Finding places to query

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The process looks something like this:

See a book on my child’s desk at Parent Teacher conferences. Realize that the book cover and title seems very like the type of book I’ve written. Carefully scribble down title and author when teacher thinks I am writing notes about the conference.

When at home, look up the book at Amazon.com. Read synopsis. It does seem similar in tone to my book. Write down the name of the publishing company next to the name of the author. Scroll through the “people who bought this book also bought” list. Identify more books which look similar to my book. Write down those authors and publishers.

Take the titles to my local library’s online catalog. They do have the book, so the next day when I’m at the library with the kids, take a detour into the adult non-fiction section. Find the book. Peruse the shelves around the book for other books which look similar in content or tone. Shush kids who are playing with the library’s rolling stools. Grab a stack of books to check out.

When at home, sit down with the books and the list. Flip through the books to see who the publishers are. Look at acknowledgements to see if the author names an agent or an editor who worked on the book. Write those names on the list next to author names. Take the list to my computer. Google to identify more agents and/or editors associated with the book titles.

Open agentquery.com and start filling in agent names. See if the agents are open to unsolicited queries. Peruse the “what I’m looking for” list to see if the agent will be interested. Compare the agent’s name to my submissions document to make sure that I don’t already have a query out at that agency. If all looks good, copy the agent’s name and contact information into my “To Query” file.

Google publisher names and editor names. See if I can find submission information. Add that information to my “To Query” file.

I am now ready to send out queries. Each query takes at least 10 minutes as I try to personalize the opening and closing paragraphs. Sometimes I have to print and mail the query.

By this time I am tired of the whole process, so I sigh in relief that I’ve done my job. Either it will sell, or it won’t. For the moment I can cheerfully ignore it… until I happen across another book which looks like it might cater to the same audience. Then I have a job to do again.

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Fall Parent Teacher Conferences

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Parent teacher conferences are always fraught, not with peril, but with the potential for high emotion. Sometimes I enter with worries and exit with new reassurance and confidence. Other times I have no particular concerns going in, but leave reeling from how much more that child needs than they have been getting. It is my chance to speak with teachers who have alternate viewpoints upon my child’s development. They see things that I don’t, not because I’m unobservant, but because school is different than home and different aspects of my children rise to the surface.

Last week I had conferences for my older two kids. Today I had conferences for the younger two. I now have a laundry list of needs which require me to adjust the family schedule (yet again) so that they fit. The adjustments are minor, but time and energy must be spent on them. Mostly the things which turned up in the conferences are not surprising. We’re having new iterations of familiar problems, nothing new or baffling. This means that the solutions are new iterations of old solutions. In a way the familiarity of it all is reassuring. The kids are all exactly where they need to be for steady growth.

I’ve never seen parent teacher conferences from the teacher side of the desk. I know how tired it makes me, even when there’s no major issue to address. I marvel at the stamina of those teachers, who have 25-30 conferences in two days and a laundry list of issues they hope to address. They must face varying levels of indifference, anxiousness, over-protectiveness, and outright bewilderment from the parents who show up. Teachers are expected to find all the trouble spots and provide solutions, often when no easy solutions are to be had. I am constantly impressed by the efforts of the dedicated teachers who work with me for the benefit of my children.

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Financial Management for Creative People 101

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The first thing any creative person needs to know about managing finances, whether you’re an artist, a writer, a musician, a film maker, or anything else: Good financial management is a skill. It can be learned by anyone no matter how good or bad they are with numbers. Granted, if numbers are not your friends, there may be struggling and swearing involved, but learning and practice will gain you the skills you need. You will get things wrong, sort them out, and then get them right. More than once. The key is to not give up, because if you are a creative person who wants to make a living doing creative things, you’re going to need to manage your finances effectively. Even if you don’t want to make a creative living, you can still make your finances more organized and less stressful. I graduated with a major in Humanities. I picked that major in part because it did not require me to do any math. Numbers were not my friends, and yet I learned this. You can too. Here are some places to start:

1. Create physical space for financial things. This can be anything from a basket to an uber-organized filing cabinet. The key is to have a place to drop all those bills and receipts before they have a chance to get lost. I have a file basket on the end of my kitchen counter. It contains file for the school papers of each kid, and a file for bills and other To Do papers. When mail arrives, I throw away the junk and drop the bills, checks, and other business papers into my accounting folder. Howard empties his wallet and dumps receipts into the folder as well. Then I ignore them until it is time to go through the folder.

2. Pick a method for tracking your money. I use Quicken for family finances and Quickbooks for the business accounting. Both of these are solid programs which will require a learning curve, but I’ve found them invaluable. I know people who use spread sheets or even hand-written ledgers. Pick something that feels most comfortable for you. The key is to start keeping track of where your money comes from and where it goes. If you’ve never done it before, this process can be very instructive about your spending habits. It is vital information which you can use to make your life better.

3. Make an appointment to do your accounting. Put that appointment on your calendar and keep it. I do this weekly. Every Monday I grab that accounting folder and go through everything in it. I pay the bills, enter the receipts, cash the checks, and file important papers. Once per week gets me the good news quickly and prevents the bad news from getting out of control before I handle it. When I’m pretty sure the accounting holds bad news, I do it anyway. The bad news I imagine is always worse than the bad news in the papers. I know people who do their accounting every other week or once per month. I found that it was easier to procrastinate on the longer schedule, so now I account every Monday morning.

4. Outline clear responsibilities for all people associated with the accounts/bills. If you’re a single person who manages your own money, this is not yet relevant to you. If you share your bills or finances with any other person, it is important to know who is responsible for the accounting and bill paying. Early in our marriage, Howard and I split the accounting. These days I do it all and just give him financial reports. How exactly you do it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that everyone involved knows their responsibilities.

5. Create a budget. A budget is a plan for how much money you will spend on the various expenses in your life. This topic is big enough for it’s own blog. I wrote up some basic budgeting in my post budgeting 101. For now, let this suffice. If you have never budgeted or planned your spending, start by keeping track of what you earn and what you spend. When you have several months of information you are ready to make a budget. The power of a budget is that it lets you see when you should not buy that shiny toy even if you still have money in your checking account because that money will be needed next month for car insurance. A budget helps remove the surprise from your bills and can lower your levels of stress.

6. Save save save. If you get extra money, squirrel it away into a savings account. This money is what helps you reach your dreams. The only reason Howard was able to become a full time cartoonist was because we spent the prior decade of salaried employment saving up money and paying down bills. A solid savings account is also your shield against disaster. Everyone ends up with unexpected bills. These are easier to handle if you have money in your hands instead of lots of take out pizza. It is easier to save money if you know what you are saving it for, so keep your dream in view and save for that. This year I’m saving money because there is a trip I want to take next summer.

That’s enough to get started. Changes and learning are easier to incorporate in your life if you don’t try to change too much at once. Other financial posts which may interest you:
Budgeting 101
Financial Management for Creative People 102: Structuring your finances to support a creative business. (Forthcoming)
Financial Management for Creative people 201: Taxes, incorporation, and business plans, Oh My! (Forthcoming)

You can learn this. Good luck!

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Small Beautiful Things

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It was my intention to make at least one small thing beautiful today, but I discovered that once I began it was hard to stop at only one. So here is a short list of the small, intentionally beautiful things I did today.

I cut off six inches of my hair. At the length my hair was this means it feels worlds different to me and no one else notices much. Then I broke out the curling iron and fixed it nice instead of leaving it in a braid. I even put in earrings.

I folded laundry, making each fold precise and neat. I admired the stacks for a moment before putting them away.

Unable to find stationery at a store, I used my design tools to create some. My printer is only black and white, so I took colored pencil to the flowers. Then I wrote my Grandma a letter.

I made cookies, not just throw-the-batch-together cookies, but carefully-cream-the-butter-and-use-the-baking-stone cookies. When they came out of the oven I topped my hot cookies with vanilla ice cream and ate them.

Looked at my children and really saw them while listening to them.

Tomorrow I will find more small beautiful things.

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Making Things Beautiful

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I’ve had the stationery box since I was a teenager. My grandmother often gave gifts of stationery for holidays. Mostly the boxes came and went from my life without notice as I used up the contents. This particular box was large enough that got pressed into service for storage. I collected my various papers and envelopes all into this single box so that I could access them easily. I was a diligent correspondent in those days. I wrote letters to people from other states that I’d met at youth conferences, to friends had gone on trips or moved, and to distant relatives. I got a lot of satisfaction out of putting words to paper and then putting the paper into envelopes. People did not write back so often as I wrote to them, but I figured that letters were gifts that I was giving without expectation of return. That way any letter I did happen to receive was also a gift.

Like most people, I shifted from paper letters to email. The stationery box was shoved into various corners and cupboards, used to store stickers, and used to store the few letters that did trickle to me over the years. Then in the past month I happened to receive a pair of letters. One from a friend and one from a person who sent me a thank you note. These things combined with the blog entry of another friend who is actively encouraging people to send her letters, spurred me to go find my old stationery box. It was a fairly ugly box by this stage of its life. The walls were structurally sound, but the lid a little caved in and stained. I decided to make it pretty again by re-covering it. So that was my small beautification project of the day. The box is made new and ready to collect more letters. Finding stationery to supply it will be a slower process. Stationery sets are not so commonly available as they once were. Also I’m afraid I’ve gotten picky about design.

Fixing up a stationery box was not a particularly productive activity. It did not forward any of my goals for the day. It did not accomplish any of my To Do items. Yet the decoration made me happy. More importantly, it will continue to make me happy for years to come. I made a whimsical post on Facebook and Twitter about how I had made something needlessly beautiful. Several friends wisely answered me that beauty is never needless, it always has value in and of itself. So I am issuing myself a challenge for this week. Each day I will make something beautiful. These will be small projects. Things I can accomplish in 30 minutes or less. Conscious focus on the beauties of my life will be a good thing I think.


My stationery box: re-covered with fresh paper and decorated with pressed wisteria leaves.

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Project Complete: Staining Our Deck and Playset

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Wooden structures like fences and decks are, in theory, supposed to be re-stained every couple of years. This protects the wood from damage and keeps them looking pretty. We haven’t done that kind of maintenance in over a decade. First there was no time. Then there was no money. Then there was neither time nor money. However the seeing the gradual dilapidation of these wooden structures was making Howard and I both feel sad about the state of things. I finally freed up the time and sneaked enough money from the budget to make it happen.

This is the playset before we began. You can see remnants of the original stain on it, but much of the wood is bare.

Step one was to rent a pressure washer and blast off all the old paint. Howard handled pressure washing the playset. I managed the deck. Our gargoyle, Winston, had a supervisory job. The washing took five extremely wet and dirty hours.

The water blasted off old layers of stain and also some top layers of wood. There were many places where we had to be careful that the high powered stream did not damage the wood more than necessary. I suspect that would not have been an issue if we’d been properly maintaining our wood through the years.
This is the playset all clean and dry.

Next came staining. We used five gallons of stain and about 22 man hours of work. We decided to apply the stain using brushes rather than a sprayer since our last sprayer experience was…messy. It was a lot of work, but we got it done.

From a distance the structures look like new. Up close you can see all the dribbles, drips, spots where the washer gouged the wood, spots where we neglected to blast off the old stain, and places where the wood is just old. It is not perfect, but now when we step outside it feels nice instead of feeling depressing. I can live with that. On to the next project.

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The Needs of the Many and the Needs of the One

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I grew up watching Star Trek. It was a family tradition. 5 pm on Thursdays the TV was tuned in and we sat down together. I suspect that I did not always watch with complete attentiveness. Some of the science concepts did not intrigue me the way that they did my older siblings, but I loved the characters and the stories. However when each of the Star Trek films came out, we all went to the theater. Thus I grieved greatly at the death of Spock at the end of Wrath of Khan. Some of his closing words stuck with me as important and true.

Spock: Don’t grieve admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many…outweigh…
Kirk: The needs of the few
Spock: (nods) or the one.
View clip here. Conversation takes place at 1:54

It was an echo of a conversation which took place earlier in the film and helped wrap the story into a meaningful whole. Yet Spock was still dead and we grieved. Then we heard that the next film was to be called The Search for Spock and we waited anxiously. Could they really bring back Spock? They did, of course.

The Search for Spock was not a great movie, but it was exactly the movie I wanted. It let the enterprise crew be heroic. They paid the price of losing the Enterprise, and yet triumphed to return with Spock alive, if confused and recovering. At the end Spock spoke with Kirk in a scene which directly referenced his death scene.

Spock: You came back for me.
Kirk: You would have done the same for me.
Spock: Why would you do this?
Kirk: Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.
View this here.

I loved it. I loved Spock’s look of confusion as he tried to balance this illogical equation of caring.

I’m thinking about this pair of movie scenes because of a conversation I had yesterday about community and selfishness. I was talking with a woman who claimed that embracing selfishness was a way to discard guilt and find happiness. Her point was that we should allow ourselves to want the things that we want. I countered that unchecked selfishness is the source of endless damage and pain. She assured me that it was okay for me to be selfish because I would never do such things, it was not in my nature. I stayed silent because I could see that she was trying to help me to let go of some of my stress and emotional tangle. She is right that I need to allow myself more small selfish things. There is nothing wrong with me getting time to myself, having a hobby, or watching entertainment even though these things do not benefit other people. It is even okay for me to have things I want when they cause inconvenience to others. However, she is also wrong. If I allow habits of selfishness to build in my life I could travel to a place where I am willing to do damage in order to get the things that I want.

Communities thrive on cooperation and self sacrifice. These are not attributes which are lauded in American society. America is all about the individual. This is good. If we do not value the needs of the one then we all risk oppression. However there are times when we must individually sacrifice for the needs of the many. When I think of the movie conversations listed above and applied them to myself, I found something very interesting. In the Wrath of Khan quote, I pictured myself as the one who must sacrifice for the needs of the many. In the Search for Spock quote, I pictured myself as part of the many. It was an ingenious little shell game trick some piece of my mind was playing on me to make sure I never won. It allowed me to reconcile these seeming opposite quotations both as true. Yet it was stealing the power from the contradiction. That contradiction needs to stay strong because both things need to be true, not at the same time, but alternately.

Last May I went on a trip that I wanted which inconvenienced everyone else. I could claim that Howard made me do it, but this is not true. Howard pointed the way and I finally allowed myself to be the one for which many people sacrificed. It was hard and easy at the same time. I’m so grateful it happened. Applying what I learned to daily life has been much harder. Sacrificing for others is as easy as breathing. I give myself away without even thinking about it. Learning to let my loved ones have that same experience is proving to be harder.

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Headed for the Future

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After Cub Scout Pack Meeting, Patch and I retrieved his bike from among the dozens clustered near the rack. Patch climbed on the bike and rode ahead of me while I walked. His knees almost hit his handle bars. Time for a new bike. This, along with the switch to the top bunk and the eradication of Blues Clues from his room decor, have made abundantly clear that my boy is not so little anymore. With Link grown taller than his parents, I am quite able to picture the future those skinny legs are pedaling toward.

We rounded the corner into our cul de sac to see Gleek cruising along on her ripstik. This two-wheeled, swiveling skateboard is the latest cool thing among the kids of our neighborhood. Gleek bought hers with her own money and has ascended to a level of grace on it which astounds all of us. She turned and smiled at us, giving her head an extra flick to send her newly-short hair brushing against her face. She swooped down a driveway and in a circle around me before swiveling off again. She too is growing fast and changing daily.

I expected it of my teenagers. Teens are future bound from the minute they hit puberty. I was a little startled today by these younger ones who will join their older siblings so very soon. We’re nearing the end game of this parenting project. I know that in real terms, parenting never ends. I also know that grandparenting lies somewhere in my future. I’m not ready for that yet, but some day it will be a marvelous thing. Years ago, when I was mired in the midst of toddler and preschooler care, I was admonished to enjoy it because some day I would miss it. I replied that I would enjoy missing it, which is an accurate assessment of how I now feel about those early years. Days like today I will miss. I will look back to this time when I had two still turning to me and two beginning to launch toward adulthood. Like Patch on his bike and Gleek on her ripstik, we can not stop; stopping the forward motion makes us fall. Instead I will not be in a hurry. I will try to pay attention. Then at least I will have many clear memories instead of these moments disappearing in a blur of busy-ness.

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Of Wood Stain and Bedsheets

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The morning began with errands and a list. Successful acquisition of the items on the list would make my plans for the afternoon possible. I was going to begin re-staining wooden structures in my garden and I was going to solve the problem of bedsheets. The beds were something of a surprise problem, because of course I have bedsheets for my kids’ beds. Except last Saturday in a flurry of “make it all clean” I discovered that when I stripped all the beds I only had enough clean sheets for two of them. We have suffered sheet attrition between stretched out elastics, worn fabric, and the fact that everyone refuses to sleep on Sesame Street sheets. It was a problem which a shopping trip could solve and then we could begin insisting upon more regular washing of bedding. A good thing in a house which contains two teenagers and two active kids.

The danger of shopping is all the things I see which catch at my brain and say that I have uses for them. Stores do this on purpose. They place things I might want right next to things which are on my list. This was useful in the hardware store as it prevented me from forgetting paint trays. It was less helpful in the bedding section which is full of soft loveliness, none of which fits into my current budget. The sheets were a stretch as it was.

I brought my spoils home and set to work. Setting up beds was clean and soft. Staining was neither. I started with the staining. I watched the paint brush stroke liquid across bare dry wood. Any puddles vanished quickly, soaked in by the thirsty wood. We hadn’t stained the deck or the play set in a decade. The old stain had worn off long ago. It was satisfying to see the new color go on over the bare wood and the remnants of old stain. Stroke by stroke the wood was made to look younger. We could have used a sprayer I suppose, but this method insured that we got enough stain into the thirsty wood. It was slower, but more controlled in result. We did not finish. It is a project that will occupy a pleasant hour or two each day for the rest of the week. The week will be sunny and there is no need to push faster than that.

The kids liked their new sheets. Now no one would have to suffer those scratchy Spiderman fabrics anymore. I helped Patch spread out his comforter across the green sheets he’d picked. His comforter still sports a giant image of Blue from Blue’s Clues. It was Patch’s favorite show when he was four and Link’s favorite show before that. Patch is eight now. That was half his life ago. About six months ago Patch mentioned in passing that maybe he ought to have a new comforter. Three months ago both boys collaborated in removing all of the Blue’s Clues wall stickers from around the wall of their room. That’s not who they are any more. I tucked the Blue’s Clues blanket around the foot of the bed and knew that I have more shopping to do. I must buy a comforter appropriate to the boy Patch is rather than to who he was years ago.

Old things made new, old things which are still good ready to be passed on, and new things to replace those which are worn out. It was a solidly good day. I need to have more like it, although perhaps with less shopping involved.

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Sunday Dinner in Process

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Food currently in process:
Rolls -currently rising with the oven pre-heating. I began the dough before church, kneaded and rolled in the space between church and a church committee meeting.
Fudge -cooling. This is the promised reward for Gleek and Patch who have spent the last month braving primary without any toys or distractions. I made it after my committee meeting just in time to start everything else.
Rice -simmering. This will be the basis for the Sunday dinner which Patch has decided to cook.
Hamburger -thawing. Soon it will become beef stroganoff.
Vegetables -canned. Awaiting a can opener and a microwave.

Apparently in this new rhythm of life my Sundays are all about church and cooking. I’m not sure whether this is a problem yet. The minute resentment appears, shifts will need to be made. Today I’m not minding it because I’m focused on the positive benefits of all of us sitting down at the table to eat lots of delicious food. I’m staring at the puffy roll dough right now and they’re going to be amazing.

The other things I do on Sunday are often preparatory for the rest of the week. I make lists, plan meals, remind everyone of their Family Home Evening assignments, and sometimes have time to sit down and work on the family photo books. It is definitely a day focused on family and on being prepared. I am not doing my usual round of things, which I suppose qualifies as a day of rest. On the other hand, I hardly take time to sit down. For now I need to hold the patterns as they are. I really like the results of all the things I do on Sundays and this is the only way I’ve found which structures those things into existence. Any changes would have to be made carefully or important things will fall back out of the schedule.

For now I’ll just stick the rolls in the oven, then call Patch to come help cook while Link sets the table.

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