November Recap

In November, I've done a few things, including:

I met my NaNoWriMo challenge goal and wrote 25,000 words for Waterfire, Part II of the Providence Trilogy Awash in Talent, converting it officially into a novella. More on that later!

I cut more than 2,000 words from my epic Seven Noble Knights (while keeping the old copy just in case) as well as cutting a few words from the title. I sent out a few query letters, got a few rejections, and a few leads.

I edited and copyedited and proofread my story, "Axe Man," for the anthology A World of Joy (debuting soon!).

Rare photo of a male Javan rhino. IRF

My husband and I decided to celebrate the holidays by giving. We chose to donate to the International Rhino Foundation because of all the organizations we looked into, the money seemed to go the farthest with them. It is my fond hope that our small amount of cash will make a difference in the lives of the most endangered, largest land mammals on Earth, Javan rhinoceroses. We also decided to "adopt" a Sumatran rhino through the World Wildlife Fund because we couldn't resist the swag! Merry Christmas and prosperous 2014!

Yours truly with WWF Adoption swag, an
achingly cute (and hairy) Sumatran rhino plush. We'll put
him back in the bag to open on Christmas.

In other rhino-related news, I wrote five pieces of flash fiction in October, in honor of the five surviving species of rhinoceros, and submitted them to an anthology after polishing them in November. My husband loves these little vignettes and I hope at least one of them is accepted. They will be added to the Rhinoceros Dreams omnibus in the future.

I haven't moved yet, so that's still hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles. There was a lot going on at Loose Leaves, too, enough for a full time job!

For the month of December, this blog will be celebrating books! I'll have interviews with six of the authors from the new free holiday anthology, A World of Joy, and at the end of the month, for the third year, the annual Knauss Awards.

In December, I'll also be taking a course in writing magical realism. I'll be sure to let you know how that went in January. Thanks for stopping by — see you again soon!

Dedication and Revision -- Shh!

Robert Greene, author of Mastery, says, "It’s not the fact that you’re born a genius, or that you have a larger brain. It’s the level of dedication and persistence and patience." Amen!

I'm the sort of person who goes along just fine, but once someone remarks on how hot it is, I start to melt. 

My dedication to writing is dogged. I read a lot about how writers have to persist (and persist), and how if we really love it, we'll never be discouraged. Honestly, my patience is pretty organic and I think I do much better when I'm not reading about how I should be doing it. I mean, these pep talks are inspiring, but they also point out the long road ahead. The difficulty of the chosen path, I find, is best ignored. It's just easier when you don't dwell on the rough time you're having.

But, if you've reached a goal, then it's okay to acknowledge just how arduous it was to get there. Case in point: my query letter is probably the hardest thing I ever had to write, and now it's on display. It will probably be changed again soon, so it may be premature to reflect on all the difficulties involved. For now, let's just say I think people who can write good query letters should make careers out of writing them for other novelists so we can get back to our stories!

And also, I totally do all the great things listed here. I really do! Well, most of them...

Rejection! and The Right Match

I got my first "no" from the query I sent out last week. That was fast! I don't feel too bad because the whole thing was rather impersonal.

It was even kind of amusing because I'm doing this on Gmail, so there was a uniquely tantalizing preview: "Thank you so much for sending the X Literary Agency your query. We'd like to." We'd like to WHAT? To quest the full manuscript? To offer me a package deal for three books and accompanying movies and miniseries? To kiss my feet with gratitude because they'd thought literature was dead and my submission revealed that that's not the case?

But I knew intuitively that couldn't quite be it, because it began "Dear Author." If they were enthused about a project, I assume they would take the trouble to address it to an actual name. 

They only wanted to apologize for the impersonal nature of the rejection. Which is fine. 

There was a sentence in the form letter, which is meant to be encouraging, but that seemed simplistic to me: "After all, it only takes one 'yes' to find the right match."

I've done enough dating, finding writing groups, accepting manuscripts for publication and getting short stories published to know that it frequently takes a lot of yeses to find the right match as opposed to just any match. The key is getting past a sea of nos and to a yes everyone can live with, which may not be the first one that comes along. 

My life over the past three years has trained me to be as patient as a saint.  Patience wears thin, but something will always come along to give it a second (third, fourth, etc) wind. Patience and persistence are behind all the "overnight" success stories.

Ever onward!

Reaching Goals, Querying, and WANA

We're living in a hotel until my husband's contract is settled. Daily housekeeping and my stuff in storage, unable to distract me, leave me little else to do than get down to business. No excuses! I see those goals and they're getting reached!

Hooray for me! I met the goal I pledged last week! The finishing touches on "Middle Awash in Talent" are done. Now to find some validation for them...

I also made a huge leap forward, which I haven't mentioned before: I've got The Seven Noble Knights of Lara out on query. I was astonished at the huge uptick in neurosis, obsession, and pure terror that finishing off my basic query letter caused. I know that getting it traditionally published is going to take a long time. I calmly accept it, and I thought that acceptance made me immune to the searing pain of moving from having all my options open to possibly getting rid of the agents I submitted to because I'd unknowingly done something wrong in my query letter.

Yikes!

As I was finishing the letter up, I showed sentences to my poor husband and badgered him until he said the magic words (that any agent would love it -- the words never came because, how would he know?),  I asked anyone and everyone what they thought, and I resorted to some magical thinking.

But now, it's out there. It's about to get REAL. Even if reality just means submitting to more and more places every week.

I'm one of the people in the seven billion who feels that the human condition is fundamentally alone. It's especially acute for writers. So I read every post at We Are Not Alone, and try to get it through my skull. Maybe someday I'll have less trouble reaching out for and finding the help I need, and I'll really believe it!

Thanks so much to the handful of people who really helped me with the query letter process. You know who you are.