Things to Do While You’re Waiting for Your Rejection Email

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Even though my queries are shooting through cyberspace at the pace of two a week, the responses are slow in return. Not complaining, mind you. At this rate, I figure I’ll run out of agents long before the rejection letters, meaning I’ll be waist-deep in the aftermath for months to come.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a list of things to do while you’re waiting for rejection. I’ve done most of these, but I’ve yet to do some. Can you guess which ones? 🙂

1. Take up a new hobby. It’s hard to do when your head is full of angst and wonderment about the next form email to hit your inbox. Or you could be silly like me and expect the next return email with “QUERY_VIRTUALLY YOURS” in the subject line may actually be an offer. (A girl can dream, can’t she?) I usually take up a new hobby just to see if I can get my mind off my worrying.

2. It’s very fattening, but cook. I always cook in times of stress. Of course, that will make a person fat, which leads to…

3. Working out. Even for ten minutes. Drag the dog out for a walk, even in pouring rain.

4. Open your manuscript one more time. No, don’t do that. It will drive you mad.

5. Start a new project. That’s right, write some more. Go in a totally different direction. Write in another genre even.

6. Bug your husband to buy you a comfortable bed.

7. Buy yourself some pretty notebooks and a nice pen and put it in your purse. One can derive a lot of inspiration from paisley covers and turquoise ink. Plus it makes you look like you’re a serious writer, even though you are really a wannabe sitting on pins and needles.

8. Take a class. I highly recommend Jeremy Shipp‘s online class for those like me with no time to commit to a brick and mortar class. Even though I do not write in his genre, but I found his exercises very motivating.

9. Google your favorite authors to find out who represents them. I know that’s close to cyberstalking, but these are desperate times.

and finally…

10. Read. Reading is more than fundamental, it strengthens the brain. The more writers read, the more they want to write, and that is the whole point, isn’t it?

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A New Experiment

Posted by Joanne Huspek

As if I didn’t have enough to do, I have decided to try a new experiment in writing.

Actually, I’m taking advantage of my renewed vigor after attending the San Francisco Writers Conference. I love attending this conference, because afterward I feel the glow and motivation of so many positive writers, editors and agents.

Part of my idea is based on a wonderful workshop given by Nina Amir at the conference. The presentation was titled “Blog a Book in a Year.” The premise consists of commitment to a daily blog entry, and voila! Just like that you will have a book along the lines of “Julie and Julia.”

I’ve done this before, and it’s wildly entertaining. For me, for sure; for my readers, maybe. 🙂 For those of you who knew me from that other web site across the galaxy, I took a Susie and constructed a novella’s worth of adventures for her in the span of about six months. All it took was signing in as her each day or so and twenty minutes of posting.

(I still have my “Sioux-y” story. Maybe someday I’ll publish it, although I have shopped it around. Most agents wanted me to change the time from the 70’s to the modern era – since it’s YA – but that wouldn’t work. Siouxy grew up in the Twin Cities in the 1970s and there is no way of translating that fab time to the modern day, not without massive surgery.)

The main reason for doing this is not to finish a novel in a year, although the accomplishment would be a fantastic bonus. It’s to get my butt into gear and make a habit of writing.

This also coincides with something else going on online. The new experiment will be a romance – I promise – modern in nature, but the girl ends up with the guy. (I have to admit, I have had this idea percolating in the back of my mind for about a year, so I have the guts of it in place. Just not on paper.)

At some point, I will post the location of the blog for all to visit. Not today though. ;-P

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No News is Good News? and Blasting Away

Posted by Joanne Huspek

No word yet on the novel (Finding Cadence) sent to the esteemed Alan Rinzler, but I suppose that’s to be considered. The book needs a lot of work, and he’s likely flummoxed over it.

In the meantime, I’ve put Virtually Yours on the editing back burner (after adding a short paragraph-blog post at the beginning) and have been diligently emailing queries at a rate of approximately two a week. In fact, I just sent another one a few minutes ago. So far, request for one partial. I’m not complaining about the wait; I have other things to do in the meantime.

I wonder if other writers get the way I am sometimes, or is it my own case of adult onset ADD? I am enamored of my works at different times, so caught up that all I can do is think about a scene to add or something else to tweak. Then after the hysteria dies down, I close the file and can’t stand the thought of opening it again. Or if I do open it, the heady rush-love affair feeling has dissipated and all I can think is “Meh?”

I couldn’t stand to open Cadence for over a year after I typed the words “The End” at the bottom of my 175K monstrosity. It was just too horrific. Embarrassing. The thought of editing made me nauseous. So I started the next book, and let that one rest.

It was full steam ahead with Virtually Yours. I couldn’t wait to get to it. With the help of an editor, I noted the weaknesses and strengths. I revised. I studied. I honed the personalities of my characters and made them more real. I tweaked, and tweaked some more.

Once complete, I did go back and worry over certain parts of it. But then, I re-opened Cadence and discovered it wasn’t that bad of a book at all. I was hit by a blast of new found energy.

Many writers I know say I should stick to one story before moving on to the next. I just can’t constrain myself to those rules. I have dozens of stories in my head, and a few more in various states of disrepair in my computer. If I’m not constantly jotting something down or emailing myself a link or starting a new WIP, I would go nuts.

Of course, I realize that writers with far more discipline would probably say the same about my modus operandi. But we all know I’m nuts, right?

🙂

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A Week of Frantic Writing/Editing

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’m feeling more like a REAL writer every day…

I just spent the last ten days going over FINDING CADENCE to get it into some sort of shape to send to world-famous, Alan Rinzler, editor to stars of the literary world. You know the ones: Tom Robbins, Toni Morrison, Clive Cussler – those kinds of literary luminaries.

I won Mr. Rinzler’s expert services during an eBay silent auction held by the San Francisco Writers Conference.

For those of you who have been following my search for Cadence (or not – who knows? you might have landed on this blog by pure coincidence), FINDING CADENCE was my first novel. Epic. 175K pages. Poorly written. I took every cliqueed broken rule and broke it some more. It was so awful, I couldn’t stand to look at it for more than 365 days. It was barely readable by me, so I wonder what my betas thought.

But…the story is a good one. It was salvageable. So with some trepidation, I opened the file back up last summer and plunged into the muck. I added more drama, more angst, more problems. I planned the story out better, making sure to weave in details I missed the first time. I cut, cut, and cut – especially the redundancies, the adverbs, and most of the telling. Then I cut some more.

Next I entered it into the SFWC contest. And it made it to finalist. Finalist!

Then I bid on Alan Rinzler’s editing, and I won the auction. I won!

Oh, my God. I won?

This is where the last ten days come into play. I was in the midst of changing the manuscript from third person, many POVs (too many if you ask me – my head was spinning) to first person. I had only completed a little more than one-third of the story at the time of the conference. So when I returned home, I spent every spare minute going over the rest of it.

I finished Wednesday night, and emailed the revised Cadence to Mr. Rinzler yesterday. It’s leaner (100K), meaner, but still needs a lot of work. Believe me, if anyone needs writing help, it’s me.

I need to add entire scenes I cut from those other POVs. Otherwise the story will be disjointed, as I used those other people to fill in the gaps of the story.

But my first plan of action was to deliver something to Mr. Rinzler. And I have.

It’s on to working on other things I’ve let slide. Laziness, other life, bad mojo…I can blame my lack of writing on lots of things, but it all comes down to me. I figure the rush I got from the conference won’t last long, so I might as well take advantage of it while I can.

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San Francisco Writers Conference Recap

Posted by Joanne Huspek

WOW. That’s all I could say for three days. However, now that the conference is over and I’ve marinated overnight, I’m ready to post my afterthoughts on this great event. Even though I didn’t win the fiction contest, I was honored to have made it to finalist.

First of all: write what you love and love what you write. Many writers say they are writing because “they have to” or some other noble cause (I was one of them), but really what writers do is write to entertain. They write to reach out, to connect to readers. That’s right, we write for totally selfish reasons — we want people to listen to us. Some writers think they can write for money. I suppose that is true in some cases, but not true in most. If traditionally published, a good run would be considered 3,000 books over ten years. That’s not a whole helluva lot. If you are going to write, make sure you love your words and make certain those words are fabulous. Don’t look for the magic pay off or the slot machine win, because that will likely not happen.

Second: keep learning. That’s right, you can never attain the pinnacle of knowing it all. For example, I attended a workshop this weekend on how to run a critique group. Now I’ve been a member of a critique group for about a year, but I had yet to know how to critique. In fact, that’s one of the things I find myself lacking. I’m poor at critiquing other people’s work. Now I know how. (Duh!) You can learn from books, true, but you can also learn online. Get on Twitter and follow a few writers and agents around. Click on their links when they post them, and read carefully. Better yet, join the San Francisco Writers University — it’s free, it’s going to be the Facebook for writers, and there’s all kinds of useful information to be had.

Third: keep the lines of communication open. Writers are quite a chummy set of people, even though many of us are introverted to an extreme. Reach out to other writers; you can learn so much from them. Last year, I learned how to write an appropriate pitch from four ladies who gave mine a thorough going-over. Make friends with other writers — you never know what they will have to offer to help you on your journey. This weekend, I found two writers who will give me a line on an illustrator for my cover.

Fourth: if you are a writer and can only attend one conference a year because of time constraints or expense, GO to THIS one. I belong to the Romance Writers of America, and would love to attend their conference because I hear it’s fabulous, but I can’t. One, it’s in July when my day job is uber-busy. I can’t get away. Two, I can only afford one conference. And Three, I really don’t write romance. The San Francisco Writers Conference covers many genres, many aspects of the writing process. This is my third year. Every year I wish I could attend every workshop offered, but of course, I’d have to be cloned.

A caveat: I have already registered for next year’s conference. If you’re interested, you must act quickly. They limit attendance to 300, and often reach full capacity like they did this year.

I want to see you there, not on a waiting list.

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Woo-EEE! One of My Entries is a Finalist!

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Gentle readers, in case you are on the other side of the world, or living  under a rock like those two Neanderthals on that Geico commercial, or totally deaf, dumb and blind, you would know by now that one of my entries in the San Francisco Writers Conference contest is a finalist! That’s right, a finalist! If you haven’t heard, I’d be surprised: I’ve been wildly sending Tweets and Facebook stati and email all over the place. This was greeted by congrats from everywhere, and a sassy comeback from my daughter asking me when she can find the book on the local Barnes and Noble’s shelf.

You know me: I tend to go ape-shit crazy over the tiniest positive outcome to my writing. Heck, I even celebrated my first rejection letter last year.

A finalist! Zow-eee! That’s right, I sent in both VIRTUALLY YOURS and FINDING CADENCE. It was Cadence that got the nod.

Well, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that I have 24 fellow finalists in my class, adult fiction. Everyone who I’ve ever met at this conference and in other places are not only good writers, they are great writers. Me? I’m a wannabe, a hanger-on, a flounderer with a pen, a writer with a dream. I’m a wish-baby, a neophyte, a tadpole in the organic soup of the literary world. Besides, I’m still learning.

*sigh*

So, the first thing on the agenda is going over Cadence. No, that’s the second thing. I need to make a final pass over Virtually Yours. I attempted a pass over the weekend, and to my dismay found plenty of typos. I’m terrible at proofreading. THEN, I will start again on Novel #1.

The conference is next week, and I don’t have much time.

See you in San Francisco. If you’re not going, send me a prayer or two.

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Writing: For Pleasure or Profit?

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Now that I have my manuscript wrapped up (for now, at least…I hope I don’t open it again for last minute tweaking), I’ve been researching the agents I want to target. This includes cyber-stalking on Facebook and Twitter. Of course, I click on almost every link. I would click on every link, but who has time? There’s a lot of good information in there. Stories about success in getting published, and of course, the sad tales of repeated rejection, and if not outright rejection, then a facsimile of it based on agent teasing. Mind you (agents in waiting), I have no first-hand knowledge, only anecdotal notes from my friends and colleagues.

It’s not enough to spell correctly, un-purple your prose, toss out the cliches, and tighten weak grammar. An author must get out and SELL. You not only have to write a book that wows, you must write a query letter with zing and a synopsis that won’t leave the potential agent snoozing. It’s a tough market out there; the ocean is full of fish, and a lot of them are way more talented than I am.

This caused me to think: Do I want to write for pleasure or for profit? This journey has been a long one, to be sure. It’s tough writing a book. You not only have to be reasonably creative, you also have to have a strong work ethic. Do I really want to peddle my baby? And once sold, I know it won’t make enough money for me to quit my day job.

Since I am hunkered down in my castle waiting for the Snowpocalypse, I thought I would explore this. Why do I write?

The biggest reason is because I must. I have ideas in my head, and stories I want to tell. So far, a select few have read my book, and the consensus is that most like it. A few like it a lot. I love the fact that I have written a 95K story that entertains. To me, that’s the best part of the whole deal — taking my idea and molding it to a complex and mildly funny tale.

It’s not all fun and games. I wish the words would fly from my head and into my computer without any thought at all, but writing is hard work. There are rules (yes, some to be broken); there is always something to learn.

I honestly wish I would have started earlier, or not stopped when the kids came. Although I must say, being able to write witty notes to elementary school teachers came in handy.

So, even though I’ve sent out 1.25 queries every week this year, I won’t take the rejection personally. I won’t quit; I won’t get depressed. I’ll keep plugging along, getting the next story out of my head and onto the page.

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