Tag Archives: writing

Absence

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I’m back! Did you miss me?

Wait–you didn’t even notice I was gone? Well, that’s depressing.

For those of you who did notice, I didn’t actually go anywhere, except to work at my new full-time job (hence the gap between posts). I am now officially working at XXXXX, XXXXX-ing a number of XXXXX’s for several large XXXXX’s–it’s all very top-secret. Yeah. That sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? I’ll just let you fill in those blanks yourself (feel free to insert your own ideas here; they’re probably far more titillating than what I’m really doing).

But it’s a job, it’s flexible, and it’s close to home, so no horrendous commute this time around.  The only real downside (other than the fact that XXXXX-ing is about as stimulating as watching paint dry) is that I’ve returned to work just at the time that I need to be busting on getting the print edition of Widow Woman ready to go and I don’t have a lot of extra time to spend on it now. I should, in fact, be working on the proofing now, but I worry that if I go too long between posts, you  might forget about me and move on to some other crazy writer’s blog.

So where am I now? I’ve seen the first draft of the cover from my wonder of a designer, I’m at about Chapter 6 of the proofing, and still need to purchase my ISBN (but at least I finished my research into which one to get–is there any good reason for those things to be so complicated?). Why am I reproofing, you might ask? Well, if you read some of my earlier posts, you know that the e-book version turned up a number of “little darlings” that need to be fixed and I’m anxious to put out a cleaner 2nd edition (but don’t forget: those 1st edition bloopers will make for a valuable item, someday. Yes, that’s what I’m telling myself–it helps manage my anxiety).

Well, that’s where things stand now–still plugging away at it, though in fits and starts during lunch and coffee breaks instead of in 8-hour stretches. Nobody said it’d be easy–because if it were, fewer people would be crazy enough to do it, I guess.

I’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, feel free to check in with me on Twitter or Facebook–shorter posts and tweets may be all I can manage for the immediate future.   

 

 

Another Fork in the Road?

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Classy SporkMaybe this is another fork in the road, maybe it’ll be something else. Like chopsticks. Or a spork–I really like sporks.

Bottom line is, I’m starting a full-time editing job tomorrow: the Clark Kent to my Superman; the Peter Parker to my Spiderman; the Diana Prince to my Wonder Woman. I think it’s a good move, but as with any change, it comes with some nerves and maybe some weird tingling–that could just mean my foot’s asleep.

What it does mean, certainly, is less time to blog, so I’m going to resort to a rerun (sorry, folks, even Emmy winners do it) of my post from the week I started my last full-time position. The position may have changed, but the new-job angst remains the same.

Enjoy, and hopefully, I’ll have a real update later this week. Wish me luck!

[Originally posted April 19, 2012]

What? There’s a fork in the road? Better pick it up before someone gets hurt [rimshot].

Sorry, I couldn’t resist—I seriously hope bad puns are not an uncontrollable side effect of all the impending changes ahead this week. What changes, you ask? Patience, my friends, patience. Submission updates first:

I haven’t sent out any additional submissions since my last post—why will shortly become clear—but I did receive 1 ½ rejection letters. No, that’s not a typo. If you want to be perfectly literal about things, then it was really 2 rejections, but I’m a fiction writer—I don’t do literal very well.

The first rejection was pretty standard—“We don’t normally write form rejection letters because we want to give you a personal touch when we reject you and your sorry piece of work, but in your case, we’re making an exception. Thanks, but this is not for us.” Meh. I’ve read worse.

The second rejection, however, thrilled me right down to the ragged toes of my fuzzy fuschia slippers (that’s why I’m only counting it as half a rejection: no crying). First, it was from my “dream agent.” Second, my dream agent clearly has the patience of a saint, because she is still corresponding with me even after I queried her three times for this book. And third—and this is huge—one line after informing me that she still didn’t feel she was the right agent for this manuscript, she wrote that she would “happily read” other material I sent to her. “Happily read!” Woohoo! That’s a door left ajar if I ever saw one. On the other hand, maybe delusions are another side effect of change? Nah. I’m sticking with huge.

Never has a rejection letter left me feeling so euphoric—and then, immediately, so panicked. Yes, panicked, because clearly, now I really need to get crackin’. But…that’s not going to be as easy tomorrow as it was yesterday.

Remember those changes I mentioned before?  Well, in addition to working on my manuscript for the last few months, I’ve also been doing some Other Writing. Writing that included, among other things, resumes, job applications, and cover letters. And that writing, as it turns out, was the more successful of the bunch, because…

I’ve got a new job.

Yay!!!!

But…I’ve got a new job.

Waaaaa!

To say I have some mixed feelings is a classic understatement: I am so thrilled about my new position (associate editor for a trade magazine) that I haven’t been able to sleep since accepting the offer. It’s exactly the job I’ve been hoping to land during all these years of freelancing. But unlike my freelancing gigs, this new one is a full-time position, which means the hours I’ve been able to while away on my own writing will now be consumed by writing for someone else.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing, really. It is. (And I’m not just saying that to avoid hate mail from desperate job seekers out there). It is a good thing (ew: first puns and now I’m channeling Martha Stewart) for me to enter the corporate world. After all, it’s been more than eleven years that I’ve been at home taking care of my family and freelancing. Eleven years—has it really been that long? Of course I’ve got some mixed feelings—it’s the end of an era.

And while we’re on the subject, oy, you want to talk mixed feelings? How about this response from my youngest child: “Mom, I don’t want you to work over the summer—I’ll miss you.” Ouch. A moment of silence, please, for the author to take a deep breath and compose herself.

Thank you. I think I can type again now.

So that’s my Fork in the Road: it’s big and it’s shiny, but it’s some got really sharp tines. And there it looms, smack dab in the middle of my road, turning me away from the path I was on and nudging me onto a strange new one, whispering smugly “You always knew this day would come, didn’t you?” Okay, that turned out a little more mixed than I intended. Ugh.

I’m happy! I’m happy! I’m happy! There—balance restored.

Well, we all know what they say about two roads diverging, don’t we. So–Here’s to my new, unexplored road—wish me luck!

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

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authorgraph logoMaybe it’s because I’m actually signing some autographs now, but I’ve been thinking a lot about signatures lately.

Your signature is a pretty important part of your identity, wouldn’t you say? I mean, we all make jokes about people with illegible handwriting going on to become doctors or pharmacists (or the U.S. Treasury Secretary), but some people really believe that your signature tells a great deal more about you than just how many times Sister Mary Frances rapped on your knuckles with a ruler during cursive practice.

There’s even a whole field of study dedicated to handwriting, called graphology (although when Wikipedia calls a field of study “pseudoscientific,” it’s wise to take any findings with a grain of salt).

Still, it is amusing, at least, to imagine what people can read from your signature. I even went online and took a signature analysis quiz (fair warning: it was a lame one), just for fun. My results focused entirely on the way I dot my I’s. Apparently, although I’m restless and always in a hurry, the fact that I actually take time to dot them means I am attentive to even minute details. Hmm. Freakily accurate.

One other reason I’m looking at my signature is my involvement with Authorgraph.com (just another thing I have in common with E.L. James). It connects readers wanting autographs with writers and allows them to receive personalized digital autographs for their e-books from their favorite authors. For authors, it’s a great tool to connect with readers who can’t attend their events in person.

When I first joined the Authorgraph stable, I didn’t yet own a tablet, so I had to use a mouse (and apparently an angry one at that) to create my digital signature. Haha, if I’d taken the signature analysis quiz with that, my results would’ve shown me to be restless, in a hurry, and wearing a large, heavy cast on my hand. Plus someone you wouldn’t want to sit next to on any form of public transportation.

Happily, now I’ve got tablet access, so I spent a little time this morning playing around with the stylus and tablet to try to improve my Authorgraph. I think it’s better now (although maybe I should take another quiz to make sure my signature doesn’t scream “demented photo bomber in training.”)

Let me know what you think.

All My World’s A Stage

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ImageIt’s time for another peek into my work-in-progress. Last week, I introduced you to the members of the Barnes family, the folks at the center of my new novel. You may have noticed their names are a bit unusual. Just as with my cover, there’s a story behind that, too:

Their mother, Ellie, had been convinced that within her children lay the seeds of greatness. This belief had manifested itself in her choice of names, and so, each child bore the name of a great and powerful leader: Elizabeth, Hannibal, and Alexander.

Portentous though they may have been, the boys’ names were decidedly difficult for young Miss Elizabeth Barnes to pronounce properly (immediately upon learning to babble, she’d shortened her own name). Bibi formally christened her brothers early on: “Dis Nibble,” she’d proclaimed, ruthlessly jabbing the sleeping Hannibal in the head, “an’ dis Lex,” giving little Alexander an equally enthusiastic thumb to the eye. Much to Ellie’s enduring chagrin, Bibi’s names for her brothers stuck fast.

Less than fond of the twins’ tiresome company to begin with, Bibi crowed with glee upon later discovering more fitting (in her mind, anyway) namesakes for her brothers: Superman’s evil arch nemesis Lex Luthor and the fictional mass murderer Hannibal Lecter. (Bibi’s prodigious appetite for books led her more toward the macabre and violent than to the fluffy and pink.)

A friend asked me last week what, if any, feedback I was desiring as I share these bits and pieces. I guess I’m not really looking for any–yet. You see, this stage of writing a book is magical. It is the stage where anything can happen: characters can live or die, be heroes or villains; voyages can be made or forgotten; plots can drive themselves right off a cliff or reach right into my chest and grab hold of my pounding heart. It’s the moment of anything-is-possible.

At this stage, I’m not worrying about feedback; I’m reveling. Feel free to lay your comments on me, but as far as formal feedback goes, I’ll wait and ask for that when I hit the editing stage and feel less like I’m flying and more like I’m drowning.

Keeping Your Work Safe

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When I was a little girl, my younger sister often tagged along behind me. It seemed as though she copied everything I did, which was a source of constant irritation to me. My mother often responded by saying, “Oh, honey, it’s okay; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Yeah, that didn’t float with me either, back then–I still wanted to beat her up. [If you’re reading this, baby sis, you know I love ya.]

I think there’s some truth to that saying though–don’t you feel good when you see somebody want to borrow your special recipe, or ask where you bought your very tasteful drapes, or where you get your awesomely stylish haircut? It feels good to have people acknowledge the worth of your decisions by emulating them.

For writers, however, too much imitation is a bad thing. After all, who wants to keep reading the same tired plots and story lines over and over again? It gets dull. (And who wants to write them, for that matter?)

Yes, originality is critical, but for some writers, The New can often be hard to come by and they resort to a little bit more imitation than they should (i.e., plagiarism.) There’ve been some big cases of plagiarism in the news in recent years, and by some pretty big names, too. That’s got some writers feeling queasy about sharing even rough excerpts (as I did last week).

But here’s the thing (in case you didn’t know):

The U.S. Copyright Office basically states that your work is protected [for the most part] from the moment you create it and “fix it in a tangible form,” whether it is published or unpublished, although it still recommends that you register your copyright with them, anyway, due to differences in copyright laws abroad. That way, if someone does “imitate” any of your work too closely, you have the right to bring a suit of infringement, something the unregistered copyrights or “poor man’s copyrights” (sending a copy to yourself and dating it) don’t provide.

It’s certainly something to ponder when you’re trying to build your platform by sharing works in progress, but I guess my take on sharing excerpts is that it’s more important for me to get the word out there about what I’m doing, knowing that I’m mostly protected, than to hide my progress under a rock of fear of imitators. I think I’d be flattered someone thought my work good enough to imitate.

On the other hand, maybe those thinking about “borrowing” my stuff too liberally might want to talk with my little sister first to find out what other kinds of things I like to do with rocks…

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Just something I was thinking about on this slow Monday. Look for more excerpts to come.