I write nonstop. I love it. I’ve written everything from Christian YA to urban fantasy, middle grade, and even contemporary women’s. As a result, I have discovered something about me. I had been wrangling with the editing of my quirky women’s fiction when I was called back to rework the Christian YA. Because of the immediate shift from one genre to the other, I learned this. I like quirky. I love snarky. I may even adore smarmy. So, while YA fantasy may be all the rage these days, I prefer nutty characters that blatantly do all of the things that we never would. I like throwing political correctness into the wind, and just telling those fakers out there that I know what they are. Well, I would never do that personally, of course, but my characters can. When I think about it, it’s just so – me. I’m not a romantic, I like irony. I watch the Vampire Diaries to see what completely rude thing Damon will say next. I liked Jack Bauer because he just was who he was, no apologies. I can’t do that in life, but I can in a book. In life, I match my bag and shoes (which is always super fun), I never leave home without my makeup (can you even imagine?), and I never ever make phone calls past nine o’clock pm, or before eight o’clock am (ah, rude). I am confined by the rules. It happens to only children like myself. I want to do everything at 125%. I want to do good. I want to be praised. I still laugh when people fall down, but there’s little to be done about that. So, anyway, I think I may be finding my voice. Perhaps YA is not my voice.Its often my favorite read, but maybe the two a just separate. Unless, I can pen a story of two teens who embrace their inner nerd and … yeah, no teen wants to read that.
|
||||
|
I am such a spazzy little gal. I get myself into trouble that way. Sometimes it helps, mostly it just makes me hasty. On occasion, I will be present for some travesty, like, say, Bryan comes home and says,”Aren’t you ready?” For what? I may ask, only to be told that we are meeting the corporate honchos from another country in 45 minutes and it’s their kids birthday. Now, when you have forgotten to give me warning, or when a catastrophe has hit, you need a spazzy girl. I can bathe, dress, and launch three small children into 5 point harnesses, while calling a sitter and pulling out of my driveway. I can call ahead for a prewrapped gift to pick up on my way to said party and handle my hair and make up at stop lights. Sometimes spazzy=good. Also, it makes me more fun. For example, I will never, ever, ever turn down an impromptu invitation to take off somewhere. My kids love the unpredictability, and with me, its often unpredictable. Now that I feel all warm, I will point out the down side of spazzy. I hate to wait. Love to plan, hate to wait. I will enter writing contests on a whim. That’s not a great way to win. I will begin querying without proper research , or a fully polished manuscript. (I really have to hold my own reigns on that). I will eat that 9×13 of brownies. Don’t leave them if you want them. They are already gone. I also do embarrassing things like register online and pay through paypal for a writers conference which is not taking reservations for another 2 weeks. Hey, then, I will even come on here and blog about how I registered. Yep. I did that. I got the email today letting me know that they will submit my reservation in July, when it is acceptable. Around my way, I’ve been called a few things. High octane is one that fits. It’s nice to get things done and it feels great to be so inflated all the time, but I am learning that this is not a great trademark for a writer. So, picture me taking a few deep breaths, closing my eyes, stepping away from the laptop, and running full speed into my room where I will proceed to talk my husbands ear off until he shuts me up. What can I say. You have to take the good with the bad. Today, I will be submitting a full manuscript for review with an agent. This is always a nail wrecker for me. Any interaction with a literary agent should be treated as if it will be the last. Most likely, it will be. Once your query is rejected, the game is over. (Unless you rewrite the query completely and wait a few months to try again, but that isn’t exactly recommended). If the query piques their interest, then you send 10, or 50 pages, maybe the first three chapters. Those chapters have to sing and dance because once the agent says ‘no’, they don’t want to see it again. I’ve heard that an agent may ask to see them again with revisions, but that scenario is different, it was the agent’s request. Now, if you hook them in three chapters, they will give you a request for full. The big enchilada. Someone wants to see your entire manuscript . This is huge. Your hopes are in the sky. This could be it. So, don’t blow it. Even if your manuscript is polished to a shine, read it again. Ask a friend. Beg a stranger. Read it one more time. You won’t regret it. I have mentioned the request I had on a manuscript last week. The first three chapters were with that agent for six months. That’s a long time even by industry standards. I hadn’t looked at it in half that amount of time. When I opened it and began to read it before I sent it off, I discovered something. All the time I have spent reading and writing has helped. I saw things that I didn’t see or know three months ago. I revised. I found missing commas, missing words and more. When I had been pouring over the pages every day, three months back, , I hadn’t seen the errors because my mind knew what it thought was already there. After reading it this time, and making it perfect, I still didn’t send it. I contacted the Word Whisperer. She found even more tweekable issues. It took a week, but when I hit send on this full today, I will know that what I am submitting is my best work. If my hope ends with me holding a rejection, I will not wonder if there was something more I could have done. I’ve read it, fixed it, reread it, fixed that, shared with a friend and fixed again. Now, I know that it is all that it can be. If this ends in a rejection, it simply wasn’t the time, the agent, or the right manuscript to officially begin my term as Julie Anne Lindsey, author. I think that I have read a thousand articles with this same title. I have also borrowed books on the topic and am currently registered to take an online course about the same thing. Query Writing is offered at every conference and seminar for writers. All of these facts should tell us something. It. Is. Important. Please read that last word with an underscore, italics and bold font. (I won’t put them in so that no one feels I’m yelling at them). After finishing a 300 page manuscript, I too, feel as if a 1 page letter, with only a paragraph to describe my book, is impossible. The task is daunting. It can be easy to spend very little time on the query and hope that when the agent reads the opening pages, it will catch him or her. The scary thing is, if the agent doesn’t like the query, there is no reason for them to read even the first 3 pages. It doesn’t even matter that they are right below it in your email. If we call ourselves writers and our goal is to be published, then we need to think about our craft as more of a business. OK, how many people just navigated away from my blog? It true anyway. Whether you read it here or not. Books are on paper because someone is making money. It is a business. So, the gatekeepers out there (agents) are reading as much as they can, as quickly as they can, in the hopes of signing the next book to make some income. Once the agents signs you and your book, they still have to try to sell it, just like you did. They sell it to a publisher. Please don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Be salable. Be marketable. Don’t limit your mind to only seeing writing as an art, not if you want to get it to a publisher. Do your best on the book, then write a query that gets agents reading. You can’t sell it if no one reads it. I know that I said there are tons of ways to learn about writing a query, but I just finished a free downloadable book by Noah Lukeman that is worth the time. It was very good, and it will save you from reading 1000 separate articles. He says it all, and he says it well, right here: http://www.lukeman.com I did it! I have registered for my first writers conference. This is like my brother in law getting tickets to Comic Con. It’s HUGE for me, and I am thrilled. There is a lot that goes into the going process. For the mother of three small kids, I need a very loving and slightly nutty person who wants to keep them all weekend. Grandparents fit the bill nicely, and they were takers. Next, I have to have the cash to get me there. That is a tiny issue because I have no actual income to speak of. However, I do have a devoted and completely darling husband who had no problem with the whole expense. (We use the don’t ask more than you really want to know policy about big purchases). Then, I had to get there. I am a nervous driver in new places. I asked several pals. Mostly they couldn’t justify the expense to attend a writers conference. They aren’t writers. Also, it seemed excessive to go only to chauffeur me. I thought it was a wash until Bryan asked me if I registered. It had been a week. I normally do things in the process of deciding to do them. When I said no and told him why, he said. “I’ll go.” Yep. He’s taking a day off, driving me to Columbus, and hanging out at the hotel while I go meet writers and agents and publishers. Sure, who wouldn’t like a day at a hotel just for sleeping and watching TV, and Bryan is scary, crazy, smart, and can log in and work from anywhere, BUT he wants to take me. He wants to be with me and encourage me and cheer me on. At the risk of sounding half my age, I must declare to the web, My husband rocks my socks, all the time. Thank you sweetie! On a related note, if you are from Ohio and are looking to attend a small writers conference, there is one coming our way this fall. It is the Central Ohio Fiction Writers Conference and you can read more about it here: |
  My very FIRST book is available on Amazon & I am a happy dancing mess!
 |
|||
|
Copyright © 2012 Musings from the Slush Pile - All Rights Reserved |
||||
