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By Julie Anne Lindsey, on July 27th, 2010
I think that it is clear to all who write. Waiting is par for the course. I doubt that any of us are ever surprised by the waiting, but it is the sting of the needle isn’t it. You know that the waiting will come, and it won’t be pleasant. Unlike the needle, the waiting can last for months – actual months. In the meanwhile, we are told to write. “Just keep writing.” “Improve your craft.” This is great advice, but not always possible. There comes a time when we have waited so long for something, perhaps even well past the date when we were told that we would hear, and we begin to lose our cool. Please feel free to replace the “we” in that sentence with “I” and the “lose our cool” to “completely wig out.”
You know the drill. We have refreshed our email to the point that the key is stuck and the white letters have been rubbed off. My pointer finger is developing a small callous, or maybe the nerves in the tip are just numb. Either way, I need to get a grip, peel my face away from the computer, shrug, close the tweet deck, cringe, and walk away, fall to my knees and cry out, “No! Please no!” Dramatic, sure, but I am a writer, it’s my thing. Obsession is my other thing.
What can we do when we are waiting that will pass our time legally?
1. Plan something. Planning takes a lot of time and creativity and concentration. Have a party, plan a summer’s end bash. Think of your guest list, food, drinks, decor, your calendar, etc etc, shop, budget. If you do this really well it should take a couple of weeks. If you are done already then do it better.
Do not check your inbox.
2. Learn something new. Something that takes practice to improve. This keeps the mind busy not thinking about your inbox. Learn to do yoga, knit, golf, tap dance, line dance, pole dance, whatever.
Do not check your inbox.
3. Dream and plan to attain it. I like to plan my dream home, like from the ground up. I have my dream house plan, and I keep a 3 ring binder, and I love getting lost in the planning. The wood, the stain, the floors, kitchen layouts, granite colors, mini pendants. It’s a real time-suck-mind-busier, and its fun.
Do not check your inbox.
4. Plan a vacation. This is also very very fun. Plan a big dream vaca. You may find that you can afford it too because rates are down in so many tourist destinations. So live it up, plan it out. Please share it here. Now, I’m thinking about a vacation. Hmm…
Do not check your inbox.
5. Read for fun. Writers love to read. You probably have a list of books on your “to read” pile. Read them. Get lost in someone else’s world. Every reader knows that entire days can pass when you are engrossed in a story.
All of these things will help you later when you are writing again. Anything that you add to your toolbox of detailed information now will make for better more vivd scenes later. Plus, learning something new is just plain good, and challenging your mind in new ways will get those synapses firing again, unlike the sitting-staring-drooling result obsessive of inbox refreshing.
OK. Check your inbox. Did you make it all the way through my article? Then, pat yourself on the back. I admire your strength of will. Best Wishes in getting that email which you are waiting for.
By Julie Anne Lindsey, on July 26th, 2010
As promised, today begins the new Book Review Monday. I will be trying to read a book a week and I will review it here. I also welcome any guest blogger who may enjoy having their book review here as my Monday feature. If that sounds like fun, contact me with your review and I will feature it here, along with a pic, a bio and any links that you’d like for contact. On to the review:
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
  Shiver is a young adult novel about a young woman, Grace, and a wolf, Sam. The two met one winter when Grace was very young. A pack of wolves were going to eat her, but Sam-wolf stopped them, saved her, and continued to keep watch over Grace thereafter. The thing about the wolves in Shiver is that they are shape shifters. Each was bitten by another, creating the change in them. They are wolves in winter, in the snow, when it is too cold. They are human in summer. Maggie Stiefvater adds a further twist to this story. For one, most shape shifter stories state that the shifter can change back and forth regardless of season. Stiefvater’s wolves cannot, and their human life is limited. Each wolf only continues to change for a short amount of years, thus creating a great tension in the story. Sam seems to know instinctually that this will be his last stint as a human before he turns and does not turn back.We want the wolf/boy to live happily ever after, with the girl, and preferably not as a wolf.
When the two protagonists (yes, there are two. The story is told in alternating first person between the wolf and the girl, chapter by chapter) meet for the second time, the wolf has been shot by a hunter – Grace’s father- and instantly they connect. Though Sam has been in wolf form all the years since their original meeting, the two have spent plenty of time admiring one another. They are kindred souls.
Its a race against time and the cold, as the young couple falls in love and establishes an utter commitment. There are wolf/people looking for a ‘cure’ and hunters looking for wolves, others at the local high school are bitten and changed. Winter is coming. Anxiety mounts to the ceiling, and by the end, Grace is willing to become a wolf if that is what it takes to be with Sam. It’s all very dramatic and very YA. For this reason, I enjoyed it very much.
The characters are wonderfully written, main and secondary. The imagery was beautiful. The love was innocent and pure and honest. The trials that faced them were devastating. I reccomend this book to other YA readers. It wasn’t a two day read-a-thon book, but I am glad to have see it through. I wouldn’t have walked away without knowing what happened to Sam, which, of course, I cannot tell you. Pick it up 
By Julie Anne Lindsey, on July 25th, 2010
People need people, cliche but true, and as writers, people are actually our thing. In the short time that I have been blogging, I have been awestruck by the number of writers out there. The amount of people sharing my dream of publication is nearly unfathomable to me. It’s crazy. I LOVE it.
Connecting with others of like mind should be one of our goals. Networking is wonderful, and the benefits are well worth the effort, trust me. First off, it is encouraging to know that others struggle with the juggling of their time, commitments and priorities. It’s reassuring to know that they are surviving. So will you. It gives us hope when we find others who were once in the trenches, but now have reached their goal. Most importantly, we need people who ‘get’ us.
Social media is a great way to meet other writers. Reading and responding to blogs is great. Facebook is great. I belong to lots of sites and forums where writers gather and share. All good things, but my new thrill is Twitter. As it turns out the Twitterverse is soaking in writers. I have recently found tons. *Dance of joy* At any point in any day, I can log in to Twitter and see other writers chatting, musing, ranting, whatever. It’s fabulous. Some days I lurk and listen and ponder. Other days I do the ranting and pontificating. Regardless of my role, there will be others there, of like mind, and I am home.
I said all of that because I am chatty and also because I highly recommend using Twitter to locate others of a like mind, follow them, meet them, check out their blogs and enjoy!
Insightful thought for the day: Sometimes virtual friends are exactly the kind of friends that you’ve been waiting for.
By Julie Anne Lindsey, on July 24th, 2010
I just spent 6 hours in the car with three children, the oldest of which recently turned 7. We took no video games or DVD players. It was just me and the fam. The thing about spending so much quality time in a confined space is that it loses its fun kinda quickly. The boys were fighting about three blocks out of the driveway and my daughter slept the first hour to get her lungs rested up. She’s two. When she woke, she screamed off and on for the remaining 4 hours. Mostly it was just noise, but she threw in the occasional “I hate this!” scream-and-pull combination on the 5 point safety harness, for good measure.
Instead of sharing a flask with my husband, we absorbed the circus that we were strapped into. It wasn’t easy. Parental self preservation requires deflection, not absorption. Today, in the interest of making this blog post, I chose to absorb. I absorbed all of their tiny high pitched voices. I absorbed the many many faceted arguments. “He’s looking at me,” morphed fluidly into “I’m hungry,” “Tell him to stop,” “I gotta go bathroom,” and “Are we there yet.” I don’t think they even breathed between the rants and awes. “Mom! He took my…was that a goat or sheep?” Together, between fights, we sang, laughed, some of us cried. We smelled very bad things, and you name it, we saw it. This is why I love the Midwest. There is so much diversity in our little corner of the country.
By way of absorption, I now have my share of starts for stories on everything between, “Car games for families,” to “Buried in the Barnyard,” and my favorite, “Undercover Amish.”
Lesson here: Think like a writer, find the story. Don’t shut life out so that you can quietly ponder your profound thoughts and emotions. Silly. Embrace life, sounds, smells, colors, sights, textures, the ridiculous and the beautiful. That is where the next greatest story will be found, not in a quiet office overlooking a field of wheat as TV would have us believe.
Happy writing!
By Julie Anne Lindsey, on July 23rd, 2010
Have you noticed the growing pattern? More than a few agents are officially closed to submissions. Don’t worry, it’s not permanent. Agents are inundated with queries to a point that they can’t keep up, let alone get ahead, and what if you were a client? Everybody has to manage time. Agents are no exception. The buzz I am reading around some sites I frequent is that writers don’t like this practice. Personally, I don’t get it. Agents aren’t in South Beach together, sipping Mai Tais and laughing at us writers. No, they are working diligently, trying to get their heads back above water and perhaps even reading for fun again.
I make this suggestion to writers who are less than thrilled that their dream agents are closed to submissions- right when they are finally ready to query. I say, celebrate, it takes the edge off. Use this time to give your submissions another pressure-off look. You can’t submit. You can’t. So, relax, look for those things that you missed. You aren’t falling behind. No one can submit right now. This is an imposed break. Let’s start thinking about the next project, write it a while then go back to our query next month with fresh eyes- when our agent crush opens the line again. What do you say?
Thoughts?
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Julie has
read 23 books toward her goal of 50 books.
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