The Journey Continues

Well, I’m gonna answer your first question first. No, I don’t have an agent (yet!) But there’s still some good news.

I had realistic expectations going in to Pitch Wars, as 1) I had been through it before, and 2) I knew my manuscript was not a hugely commercial one. So, I was truly happy to get a couple agent requests. (Not gonna lie, though, those first hours with zero requests for me while other pitches got literally dozens was rough.) I happily sent off my manuscript to the requesting agents, knowing it might be a while until I heard from them. No biggie.

But then, the offer frenzy for other writers’ manuscripts began and I basically had to stick my fingers in my ears and repeat the artist’s mantra to myself over and over:

Keep your eyes on your own page. Keep your eyes on your own page. 

All that commotion consumed many of the agents and those of us who didn’t have a ton of requests knew we’d have to wait a little longer for our work to get read. That’s okay. Just the way the business works. The challenge of being in Pitch Wars is that you see so much going on for so many people and it’s easy to feel you’re the anomaly even when you aren’t. The best part of being in Pitch Wars is gaining dozens of new writer friends at once, who really get you and who are going to battle just as you are. It’s awesome to cheer each other on and they inspire me daily, both my mentors and fellow mentees. 

My fellow mentees inspired me so much that, against my better judgment, I entered #PitMad. With a hard-to-pitch book. And I got five requests! Three were from editors which I prefer to hold off on until I get an agent, but two were agents. And one of them has already requested the full. I’ve already gotten some rejections from others and that’s okay. It’s part of the game. I’m querying others as well.

Meanwhile, on a whim several months ago, I wrote a poem and submitted it to a literary journal…AND IT WAS ACCEPTED!! I’m excited to share more details very soon. Tee hee.

The lesson for me is to keep following my gut, trusting that things will work out in due time, not in my time. To stay focused on what I can control. To keep creating, keep pitching, keep submitting, and most of all, keep learning. I hope, no matter how rewarding or frustrating your year was last year, you’ll do the same. Happy 2018!

Returning to Battle: Second Time’s a Charm?

I’m doing it again! Pitch Wars, that is.  And can I tell you how excited I am?

It really happened!

I feel more fortunate than ever.  Because with Pitch Wars, the odds are most definitely not in your favor. This year, Brenda Drake’s epic contest garnered the highest number of entries yet–somewhere around 2600.  That makes the odds of getting in about the same as getting into the Ivy League. (!!)  But if you do get in, the odds of getting an amazing, super-cool, loves-you-like-their-own mentor is extremely high. These mentors are in it for the love, man. They love writing, they love writers and they love helping you make your manuscript the best it can be.

I’m thrilled to have Cass Catalano and Shauna Holyoak as my mentors this year (yeah–I got two! Bonus!) Together with me and my fellow mentee, Gaye Sanders, we are Team oMG. For the uninitiated, MG means middle grade, which means readers typically between 8 and 12 years old. I love writing MG because those years are such a pivotal time in life. It’s exciting and scary, and books can be a great companion, helping you figure it all out.  Actually, that sounds like me, now, with my mentors!

oMG squad hug

Seriously, although I entered hoping to get the opportunity to put my work in front of some top-notch agents, no matter whether I connect with one or not, I know I will get something hugely beneficial out of Pitch Wars this year: a community.

I first entered Pitch Wars three years ago and I gained a lot, including becoming a stronger writer, but most beneficial was the community I became a part of. Our group of over 80 mentees is still in touch, supporting each others’ writing and celebrating each new book published by one of us. And so far, there are a lot!! That deserves a separate post, which I promise I’ll do soon. I also connected with a super-supportive mentor, Lisa Lewis Tyre, whose writing I love. You can check out her debut novel, Last in a Long Line of Rebels, here and she’s got another book, Hope in the Holler, coming out in early 2018.

This year’s Pitch Wars class is turning out to be incredibly supportive and fun. I’m loving being a part of this group and am learning everything I can from them as well as Shauna and Cass. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about–taking my writing to the next level so that (hopefully someday) my words will be out in the world, touching the hearts of children.

The next step is revising, revising, revising and honing my pitch for the agents. I’m ready to take on the challenge!

Prepare for battle

Uncertainty as Opportunity

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. ~Rebecca Solnit

I love this quote and I would add that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to create. In fact, I submit that ONLY in uncertainty does the room to create exist. Embrace the uncertainty surrounding you and fill it with your beautiful, hopeful creations.

The world needs them, desperately.

Star Cluster R136 (Hubble) STScl-2016-10

The Myth of the Solitary Artist

Though the image of many famous artists is that of the painter or writer slaving away by themselves in their lonely studio or hunched over their antique typewriter high up in a tower somewhere, I have learned the exact opposite about the art of creating art.

Smithsonian ‘castle’

Art is never created in a vacuum. At the very least, artists are inspired and informed by the world around them. For some it is cities, for others: mountains. Or flowers or waterfalls or people. They observe color, light, movement, sound and they translate it onto their canvas, whatever canvas that is. For me, it’s a page and my paint is made of words.

My fellow writers are a treasure trove of stories not only because of their vast imaginations but because they feed their imaginations. Many love to travel, some to the opposite side of the globe, learning about different cultures and traditions; others to the closest subway station, eavesdropping on the conversations around them. The world is their collaborator though it doesn’t always know it.

In my experience writing is a team sport. Beyond gleaning from their interaction with the world, writers actively partner with many, many people most of whom give of their time freely in order to help that writer’s vision come to life. Here’s a short list:

• Critique partners who give honest and necessary feedback in the earliest stages (love ya OWLS!)
• Fellow writers in the community and at conferences who give encouragement and support
• Bloggers who provide information, resources, and sometimes exposure and connections
• More experienced writers who serve as mentors (thank you Lisa Lewis Tyre!)
• Beta readers who give even more feedback once the story is complete
• Industry professionals who attend conferences and contests giving information and sometimes feedback
• Agents who generously provide feedback even when they’ve decided your work is not a fit for them
• Agents who say “YES” and agree to represent you who help you get your manuscript into shape to sell and then work their tails off to sell your book on only promise of payment IF they sell it
• Editors who read your work and provide feedback even if they will not be acquiring it
• The editor who does agree to acquire it (squee!!) who works with you to polish it into the final product

Okay, so the list isn’t that short. And it doesn’t even include the whole team at the publishing house who helps ensure your book actually hits shelves (physical or electronic) with cover art and a minimum of typos. Which proves my point. Writing is a team sport. Don’t go it alone.

Without my writing “team”, I would not have completed two novel-length manuscripts and I wouldn’t have been able to see my stories with fresh eyes and take them to new levels. Of course, I haven’t yet added an agent or editor to my team. But I hope to soon. I’ve got some fabulous agents reading my work. Keep your fingers crossed that one of them is the right match for me.

The best CPs anywhere

YA Chicks & Friends

 

The Power of Empathy in Writing (and in Life)

The school bully, the class clown, the unfaithful friend. The kid who doesn’t even try.

These are the characters I love.

Why? Because they represent the fascinating, complex, bittersweet reality of life.

I know when I see people like this, who are considered problems often creating hardship for everyone around them, there is more beneath that shell which is all they allow the world to see. Much more. People are never, ever one dimensional and a difficult exterior is almost always a sign of an interesting interior. And often a painful past. It’s that painful past that makes me love them. Because I know they are struggling with it, trying desperately not to need the love they so desperately do.

Everyone is shaped by their environment, molded and stretched and scarred by their experience. That bully? He may have lived in a home with violence and anger all his life and not know anything different. Or, he may have always been indulged, never told ‘no’, never had someone help him learn the give and take of healthy relationships. Now he’s baffled when people don’t really like him. The unfaithful friend may have experienced instability and disrespect in her life that has taught her not to trust people and that it’s better to hurt first than to be hurt. The class clown may be ashamed of not being like his ‘perfect’ older brother. That kid who seems completely bored and sneers at others who try hard has probably been knocked down so many times, he’s learned the only way not to lose is not to try.

There is a great story there if you just look beneath the surface. I like to try to do that in real life and in my writing. 

When you write, your power to look below the surface is what will allow you to create great characters. Characters that people can cry for, hope for, and cheer for even while they are doing things that make you cringe, that you don’t agree with, or that make you angry. Think about where they might have come from and how it might be affecting them now so that you can love them in some way. All characters need that. In writing, and in life.

 

 

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Wow, It’s hard to believe that last post was in September. Now that many moons have passed, it’s a good time to take a look back, see what I’ve accomplished creatively and look at where I go from here. Let’s see…there was:

September, in which I gained a mentor and lost a stepfather

One of the many benefits of #PitchWars is that I got a mentor (Yay!)  Even better, she’s a super-awesome writer of middle grade fiction who lives in the South. (Like me!)  Her name is Lisa Lewis Tyre and her book, Last in a Long Line of Rebels, comes out this Fall. I can’t wait to read it! If you like to read tween/teen stories or you know middle school or upper elementary readers who do, you can pre-order it here now. Anyway, Lisa loved my story and was so encouraging, while still giving me lots of feedback and suggestions for adding flavor to it. I was thrilled to work with Lisa.

But often when one hand giveth, the other taketh away.  At the same time this exciting thing was happening with my writing, my stepfather was fighting for his life against a brain tumor. It came out of nowhere in August. By the end of September, he was gone. I spent more time with my extended family in that month than probably in the last five years combined. And every minute was worth it. There are some things that are more important than writing, and it’s a good thing to remember that, especially when you are living in rejection-ville, as happens when you are querying.

October, in which I learned how bad I suck at queries

You’d think that putting together one short paragraph that hooks the reader and gives them the basic concept of your book would be easy, especially when you’d already written a whole book. You’d be wrong.

I wrote, got feedback and rewrote those three paragraphs approximately 8,332 times and finally settled on something. But you never really know for sure until you throw it out there.

November, in which I got two full requests(!) 

So maybe I wasn’t so bad at queries. I wasn’t great but I ended up with a couple partial requests from PitchWars anyway (Yay!) And, I got another outside that, too (Yippee!) Then, I got a rejection (Boo.) But then…I got two follow up requests for full manuscripts. (Yahooo!)

December, in which I read a lot and tried to pretend I wasn’t waiting for anything

The header says it all. The waiting stinks. And, as you hear of others landing agents even during the holidays, it’s hard to convince yourself that you just haven’t heard anything from agents yet because they just haven’t opened your email.  But it was good to read a lot just for pleasure. I haven’t indulged in that nearly as much as I’d like in the past year.

January, in which I stopped waiting and jumped back into the race

I started querying in earnest but slowly. And I started getting requests, especially when I included sample pages, which means hey, my writing doesn’t suck. But the process of finding an agent who is just the right fit is often a long one. 

Since then…

I’ve gotten more rejections and I’ve gotten more requests. I’m sticking with it, listening to the encouraging feedback I’m getting from agents and fellow writers, and improving my work.

I have to give myself credit for all I accomplished. I…

1) finally finished the book

2) did well in a couple contests and got some notice

3) got a fabulous mentor

4) learned how to revise and produce a polished end product

5) got some agent interest

And what got me these accomplishments was: to just keep doing the work, step by step, and find the joy in that. To make my writing the best it can be and keep putting it out there. Slow and steady wins the race (I hope!)

Violence, Women, and Art

Note: I drafted this post a few weeks ago, but hadn’t published it yet when events in the news spawned the #Yesallwomen conversation. I wasn’t sure I would publish it because I didn’t want to sound too preachy. But now, I’ve decided to, in the spirit of #Yesallwomen. (If you haven’t read the Twitter feed on that hashtag, do it. You will be amazed, horrified, nodding your head, saying ‘yes, me too’ and more).

See article at http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/27/living/california-killer-hashtag-yesallwomen/

 

Here’s my original post:

As someone who values and admires creativity, my ideals include validating and encouraging all art.  But reality has come smack dab up against my ideals.  Here’s the problem: violence against women.

The other day, I was listening to a streaming music station on my iPhone as I worked in the yard.  Happily, I clipped along to the playlist of one of my favorite artists. A song came on with a beat and lyricism that you cannot resist singing along to. It included a collaboration with a rap artist, embedded in the song. I love these collaborations – they’re super cool and interesting musically. I’d heard the song before, but had never really paid close attention to the lyrics. All the lyrics. As I did, they hit me like a ton of bricks. And I thought:

“This guy is calling a woman a b* and literally saying he’s going to eff her up because she isn’t pleasing him. And I’m singing it with him. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?” Yes, I was yelling at myself inside my head.

But then I said to myself, “Self, this isn’t the first song you’ve heard (or sung) with lyrics like this. Why are you freaking out now?”  And, then I freaked out even more at the fact that I hadn’t freaked out about this before. 

WHY hadn’t I freaked out before? WHEN did it become acceptable to glorify beating the stuffing out of a woman?  Are we in the Twilight Zone, people?  If you were to replace gender with race in these songs, people would completely lose it. And rightly so, because it would be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Where is the outcry when these things are said against women?

In art, we explore many things. But when there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of songs which include lyrics that make it sound okay, normal or that glorify violence toward women, we are sending a message. A horrible message.  Millions of small choices make up our culture.  I, perhaps you, and millions of other men, women, teenagers and even young boys and girls are happily listening to lyrics that imply that women are: beneath men, here only to serve men, deserve to be harmed in some way if the men in their lives are not pleased.  And then we wonder why there is so much violence against women in the world. When we buy, stream and listen to these songs, we are saying it’s okay.  And, it’s NOT okay.

So, I’m making a small choice. I can only choose for myself, but I hope you’ll consider joining me. I’m not talking about censorship. I don’t believe in the big brother approach. I believe in the power of the market. The power of the people.  If people choose not to buy or otherwise support these songs, fewer of them will get made. Fewer of these hateful messages will be put out there.  And fewer little boys and little girls will grow up thinking that women are nothing but objects that deserve to be used and abused.

From now on, I will not buy songs that have a mysoginist message, I won’t stream them, and I’m removing them from my playlists. I admit I’ll be sad to see some of the songs go, because I do love me a nasty bassline. But it’s gotta be done.

Small Steps on My Writing Journey

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao-Tzu

One step at a time

For 2014, I decided my theme for the year would be to focus more on polishing what I’m already working on instead of starting a bunch of new things. One of the things I wanted to focus on was a middle grade manuscript I began early in 2013. I’d already weeded out other projects that were taking my time and distracting me from my goal. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other (i.e., words on the page) and git ‘er done.

Finally, I did! I had a complete first draft. Time to celebrate, right?  Well, sure, but…a first draft is not a final-ready-to-send-agents draft. So, my next step was to revise.  I began. But at the same time I entered a contest on an awesome website called Adventures in YA Publishing (if you write YA or MG, check it out here.)

In this contest, you submit a pitch and first line, and if you are in the first 100 submissions, you get feedback. I thought, awesome – I am going to get some feedback which will help me make it stronger. I didn’t actually think I’d get to the second round and get asked to submit my first page for critique as well. But I did. Eep!

From there, the top ten were selected to go on and get their entries judged by prominent agents. When I checked the list of finalists, I closed my laptop with a sigh. Oh well, I got some good feedback and that’s why I entered in the first place. But wait! What was that? My title? I flipped my laptop back open, and sure enough, mine was listed. Now I started to actually get excited. Big-time agents would read my work. Maybe even like it!  Of course, getting your hopes up is a recipe for a shattered heart, so I tamped down my excitement and just focused on getting the feedback.

So, how excited was I to receive a request to see my full manuscript from not one but two awesome agents?  Yeah, this excited:

Not me, but this is what I looked like on the inside

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

A day later, I was notified I’d been named a runner up in the contest!  Out of 100 people, I was one of the top few. Double eep!  As a runner up, I received a first chapter critique from the fabulous Roseanne Wells.  Her critique gave me great insight and new perspective on my story and I am so grateful to her.

As I’m getting more feedback from beta readers and critique partners, I’m taking one step at a time to make my manuscript stronger. And soon, very soon, I’ll be ready to submit my final, polished story to these agents.  I cannot know where that step will lead me, but no matter what, I know it will be something good.

It’s great to look back now and see how many steps I’ve taken just this year. And it’s exciting to think of what steps are ahead. I just have to do my job and keep on walking.

Inspired by Spring

Chicks hit the beach!

Here’s a small thing that we enjoyed this past week: a beach day!  It was only a day, but it felt like my own little Spring Break, since it was too cold during our actual Spring Break to wear a bathing suit (or anything less than a jacket.) Nothing like a day of true relaxation to rekindle the creative spirit.

We loved every minute of our beach day. We also enjoyed having our guest chick, Maya, with us!  What are you doing this Spring?

LIFE IS A JOURNEY

“Life is a Journey with problems to solve, lessons to learn, but most of all, experience to enjoy.”

My dad passed away in a horrific car accident on November 2002 in which he caused.

That’s when my life changed!

I  knew very young that life was not going to be easy, and that I was going to have my challenges along the way.  I was not a great student, was not overly smart, did not have a creative talent.  Knew that if I wanted anything in life I would have to work hard for it.

By November 2002 I had a wonderful husband and a beautiful little girl.  That day when the phone rang and I got the message that my father passed away it was the worst day of my life.  It wasn’t that I did not expect it.  He was an alcoholic and I knew that death was just a step away for him.  What hit me so hard was how he died.   Not only did he pass away he also caused someone’s death because of his addiction.

The effects of this incident have stayed with me for many years and made me evaluate my own life.  It’s made me think how precious life really is and how short it can be.  When we are young we think that we have our whole lives to do anything we want, that we have time.   We let fear and  insecurities stop us from pursuing what we have always dreamed of doing.  We talk about our dreams, but we never make that first step toward them.  We make excuses why we can’t pursue them.

November 2002 changed all that for me.  Yes it took a few years for me to get all my ducks in a row.  When I turned 40,  I focused in and made personal changes.  The funny thing was that I was thinking of a whole different journey for myself, a more creative journey. That is how 4 chicks started.  But life had different plans for me.  I went back to school, I knew that I wanted to study Holistic Nutrition but with my husband traveling for work so much and having 2 small girls at home, I knew it was impossible for me to go to a campus-based university.  So I researched the best Holistic Nutrition distance learning college to help me achieve my educational goal.   Some disagreed with my choice of school.  But I believe in trusting one’s intuition and going with the flow of life and seeing where it will lead.  Many were asking what are your plans for life after college.  Truthfully, I did not have a plan at all.  I knew I wanted to help people get healthy.  I really enjoyed the learning process without all the stress of  what specific job this was leading too.  I have great faith in life and know that I’m the only one that can change my future.  I knew I was going to have obstacles along the way and was prepared to face them.  In January 2014 I finished! Where will this all lead me?  I don’t know but I’m excited to find out :-).

It still makes me very sad to think about my father.  More because he did not value his life or the consequences to others of his actions.  He did not understand that life had great plans for him (as it does for each of us).  He lived his life with the notion that ‘if you have lost it all, why even try’.

I believe that everyone is put on this earth for a reason and YES life is hard but it’s up to us to make a difference within ourselves, family, community and world.  If we stop blaming others for our challenges in our life and focus more on how to move forward in a positive and uplifting way, we really then begin to enjoy the journey.

And life is a journey, and we must learn to enjoy it and not focus so much on the final destination.

So what happens now at mile marker 2014?  I can’t wait to find out!!!!