now I just need to pick myself up, shovel myself off, and stuff all the little fears back into the dumpster where they belong.

They'll sneak up on me again sometime in the future. Some tenth day*, perhaps weeks from now, they'll get me and I'll have to go through this again. Until I learn to see it coming and avoid it altogether, or figure out where it's coming from and stop it at its source.

(*it's an average. Since I went through months of this early on, now I can go weeks between.)

Fear

Fear of failure... Fear of success... Fear each word you write isn't the best word, or that your story is headed in the wrong direction, or that your character just said the wrong thing. All of it can be a killer. Fear sucks, literally. It sucks the energy right out of you; it sucks the life from your story; it sucks the creativity from your brain.

The other day (or maybe it was the other year... after a while everything runs together) someone asked me how I write so much so fast. Over the weekend, I was thinking about the answer to that question.

You know, until this came up, I never thought I wrote fast. Two thousand words for one day doesn't feel like enough for me, whether it was done in two hours or eight hours. I always feel like I could've done more, like I should've done more, but was too lazy. But talking with other writers, I see that 2K in two hours is a lot more output than some writers can get to.

So, why me and not them?

I think part of the answer is that I used to be a secretary. Simple typing speed has something to do with it. If you've only got an hour to write during your day, the more words you can get onto the paper in that hour, the higher your output. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not anywhere near as fast a typer as my mother, who touch types, can read and type at the same time, and can transcribe from dictation. Put in a typical secretarial position, I'm a mediocre typer at best. What I can do, though, is type quickly when I know what I want to say and I'm not afraid to say it. And there's the key, I think.

During the first draft, I just let the words come and I don't worry so much about each particular word. I'm just trying to get the ideas down on paper, so I can get a sense of what I want to say well enough to make refining the section easier during edit time. I don't let fear stall me at this time. This might be part of the reason, also, why Spectacle took me so long. I obsessed over every word and every scene. I went back and edited while I was writing, and if I couldn't think of the absolutely right word at that time, it hung me up.

I got over it. Now I just sit down and write without letting fear enter into the equation. If I make a mistake now, I figure I'll worry about it in the edits. I know I sure as hell don't worry over whether what I'm writing will ever be published. If I let that fear in, I wouldn't be able to write a word. (And that's what happened in the middle of Caldera, so I know whereof I speak.)

A million little things can stall your writing. If you let them. Don't allow fear in because it will be the biggest stall of all.

Are you a fast writer or a slow writer? Either way, what do think might be holding you back from your potential? What are you afraid of? If the answer is Nothing, share your secret.

(If you haven't read it yet, check out Karin Tabke's post on Fear. Great minds think alike this morning. I've been trying all morning to post a comment, but it's not letting me, so look there later for my thoughts on her subject.)

ETA: Since it still won't let me post a comment, I'll leave it here: Awesome post, Karin. One thing about me is if I sit and think about all the little things there are to be afraid of in this business, I freeze. Deer in headlights frozen. Reading your paragraph about all the little things to fear got my heart doing its palpitation routine. What if I never sell anything? That's the worst fear for me. Well, the only thing to do about that is to keep writing, keep improving, keep learning. Sooner or later something will hit. If not this book, then the next. (And if not that one, then the next one. And so on.) If one genre doesn't fit, try another. Find something that will sell, and hope it opens the door for the good stuff you wrote before. Kick the fear to the curb where it belongs and forge ahead.

And now that I'm fired up, I think I'll go finish my blogroll and get some query letters out. Onward!

Sabbatical of Sorts

I finally broke down and admitted that I'm not in the frame of mind to write right now. So I gave myself permission to take a sabbatical from my work. Not that I'm taking a sabbatical from everything writerly, mind you. I just started sending out submission materials for RTL. I'm not stopping that. I will also be here on the blog, and visiting other writerly blogs, and networking with people around the net.

If this year is anything like last year, I should be raring to go again soon. Think of it as a vacation. Normal working people get vacations sometimes, right? (Except when I was a normal working person, I never took mine... so I feel guilty about taking one now.) I need this time away. My well is parched, my muse is off lollygagging, and the ol' brain is a wee bit on the thin side right now. I need Spring to send it's warm fingers through the earth; I need to see the crocuses and hyacinths poking through the ground. I need my dormant writing to awaken in the warmth of the year. (Actually, I need it to reawaken right now, but I can't seem to force it to do anything. It's like a teenager being told to clean her room. Ack.)

Like I said, I'll still be here - just don't expect to see the progress meters move any time soon. (Unless I put in a progress meter for the blanket I'm crocheting. That's about the only thing I'm achieving these days.)

How're things in your world? Working hard, or hardly working?

Ummm... help?

I could use a little help this morning. I've been wracking my brains working on my query letter, and I think I have it down, but I'm still a little unsure about the blurb. So... If any of my regular visitors have a minute and would like to look over my blurb for me, leave a comment and I'll e-mail you a copy. (If your e-mail isn't listed on your blog, feel free to e-mail me directly instead.)

In exchange, you'll have my gratitude and just to sweeten the pot, I could throw in some reciprocal help and/or a free book for your troubles. Come on. You know you wanna see it.

End of Winter Slap... errr Slump

Or maybe it's the 'end of book slump'. Either way for the past few years it always seems to hit me around about this time. I get to where I don't feel like writing. I don't feel like editing. Hell, I barely feel like reading. (And blogging? Fugetaboutit.)

Right now I've got RTL almost in the can. I'm about this close. (You'll just have to imagine me holding my fingers about a micron apart.) I'm just waiting on my CP to give me her thoughts on the rest of the book and on the synopsis. I even think I've got a pretty nifty query ready to go. But I'm dead in the water.

I've got some great ideas on how to finish my WIP. They're all written down so I don't forget them, and I'm ready to move ahead on it. Except I can't seem to get motivated to do so.

Writers write. Professional writers write every day (or at least most every day - they're not machines). Not writing makes me feel like a hack. But I can't seem to get back into the swing on it lately. How professional is it when this malaise hits me every damn year?

Seriously. What happens if I finally get a contract and deadlines and stuff, only the timeframe encompasses this part of the year? "Ahem, sorry Random House, but February and March are bad months for me. Can you hold production until I get my head out of my ass?" Ya, right.

I think I just need to slap myself around. Maybe all I need a good ol' fashioned kick in the hiney. Trust me. Just thinking about presuming to put off a publisher because I'm not feeling like writing :insert whine here: is nearly enough to send me scrambling for my notes. "You need to write whether you feel like it or not, ya big baby. Now drop and give me 1500 words!" (The voice in my head sounds like a cross between that overzealous Marine ghost in The Frighteners and the barbarians in The Thief and the Cobbler. What can I say?)

Anyway, I don't know if I'm cured this year or not. Sometimes just putting it into words shakes it loose, but I know it'll be back again next year. End of winter seems to do this to me. I guess I just need to remind myself next year to give myself an end of winter slap to cure the end of winter slump.

Tell me: Do you notice a pattern to your writing throughout the year? Other than this slumpy thing, I seem to be very productive from September to December. Do you have more productive and less productive times of year, or am I just weird?

Unstuck (Kinda, Sorta, Maybe)

Part of the problem with writing a synopsis is trying to jam a whole book into 2-3 pages. Hitting on the important parts without sounding like a grocery list; infusing your voice into a sequence of events so the damn thing isn't dry as a Colorado riverbed. It's damn hard.

But that wasn't my problem yesterday. Or rather, it was but not like it usually is.

Yesterday morning and all day Saturday I was agonizing over every sentence and worrying over every word. I forgot to give myself permission to suck. This time it was all coming from the fact that I have found what I think it the perfect agent for this book, and I am so freaked out about making the synopsis perfect, I can't even write the damn thing. Every sucky word was killing my ability to just get the thing on paper. Once you get the thing out, you can fix it. If you never get it out, you're truly screwed.

I was truly screwed.

In the end, I tricked myself. I told myself I was just going to sit down and compile the events of the book so I could use that to write the synopsis. I sat on the couch with a notepad beside me, and I wrote stuff down as it occurred to me. Commercials, slow spots in a show.... Any time I could think of a good way to describe the next event, I wrote it down. Guess what? I now have a good beginning to my synopsis, and I did it without even trying. Sure, it needs rewording. I knew it would. But it's there, and this time, that was the hardest part.

Except now that I admitted my trick publicly, my subconscious may try to torpedo my progress. *shrug* I'll deal with that when the time comes.

How are things in your world today? Ever had to do an end-around on yourself?

Stuck

I went to bed last night thinking about my synopsis. I spent about 90 minutes working on it after dinner. Sitting here at the computer seemed to be causing writerly constipation, so I grabbed a notebook and worked on it while sitting on the couch. Nope. I'd write a paragraph and cross it out. Pages and pages of crossed off paragraphs later, I gave up and went to bed. Which is why I lay there thinking about it for too long, and woke up thinking about it too early.

I am officially stuck. RTL flowed out of my fingers--a waterfall of inspiration. Its synopsis is a dry riverbed. And I'm choking on the dust.

During this hardcopy work last night, I did manage to rewrite the first paragraph of my WIP (now known as Pseudonymous Mystery) and get some plotting done so I can fix the problems with it, so it's not like my writing is totally jammed. It's just this blasted synopsis. It's bad enough now that I actually thought about offering money to my CP just to get her to write it for me. (And I never ask anyone do my work for me.) It's 'beat my head against a wall' frustration I'm talking about here.

So now I'm up at an ungodly hour (thanks in part to my furry gray alarm clock), and the blockage is still there. Gah.

Screw it. I'm going back to bed. Maybe when I wake up I'll be refreshed--bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and raring to go.

Heh. That'll be the day.