Writer’s Wednesdays

I think I’m going to make a bit of an edit for my schedule.  Rather than a guest article and an interview every single week, which takes up more time than I expected out of an already-paced schedule, I will have one feature a week.  This will take less time, plus I’m concerned about my blog ending up nothing but interviews and such.  I wouldn’t want to post my open things on those days and compete.  So one feature a week, and on Wednesdays.

Today I bring you a piece by the lovely and talented Eli Ashpence.  Eli’s blog is full of great information I encourage you to read!  Her novel, Genocide to Genesis, is on my to-read-ASAP list, and can be bought (for a measly 99 cents – raise that price!) here.   Her advice is also a fantastic method used by many thespians.  It works very well.

Enjoys Eli’s Advice to Noobs!  You may feel better about the days you feel unproductive.

I thought about writing this post for newbies, but the truth is that very few newbies will see this.  Writers who will find this post are noobs–they’ve written something and have begun networking, querying, etc–and such people are full of confidence.  Sometimes, you could even say they’re full of too much confidence and could use a swift kick in their quasars…or whatever word you want to use to avoid alienating male readers.

There are plenty of posts about the technical aspects of writing.  There’s even more about the do’s and don’ts of querying.  I’m not going to detail all the basics that writers should remember.  Nor am I going to write a dissertation on voice or write an analytical essay on successful novels.  The only advice that I could possibly share to my fellow noobs is “emotion”.  

It’s such a simple word, but it’s what we sometimes forget to use when the fear of failure or the disappointment of rejection forces us into retreat.  It’s something that drives us, yet also hinders us.  Emotion is the one thing that writers underestimate when we’re busy trying to correct technical flaws, even though it’s one of the few things that can make readers forget to look for flaws.

It wasn’t until recently that I came to understand the amount of power held by emotion.  I was sitting in front of my computer, utterly dejected at the stilted quality of my writing.  It was some drivel about a boy hated by… blah blah blah.  The flaws were glaringly obvious and I couldn’t bring myself to care… even though I’d written it.  

I thought back to all the best scenes I’d crafted in the past, somewhat self-destructing at that moment, and I was stopped when I noticed one common factor.  In all my favorite pieces of writing, I had poured my own emotions into the story.  Not in anyway an average reader could understand, of course, but it almost seemed like I’d written a journal of my childhood in secret code.  I’d beaten my character into submission when I felt beaten down.  The characters flew into a bloody rage when I felt insulted.  The characters felt unwanted to the point of despair when I felt lonely and misunderstood.

In many ways, the story was a purging.  I took every harsh memory I had and allowed my readers to feel my pain.  In some instances, I wrote a twisted version of actual events so that I could finally ‘speak up’ about things I’d buried.  Through writing, I came to understand the people that hurt me and accept that all people have flaws.  

And that brings me back to my moment of apiphany.  It was emotion that I was lacking in my current WIPs.  So, I went back to the starting line.  I thought to myself, “My character was misunderstood.  How did I feel when people misunderstood me?  Why was I misunderstood?  Why did people act toward me in such a way?”  Furthermore, I sat back and actually visualized the event I was using as inspiration.  After that, the character poured out. The story I had struggled with, and the writer’s block that had slowed me down, vanished like it never existed.

Remember this when you get another rejection.  Remember this when a critique partner tries to rip you a new one.  Remember this when your family rolls their eyes at ‘the writer in the family’.  Take the emotion and feed off it.  After all, no one except you can confirm that your worst enemy is that douchebag in chapter four.

 

A change in the wind

While I want an agent, I’m really in no rush.  I fact, we decided today that I’m going to the PNWA conference in July, which is supposed to be one of the best in the nation.  Lots of time is set aside specifically for working on pitches with agents and then pitching to them.  I think I could get an agent on board easier in person than in an e-mail.  As a published friend of mine said a wink-wink-nudge-nudge in person can help a lot, especially with the one-line pitch about “other girls in love with vampires.”  

Of course my challenge is getting across how different Sacred Blood is from other series despite having a human girl, half-vampire, and werewolf.   As my betas about that.  This was intentional.  This is why “Juliette won’t wait to be rescued, unlike other girls in love with vampires,” is my one-line pitch.  I’m relying on the schema people have with Twilight, and setting it apart by saying right up front that she’s no Bella.  Save Juliette?  Ha!  She saves herself, then goes into a literal battle and ends up saving everyone else too, ending up in the exact opposite situation of where she started in the book.  Instead of being at Nathaniel’s mercy, he’s at hers.  It’s wonderful.  I’m proud of it.  The ending is bittersweet, and the epilogue is brilliantly ambiguous, if I do say so myself.  Perfect?  No.  But it’s wonderful.  Speaking with agents in person may help me get across what I need to in a way I can’t via text.  The conference in my schedule has helped alleviate the tension and feeling that this either happens soon or it won’t at all.

I am actually more worried about getting an offer from an agent who, upon having personal correspondence and conversation, ends up not being the right one for me.  Turning down an agent would border on rude, at least in my mind.  Now I don’t want to claim to be the next best-selling author any agent would be a fool to turn down.  The wrong agent may not have the connections to get the deal that would turn my book into a best-seller, and I know that.  Plus different editors would choose different things to have changed.  But I do believe that Sacred Blood is worth the best agent I can get, meaning one who is as right for me as I am for that agent.

Just as a marriage between spouses won’t work well if it’s unidirectional, neither can an agent-writer marriage.  Both sides need to work together, and this means both being right for the other.  Knowing this doesn’t make the wait any easier to endure, but it does make the wait more peaceful, and in that way, it is a bit easier.

Into the darkness to find new life

I am overwhelmed and don’t know why.  For the first time, I feel completely submersed in my writing, like I crossed a line and there’s no backing up without popping my tires. I’m not even agented, and yet feel there’s no going back.  What’s causing this?  My premonitory senses tend to be spot-on, but right now all I can feel is something’s shifted and I can’t stop going.  I don’t know what’s going on, but have to proceed with abandon anyway.  Something’s going on somewhere.  I know this sounds crazy to probably everyone who’s never met me, but I can feel it.  I know it.  Maybe a beta reader’s getting to the end and is really happy with the ending.  Maybe an agent is laughing like crazy over my query.  Someone somewhere is thinking about or reading what I’ve written.  Perhaps I finally have lost my mind this time.  Neither of those scenarios feel quite right.

Years ago I was driving through the Caldecott Tunnel going from the Berkeley side of the Bay Area to Oakland.  It’s not a straight tunnel.  In the single most terrifying driving incident of my entire life, the lights in the tunnel went out and no one’s headlights were on.  It was pitch black.  We were all going forward in a curvy tunnel.  I was afraid to stop in case I was hit from behind.  Believe it or not, your first thought isn’t to calmly turn on the headlights.  It’s a whole string of expletives and hoping you aren’t about to become tunnel pancake.  Within a second or two that felt like an hour, I reached out and hoped I could find the head light switch in complete darkness.  Thankfully I did.  Other drivers started doing the same.  We kept going forward with no accidents.

Right now I feel like I’m in that place where the lights have gone out.  My writing and I are propelling forward into the darkness that is the unknown.  All that I know is that I absolutely must keep going and that whatever is going on directly involves me.  To stop now is to die.  

So into the unknown I go, hoping this irrational feat doesn’t suffocate me.

Interesting typo.  I’m leaving it.

Over in the Padded Room…

I keep forgetting to share this, but I wrote a guest post for Writing From the Padded Room on lessons learned about writing.  I tend to write multi-dimensional characters, both the good and the bad.  That post is about that topic.

Not enough coffee in the world to keep me awake much longer tonight, so in the morning (or afternoon, who am I kidding about when I’ll drag myself out of bed?) I’ll share my temporary book cover!

I won a contest!

Wow.  WOW.  I didn’t expect to.  Over at Ink in the Book, Talynn has been hostessing a workshop on writing and various aspects of querying and pitching.  Last week she ran a contest for pitches of no more than 200 words, and the top five, as selected by a panel of judged unknown to the entrants and of various ages and both sexes, and those top five would each be randomly assigned one of five prizes.  Four involved critiques and one is a phone call with a literary agent.

Now my manuscript involves the taboo V-word.  Say “vampires” these days and everyone thinks of Twilight and sparkling.  Though my vampires are the polar opposite of the ones in Twilight, and the characters are multidimensional and the abused girl saves herself, a lot of people are quick to think it’s another Twilight and dismiss it right away.  Those who’ve read my manuscript have been shocked at the Twilight mention due to how drastically different Tristan et.al. are and how Juliette ends up the hero of not only herself, but everyone.

My regular query hasn’t been working.  I’d been considering my options.  So I decided to write a quick pitch and was in a snarky mood.

Though she starts off in an abusive relationship with a jerk she doesn’t know is a werewolf, Juliette saves herself. Screw waiting for someone else to do it for her. Too bad her best friend is a secret vampire, making it difficult to be rid of her ex.

Sure, there are vampires in this manuscript, but these vampires can’t be made by biting. So they can go into the sun without dying or sparkling. They can also turn into cool things like a panther and a bison. Don’t underestimate the mighty bison! Too bad they aren’t the only kind of vampires out there. But they don’t know that part just yet. 

Toss in an adventure to find out if there are other vampires, add in some harpies and an irrational werewolfy desire to kill vampires, and put a longbow in Juliette’s very human hands, and you’ll get a heroine who kicks some major ass, saves vampire civilization, and ends up with an awesome boyfriend. Or does she decide not? Hmmm….

 

Whew.  I just typed and didn’t bother to re-read it.  I did post my query after it with a note about no longer being a teenager with a devil-may-care mindset when everyone else shared their queries.  

Humor.  I have it sometimes.  On occasion, I even entertain myself.

So cue the nerves.  I’m waiting information about the phone call and will probably fight back anxiety over making sure I’m as prepared as possible.

Interview With a Writer – T.J. Loveless

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Interview with a Writer

In my inaugural post in this series of writer interviews, which will be posted on Sundays, though not necessarily every Sunday,, I have the lovely T.J. Loveless.  When I first joined Agent Query Connect (of all the forums I’m on, this is my “home base” and it is just so full of wonderful people willing to spare their time to help) I was overwhelmed by all that I didn’t know.  T.J. is the first person I had contact with off the forum, and she’s been consistently wonderful and helpful and encouraging.  Everyone needs a writing friend like her.

I’ve had the privilege of reading the beginning of her manuscript for Going Thru Hell, and it’s been fantastic!  Even though I’ve received a spoiler, my enjoyment hasn’t been diminished, and I’m eager to receive more!

Pay close attention to T.J.’s grandmother’s last works.  Re-read them.  Take them to heart.

Without further adieu, I present to you T.J. Loveless!

What inspired you to start writing?

In 2009, we returned to Tulsa, OK. I began working as tech support, on the phones ten hours a day. When I’d get home, I needed a stress relief valve. Writing did it. I actually finished the first book, and haven’t been able to stop. Granted that story has been revised more than a dozen times, but I became addicted to writing, letting my imagination wander.

Who have been your biggest inspirations?

My grandmother and great aunt. I learned a lot about survival, making the best of a bad situation, and believing in myself from these two sisters. The week before my grandmother died from complications of fighting cancer for twenty years, we talked on the phone. Her last words to me? “Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You are a writer. For once, child, follow your dream.”

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

When I left my abusive ex-husband. I had the thought I wanted to talk about the things I learned, but no outlet. I’d written when I was younger, but it would be another ten years before I began to put fingers to keyboard.

Where do you do most of your creative imagining?

Staring at mountains or dreaming.

Which of your character creations have been your favorite, and why?

Oh, this is easy. Dakota. I love her strength and willingness to at least try. Despite the ups and downs, or the huge obstacles, she doesn’t give up – even when she’s bone tired and would rather someone else lead the way.

Which of your character creations has been your least favorite, and why?

Piper. I’m assuming you mean the lead people of various works, and not the bad guys. Piper is too manipulative, although, for her, it is necessary. She’s been the hardest to write.

Tell us about your first and most recent manuscripts.

The first true MS was The Earth Maiden. Dakota is the of nine for my series, The Maidens. She must overcome a great many things, and personal pain, in order to become the woman she hides inside. When she learns the lessons, she becomes one of the most powerful mortals to ever walk the earth and a real threat to immortals.

The one I’m working on now is Going Thru Hell. Kylie has a special power and the gods want to use her as a weapon in their ward. They are relentless, until they learn of her eight year old son and use him against her.

What have you learned that would have been helpful to know when you write your first manuscript?

Learn the difference between complexity and conflict, how to identify the various POV, and that it’s not the beautiful prose that will help your book forward – it’s the characters. I wrote some wonderful, beautiful scenes just to fill pages. Described every blade of grass, fluffy cloud and breeze. Yeah, they were cut.

And a final lesson – learn to love red ink. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Love to learn. Nobody sits at their desk, and with quick taps on the keyboard suddenly becomes the world greatest novelist. It takes time, plenty of rejection, and a few other hard lessons. Do it for the love of writing, of being a storyteller

You can follow T.J. at:

Blog:  Writing from the Padded Room

Twitter: T.J. on Twitter

Facebook: T.J. Loveless

Day 18 in the trenches, so hopping some blogs for cheer

The worst part of querying is definitely hitting the send button.  Once I hit it, there’s no going back.  If I make a spelling mistake, too bad, so sad.  If I don’t submit exactly what is asked, oh boy, let me go bury my head in sand and open my eyes so I can claim I’m crying over the sand.  So far I haven’t done that, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a first time.

For a few days I’ve been looking into another agent, but let being busy get in the way of finishing my submission.  Since they aren’t copy-paste e-mails and I re-read everything, I can take a couple hours making sure each one is just right.  Cue the boot to kick my butt.  today Writer’s Digest sent out an e-mail to their subscribers that that agent is seeking submissions.  Of course this means she will be under an avalanche of queries.  Can I get a collective D’OH! from everyone reading this?  And I’d appreciate a second d’oh because I just saw the frozen pizza I bought last night is still sitting on the table.  Salmonella’s worth the risk.  I survived it ten months ago.  It’s the query trenches that might kill me.  So into the oven the pizza goes.

And because I love hop hop hop hop hippity blog hops (whoever wrote the screenplay for “Harvey” probably wants to reach through my screen and smack me now), enjoy!

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Talynn over at Ink in the Book spends so much time on things like this and bringing in agents to talk to us that I feel bad having nothing to offer in return but a link to her site and my gratitude.  Blog hops, Twitter chats, you name it, she’s doing it for us.  I also owe a thank you to T.J. Loveless from Writing from the Padded Room for telling me about Talynn’s blog.  T.J. also has a fantastic manuscript in progress I’ve been privileged to read, and though the ending has been spoiled for me (thanks, Twit chat…), the story is still fascinating enough that it only ups my desire to read more!

And the pizza is done.  CPK Garlic Chicken, please don’t make me sick.  I really don’t want to come close to killing a main character in my third book other than the one whose death has already been written, though being upset and nearly killing a main character on a whim in my second made for one of the best scenes.  Lucky readers.  You won’t see what happens in these books.  I made sure of that.  Lots of twists.  Oh, pizza time.  YUM!  Bye.

Writer’s Wednesday: Michelle Hauck’s Road to Publication

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Writer's Wednesday

In this, my inaugural post Writer’s Wednesdays (I’ll come up with a catchier title at some point, and this will be every few Wednesdays), I bring you a guest post by Michelle Hauck on her journey to publication.  Links to her work and are below her article.

Thank you very much, Michelle, for your fantastic words of advice and encouragement!  I’m looking forward to March when Kindar’s Cure is released, and will grab a copy!

Thanks, Alys, for inviting me to share an inspirational story on your blog. I hope this fits the category because, Lord knows, I struggled with my journey and it isn’t over yet.

When I started querying my first manuscript I had no clue. I didn’t know the rules of writing or how to create an enticing query letter. To give you some idea of the awfulness, my epic fantasy was 147,000 words. My cheeks heat up just thinking of everything I did wrong. It was a flop, a disaster. I began doing research by reading agent blogs. I got help on my query letter from other writers. The results didn’t improve. I ended up with three requests out of somewhere around seventy letters sent. All three were swiftly followed by rejection and, in one case, even worse news. The agent with my partial had passed away. I felt terrible.

I did the unthinkable; I shelved my baby. You read the words of other writers about how they trunked their first manuscript, but I never thought it would happen to me. It did. By now I knew Heartsouls would never work in its current state. It lacked conflict, and the characters ran wild instead of adhering to the plot. There wasn’t a nice clean stand alone ending. It needed a total rewrite. Instead I started a new story.

In this second story, another epic fantasy, I did everything right or so I thought. I kept to the plot. I understood query letters, or at least the idea of how they should work. I didn’t rush off to query my first draft. To my eternal good fortune, I found Agent Query Connect where other writers with a clue share their experience. I took advantage of the critiquing marathon for Speculative Fiction writers to improve my skill at editing and get some feedback on Kindar’s Cure. I collected a double handful of beta readers and spent months editing before sending out a query letter to agents. Guess what happened? Kindar got three requests. Oh, it did get personalized comments. In fact, it got more of these than requests. ‘I love your concept, but …’ There was always a ‘but.’

All my research and careful preparation, and I got the exactly same number of requests. Three became a taboo number. I was cursed. Those rejections kept coming in and they hurt big time. Even I noticed that I didn’t laugh or joke as much as I used to. To inspire myself, I even start a series of post on my blog of friends who had gotten the call. I could at least read their happy endings. The revise and resubmit Kindar got came back another ‘no thanks, not for me, but good luck with finding someone else to represent you.’ Then the third and last full came back as a form rejection. No words of advice, just a form rejection. A few weeks later that agent left the business. Oh, God, it was happening again!

But this time there was a difference. I knew Kindar was a good story. I knew it was well written. Give up? Heck no!

I began to submit straight to publishers. And hey, a lot of them didn’t want query letters. Right away I got a request for a full. My kids thought I was nuts, running around the house in a victory lap at seven in the morning. I got other requests mixed among the rejections. My numbers were higher. I ran a percent of requests to submissions over twenty percent. Partials went to fulls—overnight in one case. Still the rejections overshadowed everything else. And guess what? The requests became stuck at three. There it was again. The number of doom. Time went by, and I immersed myself in my work in progress, refusing to think about Kindar.

In June, a different publisher opened their submissions. Low and behold, I got another request. I did it! I passed the cursed number three to become four!

I didn’t lose the habit of checking my email like a junkie. One Sunday night, pretty late, I gave my mail one last look. The first publisher to request, Divertir, showed up in the inbox along with some more innocent letters. Crap. Do I open it first and get the bad new over, or do I save it for last and hope a little longer? I opened it first. It was short. Ah, rejection for sure. They’d been awfully busy but they wanted to let me know they’d like to publish Kindar’s Cure. What? I read it again. Then again. It kept saying the same thing! There was no victory lap. I sat there in total shock. ‘Uh, husband, they say they want to publish.” Husband wasn’t impressed. He took bad new harder than I did; he wouldn’t allow himself to get excited anymore. I don’t think he’ll believe it until the book is in his hands.

Several months later, I find that I’m agreeing with my husband. This good news didn’t happen to me. But it did! Divertir gave me a tentative release date of March 2013. I have an editor. Me, an editor. It doesn’t seem real. In fact, to be perfectly truthful, it’s been a little scary. It’s a leap whether it’s signing with an agent or accepting a publisher. You’re signing over something you created and putting it in strange hands.

So don’t believe it can never happen to you. An overwhelming number of rejections can mean nothing. The right person might be out there, waiting. If you believe in your work then be persistent. If the first story doesn’t set off fireworks, write another and another. Like a lightning strike, success can happen when you least expect it.

Follow me on twitter.

Read other Getting the Call stories at my blog.

See Kindar’s Cure on Goodreads.

Trudging along

Still in the trenches.  Still writing.  Still editing.  Having too much fun on Twitter and building a website.  Busy writing a couple guest articles.

This next week, and I hope longer, I’ll be featuring guest articles here too.  On Wednesdays I’ll share articles about the craft, inspiration, and so one, that fellow writers would like to share, and interviews with writers on Sundays.  So watch for that!

I’m also one of the few people who doesn’t care to watch Hollywood people fawn all over themselves, so tonight shall be spent writing a couple articles and doing some editing and maybe some more writing on Sacred Heart.

Discouraged

So I’ve got characters I love, and characters I hate as much as they’re meant to be hated.  I’ve got a solid story that has had more than a reasonable amount of research done to it (I think scouting out pics of the inside of a Canadian grocery store in a town of 200 in the middle of nowhere is a little beyond reasonable).  My betas are loving it.  Reviews on the sites I’ve posted chapters to have have been great.  So why am I feeling discouraged?  Aside from three agent rejections since the first of the year.  Why am I doubting this novel?  What can I do to not feel like I’m wasting my time?

Right this moment it’s only the words of a couple friends that are preventing me from scrapping Sacred Blood.