Let's Mary Sue/Marty Stu!

Suppose you were the hero of your own book:

1. Give a brief introductory description.
2. What are your most important qualities for your story?
3. What is your quest/what is it you need to accomplish?
4. Who/what is your antagonist?
5. How will you try to meet your goal?
6. What weaknesses of yours will get in the way?
7. What do you learn about yourself?
8. Do you accomplish your goal?

Waiting

I don't wait well.

Ok, maybe I wait well, but only if I can work on something new while I wait. And right now I'm at a standstill.

• My classes are all put together (my colleagues are jealous)
• The moulage kit is all put together for New York Hope next week, complete with half a gallon of fake blood.
• My queries for Mythos are getting slowly rejected (should have waited for my betas and listened more carefully. Sorry, betas!
• My betas are currently reading Prodigies and doing their normally great jobs, but submitting that has to wait as well.
• I need some information for a paper I'm writing for my class (due in 5 days) that I haven't gotten yet.
• I am not quite in the place where I understand what I'm doing for Whose Hearts are Mountains, and haven't thought of something new to write that isn't a sequel for something I've not yet published.

Maybe I should take a rest, but I do so badly at that!!

50% sleepy, 50% bored

I want to do absolutely nothing today!

I don't like doing nothing. I think I've told you this before. Doing nothing means watching Netflix (which I rarely do well), going to a movie (very few movies are enticing enough for me to go, and none of them are Mamma Mia 2), sleeping (I'm all caught up), reading (I have to find a good book!), or meditating all day (which is impossible unless I'm sick).

Who am I fooling? I want to do something, even if I want to do nothing.

I would love to send queries on Prodigies today, but my betas are still reading and I'd rather have them be slow and careful than speed up on it. If I could knit or crochet or tat I would, but my hand-eye coordination is abysmal.

I could write -- but I'm having trouble getting back into my work in progress. Maybe more coffee. I'm 50% sleepy and 50% bored. I'm working on it.

PS:

Dear readers and lurkers:

I'd still love to know who you are!

lleachie at gmail.com

Interrogating the Hacker

One of my favorite characters in Prodigies (they're all my favorite characters, honestly) is the notorious hacker Weissrogue. An idealist who feels the end justifies his illegal means, he's the character you're glad is on your side:

“You need to know that ‘Weissrogue’ translates just as you may think — to “White Rogue”. I was only about 15 when I named myself, and I look at it now and think it’s appropriate not because I was a white hat hacker but because I was a pasty white kid.” He was indeed, I thought, a pasty white kid still.

“That whole thing I did when I was fifteen — I can’t stand violence in any form. I suppose I would use it in self-defense if I had to, but even then, I wonder. I just wanted to get the government to think differently about weapons of mass destruction —”

**************

At age 15, as this passage hints, Weissrogue hacked several world powers and took their missile programs off-line. Realizing he was too talented to kill, the US government took him in and made him their pet hacker.

Now 39 years old, the suspected Prodigy tracks suspected Prodigies in the US -- but not necessarily for the benefit of the US government:

“I’m not a double agent,” the stocky man corrected. “I’m the Prodigies’ agent; I’m not a double agent because I’m not letting out anything to help Renaissance Theory or Homeland; in fact, I’m misguiding them. But when it comes to Prodigies, my allegiance will always be to them. Something my employers don’t need to know.”

“So you’re hiding the existence of Prodigies?”

“Prodigies, yes. Organizations that deal with Prodigies, no. That’s why I signed up with the government — on this new project, anyhow. I don’t like anyone ‘managing’ a minority for any reasons, and governments — no matter how benign — want to use Prodigies.”

I wondered if the US was among the benign or not.

*****************

I'll take a moment to interrogate Weissrogue, so you can get to learn about him a little more:

Me: So, what's your real name, Weissrogue?

W: For all intents and purposes, it's Weissrogue. My birthname was changed by the US Government when they took me in after the missile failure, and I've gone by so many names that the only name that has stayed with me throughout is Weissrogue. I have a presence in the real world as Arthur Schmidt, locksmith and cryptologist, but I don't want people associating Weissrogue with Schmidt. I have to keep that name clean to keep trust with the government, who don't realize they have a big government contract for security with Weissrogue.

Me: Why Weissrogue?

W: Easy. I was fifteen, and I wanted to make a name for myself as a black hat hacker for humanitarian reasons. "Weiss" means "white" and "rogue", of course, means "rogue".

Me: Do you ever hack for non-humanitarian reasons?

W: It's a waste of time to hack for pizza, or for money for that matter -- unless you're slowly draining some despot's bank account and giving the money to charity.

Me: Not taking the money yourself?

W: I have enough money. I have a lucrative security contract with the government, remember?

Me: So what turned you into such a humanitarian?

W: I spent my life in military schools as a ward of the US government. I don't know if I never had any parents, or if they surrendered me. This is a pattern you see with a lot of Prodigies. I was subjected to endless discipline, especially as I was a naturally rebellious person. It got to the point where they modeled me into exactly the opposite of who they were: Instead of conforming, rebellious; instead of hierarchical, egalitarian; instead of military, pacifist. I tried to relate to the people around me instead of their roles, and they punished me until I didn't care anymore. And I took their hatred and used it to hack into the security software for the missiles.

Me: What did they do?

W: First off, they kept me a secret even after they found me. I can't blame them -- however, it wasn't entirely successful; the news media was lucky enough to find my leaks. When the government finally caught me, they didn't know what to do because I was their ward -- and they were hoping I would show my talent. We arranged for my death, and I became their top secret government worker. So, in effect, I'm dead.

Me: But you don't always do what the government tells you to.

W: Shhhh. That's a secret.

Feeling a little outspoken today

My God speaks to me in birdsong,

In waves of grass,

Rustling leaves,

And a feather falling to ground.

You speak for your God

In booming voices,

Condemning your lost children,

The ones you yourselves have cast out.

You say your God will love me

If I do what you say –

But what does God say?

I cannot hear him from your yawping.

revamping Mythos

Richard (my husband) and I are sitting down and discussing what to keep and what to get rid of in Mythos. Here's what we've come up with so far:

Get rid of: The creepy prologue, The B plot with James as her dangerously possessive husband,  first person point of view (with two different parts and two different protagonists!), all those jumpy scene cuts, the word "engendered".

Keep: The A plot -- Lilly's identity, the A+ plot -- the importance of Lilly's identity, the now B plot -- Lilly's and Adan's relationship, the Nephilim (half-Archetype cannon fodder), Adan and Lilly's daughter Angel and the Archetype cats.

I think I'm going to write it from scratch with only an outline. Or maybe not. I don't know when I'm going to write it -- probably NaNo in November. Wish me luck!

Dealing with the Problem Child

I think I'm going to rewrite Mythos from scratch. Ok, from near-scratch.

Mythos is the book I just put through querying that is currently gathering even more rejections than before. Even I think the book is a problem child at this point, and I'm just patiently waiting for more rejections.

I don't blame the agents for rejecting it.

I don't want to abandon Mythos completely, because as far as worldbuilding is concerned, It's beautiful worldbuilding. It's just that -- well, my beta-readers can't get through it. It has some convolutions that aren't adding to the plot, as if it was two books smushed together. It is two books smushed together, actually. It was my second book, and the first book is even more problematic.

So what I'm going to do when it's time to write again is take the outline and rewrite the whole damn* thing. In third person. Without some of the convolutions. Without my tendency to put in too many scene breaks and without the word "engender"** and maybe a few other words that drive my readers crazy ...





* "Darn" will not work here.
** Sheri, this one's for you!

What am I going to write about next?

I know it's a little early to think about this, as I am about to send Voyageurs to the developmental editor and my beta-readers have a hold of Prodigies, but I don't know what to write about next!

The problem is that most of my new ideas are based on either Voyageurs or Mythos (the book that will go to developmental edit after Prodigies, because my betas get lost in the middle of it)  and I don't want to make the mistake I made before of basing 3 other books off a first book that I can't publish.

No, I still don't have an agent  yet, but I remain optimistic.

Anyone have any ideas?

There's plenty of margaritas for all of us.

Dear Beta-readers:

I love hanging out with you, you know that?

I picture one of these all-female gatherings* where we're drinking margaritas and talking about something we've read, except it's the thing that I wrote and you're telling me what needs work on it. 

It doesn't bother me that you're telling me that page 72 confused you or that my words are too big (hi, Sheri! You're right!) It doesn't bother me because you're in the spirit of helping me, and because I get to show off something that's important to me.

You go, girls, and I owe you all dinner. 

* All my beta-readers are female. Whose fault is that, men? Where are my male beta-readers? There's plenty of margaritas for all of us. 

From Prodigies:

“Sadness, I think. People say I’m happy all the time, and I guess I am. It’s a lot simpler that way. So I’ll challenge you to make me feel sad …”

I knew the song, then. An old spiritual, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” a little lower-pitched than Marian Anderson’s version and less jazzy than Lena Horne’s, to suit my contralto voice. “… nobody knows my sorrow …” I sang, pulling out all the sadness wrapped around my bones like sinew and muscle. I sang to the G-d I didn’t know if I believed in anymore, the one I gave up on when my parents, the last of my family, died.

When I finished, I faced silence. I looked back at the tall, slender Ichirou supporting the shorter, stockier Weissrogue, who slumped with his head bowed. I heard a sniff from the other side of the counter — Ayana and Greg stood there, with Greg’s face streaked with tears and Ayana’s hand in his.

“I haven’t had a cry that good since I was seven,” Weissrogue said shakily. “How long before this wears off?” He wandered, dazed, back into the secluded booth; we all followed him.

request

Help! I need motivation to edit today so my Beta readers get this tomorrow and I can go on to other work I have to do!

Good vibes needed!

Sorry I haven’t written lately, but I’ve been mad busy editing Prodigies on the advice of my editor. Whew! The hardest part is what I’m in the middle of — eradicating “was, were, have, had” from my document. One can’t eliminate all of them, and one has to restructure sentences to eliminate them, but passive tense IS BAD.

This type of editing is high cognitive and low reward, not like turning up the emotional content or developing a character further. In other words, as I like to say, high effort, no cookies. So I’m counting the chapters, waiting to be done with this!

Balancing omens

I'm the sort of people who believes in omens. Yes, I'm a college professor and I know all about confirmation bias. In confirmation bias, a piece of data that corresponds to your belief, positive or negative, will confirm that belief, even if there's a multitude of data that corresponds to the opposite belief. In addition, omens cannot be separated from coincidence, as we cannot test stimulus and response adequately.

I still believe in omens. As a mystic (had you not guessed that?) I find believing in omens and the rest of the unseen world makes for better poetry, and allows my imagination to fly further.  However, I have to maintain a certain amount of detachment to allow them in my life.

The danger in believing wholeheartedly is that I can accept things as omens that will make me feel very negative about my writing. For example, I have received 13 rejections so far on my latest round of Mythos, and if I saw those as omens of how things are going to go, I'd give up here. I have to see them with both parts of my brain (the rational and the whimsical) in order to make sense of them.

I mentioned Dragonfly the other day. Dragonfly is my omen of unexpected things. When Dragonfly flies loops around me, with his jeweled strength and fragility, he tells me to look outside rather than staying within, because life is going to surprise me and I don't want to miss it. When Dragonfly buzzes in my ear and crashes against me, I'm either being really dense or I'm really missing something going on around me. (Or, the rational side of my brain says, he thought there was a bug in my ear, which is entirely possible and thank you for eating it, Dragonfly.)

I'm selective with my omens. If a black cat crosses my path, I pet it and say, "You're a kitty!" If I break a mirror, I say "Oh, shit." But there are things -- Dragonfly is one -- that I read as omens. There are a fewe others that I will talk about another time.

What are your omens?

Wrestling with a Character

One of the things I've been suggested to do by my developmental editor is to beef up the developing relationship between Grace, a black/Jewish viola prodigy and Ichirou, the young-looking computer design prodigy at the beginning of Prodigies. This should take care of slow pacing and more development for Ichirou.

Somehow, I have not developed Ichirou enough. Part of this is because Ichirou is Japanese, and Japan is a collectivistic society, so Ichirou appears reserved at the beginning. Conversations have the target of taking care of the group and not preserving the assertiveness and individuality of its members. How do I develop Ichirou -- somewhat reserved, idealistic, and in love with Grace?

At the beginning of this story, I find this difficult to do. After all, he's 17 but looks 12, and Grace sees him as a "little pervo". He notices Gracie, but she treats him like a younger brother. He has a tendency to let his mind disappear into an alternate place where he gets ideas, and he seems fragile.

Nonetheless, I have to do something. So far the approach I'm using: They talk about what they have in common -- living in boarding schools, feeling lonely, being pursued by Second World's men. Being prodigies if not Prodigies -- If you're interested in that distinction, be my beta-readers!

I hope this keeps my beginning from dragging!

Classism and consumption in romance novels

I used to read a lot of romance novels, probably because I was single for a long time. Over time, I kept seeing tropes pop up that rubbed me the wrong way:

• Vast differences in social class between male and female protagonists. Titles like "The Millionaire's Pregnant Secretary" and "The Sheikh's Prize* make male wealth and female beauty the main selling point in the book. Edwardian romance paints the man as a duke or an earl and the woman as a genteel clergyman's daughter or an orphan or a nanny. And don't get me started with JD Robb's romantic police procedurals -- she's a cop and he owns half the planet. The exchange of her beauty for his money is classic, but perhaps outdated in a society with much more egalitarianism.
• Large amounts of money in the happily ever after -- research shows that, although money changes everything, it does not necessarily change it for the better. Lottery winners are no more happy than us normal people, and maybe even less happy. People tend to throw their fortunes away, and given the bounty the male protagonist drops on his true love, romantic males are no exception.
• Speaking of money, conspicuous consumption. When the male protagonist spends money, we get detailed descriptions about his wardrobe, his car, the dress, the dinner, the yacht, the trousseau, the ... you get it. We witness how the protagonists spend their wealth, because if they didn't spend it, nobody, including us, would know how rich they were. That's the meaning of conspicuous consumption.
• Overdone sex and male prowess. Don't get me wrong, I like sex.** But these invariable rules make me skip ahead to the next scene: If the female is a virgin, she's overwhelmed by the size of the male's penis. If she's not a virgin, he supplies better orgasms than anyone else. No matter how badly the two protagonists fight, they still have better sex than any of their readers. They always have sex before falling in love, and they spend the rest of the book dithering about why they can't marry the other person, and it's invariably that they don't want to subject the other person to embarrassment or ridicule or a life of servitude. We, the readers, don't only vicariously consume the couple's wealth, but their out-in-the-open sex life. 

I admit I'm not the typical reader. Wish fulfillment to me would be living in Canada as a published author, retired, and a cat***.  I like my couples to have more equal footing, and the woman to supply more than just her pretty face to the union. I like strong females and males with depth, not just "strong and silent".

I have to admit that I still read a few romance authors. Robin D. Owens I read for her world building and her focus on emotional baggage rather than "He/she wouldn't possibly want to marry me". Also, her sex scenes are reasonably anchored in reality. I read Barbara Michaels, although her books may not be considered romance, because she has very real protagonists who seldom have the immense social class disparities. I read a few others -- Mary Balogh among others. And I still read JD Robb, but I skip over the sexual acrobatics.

* These may actually be real titles for all I know.

** Oops. TMI.

*** I would not be the first published cat. That honor goes to Lil' Bub, the pint-sized alien cat. 

The Developmental Edit

I've just gone through a developmental edit on Prodigies.

Developmental edits are not like copy edits, where someone proofreads and questions word choices. It's a lot more thorough, and looks at things like pacing, distracting techniques, etc. A second pair of skilled eyes to look over my work and find the problems.

It's not cheap, but if you're serious about getting published and you like having more work to do on your pet project, it's highly advisable.

My editor, Chelsea Harper, is a skilled developmental editor. She not only picked out all the things that nagged in the back of my mind (and couldn't put words to), but she found some issues I hadn't picked up, like too many scene breaks. And she told me something important that I hadn't guessed:

I should be submitting my work to agents in literary fiction (or edit it extensively for fewer big words, which I don't think I can do.)

Yes, I was told that my words are too big before (hi, Sheri!) but I didn't think my writing had what it took for literary fiction. I thought that was the sole province of English professors about High Concepts. Maybe I'm writing crossover fiction -- same difference; I may just be querying the wrong agents.

I don't know where that's going to get me, but it's something.

Deep breath. I've gotten five rejections from Mythos. It might be a good reason to eventually give that to a developmental editor as well. I think we need a developmental edit money pool. Or a Mega Millions win.

Life without writing

About querying time, I wonder what it would be like to quit writing and quit pursuing representation and publication. Querying is brutal -- you prepare excerpts of your prized manuscripts to people who will go by their first impressions, and nobody will tell why they rejected you except "It's not you, it's me" or "I'm very picky about who I represent". I would love some real feedback like: "Could you rewrite your query letter and tell me more about x".

What would my life be like without writing? I think it would feel like having a lobotomy -- I would know something important was missing, but have no idea what. It would be like waking up and finding out a loved one was gone -- not dead, just gone. In other words, there would be a hole and I can't imagine filling it up. No other hobbies I've had have been this fulfilling, and for my gardening to be close to this fulfilling I would need a working greenhouse with enough room to actually handle my plants. (We do not have the space or money for that.) My moulage (casualty simulation) might become more fulfilling if I could go professional with it, but the outfits that need moulage for training purposes can't afford a professional.

As for giving up dreams of being published, that's a little more complex. There are certain things built into my psyche for better or worse. I love to accomplish new things, and everything else in my life lately has been things I've done for the last N years, where N is probably around 30. I've hit a stagnation point in my job with 8 years until retirement (I've tried hard, coworkers, but I'm chronically burnt out and in need of a break). I need challenge, and I need recognition. I need people liking my work, and to do so they have to see it. Esteem and accomplishment are nothing to be afraid of.

What would it feel like to give up trying to get published? I'd be exactly where I am now, except that the challenge would be gone and I would feel like I had given up on an adventure to stay in my stagnation. I don't know if I can find another opportunity to break the stagnation.

So I do the same thing I've been doing every four months for the past two years, wondering if I will ever make escape velocity.

If anyone has ideas of challenges I could try (I've already lost 70 lbs, I have some health problems that keep me from running, I don't want to run for public office, and I have profound hand-eye coordination problems), let me know.

Dragonfly

The first time I realized the world begged me to pay attention was through a dragonfly.

At the time, I was in my early 20's and had just broken up with my boyfriend for the second time.I didn't deal with breakups well (on the other hand, I dealt with them the way any twenty-something would have: I whined like the world was going to end.) My friend Les (who I had met through the ex-boyfriend) told me that what I needed to do was go outside and pay attention to my surroundings.

What I noticed on my walk was dragonflies. I was surprised at how I would walk down the street, blocks away from the nearest water source, and a dragonfly would cross my path.

I asked Les what I should do about the dragonflies, and he said, "Stalk one."

So I would go out on walks stalking dragonflies. You can imagine how this worked -- I would go out walking, paying attention to everything around me, telling the people I ran into that I was chasing dragonflies -- most people dealt with that surprisingly well.

I finally got to the point where I tracked a dragonfly -- the type that looks like desert camo  -- to a flower, where I watched him flex his abdomen. I saw him, really saw him, a fierce jewel.

From that moment, I understood why I needed to look at dragonflies -- because they were trying to tell me something.

What?

Pay attention. 

In other words, Les gave me a nice psychological exercise that turned into something more. But he knew it would, because he was the sort of person who believed in nonstandard reality, as I like to call it. Spirits and the like.

But from that point forward, if I see dragonflies hover around me, I pay attention. Not just to the dragonfly, but what's going on in my life. I start anticipating good things will happen even if the day is dark.

Yesterday, a dragonfly smacked me upside the head, a graceful creature with neon blue on its wings. He smacked me upside the head with a bzzzzzzz as if I needed a nudge.

Pay attention. No, for real.

And so I wait for the revelation.

I'm getting back into meditation again.

For a long time, I couldn't meditate -- I would instead fall asleep, which is something that very quickly shuts off  your meditation session. Then suddenly, I knew how to do it again, and I could go on that long walk to my inner self who knows more than I do.

That's the guided meditation a long-ago therapist taught me, and it works well, because it cuts off all the "what ifs" and (for someone who sometimes goes hypomanic) the mildly grandiose thoughts:

I am walking along the edges of a steam, where one side is woodland and the other side is clearing, with meadow on the other aide of a road. I can see the forest plants on one side, and on the other, the meadow plants (which this time of year are mostly yellow). I hear the stream burble and the occasional call of a bird in the trees.

Just as the forest subsides, the road starts going uphill. I step across rocks in the stream and take the road, it climbs upward on a moderate slope, and then winds around the side of the hill, I go partway up and see a cave entrance. I have to slide down the slope just inside the entrance of the cave, and then I am in this cozy vault. There is a fire burning, and I put a log on the fire.

My wiser self shows up, many years later, with my face much older. She gives me a hug and then we sit down.

"Tell me what you've come to ask about," she says.

I ask her questions about things I'm unclear about, and she answers with things I know to be true.

Making it hard to hope

I just got a rejection less than twenty minutes after I handed it in. It didn't "make her passionate". She only took on "select clients". Hopefully someone else would "take me on". This is where the brutality of sending queries comes in, when the agent sends back something that sounds condescending. I could just cry.

Hope Part 2

My mantra:

"You may find a sweeter outcome than you've imagined."

I don't know what I think about this mantra that has popped into my head. On one hand, I fully expect another round of rejections like the one I got yesterday, less than 24 hours after I sent it. On the other hand, I have a pretty vivid imagination. I imagine a multi-book deal and a book-signing tour for which I would have to get book-signing clothes, and friends who want to read this book.

Realistically, I don't think that's going to happen. As a friend of mine said, publishing is a punishing business. It's true. I need the hope to get through another round of queries, hoping that an agent will bite. Which is the first step to getting published, because there's no guarantee that a agent will take you on after they've asked for more material.

The other piece that gives me hope is that I'm already an artist, already a writer. I don't have to get published to be one. I write, I get feedback, I improve my work, I try to get it published. I am serious about what I do. I am a writer, and all the publication route does is make my work available to other people, and gives it some sort of seal of approval so others take it seriously.

I have a friend (as much as one can be when the entire friendship is me commenting on his Instagram posts) who has been busting his butt to get recognition for what he does, and he finally says he's broken a goal. He hasn't announced it yet, but I'm sure it's good because he was almost speechless in his Instagram post.

I'm proud of him.

I hope I will be able to make that kind of announcement someday.

Dreamblogging

I wish I could blog in my sleep. Right now, I'm sleepy enough that I can't build up a brilliant topic to write, and I don't want to leave this space blank. If I could sleep and blog, I could blog my dreams while they were happening, without the internal censor of my waking self trying to make sense of them. I might look something like this:

Richard and I are moving out of an apartment which apparently isn't ours. We've been putting this off because we don't know whether we're taking the train or driving home, We are all actually in a house where the family is leaving to go on vacation, leaving it to us (who are leaving) and a half-dozen teens who were hanging at the house without making any attempts of cleaning up after themselves. I am standing in the hallway on the cell phone with a friend (let's call him Kermit) advising him on how to deal with another friend (let's call him Arnold), who has a rather unique and quirky personality. I go back in and find Richard's gone, and I can't get a hold of him on the phone. I search a nearby college union (University of Illinois Illini Union) to no avail. I'm all weepy all over the place for the next day, stumbling through conferences at the Union because whatever. I finally hear from Richard, who acts like nothing happened. He tells me where he is (notice we are not fully packed for the trip to one of two places, either by train or by car, and all of a sudden I'm on roller skates in an upscale shopping mall, trying to find where Richard is. I discover the only way down to another level in the brick hallway along a mirrored wall is a wide, stalled escalator. I wheel onto the escalator, and instead of skidding down the stairs, I hover down them, all the way down, until I lightly touch the ground.

Think about how I would have written that if I was awake. I would have interpreted it: "The moving out of the apartment mirrors our current situation with evicting renters ... " and I would have tried to make sense of it, smoothing out some of the discontinuities and pointing out that, in real life, I neither skate nor hover.

When I write from a dream, I try to capture that wild discontinuity, the more fanciful elements. But I admit I smooth them out, because it's only human to either want things to make sense or blame the vivid weirdness of a dream on pizza before bed or a bad acid trip. But think about if the above was a less prosaic dream -- and it is rather prosaic in topic. How about a dream about finding a commune in the desert populated by immortals who were trying to hide their identities, and then finding out you were the child of one of those immortals and a human? What kind of identity crisis would she have? And what if she were being pursued for the secret she holds, bringing danger to the commune?

That was a dream I had 30 years ago while sick with a kidney infection, where the dream stretched over two days. I'm writing that book now -- it's called Whose Hearts are Mountains, and I hope to get it done someday.

Hope

What do I write about when I feel I've written to you about everything?

How about hope?

Hope, depsite what most people think, is not a wish that someone makes that something will happen. It is not a belief that something specific will happen. But it is a belief that something positive will happen.

There is a big difference between those items. A wish is a petition to an external grantor -- God, the wee folk, Fate, the Goddess of one's choice. The wisher washes their hands of agency and often blames the external grantor if the wish is not fulfilled. For example, "I wish I would get published" gives the responsibility for my getting published to The Powers That Be, who so far have failed me. Bribery -- "I've been good, God, where's my cookie?" -- is also a danger to wishes (and very specific prayers) and ends in disappointment.

Believing that something specific will happen takes the onus off a god figure, but provides only one narrow possibility for fulfillment. This time the fulfillment is in the hands of a worldly grantor: "I wish Tor/Forge would publish my book." There's only one way for this to be fulfilled, and how good my book is doesn't enter into it, nor does whether it's something that fits their imprint. Worse, if I receive this, I will never believe my worth if it happens. (Ok, maybe I would.)

For the final part, I'd like to share an old joke with you:

Sven prays every Sunday in church that he will win the big lottery. Week after week he prays, and week after week he fails to win. One day, he prays: "Lord God, I have prayed in church every week to win the big lotto, and I don't win. Have you forsaken me?"

A big booming voice rocks the whole church building: "Sven, buy a lottery ticket."

This joke has a lot to do with hope as it really exists. Hope is, first and foremost, a sense of positivity around the situation. It doesn't provide a script for what should happen, but opens our eyes to what could happen.

For example, if I hope for the way to open (Old Quaker speak) toward getting published, then that can be fulfilled in many ways -- through finding beta-readers after a year of searching, finding a developmental editor in my Camp NaNo cabin, finding my way through a knotty plot problem, getting an aha about a query letter, getting an agent, etc. I might not have seen any of these developments as progress if I saw hope as granting a wish or demanding the universe deliver.

Hope is thinking, "This could happen" every time I send a batch of query letters, hooking up with a developmental editor despite my fears that she'll feel my manuscript is crap, looking at the latest message from one of my betas and thinking about how to improve something.

If you've been reading this, you know that sometimes I feel hopeless (and sometimes I am hopeless). But then I rise again, and hug hope to my chest for another round.

Acknowledgements and dedications

When I am about to embark on another querying round, sending agents a bundle of my work that generally sells my book as a product, I need something positive to anchor me, because it's a brutal process with lots of rejections and (so far) no acceptances.

To keep myself positive, I compose acknowledgement and dedication sections.

For example, Prodigies is being developmentally edited right now. In the acknowledgements, I will need to include Chelsea Harper (the editor); Marcel Borowiec (who supplied translation help on one short section); my beta-readers (I'm hoping Sheri Roush and Martha Stewart agree to another round of reading); and last but nowhere near least, my husband Richard Leach-Steffens for letting me bounce story ideas off him and keeping me plied with coffee.

Meanwhile, Voyageurs is about to go into the query cycle after a revision. I would acknowledge some of the people above, particularly Sheri and Martha and Richard, so I'm thinking of dedications.
The trick to dedications is that you want it to be sincere, interesting, and in fitting with your image.

Oh, God, what is my image?

I would call my image ageless with a dry and quirky sense of humor. (As opposed to real-life me, which is a little more goofy). So let me write the dedication: To my husband Richard, for his unfailing support and endless pot of coffee.

Developmental editing

In a neverending quest to learn about what I'm doing as a writer (and hopefully get published), I am sending the latest copyedited manuscript for Prodigies (this is the one I needed the Polish translation for, Marcel) to a developmental editor.

Whereas a proofreader reads for punctuation and grammatical mistakes, and a copy editor goes a little deeper into confusing and awkward sentences, a developmental editor reads for bigger pictures -- flow, characterization, troublesome developments, places you lose the reader.

I don't know how this will turn out, but I want to get to the bottom of why I'm not finding an agent, and the idea is for me to get as smooth and refined as possible.

I must be out of my depression, because I'm once again believing that maybe, just maybe I can get published someday.

Chasing the Muse

My muse appears, elusive in the street,
skipping through foot traffic, disappearing
in the crowd. The chase begins again
at the edge of the forest where the light
through the branches conceals. I never
touch his arm, he never kisses me, we do not
ever meet.

Slamming the door on my head again?

Oh, Gods -- I'm thinking of submitting queries again after this latest edit.

I can think of all sorts of reasons not to -- all of them in terms of rejections I have already gotten. I keep fixing it, and I keep getting rejections.

On the other hand, if I don't send queries, nobody will get to see whether it's publishable or not.

I'm still not ready to self-publish, mostly because self-publishing in the academic world means that you haven't been peer reviewed and, thus, your work is not legitimate.

I am so torn ...

Life without coffee

This morning, my husband said to me, "I didn't roast any coffee yet and we're out of emergency beans. Would you like tea this morning?"

I felt my vision narrow into a grey-hazed tunnel and my body curl into itself. "Help?" I moaned weakly. "Coffee?"

Tea would just not cut it. Don't get me wrong -- I love tea, from the deep earthy murk of pu-er to the light fragrance of a Chinese green. I drink Darjeeling the way others drink wine -- literally, because I'm no longer allowed to drink alcohol. It's just that tea doesn't have the body, the mouth feel, the fortifying nature of coffee. Tea is an afternoon indulgence; coffee is a trusty helper.

I am not a coffee addict. Truly I am not. I can quit anytime I want ... except, apparently, this morning. Because I begged my husband to go out and get some coffee, and here I sit, now drinking the elixir of life. Richard is the hero of this piece by bringing me coffee.

Juggling cats

I'm juggling cats.
Hefty cats.
With claws out.

This is what my schedule seems like lately. In addition to editing books, I'm taking an online course, putting together what is roughly a manual for doing moulage, putting together an online course for fall, and visiting interns on site. If this is a summer vacation, I'm not vacationing much.

Oh, yes, and I got my psychological first aid certification, so there's that.


And I'm managing to do this all while recovering from a depressive episode. Yay me!

Today, the excerpt is from the manual for moulage. It's somewhat drier than my fiction, so apologies in advance --

In the case of disembowelments, this author has used inflated condoms and pork sausage casings as the simulated bowel material, which show some promise but at the same time have limitations. Condoms must be inflated and tied together, a feat impossible to do if the condoms are lubricated. The casings must be soaked in lukewarm water to remove the excess salt and likewise inflated and tied, a task not for the squeamish. Actual pork intestines yield the highest fidelity in constructing a disembowelment, but its characteristics (slipperiness, smell) might be a deterrent to its use in moulage.

Happy breakfast!

Back to Camp

I'm back at CampNaNoWriMo, Camp NaNo for short. It's the second summer session for the virtual campers to work on books. I've signed up for 30 hours of revising (yet again) Mythos after my beta-reader went through it.

I'm feeling the heat of the summer deep in my bones, weighing me down with indolence and a total feeling of "meh" about writing. I don't feel hopeless about being published, I don't feel distraught about not being published, I just don't feel like much of anything, especially as regards writing. I don't like feeling this way -- ok, I like not being drenched by despondency, but I rather miss that belief that something could happen any day now that could result in a writing career.

Perhaps this "meh" feeling is what I end up with. If that's so, then maybe it's time to give up writing. I know, I keep threatening (or promising) to give up writing, and I don't. But if it ceases to spark something in me, I may have to find something that does.

This might be depression -- I've been struggling with that for a while, no matter how happy and bouncy I look. I have an eye on it.