Trying to get out of the doldrums

So, the weather is crappy here in College Station, and the rejections have been trickling in. Needless to say, I’m not in the best of moods. It’s hard to write anything during times like this. I want to curl up in a blanket, snack, and watch B-movies until the sun comes back.

Can’t do any of that, though. Getting back into writing after taking a break from it is soooo much harder than muddling through during times like this. Besides which, my snacks aren’t exactly…healthy. I can’t have them without also putting in some time on the elliptical.

The wind sounds very mournful outside. I guess I could write some mournful scenes, but I’m afraid that route leads to bad teenage poetry about how life is dark and so am I, and trying to find words that rhyme with void. I’m not depressed. I’m just bleh.

How do you get out of the doldrums?

No time to post today

I’m too immersed in a great post at Words from the Woods. I also got quite a bit of writing done at our local Blue Baker and have been trying to figure out my first forays into ebay. Busy, busy, busy.

Discarded pizza boxes are an excellent source of cheese

If you’ll remember, I was waiting on an agent to get back to me after she requested a full manuscript some months ago. It was my fourth full request ever. She turned it down the other day, and I’ve been wondering how to feel about it. No one likes getting rejected, but I thought I’d grown used to it. After a few days, however, it’s wearing on me.

Many times, I’ve gotten past the query to the sample pages. Many times, those sample pages have gotten past the assistant to the agent. Four times, that agent has requested a full. And every single time, I’ve been turned down. Most of my rejections have been form letters. Some were very personal. One was handwritten. The personal letters were glowing. Unique voice. Clever style. Wonderful dialogue. But…but…but…no. They didn’t bother to get specific about the no. I understand why. They told the truth as much as they could. My stories didn’t grab them, and one cannot edit on that kind of info. If my story grabbed me, and if it grabbed those in my various circles who read it, then I can’t make it any more grabby. They say that all you need is one yes, but I haven’t found my grabbee yet.

I feel so…fingernails about the whole thing. Which is a weird feeling, I know. But I’m clinging. Sometimes I feel like I’m sooooo close, that I’m hanging inches away from that elusive yes. Blame it on the economy, blame it on e-books, blame it on the state of publishing today. Blame, blame, blame, there’s lots of it to go around. There’s lots of encouragement on the web, but there’s lots of reality, too. I read, keep trying, but I also read, maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe I haven’t written the best book yet, maybe that’s my current project, or the one after that, or the one after that. Maybe I should accept defeat and become an organ grinder, or an organ donor. I hear that some hospitals pay for plasma. If I wasn’t a writer, I’d be… I can’t finish. If it weren’t for my wonderful husband who believes people should follow their dreams when they can, I’d probably be homeless, hence the title of this post.

Good but not great? Maybe that’s where I am. I can’t find anything lacking in my manuscripts. I believe they are as good as I can make them at this point in my life. Don’t fear for me. I’ll keep writing, and I’m not looking for pity. I just wanted to share. And of course, I want to hear from you. To all those aspiring authors, do you ever feel fingernails about this process? And to all you published authors, how long did you have to hang there?

Have you seen my ending?

I’ve done a post like this before, but it needs to be repeated. Every writer has run out of steam once in awhile. And not just between projects either, but in the middle of them. The beginning is pretty easy. It’s all excitement and explosions. The characters are new and shiny, with parfait layers all ready to explore. (I don’t like onions.)

And then, the middle comes. The story is bogged down. The characters refuse to have the revelations you planned for them. The plot feels worn out and begins to look like something you’ve seen everywhere. It’s trite, it’s overdone, and you suddenly hate these characters and want to move on to the shiny, exciting, explosive ideas that are suddenly burning a hole in your brain.

Well, don’t. Jot the ideas on a piece of paper, put them away, then slog through that novel. If at the end, you don’t see anything worth saving, then you can lock it away, too, but in getting to the end, you’ll learn something about how and what to write. And maybe that novel will work itself out, and you’ll have a revelation of your own. The reason your character wouldn’t go forward is because he never forgave his father for failing him as a child and….. These sorts of realizations will begin to tumble out, and you might have to move some of it back to that boring middle to spice it up a bit, but you will begin to hurtle toward the end like a freight train.

Easier said than done? Perhaps. You might need more than just willpower. All right, how about some inspiration. If you get yourself over this hurdle, if you push for the end, you’ll know that you can’t be trapped by this. You’ll know you can finish something. You will be among the few, the proud, the people who have finished.

And if that doesn’t work, if you still find that you aren’t motivated to continue, then maybe you need to go a completely different direction with the plot. Just change lanes right there in the middle and fix the beginning later. Do something exciting out of the blue. Kill all your characters in a big revenge scene and then resurrect them. That should vent some of your frustration. Force an epiphany or two and then work backward later. Just push. Remember, you don’t get in sight of the finish line only to turn around and start the race over from the beginning. Run for it.

When to slow down

In my opinion, I write fast-paced novels. Action follows on the heels of action, and even when my characters are ruminating, I try to make them do it on the hoof, so to speak. Or I keep their thoughts brief, trying not to spend too much time thinking about one topic.

I have a character now who has run headlong into danger in the past. Now, she’s learned caution. In her latest escapade, she did recon before proceeding into an enemy stronghold. I did find, however, that my readers missed the headlong action. They found the recon a little tedious. The thing is, when I heard this, I read back over the part and found that the recon took maybe a page. A page in which the main character chomped at the bit, really wanting to get to the action, but she knew she had to be careful because going off half-cocked had burned her in the past. A couple of members of my writing group thought the scene dragged. Was it boring, I asked, or were you just anxious, as the character was anxious? They couldn’t give me an answer, and I thought, how fine a line is that?

So, I hope some of you will tell me when you slow down in your stories, when you take a breath, and if your readers prefer you not to. Is making a reader feel the same anxiousness as a character actually a triumph?

I completely skipped yesterday

Sorry about that. I know I meant to post, but I was too busy reading other blogs!

I took a class once on marketing oneself via the internet, and they recommended starting a blog, but they also warned about spending so much time reading other blogs that you did nothing else. I have to remember that one and not put internet time before writing time, even if that’s just writing my own blog.

I spent quite a bit of yesterday submitting, and I was amazed by the number of agents that still demand paper queries and still others who don’t have a website. I was leery of submitting to several who only had Agent Query or Publisher’s Marketplace entries, but as always, the Absolute Write Forums were my guide. An excellent source of information on agents or editors. Together with P&E and Writer’s Beware, they sniff out many a scam.

I was very surprised to learn that one of the biggest sci-fi reps, Spectrum, only takes paper queries. So many agencies have gone paperless, why not one that accepts queries about space age technology? Maybe they use this as part of their weeding process. If you’re too lazy to mail a letter, we don’t want you? Save a tree, I say, and not just because I AM lazy. ^_^

Haven’t heard back yet from IGMS about my story, but I got a rejection from Crossed Genres. But I still love them and will do so forever. ^_^ I got a request for pages from one agent one day after I sent the query and was rejected the next morning. Some of them have truly awesome turnarounds, and some will probably never respond. I’ve become almost sanguine about the whole thing, especially after reading this.

Resolutions going well

My New Year’s resolution was to swear more, and I think I’m fuckin’ nailin’ it!

The other day, I almost had to physically restrain myself from swearing as I was speaking aloud in the midst of younger, shorter members of society. I wasn’t speaking to them, just near them, but I know they could hear me. It doesn’t help that I was a little agitated. “What do you mean he won’t ffffff….freakin’ give it to you? What the ffff….freak is his problem? He should just give you the damn thing.” And then I realized, I don’t even consider damn a swear any more. Damn.

Luckily, it hasn’t slipped into my writing yet. Coming up on 200 pages of the new project and not an F-bomb in sight. But a few hells and damns. Whatev. Aren’t the kids using those nowadays anyway? I’m pretty sure Goodnight Moon has at least one damn. Hmmm, maybe not.

In other news, the query deluge has begun! I did five or six yesterday and plan to send out more as the week goes on. Fingers crossed, dammit!

Arrrggghh!

Well, the library is out as a quiet writing place. The high school across the street is back in session, and they appear to have either an open lunch, of a bunch of skippers. Plus, every other annoying person was there, talking in normal voice, answering cell phone calls, or ignoring their children. It was noisy one other time, and this was it’s second chance.

So, I need ideas. Coffee shops are okay, but some are really small, and have too many comings or goings (especially as I live in a college town). Well, the people are one thing, but I can’t stand the sound of a coffee grinder. Anyone have any other bright ideas?

I just had to share

Today I get a rejection from an agent who had already rejected me for the same project. And no, it was not a requery. The letter apologized for the extremely long response time. I’ll say! I queried in January of last year, was rejected in February, and now that it’s January again, I guess they thought they’d just reject me again for the helluva it. Ah, nothing like being told no twice. ^_^

Finding the right writing group Pt. 3

Last time, I mentioned our group’s interview process, and in the comments, I was asked to clarify. So, if you’re looking for more info on that, it’s in the comments for Pt. 2.

So, now we had a group, and we had some rules. A few times in hour history, however, our membership dropped. The weekly commitment proved too much for many of us, leaving us with three people at one point. And if one person can’t make a three-person meeting, the meeting gets called. Two of the three of us had small children, so the occasional miss was unavoidable, but it got to be where we would go for two or three weeks without meeting. As the one without small children, I was a bit peeved by this. ^_^

We needed new blood. But how to get it? Well, the internet seemed to hold the key. My husband and I had created a webpage for Writer’s Ink, and now seemed the perfect time to put it to use. We needed to steer traffic toward it. We put Writer’s Ink on an online listing for writers’ groups in TX. We put an ad on Craig’s List. I scattered fliers all over town. It took awhile, but eventually, we had some submissions.

At one point, we had enough that we could give some acquired members the axe. This is always a hard thing to do. But one had sporadic attendance, and we had promised ourselves that we wouldn’t be a “drop-in” group, so we had to send him an email telling him to look us up again when he had more time. Lucky for us, he was very gracious.

Another member made it all the way into the group before we realized that, for him, honesty and brutality had to go hand in hand. If we weren’t willing to be brutal to one another, he said, then we clearly just wanted to sit around and give each other compliments. We tried to impress upon him that this wasn’t the case, but he persisted. When he got a polite email, telling him that his personality didn’t mesh with the rest of the group, he was very upset and fired back several emails, trying to argue. As I recall, we just had to say, “We’re done,” and not respond further. Now, when people join, we give them a copy of The Diplomatic Critiquer by Andrew Burt. The honesty = brutality people usually get the message straightaway and don’t bother.

So, that’s it, really. To find the right writing group, you have to be willing to look, to try out several and ask yourself how far you’re willing to drive. When I moved away from Houston to College Station, I thought I would have to give up Writer’s Ink, but I just couldn’t. Each week, I drive the two hours down to Sugar Land or over to east Houston. I try to schedule other Houston activities on the same day to stretch out the time between driving. Two hours has become a small price to pay for a good group.

And if you can’t find one, make one! It’s hard, sure, but it’s sooo worth it. If you need any tips or advice, feel free to ask. Writer’s Ink will have it’s fifth anniversary this Fall.