Tag: Hurricane Baby

The Triumph of Hope Over Experience

The above is part of a quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde about second marriages. I like to think it applies to writers trying to get their work published as well. We get rejection after rejection, but we keep pressing on, hoping to find that one fit, that place where our words are welcomed and shared with the world.

That leads into my latest update about Hurricane Baby:

Queries sent–69

Rejections-49

Places still considering–20

Places left to send to-2

I got three rejections in a row this week. Dampened my spirits a bit. But not as much as usual.

It’s been on submission now for a year. I will send it to another press on September 30 and yet another on October 1. Then I am going to stop. I will have sent to 71 publishers by then.

I don’t know how many people I will have heard back from by October 1. Not all of them, I’m sure. And I will just wait on the rest.

In the meantime, I will continue sending Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi’s proposal to agents. So far, I have sent to twelve agents and heard back from four, with the waiting period having passed on one other. That’s seven agents still considering it.

I’m not sure I will keep sending it out as long as I have Hurricane Baby. I am sending queries out weekly for it so far and plan to continue until at least the end of the year.

Hope is less fragile that it seems. It’s less a soap bubble and more a spiderweb in my heart at this point. I will continue persisting. And that’s a good thing at this point.

Wishful Thinking? Or Divine Instruction?

I did something this morning that I’m sure most of you will find incredibly silly or misguided or stupid. But I did it, and now I feel like I should share it.

Scripture tells the faithful to put the Lord to the test in our finances–commit to big things in his name, and he will meet us in that commitment and provide.

My church is doing a fundraising campaign. The particulars aren’t important. But today was the pledge day for it. And as clear as day, before the preacher even started talking, I heard God telling me to write on the pledge card that I would give my first book advance to the church.

This thought had never occurred to me before. I didn’t even know it was a pledge day until I got there in the sanctuary and saw the pledge cards.

Not a dollar amount, not a certain percentage of the money I already have, but something that I’ve questioned very much recently if I will ever receive.

I really wrestled with this throughout the service. Was I trying to manipulate God into doing something that wasn’t in his will for me? Was I selfishly asking him to bless my efforts at publication but dressing it up in religious language? Was I looking for glory for myself rather than for him?

Because God looks at the heart. Was I was asking for a miracle to quell my feelings of failure and inadequacy? Was I asking God to do something I wanted badly and just tacking on that I would give the money to the church in an effort to deceive myself about my own motives? Was I evading giving anything at all by hinging my pledge on something so farfetched?

I didn’t get that question answered during service. I just obeyed by writing that on the card and dropping it in the box they asked us to put our cards in.

I caught myself thinking that I’m sure whoever read the card would have a good laugh about what I said. Maybe even tell everyone on staff.

But then I thought: What a testimony it would be if it came true! A testimony not to my work or talent, because that surely hasn’t gotten me very far at this point. But a testimony to God’s power that anything is possible if it brings glory to him.

That’s how I need to think–how can I bring glory to his name. And so that’s what I’m going to do. You read it here first.

Much Encouragement in Writing

I got a lovely note from a contest the other day about Hurricane Baby:

Dear Julie Whitehead,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to fiction,OSU’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize. We were gratified by the number and quality of submissions, all of which were read anonymously and with care, and hope you will be glad to hear that although your collection was not ultimately selected as the winning entry, it was among a group of distinguished semifinalists for the prize. We want to acknowledge the time and effort you put into your work and wish you great luck with it elsewhere. You are of course welcome to try us again in 2024.

OSU being The Ohio State University Press.

So that was wonderfully encouraging.

I finished my light rewrite of Hurricane Baby and have it almost ready to send to the newest batch of reading periods and contests that open up in August and September. I’m going to read it through and make sure it’s what I want to send out, then send it first to the guy that asked me directly to resubmit Hurricane Baby to his press. I hope that bodes well. It’s a nice outlet and I certainly hope his words might be a harbinger of success for it there.

Keep going. Persist. Don’t give up. Those are my watchwords for August 2023.

Revamp

So I have started in earnest on the quick Hurricane Baby rewrite for July. I am working with the last reading Cheryl gave it and finding new ways to ratchet up the tension throughout. I am on story number 12 so far, and finally ran into one of them I’m not sure I can improve on. But I’m going to keep thinking on it to make sure. I am using Cheryl’s notes to work through problem passages that she pointed out that need either rewriting or cutting.

The story I just went through was a good example of what I am doing. In the last rewrite, I realized that each individual story had three impactful scenes in it, a rising tension one, a big climax, and a third scene leading into the next story in that arc. I just went through the story where Cindi leaves Tommy and realized the third scene was really flat. It didn’t have any stakes for Cindi and Tommy; it was just a memory of Cindi’s. So I made the scene have some more meat to it and added to the stakes of the fight between Cindi and Tommy over his drinking.

Another particular one that Cheryl had commented on was a story told from Rosie’s point of view, and Cheryl felt like it was Wendy’s story to tell. It had been originally in Wendy’s POV, but I wanted it to be in Rosie’s so she could have her say about the events in the book as well. But I hadn’t told a story about her in it. On this rewrite, I made the story about their relationship as sisters. I made it have stakes between them instead of just Rosie finding out about Wendy’s relationship with Judd. Hopefully that gives the story more depth and meaning and makes a better case for Rosie as the narrator.

I’m doing that with every story, checking that the number of scenes is right, that the stakes are high, and that each story is told from the right character’s POV. So we will see how it turns out.

Wish me well–I will need to be sending it back out soon after July to the new places I found to submit to. Here’s to second chances.

Encouragement

I received two very encouraging emails this week about Hurricane Baby–one was from a contest I had entered that directly invited me to revise and resubmit, telling when the new contest deadline was and everything.

I was so shocked I wrote back to make sure I had read correctly.

He (the publisher) responded that that was exactly what he had meant.

So that got me thinking. Another press that I think a lot of had held a pop-up submission window for short-story collections that I had sent to last Thanksgiving and had ultimately been rejected by, but they had a specific short story contest coming up in September that they had not held last year. So I wrote that publisher and asked if I could revise and then resubmit to that contest. She replied that of course I could–people did it all the time.

So i am taking Cheryl’s comments from my last story swap and using them to revise and deepen the reader’s understanding of the characters and pick up on other notes she made about the stories, and I’m going to submit to the last few presses on my list and then to those two in particular. Hopefully we can see results.

I am also putting my other strategy in place of sending a few of the other individual stories to high-quality journals as they open submissions and see if I can place a few in some nice publications and get a little buzz going. So I spent yesterday doing that with the first story, Still Waters. We will see what happens.

Good writing vibes to all!

New Project!

Time to announce my new project for the year–Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi.

I plan to write about working for MCIR and covering mental health issues, specifically the disappearance of Travis Sean Hunt from Choctaw County, which is where I grew up as well. I hope to tell his story as well as mine about being mentally ill and how similar our conditions were and how there but for the grace of God, go I. I will be chronicling the writing of this story the same way I have been doing Hurricane Baby in hopes that it can encourage others who want to tell their own stories as well.

As for Hurricane Baby, here are the latest statistics:

Presses sent to –62

Rejections–37

Presses left to hear from–25

Presses left to send to–6

So I will let the process work its way through the rest of the list and just see what happens. But I am excited to work on this new one and stay busy creating my own future. If I have to put away Hurricane Baby, I suppose that’s just the way it is. But I am excited for this new venture and hope you all can be excited with me!

Onward!

Swap

My writing buddy Cheryl sent me back her read of Hurricane Baby: Stories, and her read was much more favorable that I thought it might be. She noted a very few places in the manuscript where she lost track/got tripped up in the narrative, and she thought I could actually cut some places where I was describing actions that didn’t necessarily move the plot forwards–she urged me to focus on the action throughout, which was a nice surprise. She said she really, really loved it, and her favorite character was Tommy Hebert, the one I turned from a peripheral character to a major one –she said his character arc really held her attention.

So now I think I know what to do with it in the next stage of revision, which I am probably going to take up next year (if it doesn’t get picked up by someone before that) after I draft my new project I want to work on. I am going to make each story as individually strong as I can and start sending them out to see if I can publish them in high-profile places and get them some attention. We will see what happens.

Some of the items she mentioned I can fix now before it goes out to anyone else this year–they’ll be quick. And I need to finish reading and reacting to her manuscript before the end of the month. So i am gong to look for some time to finish that before May 30.

i am very glad I did this new swap. I feel more confident about the manuscript’ strengths and know where to fix the weaknesses. So good. Onward and upward!

Numbers Update

So it’s been a few months, and i thought I would update my query numbers.

Presses queried–53

Rejections–33

Submissions still outstanding–20

Presses left to send to–8

I am still hopeful. But I have a few backup plans in place now, so we will see what happens. I went ahead and sent it off to my workshop mate Cheryl to see what she will say about it. And I will spend time reading her work and see how I may be able to help her improve her new novel project.

We will see what happens. Some really nice places still have the manuscript, so I will see what develops. I will send to a few places tomorrow that open on May 1. So that is the next step. Wish me well! Happy writing!

Ready to Swap Again

I’m on the verge of doing another swap of Hurricane Baby with another writer, this time Cheryl Pappas, who I met through the workshop I attended last summer. She is writing her first novel even as we speak, so I will be beta reading that for her, and she will be reading Hurricane Baby.

I’m not sure what I can actually accomplish by having it read again and revising it again. I may can make it better so it gets accepted at one the eight places left on my list where I haven’t yet sent it. Which is a heck of a tiny margin of error or success, depending on how you look at it.

Or I may can make it better and send it around again in 2030.

That looks like a damn desperate concept when I say it that way.

Or her feedback may convince me to shelve it altogether and start over with my new story idea and just work on that for a while.

Or I may can take the feedback, make each story the best it can be, and try to sell the individual stories around to see if I can get one or three picked up by journals to have a better chance once I start sending it around again.

That sounds more hopeful than giving up. Or simply waiting around after revising.

I guess the moral is: Keep fighting for your work. Even if it means a strategic retreat from time to time. The fight IS the work in that case. So that’s what I’m doing: Fighting.