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...

A Writer's Regret

I was listening to the radio this morning and Lukas Graham's song "7 years" came on. I was mindlessly singing along to it, as one does in the car, when a line caught my attention.

Soon I'll be sixty years old, my daddy got sixty-one.

I am thirty years old. My parents are still alive, but my mother-in-law died three years ago at age fifty-eight. I know some people live to be in their nineties and hopefully I will too.

But I might not.

I'm relatively healthy. A few minor conditions losing some weight would probably cure, but nothing life threatening. But I could get hit by a car or take a bad fall down the stairs, or any number of things and be gone.

This is not a morbid, worrying about dying post.

But that lyric got me thinking. If I did die, what would my regrets be?

I would regret not getting to grow old with my husband, not getting to watch my children grow up. Of course, I'm blessed with faith in God and I believe in an afterlife, so I expect I'd spend time up there keeping an eye on the loves of my life.

My life is good. I'm married to an incredible man. I have three wonderful children. I am a stay-at-home mom and I'm very fulfilled with that vocation.

But one regret did instantly spring to mind.

I would regret all the stories not yet written. I'm not good at devoting the time I should to writing. I get distracted by Netflix and playing games on my phone and the like. And then I'm too tired to write, so I put it off.

I have written one book. It is with beta readers, and I'm doing my best not to dwell on it while it's out of my hands. I have started a second one and barely got into it.

I have so many book ideas within me. Stories that I want to share with the world or at least my family. Regardless of whether or not I get any of my books published, I want to get them written. And I understand that that is an impossible goal since the more I write and see the world through a writer's eyes, the more book ideas I get. But the idea of dying without making a valiant effort to get the stories swimming inside me out onto paper (or, to be literal, into my laptop), that would be a huge regret.

Isaac Asimov's quote saying "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." makes sense to me. Although, six minutes wouldn't be nearly enough time to get out a story, and I'd probably want to spend those remaining few minutes cuddling my family, but I very much feel those words.

Our lives are full of countless minutes. There are so many distractions to take away from the time we have to write (or do whatever else you are passionate about). But when our time comes, will we look back at our time on Earth and regret not finishing re-watching that second season of Charmed, or regret not finishing the stories we are filled with?

I know how I want to spend my time. How do you want to spend yours?

When Characters Act On Their Own

One of the most amazing things about writing is watching in amazement as your characters take on a life of their own. It's incredible and utterly bizarre, and it never ceases to take me by surprise.

In my magical novel that is being beta read, two characters randomly became related. It was unexpected but the second I realized it, it was hard to imagine their relationship any other way. Now, I have been working on that version of the novel for a year and a half, and much of that time has been spent editing. I didn't have any huge character-altering moments during the long, long editing process, or at least if I did, it was early enough on that I don't remember it.

While my magical novel is being read, I am working on a first draft of an entirely different story. This one has ghosts in it. I'm only one chapter into it (a teething six-month-old doesn't leave much time for writing) but it's been mulling around in my mind a great deal since I began writing it. I'm a planner, and I have a somewhat sparse outline of what it's going to be like. There is the main character, her childhood friend, and their love interests who have been integral players in the notion of this book since it first appeared in my mind all that time ago.

Yesterday I suddenly realized that the friend is transgender. I mean, of course she's transgender. It's obvious, really. One of those "How did I ever not notice it to begin with?!" moments.

Writing is amazing.

A More Experienced Writer

I have written two first chapters before. The first Chapter One I ever wrote was in the first version of my book, which was written from two different points of view. Chapter One of version one was written from the POV that I eliminated in my second version. It was my first ever attempt at writing a novel. Back then, I would start each writing session rereading what I had written before and revising. It didn't take too long for me to realize the impossibility of writing something the length of a novel in that fashion, but when I wrote that first chapter, I did not know that yet. I read and reread that chapter each time I started to write.

Then I wrote my second version of that book, entirely from the POV of the older character. When I wrote that first draft, I only changed a few details of the second chapter from the first version (the first chapter in that version from the older character's viewpoint). About a third of the way through, I realized that chapter was lacking something and I entirely rewrote it. It ended the same way, but the majority of the chapter was entirely new, and much better.

I have written one book. I have written it twice, and the second version did end up being surprisingly different from the first, but those original Chapter Ones were pulled from the first version of the book. I had a deep desire for them to be perfect. For my writing to start out with a polished, flawless beginning that would help guide my fingers to produce the rest of the book.

Now I know better.

I am starting a new book. My previous one is being read by my beta readers. It is the fifth draft of the second version of my book. It is not the final one. Once I get the feedback from my beta readers, I will read over it (cringing, I expect), mull over their suggestions, and decide what changes need to be made. I will make them, and then read the whole thing out loud and hopefully then will feel confident enough to begin querying agents. But for the next two months, I have nothing to do with that book. It is in others' hands, and not for me to dwell on.

So, I am writing something else. I have lots of notes about the story, along with various things I need to research. But this evening, I sat down and began Chapter One.

And I am amazed at how unconcerned I feel about making it perfect. My complete overhaul of what I believed to be a perfect beginning vastly improved my book. I am confident that I can redo any imperfections in this brand new Chapter One in subsequent drafts.

Draft One, Chapter One does not need to be anywhere near perfect. It just needs to start me writing the story.

I tend to think of myself as just an aspiring author, someone who is writing but isn't a proper author yet since I'm not published, and therefore an amateur. And there are certainly ways that I am very much an amateur. But I am surprised to find that I am much less of one than when I started writing three years ago. Writing is a journey, and I am so pleased to be walking its path.