(no subject)

[shalanna]

I need a voodoo spell.

There might be an opportunity for an author to have a partial manuscript looked at by Maggie Crawford, Editorial Director, Mass Market, Pocket Books. (Simon and Schuster! New York! She is the real deal, as Joe Scarborough always says). I must therefore begin the preparation of the spells, charms, and/or voodoo that will allow said author to be . . . someone we know.

Really, doesn't that sound like a plan? It does. It really does. I know that if Certain People's Work ever crossed the desk of an editor, there would be no questions such as "how do we pitch this to an editor?" There would be only the words, and the style, and the voice. Washing over the inveterate reader. Even if it wasn't right for the list, the work would at last get a chance.

Isn't it pretty to think so.

Anyway, any luck spells you happen to have, let's hear 'em. I heard you can write the name of the person you want to contact you on a piece of pink paper and put it in your wish box. But that didn't work last time . . . the contest judge didn't like me. Or my wish box was secretly a Venus Fly Crap Wish Box.

I also mailed off the mystery to the St. Martin's contest yesterday. The clerk at the Mail-It-Often store got all excited. "Wow! You must do this all the time! A whole novel! Wow! It sure is heavy!" (grin) "So what are you going to do when you win?" (Break down in hysterics, no doubt.) It was endearing to hear all the enthusiasm in the room. Obviously they have never known any writers personally. (grin) Mostly, it's a game of waiting to be hit in the chest with another stone. Hoping your heart turns to stone.

My mom summed it up pretty accurately, from her POV. I couldn't blame her for her attitude. "What, you went off and sent another one? There goes another $15 down the toilet. You send it off, only to get upset and depressed and cry a few weeks or months later, when it's rejected. Why do it at all? Why not get a life and learn to knit or something? People appreciate mittens and hats and such. They don't appreciate fiction so much." In her view, why WOULD you spend money only to be ultimately disappointed and hurt? The way she figures it, there's never a chance that you WOULDN'T be hurt. Judging from past experience, it's the way to bet. I can see her point. It's enough to make you think you'd be better off as an airheaded PTA band booster with sixteen children and a soccer-mom minivan full of kids driving all over town all the time to Events and softball games. Well, the Universe didn't see fit to send me any kids--I couldn't have them, and hubby wouldn't cooperate with the people when I sent in applications to adopt (he knew we didn't have the money to cover all the fees, ultimately, and didn't think I should try to brazen it out). It might have been fun to sit in the floor with the kids and play "Concentration" with a pack of mismatched playing cards the way my sister-in-law did. But I didn't get the choice. My books are my offspring. That's just the way it turned out.

I'll be right back. I need to go buy my lottery ticket. If you don't play, you can't win. . . .

Comments

[pointoforigin.livejournal.com]

Shalanna, I don't really know you, and there may not be a polite way to say this . . . but is there some way you could just stop taking your mother's phone calls for awhile?? Regardless of how it looks from HER POV, it's YOUR POV that counts! And I don't think any writer needs constant nagging about how useless her work is. What you need is to be kind and good to yourself, especially if the outside world is not being so kind. Repeat after me: "Mom, I can see that you don't understand how important my work is to me. Now hear this: even if I never sell a novel, expressing myself creatively gives me great joy, and I will continue to do it no matter what, because I believe in myself and I value my art! So put THAT on your crochet hook and make a doily of it!"

I highly recommend Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way," and its sequels. Doing the exercises in this book has certainly helped me maintain faith in my work during rough times. Just don't show it to your mother . . . .

So it isn't Home Sweet Home . . . adjust

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Hi, and welcome to the lj! Thanks so much for the supportive comments. I hear you. I do a lot of self-pep-talking. And I think when you write down an emotion or event, it helps you work through it; I find the journal helpful in working through some issues. I keep plugging away at this stuff, hopeless as it seems. I wish I really did feel that the journey is enough of a reward, that I didn't need to publish. For some reason, that is such an important thing to me. *(sigh)*

It's interesting that you suggest the phone thing . . . if I don't answer when she dials the house number from her cell phone, she comes limping back to the computer room (the extra bedroom) to hit me with a throw pillow. "Why aren't you answering the phone?!?!" (grin)

I guess I haven't exactly come out and said this, but my mom is elderly and lives with hubby and I here at Casa el Dumpo. She had several medical "events" and surgeries over the past few years, but was able to live alone in our "little" house (our first house, which we kept and moved her into when she couldn't take care of the BIG house any more) for a few years. But finally she broke her arm about five years ago and "gave up" living alone . . . she moved into the fourth bedroom/playroom, which is off the kitchen with a shared half bath and small closet. (I had been using it as my office. That's how I lost my desk, grin.) She also needs me to drive her to the doctor and do various things for her. That's when I hear the complaints, if she happens to see what I'm carrying or what I'm working on. She actually did think the mystery opening was good, though, when she inadvertently read some of it a couple of weeks ago.

She's certainly not helpless, but she gets bored and wants me to entertain her. It's not so bad in general, but just that she really thinks I should try to be happy, and she can't see how the writing is going to lead to any gain. Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime (maybe there was ONE . . . but the rest were in his brother's attic.) He wasn't a happy little artist camper. Not that I'm a genius like Vincent, but I can see her point in that a person should have a little fun once in a while.

She had the flu and got a couple of other little complications this past week, so any time I tried to sit down and type, I'd hear this plaintive wail after about 30 minutes. It's really tough to make her understand that dear, I am now forty years old and the homeowner and PAY FOR EVERYTHING (except her meds and her personal little luxuries, which she affords on $600 a month Social Security and that's IT, because she didn't plan for her retirement because Daddy died and she wasn't planning ahead. It's much cheaper for us to have her living here, because now we don't have to pay two house payments!) It's just her personality of dominance, I think.

Hubby has a tougher time than I do, because he was brought up not to hit women. (grin) He isn't quite as optimistic as he used to be about my possibilities. After all, he sees all the 25-year-olds getting published, and it's tough not to wonder "what's wrong with this picture?" Still, he doesn't say I should stop. (But he doesn't read the stuff, either.)

I realize it may come across as pretty dismal around here. But that's just because that's the way I felt when I was doing my journal entry. We have a few laughs now and then. We watched the movie on TV this afternoon together on TBS, "Blast From the Past," and since we both remembered the era (I was about three when the baby in the movie was born), we enjoyed the story. She's probably right about my doing more housecleaning. I would get one of those "Roomba" vacs, but I don't think it could navigate the mess (and I'm sure it terrifies cats and small dogs!)

I'll try to whine less. Though it helps a bit just to vent and wander about kicking at soup cans.

thanks for listening. . . .

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to get caught up--with the school year on, my forays into LJ become very hit or miss, more often than not with rip-reading the shorter postings and mentally marking longer ones for later reads...which may or may not happen.

I only mention that because after seeing the above notice about a new chance, I went back and read the longer postings about rejections. It really seems to me that you've got the drive to get a career going, there's just some disconnect in what you're seeing in your own work and what 'they' are seeing. From what you are reporting of their words, below all the make-nice compliments they seem and I emphasize that because by now it's third hand, they are bored early on, and don't want to make the investment in the story.

If I am right, then there's that sense of wading through too much wordage to get the payoff, even if the wordage is properly put together, even cleverly put together. That is a whole lot harder to pinpoint, except on a line-by-line basis, and they are not getting the urge to plump for the project and do a line-by-line rewrite request.

If so, and that's just an if, what to do? You've done workshops, etc. I suggest something you mentioned a few months back, which is put the opening of a project here, where there is a wide range of readership whose common element is that they are on your side. It could be that there might be a consensus on what works and what doesn't, in which case, you get a clear sense of how the reader is perceiving the project. (If everyone says something different, then that's another issue to be addressed.) Anyway, that's my suggestion--maybe a project not under consideration.

There really needs to be a way to get past that last hurdle, it's just a matter of finding it.

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Sartorias is making a good point here. I fuond one of your postings on another writing list, Shalanna, where you referred to a conversation with an agent over a cozy mystery MS that was about 160,000 worsd long. (I tihnk I have that right, and I know this was an old posting.) The agent seems to have told you that the story was too long for the genre but liked the subplots and such. She just wanted you to cut down on the overall words. Run it throug ha tea strainer, as it were.

I'm remarking on this because my own cozy MS has lost 20,000 words since it first entered the St Martin's Press contest a couple of years ago. I slaved over every word in the thing and lots of beta readers liked it. One (the only man) commented that he was losing interest as the story took so long to get started. It was well written, he said, but it was time to get going.

And bless her, my first reader in the Malice contest said the same thing and offered suggestions about how to improve matters. It turned out that the story could easily shed a whole lot of words and several whole scenes that I thought were necessary to set up the plot. I just needed to work on it.

I know you have lots of ideas and lots of manuscripts, but it might not be a bad idea to pick one you really believe in and work on rewriting that one. It's not just for the sake of crass marketing. It's that a story you think is finished and you can't write any better might not be finished, and might very well improve a great deal by tightening.

It's not that readers are stupid or impatient or more interested in blow jobs (to quote a comment you made a few days ago that made me wince.) It's that sometimes we, as writers, get carried away and don't realize that the story we're telling doesn't really support all the words we're using. It's like that Tragically hip lyric "I've been carving you To see what form you'd take/ You were hiding in ivory I just wanted to free your shape..." Carving a little closer just makes that shape clearer.

Mind you, I'm speaking as someone who's been working really hard on one MS for a long time because I really believe in this one story and want to tell it. I admire your ability to come up with so many stories and write them. But I wonder if you're not shortchanging some of them by moving on to another genre or story a little too soon, rather than sticking with one of them until you've learned all you can learn about writing that one.

Just a thought.