Tag: Hurricane Baby

Professional Jealousy

I had kind of a bad week the week before last as far as how I felt about my writing. One author in a writers’ group I am in posted the story behind her book deal. I am trying to be charitable and think that she was just posting encouragement. She talked about how long she had been writing in her spare time and how she’d always wanted to write a book, and she got laid off at her job. She decided to take the plunge and try to do a book on a volunteer passion project of hers.

She consulted with another person in this writers’ group, and together they crafted a nonfiction book proposal. Within a month, she had a literary agent. Within six months, she sold the book at auction for a six-figure advance to a Big Five publisher. She hasn’t even written the book yet; she asked for encouragement going forward.

I am trying so hard to be joyful for her and not think of myself.

But it’s so hard to.

I have been kicking Hurricane Baby around for almost twenty years. I got an agent fairly rapidly, and I tried the big New York presses first. No dice. Now I have refined it several times over and am trying to work with the small presses. So far the query letter got some hits, but I’ve collected polite rejections after that. I still have about twenty possibilities for it, but I’m starting to think that maybe it’s just not going to happen for me–a feeling that reading this story intensified.

But as Anne Lamott says, I am comparing my insides to someone else’s outsides. It probably wasn’t as easy as it seems for this person. On social media, you only see the end result. In this blog, I’m trying to counter the myth of the “overnight success” by being transparent about what this process is like. I believe in telling all like it is. And right now, it’s uncomfortable to sit with the idea that Hurricane Baby might never be all I want it to be.

But all I can do for myself is press forward. And press forward I will. It was hard to pick myself back up and send the book off to yet another press this week. But I did it. And I will wait and see what happens with it. Wish me well. And I will take heart in the fact that I have my own tribe cheering me on, here and elsewhere.

Persist. That the word of the month for me. I hope it can be yours as well.

Confession Time

I am not keeping up with some of my resolutions.

I am not reading very much, and I’m not working on my fiction project, either.

I have just been so tired when I finish work, so I want to do something mindless after work instead of concentrating on reading and writing. I think some of it is a lack of motivation due to the bad weather we’ve had. The forecast is promising to get warmer and warmer as we go throughout February though, so I am looking forward to an improvement on that front.

I think some of the lack of motivation of particularly writing on my fiction project is that I’m still getting rejections on Hurricane Baby with pretty consistent regularity. I went back and checked on a lot of my submissions from September, and many of those are rejections (I think) because I never heard any response back. Many of them say no response after three months is a negative response. :(. So.

That makes 20 rejections thus far.

I’ve not given up hope on Hurricane Baby–I have yet another email ready to go out on February 15 to yet another press. I still have 14 total I plan to send to. But a lack of response to it has dampened my enthusiasm to work on another manuscript.

But (and this is a mindset I am learning to embrace) the sunset of tomorrow is not the end of the world–it’s barely the beginning.

What do I mean by that?

My youngest daughter leaves home for college in August of this year. I have resolved to wait until then to get back into the fiction writing. She will have moved on to her new life at college, and I will have more time during the week to devote to writing, what with the end of going to her school activities and such. And I may need to immerse myself into something new to take my focus off of missing her.

I do plan to continue the blog with updates on Hurricane Baby (especially the play coming up this spring!) and my querying journey. I also plan to write a few craft essays to post here as well. So I’m going to still be writing here, on my other blog projects, etc. I’ve been at this too long to give up altogether.

But the time just may not be right at this particular second. That’s okay. Later is fine. Totally fine. I will keep reading, living, experiencing. That can only enrich my fiction–when the time is right for me to take it back up.

I hope you can stick with me on the journey. Thanks to all who read and write and encourage us writers in our dreams.

Read-Thru

So I didn’t post last night, because I was doing something kind of nerve-wracking.

I sat down and read Hurricane Baby again, all the way through, from start to finish.

It was so gratifying. because the stories held up to scrutiny.

I had wondered if when I read it again, I would discover lots of problems. Continuity problems, poor story construction, tone-deaf dialogue–I was prepared for the worst: that I would see that it really wasn’t in my best interest to publish it.

That’s not what I saw reading it.

Are there places that could be better? Probably. One place in particular I thought I might need to add a scene that is referenced early on but not played out.

Typos? Yep. But not nearly as many as I was afraid of.

But the stories still felt true. I’m sure if someone picks it up, it will need to undergo some revisions. But the stories are there: meaningful, impactful, and oh so human.

That was a good feeling. I wish i could bottle it for when I find myself doubting my skills and talent. Hurricane Baby might not be Great Literature, with capital G and capital L.

But it’s good. And right know, that knowledge is enough.

Update on Numbers

So I decided to look at numbers again for Hurricane Baby’s querying journey–here we go.

Queries submitted: 38

Rejections received: 15

Places still on the list to send to: 10

I did get a lot of rejections over the holidays, but I was expecting that so I am still okay about it 🙂

I am going to send another query this afternoon or tomorrow, to Prairie Schooner Book Prize. More places open up in February, so I have a plan to continue submitting for the rest of the year, just about. And I may find even more to send to. We will see.

Persistence pays off. That’s what I’ve been told. So we will see. Wish me well!

Hurricane Baby the Play Update

I finally got to talk to the artistic director of Mississippi Repertory Theatre, the group that is going to put on Hurricane Baby this spring. We had been missing connecting for a while–we talked once over Facebook, and I had made a few calls trying to catch him at the theater but always missed him. So we finally had a chat.

He had a lot of good ideas about putting the play together–he talked about using news footage of Hurricane Katrina on the projection screen the theater has during scene changes (which there are several). We had a very productive discussion about fees, which is the main reason I wanted to talk to him–some theater companies I won’t name like to nickel-and-dime their playwrights, but he didn’t sound like that type at all.

He told me I would get a royalty for the rights to use the play and I would get a percentage of the tickets as well, which is what I had been told to look for by another theater-friend of mine. He said he would invite me to a rehearsal to see a run-through and get my ideas about costuming, the scenery, the tech rehearsals, etc.

And we closed the discussion with me sending him another play of mine that he said he would be interested in for the next season–it’s set at a suicide hotline, a very simple two-person show that could be used for touring. So we will see what comes of this collaboration with them.

I was very pleased talking to him and hearing about his vision for how to produce it. I look forward to working with them. He talked about doing it in early April, which would be great. I will keep you all updated as to its progress in the next few months. Thanks for reading!

Sketchy Replies

I’ve had a very interesting pattern develop in some of my rejections for Hurricane Baby–three of my six rejections have offered to publish my book in a self-publishing format. They want me to pay them a fee to print my book, edit it, and distribute it.

This kind of offer is sketchy for several reasons.

Each house that has done this advertises themselves as a traditional publishing house. That means if they take you on, they are making a commitment of their own money to the project and therefore, have a vested interest in recouping that investment.

Offering what are essentially vanity press services makes me think that maybe they weren’t on the up-and-up to begin with; maybe they never publish anyone with their own money and don’t pay royalties. It makes me think I dodged a bullet in dealing with them.

They try to make it sweeter by saying I can keep more of the profit off of each book sale under this arrangement. Well, if they have no money invested, they therefore don’t have any motivation to help me sell it; therefore, I am essentially the publisher, and they are simply a printing service. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t be sending it out to other publishers; I’d have already done it myself.

I am pointing these red flags out because so many of us are so desperate to get our work out there. We want to have our voices heard. But book publishing is not a charity endeavor–someone has to make money. I know my book needs someone’s expertise to get into bookstores, to be edited professionally, to be marketed effectively to readers.

Any publisher that offers a service where you pay them for any of these components needs to market themselves as what they are–a printing service for authors prepared to sell their books wholly by themselves. I’m not saying that is wrong–calling yourself a hybrid publisher or a for-fee publisher keeps your intentions aboveboard. To advertise yourself as anything else borders on the predatory. Writers live on hopes and dreams. Sometimes the hopes and dreams overcome our business sense.

All in all, you want someone who will champion your work–not simply collect a fee from you. I will not name the companies here–just warn you to do your due diligence in steering clear of anyone that might have your money flow to themselves instead of the other way around.

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.