Ok, so I lied--this will be my last post before vacation.

While waiting for the washing machine to finish its spin cycle, I clicked on a few of my bookmarks that I hadn't visited in a while, and I found some excellent advice on publishing at Jane Yolen's site:

http://www.janeyolen.com/forwrtrs.html
Getting Published:

Know this about being published: it is out of your hands.

Even if you do everything you can think of to affect that outcome, you can not make an editor take your work.

You can go to conferences. You can take creative writing classes (though I have always wanted to see if it were possible to teach a course in non-creative writing!) You can read books about writing. You can set a work schedule on your computer and make a special place and space for your writing like my Aerie. You can travel to Yaddo and make friends there with peformance artists. You can subscribe to PW and The Writer and Poets&Writers. You can get a BA, or an MFA or a PHD in Medieval Lit. You can work as a day laborer, having heard that it will ready you for writing the great American novel. Or you can work as a librarian, because someone tells you that is the way to learn to write children's books. You can walk around Lower Slobovia for a year, sail across the Atlantic in a water closet, become Arnold Swartzenegger's personal amanuensis, have intercourse with bug-eyed aliens, manage to marry a mass murderer or to murder a mass marrier. Or get thrown off the jury at the next OJ retrial. You can even--God help us--sleep with an editor. It does not--alas-- guarantee a thing. Though all of those are probably more effective than merely having talent or writing well!

Julian Gloag has written rather sarcastically that "If I were to shoot my publisher in some nice public place with plenty of blood, I guarantee my novels would be back in print in plenty of time for the trial. . . and the world would be a lot better off."

So, once you have committed any words to the page and have sent your manuscript off to the publisher, it is truly beyond your capacity to make anything happen in re the publishing of your work. Besides, as Emily Dickinson pointed out, "Publication is the Auction of the Mind of Man." (Are you cynical enough to remember that she wrote that after unsuccessfully trying to market her poems?)

Therefore, once the book is in the mail--relax. Read a good book. Or read a bad book. Just don't worry about it. Better yet--get busy writing something new.

I have been ruminating on LNR and have even written a few words on it, but I wouldn't really call it progress as such just yet. But in good news, I will be dragging it (as well as a few other items that have been lying around under my bed) along on vacation starting tomorrow. So check back here after Sept. 4 for an action-packed account of long walks and lying around at the lake.

In case you are looking for something to do while I am gone, Kee, here are a couple of 15-minute challenge ideas (off the top of my head):

Rewrite the earlier scene (from Aug. 9) from the other character's point of view.

Describe a setting, but no people in it.

See you in a week-and-a-half!

"From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."
--Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

Two votes for "It sucks."

On a whim, and while waiting for more rejects, I decided to play out some ideas about the first chapter that I had.

It seemed an even better idea when I was reading the first few pages sent off with queries and realized even I didn't want to request to see more.

So with that...I redid Chapter one. Not to worry. The original is still whole and safe in another file. But I did want to see if I could carry the few thoughts through more than just a line or two.

And I could. Without screwing up my word count. That is to say without losing word count. It looks like I could continue and increase my much agonized about might-be-word-shortage.

If I get decent feedback on this end, I'll send it to you for commentary.

Still sick. I can hardly string two thoughts together, so here's another quote:

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit."
Richard Bach, author (1936-)

I have a cold and feel too crappy to post a challenge. So here's a quote instead:

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."
-Peter DeVries, editor, novelist (1910-1993)

I wanted to meet the "challenge" but my brain couldn't settle enough to focus.

I'm in the middle of reworking the first of RANSOM. And I can't get out exactly what's floating around so that it makes sense so I must conserve all brain function towards that end.

FYI: 2 more rejections.

Hence the rework. Wish me luck.

Challenge 2

My last batch of cookies is in the oven, and I’ve read all my bookmarked blogs, so it’s time for me to get on with it.

17:38
“Brrr. You don’t want to go out there. It’s colder than a wizard’s heart.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. You want a slug of this?”

“Hit me....More....More...There.”

“Would you prefer a bucket?”

“Ha ha. First I’ve got to warm up, then I’ve got to face *him*.”

“Right. I see your point. What’s he got you doing now?”

“Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know. *I* don’t even want to think about it.”

“How much longer you got?”

“Five months, 17 days. And then I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“Where you going?”

“No idea. Just as far away from here as I can. What’s on the other side of the world from here?”

“I don’t know...ocean?”

“Well, even if I have to live on a boat, I’m putting as much distance as I can between me and him. What about you?”

“A lifetime of servitude, man. Fucking *rules*. I don’t know who came up with this one, but I hope he chokes.”

“Bummer.”
17:46
Oops. Originally forgot to say who was speaking: Godred and Rafnar's watch-dragon

Challenge!

Every day I do not get my shit together and actually work on a story, I will post a short challenge here, just as a way of keeping my hand in. Kee (and anyone else who wants to play) is free to ignore this and just post an update on her work, but if there is no update, I hope she'll join in.

On to the challenge:
Write a dialogue between two characters from one of your current WIPs, but *do not* use dialogue tags ("he said") or any narrative between the bits--just dialogue. Then let us know at the end who your two characters were. Again, this is just a quick 15-minute exercise.

I'm off to cook dinner, then I'll come up with something to post.

Gah! Kee beat me at my own game!

Ok. Here goes mine:

9:46

Gloria chopped up pieces of raw meat and placed them in a large bowl. She tilted her head and listened to the shower running down the hall, then glanced up at the kitchen clock. She was going to be late for lock-down if Pamela didn’t hurry. Well, late to be early, because she never took chances.

“Pamela! Your dinner is almost ready!” Gloria opened the oven door slightly and let the smell of baking chicken waft out. There would be plenty for leftovers for her tomorrow.

She heard the water turn off.

She set the table in the kitchen for one, adding a small vase of carnations, Pamela’s favorite. Gloria always tried to do a little something extra for Pamela right before lock-down. She felt guilty about leaving her alone overnight, but it was for her own safety, and the safety of their little family.

Fucking Michael. He hadn’t bothered to stick around when he found out. Even the news that she was pregnant didn’t bring a response from him.

But now it was the two of them, Pamela and Gloria, and Gloria was going to do her damnedest to make sure Pamela had as normal an upbringing as possible.

“Mom!” Gloria could hear something wasn’t right in Pamela’s voice and headed down the hall. She tapped on the bathroom door.

“Is everything all right?”

“No!” Gloria pushed open the door to find Pamela standing in front of the mirror, wrapped in a towel. Pamela turned to her. “There’s some ... hair!”

Gloria relaxed. “That’s normal at your age, honey. Remember? We talked about it.”

“No! I mean hair!” Pamela tilted her chin up to show a patch of fur on her neck under her ear.

10:00

You asked for it. I didn't even think. I just wrote the first thing that came to me.

Fifteen Minutes: Go 4:42

The couch was not near as comfortable as the bed in their bedroom, but Breck didn’t think she had the energy to make it that far. The baby had kept her up the last two nights with a cough, and Breck really just wanted to lie still long enough to enjoy the quietness of the baby’s medicine induced sleep.

So flopping belly side down on the couch and snuggling down into the warmth of her body heat, Breck listened to the soft breathing coming through the baby monitor and swiftly fell asleep.

The smell of c-o-w-b-o-y soon drifted in with arrival of Dylan. The love in her heart for all the things he had given to her felt like the pleasant weight of the beloved and much requested full body hug he promptly gave her as he sprawled his hunky self lengthwise to join her on the couch for a nap.

Done. 4:59

Challenge!

I was talking to Kee recently, and I think we have both reached the "bored" stage in our current works in progress. I was thinking about this afterward, and it occurred to me that maybe there is a way to work around or out of this funk.

So I challenge you, Kee, to sit down for 15 minutes and write a short scene with any 2 characters from a work in progress (WIP), *but* it cannot take place during the action of your WIP. And no editing.

I'll post what I write up this evening or tomorrow morning, and you do the same.

Miss Snark had much the same thing to say last year as I just did in my last post:

"...Books are not products. Books are not sweaters or chocolates. They are not created with patterns or by following a recipe. I don't mean this literally either. I understand your point and I'm saying books are not fungible. One book is not another, whereas one Hershey kiss is another.

Books are not products. They are art. Even Bridges of Madison County. A person cannot reproduce that book (even if they wanted to), like they can a chocolate or a sweater. One sweater or another will keep you warm, and one chocolate or another will woo your true love, but one thriller is not the same as another."

When I was pregnant with Hannah, I went to a birthday party where I loaded up at the buffet and washed it all down with a big ol’ glass of OJ. Which I promptly barfed up; I’ve had an aversion to OJ ever since. That’s pretty much how I have felt about LNR the last couple of days. I tried to go through the first part to just mark the places that need work, but even that was like inspecting all of your dog’s poop, looking for the wedding ring he swallowed: it is necessary, but you *really* don’t want to.

The writing seemed too dry or dull or something; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I was very dissatisfied. I still think the premise of the story is good, but my execution of it leaves something to be desired. I’m afraid I’ve carried over my special brand of perfectionism from sewing. I’ve been known to undo half a cross-stitch, or unravel an entire baby sweater *twice*, to fix a mistake. The problem with writing is that there is no pattern to show you where you made your mistakes.

I used to think of writing as putting together a giant puzzle with no box, but also without all the pieces you need, and some pieces you don’t need. The writer’s job would be to sort out the useless pieces, find the missing pieces, and put it all together properly.

But that’s not quite it, either. It’s more like knitting a sweater that you make up as you go along. You have taken your measurements, chosen a color, bought some yarn, and you’re off. You knit and knit and knit, and one day you have a finished cardigan that you are very proud of. But then you look it over carefully and discover that you messed up the stitch pattern halfway through, and now the top and bottom halves don’t match. One sleeve is slightly, but noticeably, longer than the other, and you forgot to put in button-holes. And the color looks truly awful in cardigan-form. You are no longer quite so pleased with the mess on your hands. You could try to pawn it off on someone, but that would be just too embarrassing for you. So you hide it in a drawer until thinking about it no longer makes you want to weep and pull out your hair. When that day comes, you pull it back out and start methodically noting where it went wrong and what you need to do to fix it, even if that means ripping the whole thing apart and starting over. This will of course require a lot of work since you didn’t use a pattern, but when you are done you will have created a truly one-of-a-kind sweater.

That’s what keeps me coming back to writing, even when I want to run screaming in the other direction from my stories.

We've made it over 100 posts! Hooray!

I haven't looked over "Late Night Radio" in a while, so I decided that I would read it at bedtime last night to give myself a jump start on working on it today. I have never been so horrified. Maybe I was more tired than I thought, but it seemed just awful. I only made it through the first scene with Steve in the hallway before I threw it on the floor and turned off the light. Now I am scared to pick it up again. But pick it up I must. *groan*

Okay, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last posted. Thanks for the reminder, Nee.
And congrats on all the good grades!

I have been working diligently but have been reluctant to admit to not taking big sis' advice. I know we talked about mutiple submissions, and them not being favored by some, but I couldn't stand waiting for the two weeks to go by and not do anything. SO. I did some more research and landed in a blog for a Miss Snark-an anonymous agent. And the conversations there lead me to believe that people are throwing out tons of queries at one time. Some are talking 100+. I want to know where they got all of those for their particular genre, but oh well. I have been pretty choosy on who I send to.

So far I have sent out two more batches of three each. And have gotten only one response-a rejection, of course. But at least it beats waiting on nothing.

So my rationalization -which seems to be working to soothe my nerves and make me more cohabitable (?word) with my family- is to thinking that I am trying to rack up as many rejects as I can.

For the record:
8 queries, 2 rejects, 6 unanswered to date