NaNoWriMo, Day 25: Binders Full of Women

A figured a retrospective entry would be fitting for my last National Novel Writing Month post.


I went to my parent's place for Thanksgiving and, as is my usual routine, I spent a little bit of time in my old room, taking a stroll down memory lane and looking through all my old stuff. My old TV stand now houses all my binders of old writing -- angsty poems and journal entries and short stories as far as the eye could see. Usually, I flip through the pages, recollect on a more naive time, and leave them be. But, since I was already grabbing a garbage-bag full of old clothes to use for sewing projects, I decided -- hey, why not bring these home as well?


The majority of this stuff will never see the public light of day, so help me God. And, actually, I have a confession to make (I have a shoe obsession! Pinterest is my main source of inspiration!): I talk about my first and my second novel, but there's actually a bastard for-real-first novel. This little 150-page gem is something I wrote sometime when I was 15 (judging by the subject material, but more on that in a minute).


The premise itself is somewhat original: the main character is shot and killed in the first chapter of the book. The rest of the story is part retrospect, part whodunnit. But the actual meat of the story is nothing more than overly-dramatic people being angsty and unrealistic and the actual "whodunnit" is so insipid that it actually causes me physical pain to re-read.


One of my creative writing professors said that your first book is basically your autobiography. Although I've never been shot while staring out of my bedroom window, the retrospective part is practically my life. This is how I knew I wrote the book when I was 15: the heartbreaks and catty friendships I talk about in my first "book" is exactly what happened to me between the ages of 14 and 15.


Now, given, the - er - calibre of most YA this days (Hunger Games excluded), this book could probably pass as a decent young adult book. I mean -- hey -- add in a few sparkling demonic-but-brooding creatures and I could have a bestseller on my hands. But, for me, if this book were ever to be seen by the public, it would have to be completely gutted and rewritten before I could even think of polishing it up.


But, who cares? If there is any message for my last post, it's that the foundations of your writing don't have to be perfect. The same way I wouldn't berate my first grade self for terrible penmanship (ah, who am I kidding. I still have terrible penmanship), I can't be hard on myself for something I wrote in high school. And, furthermore, there's nothing wrong with basing your fictional characters on your real life. People are multi-dimensional beings, and whose frailties, fears, and complexities do you know better than your own? The only caveat here is that you still need to make the work sound believable. It doesn't matter if the things you write about actually happened in real life if the reader wouldn't buy it as fiction.


So I'm a little over 40,000 words. According to NaNoWriMo, if I write at least 1400 words a day between now and the 30th, I'll make the 50,000 word mark. We'll see what happens. Some days, I get nearly triple my goal in. Other days, I'm fighting tooth and nail just to write out 1000 words. And things are only going to get more challenging when I have the wonderful Florida weather and wedding events to distract me.


But I'm only 5 days out. Let's see what happens.


Remember; you can always follow my progress on my NaNoWriMo page (y'know, if your cable has gone out or something).

NaNoWriMo, Day 20: Nothing Wrong With Writing Ahead … So Long As You're Willing to Kill It Off

I don't know how I made it this long. Last year, I got 2,000 words in and quit. Maybe the book hadn't been ready. Maybe I hadn't been ready. While I feel like there will always be an excuse to not write that page or finish that chapter, I feel that, for this book, at least, I needed some extra time to process the events in my life that originally spawned the book idea (the book itself is about an extremely dysfunctional school, something I came up with after having an incredibly negative teaching experience). The book is comedy and farce and absurdity, but I was still too angry about said situation to really be able to write comedically. I look back on some old segments I had written for the novel, and they just sounded bitter. Said segments ended in the trash folder pretty quickly.


Which brings me to this post's theme: there is nothing wrong with writing ahead in your novel, so long as you're willing to kill it off when necessary. As Stephen King would say: "Kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."


No one is immune to it: we have a story idea in our head, but instead of starting at page one and working our way forward, we want to write the scenes we have playing in our head right now. I am just as guilty of this as the next person. At least 2,000 of the words written this month were for scenes that actually happen much later in the book.


I am all about writing out scenes out of sequence, for many reasons:

1) It gets you writing your book. I don't care if you just scribble out some dialogue or a brief description of a room or the very last paragraph of your novel. You are writing, and you are writing for your book. Whatever you are doing is a thousand times better than just sitting around, thinking about how, someday, you'll write that Great American Novel.

2) You are getting the ideas out of your head. Aside from the obvious creative satisfaction of seeing those scenarios finally on paper, it clears up your mind. It takes a lot of energy to keep those scenes, conversations, character studies, etc, alive in your memory. Once it's out of your head, you have the space to come up with more ideas. I recognize that brains don't actually work as simply as that, but finally getting out what you were thinking about does relieve you of the task of remembering it, which will help you feel more free to think up new ideas.

3) Most importantly, you are warming up the creative side of your brain, making it a lot easier to write Chapter 1 than before. Think of it as the walk around the block before you go running. The same way many writing teachers recommended doing a free write each morning to get your mind ready, writing out a random scene gets you in the proper mindset, if not more so, because your focus is on your book.


However, there is one major caveat to writing scenes out of sequence: there is a very strong likelihood that, once you finally get to that spot in your book for that particular section that you have already written, there will be no place for it.


This happened to two different scenes in my first novel. Both scenes seemed perfect when I had originally written them. But the book ended up taking on a different path. One scene was deemed redundant while another scene actually took away from the novel. There was nothing for me to do but copy/paste them into a different Word document ("writing graveyard", if you will), delete it from my book, and move on.


Sometimes, you just have to kill your darlings.


Was I crushed when I realized this? Of course. But I wouldn't have changed a single thing. Writing out those now-useless scenes had helped organize my thoughts. If anything, it fleshed out certain aspects of the characters that made them more realistic. While the reader might never know about these traits, it helped me as a writer connect better with the subject matter at hand. And, one thing I've noticed, is that the more believable and complex you make your characters (even if it's only in your head), the more it feels like they're actually telling the story for you.


If there is anything I have learned from writing, it's that story ideas are a lot like children: you can have hopes and goals for them, and you can guide them and help them reach those goals, but, in the end, they're going to do their own thing. And, honestly, that's one of the marks of a good writer: the understanding that a story is almost an autonomous creature and the ability to let things go in the name of the bigger picture. The understanding that the story is bigger than you and more important than your self esteem.


So here I am, at Day 20. I gotta admit: I didn't expect to last this long. Now I'm 2/3s of the way in -- or 10 days out, depending on how you see it. Thanksgiving is in two days. I fly to Tampa next Tuesday, where I'll finish out November driving back and forth from Tampa to Miami to Ft. Lauderdale to Seabring for all sorts of wedding and family (and micro-vacation)-related activities. But my resolve is strong: 1000 words or more a day, no matter what.


And then, who knows. Let's not get ahead of ourselves :)

NaNoWriMo, Day 5: No Cheating!

By some beautiful miracle, I've written a little over 5,000 words in 5 days. To be honest, if I didn't have NaNoWriMo's website to log in my wordcount each night, I'd have no idea what the exact number would be.


Before November hit, I had roughly 7500 words written for my novel. Each day I would sit down, look at the word count,and say to myself, "You can leave this chair once you hit this word count + 1000." I'd work until I got my thousand words in, continue on a little longer if I've got a certain scene in my head that was ready to be played out, save everything, and close my laptop.


The biggest rule I have had for myself this year is this: by all means necessary, no excuses allowed, I must keep up the pace. I can't sprint one day and write 3000 words, only to slack the next day because, "Well, I wrote so much the day before." That is a slippery slope down which I do not want to … slide.


Now, would it be really cool if I hit 50,000 words (the typical goal of NaNoWriMo)? Yes, of course. However, I also recognize that that's nearly double (well, 166%, but close enough) my actual goal, and acting like superwoman and forcing myself to write 2000-3000 words is only going to lead to burnout.


I have my routine in place: sometime in the afternoon, usually on my break (I'm blessed with a commute of one whole mile, so I go home usually for my break), I sit down at the dining room table and I write, refusing to get up until I reach my word limit, but allowing myself to go on a little further if I can play out the scene just a little more. Never anything big -- maybe 100 - 200 words on the absolute outside -- but enough so that the 1000 word limit is not a hard stop. And then I leave my laptop and do something else (usually go back to work), with the understanding that I'll come back and do this all again tomorrow.


I must add, however, that I do allow myself to "plan" for the next day. After writing my 1000 or so words, I'll spend the rest of the day casually thinking about what to write next. I might even jot a few ideas down in one of my notebooks. But I never, ever, play the numbers game. Whatever I wrote in Microsoft Word the day before becomes null and void and -- no matter what -- I have a new 1000 words to write that day.


So there we go: five days, 5000 words down. Twenty-five days and 25,000 to go. If you're curious about my progress with NaNoWriMo outside of this blog, you are more than welcome to visit my NaNoWriMo page. There, you'll fine my overall word count (what I wrote before NaNoWriMo is included in this word count), a (completely unedited) excerpt from my book, and many other just like me, slowly chugging along with their writing.

NaNoWriMo, Day One

My anal-retentive self is only a little frustrated that November/National Novel Writing Month didn't start on a Wednesday, which could have resulted in a Writer's Wednesday about NaNoWriMo. Only a little, I swear.


I think I've discussed ad nauseum about my first novel, and my fun times getting it published. I was originally set on giving up entirely on the mainstream route and self-publishing it before a friend of a friend suggested that I send my work to his agent, using said friend of a friend as a recommendation. This prompted me to go right back to work on my query, utilizing my husband's uncanny ability to polish all types of writing (but especially writing that is supposed to sell a product well). While my query isn't ready enough in my eyes to send my work out to said agent, it has motivated me enough to maybe -- just maybe -- try the agency hunt again. And honestly, what's the worse that can happen? I spend an extra few months sending out emails before going back to Plan B again?


What I don't really talk about are my other writing endeavors: namely, the second novel I've been working on (but haven't gotten past Chapter 3), and the two other novel ideas that have been swirling around in my head (I don't "brainstorm" so much as I let novels simmer in my mind until I think they're ready to be at least outlined). I wrote my first novel in a very slow-but-steady pace, 10 pages here or there for nearly a year until the novel was complete. I was hoping to do the same with my current novel.


Life, however, had different plans. I finished my first novel in the beginning of 2010, and since then, I: graduated college, started my first job as a Pre-K teacher, got engaged, took night courses, got married, moved across state lines, changed jobs, took up tai chi & yoga & ice hockey, and started doing crafts again. And, enrollment-willing, I'll be teaching a Friday night beginner's tai chi class at a nearby YMCA.


That schedule doesn't allow for much, even in the slow-and-steady pace.


That's where National Novel Writing Month comes in. For some, NaNoWriMo is a month-long, intensive writing session where one comes up with a brand new novel idea and completely fleshes it out in one month's time. For others, it's a chance to write out a novel they had been working on for ages.


The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it can be exactly what you want it to be, so long as it motivates you to write. Some feel they have "won" if they write an entire novel; others, if they write 50,000 words. For me, I'm hoping to write 1,000 words a day, good or bad, every day, for the entire month of November. This also means I'll be writing 1,000 words a day on Thanksgiving, when I see Gabriel Iglesias (one of the funniest modern-day comedians) live, and when I fly down to Florida for my brother-in-law's wedding.


It's going to be a challenge, but I really want to write out this novel. To lessen the burden, I'm hoping to use my blog this month to focus primarily on my writing. It's not as interesting as, say, videos about Taylor Swift music and necklace tutorials, but if I can focus my creative energy on just one thing, I might be able to do it.


So today is Day 1 of NaNoWriMo. With any luck, I'll be 30,000 words deeper into my book by the month's end. Hopefully I'll make it out with my sanity intact.


To find out more about National Novel Writing Month, visit NaNoWriMo.com. There are some wonderful tips, ideas -- you can even create an account to log your process alongside millions around the country. I hope this months inspires all of us to do a little more writing, even if it's just writing about our day, writing emails to friends, or even just stream-of-conscious writing in our blogs :)

Writer's Wednesday: The Importance of People Telling You That You Suck

I hit a major milestone last Thursday: I finished the last major edit of my book. This means that, as far as I'm concerned, the book as a whole is polished, save for a grammatical errors or syntax issues that I might have missed on accident. But because there are things that I can miss, my manuscript is currently being read by my husband (for the second time) and my best friend (for the first).

I want to digress and say that my husband converted my book into e-book format in order to edit it better. He included the cover art (in the end, I ditched my first round of prototypes and went for one created by my sister in law) and downloaded to his Nook. I almost wanted to cry, holding his Nook in my hands and seeing my book in actual e-book format for the very first time.

Peer edits are possibly the hardest part of writing. It means coming face to face with the reality that what you wrote isn't the perfect gem you thought it was. I remember when my original story arc was downright destroyed by my professor. Even though I wanted to crawl into a corner and die while she ruthlessly dissected it, I was so thankful for it. In the end, my book's original plot didn't have a proper arc to it. To publish that would've been hypocritical, as there is nothing that irks me more than books without proper story arc.

Peer edits are so important for one main reason: your peers aren't you. They don't know your thought process when you wrote that sentence. Like the standard reading audience, they have no context for your book. All they have are the words in front of them. Are you painting a proper picture? Are your characters coming off as complex and believable? Are your sentences concise, or are you losing your audience's interest?

It's also why I suggest waiting a long, long while to edit your own work. Be it a short story, poem, novella, or full-out epic series, let it be for at least 3 months. Work on other projects. In fact, the longer you wait, the better. I actually left my manuscript alone for almost a year -- ironically, while I was trying find literary representation. When I came back to my manuscript, I forgot about 70% of my thought process behind the book. I had even forgotten when and how a few events in the book played out. And that was perfect. Granted, it meant that I found myself rewriting entire pages sometimes, downright kicking myself for such sloppy writing. But, on the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised with how well some scenes were written. And nothing feeds a writer's ego quite like the realization that something is actually better than you remember it.

However, I add one caveat to peer-edits: take what people say with a grain of salt. This goes two ways. One: you can't please everyone. If you have an entire workshop of people reading your book, and you get 20 different suggestions, and you try to fix your book 20 different ways … your book will end up collapsing in on itself. While it's vital to hear what others have to say about your work, at the end of the day, it is still your work. It is better to have a book that is a little flawed in some people's eyes than try to please everyone and end up with a colossal failure.

Much like with editing your own work, take some time to digest what had been said by your peers before making any changes. Figure out how you can improve your book without just giving in to every single suggestion.

Two: some people just give bad advice. Be it because they're lazy or bitter or just plain ineffectual. This is my favorite example of a bad peer review: I once received a critique from a fellow classmate regarding a short story. He made zero mark-ups, zero comments ... until the near-end, where I had a sentence that essentially read as, "and this stupid boss and stupid desk and stupid job." He circled the second (just the second!) "stupid" and said, "You already used this word. Choose a different one."

I'm still hoping for a September 1st publishing deadline. Things are definitely going to be different when I go back to work (July 23rd is going to come a lot quicker than I'd like it to), but I am determined. I look at iBooks or Amazon.com and I just get anxious. I browse books on the Android App Market and I get so excited that I almost want to jump ahead in the process and publish my book now now now. I just hope I can harness that excitement for when I get critiques back from my best friend and my husband (who is known to take no prisoners with his editing!).

Writer's Wednesday: Creating Cover Art

Is there anything more daunting for a writer than trying to fill up a blank page with thought-provoking, insightful words?

Yes: creating cover art.

I have a precious month of vacation before I am summoned to summer camp duty, and I want to utilize this time. I've set a goal of September 1st as my release date and I am going to haul ass to make sure I make it.

The morning of my first day of freedom, I set up a makeshift photo studio. I had to settle for desk lamps instead of soft boxes…

…and a curious cat instead of an assistant, but I felt my way long, stacking boxes where I needed to stack boxes (again, instead of light stands, I had boxes) and grabbing additional lights when necessary.

The nice thing is that, for about a month prior, I sketched out at least 10 - 15 design ideas for the cover, and decided on a fairly minimalistic (read: cheap and simple to do) stack of books with a teacup. I also spent the last week of (real) work figuring out the logistics. Where would I shoot this? How would I shoot this? I decided on the table in my living room/workout area, with the spine of the books facing away (lest I get sued for copyright infringement).

Doing this gave me a whole new perspective on professional photographers. I tend to be very whimsical about how I take pictures: if I take a great shot, awesome. If I miss the mark, delete. But with this, I had no choice but to eventually hit the mark. This meant taking lots and lots and lots of photos where the changes were extremely minute. This used to drive me nuts on modeling gigs; why do they need me to rotate my head 5 whole degrees? What difference will that make?

Well, a lot.

After I felt comfortable in what I shot, I disassembled my makeshift studio and went to work making the prototypes.

Like the photos, I made way more prototypes than I was comfortable with, each slightly different than the other. Different shots, different color balances, different effects.

And this is just page one.
When I *finally* settled on one photo, I created a .PSD (Photoshop Document) to serve as my base for the rest of my prototypes. This made my life a million times easier: with the layers still un-merged, I could dabble with the effects without mucking up the titles. Likewise, if I wanted to change something with the title, I could delete it without mucking up the effects on the picture.

I found myself at a loss. I liked the overall feel of the prototypes, but it all felt too…indie, for my tastes. Granted, there is nothing more independent than an unestablished writer using her own DSLR to take pictures of her own books using her own lighting, but I didn't want the potential reader to see the cover and automatically assume, "Oh. Self-published. Pass." Some prototypes looked good, but seemed to fall flat when I imagined them as an e-book (good practice for those creating their own cover-art: open the prototype and either expand it so that it fills the entire screen, or cover your hands over the rest of the screen. Does it look good as a stand-alone on a big screen? Would you want to read a book if that's what you saw when you clicked on the thumbnail?)

Speaking of thumbnails: I was happy that each prototype -- at the very least -- looked good in thumbnail form. The minimal design with big bold "CHICK LIT" (which gives you a good hint as to what part of the title is) at least catches the eye's attention. So at least there was that.

The best part of this whole operation is that, after I swore I had my chosen photo, I found another one I liked a smidgen better, one that hadn't been made into a single prototype from.

And not even hours after realizing that, my husband came up with the suggest: why don't I try drawing the stack of books and tea cup? Maybe a sketched look is what the cover needs.

I fully recognize that this is going to be a very long process. When I first came up with the idea for my cover art, I naively thought that I'd have a finished product before I even finished my last edit. But there's a reason why, even with a team of people working on a person's book, a manuscript isn't ready to be printed and distributed as a book for upwards of a year. I gave myself the ambitious September 1st deadline. Two and a half months seems like such a long time, especially when I'll have one of those months work-free, but, at the end of the day, this is my book, my baby. The first novel I've written that I am genuinely, genuinely proud of (as opposed to my previous attempts, which hide in shame in a binder somewhere at my parents' house).

Even I sell only 10 copies, I want everything to be right. And that includes working feverishly at cover art prototypes until I go cross-eyed, only to realize that I might have to start again from scratch.

Writer's Wednesday: The Underestimated World of E-Publishing

Whenever I get into discussions with fellow writers, we always land on one main topic of conversation: the publishing world is more unforgiving to new writers than ever before. I remember pulling my hair out during my agency hunt: at least half of the agencies I researched either stopped accepting all queries or were only accepting queries by established authors (or writers recommended by established authors). Some even stated outright that they had no interest in writers that had not been previously published (and, apparently, being published a handful of times in your university's literary magazine means nada in the real world).

It's a vicious cycle: they don't want to represent you unless you already have an audience, but you can't garner an audience when you work hasn't even been published yet.

The idea of self-publishing has always been in the back of my mind. However, being extremely behind on the times, I have always lumped the concept in with vanity publishing. Even when I looked into POD self-publishing (Print-on-Demand, or, if you're a child of the 90s, the best Christian alt-rock band ever), I felt like it was giving up somehow, throwing all my hard work away in the name of selling a few copies to my friends and family.

However, one thing I forgot was, with the advent of Web 2.0, there are more opportunities to those in the arts than ever before. Singers who were passed up by every major record label in town can cultivate their own fanbase with a little help from Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and, for a period of time, Myspace Music. Photographers and painters can sell prints thanks to numerous online art communities. The concept of self promotion is no longer limited to the guy on the sidewalk, fruitlessly passing out flyers for his band. Although the medium is still on a smaller scale, the power is in the artists' hands. And that power can be just what you need to get your foot in the door.

Take two of my recently-enjoyed books: Still Alice by Lisa Genova, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Both authors had similar journeys to publishing success: both queried countless agencies, both were unanimously rejected, and both decided to simply self-publish. They cultivated a fan base on their own and, when word of their success made its way to the "legitimate" publishing world, agencies that flat-out rejected them ended up contacting them about representation.

It really is easy to look at the success of Twilight series and get frustrated. I won't even get into the books' extreme lack of merit (any type of merit); the simple fact that Stephanie Meyer had an agent by Query #15 and a book deal before the book could've been properly edited (at least, that's my guess) is frustrating to writers -- if only because we want that success. We don't want to be like Stephen King, sending out 200+ queries until getting even a short story published. We want to be the special ones who have agencies lined up by their door.

But the publishing industry doesn't work like that. Stephanie Meyer is literally one in a billion. Maybe six other authors in all of the current publishing market have had that luck. And even in better economic times, times when people read more frequently, people did not achieve representation/a book deal that quickly. And now, more than ever, you have to already have a fanbase before anyone will even look at you.

I have already starting my (hopefully) last round of editing, polishing Manuscript #1 until it is absolute perfection. After that, I'll be collaborating with my sister-in-law to make an eye-catching cover (a bit of advice I got from a fellow writer: when designing your own book cover, make sure it looks eye-catching in thumbnail size. When people are scanning the digital shelves of Amazon or B&N.com, that's all they're going to see!), with the goal being self-publishing it as an e-book/POD by the fall. It's already copyrighted (an act I urge all writers to do. It's super quick, it only costs $30, and it covers your ass) and I already own software that turns Word documents into e-book files. After that, it's all about finding the best platform, putting it out there, and promoting shamelessly (which, given how I can be with this blog, is something I already have experience with).

If you are curious about the wonderful world of e-publishing, I suggest reading this and this great article. The only caveat I give is that, since the world of e-publishing is constantly changing, both articles are already outdated!

Writing Wednesday: The Sweet Reminders of Rejection

A funny thing happened about two months ago: I hit a complete dead-end in my agency hunt.

It's not that I ran out of steam, or ran out patience.

I ran out of agents.

On the advice of a fellow writer, I kept my search limited to members of AAR (Association of Author Representatives). I looked at this list -- pages and pages and pages of names and contact information -- and thought I was set. I could be searching for an agent well into my second novel, possibly even second child. I searched and researched and sent queries to every agent who seemed to represent my type of book -- and a few who probably didn't (fun side story: I've, on more than one occasion, accidentally sent out queries to cookbook agencies, children's lit agencies, and/or academic textbook agencies).

I continued this way for over 6 months. I was downright feverish in constantly editing my query, my synopsis, my sample chapter. Some days I'd submit to as many as 10 agencies. In a better economy, this would probably have been labeled as reckless, if not downright stupid. But given the current state of publishing, my spray-and-pray method was really all I had.

And then … I hit the end. I submitted to as many agents as I possibly could. Something to the tune of 100+ agencies. I had even submitted to additional agents within one agency after the first agent passed. I had a few nibbles: a partial manuscript here, a full manuscript there, but nothing ever fleshed out.

And I was left thinking: okay, wtf do I do now?

Part of me geared up for part 2 of my publishing endeavor. Another part of me wanted to take a nap on the nice new couch my husband and I purchased.

Take a gander as to which part won.

Even though I'm on a bit of a publishing hiatus, every week or so, I get a rejection email back from an agent I queried upwards of 4 months ago. Once upon a time, rejection emails were a punch to a gut. I'd see the "Re: Query" in my inbox and get all excited, like a little child hearing puppy barks from downstairs on Christmas morning. I'd click on the email only to find out that the puppy barks were actually just the washing machine acting up and my main Christmas present was a reminder to get a job.

But now? They're just what I need to keep chugging away. A brief reminder that, even though the ball's not in my court (if only because I chucked it to the other side and scream, "I hate your stupid game! I'm telling Mom!"), the journey is not even close to being complete. I'm still in the queue for many agencies. My name is still out there, even if it is being systematically ignored. And even if it continues to be ignored, so what? I have back-up plans to my back-up plans. And this is all for Manuscript #1 -- who knows what will happen when I finally finish it's bastard little brother, Manuscript #2. I've got enough plans to keep me happy and delusional well into my 30s. And by then, I'll be so weighed down with kids and a mortgage that I won't even notice that my writing is gathering dust.

And even though I'm taking a break and focusing more on crafts and reading and somehow surviving as a teacher in New Hampshire, this story is not nearly over. And hopefully, when I resume my hunt again, I'll come up with snazzier names for my books outside of Manuscript 1 and 2 (although that does have a nice ring to it).

My Misadventures in Publishing, Post 1

For every story of a struggling modern-day (and best-selling) author, who sent almost hundreds of queries or ended up self-publishing before finding success/a publishing house, there's a story about an author who sent out a whole 10 queries and found a reputable agent within weeks.

In short: for every Still Alice success, I stumble across a Twilight.

I have been in the agent-searching business for about 5 months. I have easily submitted over 100 queries, sometimes to a different agent in the agency after being rejected by the first agent. Stephen King queried something over 200; the writer of The Help queried in the ballpark of 70. But then you hear of Stephanie Meyer sending 15 queries.

I know a lot goes in to finding an agent, and that finding an agent doesn't mean you'll be published, but it's still frustrating when you've contacted nearly every reputable fiction agency in New York (as well as all over America).

But I live by the Dora mantra: just keep swimming. If I find myself at a dead end in my agency search (which I'm getting scarily close to), I plan on focusing my writing efforts on getting my short stories published, either in magazines or for free in downloadable/e-book format, and working on my second novel, which I label as the Catch 22 of the day care world. It has a lot more farce than my first book, which is a combo parody/homage of "chick lit", as well as a coming-of-age tail of a semi-recent college graduate who realizes she has to make something of her life. I know writers talking about their writing is akin to a girl looking at herself in the mirror and exclaiming, "My, my, aren't I pretty?" But, like I mentioned before, this blog is for all the little "creative" things I do, writing included.