writing

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.

Today my head is full of the business side of writing. I realized that there is a “Writing for Children” workshop running at BYU in a little over a week. This workshop would give me the opportunity to pitch Hold On To Your Horses to an editor and an agent. But it would cost me $120 to go. I’d also have to arrange babysitting for while I was gone. I’m torn. I’d love to give the book a chance to fly nationally, but I already have my plans in place. Pitching the book would delay those plans because I’d have to wait for rejections before going ahead and publishing through Tayler Corporation. If I did get a national deal, they’d almost certainly want changes made. The project then becomes less personal. Also if the book sells well, we could potentially make more money printing it through Tayler Corp. The flip side of that is that we also stand to lose money if it doesn’t sell. Perhaps I’d be better off talking to the editor and agent next year when I have sales numbers to show. Alternately I might be better off talking this year before it is a previously published work. I haven’t found any answers yet. I’m still pondering.

Julie Czerneda accepted my story “Immigrant” for her Ages of Wonder anthology that is due out this fall. I’m so happy that I want to dance around the room. I have in fact danced around the room. Twice. I also startled both Howard and Kiki by running up to them, flapping my hands wildly with joy, to announce the news. Yes folks, this is how we calm, professional, writer people act when we make our first sale.

I really didn’t know whether to expect it or not. The optimistic part of me was sure my story would be picked. The pessimistic part of me already had a half composed response which included “Please consider me for your next anthology.” The pessimistic part was, appropriately, disappointed. The half composed response will not get used. I’ll have to file it away for a probable future rejection.

It would be nice to say that I’ve been calmly waiting for news about this anthology. It would be a lie. I have been quietly lurking on the Czerneda news forum for the last week to catch any snips of information that might be dropped. This is why I knew when the notices had been sent out. The notifications had been sent out and I hadn’t received one. I was terrified that my story had been lost somehow and never been read. But I remembered that the same thing happened to the invitation to submit. It disappeared into some electronic black hole between Julie’s computer and mine. I used the same solution this time as last time. I emailed Julie. She kindly replied that she would resend the notification. The reply arrived, but the notification did not. I’m pretty sure there is an electronic gremlin lurking inside my cable modem eating the emails. But it only eats emails from Julie Czerneda. I guess they’re yummier or something. Fortunately Julie was kind enough to cut and paste the information into yet another reply. Have I mentioned how nice Julie is? She is very nice.

The inclusion of my story in Ages of Wonder means that I will have two works of mine published before the end of this year. Ages of Wonder is due in the fall and my children’s book, Hold On To Your Horses, will be out in July. I’m happy. I’m so happy that none of my icons were happy enough. I had to make a new one using some of the artwork from Hold On To Your Horses. Consider it a sneak preview.

Excuse me. I need to go dance a little more.

Why oh why is it that every time I resolve to set the writing aside and really focus on other things, I get seized by a story? Today my brain started turning over possibilities of a middle grade book aimed at Link’s interests and challenges. I’m trying to not let this run away with me. I still have to put other things first. There are household, child care, and business tasks that need more of me for the next while. But the writing piece of my brain is busy stewing away trying to figure out plots and characters.

I’ve had this happen before. Twice during my years of one-baby-after-another I decided to officially give up my dream of being a writer. It seemed silly to hang on to the dream when I hadn’t written a thing for years. Both times I was seized by a writing idea within days of giving up. After the second time I realized that giving up writing just wasn’t going to work. I had to find a different way to banish my sadness over not writing. I chose to try to realize the dreams instead of banish them. It has worked pretty well so far.

The other day I decided to dig into my file box full of old stories. I wanted to see what was in there. I was surprised at how much of it there was. Apparently I’ve been a compulsive writer for longer than I can remember clearly. I found the hand written draft of The Purple Rabbit which was my very first story. I started it one day when I was six years old because my older sister was writing a story and I wanted to be just like her. I’ll never get rid of that draft even though the pages are yellowing and beginning to crumble around the edges. I love the child handwriting.

There were many other stories. Most of them I’d completely forgotten about. I didn’t stop to read many of them. I just flipped through the pages, scanning to remember what the story was and who I’d been when I wrote it. Some of the stories proclaimed their origins very clearly like the prophecy based story I began after reading David Eddings. Or the epic book about a revolutionary war that I planned out after reading Les Miserables. Many of these stories were reflections of the things that captured my imagination at the time. Absorptive reflective juvenilia, to use Bujold’s term.

Every so often as I flipped through, a scene or an entire story jumped off the page at me. I would sit there with that one piece of paper and know for sure that here was something I could work with. Something in that piece of writing was not a reflection, but my very own. These ones I set aside for further consideration because they still live even after spending a decade in a dusty file box. Everything else went back into the box.

I’m not a person who keeps things for sentiment sake. I pitched my yearbooks when I was only a couple of years out of high school. I gave away most of my stuffed animals and toys as I outgrew them. Award certificates get pitched. But I’ll never voluntarily throw away these stories I’ve written. They say more about the person I was at the time than any other object I could keep. I love watching my handwriting change and mature even as the stories themselves change and mature. I look at them and remember so clearly when this particular story lived in my brain and absorbed all my thoughts.

For better or for worse, I am a writer. What I am not is an author. To be a writer only requires that I write. To be an author I have to be published. My goal is to be an author too, but that will take a bit more time.

I’ve been reading Under Cover of Darkness a short story anthology. As I’ve been reading I’ve paid special attention to the author bios that accompany each story. I’m fairly certain that these bios are written by the authors themselves although they are all in third person. Most of the bios read like resumes as if the writer is trying to demonstrate to me their writing qualifications. Other bios read like Oscar acceptance speeches, full to the brim with thanks for specific people. But the bios that impressed me were uniformly short. Larry Niven has a story in this particular anthology. His bio simply reads “Larry Niven has written science fiction and fantasy at every length, and weirder stuff, too. He lives with his wife of thirty-six years, Marilyn, in Chatsworth, California, the home of the winds.” Larry Niven has nothing to prove to anyone and it shows in his bio. If he tried to write his bio like a resume, it would have been longer than his story.

If/when I get to write my bio for an anthology. I’m going to keep it short.

I have just finished my third re-draft of the story I intend to submit to Julie Czerneda’s anthology. This has been by far the most painful writing experience that I’ve ever had. I’ve often heard writers talk about bleeding over their work. I never felt that way about writing until this story. I’m not sorry for the experience. It has taught me lots about how I write. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

• 30 days is a very short time for me to try to go from nothing to completed story. In order to accomplish this feat I have to push the creative process hard. This is rather like giving pitocin to a woman in labor. The baby is born much more quickly, but the contractions hurt a lot more. In the end the speed of the labor does not affect the quality of the baby. Given the choice I much prefer having leisure to let the process be natural and much less painful.
• I should not give my stories out to be critiqued the day that I finish the draft. At that point I am still emotionally invested in the stories and the commentary begins to feel like a personal attack when it is not. Also, the critiques are sure to mention problems that I would have noticed on my own if I’d only given myself enough time to see them. Then I’m angry at the critique for telling me stuff I already know and angry at myself for not seeing it before I handed the story out to be read. Also I start feeling embarrassed that I handed out such a poor draft to be read.
• Tearing a story apart and redrafting only days after finishing the previous draft is very painful. I need to give myself time to detach from the story before restructuring it. When I’ve just finished drafting I remember clearly how much work it was. The last thing I want, is to do all the work again. It also renders further critiques on the previous draft pointless. This is a problem when I don’t wait for all the critiques to arrive before I start redrafting. This time I was in such a hurry that I’d start redrafting after each critique rather than taking time to compare critiques and decide what needed changed. I do much better if I get all the critiques and let them simmer in my back brain for awhile before I start to re-work the story.

No one gets to see this redraft yet. I am going to put it aside and think of other things for three days. On Monday I’ll re-read it. If it still feels really good to me, then I’ll send it off. If it still needs work, then I’ll do the work. I may decide that I need other opinions, but I don’t think so. In the middle of this process my confidence in my ability to write was shaken. This is my fault for not giving my instincts time to work. I rushed too fast to get the opinions of others. Now it is time for me to slow down and trust those instincts.

One person I met during LTUE weekend, but whom I’ve failed to mention is Stacey Whitman. She is an editor for Mirrorstone books which is an imprint of Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend much time with Stacey. Our paths crossed frequently, but never ran together for very long. Hopefully I’ll get to see her again on our trip to Seattle. Stacey had some interesting insights on publication in general and on children’s books in particular. I’ve stored that information in my brain and combined it with information that I gleaned from Julie Czerneda about her editorial selection process. I further added my experience in selecting an artist for my children’s book and I’ve distilled a five step process of elimination that editors go through to find who and what they want to work with.

1. Will they respond/query? This is where many beginning writers disqualify themselves. They never even try. Julie says that she regularly teaches at writing workshops of 30 people or more. At the end, she invites all of them to email her to be put on the invitation-to-submit list for her next anthology. She usually only gets one or two emails.

2. Will they finish and submit? Many writers have grand ambitions and good intentions, but if the work is incomplete it might as well not exist at all. If it is complete and never submitted, then it might as well not exist.

3. Does it follow the submission guidelines? Stacey’s company Mirrorstone does not publish picture books. It says that clearly in the submission guidelines. But on any given day half of the slush pile is picture books. It does not matter how good those picture books are, they don’t follow the guidelines, so they’ll never see print.

4. Is it good? This is something of a judgment call on the part of the editor, but quality writing shines through. My sister Nancy says that every story in the Baen Universe slush pile gets read and rated multiple times. The same story can get a 9 from one editor and a 1 from another. There are some stories that get 8s and 9s from everyone. Those are the ones that end up in print.

5. Is it what the editor is looking for? Sometimes for some reason, the story just doesn’t click with the editor. Sometimes there is another story that is too similar. Sometimes it just doesn feel quite right.

I’ve thought about this process of elimination in regard to the anthologies to which I’ll be sending stories. I find it very comforting that I have control over #1-4. I have no control over #5. This means that I need to consider my story a success if I’ve nailed numbers 1-4. I need to base my feelings of worth as a writer on factors over which I have control.

Yesterday writing consumed my brain. I revised 4 blog entries into stand alone essays, selected another dozen blog entries for the same treatment, revised some short stories, selected which stories will go on the website and which will wait for print, then wrote the next segment of my story-in-progress. Several times during the day I tried to stop. I told myself I had done enough. I told myself that there were other things which needed doing. But I couldn’t really focus on anything except writing tasks. It was strange and kind of cool. I got a lot of writing tasks done. Of course there were lots of other things that went undone.

One of the writing tasks which did not get done was blogging. I still have a stack of things that I wanted to blog about attending LTUE. I wanted to give each of these things a full blog so that I could relish them at length. But instead I find that they are staring accusingly from my notes page and my memories are growing increasingly fuzzy. So I am left with the choice of throwing them all together in a single blog or deciding not to blog them at all. I have decided upon the former.

Should you ever have the chance to go out to dinner with John Ringo, I advise you to take the opportunity. If you get to go out with both Howard AND John, you definitely should not pass. But don’t expect to do much talking. I sat between these two storytellers and listened as they traded stories. They did not deliberately exclude me, but their stories were so much more interesting than what I had to say, that I just stayed quiet to listen. I hope to get to spend time with John again in the future. I liked him.

One of the highlights of LTUE was being able to pull out a couple of the pictures that Angela Call has done for the children’s book we are collaborating on. The pictures were greeted with universal awe. Several people asked that I please inform them when the book will be available because they really want to see it and probably buy a copy. I loved having people enthusiastic about a project that is so close to my heart.

All the local cons are a place for local authors to meet and greet. Many of these people have become my friends. I got to catch up with Dames Dashner, Julie Wright, Bob Defendi, Eric James Stone, and Dan Willis. I also got a chance to really talk to Brandon Sanderson. I’d met him in passing before, but this time I got to converse which was nice. Even better, raisinfish showed up and I was able to introduce her to people that I know and she introduced me to people that she knows. Yay networking! I was very pleased to learn that Julie Wright sometimes lurks here on my blog. (Hi Julie!) It is wonderful to have someone I respect read and enjoy my writing. Another cool thing was that Brandon Sanderson asked Howard to be a guest lecturer at his creative writing class. That will happen next week. We’ll also be having Brandon and his wife over for dinner to talk about business stuff. His wife would like to help with the business stuff so that Brandon can get back to writing, but she isn’t sure quite how to do it. Being support personnel for a creative person is something I’m expert at, so we’ll have a nice talk. Again I say “Yay networking!”

Howard almost bought me jewelry. There were some beautiful hand made stone-and-wire medallions for sale by Michael and Judi Collings. Howard found a beautiful green one with matching earrings. He brought me over to it and asked if he was allowed to buy it for me. I dithered for a bit, but eventually decided that $140 was too much to spend on jewelry right now. I think my refusal to let him spend frustrated Howard, he really wanted to get me something nice. Someday we’ll have enough money that he won’t have to ask and I won’t have to say no. For now it is enough that he wanted to buy me something beautiful.

Ah. It feels good to have all of that cleared out of my brain.

Tomorrow begins yet another week. Hopefully I’ll be able to tone down the busy-ness. Though I fear that the hope is futile because we have two birthdays scheduled this week. Howard’s birthday will be celebrated on Wednesday. I need to ask him what he wants to do to celebrate other than open the presents. Patches birthday is on Thursday, but the big celebration will be on Saturday because that is when I’ve scheduled his birthday party. The move to Saturday is in part because the Cub Scout Blue and Gold dinner is scheduled for Thursday. I’ll get to spend most of Thursday slow cooking pulled pork.

AND I just checked my calendar which totally ruins my illusions of “Not busy.” Monday I volunteer at Art Club, take papers to our tax man, and do some necessary mailing. Tuesday has the regular accounting, laundry, gym for Patches, art for Kiki, and parent teacher conferences. Wednesday has a patriotic sing at Kiki’s school and Howard’s birthday. Thursday has the Blue and Gold dinner, volunteering in Gleek’s class, and Patches birthday. Friday has a Junior high transition assembly for Kiki. Saturday has Patches birthday party (small, only three guests) and a movie night with raisinfish. Why oh why do all of my weeks fill up in this crazy way? Next week looks empty. I hope it stays that way.