Tomorrow is the day to submit to the Gearing Up to Get An Agent Pitch Contest! Go here for updated details. There are very narrow windows (I predict the windows will be less than a minute long), so you'll need to be fast with the send button--but not so fast that it gets sent before the window opens! Good luck! (And wish me luck!) Starting next Monday, 40 of the entries will be posted on this-here blog, so please come back and help critique the lucky ones! :)
Then, these folks from Writer Therapy:
...are having a First Page contest that you simply must get in on. Everybody's doing it. Go! Go!
Finally, for the second week in a row, I'm at a conference that is NOT a writer's conference. Last weekend was a woman's retreat-type conference with my MIL and SIL's and this time it's for work. Same city. Wanna know the main difference between writer's conferences and other kinds of conferences? At a writer's conference (if you're me or with me or near me), you are totally excited to meet everyone near you. You exchange cards and stalk each other on twitter. You become BFF's and scrutinize each other's work. At other conferences, you pretty much talk to people you know and maybe casually chit-chat with the nice people you bump into.
Yes, I know I should network more with non-writers, too.
Do you ever go to non-writer conferences? Are you better at coming up with stuff to talk about to non-writers than I am?
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Win a 50 Page Critique
My friend, Ru, is giving away a free 50 page critique to a lucky winner on her blog, And then she was like blah blah blah, in order to celebrate her upcoming writing retreat. (Though I think she's really trying to sabotage her writing time by critiquing someone else's stuff instead, but who am I to judge?)
One of the coolest things about Ru is that she's a lawyer and a novelist. Lawyer + Novelist = Totally Awesomesauce. Ahem. Just saying.
Also, lawyers make good critiquers:
- We like to find the parts of writing that don't fit with the whole so we can yank on them and make the whole thing unravel. We do this for FUN.
- We know all the various ways you can hide the actual point behind high-falutin' mumbo jumbo--so we can spot it when you do it and can help you unearth it.
- Just to get through law school, we wrote tens of thousands of words which were then scrutinized by professors who have to publish regularly just to keep their jobs. Tough crowd, let me tell you.
- Especially in the law, the devil is in the details. Every word has meaning and scrutinizing each and every one of them is second-nature to us. We just can't help ourselves.
So go enter Ru's contest. You'll thank me later.
Also, I'm curious. If I offered a critique as a prize for something, how many of you would bite? I mean, I'm no Ru, but my name starts with R. :)
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Life Is Hard. Deal.
Last week was brutal. When someone pointed out that it was only Monday, I wanted to curl up in a little ball and cry. Tuesday was worse. By Wednesday afternoon, I welcomed the tickle in my throat that meant I probably wouldn't be at work the next day. It worked for the day after that, too. Ah, sickness: the gift that keeps on giving.
Possibly the worst part of the week was that the terrible, horrible, no good, very unfair things... weren't happening to me, but to people I was in charge of protecting from said bad things. Which takes empathy to an unhealthy level, compounds it with feelings of frustrating failure, and dumps the whole lot into a cesspool of can't-do-anything-to-make-it-better.
Which is when I look to those wiser than I am.
Many months ago, I followed a link on Twitter to an article that has haunted me to this day. It's an advice column titled How You Get Unstuck, written by Dear Sugar at TheRumpus.net. When my week went south, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find it again. That I was successful was practically the only thing that went right all week. I couldn't remember the site or the title, but I remembered that it had something to do with Sugar and a dead baby. (Yes, that's exactly the kind of week I was having. You can imagine my search terms.) The tweet that led me to it said something along the lines of "it's not what you think." And it isn't.
The column starts out with Dear Sugar's advice to a woman who'd miscarried her baby... and then it talks about a group of teenage girls that the columnist mentored for a year. These girls had lives that would win any pity party you can name. Hands down. The rest of us shouldn't bother showing up to try to match our piddly little problems with what these girls had to overcome.
The columnist tried and tried and tried and tried to get help for her charges. But nothing ever happened. Child Protection didn't take them away from their bad homes. The police didn't arrest the 30-year-old lover. There just wasn't funding to handle all the problems, and the teens were left to take care of themselves.
Do yourself a favor and read the entire article, here. It's gritty and the language is rough, but you seriously need to read it. Go now. I'll wait.
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Did you read it? Good.
The most heart-wrenching paragraph comes right after she finally realizes that, no matter how many phone calls she makes, she'll never be able to save these girls from the lives they're living. I'm keeping the original language intact because, let's face it, sometimes four-letter words only begin to describe the screaming wrongness of something:
And the sad reality is, art reflects life. It wouldn't realistically work for our characters if it didn't work the same way in real life.
Which means that brutal weeks are necessary for us. They prevent us from becoming spineless whiners. And, like our characters, and like the girls in the Dear Sugar column, we need to learn to deal. We are not so special that we can escape pain for ourselves. We aren't yet strong enough. We haven't crawled far enough to earn the right to fly.
And we all need to build bridges to our dreams out of our desire to heal.
What about you? You ever think your problems are insurmountable? Try to win pity parties? How's that working for you? :)
Possibly the worst part of the week was that the terrible, horrible, no good, very unfair things... weren't happening to me, but to people I was in charge of protecting from said bad things. Which takes empathy to an unhealthy level, compounds it with feelings of frustrating failure, and dumps the whole lot into a cesspool of can't-do-anything-to-make-it-better.
Which is when I look to those wiser than I am.
Many months ago, I followed a link on Twitter to an article that has haunted me to this day. It's an advice column titled How You Get Unstuck, written by Dear Sugar at TheRumpus.net. When my week went south, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find it again. That I was successful was practically the only thing that went right all week. I couldn't remember the site or the title, but I remembered that it had something to do with Sugar and a dead baby. (Yes, that's exactly the kind of week I was having. You can imagine my search terms.) The tweet that led me to it said something along the lines of "it's not what you think." And it isn't.
The column starts out with Dear Sugar's advice to a woman who'd miscarried her baby... and then it talks about a group of teenage girls that the columnist mentored for a year. These girls had lives that would win any pity party you can name. Hands down. The rest of us shouldn't bother showing up to try to match our piddly little problems with what these girls had to overcome.
 |
| This is the Dear Sugar logo. Oh, how I searched.... |
Do yourself a favor and read the entire article, here. It's gritty and the language is rough, but you seriously need to read it. Go now. I'll wait.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Did you read it? Good.
The most heart-wrenching paragraph comes right after she finally realizes that, no matter how many phone calls she makes, she'll never be able to save these girls from the lives they're living. I'm keeping the original language intact because, let's face it, sometimes four-letter words only begin to describe the screaming wrongness of something:
As writers, we spend a lot of time torturing our characters. We laugh about it, tweet about it, and gleefully rub our hands together as we plan new ways to tear them down. This is not because we hate our characters--it's because we love them and we love the readers who might learn, through reading our stories, that awful things can be overcome. We don't tear them down for the sake of watching them squirm, but to build them back up. Better. Stronger. We writers love nothing more than to take a spineless character and whip all the weak out of him. To make her crawl so we can teach her to fly.I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.
And the sad reality is, art reflects life. It wouldn't realistically work for our characters if it didn't work the same way in real life.
Which means that brutal weeks are necessary for us. They prevent us from becoming spineless whiners. And, like our characters, and like the girls in the Dear Sugar column, we need to learn to deal. We are not so special that we can escape pain for ourselves. We aren't yet strong enough. We haven't crawled far enough to earn the right to fly.
And we all need to build bridges to our dreams out of our desire to heal.
What about you? You ever think your problems are insurmountable? Try to win pity parties? How's that working for you? :)
Monday, September 3, 2012
GUTGAA Meet and Greet
Its the first day of the Gearing Up To Get An Agent Blogfest!
Where do you write?
I write at the computer in our tiny living room. The couch is at my right elbow and the TV is over my right shoulder, so my neck kinks to the right whenever my kids are watching Phineas and Ferb.
Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?
The kitchen table is close enough to hold my snacks. When it's dinner time, a quick push of my legs and a 45 degree rotation puts me in front of my food. (Hubby cooks.) :)
Favorite time to write?
Not sure if it's my "favorite" time, but I usually write at night. (Day job.) On weekends, I write in spurts through the day, between occasional chores.
Drink of choice while writing?
Water. Tastes great, less filling, zero calories. Sometimes I'll add lemon.
When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?
All noise is background, so silence is my choice when I can get it. If the family is watching a show I'm inclined to enjoy, I'll put on Pandora and headphones. I like Film Scores Radio most of the time. :)
What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?
My WIP (not the book I'm pitching in the blogfest) was inspired by this (which you'll have to watch on YouTube):
Plus this: Writing Excuses 7.25: Writing Capers
What's your most valuable writing tip?
You can't fix a blank page.
Below is the bio in my query, but since it's going to be in the query for the blogfest, I'm blanking it out so you have to select it to read it. If you're a judge, there's nothing else to see, here.
I’m a host of David Farland’s Authors’ Advisory, where I grill bestselling authors for free writing advice. By day, I’m a criminal defense lawyer, where I learn about the drug trade directly from traffickers and addicts. I’ve published a paper on the juvenile death penalty, but I have not yet published a work of fiction. The death penalty paper was easier.
Anyway, enough about me. Go sign up and tell me about you! Then find out about the rest of the GUTGAA bloghoppers:
Today, we're all answering get-to-know-you questions and adding bios.
Where do you write?
I write at the computer in our tiny living room. The couch is at my right elbow and the TV is over my right shoulder, so my neck kinks to the right whenever my kids are watching Phineas and Ferb.
Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?
The kitchen table is close enough to hold my snacks. When it's dinner time, a quick push of my legs and a 45 degree rotation puts me in front of my food. (Hubby cooks.) :)
Favorite time to write?
Not sure if it's my "favorite" time, but I usually write at night. (Day job.) On weekends, I write in spurts through the day, between occasional chores.
Drink of choice while writing?
Water. Tastes great, less filling, zero calories. Sometimes I'll add lemon.
When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?
All noise is background, so silence is my choice when I can get it. If the family is watching a show I'm inclined to enjoy, I'll put on Pandora and headphones. I like Film Scores Radio most of the time. :)
What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?
My WIP (not the book I'm pitching in the blogfest) was inspired by this (which you'll have to watch on YouTube):
Plus this: Writing Excuses 7.25: Writing Capers
What's your most valuable writing tip?
You can't fix a blank page.
Below is the bio in my query, but since it's going to be in the query for the blogfest, I'm blanking it out so you have to select it to read it. If you're a judge, there's nothing else to see, here.
I’m a host of David Farland’s Authors’ Advisory, where I grill bestselling authors for free writing advice. By day, I’m a criminal defense lawyer, where I learn about the drug trade directly from traffickers and addicts. I’ve published a paper on the juvenile death penalty, but I have not yet published a work of fiction. The death penalty paper was easier.
Anyway, enough about me. Go sign up and tell me about you! Then find out about the rest of the GUTGAA bloghoppers:
Friday, August 31, 2012
Contest Alert: PitchMadness
Sorry for the late warning on this one, guys, but I wanted to tell you anyway. Polish up your 35 word pitch (exact word count) and the first 150 words (end at the end of the sentence) of your completed manuscript and go here for more details.
Submission windows:
Saturday, September 1:
1ST SUBMISSION TIME: 12:00 pm EDT (EST-NY time) first 100.2ND SUBMISSION TIME: 6:00 pm EDT (EST-NY time) first 100.
Tuesday, September 4:
3RD (Extra!) SUBMISSION TIME: 10:00 am EDT (EST-NY time) first 100.
Visit Brenda Drake's blog for more details on proper formatting and for the email address to send to.
Visit Brenda Drake's blog for more details on proper formatting and for the email address to send to.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
The "Girl Book" Debacle
Shannon Hale has been posting about the tragedy of how boys will often refuse to read girl books. Catch up on her excellent blog discussion here, here, and here and on her tumblr account here.
She's running a contest right now where you can post a picture of a boy/guy/man reading any "girl" book and post a link here. Winners will get quality girl books. Like her recently-released sequel to Princess Academy (her "girliest" book), Princess Academy: Palace of Stone.
So I rounded up my boys and handed out copies of "girl" books: Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George, the sequel, Dragon Flight, and The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. When I first started passing them out to my confused sons, KidC (9 years old) got excited--he thought I was giving them away. He remembered me reading the Dragon Slippers books to them and was grinning. Bouncing. I've recently started reading The Goose Girl to them (spurred, in part, by Shannon's posts) and KidD (11 years old), was the only one who had expressed discontent with the no-explosions-in-the-first-chapter pace. KidC and KidB (7 years old), when asked, admitted to liking the first chapter, no-explosions and all.
So I handed Dragon Slippers to KidD, Dragon Flight to KidB, and Goose Girl to KidC. And I explained that I was going to take a picture of the boys reading the books. And that I would post it on my blog.
KidC exclaimed "I don't want people to see me reading a girl book!" He tried to trade Goose Girl with KidD so he'd have one of the Dragon Slipper books instead (lesson learned: dragons are manly, even if they are friends with a seamstress who exclusively makes fancy ballgowns). KidD tried to pose with the book covering his face. KidB, who is learning what is acceptable from his brothers, was likewise reluctant.
So I called a halt to the proceedings, sat down my young-uns, and asked: What is wrong with girl books?
KidB exclaimed that they talk about girl parts. (We told him that none of the books he'd be reading would have anything like that.)
KidC related a story (the specifics of which he could not remember, which could suggest that it does not have its origins in reality but is instead the product of his expectations) about a time when a boy caught him reading a girl book, laughed at him and then told the other boys.
KidD, an hour after I took the pictures and mocked them for not being manly enough to read "girl" books, asserted that his problem was with having his picture taken, and not with having people see him reading a book with a girl on the cover. He says that wouldn't be a problem for him at all. We will be testing this assertion and reporting back.
When I started reading Shannon's posts, I had a bit of an a-hah! moment. Back when I started reading novels to my boys at bedtime, I started with Dragon Slippers. This was mainly because I had purchased the first two books and knew I needed to own the books before read them, since we didn't make it through a book in 3 weeks. Plus, I wanted something fantasy, since I've noticed that a taste for fantasy must be cultivated very young or it is harder to acquire one later. So I read Dragon Slippers and, despite the very girly scenes, my boys loved it. After that, though, I wanted to try to cultivate their love for reading on their own. So I went looking for "boy" books so they'd be all "Wow! That sort of stuff is in books? I want to read more of it!"
And, sure, I don't think that's a horrible theory. My boys loved Janitors by Tyler Whitesides. They roared at every fart/burp/potty joke in J. Scott Savage's The Zombie Kid (no, it's not out yet--we read it before it was even an ARC--nyah, nyah). They enjoyed the twists and turns of Harry Potter (we stopped at book 3).
But now I think they've got the point. Even though they aren't devouring books (yet--I still have hope), they know there are fascinating stories in there. They know where to go when they're ready for a good time.
Now is the time to expand their horizons, methinks. To introduce them to books they might not pick up on their own, but just might love anyway. To convince them that there doesn't need to be a boy on the cover of every awesome story. That girls, doing girl things, can teach them as much about their own lives as fart jokes. Maybe more.
We're now 5 chapters into Goose Girl, and the boys are warming up to it. It helped that one of the guards was killed by a sword that burst out through his chest. That was cooool.
What do you think? Do you encourage your boys to read "girl" books? Do you ever tease them when they love a "princess" book? (Stop that right now!) When you shop for a story your son/brother/nephew might like, do you consider female protagonists? If not, why do you think that is? Is it socially accepted for a girl to read a boy book? If so, why is it okay for a girl to read a boy book, but not the other way around?
(Updated to change Dragon Spear to Dragon Flight. Spear is the 3rd book. *blushes*)
She's running a contest right now where you can post a picture of a boy/guy/man reading any "girl" book and post a link here. Winners will get quality girl books. Like her recently-released sequel to Princess Academy (her "girliest" book), Princess Academy: Palace of Stone.
So I rounded up my boys and handed out copies of "girl" books: Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George, the sequel, Dragon Flight, and The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. When I first started passing them out to my confused sons, KidC (9 years old) got excited--he thought I was giving them away. He remembered me reading the Dragon Slippers books to them and was grinning. Bouncing. I've recently started reading The Goose Girl to them (spurred, in part, by Shannon's posts) and KidD (11 years old), was the only one who had expressed discontent with the no-explosions-in-the-first-chapter pace. KidC and KidB (7 years old), when asked, admitted to liking the first chapter, no-explosions and all.
So I handed Dragon Slippers to KidD, Dragon Flight to KidB, and Goose Girl to KidC. And I explained that I was going to take a picture of the boys reading the books. And that I would post it on my blog.
KidC exclaimed "I don't want people to see me reading a girl book!" He tried to trade Goose Girl with KidD so he'd have one of the Dragon Slipper books instead (lesson learned: dragons are manly, even if they are friends with a seamstress who exclusively makes fancy ballgowns). KidD tried to pose with the book covering his face. KidB, who is learning what is acceptable from his brothers, was likewise reluctant.
 |
| KidC with Goose Girl, KidB with Dragon Slippers, KidD with Dragon Flight |
KidB exclaimed that they talk about girl parts. (We told him that none of the books he'd be reading would have anything like that.)
KidC related a story (the specifics of which he could not remember, which could suggest that it does not have its origins in reality but is instead the product of his expectations) about a time when a boy caught him reading a girl book, laughed at him and then told the other boys.
KidD, an hour after I took the pictures and mocked them for not being manly enough to read "girl" books, asserted that his problem was with having his picture taken, and not with having people see him reading a book with a girl on the cover. He says that wouldn't be a problem for him at all. We will be testing this assertion and reporting back.
When I started reading Shannon's posts, I had a bit of an a-hah! moment. Back when I started reading novels to my boys at bedtime, I started with Dragon Slippers. This was mainly because I had purchased the first two books and knew I needed to own the books before read them, since we didn't make it through a book in 3 weeks. Plus, I wanted something fantasy, since I've noticed that a taste for fantasy must be cultivated very young or it is harder to acquire one later. So I read Dragon Slippers and, despite the very girly scenes, my boys loved it. After that, though, I wanted to try to cultivate their love for reading on their own. So I went looking for "boy" books so they'd be all "Wow! That sort of stuff is in books? I want to read more of it!"
And, sure, I don't think that's a horrible theory. My boys loved Janitors by Tyler Whitesides. They roared at every fart/burp/potty joke in J. Scott Savage's The Zombie Kid (no, it's not out yet--we read it before it was even an ARC--nyah, nyah). They enjoyed the twists and turns of Harry Potter (we stopped at book 3).
But now I think they've got the point. Even though they aren't devouring books (yet--I still have hope), they know there are fascinating stories in there. They know where to go when they're ready for a good time.
Now is the time to expand their horizons, methinks. To introduce them to books they might not pick up on their own, but just might love anyway. To convince them that there doesn't need to be a boy on the cover of every awesome story. That girls, doing girl things, can teach them as much about their own lives as fart jokes. Maybe more.
We're now 5 chapters into Goose Girl, and the boys are warming up to it. It helped that one of the guards was killed by a sword that burst out through his chest. That was cooool.
What do you think? Do you encourage your boys to read "girl" books? Do you ever tease them when they love a "princess" book? (Stop that right now!) When you shop for a story your son/brother/nephew might like, do you consider female protagonists? If not, why do you think that is? Is it socially accepted for a girl to read a boy book? If so, why is it okay for a girl to read a boy book, but not the other way around?
(Updated to change Dragon Spear to Dragon Flight. Spear is the 3rd book. *blushes*)
Monday, August 27, 2012
Final Prep for GUTGAA 2012
Quick: Add this to your To-Do By September list:
Then, once September hits, you'll be ready to:
- Polish query
- Polish first 150 words
- Sign up for the Gearing Up To Get An Agent blogfest
Then, once September hits, you'll be ready to:
- Answer questions and hop around the Meet-and-Greet (starting September 3)
- Email your polished query and first 150 words (starting September 7) to Deana Barnhart to include in her anonymous Pitch Polish
- Get critiques on your pitch (starting September 10)
- Enter the Agent Pitch Contest (email your pitch to Deana starting September 14)--1/5 of that contest will be featured on this-here blog, so you KNOW you wanna play (up to 200 can enter)
- Root for your favorites as four guest judges troll the entries to pick the 50 finalists (announced September 21)
- Watch with baited breath as the 11 agents judge the 50 finalists over at Deana's blog (starting September 24)
- Enter the Small Press Pitch Contest (starting September 28)
- Rinse and repeat for the Small Press editors
- Did I mention random door prizes every Friday?
- Learn the winners of the pitch contests on October 12
Are you signed up?
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