Fan Girl Moments!

Matt Smith playing Dr. Who (Season 7 Part 2) Source: Fanpop

I have some very exciting news to share with everyone! I recently landed an amazing internship and got accepted to become the official fan girl of Dr. Who on Fangirlish!

I’m a huge Whovian so having another outlet to geek out over Dr. Who’s story, characters, and cast will be so much fun! OK, I promise not to continuously use exclamation marks throughout this entire post (though it will be hard…). I love the idea of being part of a larger blogging community. It will be so fun.

Now my other amazing news, which is more closely related to writing. I am now interning for Gennifer Albin, author of CREWEL (helping with the Crewel twitter account, setting up events for her, things of that nature). It’s a great way to see the inner workings of the publishing world and what happens when a writer can make their writing a career. Plus, Albin is an amazing writer so just getting to work with her will be a great experience.

I don’t really have much more to say, since I just started the internship and have yet to post on Fangirlish. But I’m so excited.

NaNoWriMo 2012

As many of you might know, this month is National Novel Writing Month. This year is my first entering it and I think I’m doing pretty good. I read a lot of posts on how to prepare for it (Publishing Crawl has a good one). For the most part I followed them, even without thinking.

But, as you can see, I’ve already achieved the recommended 50,000 words. So, technically, I win, I guess. How did I manage this in just seven days?

First I didn’t write all of October. That was pretty rough. I don’t think I’ve ever gone an entire month without writing or revising one thing or another — well, at least, not for a long, long time. Instead, I spent all the time I would be writing reading instead. The story I’m working on now, Terrifying Tora is the working title, is a paranormal thriller. I guess. I’m not 100% sure on that. I want it to horror elements, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s horror in genre. So, I read a lot of horror stories. October, the month of Halloween, seemed like a great time to catch up on all the horror stories I wanted to read.

I love zombies. They’re my guilty pleasure, so I read Rot & Ruin, This Is Not A Test, Ashes, and a few other zombie/people-turning-into-zombie-esque-things stories. Reading such great books always makes me want to write… but I resisted the urge and picked up another book. I also read a few fantasy YAs (such as the amazing Daughter of Smoke & Bones).

Maybe it’s not fair to say I didn’t write at all in October. In September I got the idea for Terrifying Tora and started outlining the story. I worked on that outline throughout October so that I had a pretty thorough one. I knew how I wanted to start it, the main ideas I wanted to get to in each chapter, and how to end it. That’s a form of writing, right?

Honestly, out of everything, I think that outline helped me the most. I didn’t have to wonder “What next?” because I always knew. And once November hit I finally allowed myself to write, so I wrote… a lot to make up for the fact that I didn’t write at all. I also set the whole first weekend of November aside to write — I’m lucky my life isn’t as hectic as some. I barely looked at the word count and then when I finally did it was pretty high already.

The stories not finished yet, I still have a couple chapters to go but I’m getting there, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

Learning From Others

As a YA writer, you’d think I’d have joined SCBWI already, wouldn’t you? But I hadn’t. For some reason I had it in my head that you had to already be a published writer in order to become a member. Turns out I’m wrong, which is wonderful. I suppose it was officially a week ago that I joined SCBWI. Now I’m a member of the local chapter and a critique group here. It’s an online one, like the other critique group I’m a member of, but it’s small and filled with only YA members. My other critique group is constantly growing (I currently have no idea how many members there are…) and from all sorts of genres, which is nice because of the variety of prospective that comes along with that. I think the SCBWI one will trun out to be great. I’m also working on joining an in-person critique group.

I joined at just the right time for this. The third weekend of October, the local SCBWI chapter is hosting a writer’s conference. Of course I quickly registered to attend it, which is super exciting. It’ll be my first writing conference. This is going to be a great experience, both the critique group and the conference. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot and grow as a writer.

Also about a week ago I decided to give a Writer’s Digest course a try. I’m a VIP at WD and do some of their webinars from time to time, which are always interesting and insightful but I don’t think I’ve ever really learned something new about writing. I just like to do them to hear a literary agent’s POV on things. But I decided to the the First 10 Pages of Your Manuscript bootcamp anyway. It was one weekend and three literary agents, two of the three were YA enthusiastic, would look over the first ten pages and give insight into what worked and what didn’t.

I really think I learned a lot from that. I had been thinking about tweaking my manuscript in a certain way, but unsure of how to go about doing it. The literary agent I got, the lovely Paula Munier, was extremely nice and extremely helpful. She really went above and beyond to help everyone who attended. Another great thing came of it, all the YA writers who were attending decided to get together online afterwards and continue critiquing each other’s work.

Writing can be done in solitude, and for a long time I did it just that way, but the more I open up the others and share the more I learn about my own writing style and the more I grow. I’m really glad I joined SCBWI and very glad I did WD’s Bootcamp. Getting other people’s perspective is invaluable.

To NaNo Or Not To NaNo?

I think most people have heard of NaNoWriMo, even if they aren’t writers. I’ve always wanted to participate, just to see if I could really write a novel in one month, but I never have. Mostly because for the last couple of years I’ve been focusing on Vanishing Valerie or a different manuscript I had written — the latter is a hopeless cause. Anyway, I’ve finished with VV for the most part. It’s out in the query/partial land and there’s nothing to be done but wait, wait, and wait.

But now November is coming and I have a chance to participate in NaNoWriMo 2012, should I? I recently finished a different story, Pandora’s Hope (that’s the working title for now, it could change). And by finished I mean I completed the first draft, it’s needs some serious revision. So should I just focus on that or write a new story? I don’t want to fall into one of the most common lies writers tell themselves: I’ll come back to this story after I write this other story. And, of course, it doesn’t happen. But, then again, I don’t know. What if the story I could write is better than the story I have already written?

What if the story I’m going to write for NaNoWriMo is the one that will get me a lit agent then a publisher then — finally — published? I hate the world of what ifs, but… I’m not sure. Either ignore the impulse to join NaNo November and focus on my WIP or ignore my WIP for a month (risk ignoring it for longer) and write another WIP. What do you think?

I have a while to wonder about it. For the time being I’m trying really hard to plow through all my To Be Read list. What better way possibly prepare for NaNo than by reading?

The Not So Pretty First Draft

I’m officially finished with the first draft of my WIP, which is currently nameless. Coming up with compelling, meaningful, titles has never been a strong suit of mine. It’s 85K words and a YA urban fantasy (no shocker there, right?). It’s considerably different from my complete manuscript (Vanishing Valerie) which is currently out in the land of partials and queries. Unlike VV, it’s first-person and present tense. I’m not sure if it’ll stay like that through the revision stage. I mean, it’ll probably remain first person but the verb tense may change.

For the most part, it turned out like I had expected. I’m sure you all know it goes when you’re writing, sometimes the story takes a completely different turn. A couple characters turned out differently than I had envisioned, but that’s fine since it took the story to where I wanted it to go. But… really, Hemingway’s quote couldn’t be more right. It’s decent, but really nothing remarkable. I need to take a big step away from it before I can start to revise it. I need fresh eyes and to figure out how to make it better — and, mostly, whether I’m going to change the verb tense or not.

So what am I going to do with that time? Focus some on the querying process for Vanishing Valerie, of course, but mostly read. Read, read, and read some more. I really think that it’ll help me with revision more than anything else. I was reading an article, Envy or Inspiration, over at Magical Word today and it really was perfecting timing for me. Sometimes I struggle with being envious over the amazing books I read, but I just have to keep reminding myself that it’s their final products. Their polished work that took them multiple drafts to get to, so of course my lousy first draft is nothing in comparison.

What about everyone else? Do you feel your first drafts are pretty good or just awful? What do you do to prep yourself for the revision stage?

Facing Fears: Rejection

I got my first rejection Sunday, which was nice. I know that might sound weird, but I was really looking forward to the first rejection. I wanted to know how I would react. Overall, I was impressed by how quickly the agent replied and how kind of a rejection letter it was. I thought I would be upset, perhaps even really devastated, but I wasn’t. I won’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed, but it was just a dull pang for a moment then it was gone. Like when I was applying for a job but only submitted a resume, then received an e-mail saying that they were going for different candidates. It was a bit disappointing but I was over it in a couple minutes.

I’m not really surprised by this, I didn’t think I would be too emotionally distraught. I’m aware that the publishing industry is a business and this is just part of the process. Maybe when there are less agents on my list it’ll be more upsetting. It’ll probably be different if I get a rejection on the partial I sent out, too. But I’d rather face a fear than wonder what if?

Source: Wikimedia.org

I actually like being scared. I’ve had an irrational fear of sharks since I was a little girl. Extremely irrational, even, since I grew up in a land locked state. Though, I did spend my summers between Louisiana and Florida so I did go to the beach. In order to get over that, I decided when I was in Australia to go snorkeling with some reef sharks. Of course, those rarely bit or attack people so it wasn’t dangerous but I did get over it. Now I’d like to go to South Africa sometime in the near future to see some Great Whites (don’t worry, I know better than to try and swim with them).

So, even though I worry (fear, really) getting to the end of my literary agent list and seeing nothing but “rejected” next to each name… I’d rather let that fear inspire me to write the best story I can and keep trying instead of giving up. On a related note, I came up with an idea for a YA that deals with fearful things (aka horror). I’ve completed a synopsis for it and might try to do that during NaNoWriMo — either the November or August one.

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

I’m not particularly superstitious or anything like that, but I did love the movies. When it came down to the battle between Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elmstreet, and Halloween, Jason always won. I would always marathon all those movies depending on the time of the year when I was a kid. My mom never wanted me to, because I had a tendency to be completely freaked out for weeks. For ages I was scared that Michael from Halloween was going to be in my closet with a knife, but I couldn’t sleep if my closet door was closed (I don’t know why, it’s just one of those things — still is even).

I never really had fears of Jason. I imagine I would if I ever went camping and/or went to camp as a kid but I don’t get camping. Why pretend like you don’t have AC when you do? And God forbid I have to deal with bugs. I hate bugs. I only got into hiking and whatnot when I was in my late teens, even then I’d rather just keeping hiking until I got to a hostel. There was really nothing to do when it came to Freddy, other than not sleeping and I never did that.

For whatever reason, when I realized this Friday was the 13th, I decided it’d be the perfect time to start querying wider. I just like the idea of really kicking off the submission process properly on today. It helps that I’ve got everything in order now. Though, I’ve had it in order for a while now… but just a little too nervous to finally do it.

Except, of course, I made a mistake when I sent a query to one literary agent (I put the wrong name! What a silly mistake!) but I just resent it with the proper one and hope that’ll do.

That’s that, I suppose. I’ve started the query process. It’s really finally happening. I get the feeling I’ll be very flexible by the end of all this. I’ve decided that I need something to do after each rejection, something that helps me process it and move on, and it’s yoga. I’ve been doing it for a while, but not with any real conviction. Now I’ll have no other choice.

The “Amazing” Query Letter

That pretty much describes how I felt last night! But it’s a good feeling, a fantastic one! I could have screamed, if only it weren’t so late. Plus, my older brother is visiting right now and it would have freaked him out to hear me yelling.

I sent my first query out to a literary agent a while back. Actually, June twenty-second to be exact. I was testing it to see if it would work. I really didn’t expect to hear back from her in such a short time. Last night, though, I did. She wants the first fifty page, which means the query letter must work. How exciting!

She is definitely one of my top picks, but I’m aware this is just a small step. It’s just since it’s my first query letter and my first request for a partial I am ever-so happy! All the kind things she had to say about my query letter was wonderful, too. I had sent one to my critic group (fantastic, amazing, writers!) and then trashed that to start again. Then I posted I think two different types on AW’s Water Cooler’s Query Hell. I trashed both of those, too, and wrote something completely different.

Like, really different. I liked it better than the others, and sent the first version of it to Query Goblin to see if it worked. Which, luckily, it did. Then I was given a guaranteed query critic when I signed up for a Writer’s Digest webinar and decided why not? I’d send my weird, somewhat non-conventional, query letter to her and see if it worked. If it didn’t, that’d be sad, but at least I’d know and she’d give me pointers to tell me how to alter it. If it worked…

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream of it working and her asking me for a partial, but I really didn’t think it would happen. That’s why it took me eleven minutes to actually open the e-mail. When I read over it my heart soared! It’s the little things in life you have to enjoy 🙂

Even if she decides the story isn’t for her after reading the partial, I’ll still be grateful and pleased. Probably a little disappointed but I’ve always chosen to focus on the good instead of the bad. As Randy Disher said, happiness is a choice. (If you get that reference without googling it, you’re amazing and I love you!)

Of course, I don’t expect this to work out. After all, it’s my first try and it’d be too… weird if it worked. I’ve read a lot of stories of writer’s not getting an offer until query letter 75. I think that’ll be my story when this is all said and done.

Now for the reason that ‘amazing’ is in the title of this post! I don’t get this news until I got back from seeing the Amazing Spiderman. I’m a hero movie geek, it’s my big brother’s fault and since he was in town we decided to see it together. It  was… well, amazing. Really amazing. Andrew Garfield is ten times better than Tobey Maguire was at being Spiderman. Plus the actors in it are amazing ones like Denis Leary (so funny), Martin Sheen, Campbell Scott (I have a crush on him), and Emma Stone (my favorite actress, but she needs to return to a ginger. Redheads are the funnest, trust me).

And Andrew Garfield…? I could scream like a little school girl whenever I see him wearing glasses. I love guys with glasses and he’s already so handsome. Anyway, if you are wondering whether to see it or not: see it! It’s a fun, action packed, interesting plotted, story. Yes, you know the Spiderman story — everyone does — but this movie does it well.

Writing the Breakout YA Novel

When I first started to write my manuscript, I didn’t think about what genre it would fall into. I didn’t really care, I just wanted to tell my story and knew I could figure out the rest later. I don’t think it does anyone any good to write a story with a specific genre in mind, or a lesson they want to teach someone, or to follow a current trend.

Trends change, it’s pretty much impossible to guess what the next trend will be and the current one will probably be dead before you can publish the novel you are working on right now. No one likes to be taught a lesson by a novel, particularly teens, but we all learn something anyway. If it’s a good story then we enjoy it and when we think about it later we realize we learned something. But have you ever read a story that was blatantly trying to teach you a lesson? Like “Don’t do drugs, kiddos!” those aren’t fun. I think a perfect example of this is the movie Charlie Bartlett. It was funny, entertaining, and interesting… until the end became a blatant moral lesson about how kids shouldn’t do drugs.

Yeah, I agree, doing prescription drugs when you don’t have a prescription is a bad idea. Duh. I figured that out from the rest of the movie, being blatantly reminded that at the end just made a five star movie fade to a three star one. I’d rather read/watch a great story that has a moral lesson to be learned subtly on the side.

Plus, if you write your story without any of those things in mind, you open up the possibility to surprise yourself with what your finish product turns out to be.

I’ll admit, I got into researching the market place and the publishing business later than I would have liked. I wish I had started it years before I did. When I first started to test the water and see what was going on I invested a lot of time in Writer’s Digest. Reading their blog, their magazine, their writing books, and all that fun stuff. I’ve bought a tutorial or two (which used to be WD webinars) but they always came with a package deal, so I didn’t intentionally buy just one of them.

But last week I signed up for a live webinar event and it finally happened today. It was an hour and a half webinar called Writing the Breakout YA Novel and it was hosted by literary agent Holly Root. By the way, that’s a name you should know. She’s an extremely active, high up, literary agent. You’ll probably want to query her if you write adult or young adult fiction. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of the webinar (other than a query critique by Holly Root — which I’m so excited about!) since I had done a lot of research in this area already.

I’m glad I attended it, though. It was nice to hear how the YA market is growing and there are still a lot of opportunities in it now. Even though the traditional publishing business is in the midst of change because of technology advances and such (and no one is for sure what will happen to it). Most of the fellow writers I talk to on a regular basis are indie self-published authors and they aren’t that reassuring when it comes to the traditional publishing place. I love all you indie writers, of course, but usually you went indie because you have little or no faith in the traditional publishing market (or you are disenchanted by it). To each their own, as I always say, but going indie isn’t what I want. I’m not ruling it out, but I’ve always wanted to go the traditional route.

A third of the webinar was new and interesting to hear about, another third I already knew but it was still nice to hear Mrs. Root’s take on it, and then the last third of it… I may or may not have gotten distracted by interior design ideas. Of course when I got distracted I was still listening and taking in what was said (I’m brilliant at multitasking at least that’s what I tell myself). I don’t know what it is, but if I’m not multitasking I feel like I’m wasting time. Except, of course, when I’m writing. Though, I’m always listening to music/watching a movie/tv show at the same time… In less I’m revising, then I’m usually just listening to music (if anything).

I digress, my point is this: the YA market is a live, thriving, and to hear that makes me happy.

Completed Literary Agent List

I’ve had a goal for a while now to form a list of at least 50 literary agents that I would like to query. A detailed list, with plenty of information on each and ranking from the ones I’d want the most to the ones I’d still be happy with but aren’t my top pick. 50 became 75 at some point and tonight I finally achieved that. I always thought I’d be done with my query letter by that point but I just started on it tonight (which means I’ll probably continue researching until I find a 100 lit agents).

And I didn’t even finish a first draft! Something about queries scare me, probably the concept of summing up a 85K manuscript in 250 in a way that is creative, enticing, and perfectly polished. I’ve done a lot of research on queries, and there’s no such thing as a perfect one or a formula for success (that’d be nice but, of course, too easy). I’m sure I’ll get it eventually. I have a couple different ideas of how to approach the query but I’d first actually have to approach it.

Then there’s the synopsis to write, which I’m less worried about. While I find minimizing my 85K words into one to two pages of plot difficult, I know it’s not impossible. I’ve actually been working on a synopsis off and on for a while, so by the end of June I’ll have a good one for sure.

I guess the whole point of this post is to mark a milestone in the querying process for me. The research has been mostly completed. Which is a bit sad, I am very good a researching and I enjoy it. It’s also far from frightening. Moving to the next step, querying to actual agents, means preparing to hear ‘no’ a lot. I’m not bad with rejection, I more than understand it’s not personal. It’s just easier to avoid that, right?

Anyway. Now I just need to finish the query letter and synopsis then I’ll finally be able to start querying. It’s exciting and a little scary — like all great next steps in life. I hope to take this plunge at the start of July.