F³A: The Fruits of My Labor

Writing. Sometimes it seems so unrewarding. I mean, most people will never see their work published. Of course with the rise of self publishing I supposed that's changed, which has its advantages and drawbacks.

But I digress.

Even those that are published--how many unpublished manuscripts do they have collecting metaphorical dust on their computer. I have at least six.

And when you're published, self or traditionally no matter,  you cannot believe how much work you have to do to market it. I mean, it's not going to sell itself. I've spent so much money and time trying publicize me, Never Eighteen. I'm constantly exhausted.

Sometimes it seems like it's not even worth the trouble.

But it is, isn't it?

Writers don't write for notoriety or money (well most, I mean there are those big names that are now just churning out shit to make a buck. They probably aren't even writing their own books anymore. I'm not naming names).

We write for ourselves. Because it's cheaper than therapy. We write to feel a sense of accomplishment. We write because simply, we love it.  I'm not going to use the cliche that writing is like oxygen,  I'm more about the whole therapy thing. Seriously though, some of us writers can't imagine a life without it.

It's what we do, it's who we are, and every word we write becomes part of us, like a cell or a mole, or an eyelash. Little bits that alone seem like nothing, but when put together become a whole.

Writing completes me.

Done!

I finally finished my rewrite of An Unbalanced Line.  But I'm not done. I made some notes on the manuscript along the way, which I want to fix, then I print it out and read it aloud. Reading aloud helps me get the voice and dialogue right and it also is useful for finding little mistakes, typos, punctuation problems.

Then I do revisions.

The step after that, I get some beta readers. I usually pick four or five people. A couple readers, a couple writers, and I have one friend who is a writer and an excellent editor. 

After that, I do another set of revisions, then maybe another. I do as many as it takes to get it to a place that I feel is good enough to send to agents.

How do you get feedback on your work? Who do you count on to give an unbiased opinion? Do you read aloud?

I'm interested in other writer's process.

Antipation = Obsessing

Now that I've queried a couple of agents I've become a little (okay a lot) OCD with my inbox. I check it about a million times a day.

Of course so far I've been disappointed to not find that email from Mr. or Mrs. Awesome agent.

I don't mine when the inbox hold messages from friends or fans but what is irritating me are the stupid emails from the places I told could send me emails. Like Papa John's. Or Food.com. Or Tacoma Soccer Center. If I could drop kick those emails into the trash I would, because every time my notifications tell me I have a new email, I scramble to see who it's from, hoping it's from one of the agents.

If I could keep myself to checking email only a couple times a day I would. But I can't. Don't even try to give me advice on how. Ain't gonna happen.

Okay, back to the crazymaking, email checking waiting.

The Query Process.

I'm deathly scared. I've sent another query out today. I'm sick to my stomach. I know the feeling will pass shortly, but I always feel this way after I hit the submit button.

For those of you who've not yet made it to the query process, let me give you a rundown. A query is nothing more than a one page letter. It should state book title, genre, and word count.

Then you need to summarize your book in a way that gives them a feel for your writing and makes it pop off the page.

Any credentials, list them. Of course first time writer don't normally have any, so there's that.

Lastly, you need to personalize the letter. Tell the agent why you chose to write to them. This tells them that you know who they are, what they represent, who they've sold.

That's it. You're done. Most of them don't want to even see a page of your work. They judge you on that one page letter, so you better make it good.

This is why I'm sick to my stomach. I think finding an agent is the hardest part of the business. Writing, awesome, revision, not as fun, but a necessary evil. Getting published? I only have one experience with that and it was less than two weeks. But it took me a long time to find an agent. Over a year for the superhero book, which is now being transformed into something else. Probably about six months with Never Eighteen.

Be prepared. Thicken your skin. You will get rejected. Don't take it personally, agents get thousands of queries a year, have piles of manuscripts on their desks to read, plus have to represent the clients they already have.

If you're getting ready or are already in the process, good luck. If you could send some good vibes my way too, I'd sure appreciate it.

The Star System

I've decided to take up my friend Jillian's star system with regard to my writing. It's nothing innovative mind you. It's the same system that's been used for decades in the school system to commend children for doing their homework or for a job well done, perhaps with some kind of incentive.

So a couple weeks ago, Jillian showed me her star chart she keeps for writing. She gives different colored stars for how much she wrote for that day. No star means no writing. An asteric means the day job kept her from writing.

I hadn't written for about three weeks until she showed me that chart, so I decided I needed to do something to motivate me. That on top of my BF's Be, Do, Have inspiration got me writing again. I started Monday.

As you can see from the picture, I missed a day this week. So now every time I open my calendar, which is often, that glaring white space is staring at me. I don't like that. I get a bigger star for a bigger writing day. Small for 0-10 pages. Middle for over 10 pages. Large for a finished project.

I'm trying to think of an incentive for when I finish a project. Definitely not food. I'd like to not spend money, but I am thinking a massage or pedicure. Maybe just a nothing day where I don't clean, cook, I just do whatever I want.

Do you have an incentive program to keep you on task with your writing? If so, what is it?