In Which I Hang Onto a Teeny, Tiny, Gossamer Thread of Hope

It's Advent, the season of hope and waiting. I don't talk much about my faith on this blog, so, in case you didn't pick this up earlier, I'm a Christian. As a Christian, during this season of the year I celebrate the creator of the universe coming to Earth as a tiny, helpless, newborn baby. If that's not a miracle to be in awe of I don't know what is.

Even many who aren't traditionally religious think of this time of year as a season full of hope and potential miracles. Many people are hoping for a "Christmas miracle."

I'm not expecting a publishing Christmas miracle. Well, unless it's a certain Big 5 publisher settling the strike and actually listening to their employees (hint, hint HarperCollins). But I certainly wouldn't say no to it. I actually tweeted jokingly about my publishing Christmas wish last week and it went, well, not truly viral but at least viral-adjacent as opposed to most of my tweets that get 0-6 likes.

I'm still hanging onto a teeny, tiny thread of hope for my steampunk airship adventure. It's still in about 20 agent inboxes and until the last one passes there's hope that one of them will be the agent who falls in love with it. But the hope is pretty tenuous. The agent I thought was my best chance, who asked for a revision back in June, recently passed on the manuscript. She didn't like the direction I took the revision in. I guess it's better to find out now that we have different editorial visions than after I sign a contract, but it was still heartbreaking.

As if that wasn't enough, the full manuscript of my Nutcracker reimagining was with an editor who is normally only open to agented submissions thanks to a pitch contest like. Earlier this week she passed on it not because of weakness in the writing but because she just didn't think it was a perfect fit for her.

To be clear, I'm disappointed but I'm not angry with the agent or the editor. Agents spend a lot of time with client manuscripts and need to go through a long slog of pitching them to swamped editors. Editors devote a lot of time and effort to manuscripts they sign and it's not worth their time to work on a book they don't love. Yes, agents and editors receive manuscripts that are poorly written, but at least as often they have to pass on things that are well written and just don't light them on fire. Think about your own reading habits. You don't check out every single book in the library or buy every single book at the bookstore. Most of the books you pass up aren't bad. They're just not books you're currently excited about.

On the heels of two rejections I was pretty hopeful about, I was briefly ready to throw in the towel or just take a long break. It's been a year since I started querying my Steampunk book. I've spent the year doing a bunch of smaller tweaks and one major revision. I've lost count of the times I've tweaked my query and opening pages. According to all the advice out there I've done all the right things and should have been overrun with requests at least if not offers. My book has all kinds of things agents are supposed to be looking for. It has disability rep. It has queer rep. It has a diverse cast. It addresses climate change. It's a mystery to me why it hasn't gotten more full requests.

But I don't get to control what agents and editors think. I only get to control what I write. I tried to start writing something new this spring but I kept stopping and starting with it and never got very far. Only time will tell, but so far I'm much more excited about my new #WIP. I enjoy reading adult contemporary romance and I liked the idea of writing one, but it doesn't excite me the way middle grade does. Reading and writing middle grade lights me on fire in a way other types of books don't. Yes, I can appreciate books in other age groups. Someday I might even write one. But middle grade is where my heart is.

And when it comes down to it, that's why I'm not ready to give up on pursuing traditional publication. When I decided to get serious about writing again three years ago I knew it would be hard. I didn't know it would be "writing and querying three books over three years with three requests between them that all ended in rejection" hard. Some people would have been ready to quit well before this time. And there is nothing wrong with that. Your mental and emotional health is more important than reaching the elusive goal of getting a book traditionally published. 

There are moments when I feel like it might be time to quit. But when it comes down to it I'm not ready.  I've liked all the paid jobs I've had. This fall I started a part time job teaching a two year old preschool class and I might actually like that one best of all. But what really lights me on fire, what really makes me feel like I'm doing what I was created to do, is writing. Until I stop feeling that, I'm going to keep plodding up this mountain path of unknown length full of logs, rocks, and roots. I may stop for awhile and take a rest on one of the logs, but I'm not ready to head down the mountain just yet. 

In Which a New Idea Grabs My Attention

Querying right now is soul sucking. There. I said it. I don't know if there's a better way for agents to make connections to writers they want to represent. I don't blame the agents for being busy and taking a long time to respond. I do sometimes wish I could go back in time to a time when there were fewer people trying to be published and seriously pursue being published then, but time machines are not a thing. Plus, I know that I'm a better writer now so there's that.

In large part due to the soul-suckingness of querying, I've found it really hard to get into writing something new. Harbor Lightkeep is the fourth book I've queried and I didn't have this problem with the other three, but I think the very fact that it's the fourth and I'm still trying to find an agent is part of what's stopping me. Every single time I finish a book I think "Okay, this one is going to be the one." And so far it never has been. 

It also doesn't help that I recently started a part time job, teaching two year old preschool three days a week. I love the job, even with all the dirty diapers I have to change, but it does limit my potential writing time. At the very least I blame the new job, which I started in October, for me not blogging in October.

I kept telling myself I was going to finish the adult contemporary romance I started in March this fall but no matter how many times I opened my computer and stared at the document I just could not work up the energy to add to the story. I do hope to finish that book someday. I really love the world I dreamed up. But romance just doesn't light my heart on fire the way middle grade does. So I officially gave up pretending my fall goal was to finish that book.

Finally, just over a week ago, a new idea grabbed onto me. I had always been intrigued by the seed of a the 200 word story I wrote last fall for #FallWritingFrenzy and kind of wanted to do more with the idea of a grieving girl summoning the ghost of her twin. But I wasn't sure where to go with it until suddenly I was.

The original story was inspired by a photo of a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. But, while I feel a deeper connection to Latinx cultures than I often do to the cultures of my own ancestors thanks to the combination of my degrees in Spanish and having a child in a Spanish Immersion school, I don't want to steal a culture that doesn't belong to me for an entire novel. I toyed with the idea of having the story center around Halloween and the autumnal equinox and the traditions from many cultures that involve spirits visiting our world at that time of year. But it just wasn't clicking for me.

Finally I remembered my favorite ghost story from childhood: A Christmas Carol. The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas never caught on in America, but it was huge in Victorian England and well before that so there's a rich culture to draw from. Plus, I love the idea of the veil between the living and the dead thinning at the darkest time of the year. I still have a lot of planning and research to do before I can do this story justice, but I'm finally really excited about something again. So I present to you the moodboard for what I'm currently calling #SpookyGhostTwinChristmasWIP. Although I've never actually used that hashtag since I'm taking a twitter break while I research and draft. And, no, this is not a NaNoWriMo project. It's just a project I happen to have started in November. 

In Which I Am Really Bad at Waiting

Eleven days ago I sent my revised manuscript of HARBOR LIGHTKEEP AND THE BROKEN WORLD to the agent who asked me to revise and resubmit it. The same day I sent fresh queries to three other agents. Every time I check my email now I brace myself for bad news, smaller bad news like one of the new agents sending a form rejection or bigger bad news like the agent who wanted the R&R still not loving my book enough to offer rep. Either is a distinct possibility. I also brace myself for good news, like a full request from one of the new agents or an email asking for a call from the agent who got the revised full manuscript.

The agent who asked for the R&R seemed eager to read my book, so I had a vain hope that I'd know one way or the other within a few days, but nearly two weeks later I'm still waiting. To be clear, I'm not upset at this agent. She has clients she's working with on edits and sending on submission to editors. She's reading queries from other writers and reading full manuscripts she's requested. She's also a writer herself and needs to devote time to her own work. She doesn't owe me a fast response. That didn't stop me from hoping she would give me one anyway.

So now I wait, which is one of the things I'm worst at. I told myself, as well as telling my CPs and whoever sees my tweets, that once I turned in the R&R I was going to get back to work on the adult contemporary romance I started this spring and put on the back burner when I got the R&R request. Reader, I lied. Well, I didn't exactly lie. That's what I intended to do and what I still intend to do. But it hasn't actually happened yet. I've opened the document and read through what I've written so far, yes, but I have not added any more words to said document. 

Part of this is that my ADHD brain struggles to complete tasks I'm not excited about. Part of it is that I've never written anything for adults before and it's proving to be harder than I thought it would be.

Mind you, I haven't been staring at the wall or bingeing Netflix while not writing. I've been trying to conquer my large to be read pile instead. I've read some great books, and that's a valuable thing for any writer to do, but if I want to keep being a writer I really do need to actually get back to writing at some point.

I'm almost done with my TBR pile from the library (let's just forget about the 20+ books on my shelves that I haven't read yet for the moment, shall we?) so maybe this will be the week I figure out how to convince my brain that going back to work on the romance is exciting. We'll see.

I don't have a good picture to represent me not writing and holding my breath every time I check my email, so here's a beautiful photo of my cat, Daniel Tiger, instead. He's a reader, as you can see.

In Which Getting Published Isn't Easy

Some of my writing friends are talking about a recent article in the New York Times which purports to talk about how a book went from a messy first draft to a bestseller. Supposedly this is representative of how writing and getting published works. I don't subscribe to the New York Times and the article is behind a paywall, so I will admit from the start that I haven't read the article, I've just heard things about it.

What I've heard is that the article paints a rosy view of publishing. The author apparently had connections within the publishing world that helped get her her deal. She also got a high number deal for her middle grade debut, which is uncommon, and a lot of publicity was put behind it. Let me make it clear that this post is not coming from a sense of sour grapes because I've been querying for 2 1/2 years and don't have an agent let alone a book deal. I'm glad this writer has had so much success. I wish success like this for everyone who writes good books. 

The thing is, though, most people don't get that success and articles like that can make it look a lot easier than it is. Even successful writers experience setbacks. Even writers who have had multiple books published get rejections from editors. Selling one book does not mean you've "made it". Selling one book means you've sold one book, no more and no less.

Don't get me wrong. That's a big accomplishment. Many more people write a first draft of a book than go through all the work it takes to get that book ready to query to agents or editors. Many more people query than get an agent. Not all books signed by agents end up being the book that gets that writer a book deal. Sometimes a writer signs with an agent, the agent sends that book on submission to editors, and the writers gets a book deal in a few months. Sometimes it takes a year or more. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all and the agent sends another book instead. I have a few writing friends who signed with agents more than a year ago and have yet to have a book sell to editors. I have other writing friends whose debut book sold in less than a month. 

It's variable, and a lot of it depends on the book getting in front of just the right editor at just the right time, which is difficult to impossible for an agent to predict. The thing is, not even agents, who have a different view into the industry than writers do, can know exactly what an editor has signed recently since deals aren't announced the second they're agreed upon. One friend got a rejection because that editor had just recently signed a book that was too similar. The editor said they might have signed my friend's book if they had received that one first. But they didn't.

I know this post is full of doom and gloom. It's rough out there in the world of traditional publishing. And though some people choose to publish on their own (some would call this indie publishing and some would call it self publishing) that's not actually any easier. There are absolutely indie writers who are successful and make  good income from their writing, but there are many, many more who just sell a few copies and make a few dollars or don't even break even. I don't think the answer is to abandon traditional publishing.

So what is the answer? If you figure it out, please let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to keep writing my stories about kids who don't let their invisible disabilities stop them from going on adventures and keep sending them to agents or (hopefully in the future) have my agent keep sending them to editors in the hope that they will be on the shelves for kids to read someday. With book bans, major bookstores not wanting to carry a variety of hardcover children's books (maybe I'll write more about this next month), and editors quitting making the editors who are left even more overworked, it's tempting to just throw in the towel and stop writing. Or to write only for myself.

There would be nothing wrong with doing this. You are not a bad person if you decided you're done with the query trenches for good or you decide you're done having your books sent on sub and failing if you're agented. Every person needs to make the decision that's best for their own mental health.

Personally, I'm not ready to give up. I have a lot of hope for the current version of my eco steampunk airship adventure, which I hope to finish final edits on and send some queries for by the end of the week. If that one isn't "the one," or it is in terms of getting me an agent but it fails on sub, I have more than a dozen other ideas in mind. I'm in the privileged position of being in a stable marriage to a partner with a good income, having kids in school, and working very part time. I have time to write, and I don't need it to make me money any time soon, if at all. Not everyone is in this position. In fact, I would say most people in the query trenches aren't in this position. There are plenty of people who keep writing and pursuing publication despite having more obstacles than I have. There are others who have the same privileges I have who decide they're done after a certain amount of time. Neither are right or wrong.

Getting a book from a messy rough draft to bookstore and library shelves, let alone to bestseller status, is tough. It takes a long time, a lot of work, a lot of tears, and quite possibly some fairy dust. If someday a reader finds my book and feels seen, finds a book they love to read for the first time, or just spends an enjoyable day or more absorbed in the world I've created, it will have been worth it to me. If I also have a book that reaches bestseller status and gets me a lot of money I will not complain. But for me it's about having my books reach readers first and foremost.

Because I like putting pictures in my posts, I'm ending this with a photo of a photo of an arctic fox that I took this past weekend at the Columbus Zoo. We saw actual arctic foxes, but they were curled up and snoozing and not in a great position for a good photo. This fox is exactly how I picture Crystal, the glucose alert fox in the book I'm querying. Enjoy the cute foxie!

In Which the State of My Inbox Compels Me to Buy Oreos

The writing life is tough. I mean, yeah, it's amazing to dream up whole worlds and I don't want to stop doing it. But it's also really tough. I've been actively trying to get an agent for nearly two and a half years now. With four different books. In all that time I have only ever had one agent request a full manuscript and two request partial manuscripts. The partials were for the same book. Two of my manuscripts never got any requests at all.

I've learned a lot over the past two and a half years. I know that each book has been better than the last. Every time I finished a book I was sure that book was going to be "the one". The one that got me an agent and then a book deal. Every time (so far) I have been wrong. But, looking back, I can see why the first three books didn't do that. I can see that I still needed to grow as a writer.

But this most recent one. I was so sure it was special. The pacing is on point. There's a cliffhanger ending at 10 pages, at 30 pages, and at 50 pages, the three increments agents normally ask for. It's unique. It has disability rep. It has queer rep. It has an environmental message. It even has a fox as a service animal.

Still, my inbox is crickets. I got two partial requests from agents who only ask for a query, but both ended in rejection. The advice is to query in small batches and change up  your query and opening pages if you don't get requests. So I've been doing that. I've had agented writers look over my query letter and opening pages. They've been pronounced great and sure to get requests. Still, agents don't seem to be getting the message.

Maybe it's not getting in front of the right person, people say. Is there a magic wand telling me who that right person might be? (Maybe you're an agent reading this after I queried you and you're that person? I can hope). Otherwise I just need to keep sending it to agents I think I'd like to work with who rep middle grade sci fi and seem like they might be interested. Maybe this will yield the results I'm looking for. Maybe the book is in the right inbox right now. There's no way to know that.

What I do know is that I'm not going to stop writing new stories. What I also know is that, if this round of queries doesn't go anywhere, I need to set this book aside. That doesn't mean it will be dead forever. My dream is that after I get an offer of rep for whatever book does that for me, my agent will be interested in eventually sending all of my books on submission to editors. There's no guarantee of that. But it's well within the realm of possibility. But at this point I need to protect my heart. I was so sure this was the book that was doing to get requests early and in spades. It has so many things agents are supposed to be looking for: disability rep, queer rep, and environmental message. I really don't know what it's missing. Or if it's missing nothing and the right person simply hasn't seen it.

That's one of the super frustrating things about writing. It can be really difficult to know if it's you or if it's them. But there are really two choices for writers facing piles of rejections. You can give up or you can keep writing. I'm not going to say I will always keep writing no matter what. That it doesn't matter at all if I never get published. I just feel compelled to tell stories. That's true for some people, but I'm not sure it will be true for me long term. If I'm still nowhere near publication in five years will I keep plugging away? I have lots of idea, so maybe. But maybe not. 

I love books, especially books for young people. I will never stop caring about them. But will I stop writing them if there's no hope they will ever make it on shelves? I just don't know. I hope I won't, but my battered heart can only take so much. If there comes a time when writing never brings me any joy I think it will be time to take a long break, at the very least.

Speaking of breaks, my kids are out of school for the summer, so I've decided to take a break from significant writing work. I might still write, but only if it brings me joy. Otherwise I'm going to enjoy spending time with my kids and I'm going to read a lot of books. 

Oh, and I mustn't forget the Oreos. One day last week when I was feeling particularly bad about the state of my inbox I found Fireworks Oreos at the store and I bought them. These are special edition Oreos that only come out in the summer. They have something like pop rocks in the cream. The rest of my family thinks that is super weird and will not eat them. So these are the only Oreos that are safe from my teenage son, who is basically a food black hole. So I get to eat my feelings and my family doesn't have more snack food tempting them. Everyone wins.

I've read some great books already this summer. I'll be back soon to share about some of them.

In Which My Son Attends a College Visit Weekend and I Come Away with Writing Advice

 My 17yo is starting to look seriously at colleges, and this weekend he attended an overnight visit event at Asbury University, which is his current top choice and only about 45 minutes from our house. He wants to study media production, and Asbury has a very well respected program. This weekend's visit was aimed at students interested in the media program and was capped off by the college's film festival on Saturday night. For the film festival weekend, there were judges and other visitors from the film industry on campus, giving talks and meeting with students and prospective students.

I stayed for the first talk before heading home, and I was pleasantly surprised that I took a lot a way from it as a writer. Asbury is a Christian university and the talk was aimed at that audience, titled "What every Christian needs to know before going to Hollywood". The speakers, a movie composer and a producer who are married to each other, emphasized that by "Hollywood" they really meant the entertainment industry in general, which is global, and that the principles would apply wherever the students ended up.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that a whole lot of the advice applies to the creative life in general, including writing, and not just to moviemaking. It was also a good reminder that my son, who is severely dyslexic and doesn't read for pleasure (he can read, but it's a lot of work for him and he only reads when he needs the information) isn't quite as different from me as it would seem on the surface. At the core, he wants to build a life as a storyteller, just as I'm trying to do.

I won't share any of the specifically Christian advice on this general interest blog, but I thought some of the advice would apply to people of other faiths and no faith. Those points are as follows:

1. The importance of community. I've posted here about finding my writing community. Writing is most often a solitary occupation. When you're in the query trenches or agented but on submission to editors, it is also most often an incredibly discouraging occupation. If you have someone to share both your joys and your sorrows with, it's significantly more bearable.

2. Don't go into writing (they said filmmaking, but the principle is the same) because you want to be rich and famous. Go into it because you love to tell stories. That's what I try to keep in mind as I write story after story that no agents want to pick up so far. Yes, I want to see them on shelves and I hope to someday make some money from them, but it's unlikely that I'll get rich from it, which is okay. What I want to do is to tell stories that will both entertain and impact readers.

3. Show interest in other people in the industry. Don't always think about only yourself and what will benefit you. This may in the end open doors for you. I'm not sure if the "opening doors" part is quite as true in publishing, but, along with building a community of writing peers, I do think it's both helpful and important to establish relationships to whatever extent you can with writers ahead of you on the path. At least, they're more likely to read and hype your book if they already know who you are and have had good interactions with you.

4. It takes 10,000 hours of work before you become an expert in something. It may not take exactly 10,000 hours to write a novel that's good enough to get published, but in the case of the large majority of writers, it's not your first novel that ends up being your debut novel. Even if you do sell your first novel, the version that sits on shelves will go through sometimes significant edits and take a lot of work. Even established writers often say that they look back on their early published books and see all that they still had to learn. I can look back at my first three books and, even though I love the stories and hope to someday edit/rewrite them into books worthy of publication, I can see the things I still had to learn and the ways they're lacking. Not that my fourth book is perfect, but it's much better at this stage than the others were at the same stage because of everything I learned from writing them.

I returned to campus for the film festival last night, and I heard something there that was meaningful to me as a writer as well. The chair of the media communication department quoted a filmmaker whose name I immediately forgot (please tell me in the comments if you know who said this), who said "Make visible what, without you, might otherwise never have been seen." That really struck me, because that is half of why I write. First, because I love to tell stories, but second to make the marginalizations I identify with or am very close to, visible. This includes people on the asexual spectrum, girls with ADHD, and the diabetes community. Even if you don't identify with any marginalized group I still think this can apply. You might be making small town life visible, an unusual interest, an experience you've had, or something I haven't even thought of. Everyone has something unique to bring to their writing, and I believe there's a kid out there who could see a character like them in a book for the first time because of the story only you/I can tell.

To end, I'll share some pictures from the festival. I got to meet actor Joel McCreary, who played the prime minister of Genovia in the Princess Diaries as well as posing by statues of Kings Peter and Edmund of Narnia, which are actual set pieces from Prince Caspian movie. The media building as Asbury officially qualifies as a museum because of all the TV and movie artifacts it houses. They're all from projects that Asbury faculty and alumni have worked on.

In Which It Still Isn't My Turn, But I Keep Moving Anyway

 There's lots of good writing news in the middle grade twitterverse recently, and from my closer community of the #MGWaves. It feels like every time I check Twitter or Slack someone has just signed with an agent or announced a book deal. I've gotten to know some of these writers well and read works from many of them over the past year since I jumped into the writing community with both feet, and I can say with confidence that everyone I've seen announce news heartily deserves their good fortune. Most of them have been working toward this goal for years, some even longer than I have.

It's good to remember that what might look like an "overnight success story" could easily be that writer's sixth manuscript that they queried for a year and had just decided it was time to shelve when they got the full request that led to an offer. One of my friends who just signed with an agent received the email asking to set up a call to talk about representation literally 24 minutes after sending a text telling her critique partners that she was officially shelving the manuscript.

I'm still waiting for a story like that to happen to me. I'm actively querying a version of the second book I finished, which went through such a major rewrite that I kind of consider it my fourth book. I have not gotten any bites, but I recently rewrote my query and opening pages and just started sending that version a week ago, so there's still hope. In the meantime, I still have a small handful of queries out for my third book, the one that I should probably have shelved months ago, but that I keep firing off an occasional query for because I love it so much I can't bear to completely shelve it until I've run out of agents I'd like to work with who might love it. This one has also gone through not quite a rewrite but a very thorough revision including changing from third to first person since I began querying it late last year.

In the meantime, I'm plugging away at my fourth (maybe fifth, depending on how you count) book, which I currently think is the best one yet. Whether that actually proves to be the case will only be seen if I can actually finish the thing. This first draft has taken way longer than any other first draft I've ever written because I have my fingers in so many pies right now. I keep going away from it to tweak the books I'm still querying and fire off a few more. Add to that the days I just can't bear to look at it because I'm sure it must be a flaming pile of you can guess what despite my feelings about it and my critique group members' feelings about it, because if I actually knew how to write surely my inbox would be flooded with full requests.

Add in the mental fatigue from the pandemic that never ends, and keeping at the writing game can feel like a Sisyphean task. Push that boulder of a finished manuscript up the hill, and the rejections will come crashing down on you and push you right back down. So, why do I do it? Why do I keep creating these stories and throwing my babies out to the cold, cruel world? Why don't I just get a regular job that doesn't come with a regular side of rejection? Because rejection is and always will be part of the writing game. Once you get an agent, editors start rejecting you. Once you get a book in the world, readers start rejecting you. There is no stage at which a writer is entirely shielded from rejection.

First, I realize I'm in a place of incredible privilege because I don't have to work another full time job on top of writing just to keep a roof over my head and put food over the table. Yes, my kids are demanding and a 24/7 responsibility in some fashion (even the 16 year old), but it's not as if there aren't parents out there who have a full time job in addition to writing. 

It's partly because I love it. Books have always been a huge part of my life, and I've had stories living in my head as long as I can remember. It's also because I believe my stories have a place in the world that isn't completely filled. I want girls with ADHD to have a character they see themselves in. I want kids with type 1 diabetes to see a kid like them accurately portrayed in a book. I want kids who feel different in any way to see characters who are outside the norm in some way going on adventures and just living life.

Someday I believe my books will be on the shelves of libraries and bookstores. It might be a version of stories I've already written, or it might be that those stories serve as a stepping stone for me to continue to polish my craft and what ends up on shelves is now only a seed in the depths of my mind. There may be an agent reading a query that will lead to a full request and then an offer right now. The agent who eventually signs me may not even be an agent yet. 

I hate this uncertainty, and I don't always have the mental fortitude to remind myself that if I keep working and don't give up I will get there someday. There are definitely days when I spend all of my time wallowing in self pity. If I want to make it, however, I can't stay down there. I need to get up, dust myself off, and do the next thing.

This summer my family took a vacation to the Rocky Mountains. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It's also a whole lot farther above sea level than Kentucky, and the thinner air literally can take your breath away. All my family members are in much better shape than I am, and there were times we were ascending on hikes when I wasn't sure I could make it. But I did it. One step at a time. Here's a picture of me at 12,000 feet. No, I did not climb all 12,000 of those feet.

In Which I Play Catch Up

 I had established this really great trend of posting monthly and then summer vacation happened. As of today, both my kids are back in school in person for the first time since March 13, 2020. Here's hoping that will give me more time to write. Of course, I'm also mildly terrified since Covid cases are at their highest level in Kentucky since January, but masks are required in schools, they're spacing students out as much as they can, and doing a lot of cleaning and handwashing and sanitizing, so I'm hoping it will be enough.

Summer trips got in the way of me blogging in July, but they did not get in the way of me reading. Our family drove to Colorado and back as our big family trip a couple weeks ago, which meant about 22 hours in the car each way, divided over two days. Since my husband prefers to drive on long trips, partly because he thinks he's a better driver (he really is) and partly because he's prone to carsickness if he's not driving, I had a lot of time to read. I made it through my entire To Be Read pile, which had been languishing because my daughter was demanding a lot of my attention since school ended. We're still being really careful about playdates and didn't send her to any day camps, so she wanted me to play with her all the time. As an aside, parenting an extraverted kid during a pandemic is really hard.

Some of my favorites were two other books I could have recommended in my last post about MG books with queer rep had I known they existed when I wrote that post. George by Alex Gino. The book follows ten year old George, who knows she is a girl even though everyone else believes she is a boy, on her journey to find the courage to speak out about her gender identity. I also read a companion book to this, Rick, in which we see the MC from the first book two years later, starting middle school as a girl named Melissa, but through the eyes of Rick, a boy who was a bully in the first book, but is beginning to asks questions of his own about gender and sexuality and beginning to wonder, as his peers starts to get crushes and he doesn't, if he is on the asexual spectrum. Rick's metamorphosis from reluctant bully to embracing his own possibly queer identity was so great to read. I'm glad books like this exist, both for kids who can relate to them and for kids who can't.

I also read the first book in a new Rick Riordan presents series, The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim. This book is based on Korean mythology and is so delightful. I especially love that the deities at the center of the magical Korean community are goddesses.

I could go on about the books I've read, but I'll also catch up on the writing things I've done. I've sent out a few more queries for Anna Otto, including one from a late coming agent request after a Twitter pitch party that happened back in June. I've revised my query yet again since the first six queries haven't gotten me a request, and I think it might actually be really good this time. I'm hoping that, if nothing else, this books gets me a respectable number of full requests. When even your writing friends who aren't getting agent offers seem to be getting full requests left and right it can be discouraging. 

I'm still plugging away on Harbor Lightkeep, and hoping to make much more progress now that both my kids will be out of the house for six hours five days a week. My summer trip to Colorado gave me an idea for a picture book and a middle grade book, so I have yet more things waiting in line for whenever Harbor Lightkeep is out with beta readers, or if I need a break from it.

It's now been about a year and a half since I started taking my writing seriously and querying the first MG book I wrote (in retrospect, it was not ready). I was sure at that point that I would have an agent by now, probably even an offer. It turns out writing is much more of a waiting game for most people than I realized, but I'm still glad I decided to take the plunge and pursue traditional publication. I've met an amazing community of fellow writers, discovered resources to refine my craft, and found friends to lean on when it feels like it will never by my turn. I desperately want it to be my turn not just someday, but soon. But in the meantime I'm trying to find the beauty on the winding path I'm on.

In Which My Inbox Declares Itself a "Request Free Zone" and I Try (With Only Minimal Success) to Ignore It

 I love the community I have built with other writers, especially the #MGWaves. Since it doesn't involve going in to an office or having an official "team" in any way (at least pre-publication), having a community of writers to lean on can make this life feel less lonely. Especially since my main occupation for much of my adult life has been as a stay at home mom and I don't have another profession, finding "my people" in the writing world has been especially helpful. The Waves critique my work and help me become a better writer, they cheer me up when I have bad news, and they cheer me on when I have good news.

There's just one potential problem with being a part of a community of writers. Inevitably, some of them will end up pulling ahead of you on the writing road. When we started the Waves we had all applied with our middle grade novels to Pitch Wars in the fall of 2020. Quite a few people had gotten requests. I was not one of them. Two people ended up getting mentorships. As of this writing, one of those writers has an agent, and I don't think the other is far behind. Three others have gotten agents without the benefit of a mentorship program. Five have gotten mentorships through various other programs.

Now we're in the two week waiting period for two possible mentorship/editing opportunities: WriteMentor and RevPit. The Waves are talented writers. I will not be surprised if one or more of them win a mentee spot in each contest. I do not begrudge them those spots. However, at the same time, I find myself extremely envious that I cannot seem to even get myself in the running. Other writers, both in and outside the Waves, are getting full requests from agents and requests from contests for additional material while my inbox seems to have declared itself a request free zone.

To be fair, I did come close to getting a mentorship in the Write Team Mentorship competition fairly recently. I was basically a runner up. The mentors ultimately decided another writer would be a better fit, but they requested and read my full manuscript and sent me an edit letter that was just over a page and which led me to revisions that I think have made the book even stronger. I've also gotten several "champagne rejections" for Mousecracker, in which agents have named specific things they like about the book and said my writing is very strong but said the book is not the right fit for them. However, none of them have gone on to ask for the full, so even that can feel like cold comfort when so many people I know are getting much more hopeful news.

Sometimes it's tempting to just throw in the towel and figure out what career I want to pursue that doesn't involve constant rejection. Because the fact is, even agented writers get rejected by editors and even published writers get rejected by reviewers and readers. But then I remember how much books have meant to me in my life. I remember my vision to create characters who share the invisible disabilities I know intimately so that readers who live with them can finally see someone like them as a hero in the stories they read. I remember that lots of people, some of them published writers, have told me that I'm "an excellent writer". Do all excellent writers get published? No, they don't. However, I would venture to say that most, perhaps all, excellent writers who don't get published don't reach that milestone because they gave up.

So I take a page from Anna in Frozen 2 and, to paraphrase, "Do the next writing thing". Today I sent out some queries with my shiny new revised query and pages. I also worked on putting together an initial synopsis for my WIP. I'm more of a pantser at heart, thanks in part to my ADHD, but I'm trying to get more organized so I at least have a decent idea of the path the book will follow. I'm also continually working to improve my craft by reading well written books - some of the type I would like to write and others not. As a bonus, reading well written books is also a lot of fun. Today in my reading I'm traveling to the fantasy world of Lithvas, based loosely on Lithuania, which is part of my heritage. While I don't foresee myself writing a book very similar to Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, I do at some point want to pull on the myths and legends of my Lithuanian ancestors to create my own story.

Maybe tomorrow or next week or next month or (shudder) even next year my inbox will shake off its funk and stop being a "request free zone". In the meantime, my documents full of new ideas are waiting, there's a world of good books to be read, and I just need to "keep swimming" (yes, I'm stealing a phrase from a completely different Disney movie :)) and do the next writing thing.

In Which I Am the All-Powerful Overlord (Overlady?) of a New World

There's lots of advice out that there in writer-land that, in order to stop yourself from going crazy while querying agents with one manuscript (or while one manuscript is on submission after you get an agent), you should focus your attention on writing a new one. I ignored that advice for a few months after finishing MOUSECRACKER, the book I'm querying right now, but I've finally narrowed down the book I want to work on from among my many ideas.

I won't announce my tentative title since it's so tentative and not that great, but the book is in the steampunk genre, which, in case you don't know, is a subgenre of science fiction. A quick definition of steampunk is that it imagines a present or future in which, instead of the internal combustion engine having been invented, the steam age continued, and produced all kinds of amazing technology. There are nearly always airships present in steampunk (think 19th century sailing ship crossed with a blimp or hot air balloon), and technology powered by a dazzling array of metal gears. As I dug into my main character, I came up with a new aesthetic.

My WIP stars 12yo Harbor Lightkeep, who has grown up at an inn and lighthouse for airships with her twin brother, father, and grandfather. Because imagining a world powered by steam was not enough for me, I'm creating a completely different version of earth - divided into artificial climate zones and controlled by powerful empires, most of which have never existed in our world. 

I shared some of my process with my writing peeps, the #MGWaves, and one friend pointed out that I'm basically the all-powerful overlord (or maybe I should say overlady) of this world I'm creating. It turns out worldbuilding for science fiction is many steps above worldbuilding for the contemporary and contemporary fantasy books I've written so far. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I mean, really, who but a writer gets to create a brand new world? Here's a sneak peak of my first attempt to divide up the world map in a new way.

I've so far sent about 30 queries out for MOUSECRACKER, and received mostly form rejections in return, despite having changed my query letter and opening pages twice. The only slightly positive response I've gotten was from an agent who took the time to say that the story wasn't for her, but the query and pages were very strong and she was sure someone else would request. I was starting to feel discouraged about my chances of ever finding an agent. I still love and believe in that story and am far from giving up on it, but, for the moment, I'm loving my new story even more and believe it may turn out to be even better. At the very least, it's a great way to occupy my mine while I wait for news.

In Which There Is No Deadline By Which I Must Find an Agent or Be Published

I've been putting myself under a lot of pressure lately. I started taking my writing seriously as an actual potential career about a year ago. Through joining a challenge to prepare for a twitter pitch event I connected with a group of other writers and joined a Facebook group. I decided the novel I wrote 16 years ago wasn't quite ready for prime time, so I had some of those writers read it, got feedback, made some changes (including switching the gender of an important secondary character), and decided it was ready to pitch in March.

My dream came true a couple hours into the event. An agent at a pretty prestigious agency liked my pitch, which was invitation to query. I queried with great excitement. Just so I'd have some possible competitors if this agent made an offer, I queried half a dozen other carefully selected agents. I had my query letter critiqued and made it the best I thought it could be. 

The agent got back to me saying that she liked my idea but wasn't drawn in by the opening chapters. All the other agents passed as well. Two offered personal feedback saying specifically why the opening chapters hadn't drawn them in but saying that they liked the idea. I decided that I was done querying that manuscript for the time being and that, at some point, I would pull it back out and make some major revisions.

I then started work on a new idea and got one chapter in when school was "temporarily" cancelled. Spoiler alert: my kids still aren't back in traditional school. The book is an urban fantasy featuring fairies and I decided I wanted to do more research on fairies from around the world before I got far into the writing. I had requested several books from the library - then the library closed. I decided to shelve that idea.

Then I remembered a story idea that I talked about with a friend in the last lunch out I had this year. I rolled with it, and that main character, Anna Ono, grabbed ahold of my heart and mind in a way no other character I've written about ever has. I finished the first draft  in five weeks. I was absolutely certain that this book was "the one," the book that would get me an agent and my first book deal. 

I had the book beta read, polished, and ready to pitch in the June PitMad event. I got no agent likes. Not to be deterred, I researched agents and sent out query letters full of hope. I got form rejections or nothing at all. I researched more agents and sent out more query letters. I got a few personalized rejections and changed the opening chapters based on the feedback. I changed up my query.

I got a full request, then waited and waited. The agent who requested my full liked my pitch in the September PitMad Twitter pitch. I was very hopeful. A week later she got back to me. She had liked the story, but she hadn't loved it enough to make an offer.

Even before that, I had started another book. I started the first chapter the last week of July. I figured even if it took me 2-3 months to finish a draft I could still have it beta read and polished in time to pitch in December. It's a contemporary fantasy based on The Nutcracker. I figured December was the perfect time to pitch it. Then the book stalled in chapter 4. I still can't figure out precisely how the boy and his mouse sidekick are going to save the day. I seem to be really awesome at writing 1-5 chapters and not nearly as awesome at actually completing a whole book.

So I set it aside. I went back to fairy related urban fantasy that stalled after chapter 1 back in March. I made some major changes to the main characters. I massively changed the original plot I had in mind. I got four chapters in. Then I stalled. I decided to write out a plot summary, which I've never done before. I'm about 2/3 through I think and now that has stalled. 

It's October 6th. There's no way I'm going to have a polished manuscript ready to pitch in December. If by some miracle one of the agents who has a query for Anna Ono hasn't offered representation before that I'll pitch it again, but I'm beginning to feel that it may not be "the one" after all. I still love the character, believe in her story, and want to share her with the world, but I'm wondering if her story simply isn't engaging enough to be the one that an agent falls in love with at first sight. Perhaps it's the one I'll have to bring to my agent after a different story has been accepted and say, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

I finally decided that I was done putting pressure on myself. Many writers take years to finish a draft of a novel, and that's okay. I don't need to put myself on any particular timeline. Right now I'm taking some time off writing and spending the next 2-4 weeks reading recently released middle grade urban fantasy. Maybe it will spark an idea, maybe it will just give me a deeper knowledge of the craft, maybe it will just give my brain a break. Probably a bit of all three.

Two of the writers I met through Facebook now have agents and books on submission to publishers. I know my writing is as good as theirs, and, because of that, I spent way too much time being jealous of them and setting deadlines by which I absolutely positively needed to reach the place they had reached. I'm giving myself permission to let go of that. I believe my writing is good and will someday find a place on shelves. I'm not setting a deadline on when that has to happen. 

In Which I Receive Bad Writing News, but Pizza, a Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie, and the Twitter #WritingCommunity Make Me Feel Better

Remember how I posted recently about how an agent I really liked had my full manuscript and I was hoping to hear good news soon? Well, I heard news. Sadly, it was not good news. Friday evening I obsessively checked my email for, like, the 12th time that day and I had an email from the agent. Since it was a generic "submission reply from____" through Query Manager I didn't have much hope. Many agents call to make an offer. However, I don't have any hard evidence of how this particular agent operates, so it was always possible she would send a message through Query Manager to set up a call.

You've probably figured out by now that that was not what she was doing. She basically said she likes my premise a lot but didn't love the actual book enough to want to represent it. She gave one criticism, that she felt the pace was a bit slow, but basically the problem was that she had quite a few great manuscripts to choose between and, though she liked mine, she didn't like it enough to choose it over something else. 

I'd actually been afraid I was going to get a message to that effect since Wednesday, when this agent tweeted that one of the hardest things about being an agent is not being able to represent everything she requests in full. My first thought was, "So, what category does my manuscript fit in for you? The chosen or the regretfully rejected?"

So, weirdly, because of that tweet I felt sort of mentally prepared. That doesn't mean it didn't feel like a punch in the gut, it just didn't feel like quite as hard a punch. My husband and teenage son had just left for a weekend backpacking trip, so I couldn't even go home and cry to him. I texted the news, and to his credit, he did send a nice text back. I told my 9 year old, and she was appropriately disappointed for me, especially since she really likes the book and wants it to be published, but she didn't really understand what I was going through.

The people who did understand were other writers.I tweeted about my disappointment, and the Twitter #WrtingCommunity really stepped up. So far, two days later, I've gotten 419 likes, 10 retweets, and 4 quote tweets. That blows statistics for all my other tweets out of the water. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I added up all the likes for my other tweets for the past 6 1/2 months since I joined Twitter they would not equal 419. I also got about 100 comments commiserating and/or telling me to hang in there and that I'll find the right agent someday. 

I'd still much rather have gotten an offer than a rejection, but, since I had to get a rejection, it's nice that it resulted in so much support. Particularly in the divisive political climate we live in, having 419 people, all but about three of whom don't know you, is a pretty amazing demonstration that people can, in fact, be nice to each other when they want to be.

The other thing that made me feel better was having pizza and a movie night with my 9yo. If I had not just gotten a rejection I would probably have clicked "no" when Mad Mushroom asked if I wanted a dessert before I paid for the pizza, but it's awfully hard to muster up the self control to turn down a giant chocolate chip cookie when one version of your dream has just been crushed, so I didn't turn it down. It turns out Mad Mushroom doesn't just make the only pizza my super pick 9yo will eat. They also makes an amazing giant chocolate chip cookie.

So now it's back to the querying trenches, or really just reacknowledging that that's where I still am and may be for awhile. It's also back to work more seriously on my work in progress, so that I can query that one and let the current one in through the back door if that's not the one that gets me an agent.

Most people who aren't writers have the ideas that actually writing the books is the hard part of being a writer. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy and takes a lot of work. However, it can actually be accomplished relatively quickly if an idea gets ahold of you and you have the time to let it take you where it wants to lead you. Actually getting that brilliant book you produced published and in the hands of readers, whether you're searching for an agent, submitting directly to small presses, or publishing independently, is a million times harder in my humble opinion.

To end, because I really like including pictures and I didn't take one of the pizza or the cookie and sharing a screenshot of Twitter seems hokey, here are pics of my cats. The tabby boy is Daniel Tiger and the black girl is Shadow. And before you asked, no, Daniel Tiger is not named after the cartoon character or the puppet who inspired him. He's named after Daniel Boone because he's an intrepid explorer.