IdeaJones

Tag: #writing

  • Please, 2020, No More Sequels

    Please, 2020, No More Sequels

    New Year’s Eve, 2021. Tomorrow, we start the third official year of the pandemic. Would whoever’s in charge of such things turn off 2020 before midnight tonight? Please?

    2021 seemed like 2020, Pt. 2. The pandemic plodded on, largely thanks to its biggest fans, anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, who thought the only thing wrong with the pandemic was that it might not last long enough. While shouting about how they wanted to be free of the pandemic and its restrictions, they did everything they could to assure us all that it wouldn’t end. Thanks!

    Wildfire season, again, entered and was the Drama Queen that literally sucked up all the oxygen in the room for multiple states.

    Between wildfires and Covid, there was a theme to 2020 and 2021: breathing. Call it the era of Waiting To Inhale.

    We’re still dealing with Long Covid here, 20 months later. Definitely better than I was a year ago, but the big excitement for me was getting on the waiting list for my health care provider’s Long Covid program (which hasn’t started yet). Now it has a name: PASC. Here’s a hint for those with Long Covid looking for a doctor: ask what that doctor thinks about PASC. My old doctor didn’t “believe” in Long Covid, as though we were talking about the Tooth Fairy. My current doctor? Filled in the acronym and proceeded to discuss the latest research she’d read about. This was the year I learned to advocate for myself. A friend who works in healthcare said, “Always remember this is a service industry. You are a customer and if you don’t like how you’re treated, you might go somewhere else, and we’re unemployed. If you need something you aren’t getting, speak up!”

    A doctor is a business partner. You have to work together to improve your health, and you have to be able to both understand and trust the advice you’re given. You have to be able to communicate. You have to know that you are heard and your concerns are considered. If all of that isn’t true, you might need a new doctor — and don’t be shy about finding a new one.

    My own personal pandemic is entering its fourth year. I was just getting over a mysterious and scary illness (that turned out to be a reaction to a virus), when I caught Covid. Yet I still believe the pandemic will eventually end. Mom used to say that everything ends, and if the bad news about that is that good things end, the good news is that bad things end. She also said “Better is always coming. The trick is to hang on until it arrives.”

    So hang on. Keep masking when you should, get vaccinated if you haven’t, and cut yourself a big slice of slack. This decade has a lot of room for improvement. When things get better, you want to be able to enjoy it. So rest. Meditate. Listen to music and dance around the house. Pet a dog. Laugh whenever you can. Forgive as much as you can. Be the light until the sun shines again. You are more remarkable than you suspect and more glorious than you know. Give yourself room to stretch out and shine or incubate and rest, whatever you need.

    And if you’re the person who should have turned 2020 off, you’re forgiven, but please flip that switch now, please and thank you.

  • Back In The Saddle Again (Well, in, then out, then in…)

    So I haven’t been keeping up on our website until just recently. My new hashtag is #IBlameCovid. It’s been 5 months since I was first diagnosed. Here we are in July (almost August) and I’m definitely improved (I know March happened, but don’t ask me about it), but not completely over it yet.

    The main lingering symptom is exhaustion. In March, I found myself having to sit on the floor of my shower because I couldn’t stand up long enough to rinse the shampoo from my hair. Now? I can shower, then I have to lie down for an hour. So improvement, yes, but not back to normal.

    That’s a common misunderstanding about #Covid19. People think you have it and you die, or you get better, end of report. Not really. For many people, even a mild to moderate case (like mine), where you didn’t have to be hospitalized, produces lingering and often debilitating symptoms that can come and go unpredictably.

    Thinking is physical work and it tires me out. Laugh if you want to, it’s true. Sometimes I hunt for common words or to labor to finish a thought. It gets better, then returns. I’m just glad my brain came back at all. For quite a while, I struggled to follow a thought from one end to the other, and conversation left me with crushing fatigue.

    I’m writing and editing again, and my brain seems to function, until I get tired, so my working hours are brief and interrupted by rest breaks while I lie down, but at least I can work a bit. I just have to accept that an hour of writing will be followed by an hour (or more) of lying down. It’s frustrating, and I was wrestling with guilt and frustration, but I remembered the lesson a dear friend taught me.

    Merlin was my service dog. He had been a starving stray puppy, but he still approached every morning cheerfully, making the most of whatever life offered him that day. We call it The Lesson Of Merlin. He taught me that it doesn’t matter what you planned, or what you feel your situation “should” be. What matters is meeting life where it is and doing what you can with what you have to work with.

    Merlin, who tried to teach me all he could.

    Which isn’t to say I’ve magically become a yogi and avatar of enlightenment. I have to remind myself every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to look at what I have available that day and make the most of it. If it’s a bad post-Covid day, that may mean lying on the couch all day, watching Shakespearean comedies, history programs and writing classes on tv. If it’s a good day, it’s a bit of housecleaning, writing, playing with my pups, talking with Mark. My challenge is to find joy in whatever I have.

    The lesson of Merlin.

  • #QueryRoad

    #QueryRoad

    The query letter has to be as good as the book. Maybe better.


    “Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write. Will you take a look?” — The Beatles

    Something I’ve learned while searching for an agent: writing the book may be the easy part. Here I thought all that time spent mumbling to myself, scratching notes on diner napkins, and otherwise trying to put together one really good sentence, then another, and stack them together into something worth paying to read was the heavy lifting. Editing, polishing, polishing again… that had to be the hard part. I didn’t expect finding an agent and selling a book to be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be the start of a secondary writing career, either.

    I didn’t know how many documents have to march in front of an unpublished book, carrying the banner and blowing trumpets. Loglines. Synopses. And, oh God, Query Letters.

    Looking back, my first query letter, as artist Berke Breathed put it, “wasn’t that bad, but Lord, it wasn’t good.” Each form of writing has its own sales style. I could, and had, write a successful pitch to land a freelance assignment, but writing a query letter for my novel that way left it as dry as a cracker.Plus, I’d gotten to the point where I was getting assignments through other editors or producers who had recommended me, so I wasn’t pitching often.

    In Girl Scouts, I was the kid who towed the wagon full of cookie boxes if the other girl would ring the doorbell and talk to people. I’m a major introvert. My pitch skills were near zero.

    So I did the research. If you’re trying this, seriously, do your homework. It’s fine to ask other people what they think, but also read articles on reputable writer sites (like Writer’s Digest, and literary agent blogs). I did, and here are some of the tips that come up repeatedly (in no particular order):

    1. Be brief. A query letter is supposed to be a single page.
    2. Include the name of your book, genre and approximate word count. Target audience, too (and do NOT, whatever you do, say, “This book would be popular with everyone!” Nothing is popular with everyone. Who, really, is probably going to enjoy this book?).
    3. Include qualifications (both to write this book, and as a professional writer), if you have them. Placed (or won) any writing competitions? Participated in writing workshops or taken classes? Been published (for example, if, like me, you’ve had articles, etc. published)? How do you know about this subject (especially important for nonfiction books)? If you haven’t had anything published, then you haven’t, but if you have, the bio paragraph is your chance to say so.
    4. Describe your book in a paragraph:
      1. Protagonist/antagonist
      2. Conflict
      3. Stakes (What does your protagonist need? What threatens him/her getting it?)
      4. Some idea of why this book would be interesting for a reader
    5. In your bio, if you belong to writing groups/associations, mention it.
    6. Address the letter to the agent by name AND DOUBLE-CHECK THE SPELLING
    7. Contact info
    8. Comparable books in your genre. People like something that is a twist on something familiar — the actually completely unfamiliar is something most people won’t risk their careers/income on, and you’re asking an agent to do just that. Show that you’ve given this some thought. Best if your comps are fairly recent and fairly successful. Comparing your car to a 1970s Gremlin isn’t likely to sell it
    9. Platform (social media) if you have one. Twitter handle, Facebook, etc. Keep in mind the agent, if interested, will likely check you out on social media, so watch the posts of half-naked pictures of you passed out, drunk. You don’t have to wear a muzzle, just, y’know, be aware that the most important word in “social media” is SOCIAL. All kinds of people see it.

    Craft your query letter with as much attention as you spent to craft your book. It’s your sales rep, knocking on doors and pitching you and your book as something every good agent needs!

    While crafting your query letter, logline and synopsis, craft a rejection strategy, because you are, at the start or at some point, going to get rejected. Comes with the territory. If Kathryn Stockett, Stephen King, JK Rowling and even Dr. Seuss got rejections, you and I probably will as well. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Some successful authors were rejected over a hundred times before getting a break. My personal routine is: 2 minutes to be disappointed, chocolate, exercise, pet my dogs, send out a query letter for each rejection. Sometimes more.

    Good luck! Hope to meet you on the bestseller list some day!


  • Into The Twitter(pitch)verse

    Into The Twitter(pitch)verse

    More on Twitter pitch events… Da Etiquette

    Into the Twitter Pitchverse. An introduction to Twitter pitch events for writers.
    Navigating the world of Twitter pitching.

    I’m not an expert, just another writer trying to navigate the jungle of getting and agent and getting published. In that quest, I’ve been finding my way through Twitter Pitch Valley, and in the interests of #WritingCommunity, I’m offering what I’m figuring out in the hopes it might be helpful to someone else. First, because it’s that important, Da Etiquette.

    As mom used to say, “Manners matter.” There is etiquette to Twitter pitch events. If you don’t follow it, you will probably get chastised, and may find yourself banned, so it’s worth noting.

    1) Be thou not a jerk. Criticize not the pitches of other participants.

    2) Follow thou the rules. If allowed three pitches, confine yourself to three. If allowed six, whoopee! Do six. Not seven. Read Da Rules and follow same.

    3) Seriously, be thou not a jerk. Don’t criticize the worthiness of other participants, or their right to participate.

    For example, one pitchfest for books is #DVpit. For writers from marginalized groups, such as the disabled. It’s on the honor system and if someone cheats they will be found out, but it’s not for you to make that call. If you personally know this participant and have concerns you can politely DM, I suppose, but otherwise? Leave ya nose outta it.

    4) Only “like” a pitch if you are a legit agent or editor and wish to see the manuscript. That’s how this works. If not, some allow you to retweet pitches you like. Some ask you not to. Read and follow Da Rules.

    If allowed to RT pitches you like, it’s a nice way to show support.

    So it follows that you do NOT “like” your own pitches, as you are not an agent looking to see your own manuscript.

    5) Be not a daft twit. Check Da Rules. If it’s a genre thing, be sure you legit fit somewhere in that genre before you participate. If you don’t know what the genres are and where you fit, for crying out loud, do some research.

    If it’s for left-handed writers and you can’t even brush your hair left-handed, stay out of it. If it’s for Women’s Fiction and your book is about a guy who hates women and kills people with a dinner fork, stay out of it.

    6) Time marches on — and you need to know which way. Most of those I’ve seen are Eastern Standard Time. If you live otherwhere than the east coast of the United States, plan accordingly. If it ends at 8 pm EST and you post your pitch at 8 pm PST, It’s 11 pm where the organizers are and nobody will see your post.

    7) Don’t take any of this too seriously. Just seriously enough. Do your homework. Follow the rules. Set up your pitch event calendar so you don’t forget when the next one is coming. Get your pitches ready and polished. Be ready to tweet when the time comes… then relax. You may or may not get requests. The requests may or may not pan out. It’s a chance, not a guarantee. You can still query agents traditionally whether they request you through the event or not. Enjoy life. Don’t let your happiness hang on this. Take the chance because it’s a chance, then take the next one, until one pans out.

    Good luck!

    #writing #writingcommunity #writingtips #writerlife

  • Shoebox Writing

    “You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.” – Isaac Asimov

    To me, there are two main sorts of writers. Shoebox Writers write, but never show it to anyone. Authors write, send it out, get it back (more often than not), polish, send it out again. They just keep sending it out.

    No shame in being a Shoebox Writer. It doesn’t make you less of a writer if nobody sees it but you. If you enjoy it, it’s a respectable way to spend your free time and less messy than a lot of things people do for recreation.

    But if you want to be published, you’re going to have to get it out there. Some people will not get it. Some will not like it. A few will hate it. But the equations also work the other way. Some will get it. Some will like it. A few will love it. If you have any talent, you find your tribe.

    One rejection, even a hundred, isn’t a statistically representative sample, so don’t get a few rejections and quit. Not if this is important to you.

    If you do get a lot of rejections, look to see if any of them contain some useful feedback. “I didn’t like it” is not useful. Some will attempt to salve their own feeling of inadequacy by trashing you and what you do (ignore them — they’re jerks). But some people will, in the spirit of helping you attempt to climb your mountain, offer you considered, thoughtful feedback. And others will get it, and like it. If they get a chance to see it.

    Think of it as diamonds lost in a dumpster. It’s your job to put on your gloves and find them. Get your stuff out there so that people who will like it get the chance. Thank the people who offer constructive criticism, and those who offer encouragement and support. There’s no getting just one side of that coin. No way to find your tribe without getting negative feedback.

    If you can’t, if you just can’t bear negative feedback and it’s just to painful to hear that someone doesn’t love your baby as much as you do, be a happy Shoebox Writer. Write as your hobby, because you love it.

    As Mark reminds me, “There’s nothing that 100% of people love.” There are popular books I didn’t enjoy, not for any reason that has to do with quality. They just didn’t reach me. They aren’t talking to me, and that’s okay — not everything has to be for me.

    But some things are for me. And there are people who get my writing and like it. A few who love it. I’m searching for more. Hoping one is an agent. But meantime, my gloves are on and I’m searching.