The Joy of Writing

I wrote today for the first time in weeks. I got a wonderful job in August as a teacher for VIPKID teaching English to some of the most adorable little kids. However, since the kids I'm teaching are in China, there is a thirteen hour time difference so I have the option of teaching late at night or early in the morning. Being more of a morning person, I'm getting up at 4:15 so I can teach from 5-7 each weekday morning. Which means I'm going to bed much earlier as well.

My normal writing time was after my kids had gone to bed in the evening, after seeing my husband for a while. That no longer works.

So I have yet to find a good consistent time to devote to writing. I have an idea of when I might be able to fit it in (while my toddler is napping, after having a little bit of downtime). I just need to actually do it.

It was SOOOO much fun to write today, though. Because it's been weeks, I've had a lot of new ideas and subtle changes shifting around in my head. I knew clearly what needed to happen next, and it was just so delightful to actually sit down and do it.

The chapter ended up being twice as long as my normal chapters, but I'll break it into two chapters when I'm revising. First I just need to get out the story.

And I'm so excited about the story. I'm having such fun writing it. I just need to give writing the priority it deserves.

This week I'm going to try to write every day. Being a published author is my dream. I honestly believe that I have what it takes. I just need to make sure it gets the time it needs and deserves so I can get there.

The Excitement of New Things

A few writer friends and I are starting a website together. It's not ready for sharing yet, but we're working on our first stories for it. It's a five chapter story, which is very different from the novels I usually write. I keep having to stop myself from adding multiple layers to things I won't have time to hash out in this length of story.

But it's great fun! I'm really enjoying the writing and the folks doing this with me are as enthusiastic about the idea as I am. It's great to find people who are as excited about a new venture as you are, and who are working just as hard as you to get it done.

But the joy of writing the story! Since I've finished my first novel and have been querying it, I have attempted to write two different stories. I admitted defeat for the first one and have been trying to get far enough into this second one to really feel involved in it.

I've restarted it once, hoping that writing those first few chapters might help me get invested in it. It hasn't worked.

I don't like giving up on a story once I start writing it. There are all kinds of quotes from writers telling you that you can't just write when it's fun, or when inspiration hits, but you have to write even when you don't want to. Walking away from a story seems like giving up on my dream of being a published writer.

But I think I need to walk away a second time. I think that when the book is not calling to me to the extent that this one has been, I need to find one that will.

I have one in mind. And I'm excited about it. It's more young adult than I like to write, but it's fantasy like the book I've completed so I'm hoping having it again in a world of my creation will help me keep with it. I haven't started it yet, although I have adjusted the title and genre of my book for Camp NaNoWriMo this July.

I need to get caught up with the chapters due for my website. I was traveling home from vacation on the day the third was due, and then I've been busy with other things yesterday. So I need to catch up with those before getting into my new story.

But I am extremely excited about both ventures!

And, of course, I will continue to query my first novel as I go.

The Fun of First Drafts

I'm finding it both harder and easier to write this new story.

It's harder because it is not set in a fantasy world of my own creation. It is on an alien planet, but the people on it are from our planet and there are things I have to research to make accurate. It slows things down and I've ended up not worrying about them in this draft. Instead I am making a list of things I need to research after this draft is done and I will make the appropriate corrections for the next one. Still, it is harder to make it true. Plus its just a big change to go from writing the book I spent three years polishing to a brand new one.

But it is so much easier to write the first draft knowing how many drafts go after it. I don't have to make it perfect. The first draft of a novel is never going to be perfect. I realized this to some degree when I was writing the second, and far better, version of my first novel. If things weren't great, I could ignore them and come back and fix it later.

This time I'm just much more aware of that fact. It's not just the brackets of [insert factual information about this thing later] dotting the pages. It's the words themselves. So I'm overusing one specific word too much in this paragraph? Meh. It doesn't matter right now. The trick is just to get the story on paper (or typed into the computer), to watch it change and take on a life of its own and meander off in unexpected directions. Rough drafts are just that: rough.

There's a great freedom in realizing that. No one but me will ever see this first draft. It doesn't matter how badly I word something (although I do still pause at times, eyes shut, struggling to remember the specific word I'm wanting for that sentence), how awkward the dialogue may be. I am figuring out the story, the characters, the plot. How I word it is unimportant at this stage.

It is great fun to be writing a new story. Hard, agonizing, messy fun. And who could ask for more?

Moving Forward

I have struggled with getting into a new book after finishing my first. I used to be certain that I had no interest in being a writer. And then, one day (October 5, 2013 to be exact), the idea for my first book came to me. And I had to write it.


Once I started writing, I discovered this incredible wealth of story ideas all around me. Watch a documentary: book idea. Rewatch an episode of "That 70's Show": book idea. They were everywhere. Some were little snatches of story. Some were an entire novel's worth of ideas. I dutifully wrote them all down and put them from my mind as I continued writing that first story idea.


I have been querying that finished novel since the end of October of last year. I like my story. I think it is good enough to publish. I also know there is a lot of luck involved in finding that perfect agent who sees what I see in my work. I accept (or at least I think I do) that there is a good chance that I may not get that book published. I hope I do, but I have all these other ideas to write down perhaps it will be one of those that finds me that perfect agent.


The problem I am having is really getting invested in a different story. There are a couple of reasons for this.


First, I have been immersed in the fantasy world of my creation for the last three years. I know all about that world, how the magic works there, how people act there, everything. I have lived and breathed that world as I've coaxed the words from my mind down through my fingers to the page. It is incredibly hard to move away from that world into another. Both of the books I've attempted writing since finishing my first have been, if not based in the real world, have people from the real world transported to a world of my creation. Which means a huge shift in how I write my characters, since they have to be true to real, actual people alive today.


Secondly, the book I have written is not a stand alone book. I don't know if I intended it to be a trilogy when I started writing it, but that is how it's come to be. And I desperately want to write the second book. I get those mental images of scenes from that book, or even ones from the final book of the trilogy. And to have to tell myself that I'm not going to write it is really difficult.


I've struggled with this for a while. It always felt like I was having to choose between the art of writing and the dream of actually being a published author. Yes, I know I can self-publish, but I'm not interested in starting my writing career like that. I want to have an agent and go through a proper publishing company. That is my plan, and it's one I've given a lot of thought to. So, if I write the rest of the trilogy now, two things would happen. One, no agents I query are interested in my first book, and therefore I cannot query the second and third books at all, and I have to wait for years before having something to query with again. Or two, an agent down the road does decide that she/he likes my book, signs me, gives me feedback and I have to rewrite the first book, therefore throwing off the rest of the books as well and wasting a lot of writing time.


So I've tried to get into these other two books. Both are good ideas. Neither of which have clear outlines, either on paper or in my mind, about what should happen. Which makes the non-pantser in me struggle a great deal with sitting down and writing.


I know this. Yet, I have not sat down to get an outline planned. And I think a great deal of that is that I really want to finish the trilogy I have begun.


Then the other day, I figured it out. I think I was driving somewhere (we're wrapping up Girl Scout cookie season... there has been a lot of car rides to deliver cookies to nearby towns) and I suddenly figured it out.


I'm going to write my trilogy. But not all at once.


I attended a Writing Workshop in Minnesota in February. There was a wonderful speaker there, Chuck Sambuchino (amazing guy, you should look him up) who gave a talk about the options in publishing available today. He talked about both traditional publishing and self-publishing. I listened attentively in that "Well, I'm not ever going to self-publish, but this is interesting and Chuck's a great speaker" kind of way. He talked about how you can get the best of both worlds by having a traditional publisher but self-publishing on the side. Short stories, poems, things the traditional publisher isn't interested in, or even proper books that the publisher has turned down. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk, but was still certain I was never going to self-publish.


But perhaps I will.


This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to outline both of my book ideas and find those endings. I am also going to outline the rest of the trilogy. Then I am going to write one of those new, completely different book ideas while merrily querying five agents a week. I will finish this new book, revise it, polish it, all that good stuff. Then I will start querying that one while I write the second book of my trilogy. Once I've finished that, I will write the other new book and query that one while I finish my trilogy.


Hopefully the book I am querying gets picked up. If not, hopefully one of the other books will get me published. I will keep writing, and the more I write, the better I will become. And down the road, maybe nearby, maybe far, far away, I am confident that I will get published.


And then, I will offer them my trilogy. If they want it, great. If they don't, I will look into self-publishing it.


I am not going to give up on my dream of getting an agent and being traditionally published. Nor am I willing to give up the rest of this story I have begun. I am going to do both.


And isn't it a glorious world where I have that option?

The Slow Path of Querying

I have been querying agents since the end of October. It has been, and still is, a long, slow journey.

I read up on how to write a query letter. Then I wrote one, got some excellent feedback from fellow writers, and revised it. After I sent out some queries with no positive response, I revised it again. I am now happy with my query. I feel confident that it portrays my book well and I believe that any rejection emails I get come from a mismatch between my book and the agent, and not the query itself.

And I have gotten a LOT of rejection emails. In total, I have looked into one hundred and eighteen different agencies. Twenty-seven of those have been agencies that do not publish adult fantasy, so were not queried. Of those ninety-one agencies I have queried, I have received twenty-six "no"s. That is not including those agencies who only reply to you if you are interested. I haven't updated my spreadsheet recently to add those unspoken rejections. But I have gotten twenty-six polite, professional rejection emails.

I have also gotten two requests for the full manuscript of my book. I haven't heard back from either of them yet, although the first agent said he'd reply in January or February, so that could happen anytime now. The other agent did not send a time frame to expect a response by.

I am content.

When I first started querying, every "no" would send me into a sad, grumpy mood for a few hours, and those days where I got multiple "no"s were not good days.

But it doesn't bother me anymore. I like my book. I am proud of it, and I will continue to send out queries to agents each week. Maybe one of them will see in it what I do. And maybe they won't. It is very possible my book will not get published. But I will keep writing other books, and someday I am confident I will become a published author.

I have hope for this book, and for my future books. And my advice for anyone else out there who is querying right now is to just keep going. If you want to read about famous authors who were also rejected many times over, check out this website.

It is a great feat to have written a book. While you are working on getting it published, write another one. Have faith in your work and your abilities as a writer. And the more you write, the better your writing becomes.

I will continue the slow path of querying my novel. And I hope you will do the same with yours.

Minnesota Writing Workshop

I have signed up to attend the Minnesota Writing Workshop on February 11, 2017. It's in St. Paul, so a good three and a half hour drive from where I live. It's a workshop on how to get published, and it will last all day.

I've never been to a writing workshop before. It seems exciting and scary, all at once. This is me, putting myself out there, learning more about writing, and taking my wish to be a published author seriously.

I don't know what to expect. It's months off, and I know I have ample time to figure out what it's going to be like and everything. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to wear. I'm not paying to meet one on one with an agent. It's already pretty costly as it is, and paying extra seemed like too much. Although, as I write that, I'm feeling that pang of worry. Maybe I should have paid that little bit more. I expect I can always change that in the near future if I do decide that I should do it. I'll sleep on it at least.

Anyway, I'm excited. I hope the weather allows me to get there safely and without anxiety. I hope the roads are not too scary to drive down in St. Paul. I seem to have inherited my mother's fear of busy roads. Just another thing to get past.

I will continue to query agents between now and then. I have heard mixed thoughts about querying agents over the holidays. Some people say it's a great idea, the agents can print off copies and read them at home (which doesn't really seem like a vacation to me...). Others point out that it's right after NaNo, which I did not win this year, and agents will be flooded with queries of unpolished books. I plan to just continue querying as I have been. Sending out four or five queries a week, and trying not to take the rejection emails too hard. I've changed my query letter once, but I really do think it's a good query letter. Maybe my book itself is just not what these agents are looking for. So I will keep looking until I find the one who sees what I see in my book.

Meanwhile, I will plan for this writing workshop, and keep going on my new book. I want to get published, and some day I will. Hopefully with this book, but if not, then with another. Someday I will be a published author. I just need to put in the work.

A Writing Routine

There are so many quotes from different authors, telling us that we need to be writing regardless of our mood. We need to write even when inspiration doesn't strike, when we're tired or busy. If we want to really be authors, we need to write even when we deeply don't want to.

Which is so very hard to do.

In two and a half weeks, my daughters will be back at school (my youngest daughter in kindergarten, which is crazy). As a stay at home mom with an eight-month-old, I haven't had to get up at a certain time this summer, which as been nice. But the summer is almost over, and with the need of getting into a waking routine, I'm going to add a writing routine as well.

I am going to wake up at five every weekday morning. That way I can blearily get dressed and moving without feeling like I'm cutting into my assigned writing time, and then devote 5:30-6:30 to writing (with the understanding that I will almost certainly be interrupted to go and breastfeed my little guy once during that time) before having to get my children up, moving, and ready for school.

The early morning is really the best time for me to devote to writing. Once kids are up and about, my life is full of stay at home mom things, and my baby's naps are busy with exercising or showering. We have things to do during the day, like eating, playing, and, hypothetically, cleaning. I can't say that I'll write each evening after they go to sleep or I'll never spend time with my husband. So, morning it is.

And can I just say that five o clock is really frigging early?!

Still, if I can get into a routine of this, my life will include writing without my having to find the time to write. It will be built right in and there will be no excuses for not doing it.

I can do this. Even if it's so, very, very early...