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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There are Turnips, and There are Turnip Trucks

Posted by Joanne Huspek

When last I wrote, I was on a query sending frenzy. Believe me, just one a week is a frenzy for me, seeing that I’m rather lackadaisical (lazy is probably not the correct adjective) about doing anything. Perhaps we can blame it on winter. The first few weeks of January were *excuse my French* awful damned cold, with lows in the single digits, highs in the teens and windchill in the nether regions. I don’t call this the Tundra for nothing.

I am happy to report that I’m on track with my goal of one query to one agent per week. It’s very hard to stay on the turnip truck, but I appear to be doing quite well, thank you.

In the meantime (yes! there is a meantime), I have submitted my work into a few contests (not hoping against hope that I might place, for I am a pragmatist). It’s jolly good fun. No, it’s not, but I thought I might as well get the taste of rejection out of the way. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. This way if someone throws me a bone, I will be delighted. I don’t just mean happy, I mean happy-dance happy. (You all saw how reacted when I only placed in a contest, right?) If and when the news is good, I’ll be spreading it around so quickly…I can’t even think of an appropriate metaphor, but it’ll be fast.

I have entered this contest; if you write and haven’t entered yet, I strongly urge you to do so. There are only spaces for 5,000 entries, and while that seems like a lot, in this world where everyone is a scribe, it’s just a drop in the bucket. Best of all, there’s no entry fee.

I’ve also decided to give the manuscript another edit. I know. I cannot leave it alone. I’m fleshing out what needs it and deleting what it doesn’t need. After this final (I hope) pass, I plan on putting it away for a while and continue my querying, maybe take up with the other pieces I’ve been diddling around with and get them query ready.

Not bad for a turnip, huh?

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Queries and Agents

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Now that the novel is finished (I think…if I can keep my hands off it, finally), I’ve spent the first week of the new year adjusting my query letter. I actually sent one off too! My goal for this year is to send one out each week. However, the entire process of querying agents is often overlooked by fledgling published author-wannabes, who send out mass email blasts to every literary agent from coast to coast.

That’s right, querying agents is not so easy.

In fact, I spent a couple of days researching agents before I sent off my first letter.

Before that, I spent a year following agents around online. This is easily done on Twitter and Facebook. OK, so it’s professional cyber-stalking, but it’s a necessary task before the clueless writer sends the work off to the great beyond. This because there is a protocol, and God forbid if Clueless Writer does something totally tacky. You can gain a lot of insight by reading the pet peeves of various agents. They are sometimes funny, sometimes informative, and sometimes downright scary, as in you don’t want to mess with this person kind of scary.

Twitter is a wonderful resource, because you can eavesdrop on agents as they talk to each other. The agent web appears to be quite huge. After a while, you get to know them by their responses. I know you don’t really know them, but it gives you a feel for their personalities.

As luck would have it, I happened to see this online yesterday – talk about timely. This article is a must-read for anyone who is contemplating sending out a query letter. It’s long, but there is so much information packed into the post that I have bookmarked it for later use.

I use the Query Tracker website (if you do not, you should check it out), where you can search for agents according to genre. This, my friends, is a very good thing to do. Agents who only represent non-fiction are loathe to answer a letter from a romance novelist, and there is probably similar annoyance going the other way.

But it’s not only finding the agent to fit your needs, you must find the right agent for the genre, for the type of book you have written. For example, in the world of romance, there are many sub-genres. Agents who represent historical romance usually stick to that sub-genre. It’s the same with chick-lit, steamy traditional romance, Christian romance, alternative romance, etc. I can imagine an agent of Christian romance opening up a query letter from someone who has written erotica. Oops doesn’t even begin to describe it.

I also took some time to research where my favorite authors are represented. Yes, it’s painstaking. I know a few authors (some by name only and others more personally) but I would never think to ask them who their agent is. I could be wrong, but that shouts TACKY in 120 decibels. Besides, a good Internet sleuth can find the information with a little perseverance. Take copious notes, because if you’re like me, you could lose your place among the hundreds of agencies you are looking at.

Query letters are business letters, and aspiring authors should remember that. In my Day Job, I write business letters all day long, so I realize the need to be concise. It’s just a little different with a query letter, in that you are trying to sell your work using as few words as possible. There has to be a hook, something that will keep the agent reading. Be pleasant, be respectful, and try not be cliche. Agents are looking for a spark of creativity. You’re a writer, right?

Be prepared to have a synopsis in your back pocket as well. I have a huge, detailed query letter for those agents not asking for a synopsis, and a shorter one for those who do. (A confession: I am not good at writing synopsis. I know. I should take a class.)

I may not be an expert, but I know how to follow those who do.

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A Writer’s New Year Resolutions

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I know. I’m a day early. So shoot me. I have plans for tomorrow, not for wild partying and ringing in the New Year, but for hunkering down at home with the hubby and enjoying a nice meal and bottle of bubbly. And maybe somewhere in there, I will prepare my manuscript for a query spree to begin next week.

Looking back over 2010, I’ve achieved a lot in my journey as a wanna-be published writer. Here is the breakdown, in no particular order:

1. I finished a few edits on Book #2. In fact, I think I’ve edited it a dozen times. I lost count back in November. It is almost, almost ready for a wild round of querying.

2. I submitted my work in a few contests. Placed in a Query Tracker contest back in February. Just submitted into another this month and won’t know until February.

3. Attended the San Francisco Writers Conference, Year Two. Although I belong to Romance Writers of America and also the local RWA chapter, I attend the SFWC because… well, I don’t write romance. My work is women-aimed with romantic elements. There are plenty of romance writing resources during the conference in San Francisco, and I can’t afford two conferences – yet. I like the broad picture, because I have a lot of broad ideas.

4. Took a writing class. Not sure if I learned anything.

5. Queried once.

6. Took out Book #1 and really started going through it. I’m hopeful this will be in querying condition very soon.

Now… for the dreaded resolutions for 2011:

#1 with a bullet. Stay away from the Internet. This includes Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, especially. It’s not because I do any socializing on the dreaded, evil FB, it’s that I am addicted to FB games. I had been giving myself a pass on going online by telling myself I needed the Internet for research. Every once in a while, I would need to look up a map, find a grocery store in Fayetteville, North Carolina, or use the oft-trusty Thesaurus.com. Leaving the Internet wide open is like leaving me in a Godiva store, locking it and throwing away the key. I won’t come out. Not. Ever. Until the chocolate goodies are gone. Let’s face it; I can’t tear myself away from Scramble. I love words too much.

In order to aid my Internet avoidance, I have decided to A. only open Internet Explorer for “research” with tabs already set to where I need to go (instead of using Firefox, which has all my playtime tabs), and 2. go cold turkey on Facebook. Give myself a timer. I give myself 30 minutes a day, that’s it, and I will cut off my own fingers if I should fall off the wagon.

2. Really query more, not just talk about it. I’ve had several people beta read my book – they love it. I don’t think they are telling me this because I’m their friend, their relative, or their boss. One person even wrote a nice email detailing what she liked about it. I think it’s way past time to send my baby out into the world. I have to ready my query letter, let go of my baby, and go for the gold.

3. Resolution #3: Take another class. Signed up. Paid. Done and done.

4. Write more. I’m a basically lazy person, I know that. Plus, I sometimes get sidetracked by family issues, health issues, and Day Job issues. Sometimes I know I should write, but instead I take a detour and make a batch of persimmon cookies. Or, like yesterday, I was finally annoyed enough by the bathroom that I decided to clean it. I COULD HAVE BEEN WRITING!

5. Finally, I need to read more. OMG, my pile of books to read is dangerously high. It might fall over and kill the cat. (Yes, I am Kindle-less, but am thinking of taking the plunge, just so I can clear my bookshelf.) Come to think of it, a Kindle would hide my to-read pile. I’m going to nix that.

Other than the obvious, it’s back to the salt mines. Mining my head for stories.

See you next year.

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