Jumping Off the Cliff

That's what my boss calls it, anyway.

The time has come, since I haven't made the announcement official yet in the blogosphere (though, if you're my friend on FB, this may not be news to you).

I'm pregnant, having a boy, due March 16th.

While I'm super excited (and not at all ready, so I'm glad I still have three months), I'm also trying to be practical. This involves wanting to finish reading work by my author friends before then, finish some heavy editing on my own work, and even possibly start querying before March. I think *fingers-crossed* if I can get my novel in good shape by March, querying can happen at, um, SOME point while the baby's super tiny. Then, if an agent actually picks me up, I'd be willing to bet it wouldn't be while the baby's still so little and I'm so exhausted that I can't open my computer.

Right? *whimper*

So in the next few months, I'll be slashing and burning a minimum of 5K (hopefully closer to 8K), critiquing, blogging, and fitting in as much as (if not more than) physically possible before I jump.

Any suggestions on how to juggle babies/small children and writing and jobs would be both helpful and gratefully accepted.

Temptations Involved in Self-Publishing

If you saw my semi-ranting book review on Tuesday, you may remember that the book in question was self-published.

Now, don't go jumping to conclusions. I've read plenty of self-published books in my time, and several of them are quite good. Sure, perhaps they shouldn't be judged the same way as one would evaluate a traditionally-published book (although some indeed can, e.g., Michelle Davidson Argyle's Cinders), but they tend to be good...

...if the author puts in the proper amount of time, energy, and possibly money.

I think there's a strong temptation these days to hop too quickly into the self-publishing route. I know I've thought about it, and I'm sure I'm not alone. There can be several factors involved in not having a book accepted by an agent or an editor that have nothing to do with the quality of the work: it's not the right time; the market's already flooded with similar stories; there's no market for similar stories; the agent/editor was in a bad mood that day; it got lost in the slush pile; etc. But, we all know that sometimes it IS the quality of the work that's the problem.

For many of us, we go back to the drawing board, edit, slash, burn, revise, repeat.

Some, though, may go the self-publishing route.

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad option. It's hard to get a break in this industry, we all know. But with self-publishing comes heavy responsibility to make sure that your book can attempt to stand among the more traditionally-published books.

Taking that book that never sold and publishing it as-is on CreateSpace is not the way to go. And just because you're best friend/spouse/neighbor/mother/sibling/cat think it's the best story ever written doesn't mean the general public—a.k.a. those people who don't know you from the annoying neighbor who doesn't clean up after his/her dog—will agree.

So, what needs to happen in the route of self-publishing? Here are my top three recommendations.

First, good critique partners. I suggest people you don't know in the real world, i.e., people who won't be afraid to tell you the truth. All of my critique partners, I've met online through blogging, and with most of them I don't even discuss my personal life. It's all about the words. Keep the relationship professional and potentially brutal. It's the best way to get honest opinions. They should spot technical and factual errors, comment on awkward phrasing, and tell you when the pace slows, when they're bored, or when you've strayed too much from your original story. Take those opinions and edit, slash, burn, revise, repeat.

Second, after you've ripped and shredded—which you might think you did before querying, but, hell, do it again! what could it hurt—hire a professional editor. You may think you know grammar, but this professional, if properly doing his/her job, will make you question how you managed to pass elementary English. This editor should have strong opinions on the Oxford comma (either pro or con, doesn't matter, as long as it's a strong opinion—and here's mine) and a sharp eye. S/he should not only cover your manuscript in so much red ink that it makes your HS English teacher blush, but this person should also once again be reading for factual and technical errors in the content. An editor that only edits for commas and typos isn't worth the money, unless you specify (and, dear God, why would you?) that that's all you want. A good professional editor is worth his/her weight in gold nuggets, so be prepared to shell out accordingly. In the end, it's worth it.

Finally, don't let your 12 year old design your cover. You may firmly believe in his/her talent, as do your spouse and the 7th grade art teacher, but, again, the rest of the world is full of brutal cynics like me who will take one look at the cover and decide never to read the book. Paying for a professional artist who has experience in cover design is worth the money. Don't think you can cut costs on this just because your brother's best friend's ex-girlfriend's roommate had a minor in art in college ten years ago. Just pay the cost.

Do you have any experiences in self-publishing? What do you think of the self-publishing option these days? Have you ever considered it? Would you?

Never Truly Gone - Pt. 2

If you saw last Monday's post, you know that I've been working on this multimedia, interactive story for my writing class for the past two weeks. Yesterday I blogged about the process of creating the presentation. Today, I'd like to tell you about the story itself.

We were inspired by this news article in which a father was seeking his daughter. He published the photo in the local news paper, only to find out later that she was actually in the picture. Crazy, huh?

So, after my sick mind created the puzzle board, my partner got to work making the figures. They were designed form 18guage jewelry wire, and then had clay heads, hands, and feet. The one to the right shows what they looked like pre-humanizing cray.













He also built the sets from cardboard. You can see some of the corrugated edges in pictures we used for the puzzle pieces.

Here are the pictures we used. The first two and the last two as I post them here did not move, but the 11 in between could be put in any intermediate position.

This one had dialogue bubbles of nonsense screaming coming from the top two windows.

*sigh*

Mother: You're way to over protective. I never paid enough attention to her. I was too hard on her. You were too easy on her. She always resented my looks. / Father: She never thought you cared. Maybe you should have pair a little more attention t her. I tried to protect her the best I could. I could have done more.

Father: No. / Boy: Why can't I go? / Mother: We've already lost one child. We're not gonna lose you, too.

Mom: I don't know if your sister's coming back.

Laika feels ready to go home.

Cops: "Tell us again what your daughter looks like."

Boy: If it weren't for you, she never would have left.

Look to the left of the mother's flip, and by the tree you will see our runaway.

This was a fun project. I'm glad I got to participate in it. And as much as I complained (which the people I know personally had to bear with) and as much of my own money as I spent (which, all things considered, wasn't that much), no matter what I had fun, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do it. Hope you enjoyed it, too.

Thanks again to Boxcar Books for letting us hang our project there. It's gone now, but if you're in the area, be sure to stop by. It's a great public service/bookstore :)

Never Truly Gone

Okay, yes, I have disappeared for weeks. I admit it. I've been writing like a madwoman for weeks. "Wait," you say. "Your NaNo Count is quite low, and you're more than a week behind schedule." To which I say, "Yes. That's true. Remember that writing class I'm taking?"

Ah, yes.

The end of the semester is approaching, and so the due date my writing portfolio is growing near. We have one critique TODAY and another the week after Thanksgiving break (Dec 1 and 3).

Since I have a critique today, though, what am I doing blogging? Should I be writing/editing up to the last minute?

Well, today's critique is a bit different, and now that it's more or less finished, I'm excited to share it with you. We've had to write three stories for this class: two traditional, and one not-so-traditional. In fact, not at all traditional. Our third story was:

• group written
• multimedia
• interactive
• with an installation component

I took it to Boxcar Books on Sunday at 2pm for the final installation. It will be there until Tuesday evening, when I will return to Boxcar for the NaNoWriMo write-in from 6-9pm. If you're in or around Bloomington, IN, consider this my invitation to check it out.

So, today I thought I would share some photos from my portion of the process. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll blog more about the story itself.

Here's a picture of our project before I took it to be installed on Sunday.

Remember those tiles games you used to play as a kid? Move each square one at a time until the picture comes out correctly? Well, that's the inspiration for this, except there's no "solution". Eleven of the tiles can be moved in any order to change the arch of the story.

Here comes the mathy-side of my brain. How on earth did we do this? Well, first I made tiles:

Each of these tiles was comprised of 3 6x6in squares of foam board. The middle piece was glued 1/2in up and to the right of the other two pieces to create this simple "tongue and groove" system. You can see how they each fit together.

Admittedly, I shaved a little off of the edge of each tongue so the groove would be wider in case my measurements were off (and let's just say precision is not my specialty). I also squeezed the foam tongues so they would be slightly thinner than the grooves for easy sliding.

Then I had a problem. If they slide easily, and this is hung on a wall, if a middle or bottom slot is left open, won't the other pieces just slip down? Well, to prevent this, I got a 2x2ft piece of steel

and lined the back of each tile with magnets.

Each piece now stays where the reader leaves it.

I also had to make a tongue-and-groove system for the frame, which is hidden by the dark wood frame. Outside of the foam board "frame" are 3/4x3/4in pieces of wood through which we could nail the dark wood frame.

Yup, it took a while, to say the least, but it was kind of fun to use both halves of my brain for this project.

Don't forget to drop by later this week for pictures from the development of the action shots, the story, and discussion of the story itself.

Back from... Somewhere

Look at me, hosting my 100 Followers #contest, and then I disappear for days.  Bad Rosie!

Welcome to my newer followers!  Thanks for coming by to check out the blog.  And a big thank you to my old followers for staying interested and putting up with my time-lapses :/

Don't forget! You have until Friday to enter!

********
It's been a difficult week, and I'm not sure where it went, to be honest.  I remember Tuesday, and then all of a sudden it was Saturday.  I think I must have hit a temporal flux somewhere along the line.

My sincerest apologies, folks.  Here I am, attempting to rejoin regular blogging society.

Update: the write-up from my interview... well, it happened.  I turned it in on Wednesday.  After we'd passed them back, during the course of discussion I realized I hadn't entirely followed the directions of the assignment.  Ack!  Plus I didn't like the characterization (though there's very little one can do in 400 words), and many other things about it.  I suppose as writers, we're always highly self-critical, right?

On Friday, I was chatting with another student from the class outside the building when our instructor came up.  She started chatting with us, talking about how much she loved everyone's story from class so much, and that she planned to read a few during class.  Well, she started with *mine*.  Dumbstruck = me!  She had a lot of great things to say about it, including that, with some minor tweaks, I could get it published. 

Say what???

Oh, so giddy am I.  Later that day, I got a lovely compliment from someone in my critique group, too.  Since I wasn't feeling well, the two of those things really lifted my spirits and made my day so much better.

Otherwise, my last three days have been spent in a haze from which I am only beginning to recover.  While I've gotten some writing done, I'm terrified as to the quality I will find when I go back to edit it.  But the positive comments from this week also make me feel a bit more confident about what I'll find.  Editing will be necessary (when is it ever not??), but maybe it won't be quite as bad.

It all got me thinking about the advice and criticism we all crave.  For months, since joining the online blogosphere of the writing world, I've desperately wanted hard-nailed constructive criticism.  And I've gotten it in many forms.  Each time I've welcomed it (mostly) openly, and appreciated each piece.  In my desire for the constructive to improve my craft, I think I lost sight of the need for positive reinforcement and how much that's necessary as well.  While I feel a little head-swelly from Friday's compliments, I also remembered that, yeah, it's good to hear that people like my work.  There's only so much self-flagellation a girl can take without caring for her wounds, too, right? Or eventually it gets to be too much and she has to stop.

So, hurrah for the positive!

And here, I need to send a out a quick thanks to those who have given me the most positive feedback along the way and made me feel like I can really do this: Jose, Maria, Catalina, Nazarea, Carol, Auzy, Astra, and the rest of my crit group.  You're all awesome!  Thank you :)

What's some praise you've received recently?  Publication of a small/big work?  Partial/full request?  A friend saying how much they enjoy reading your chapters?

PS—I've recently received a few awards, too.  Yea for more praise!  I'll be posting them over the next couple of days.

The Weekend Calls

This is officially my last weekend of summer before classes begin on Monday.  Many of our friends have returned, and so people are excited to get together before the grind starts in earnest.

In other news, I still have no good formula for balance.  I'm working on it.  Google Reader is helping, but it feels so impersonal without the cool layouts.

What else?  Oh!  My totally awesomely amazing friend Rory, who you may remember from the wedding we were in a few weeks ago, sent me a page from her Vanity Fair.  While we were waiting to have our hair and makeup done, she and I flipped through a couple of magazines, chatting about this and that.  She was in mid-sentence, but my enthusiasm got the better of me, and I twisted the magazine around to show her an ad and said, "This looks exactly like one of my characters."  Then, distracted by, oh, the WEDDING, I forgot about it until I got home.  When I tried to find a picture of the same woman online, it was obviously impossible since I didn't know her name or even the ad she was in, only that it was in the Vanity Fair with Lady Gaga on the cover.  In a moment of desperation, I emailed Rory and asked her to mail me the picture.  And she did!!  Thank you, Rory! Rawr! :)

PS—Having the ad in hand doesn't make it any easier to find it online to share with you.  If you care, it's from the Lady Gaga issue.  It's a Banana Republic ad on the left-hand page.  The woman in the ad is holding a black umbrella and is wearing a gray sweater and pink blouse.  She's a beautiful redhead with freckles and blue eyes. If you find an electronic copy of the ad, PLEASE let me know.  I keep my pictures together in a file on my computer for when I'm not at home, and I don't know when I'll be able to use a scanner next.

In other writing-related happenings, I recently joined an online critique group and it's awesome.  I've not only gotten some fabulous feedback, but I've had a chance to review other people's work and learn from their positives and negatives.  The folks are great, balancing the critiques with the good and the needs-improving.  Luck is what I can attribute to it.

One of the "events" from the group is finishing our word-count goals by the end of September.  This should prove interesting.  I have the original MS, which is close to 150K, but I'm changing a few things in the plot and rearranging certain events, and hoping to end up around 90-100K before more editing and cutting.  I'm currently at 34K, but since I'm reusing some of the old MS, I do have less than 66K to go in a month.  I'm thinking about adding a ticker to the sidebar, but I'm not sure where to get one.  Any suggestions?

How about you?  Any great writing news to share?

Return to the Old Life?

My real job started again today.  Well, actually, it never technically stopped.  I just stopped.  That's the beauty of freelance work, right?  If you don't do, it just doesn't get done.  I've promised my boss it will, and it will, just not by the time classes start on, er, Monday.

I suspect, due to a rush job that needs to be completed in the next 6-7 weeks, I won't be here quite as much.  It makes me very sad to admit this because it also means I won't have as much time for my own writing.  And while I'm taking a creative writing class, I don't imagine it will affect my work for NaNoWriMo this year.

I've been saying it all summer, but I need to prioritize.  I have a job with a definite deadline, and another one with a loose deadline.  I'm training a new employee at the publisher today and tomorrow, and I'll be her go-to person when she has questions.  Plus classes.  Plus writing.  Plus husband.  Plus laundry and cleaning and cooking and, oh, I should probably start going to the gym again. 

But not necessarily in that order.

In addition to my entire life that needs order and structure, I think my writing life does, too.  At the moment, I'm trying to follow too many blogs (and I love most of them and don't want to give them up!), have my own blog which I have already let slip over the past couple of days, working on helping out the folks in my new online critique group, putting my work over there, and, oh yeah, keeping up with my editing and planning for NaNoWriMo.  *whew*  Again, not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, for the past couple of weeks, other tasks from this list have trumped my own writing, and I'm not thrilled about this.

Oh, and no where in there did I mention reading.  I'm currently reading a memoir—Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bordain—an MG—Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt—and Stephen King's On Writing is calling to me.  Oh, and a novel I won on GoodReads—No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo—and the novel I won from a FB contest—The Handbook for Lightening Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone.  And The Possessed by Elif Batuman, which I've been yearning to read for months and recently got my hands on.  Ack!

So, my attempt to organize and prioritize continues.  I think in addition to setting a minimum number of hours to work each day on the editing side, plus assuming I might do some school work here and there :) I'm going to set myself weekly goals for reading and writing.  Hopefully this will take the daily pressure off if I need to spend more time on my German, or the formatting on my editing job isn't working and takes twice as long as it should.  The writing will happen—it always does—but motivation to edit the text afterward tends to be elusive, and that's what needs to happen most right now.

Okay, ramble over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduling blogging.

How do you prioritize your life?  How do you fit writing into your (presumably) already hectic schedule?

PS—If you're doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as your buddy.  I'm Rosie-C over there :)

When In Doubt, Throw Everything Out and Start Over

Whew!

WriteOnCon was an intense ride.  I learned so much in such a short period (3 days!).  Top that off with the final for my intensive summer class (as of Thursday I am officially class-free for two weeks!), and my already slushy mind simply melted into sticky sugar water.  I'm still trying to piece everything together and make sense of it.

One post (series) that impacted me from the conference was from agent Weronika Janczuk (and if I didn't love her from her posts, I would because her name is Polish!) on pacing and plotting—click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3.  I focused on her descriptions of plot arcs, what should happen in the first 1/4, the middle 1/2, and the last 1/4 of the novel, how to build tension, etc., etc., and applied it to my current painful revisions of WiP #1.

I'm not willing to admit that my first round for WiP #1 didn't somewhat conform to the formula set forth in these posts.  It did.  But I believe it can be better.  Scratch that.  While it does conform to the increasing tension and tight climax in the last 10%, it's a mediocre story at best, and a complete overhaul will help it shine.

Add to Weronika's posts this vlog by author Kimberly Derting.  I don't write YA thriller/suspense, but that doesn't mean there aren't ample lessons in this vlog on how to build suspense that can be applied to any genre.  As I contemplated Kimberly's words with Weronika's echoing in my sugary mind, ideas of suspense-building mingled with my pondering of story arcs, and I realized, huh, this could be more suspenseful.

My story is told in 1st person (for now).  In the "original" story, my MC finds out some key information less than halfway through the story.  I realized I could increase the suspense by delaying her discovery.  I've been outlining for a couple of days now a complete overhaul of the story, trying to put the events in a proper order to delay discovery, continually increase the tension, and raise the stakes in the climax.

Finally, I'd like to throw into the mix this post from Helen Ginger's post on the Blood Red Pencil—Writers are Hookers.  Beyond the inevitable giggle this invokes in me (yeah, even a few days later), she makes a beautiful point about where the story (and each scene) needs to begin.  After reviewing my first 4-6 chapters for over a month now, I'm almost willing to throw out the first two chapters.  They are mostly background information, and I know that.  I hesitate because I feel like it's important, but we all know that this information can be incorporated later.  And some of it has been moved through recent, pre-overhaul revisions, meaning that leaving it upfront is redundant.

To risk getting a little weepy, part of my hesitation in the complete overhaul is strongly personal.  This story began as a part of my recovery process after my father passed away.  While a strong part of me yearns to be professional and know what needs to get slashed and burnt to make this puppy publishable, deep down I want to leave it, considering it a sacred tribute to my dad.  It's a little silly—my father's nowhere to be seen in the entire story—but that doesn't stop the emotional connection and the need to protect my baby from the red-line.

What I've decided, based on this final post by Jennifer Hubbard, is that I don't have to throw anything away.  (Okay, I knew that, but it's nice to have the reinforcement.)  I can keep the sacred version of my story, the one that makes me think of my struggle and my progress in recovery, and I don't have to share it with anyone but myself.  I can love it and baby it and wrap it in a huge security blanket and save it from the big, bad publishing world forever.  But I can also take the bones, the deep structure (Snicker, GB linguistics out there! Snicker!), the character histories, etc., and weave them together with this new and improved baby, one that I'm willing to raise and help mature into an undeniable force to be reckoned with in the brutal publishing industry.  I'll teach it not to take criticism personally—my baby could never learn that.  I'll mold it into a giant who will box its way onto the desk of an agent, causing said agent to swoon.  After rebandaging its fearsome hands, stopping the bloody nose and tending to its swollen lip, it will be ready to move from the agent's desk to that of the publishers, who will also love and adore it...

Man, am I getting ahead of myself!  I haven't done anything more than work on the outline.  I need to stop daydreaming and get to work.


How do you feel when you have to start over?  The more seasoned writers out there must not do this as often, but I know we have all done it at one point or another.  Have you ever coddled something despite its disrepair?  How long did it take you to admit that some work had to move permanently onto the shelf?

A Little Advice?

Hello, cyber friends.  I need your advice.

One of my critical readers mentioned that she finds my alternate reality a little difficult to swallow.  That's fair.  The problem is how to explain it.

You see, this alternate reality takes place in the "modern" US, but it's not so modern.  I've got 1000 years of history—not all of which has to be explained, I would say, or not up front—of royal history going back to the days of King Arthur, and a schism in the British royal family that eventually leads to one half taking over in the "new colonies".  I'm not changing a whole lot of the real history (the civil war is pretty feasible; the revolution against the monarchy), but I have to somehow weave this rather huge and important fact into the first couple of chapters.

So, the question is, do I:

A. Throw in general expository information (*yawn*)?

B. Have my main character studying for an exam and reading a textbook (this is where the reader puts down the book or just sets it on fire)?

C. Let my main character et al have a study session for said exam (icky expository dialogue!)?

D. Dear spirits on high, please tell me you have some better suggestions for me?

Thank you for reading this choose your own adventure post.  If you selected A, please turn to page 52.  If you selected B, please turn to page 124.  If you selected C, please shut your computer and never query again.  If you selected D, THANK YOU!

My Personal Goat Goddess

Dear Laura,
Thank you so much for your initial critique of #1 in my Anabelle series.  Your comments are invaluable, even though you considered them vague.

Love, Rosie

The Highlights:

1) Title (oh, dear God, yes!  This MUUUUST be changed!)

2) more sensible setting

3) more letters (?)

4) flesh out what makes the world different (magic, language) earlier in the story

5) more character development of the main 2
     a) give Anabelle more flaws

Things I need to work out in relation to above:

1) This has already been a struggle.  But, I've also been slacking on it.  I needed the kick in the ass on this one.

2) Write my alternative history of the US (abbreviated, of course).

3) I'm going to have to work out if and where I can add more letters, or portions of them.  And unfortunately I'm not terribly poetic personally, though Marcus is.  I need to really think through some of the ways he would write more of the later ones.

4) Write:
     a) my abbreviated history of the royal family (although, how abbreviated can it be to cover 1000 years?)
     b) my handbook on their religion.  That will also take some work.

5) Yeah, Anabelle needs to be a bit more believable.  I guess I need to work out the balance of how to give her more flaws while she remains the true narrator.  She's a bit stubborn, and I don't think she'll want to admit to her own issues.

Wait, who's in control here?  Me, or her? .......... I suppose it depends on the weather that day.

I also need to find the balance between developing Marcus more and still maintaining some of Anabelle's innocence and idealization of him.  That's a fine line to walk.


The Plan:
1) Write my tweaked US history, my royal family history, and my guide to all things spirit-related.


2) Write more full letters between them.  Even if they never make it into the story, it'll be good for me.


3) Maybe write the story from Marcus's perspective (yeah, I'm stealing this idea from Stephenie Meyers, I'll admit).


4) Brainstorm a better title already!!!

5) I think I probably need a complete overhaul of Chaps 1-7.  And I am NOT allowed to do this until I have accomplished 1-4 above!!!  That will be the hardest part, I think.

6)  And I'm not allowed to even think about starting Zoe's diary!  That's going to be really hard....


Wish me luck!  

And thanks again to Laura.  I'm so glad to know you, and very lucky that you married my friend.  I can't wait for the rest of your comments.