For today's Friday Five, I'm doing a quick blog-post-shout-out to my faves of the week.
5. On craft.
Killer post on how to add tension during revisions by talented (and sweet!) author Janice Hardy. This post is so awesome that I'm bookmarking it.
4. On books.
More interview goodness about YA debuts dropping in 2013 and more 2014 MG/YA book love to come! If you haven't checked out One Four Kid Lit yet, it's definitely worth a visit.
3. On music.
Who says music isn't educational?! A fun post by the cool music writer Jennifer Carney. On a related note, the All The Write Notes blog is up and running, and you still have time to enter and win a CD by The Rural Alberta Advantage. So pop over and enter; you've got time. :)
2. Just because it's hysterical and I don't want you to miss it. :)
Ok, so this post by the hilarious Tracey Neithercott had been up for a few weeks, but thanks to living in a cave full of NIL edits and tortilla chips, I didn't discover it until this week. :) And oh my land, IT'S HYSTERICAL. Tracey tells a story in YA book covers, and it's classic. YOU HAVE TO READ IT. And as a bonus, you might even discover a book to add to your TBR list. Tracey, you rock.
1. In which I leave Number One up to you.:)
Do you have a favorite post of the week? Let me know what I missed.:)
Hey, y'all! How are you? I thought I'd do a quick Friday Five to share what's been going in in my life.
5. End-of Year School Craziness
With four boys in two different schools, we had holiday parties, teacher gifts (I baked M & M cookies for dozens of teachers... and made white chocolate trash for others), final projects, etc. The first few weeks of December were like a Disneyland ride on warp speed. Fun, but WILD.
4. Holidays
Um, yeah. I LOVE Christmas. I love the songs, the festive vibe, the family traditions we have... the whole thing. And I love decorating for the holidays. The house is decked out, with lights and garland inside and out. Step inside and we've got Nativity sets and Santas and all kinds of stuff EVERYWHERE. Some tacky, some not, and like the boys, I love every bit of it. :) But while I love decorating, and celebrating, it takes time, time sometimes I feel pressed to find, especially this year. And right this minute I don't even want to think about taking all the decorations down. The holiday breakdown is a less fun time-suck on the other end, coming in a January when I seriously do not have one minute to spare. (More on that in a second).
3. Company
We had my hubby's brother, sister-in-law, and their kids, plus my mother-in law and my mom for Christmas. Then the day after Christmas, some of our best friends from Beijing came to visit for a day/night with their three girls...and two hours after they left my sister and her husband and their two boys rolled in. They'll be with us until the new year, which is AWESOME. My sister lives in Wisconsin, and I don't see her enough. We'll have had company for two weeks totally, which is awesome and crazy and crazy awesome. Normally I'd relax after but NOT THIS YEAR. (More on that in a second). And my kids aren't back in school until January 7th. *gulp*
2. All The Write Notes.
A cool music blog for writers is in the works. A group of us are pulling it together and I can't WAIT for you to check it out! Debuts in January... I'll keep you posted. :)
1. THIS:
Yup, NIL edits. :) Woohoo! Got 'em December 11th, chatted with my editor on the 13th, and my revisions are due mid-January. *panics* *wails* *breathes* :) The cool thing is that I finally see how it's coming together... it's really going to be a book. A published book, that people (and not just my friends and CP's LOL) can read. And *hopefully* will like.
But edits. Mid-holiday. Yeah, there's that. So I'm just doing the best I can. :) Aren't we all? :)
My next post will be a 2012 wrap-up, short & sweet. Then it's going to be a little NIL for the new year, with playlists, background, inspiration, and character shorts. I can't wait for you to meet Charley and Thad!
Anyway, I hope your holidays have been lovely, full of friends, family, love, and of course, cookies. (My favorite this year were ginger-chocolate chip bars. Delish!)
Let me know what's new with you, and if you have a favorite holiday cookie. :)
My husband likes to say “perfect is the enemy of good.”
In the writing world, perfect is the enemy of publication.
(Before you choke on your chai latte, I’m not advocating
shipping out your fresh NaNoWriMo manuscript on December first. Not even close! Bear with me
here . . . :D)
You spend months (or years or weeks) writing your novel. You spend days grinding out words, getting your story on paper. You spend afternoons
frantically scribbling your latest epiphany on random receipts from your
purse while waiting in the carpool line, and nights typing the scene that
blasted fully formed into your brain as you cobbled together dinner. You give up tv,
sleep, and the hope that the laundry pile will ever shrink to acceptable
levels, and anything else that has room to give so you can write--because you
have to.
And when you’ve worked and struggled and dug your characters
out of the deepest, darkest holes borne of your sleep-deprived writerly state,
you type THE END. You feel absolutely giddy (which may or may not be related to
the fact that you haven’t slept in weeks.) But you’re DONE! See, you tell your spouse, your best friends, your
mother or anyone else who will listen, or maybe you just tell yourself: there
it is! In Times New Roman font!
THE END.
And yet, it’s just the beginning.
If you’re lucky, your first
draft is good. As in, a good start. It’s
readable, full of promise, peppered with potholes and speed bumps and missing
bridges and all the other things that clutter the writing road on the way to a
polished draft.
So you step back, and let your manuscript marinate for a few
weeks. AND DON'T PEEK. (And for goodness sake, DON'T QUERY. Fight the urge any
way possible. I recommend chocolate. :D) Two weeks pass, maybe three. Then you
open up your Word document, and there on the very first page sits the title and
your name. And you think, Oohhhh… so pretty.
And you start reading. You waffle between Oh my
gracious, this is amazing! I wrote this? to
the much more frequent Holy crap, this IS crap.I wrote this? Some people (like me) edit as they go, others read
through all the way then dig in.* Either way, you edit. You revise. And you
send your edited first draft to
your beta readers, your all-important crit partners.
And then you wait--again. You pass the time drafting your
query, stalking following agents on Twitter or Querytracker or their
blog, and compiling your all-important query list.
You get your feedback, and naturally, it’s all over the
place. But some is consistent, and that reveals where work is needed. Sometimes it's an inconsistency you missed, maybe it’s a spot you already suspected had a problem. Maybe no one will notice, maybe
it’s not that BIG a problem. But it is, and
you fix it. You listen to the remaining (and conflicting) critiques with an
open mind and then you revise. You dig back in, fix any
lingering potholes or build a bridge you didn’t even realize was necessary--all
while keeping your vision of the story intact (after all, it’s your novel :D).
Maybe you need another round of crits, maybe not. You’ll
know whether fresh eyes are needed; trust your writer’s compass--both in
handling the crits and knowing when your novel is done.
Here’s where perfection can become your enemy.
Let’s recap: at this point you’ve (1) finished your
manuscript, (2) let it marinate, (3) revised and polished it, (4) sent it to
crit partners and listened to their feedback, (5) revised and polished again
based on your critiques, and (6) possibly repeated numbers 4 and
5.
Meanwhile, you also have a carefully-researched list of
agents who might be interested in your YA
vampire-werewolf-love-triangle-set-in-a-dystopian-future-where-the-vamps-and-wolves-must-fight-zombies-in-an-arena-and-only-one-suitor-can-survive.
(Ahem. Or whatever.) And you have a concise, hook-y, query letter ready to
roll--personalized, natch.
Anyway, if you’re not careful, as you hit Step 6 and polish your novel until it sparkles like Edward in sunlight, you might slip from revision, which is meaty, into tinkering,
which reeks of stale Diet Coke. Flat, with a bad aftertaste. You might tinker so
much that you either (1) suck the life and voice right out of your novel, or
(2) never submit your manuscript, because it’s not “perfect,” or both.
How do
you know if you’re tinkering? You change paragraphs back to their original
form, and back again. You obsess over word choice beyond what is healthy, or
helpful. You hear that little voice in the back of your brain, but it’s not
perfect, and you can’t bring yourself to hit Send. The black hole of
tinkering can kill your novel, and even worse, it halts your growth as a
writer. Because at this point, you're actually at Step 7.
You're ready to hit Send or move on.
I know it's tough, because you frequently hear: "Don't query until it's ready." And I agree with that statement 100%. Premature querying is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot. But then again, so is not querying at all. There comes a point when your manuscript IS ready, when you have done everything humanly possibly to make it the very best it can be. Hello Step 7! :D This is when you, the writer, should make a call. Send those queries, go the indie or self-publishing route, or move on to the next book, because maybe *cringe* just maybe, it’s your next book that will be “the one.” But
you won’t get there if you’re still tinkering with this one.
So stop.
Stop tinkering, stop obsessing.
Stop trying to make your manuscript perfect.
Because it will
never be perfect. Nothing is perfect. (Even J.K. Rowling’s amazing Harry Potter books
contain a typo or two.) But your manuscript can--and should be--great, rising to the level of awesome.And awesome is what (I believe) agents hope lands in their inbox. :)
Have you ever battled with the quest for perfection? And how do you keep it from sabotaging your novel?
*YOU ARE UNIQUE, and so is your writing style. :) Do what works for you.Same for your journey toward publication: it's YOURS. Own it. :) Any thoughts/advice/tips on writing and publishing you find on my blog are my own, and what worked for me. The internet is flooded with writing and publishing thoughts/tips/advice. Use what helps you, and ditch the rest. :) Including this thought. hehe
Clarification: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating shipping out manuscripts full of typos. Far from it. If you've done everything to make your MS the best it can be, you've already run Spellcheck countless times. :) I'm just cheering for you to take the query plunge WHEN YOUR MS IS READY. Don't keep obsessing over word choice forever, letting fear that your MS isn't "perfect" hold you back. :)
You know how it's awesome to go on vacation--where you have THE BEST TIME EVER, natch--but then it's over and you're so glad to be home? Yep, that's me. :)
It's Monday and it's raining in Jacksonville and my kids are playing putt-putt in the
den (with real golf clubs and wickedly hard real golf balls) and it's
all good. Because I'M SO GLAD TO BE HOME! :)
My relief MAY have something to do with this:
That was my view yesterday. FOR TEN HOURS.
Yesterday we drove home from Richmond, during which the song "Call Me Maybe" came on the radio too many times to count. Gah! We caved to the DVD pressure early, but still. No matter what you do to pass the time (Travel Bingo! License plate tag! Books! Music! Movies! Referee fighting over movies!) the time must still, well, pass.
And making road trips more interesting *cough* painful *cough* for me is a teeny problem called motion sickness. I can't read or type in the car because I get incredibly carsick. So I basically looked outside, FOR TEN HOURS. But when you look, I mean, really LOOK, with no expectations at all, you see some cool stuff. Like these clouds:
Aren't they amazing? I'd like to paint them (leaving out the Days Inn sign of course! LOL) What you can't see is that off to the right, rain is falling like molten silver. It was absolutely gorgeous, and if I'd keep my eyes straight ahead--or worse, closed them altogether--I'd have totally missed it. And it was breathtaking.
Tackling revisions is a lot like staring at the same stretch of highway you've been staring at for hours. Same straight line, same group of cars around you, with minimal shifts. A Ford Fiesta exits, and is replaced by a Dodge Caravan. And the ride continues. But if you look away, keeping your eyes and mind open, you might find something unexpected. Something that makes your journey richer, adding depth even as you keep traveling toward your destination.
Is your WIP stuck in a rut? Are you so trapped in your draft that you can't look away from the same plot path or character arc you've been traveling along for weeks...or even months? Then put it down, but don't close your eyes. :) Keep them wide open--to all the possibilities. You just might find something unexpected. Maybe even incredible. :)
Because we're talking Eyes Open and I LOVE Snow Patrol, here's some inspiration from Gary himself:
Snow Patrol "Open Your Eyes"
This video is shot almost exclusively from INSIDE A MOVING CAR. Could it be more perfect?! (Answer: no.) ;)
Enjoy! And oh--the end is the best part. :)
Are your eyes open? Seen anything unexpectedly cool lately? And how are your revisions going?
I started writing seriously on January 15, 2009. Not for publication, but for me. At the time I had a 1 year old, 3 year old, 6 year old and 8 year old, so I stole time when I could. Mostly at night, sacrificing tv. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I was sleep deprived, which no doubt fueled my insanity.:)
Six months later, I finished my YA magical realism novel. (Yay! It rocks! I rock!) After a celebratory round of cupcakes, I read it again. And died a little.
It was ROUGH. Terrible, actually. So terrible that even as a baby writer, I KNEW it was terrible. But I didn’t know how to fix it. And the endless tinkering began.
During this time, I was fortunate enough to meet Charles Martin, a high school friend of my husband and a NYT Bestseller author in his own right. He kindly read the first three (awful) chapters and told me to pick up the pace. He suggested I look at my novel from a different angle, maybe start in another place. In hindsight, Charles was SO RIGHT.
Meanwhile, in October 2009, I started Novel No. 2, a YA post-apocalyptic, inspired by a phone call from my husband when he was on a Costa Rican surf trip. Then in February 2010, my husband and I took our first week away from the boys since having babies--to Hawaii, the big island. (GORGEOUS!!!) Inspiration hit, hard, and I wrote 10K of a fresh YA light sci-fi novel (Are you counting? Novel No. 3!) while we were there; 2K on the return flight alone. (I know what you're thinking: bad wife. :D In my defense, it was also a work trip for him so I had plenty of down time to write. Plus, my sweet husband gets my writing addiction. Another reason I love him.:D)
For the next few months, I flitted between books, writing two and tinkering with one. And I worked on my craft. I read blogs, Stephen King’s book On Writing, and just plain read. Books, lots of them. I discovered querying, entered writing contests on Janet Reid’s blog, and realized publication was out there, like a crazy carrot. And I wanted it. I hunkered down with novel number one, slashed and revised tinkered, and by summer 2010, it was ready. And it was AWESOME! My friends and family told me so! I joined QueryTracker (great resource), researched agents, drafted my query (personalized, of course) and sent it out.
And the rejections poured in. Mostly form, occasionally personalized. Sometimes they’d arrive in packs, which was especially crushing. That fall, Charles gave me some valuable advice. He told me to put my first book aside, and write something else. It wasn't easy to hear, but again--he was SO RIGHT.
Around the same time, I met local YA writer, Jessie Harrell. She became my hometown CP. It was HUGE. Game-changing. She introduced me to the YA writing community on-line, and she let me critique her WIP, which was a gift. She have me incredible feedback, and soon I realized I’d never truly revised Novel No. 1, just tinkered, and they’re not the same. But it was too late. Novel number one was dead.
Everything --and everyone-- was telling me to move on. Charles, Jessie, and the pile of rejections. And so I did. I put my first book in a drawer, and let it go.*
Flash-forward to February 2011. I had first drafts of two very different books: a YA post-apocalyptic and a YA light SF, and I had to make a call. Which to polish? I chose NIL, my YA light SF. And I got to work.
I went to Backspace Writer’s Conference in May, where I found awesome crit partners Laura Stanford and Tonya Kuper. (That's another crazy story. :D) Also in May, I won a crit from the talented Natalie Whipple (love her!). After Backspace, I revised my opening pages based on agent feedback (revision no. 1). Then I sent my MS out for critique from this fab four. Each gave me constructive feedback, encouragement, and inspiration, which not only helped my MS, it helped me. Especially my confidence, which you need fully intact before you hit the query trenches. (SO GRATEFUL y’all!) And I became a better CP myself.
Based on the crits, I faced revision, again. This one was tougher. Bigger. But worth every difficult minute. After a *slight* initial freakout ("I can't do it!"), I dug deep, added more layers, and in the process, I fell in love with NIL all over again.
Now my MS was shinier than a Christmas tree. NIL was ready. I was ready. Game on. :)
September 2011: NIL queries went out. This time I got requests right away, and within a month I had a R &R from one agent, a big gun. I mulled it over, even as more requests rolled in and the holidays approached. (One of those requests, a partial, was from Jennifer. Woot! *dream agent alert*) One night as I pondered the revision request, a new sub-plot fell into my head, one that pulled pieces together I didn’t even know were missing. I wrote furiously for the next month, weaving in the new plot line, not sure whether I was addressing the agent’s R & R concerns but knowing this last revision was how the novel was meant to be. (This final revision was revision number 3). Meanwhile, I got more requests. Rejections too. I checked my inbox obsessively. The holidays were S-L-O-W.
But then January arrived. I got an email from Jennifer that she loved the first 50 pages, and could I please send the rest? Uh, YES! She was one of the very first agents I queried on NIL, having loved her interview on the Mother.Write.(Repeat.) blog. Fingers crossed, I sent Jennifer the revised version, which was also in the hands of seven other agents, including the one who requested the R & R. A few weeks later I got "the call" from Jennifer, almost three years to the day after I began writing again. Her enthusiasm for NIL blew me away. We clicked, and I felt she “got” NIL. I notified the other agents considering NIL, including the one who’d requested the revision. (That agent passed BTW; our visions for the book didn’t mesh, and that's okay). That week was a roller-coaster, full of emails and phone calls, but my feeling that Jennifer was the agent for NIL (and for me) never changed. I accepted her offer a week later.
I’m still pinching myself. :D
Here are the dirty numbers:
Novel 1 (YA magical realism):
55 queries, 2 requests. A dismal 3.63 request rate (Ugh!)
Novel 2 (YA post-apoc):
Still in drawer
Novel 3 (NIL, YA light-SF):
35 queries, 14 requests. A much-improved 40% request rate, resulting in my signing with Jennifer. :D (BTW--I'd queried Jennifer on novel 1, and she'd passed.)
Why the improvement? My query was better. My writing was better. But most of all, my MS was better, and it was READY. I let it marinate, then I revised. I got feedback from other writers (CRUCIAL!) and revised again. And then I revised AGAIN, when my gut said it need it.
3 years. 3 books. 3 revisions. The power of three.
I’m still learning, improving my craft. That part of a writer’s road never ends.
But here’s three things I’ve learned:
1. Don’t stop. Don’t stop writing, don’t stop reading, don’t stop improving. Don't stop working. And like Journey sings (*cheese alert* :D): don't step believing--in your writing, in yourself. In your ability to make it.
2. Reach out. Get on-line, go to conferences if you can, make friends with other writers. And remember that old adage, to have a friend you must be a friend? Offer to read their work. Be positive as well as constructive.
3. Remember that your journey is your own. For me it was the power of three. 3 years, 3 books, 3 revisions. Every writer's road is different. But if you keep going, I believe you'll get there, wherever your "there" is. :D
Where are you on your writer's road? *offers travel snacks* And where are you headed? Wherever you are, I wish you safe travels. And I leave you with this song. It gave me heaps of inspiration, reminding me why I refused to stop. :D
"We know, we know, that we are more than this
More than we know, there's a reason we exist"
