We'll drink a cup of kindness yet ...

I don't make resolutions, because they're more wish than goal without the supports that will make it happen. However, it is my custom over New Year's Eve/New Year's Day to do all the important things I want to incorporate in my life. In other words, I prefer my superstitious tradition to the superstitious tradition of making resolutions. Go figure.

Therefore, in the next two days, I need to:

1. Write. Yes, I haven't given that up yet. I am writing this (because I want to maintain the blog) and I will hit my head against the dev edit of Voyageurs which somehow needs 24,000 words without extraneous information. Or maybe I should write the first page of a future novel. 
2. Eat well. I've actually been doing that for the most part for almost three years. I've lost 65 lbs from my heaviest. I'd like to lose 20 more pounds, but my body doesn't seem to want to, I don't want to fall back into old habits.
3. Walk. This is something I need to incorporate in my life. I need to find more supports to walking because it's not something I love to do.
4. Work. By this I mean start to organize my new semester. I will probably set up my new semester calendar today or tomorrow.
5. Self-care. Good smelling bath and a facial mask for fun. Rose perfume (which I got cheaply -- it's a sample size).
6. Reach out to others. This has been very difficult for me lately. My fears of rejection have multiplied with all the writing rejections I've gotten.
7. Laugh. Oh, hell, I don't need to try to do that. I laugh all the time.

Love and best wishes for your New Year (if you celebrate this version of New Year)!

Thoughts and Prayers

I know that most of you in the United States are people I already know. My overseas readers, for the most part, seem to be regulars, but I don't know you (or don't think I know you). I am addressing all of you.

I need your thoughts and prayers.

Not in the sense of "I need to say something of comfort so I can go back to what I was doing," as is too often the case when handling preventable tragedies in the US.

But I believe in thoughts and prayers if they occur in the sense of "I hope the best for this person." I believe this has an effect -- not necessarily to bring out a desired outcome, but to provide hope, clarity, courage, patience in the person who needs these things.

I need these things, because I'm struggling with writing. You might have noticed that I haven't been able to write daily, and that's because I don't know if I'm going to continue writing. I have no idea if I'm ever going to be published, and I'm not sure it's worth the time and money it takes to improve and make a story reading-ready.

But I don't know if I'm not going to continue writing, either.

So, if you have a spare moment and the intent to help, send thoughts and prayers my way. You don't even have to tell me you did. But I need to find clarity to move forward in whatever direction opens to me. .

Christmas Eve -- a little on the prosaic side

I write this from Ottawa, Illinois, where I am visiting my father and sister and her family for Christmas.

Things I'm thinking about:

1) I wish I could drop Northwest Missouri State (my place of employment) onto Ottawa. This would unite a college town without a college (Ottawa) with a college without a college town (Maryville). I miss the river and the beautiful state parks and the invigorated atmosphere of a town that attracts people from Chicago and the suburbs,.

2) I still have to adjust to being 55. The hardest part is that it's now unseemly for me to get crushes on younger men (maybe it was before, but I didn't notice). I've gone from being flattering to being an embarassment. This is a major adjustment for me.

3) I can be with my family without talking much. This is a relief.

4) I'm editing Voyageurs, and the big problem is that I have to "fill in" with 34,000 words. I have NO IDEA how to do this. Think good thoughts.


Merry Christmas to all my readers -- please keep in touch!

Sorry!

I haven't written in a couple days, for which I'm sorry. I like interacting with all of you.

Update:

• My final grades get turned in at 10 AM today. I have NO incomplete grades for perhaps ever. 
• I've gotten a few more rejections on Prodigies. I have to find a different strategy or give up.
• I have a lot of editing to do with Voyageurs. The "let's rearrange the chapters" kind of edit. The "I don't like your characters" kind of edit. I'm dragging my feet on the edit because I'm still braindead from the end of the semester. But I push myself an hour at a time. 

I don't know how to talk about the rejections without whining. If effort were enough, I would be published, because Prodigies went through two dev editors and should be pretty polished by now. I am getting rejected because the book "just doesn't grab them." I don't know what to do about that. Maybe that's one more thing to learn. 

Talk later -- back to editing. 

Fantasies about writing

I'm still getting rejections, despite the improvements I've made to Prodigies. I'm also getting compliments despite that -- I've been complimented for the quality of my writing, the scope of my story, and my character development. I don't think the agents are saying this just to be nice. It's just that the story doesn't grab them. Or something.

I still entertain the belief that I can get an agent, and then get published. I sometimes entertain Walter Mitty-esque fantasies that I can make the New York Times bestseller list, and then I get another rejection and realize that I should settle for getting published by a smaller traditional publisher (AKA one that doesn't expect me to do all the marketing, because I'm a writer, not a marketer.

My fantasies are out there, but at least they push me to work my hardest on my craft. Even if no agents want to take it on.

I don't seem to be quitting.

I'm done with finals! A few last-minute items will trickle in and I will have to grade those as they come in, but ... I'm done.

This means editing time. I have the developmental edits on Voyageur and the pre-developmental edit on Reclaiming the Balance. I'm not writing anything new until I get most of my written works through developmental edit.

Unless, of course, I get INSPIRED.

It could happen. There's a book (unabashed fantasy-romance again) I want to write about a librarian with the heart of a lion and a fae trying to escape the Queen of Faerie. Somewhat like the old Tam Lin ballad except with more (a lot more) escapades. Definite Heroine's Journey here. I don't know if she ends up keeping the guy, though.

We'll see. After all, this is my break ...

Pronouns

I dusted off a manuscript that I had written a couple years ago which is in line for developmental edit. The name of the novel is Reclaiming the Balance, and one of the main characters is Amarel, who is balanced on the point between young and old, wise and foolish, human and Archetype -- and male and female.

In other words, Amarel was born genderqueer, complete with ambiguous genitalia.

When looking through the story, I realized that I had used the word "him" to refer to Amarel, which was first and foremost offensive, because the pronoun boxed him into a binary Amarel didn't belong to. I misgendered Amarel.

So I introduced gender-neutral pronouns for Amarel -- ze for he/she, hir for him/her and his/hers, hirself for himself/herself. I wrote a lot of substitutions, given that Amarel is one of the main characters.

The revised novel is a bit harder to read, because I am not used to gender-neutral pronouns. This might be a good thing or a bad thing for the reader -- good in that the reader feels the discomfort of the people around Amarel; bad in that this might make it more difficult to read.

The gender-neutral pronouns also tend to add a feeling of isolation to Amarel' s situation, which is accurate. Amarel is the only person referred to as hir and ze. We still treat the gender queer as "other", as people who purposefully isolate themselves from society through their rejection of the binary gender construction of society.

If the story had been written in first person, Amarel may have seen everyone as ze/hir/hirself, which would make a pretty inescapable point to the reader. Alas, Reclaiming the Balance is a third-person novel, so it will only convey so much of the point.

Finals Week

I haven't been doing any editing lately (apologies to my dev editor) because I'm in the middle of finals week. For those of you who have never been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by making them demonstrate that they actually know the course material. For those of you who have been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by -- you get the drift.

From a professor's point of view, it's a strange week where office hours are empty and professors prowl around the halls to tell stories of the worst requests they've gotten from students. Best one yet: the student who demanded an A because his "answers were right". (Spoiler: No, they weren't.) It's a hurry up and wait time, where one waits to give exams and then frantically grades them so that semester grades can be turned in by the following Monday.

It's a time when the outside world is calling -- in December, the delights of Christmas; in May the beautiful weather. But to the professor or instructor, they are at best fleeting until the grades go in.

*****

I am giving my first final today -- actually, they are turning it in because it's an essay final. I will spend the next couple days grading it. I am wearing my ugly Christmas sweater (the reinkitty one -- think of Santa's sleigh with cats) because I need a little Christmas during finals' week.

I anticipate having grades done by Thursday to turn in, and then I'm done for the semester. I'll restart editing Voyageurs then, in the hopes that it will be a worthy submission. I will wait for query responses on Prodigies, hoping for a Christmas present.

May your days be merry and bright.

Update -- not knowing

Sorry I have not written lately -- I'm still feeling discouraged, still struggling. I've sent the rest of my queries out for Prodigies, and I know there's always a chance one of the agents sends me a request for a whole manuscript. If I don't get a nibble, I'm not sure what to do next with Prodigies.

I mean this literally. I don't know what to do.

My friend Lynn tells me that it's okay not to know. I do very poorly with not knowing. It might have to do with my disordered childhood, but there it is: I don't like not knowing. I don't like not having a plan B, and right now I don't.

Except I do. I have Voyageurs in dev edit, and I can ship it out next. I will send Apocalypse to the developmental editor next, and there are other novels to be dev edited.

I don't know when to quit, perhaps. I don't know how to quit.

Maybe if I found something else that fulfills me as much as writing does, I would quit it. But I haven't.

PS: I may be having mood swings right now because of the high stress of finals. Please be patient.

Struggling

I got three rejections yesterday.


I don't know how much more of this I can take, though. It's very disturbing to write something, work through  multiple edits and editors only to find that it doesn't connect with the agents.

I still have about 19 queries out, and I could (and probably will) write a few more. But since this is the last substantive edit I can make on the document, this will be the last time I can send it out. And Prodigies is what I consider my best marketability wise.

I go through waves of pessimism ("I'm never going to get published, why try?") and optimism ("I still have queries out") When I think of what I will do once I get this book and Voyageurs queried (It's still in edit)  if no queries pan out, when I think of how much time and effort and money I've put into what I hoped would be a second career at retirement (I've got a while, but ...) it's heartbreaking.

That's how I feel right now -- heartbroken.

But then I get waves of optimism, and I don't know whether to trust them. Should I pay attention to optimism, or is it just stringing out the inevitable moment where I find I can't go any farther? I don't know.

I will keep trying for a while. I will probably quit if I query the new improved Voyageurs and it doesn't succeed. I'll send the rest of my queries for Prodigies. Then I'll reassess.

I don't know if the problem is my pessimism or my optimism.

A hilariously bad day

Yesterday was a hilariously bad day for a writer.

First, I received not one but three rejections. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that, since I've done everything I could with that manuscript and query letter. It might just be that agents think my stories just won't sell. I don't know what to do, but I have to start thinking of the next step.

Then my blog got five hits from Poland, and I thought that my favorite Pole decided to read my blog for once (I am not his favorite American, alas) only to find out the referring address was a porn site.

So, yesterday's theme: If I wanted recognition, it was not forthcoming.

I'm not going to apologize for wanting recognition anymore.  But the desire makes for difficult days when I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Room for improvement

I've got my development edit back from my developmental editor, Chelsea Harper (who deserves a shoutout) and there's plenty of work that needs to be done. I think it's a good thing that she caught all these places, because I as an author can't see all of them.

I should explain what a developmental editor is -- a developmental editor examines the story for plot development, character development, and writing structure -- in other words, she looks at the story with an eye for making it stronger and more readable. This can be the difference between a rejection and an acceptance, because agents have so many manuscripts to choose from that they're going to skim your work initially to see if it "grabs" you. A mild introduction, an ambiguous character, an information dump (telling rather than showing), will all turn off an agent. Even if the story idea is brilliant and daring, they won't see it through the distractions.

I think that's an important thing to emphasize -- I as an author can't see all the places my work needs improvement. I'm too familiar with the characters to see where I've shortchanged them. I'm too in love with the story to see where I've made it hard for readers to be in love with it.

I used to think I didn't need an editor, because I was an articulate person and I could catch grammatical and other errors. I was arrogant, and I was wrong. I now see developmental edits as part of the process if I want to get published.

If you're a writer who wants to get published, I suggest finding the money for a developmental editor. If you can't afford that, find someone who reads a lot to go through it -- it's probably not as good as a good professional, but it's something.

Your work deserves critique.

An embarrassment of riches

I don't know what to write next.

This, as you may guess, is unusual for me. I have eight novels (with two needing serious work to redo), and these were written in a five-year period. (And should have been edited more ruthlessly much sooner, but I didn't know better).

I want to hold off a bit on editing the two that need serious work (why? Because I feel like I haven't done anything but edit lately.)


I have a couple ideas of what to write:

• Gods' Seeds. This would be another book in the Archetype universe, taking place after Reclaiming the Balance (which needs much work) and before Whose Hearts are Mountains. and which features a brewing war among Archetypes 
• A sequel to Voyageurs, which would require a lot of history research, which I detest
• A sequel to Prodigies, a New Adult novel, with no idea who I'd be following.
• Something new and I have no idea. 

None of them are grabbing me yet. Probably because I feel guilty for having books out there that need editing. 

I suppose this is an embarrassment of riches and I shouldn't complain.

Time for me to see what ideas grab me ...

I've just sent about 20 queries of Prodigies (with the improved query letter and in in its publishing edited/developmental edited/diversity edits) to young adult/new adult agents, and I have the jitters.

The optimistic part of me thinks I've done hard work improving.

The pessimistic part of me is afraid it's not going to be enough.

The pessimistic part of me is afraid there's something fundamentally wrong with my stories and will keep thinking so unless I get picked up by an agent. Then the pessimistic part of me will be afraid there's something fundamentally wrong with my stories until I have a publisher. Then ...

The pessimistic part of me is a pain in the ass.

********
What is the path now?

• Send Prodigies queries to Young Adult/New Adult agents (done)
• Wait for a couple months. 
• Some of the agents will send generic rejection letters
• Some notify acceptances/rejections via QueryTracker (highly recommended for agent searches: www,querytracker.com)
• Some don't send anything, so if I haven't heard from them in 90 days, then they've rejected it
• If I receive a request for more of the manuscript, weep tears of joy and send it. This still doesn't mean I've been accepted.
• Wait a bit longer and resend the new improved Prodigies to the fantasy agents who got version 2.0.
• Wait for a couple of months ...

Of course, I have a new improved cover letter for Voyageurs and it's finally going through a developmental edit. Which means I will go through the process again for Voyageurs (see above).

Readers: I need your love, good wishes and prayers. I don't ask for things like this a lot, so here I am. If you can make them non-anonymous, all the better!!

Meanwhile,