Author name: Sandra Tayler

I did not want to go to the workshop yesterday. There were good things I was looking forward to, but they were completely overshadowed by the likely emotional aftermath. But I had goals I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to meet the other attendees and talk to them. I wanted to feel a sense of creative community. So with determination rather than desire I departed for the workshop. I then did a very girly thing. I stopped at Payless shoe source and bought myself a new pair of shoes. I was wearing ratty old shoes and I wanted to feel pretty and confident. I haven’t bought new shoes for myself since Howard quit Novell three years ago. So I walked into the conference feeling better about the whole thing because of my pretty new shoes. I was later rewarded by new shoe blisters because wearing brand new shoes to a convention does not rank high on the list of smart convention behaviors. My feet will recover and I’ll be breaking the shoes in more gradually.

I survived the third day of the workshop with a complete lack of “emotional heap.” Since this was my last day I am now suffering from a few mild regrets. I wish I had gone to lectures by Carmen Deedy and Dandi Mckandall. I got to speak to both of them briefly and they both were delightful and fascinating. Dandi did a reading from her book Larger Than Life Lara and I loved the segment so much, that I had to buy the book. Carmen Deedy did a reading too. That was when I realized where I’d heard her name before. My mother met her at a storytelling conference. Carmen signed a book for my mom, but signed it incorrectly. It was the last copy available, so she mailed out a correctly signed copy after the conference was over. The book was for me, so now I have both copies. I mentioned this to Carmen and she remembered the incident and my mom. That was fun. Carmen even smiled and waved to me later. She is a person I’d love to sit down with and just listen to. She’s funny and full of stories.

In all it was a worthwhile expenditure of time, effort, and money. I’ve made first contacts with several people whom I’d love to meet again. Hopefully I’ll get to meet them again someday.

The conference did have a few quirks. It was very Mormon, which is to be expected I suppose. At the “follies” the conference director called each of the teachers/guests down and told an embarrassing/amusing anecdote about them. They then called upon those same guests/teachers to take part in karaoke. Some of the guests loved this, some did not. For me it was like watching an embarrassing aunt make a public scene yet again.

At one point I got to listen to the conference directors talk about the time they went to Life The Universe and Everything which is the Science Fiction and Fantasy symposium at BYU. They thought that the people at LTUE were frightening because they wore costumes and were attending classes on weaponry. It made me realize that what feels normal and comfortable to me is possibly very uncomfortable to someone else. I need to write a whole essay on comfort zones sometime.

Anyway the conference was good. Now it is time for me to get back to normal life. I’ve got piles of housework to catch up on. And I need to get back to the actual writing part of being a writer.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Howard and how lucky I am to have him? Last night I was worn and weary. The workshop was exhausting and discouraging because I was not being able to build social networks the way I wanted to. I wanted to be able to walk away from the conference feeling like the editors and agent would recognize me if they saw me again. That is probably not going to happen. Howard kindly reminded me that it would probably be more rewarding to be building a social network with the other attendees, particularly those who live locally. In hindsight this is obvious. I’ve found tremendous joy in connecting with other creative people, but somehow I was so focused on the guests that I wasted two days of opportunities to get to know people. The structure of the conference doesn’t leave much time for just chatting, but tomorrow has some spaces for it and I intend to use them.

My attendance at this conference has really outlined the business aspects of writing. I’ve found myself thinking and planning for my future as a writer. I realized yesterday that I’m planning a career. I’ve never planned for a career before. Being a mother WAS my career. Being a mother still comes first, but the kids are growing up and they don’t need me the same way they used to. I have this developing empty space in my life and I’m filling it up with a writing career. There are other things I could do to fill that space. I could be volunteering or tutoring or decorating my house, but I’m choosing a career. That feels so odd. It requires me to redefine myself. Or rather to make my internal definitions match what I’ve been doing for nearly a year now.

This switch is scary. If writing is just a hobby, then I don’t have to worry about editors or agents or the opinions of anyone else. Hobby writing can just be, without having to be good. I still do some hobby writing, but other projects I want to have recognized, respected. This means I have to care what others think. Caring what others think is frightening because I have no control over their opinions. This makes me want to crawl into a hole and hide. Hole hiding is safe and secure. In fact I’ve been doing just that during this conference. I’ve been coming home and collapsing into a little heap of exhausted emotions. Fortunately I have Howard to pick me up and talk me through it. Then I can go out again the next day.

Why is it that at the conference I can feel confident and self assured, but I do the emotional heap thing at home? It is almost like I’ve deferred all the emotions to deal with later. I would much prefer to skip the whole “emotional heap” step of the process. Yesterday was better than Monday. Perhaps by Friday I’ll have learned how to not do it. I had today free. Tomorrow I’m headed back. I hope I can handle this without unraveling again.

Today’s visit to the writing workshop was not as emotionally wracking as yesterday. This is probably because I did not even try to pitch any of my projects. Instead I viewed the whole visit as an information gathering endeavor. I gathered a lot of information, but most of it only applies to my future projects rather than my current ones. I’m still very tired and very aware how much work this whole writing business is.

I looked on Julie Czerneda’s website and saw that she is out of town for a week, so I emailed the other editor Rob St. Martin. He was glad I did because he’s the one in charge of contracts and had incorrect contact info for me. He told me what he needs and said that he likes my story. So now I’ve had my affirmation that my story is really sold AND I’ve identified the cause of the missing emails as an incorrect address. Yay for no evil email eating gremlins! Yay for story sale! Yay! Yay! Yay!

Ahem.

I should go to bed now.

So today I went to the Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU. I was told exactly what I expected to hear and I still came away discouraged. This is because the hopelessly optimistic part of me was hoping that the miracle would happen and an editor would fall all over herself to accept my children’s book. I knew it would never happen that way, but a piece of me is ridiculously disappointed that it didn’t.

Also I am used to meeting honored guests as the spouse of an honored guests. When the honored guests get hustled away to have break from the masses I’m used to getting to sit down with them and really talk. This time I was one of the masses that the guests were hustled away from. That experience isn’t nearly so nice. What I really want to do is have dinner with these people and just talk to them about the business of creating books. Not that I expect that to change whether they print my book, but it is nice to have them meet my eyes and see me as an interesting individual and not just as a face in the crowd.

I’ll go back and be part of the crowd again tomorrow. If nothing else I’ll collect more information. I’m not truly making contacts here, just the beginnings of contacts, but that is still better than nothing. At least I didn’t fold and try to hide during the event. I’ll not mention the fact that I’m currently hiding in my office because I’m totally worn out from doing all that talking to people. The focused meeting and greeting definitely has an emotional aftermath for me. But hopefully I’m beginning to learn the shape of it and will recognize it when I see it again.

I did get to meet up with Emily Sorensen again. I met her several years ago when she and Howard were on a webcomics panel together. She’s a very nice person and I’ll probably hang out with her again tomorrow. Having a familiar face to talk to is nice.

I went to the Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU today. I did not get a chance to pitch my book one on one with an editor. I was misled on that point, or perhaps I misled myself. All attendees were invited to submit directly to her, which is good, but not the same.

Over and over I was told that a picture book that already has pictures will be rejected. There are rare exceptions, but not many. I know Angela’s pictures are good, but I hate introducing myself with the assumption that I’m the exception to their preferences. All the editors and agents were very agreeable about looking at previously self published or small press published material.

The going-forward plan that makes the most sense and makes me happiest would be to print the book through Tayler Corp and then submit it to larger publishers at my leisure.

The problem with that plan is that the Tayler family has a finite amount of resources. We only have so much energy, money, time. Any of those things that go toward my project do not go toward Howard’s next book. Howard’s books pay the bills. The logical Tayler corp plan is to push out the next Schlock book while shopping my picture book around to larger publishers.

But I personally contracted with Angela to print her book. The longer this spins out, the more I feel like I’m stringing her along and not doing the work that would get her paid. Part of me argues that my book should not impact Howard’s book because I’d be the one making it all go. Only I’d be using Howard’s layout guy. I’d need Howard to talk to the printer for me. I’d need editing help. Even if I handle all of those things completely by myself (daunting thought) the project would still be using my time which means I wouldn’t be doing the necessary support things to help Howard’s book along.

Shopping to publishers is a process that could last 6 months to a year. If I embark on that process, I have to give up my dream of having books for sale at Ad Astra in March 2008.

While I’m whining, I haven’t yet received any contractual information about the Ages of Wonder anthology. A piece of my brain is now convinced that this means that my story sale was somehow a mirage. Or if it wasn’t a mirage, then I’ll never actually be able to make it happen because emails from Julie Czerneda just disappear into the ether and never get to me. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I would never have gotten the official invitiation. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I wouldn’t have known they accepted my story. Now I’ve had to email to ask about the contract. And I’ve gotten no response. Now I’m left wondering if my email even got to Julie. I don’t want to email again and be a nuisance, but I don’t know if she got the first one.

So I’m tired and discouraged and feeling like nothing will come to anything. Logically I know this is ridiculous, but I still want to curl up into a ball and cry. Everything is still pending. I still don’t have any writing in print that I can point to and say “Here is my work.” Yesterday I was going to have a picture book out in July and a short story out in the fall. Today it feels like neither one will actually happen.

I do a lot more writing when I let myself get bored. If I always fill all the spaces in my day with reading or watching shows or business thoughts, then I do not write. Writing happens when my hands are busy and my brain is not. Or when neither my hands nor my brain are busy. At those moments I feel an impulse to find something to do. But if I quell those impulses and instead turn my thoughts toward my stories, then my brain begins to work. That is when inspiration strikes. My brain starts sticking pieces together to see what works. I need to remember that boredom can be my friend.

There is a common wisdom among writers that you have to collect a certain number of rejections before you will get published. People almost seem to feel as if getting rejected is a rite of passage. I don’t feel that to be true. It isn’t the rejection that helps you, it is learning from mistakes. It is entirely possible to learn to be a good writer before you start submitting things. Rejections will probably still come, but they’re likely to be due to a mismatch between story and market rather than faults in the story itself. Which leads to another reason newbies get so many rejections. They don’t target their stories. They don’t meet and greet so that they don’t have to sit in slush piles totally unrecognized. I know that this shotgun approach works for many writers. They just write piles of stories and send them all out until people start recognizing their name and the stories start getting published. I’m not a shotgun writer. I’m more of an archer. I carefully craft and aim each arrow. And I’m content with small targets fairly close to home.

On Monday I’m off to the BYU Writing for Young Readers workshop. I’ll have the chance to pitch Hold On To Your Horses to two editors and an agent who will probably all say “No Thanks.” This is fine. But a piece of me whispers “What if.” I wish that part would shut up so that I wouldn’t be so nervous. I’m worried that I’ll fail when thrown into this unfamiliar social environment. I will not know anyone else there. Will I really be able to introduce myself to people and make contacts? I still remember vividly how at Penguicon in 2005 I was socially lost without Howard to guide me. I hope that I have grown since then. I hope I’ve gotten better at making conversation with strangers. I hope that I succeed at this. There is a little voice which is convinced that I’ll fail miserably. I wish that voice would shut up too.