Tag: writing

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.

Writing Retreat

Last weekend I went to a writing retreat sponsored by Mississippi Christian Living, a magazine I used to write for way back in the 2000s. It was a lot of fun!

I got to meet Susan Cushman, an author whose career I’ve been keeping up with for a long time–she was the keynote speaker. She published a book with University Press of MS about writing, which I have read, and I won one of her books today as a door prize so that was fun.

During lunch I had some time to talk to her and we turned out to know a lot of the same people, of course. We talked about what we were each working on and that was fun to hear about.

I got to talk to another one of the authors as well just as we were leaving but not for as long as Susan.

We did writing exercises, and some people were not really serious about writing. They wanted to talk about writing, but when it came time to write, they didn’t do it. Weird.

I’ve noticed there are a lot of people like this–they love to read, they love to talk about books, but then they start talking about how they would like to write a book and ask another writer for tips and pointers. Sometimes they even go to college and study creative writing and even get an MFA. But they just like to talk about their plans to write and what keeps them from writing–kids, a job, grandkids, other hobbies, husbands, etc.

I spent six of the most miserable years of my life working a job I hated and not writing after I finished grad school the first time. I didn’t want that to happen again this time. I have worked hard to integrate writing into my life again and even at the bleakest points, kept writing. Blogging was a big part of that. But working to focus, sit down, and write the thing is the best decision a writer can make. Success breeds success. And as Neil Gamian says, finished projects turn into published projects.

So to all those out there who keep talking about writing but don’t do it, i leave you with Toni Cade Bambara’s observation that writing is going to cost you something–that anything worth doing is going to have a cost. And there’s the advice from Gabino Iglesias: “Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.”

Progress!

So far I have typed 3000 words on my current work-in-progress. I’ve done the writing sprints with my MFA buddy Shannon and am making progress past my initial fear about taking such a project on. When I start I just think, “It’s only for an hour.” And I just write!

The more I write the more excited I get and the more daunting it gets, but I’m not letting myself think it’s a book; I’m treating each chapter like a newspaper article. That’s helping, too.

I can’t wait to get back to it Monday night!

Bucket List Visit

We went on a trip to Wisconsin for summer vacation and as a side trip, we stopped in Madison and visited a former professor of mine from when I was at Mississippi State University; he’s now at University of Wisconsin-Madison. We haven’t seen each other in thirty years, but we’ve stayed in touch on and off through that time (basically the whole time the Internet was being invented around us).

We had a great visit, and at the end of it, he said something that will stick with me, I think. He said he admired my persistence and always had.

That will keep me going for a while.

Genius Move

Just got off Facebook with a solid plan to write this late summer and fall.

A writer buddy of mine and I were talking about writing, and I said I was going to start on my next short story collection in mid-August once my kid goes off to college and need something to distract me from the empty nest.

I remembered how a lot of people talked since the pandemic about doing writing “sprints” where you and others meet over Zoom and write for a while together then compare notes when you finish the sprints. So she and I agreed to start meeting on Facebook at 6:30 p.m. three times a week, and each write for an hour, then compare notes.

So I feel good about what I’m going to do. I’m going to only write an hour a day, three times a week, and write a very rough draft.

I’m now aware that I’ve got to give up the notion of I’m putting down something magical right as it flows from the pen. I need to just get the story out. I have a good outline, a throughline, and lots and lots of details to squeeze in. I’m looking forward to it. Really. 🙂

Accountability is really good for me. How do you feel about writing partners, workshop partners, accountability, and deadlnes?

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!

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.

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!