The other day I tweeted this clip from The Golden Girls of Blanche Devereaux perfectly summing up two of the most frustrating aspects of a writer's life: writer's block and rejection. It's the rejection phase that I've gotten fairly used to over the past couple of years. We writers face rejection from all over the place. Those of us in the traditional publishing realm often get our first (and second, third, fourth…) taste of it during the querying process as…
"The moment that counts most for me is the one that precedes reading. At times a title is enough to kindle in me the desire for a book that perhaps does not exist." – Italo Calvino My last blog post – about my latest revision of Straightville, U.S.A. – contained the following nugget of information: So I’m happy to say that I sent the latest revision (I think it’s number 1 gazillion) to my agent for his review last weekend. And…
“The waiting is the hardest part.” – Tom Petty Glaciers. Turtles. Snails. Little old ladies on the highway. These are things that move at faster speeds than the traditional publishing business. This is a fact that has taken me a while to get used to, but only because I’ve had no other choice than to do so. I did my research into the business side of being a writer when I first started querying Straightville, U.S.A. in 2011. I knew…
Perhaps one of these days I’ll earn enough money as a novelist to live comfortably off that income. I’ll get up in the morning, brew some coffee, pet the cat and sit down at my desk – still in PJs perhaps? – and write. Yeah…that day isn’t here yet. Most of us writers (wait…should I say most? Yeah, I’ll stick with it.) Most of us writers don’t do so full time. We have jobs and relationships and maybe kids and…
I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions. By mid-January (if we even make it that far), they’re forgotten about – swept under the rug like dust bunnies and little balls of cat hair. The “new” has worn off, the media buzz is gone, and we’ve settled back into our boring, old routines. Writers aren’t immune to this trend. There are blog posts galore, like this one, from authors resolving to do all sorts of very specific things, such as…
"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come." – Victor Hugo After finishing up a marketable draft of Blades of Grass in October, I gave myself a needed hiatus before beginning my next project. In November, I told myself, I’ll get started on my next book. November came and went, and no progress had been made. I thought perhaps I was up against that dreaded thing called writer’s block. I would try to work. I’d…
It can't be December already, can it? I started looking through my Kindle and bookshelf to create my Top 10 Books of 2013 list (coming soon to the blog) when I realized that several of the books I read this year came out well before the last 365ish days. That’s what I get for letting my book queue get so backlogged I’ll never catch up! So while I continue working on my list of favorite books I read this year, here are…
Oh that the day has dawned, ladies and gentlemen: a marketable manuscript of Blades of Grass is upon us! My loyal readers will attest to this project’s nearly yearlong journey from a hurried NaNoWriMo attempt last November, to a scrapped and reimagined novel in the winter, to a revised and revised and revised final draft by summer’s end. This week – after my gazillionth revision – I finally saw these elusive and sought-after words in my inbox from Steve, agent…
Hey writers, where do you write? The office? The coffee shop? A cold, dark basement, away from the world outside? I always find it interesting to see where other authors do their best creating. I so wish I could do the coffee shop thing, but I'm too easily distracted. And my neighborhood java joint had the audacity to move out of the neighborhood, lured by the bright lights of downtown. (Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Daily Cup!) Generally, most of…
I have a confession to make. Are you sitting? Here goes… I am not a full-time writer. There. I said it. Is everyone okay? Perhaps someday I will be a full-time writer, but in the meantime I’m a full-time communications director at a university. And I also teach an online course at another university, raise two attention-craving cats, make time for a relationship, serve on a non-profit board of directors and maintain some semblance of a social life whenever possible….