Do you actually, like, write?

I had a couple of hours of daycare yesterday morning, time for me to write, and I thought I'd try to figure out what I actually did during that time. To be fair, I did write about 2,000 words on my WIP (the Twelfth Night with talking seagulls YA story set here in my home city), but that's only a fraction of what "writing time" means for me.

So yesterday morning, I:

• read through my subscriptions to various writing-related blogs, noting items of interest to share with my online writing group
• discovered a newer agent to query and entered her information into my query spreadsheet for The Dharma Bum Business.
• discovered via the blogosphere that one of my favorite agents (I mean, favorite in the sense that I enjoy reading blog posts she writes and interviews she conducts...it's strange how writing becomes sort of a spectator sport at times!) is open for some types of submissions for the next month, and hey, my project fits one of those types!
• researched both of those agents for submission guidelines, etc.
  
• reread the first seven pages of TDBB that I include in my query letters with an eye to polish it up even more.
• added a comma, removed an adverb
• took away the comma
• used a thesaurus briefly
• deleted the whole sentence that used to be home to the adverb
• followed a complicated process of saving as text to, one hopes, preserve the formatting when pasting the sample pages into an email (this process was maybe seventy-five and a half steps long and involved some burnt offerings and at least a dozen languages)
• personalized my query letter
• sent four queries and updated my color-coded spreadsheet
• read several agent threads on a writing forum as research and updated spreadsheet
• noticed that my google reader showed that several agents had updated their blogs
• read blogs
• made coffee
• opened notes file for WIP and read through the summary of scenes I have left to write.
• realized that the last time I was writing, I completely and shamelessly veered away from the "outline".
• adjusted "outline". (okay, so the actual words I wrote were: "Oh no, I just realized this will all fall apart after that last scene, so...figure it out, all right? fix this. make it clever and shit.")
• made toast to go with second cup of coffee
• wrote 100 words of WIP
• whined to writing group about how hard it was
• posted excerpt, received praise
• wrote another 100 words
• checked email, found a rejection
• cried
• updated spreadsheet
• reread query letter, trying to figure out what was wrong with it
• took a spin over to Query Shark to look at query letters that *had* to be worse than mine. Instead, the entry is an example of a perfectly awesome query that I sure wish were mine
• found that as usual, queries sort of all look the same to me, especially after I read a few in a row
  
• got a headache
  
• cancelled tentative plans to become a literary agent's assistant
  
• wrote 500 words of WIP in a fit of pure, unadulterated genius
• read a tutorial on synopsis-writing, and then another one
  
• tried to start a synopsis
  
• banged head repeatedly into desk
• searched cupboard for jelly beans
• sent myself a test email to make sure it wasn't malfunctioning
  
• checked clock, found only thirty minutes remaining before I had to leave to pick up the kids
• read over the last 700 words of WIP, found them to be utter crap
• deleted and wrote 1000 serviceable first draft words
• whined to writing group about how hard it was
• checked clock, found that I was now going to be late to pick up the kids
• sped away in the minivan like SuperMom, except unshowered and tardy and with no plans for lunch.
  

write now

I realize that I haven't talked about much in my life lately other than the kids and their shenanigans. This is a main purpose of the blog, of course, but I used to give a little more context of life outside of the mom part of me.

Part of that is that I started writing about writing in a super secret friend-locked lj so I can whine wallow in self-pity post excerpts of my works-in-progress for my four or five friends. It seems like novel-writing is something I'm insistent on doing, despite any logic or reason, and starting this blog was largely responsible for my return to regular, productive writing.

Since starting the blog, I've become a part of an amazing online writing community (many of whom are also blogging here), and I've also finished two novels and drafted 43k words on novel number 4! This current WIP--a young adult contemporary fantasy book that combines Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with A Wrinkle in Time and talking seagulls--has been a particularly enjoyable romp to draft after the more serious journey toward completion (or what can ever serve as completion, with a piece of writing...*polishes, polishes, polishes*)of TDBB, novel number three.

But the fact is, novel three is complete, and even though I periodically hate it in that "How could I ever have thought myself a writer!" kind of way, I really feel that this book is the strongest thing I've written. The periodic hatred crops up, I think, because the book inside my head, the book of my ambitions, is never exactly what emerges. But sometimes what emerges is actually more beautiful, in its own way. Whatever may be the case, the time has almost come to start querying this one. Which I have started doing--cautiously, selectively--even though I swore I was going to wait until closer to fall...or for the economy to pick up...or for the right stars to align...

It's just that doing this is really scary. And it makes for a lot of doubt. And dread. And hope.

But mostly doubt.

So I'm cautiously, selectively beginning. Researching agents. Getting critiques on my query letter. Writing a synopsis. Thinking about how to answer difficult questions about the book. Searching for books that have a similar style, a similar feel, a similar marketing plan.

And for now, I'm hoping to finish up this first draft of the new book before going back to work in an un-counted number of days. So there's my writing update, and now for a while anyway, it will probably be back to kid antics and parentingfail.

the prodigal blogger

Yeah, so things have been a little crazy, what with the teaching and the writing and the life stuff. My goal was always that I would blog at least once a week, but I sure do like it when I show up at this page more like once per day. But then I start to realize that I am really not all that interesting on a day to day basis, and when I sit down to compose something that at least makes a stab at being entertaining, I realize that oh, no, I have to make lunches for tomorrow, or my mother-in-law is coming to babysit and I really should clean the house a bit. I discover that the laundry has been sitting, clean and folded, in laundry baskets placed at odd intervals around the house in some kind of crazy, anti-feng shui design nowhere near the little dresser drawers that once I neatly labelled with little pictures of socks and trousers.

I've been sending the little novel out to agents, and my inbox has already seen its share of rejections reading "Dear Author" and even a couple with my name in them. I have had one request for a partial (rejected) and one request for a full manuscript (still in progress). I'm amazed by how much time I can spend tweaking my query letter, researching agents, formatting emails, and tracking everything in my pretty little color-coded spreadsheet. This, along with the other stuff, has made work on the new novel a little slow, but I'm still plodding away at it.

And now, before you fall asleep to my prosaic excuses and status updates, here's a funny little exchange the Jabberwock entertained us with when I got home from work this evening.

Jabber: Dad? Is Luke Skywalker really real, only he lives on the other side of the planet?

D: Well, no, Jabber. Luke Skywalker is a character. He's fictional. In addition, if he did exist, he would be not just on the other side of the planet, but in a whole different galaxy. That's like far, far away across outer space!

Jabber: Um, but Dad, what if people thought Luke Skywalker was just a character, but really, they just hadn't ever met him. And he was real.

D: Haha, no he's made up. He's fiction, a character in a movie.

Jabber: (big serious eyes) Well, I hate to tell you this, but I've seen him, Dad. Because, you know, I growed up on the other side of the planet, and he was there. And I saw him. And he's so real.

Me: When exactly did you grow up on the other side of the planet?

J: Right after I was born, somebody drived me there to the other side of the planet, and that's where I spent my time until I came back to you. And while I was gone, I saw Luke Skywalker.

Taking Things Personally!

**pssssttttt...all you lovely visitors from literaryrejections...you're writers, right? Come on over to my comments confessional and tell me some fun stories about things you did as a teenager that your parents STILL don't know about! I return you now to your regularly scheduled programming...

This seems like a weird thing to get excited about, but today I got a personal rejection from an agent that I queried on my novel! Meaning, not a form letter. Sure, I've had rejections that were addressed "Dear Author," and I've had rejections addressed "Dear Elissa ..." and I've even had one that said something to the effect of, "Your story was intriguing, but..." which at first made me feel good until I found out it was really a form letter, too. A good one, though.

Today's rejection, though, didn't seem like a form letter, and contained the following compliment: "You have a lively literary voice." Which was unfortunately followed by a sad little sentence starting with the word "Alas." If that is a form letter, though, what a nice one!

I did manage to query five more agents today, via email. Sometime soon I've got to spend an evening getting together a batch of snail mail letters, synopses, sample chapters, etc. I'm ready for another mailing. It's a little cumbersome with my lack of a printer for my laptop, so I've got to save to the flash drive, bring it upstairs to the aging (but beautiful and still powerful...just no longer up to date on her soft and hardware!) Mac for printing duty.

The email queries are nice, but of course they, too, have their clumsy points, such as the fact that I feel I must save each letter as simple text and paste into my email, hoping the formatting comes out somewhat close to normal after it is broken up into a bazillion tiny bits of code and shuttled across the world (well, the country anyway) to some poor, overworked agent's assistant's cluttered email box.

I have a little bit of trouble with the agents who have an online submission form instead of taking query letters. These can be a little troublesome to me, since I spend all this time fussing and tinkering with each word, each comma, each snappy little compound adjective in my query letter, and then I am asked to break it all up into bits and paste it into little electronic boxes.

It's been a long time, though, since I have felt this good about getting rejected. My very first writing group, Doreen and Shaedra, used to celebrate each rejection notice with a little party. Doreen would break out a bottle of sparkling something or other, and maybe we would finger paint or make a collage or just go swing really high on the swingset under the freeway. We celebrated because a rejection letter means you really put it out there--you braved the publishing world and came back with a little bit of proof of your journey. That's why I still save all the letters, even the "Dear Author" ones. And why it feels so unfinished to type "no response" into my spreadsheet instead of "rejected."

Best of all, I've still got four more queries out there for today--four more chances for success. Tomorrow, maybe I'll get to five more. Even better, while I was sweating along on the elliptical this evening, out of nowhere came the whisper of a first sentence of my next short story. Now all I have to do is wait and listen, and the rest of the story will come. Hang on, world, my lively literary voice is getting primed for action!

Eek.

I just did something possibly stupid. Possibly brave. Or possibly just a non-issue. I emailed a copy of my current novel query letter to the blog of the Query Shark to be possibly critiqued. It may make me feel like an idiot. Or it may give me some really valuable advice. Or it may make me so angry I write a much better query letter. Or it may not even get critiqued. Anyway, I'll keep you posted!

Now I'm off to work on my new short story, getting it all ready to submit. Also, I'm going to spend some time searching through Agent Query and updating my handy little color-coded spreadsheet, making a list of agents I'm going to query next. So far, I'm getting a nice little collection of rejection slips/emails, but that's okay. I know it's normal to get rejected a lot, and given the fact that agents are often receiving upwards of 100 queries a week or more, I don't feel like it's that personal, either. Still, I feel like I've been writing and revising my query letter so many times I can't quite tell if I'm currently making it better or worse, so I thought why not? I'll give the Query Shark a chance to pick it apart. Janet's critique doesn't scare me as much as the comments thread, though. Eek.

Thinking about it isn't the same as doing it...

...but I've been thinking about my writing a lot lately. Yesterday I went for a nice long walk around the neighborhood, my favorite way to let ideas bounce around in my head before writing. Unfortunately, by the time I got home and got my lunch packed for the next day and all my stuff together, I had very little time for anything other than reading over the start of my work-in-progress, a short story about a mother named Madeline. Or maybe Simone. Or...okay, never mind.

I have a goal to write and submit a short story, something I haven't done since before I started on my novel. I typically have some trouble with the short fiction, simply because I have a hard time keeping it short. If you've been reading my blog more than a little bit, you can probably see how I might encounter that problem. However, getting a few publishing credits (non-poetry, too) to my name could make it easier to get an agent to look twice at the query for my novel, I'm guessing. And even if it doesn't make any difference whatsoever on that front, maybe if I could manage to get published in the next couple of years, it might help me to persevere on writing that second novel (which is in the works, but slooooowly).

I know it's not the best system, but it seems like the only time I really get any serious writing done is when I'm not teaching. Which means like eight or maybe ten weeks out of the year, when it's all said and done. That's not much to work with, so I think I'd better find some way to get better at writing in between the moments of being a mama and Ms. Lissnkids. It's hard, not so much because of the time, but because of the creativity teaching and mothering full time takes out of me. Don't believe anyone who tells you teaching is easy-peasy. Maybe it could be, if I were content to pick up some literature book and cruise along with my teachers' manual in tow, all "read this short story and answer the questions," but I can't roll that way, even when I try. Much of my writing energy goes toward school projects (you may have heard of the screenplay I recently wrote and directed called "Alien Invasions: UFO's and the MCA's"? Well, let me tell you it's not easy to get inspired by a state test (MCA's are the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment, pretty much the bane of our No Child Left Untested academic year). Plus, being that cheesy takes a lot of work!

Hmmph, it's time to make a lunch and get to bed, as usual, so I'm going to distill my thoughts down into a list of writing goals for this summer.

1. Submit AT LEAST fifteen queries for my novel.
2. Research publication options at least three times (basically once monthly)
3. Write a thousand words each day that I have writing time (we'll say three days a week, to keep it simple, since that's when I've got daycare. I'm hoping to steal a few more days here and there, though.)
4. Keep blogging. I know some people find that blogging becomes a way to avoid writing, and it's true that sometimes I "waste" time reading my way around the blogosphere, but I think the exercise of writing a daily (mostly) blog entry has been sort of a catalyst for more writing. A warm-up, in some cases.

All right. Now I've just got to keep it up, and be persistent with those queries.

Monkey See, Monkey Do...Monkey Get Owie

I never had an older sibling, but I always wanted one. I always envisioned a cool big sister who would let me in on all the secrets to fitting into the world of girls...like the exact moment when stirrup pants went from the ugliest thing imaginable to the coolest thing possible, or how to make sure the collar on my Coca-Cola rugby shirt was standing up just so. I thought she would help me with my make-up (maybe even saving me from the neon blue mascara phase!) Even a big brother would have been welcome; at least he maybe would have had some good-looking friends I could charm with my wit and big hair.

For a long time, though, I was an only child, since my mom and dad divorced when I was four or so. My little brother arrived when I was starting third grade, a little too late for him to really idolize me and emulate me...or to hit on my friends. And my little sister came much later; in fact the day she was born was the day I found out I was pregnant with my little Jabberwock.

David and I were unsure about how many children we would have. For a long while I think we were both content to stop at one, but then this weird babylonging stole over me--first in little flashes like when I actually saw or held a newborn, and then in a more permanent kind of wistfullness. Eventually, I convinced my love that two was really the perfect number.

There are times when my oldest son really regrets our choice, especially now that Monkey is fully mobile, and even the top of the dining room table is no longer a refuge for brother-free play. In many ways, our two boys are so incredibly different: Monkey is fearless and bold, while Jabberwock is more cautious and reserved. Monkey delights in climbing; Jabber gets nervous around heights. Monkey makes do mostly with three words, "dis," "dat," and "uh-oh," while Jabber at this age was already, well...jabbering. On the contrary, Monkey learned to walk like a pro before age one, but his big brother didn't take more than a step or two until almost 17 months.

Still, watching the two of them play is like watching a kind of comedy act, with Monkey imitating every move. Jabberwock grabs a stuffed animal and growls with it, so Monkey runs to get one, too, stomping around the house behind his brother, imitating the growls. Big Brother speeds up the parade, growls escalating into howls. Little Brother follows suit. Jabber jumps. Monkey jumps. Jabber spins. Monkey spins. Jabber throws himself onto the couch. Monkey throws himself toward the couch but falls short, dizzy from spinning. Monkey smashes forehead into floor. Monkey wails. In a sudden reversal, Jabber too begins to wail, not in pain but in fear that he will get the blame.

I'm so happy that my boys have each other.

Queries!!!

This has to be short, since it is past my bedtime and I still have to log my calories for the night, blah, blah, blah, but I just have to share that I have queried two more agents for my novel this evening! Yay, me! It's funny, because even though I knew going into this whole process at the beginning of the school year this year, that I would get tons of rejections and just needed to keep on keepin' on, it still hit me really hard to get all these form rejections. Part of the writing experience, I know, but still. I just want to know that after all those years of birthing that novel, someone will take a look at it. So yeah, I was busy and stuff teaching my butt off these last eight months or whatever, but I think it was also disappointment and discouragement that has kept me from querying more. That and a bleak kind of fear that I will get to the end of the list of agents without getting anyone to read it. Then what? Can I stick my baby in a drawer somewhere to be forgotten? Harsh. I am still writing, with new projects in the works, but the thought of this just getting pitched in the "practice novel" category makes me feel sick. And I'm still really happy with the darn thing, too; I still get a little giddy when I read the ending.

Anyway, just had to share that even if I do reach the end of that list with nothing but a string of rejections, I'm going to query every last one! Wish me luck! :)