Starting Again From Scratch (Almost)

So this afternoon I typed the first paragraph of my new linked short-story collection with a working title of “Strong. Southern. Women.” (periods are intentional) The story is about a widow who was left to raise three young daughters on her own. Each of the twenty stories currently planned is about how the girls grow up, leave home, and (because each has an individual fatal flaw) fall from grace, destroying their lives–they think. One goes to white-collar prison. One descends into opioid addiction. And one winds up in a battered women’s shelter with her young son.

But their mother, who is both the one who held them together and who instilled the seeds of their self-destruction, gives them space, after they make the hard decision to reorder their lives, to grow, to gather up the pieces, and to get back on their feet. It’s going to be Southern Gothic again, but much more inspirational and happy-ending than Hurricane Baby.

I have an outline of all the stories and the backstory, and I’ve so far finally gotten started. We will see where this writing journey takes me. Wish me well!

By The Numbers

So today is going to be a numbers post about how trying to find a publisher is going. These numbers are after being on submission for about a month and a half–I sent the first queries out on September 7.

Total queries to publishing companies sent–33

Rejections–4

Number of queries through Submittable–14

Number of queries through QueryManager–1

Number of contests entered–10

Number of publishers I still plan to send to–14

Queries to agents–0

By the time I send out to everybody on my list, it will have been on submission for a year.

I am trying to give this book its best chance to get published I can. That’s why I’m sending it far and wide within the parameters I mentioned in an earlier post. No use in sending it to people who don’t publish what I’ve got. So we will see where things go from here.

Wish me well. Happy writing!

Query Letters

As i said last week, I am pitching Hurricane Baby to independent presses, and I got another full request last week! I thought today I would share my query letter and see if looking at what I have done in it might help other writers craft their queries as well. About half of the presses I have sent to, I went ahead and sent full manuscripts to because they called for them. But I think this query may help answer questions about how to put one together. Mine is going to read differently than yours because I write like I write, and you write like you write. But here it is, with the final paragraph with contact information removed:

Hurricane Baby: Stories (69,820 words) is the first fictional treatment of Hurricane Katrina to approach its subject–the suffering of those who endured the hurricane and its aftermath–through a trauma-focused lens. The characters in this short-story collection face extreme circumstances with only their inner resources to count on–and in many cases. that proves to not be enough to deal with the mental challenges of living through a weather event of this magnitude. Although many of the characters do not experience the typical physical losses of family members or property, they persist in living lives that have become psychological nightmares.

Wendy Magnum of Hattiesburg, Mississippi suffers guilt and remorse after betraying her husband, Ray. by having an intimate encounter with Judd McKay, a friend Ray had trusted to help protect his family during the storm. Tommy Hebert turns to alcohol to help him handle the trauma of what he saw aiding in search-and-rescue in Metairie, Louisiana. Mike Seabrook’s relationships with his God and his wife, Dinah, are sorely tested after he loses a patient in his emergency room; he responds by quitting his nursing job and working in hurricane relief while attempting to rebuild both his home in Slidell, Louisiana and his faith. James and Lori King suffer dual devastating losses –Lori goes into premature labor as a result of the storm, and James discovers on his return to their home in Kenner, Louisiana that his best friend died trying to protect the Kings’ home from looters.

I currently work as a reporter for the Mississippi Center for investigative Reporting, covering stories on mental health, mental health advocacy, and mental health education. My fiction has appeared in China Grove Press, The Esthetic Apostle, and Swamp Ape Review, among others, including the Running Wild Press Novella anthology in 2019 with the story Looking for Home. In 2021, I graduated with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Mississippi University for Women. A full-length play based on an early version of Hurricane Baby won an award from the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival in 2010 and is slated to be produced by Mississippi Repertory Theatre in 2023.  I have a social media presence of WordPress, Facebook. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. and Pinterest, for a total of about 2,000 followers.

The stories’ common themes touch on the fragility of morality in a life-or-death situation, the impossibility of chasing normalcy for the psyche after severe trauma, and the reverberations of the characters’ choices on how to deal with their trauma that go far beyond mere survival of the immediate storm. I hope these themes resonate with you as they should other readers who are interested in the study of trauma, the effects of climate change on our communities, and the importance of memorializing the past in a way that honors and enlarges it, all told in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Sincerely,

Julie Whitehead

Hope this helps!

Indie Publishing

So I have been scouting out small presses, university presses, and independent publishers for Hurricane Baby: Stories. You know what? The US has LOTS of them–and many take submissions directly from authors without need for an agent. So what criteria am I using in selecting the people I send my manuscript to?

Number 1) I am looking for established presses. Presses that have been around for a while. Presses that know what they are doing. Presses that have a process for what they do. I do not want a press that is a flying by the seat of its pants publishing my work. So I look at the history and mission of the press.

Number 2) I am looking for someone who is buying what I am selling. Not many presses deal in short-story collections. I am looking for information that says explicitly that they publish short-story collections.

Number 3) I am looking at presses that are located in my geographic area. Since I write Southern stories and characters, I look for Southern presses. I have sent to a few presses that are located outside of the American South, but not many. I want someone who can read in a Southern accent because that’s how I write.

Number 4) I look at presses that deal only in electric submissions. A few presses and prizes out there still require sending a paper copy of the manuscript. I judge them for this–it means, quite frankly, that they aren’t evolving with the times. It’s the 21st-century. Electronic submission is where it’s at.

Number 5) I am not ruling out presses that may require a submission fee, especially for contests. Lots of people won’t pay those fees out of principle, citing that the money is supposed to flow to the writer, not the press. I’m not doing it often, and there is a limit to what I plan to spend. But let’s not act like writers have never spent money to send off their manuscripts– postage and printing costs for sending in a finished paper manuscript was expensive, too.

Number 6) If I’m really on the fence about a particular publishing house, I look for something intangible that says, “We take your work seriously.” One press I have really been considering published two books by a professor of mine–but I just don’t like the tone of their website. I want a press that means business–in every sense of the word. So I’m not sending there.

Bottom line–publishing is a business. And I want a press that has an established track record publishing what I am offering that ultimately understands my work and has the means and the vision to do so. So far, so good. Thanks for reading!

Professional Milestone

I experienced an important professional milestone this week—I got my first rejection of Hurricane Baby: Stories on Friday.

Why do I phrase it that way? Let me explain.

The rejection was from the same group that included my novella, Looking For Home, in their 2018 novella anthology. I enjoyed working with them and felt like they should get a crack at this project as well as other presses that I have not worked with before. I pitched it to them as a novel-in-stories (which may be a misnomer for this project, but I thought it was worth a try). They sent a very nice note saying it wasn’t a fit for them and wishing me the best of luck with it.

So what did I do?

I got back online and found another strong, independent press to send the manuscript to, checked over my list of further places I want to send it as they open up for submissions, and kept typing away at whatever I wanted to work on.

Back when I was pitching my first novel to New York publishers in 2006 (when there were more than the Big Five), I was just that sanguine about those rejections, too. But as the rejections kept coming, I sank into a depression. At first I was saying, “I’ve been rejected by X of the finest publishing houses in New York.” But as the time wore on, I started to seriously doubt myself and my work.

I’m not doing that this time.

I have set a date for when I will stop sending it out. I am the only one that knows that date. And I have a plan for what I will do if everyone I have already sent to and plan to send to rejects it. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that rejection letters are not grades. The world will not end every time I receive a rejection. I need to act with grace and humility for my own sanity. Grace for myself and humility about my work.

One of my MFA mentors said one time in class “Not everyone gets an agent and a New York publisher.” I have to trust that the work will find its audience when the time is right and the audience is ready.

Different writers handle rejection differently. One of my MFA mates sends her work to two more outlets every time she gets a rejection. Others delete the rejection from their email and never think about it again. Others say they wallpaper their office with their rejections. Still others shoot for 100 rejections in a year—and say that if they experience only a five percent acceptance rate, that’s five places their work appears during that year.

The journey doesn’t end with one rejection. That’s the takeaway. 

Gutsy

I did something kind of brave last week.

I was trying to encourage a friend of mine to apply for a job/internship. She was scared because she knew how she would feel if turned down. So I just talked with her for a bit about how all of writing is scary and the fact that she had done cold interviews and gotten stories done was proof of how brave he was and to be brave about this, too.

Don’t know if she’s done the application yet or not. But I took the advice to heart as well.

I submitted my fiction story “Sow The Wind” to the Best American Short Stories volume for next year. It published in January 2022 with Swamp Ape Review. https://www.swampapereview.com/sow-the-wind

“Sow The Wind” is I think the best short fiction story I’ve ever written. The last scene came to me very vividly, and then I had to work backwards and figure out how to get to that last scene. Then I had to make sure I had the scenes in the right order. Swamp Ape Review is the first place I sent it, and they accepted it very quickly. So that tells me it had the effect I wanted it to and all.

All a story needs to have to apply to Best American Short Stories is to be 1) published in the last calendar year 2) in English 3) by an author living in the United States. It’s a big deal to be included. And I think the story stands up well as a story and I wanted to try this venue. So I nominated myself over email since it was an online publication.

All they can do is say no. 🙂 And I have just as good a chance that the answer might be yes. So I took the risk.

What’s a risk you want to take with your writing career? Take it. All they can do is say no.

Work Vs. Play

So here’s an eternal question for you–how to balance the day job and the creative life.

I am finding that I am too tired from the day job to write creatively during the week.

I try to reserve my weekends for family. Especially my Sundays. I try to rest during the weekend and recharge.

But if I don’t write creatively on a regular basis, my mood goes south.

I don’t quite know what to do.

I’ve been avoiding my nonfiction project for about two weeks now: I spent yesterday with Bob going Christmas shopping and usually try to reserve my Sundays for rest and church.

But I know I don’t need to go very long without working on a creative project because a week’s delay turns into two weeks, then three, then a month, then before I know it, the New Year will be here, and I will be grumpy that I didn’t accomplish much creatively.

But I also know I need to make time for what is important to me. My family is important. My day job is important to me. Rest and recharging are essential as well. But somewhere I need to find the wherewithal to write.

I need to think on this and restructure my week somehow.

Again, an eternal question. I need to remember why I found work and why my writing is important to me as well. I will solve it. I just need to think harder about it instead of just letting time slip through my fingers.

Facts About Planning to Write

I struggle with a particular problem whenever I start a new project–planning vs. writing.

Planning sounds good, right? We plan for trips, plan for our day, plan for retirement. Why is “planning to write” so deadly to some writers?

Because “planning” isn’t actually writing–and therein lies the rub.

I am by nature a planner. I planned out all the classes I would take for my MFA before I even embarked on the six years it took for me to finish my degree. I plan meals, workdays, life events. I don’t deal very much in serendipity–just seeing what happens when I don’t follow a plan.

But planning to write is not the same thing as actually writing. You can plan out what you want to write and how you’re going to write and when you are going to write, but when you’re done–what have you accomplished to the goal of writing your book (or article or term paper or life story)?

Nothing.

Whereas, if you just sit down with a blank page and start typing, that same amount of time planning could have been spent generating a page of prose (or poetry, whatever your flex is) however imperfect it might look to a trained eye.

That’s where I am right now with my nonfiction project. I have found myself reading the manuscript I already have and inserting scenes I PLAN to write to go in it. This tendency, along with my realization that I’m going to have to find a new entryway into my story since I won’t have the previous 200+ pages of exposition/description/action I now have in the work, I find myself nine days into October with nothing new actually written. And that’s not good.

How to get over it? For me, no other way works except jumping into the cold water of my manuscript and swimming for my life. If I just stick my toe in the manuscript, I will get scared and never get into it and make it all it can be.

So today I will write instead of plan. It’s the only way anything ever gets done. Write today.

Next Stage

So all of the writing contests that I’ve already entered closed on September 30. Some have already undertaken a review of my manuscript, some will probably start reviewing on Monday, and others may not get to it for a long time. So what am I going to do in the meantime?

I’ll get busy on something else.

Waiting around for publishers/agents to get back to you is rough. You check your email every day. several times a day, to see if you’ve heard from anyone. Or you check QueryTracker and Submittable multiple times a day. Or you resist the urge to write follow-up emails asking if they received the manuscript.

Keep resisting. No one wants to be pestered. What you need to do is keep writing. On something else.

This method works on several levels–1) You distract your mind from the constant drumbeat of “I haven’t heard anything yet; what is taking so long?” 2) You have a fresh store of enthusiasm for the new project that may have been simmering in your mind for a while now. 3) You actually accomplish something in the waiting period, besides driving yourself crazy over the finished project.

Am I done with Hurricane Baby? Maybe not. I have two people who agreed to read Hurricane Baby but said they couldn’t do it right then when I was looking for feedback for these contests. So one has gotten back in touch, and I sent the manuscript to him just for kicks. Another lady from my summer workshop had agreed to swap manuscripts with me but didn’t think she would have a complete draft until December. So I will get back in touch with her then and see if she is ready.

Why am I doing that? If Hurricane Baby isn’t picked up in its current form, having another batch of feedback by the first of next year will enable me to revise again to get ready to enter another string of contests that open in the first three months of the year. Remember: writing is a long game. Persistence pays off.

So I have started another project in the waiting. I will keep writing here weekly to discuss different craft ideas, to update you on Hurricane Baby’s progress, and maybe to discuss the new project. We will see. But I hope you hang around for more ideas, insights, and if-not-this-then-that about the writing life. Stay tuned.

Asking For Help

I recently sent Hurricane Baby as an entry in to an open call for manuscripts and one of the items requested in the call was a list of published authors who might support the book’s publication with a book blurb. I thought it was awfully early in the process to be asking that question, but I sat down and thought: whom should I ask?

It’s a question that can come up at any point at the manuscript selling/publishing process, and it’s a way for the publisher or press to get an answer to another question about you as a writer–who do you know that supports your work so unreservedly that they would be willing to lend their name to its publication?

I immediately had an answer to the question because I had workshopped and read parts of Hurricane Baby in my MFA program, and I emailed three of my instructors to ask if they would be willing for me to put their names down for that list. Each one has their own relationships with the writing community and have published books in their respective fields, and each one is intimately familiar with my work due to having served on the thesis committee for my degree. I also wrote down a couple of other names in case any one of those three felt they could not help me support the book.

It’s a good idea to develop relationships throughout your literary community (whoever might be included in that catch-all term) because so much of this business depends on your ability to form good relationships. You need to be able to form relationships with those editing your work. reading your work, and marketing your work. You need to be able to trust that every part of your team wants the same thing you do–for your work to succeed.

But we writers are often a crochety lot. We have assorted hangups, opinions, and neuroses about our work and about other people’s work. (Roxane Gay is famous for cultivating nemeses as well as supporters). It can often feel impossible to communicate with other writers–we may feel left out of the club for any number of reasons. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying to have relationships because every writer needs a supportive community of other writers–be they mentors, classmates, internet buddies. or simply friendly faces in your particular crowd.

How did I go about asking? I emailed all three and simply explained what the press wanted, and would they be willing for me to list their names as possible blurbers for the work? Within forty-eight hours, each one had returned an email expressing their support. One even said he appreciated being asked! So that was good. I will also email the other three on my list who are a little less familiar with the story to see if they could also be resources if when the time comes for blurbs, any one of those three had to back out.

Other more established writers may have different ideas about asking for support. But my main message is this–it is easier to ask people you already have relationships with to support you than to try to invite people you barely know into your fold. Just my two-cents worth.