Personal Digest Saturday: July 11 – July 17

Life news this week:

• Saturday I mostly just had a chill day taking walks and texting with people I like.
• Sunday I chatted with my mom on the phone and gave her some cash to help with some painting and repairs on her house. She told me she needed me to come to her house more often to help her with various life stuff. Not sure how to arrange that since I can't get paid rides over there during the pandemic but we'll see what I come up with. Made some plans, took more walks, chatted with my sis, and did chores--laundry, cleaning the table, bills, trash. And did a karaoke recording. Then I decided to start submitting stories to magazines again and sent two out!
• Monday I did some work on some Polk County proposals at work. Also chatted to my sister, took more walks, and did some more story submissions. One of the publishers wrote back and asked to see the story I pitched. (Pitching stories is unusual, but it's for an anthology. So it's great news that they wanted to see it, but obviously there is no guarantee of anything.)
• Tuesday involved letter editing at work and having to make a digital stamp for my coworker. Texted with Meggie and did some walking. Watched some depressing YouTube videos because somehow I got sucked down a rabbit hole. Cleaned ants out of my microwave! It's an invasion! Processed some of a video with my next interviewee.
• Wednesday I prepared forms for some proposals. I also had another adventure with my ceiling leaking because it rained. I touched base with the property manager but they still haven't found a roofer to help. Jeaux came over and we went grocery shopping, then made dinner jacket potatoes with mushrooms and parmesan cheese. We watched Kipo and a new episode of Owl House. After he left I fell asleep on the couch.
• Thursday I had more proposal work to do and stayed late working. Talked to my lawn maintenance person, Tony, and he said he can take me to my mom's this weekend. (He does her lawn too.) Talked to Victor on the phone and he's been having a really sleepy week. I didn't get any drawing done.
• Friday I was supposed to go to the office but my boss postponed the work until Monday, so I worked from home as usual. Got a bunch of proofreading done on our proposals and finished the reports I do every two weeks for my boss. And also timesheets. Then I had to work hard to meet my deadline on my webcomic, which I did while chatting to Meggie on the phone.

Articles, interviews, mentions:

• I'm on a short list of books recommended to counter anti-asexual discourse.

New reviews of my book: 

• Dharma Tilley gave it a five-star review on Goodreads.

Food Plan Update:

• Still on the plan I joined last week. The good news is I like the food changes (eating "better" foods but generally not feeling hungry) and I really like all the walking I'm doing--it is fun, relaxing, and gives me time to just not be distracted by anything. The bad news is that the scale has literally not moved at all despite drastic changes in my diet and exercise. The plan comes with a coach and we're discussing what to do, but so far I'm feeling like YES this plan is sustainable and I like it but NO I'm not any closer to my goal after almost 2 weeks. It's honestly weird.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing, paused on reading projects right now!

• Currently reading: Emma by Jane Austen. I'm on page 225.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Out Tonight" from Rent.




Stuff Drawn:




Webcomic Negative One Issue 0792: "Attitude."






New videos: 

None.

New photos:

Chubby Bunny game on FB Messenger with sister P

Horsing around with family on FB Messenger

Dinner Jacket Potatoes!

With tomato soup.

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,289 for swankivy (4 new), 674 for JulieSondra (1 new), 16 for v & V Vids (no change), 99 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change). Twitter followers: 952 for swankivy (lost 2), 1,361 for JulieSondra (lost 1). Facebook: 297 friends (no change but I added someone new from a group, and then got unfriended by someone because I asked her not to spread anti-Semitic propaganda and she took it personally and unfriended me, yikes) for swankivy, 636 likes for JulieSondra (no change), 62 likes for Negative One (no change), 158 likes for So You Write (no change), 83 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,481 (4 new). Instagram followers: 203 (lost 1).

Perpetually waiting

I've become very good at waiting.

Before I signed with an agent for the first time, I usually had a few queries out at a time and maybe a few short stories being considered. The only thing I really expected to see in my inbox was letters that started with "Thank you but unfortunately." Sometimes the responses would startle me by asking for a partial or full manuscript. Eventually one of those letters turned into a request for a phone call and an offer of representation.

It's kind of one of those things you don't really know what it will feel like when it happens. Like, you're always expecting that one day someone will say yes, and then they do and you're like "oh."

"Oh, okay."

"Wow."

Since then, the waiting has continued, but it feels different.

I know what yes feels like. I've since gotten to "yes" on another agent offering me representation, a book deal, and several short stories and short nonfiction pieces. I have developed a cautious expectation of seeing "yes" in the inbox instead of "no." And that's pretty nice--developing the confidence to know that they won't be rejections forever and they do sometimes turn into actual publication offers and I will be able to handle it when it happens.

But I've also been waiting for a very long time.

I'm waiting for updates on when we start edits for the paperback release. I'm waiting for news from my agent on whether any publishers have nibbled on my fantasy trilogy. I'm waiting for news from my agent as to whether she wants to represent my next book. I'm waiting to find out when an accepted short story is going to be published. I'm waiting for verdicts on half a dozen short stories.

And I've developed this fizzy feeling of always expecting someone's opinion to hit my inbox any minute.

It comes and goes. Sometimes I'm sure that it's going to happen any minute, and I'm keeping the inbox open in another window all day, eying it to see if that (1) pops up to notify me of a new message, flipping out when spam filters in. And sometimes I feel like it's a long way off--that I can't expect any news today or this week or this month. Sometimes I see a new message from an editor and immediately think "Oh, who's rejecting me today?" (Spoiler: I've actually thought that immediately before opening a message that said yes.) Sometimes I see a new message convinced that it's going to be good news and it blindsides me with a rejection. Sometimes I just look at the empty inbox and yell something into it to see if it echoes.

But, despite how maddening and heart-rending WAITING is, I think I've gotten to the point where I want to be waiting. Waiting means I always have something new on the horizon. Waiting means good news could be right around the corner, while bad news can be processed and forgotten. Waiting means I always have balls in the air and possibilities cooking. Waiting means even if I'm not actively creating new material right then, I'm also technically not stagnant.

Waiting is exhausting and invigorating at the same time.

Whenever the waiting comes to an end, I know I'll do something to get it going again.

Another short story sale

Just five days after I sold my first short story, I sold a second one.

Which seems a bit absurd, if I'm honest. I'd never sold fiction before and then I did it twice in one week.

Though that's a bit misleading. I'll start at the beginning.

First off, the first short story I sold was one I had a feeling was going to sell. Primarily because I wrote it directly in response to a magazine's prompt--I'd never done that before--and reasonably believed it was tailored to the editor's tastes. And although I had to edit a significant part of the plot based on some feedback, she sent me an enthusiastic acceptance when I was done. In addition, the magazine I got accepted to has not been around very long, and though that does not necessarily mean they have lower standards, it is true that as a newer magazine it probably does not receive as many high-quality submissions.

Part of the reason--probably--that I'd never had fiction accepted for publication before was that I was not submitting my work to non-paying or token-pay markets; I'm sure I had very high-quality competition because I restricted my submissions to pro and semi-pro publications. This is not because I want the money, nor is it because I'm obsessed with prestige, but because if a magazine pays its authors, I tend to think it has the resources to stay around longer and is less likely to suddenly disappear or stop hosting my stories. I like to be able to link to my work online and show people where it's displayed.

As you can imagine, I've collected my share of rejections over this. And with the exception of the fairy tale short story that had just been accepted, I hadn't submitted anything new in months, so when I saw a lone e-mail in my author inbox that said "Re: Fiction Submission: 'Her Mother's Child,'" I assumed it must be some lingering rejection left over from a magazine's undone homework after selecting their favorites. Instead, the answer to an e-mail I'd sent on February 2 read "Thank you for submitting your story to Kaleidotrope, as well as for your patience. I really liked 'Her Mother's Child' and would like to accept it for publication at this time."

Well. That was unexpected. And kind of hilarious, too, since it wasn't like I had been emboldened by finally getting a short story acceptance and decided to strike out with more queries. It just happened to arrive in the good-news window.

I buy myself a cupcake whenever I sell a piece.

I checked my submissions spreadsheet to see if there were any other pending pieces out and there actually were two others sent out the same day I'd sent this one. Maybe their editors are lurking somewhere waiting to tell me how much they love me too. ;) (By the way, the short story that was accepted was the one I was fidgeting about in an earlier post.)

My future intentions with my short stories:

Written, hoping to publish, will keep submitting:

•  "In Love With Love," contemporary fiction, about a mom who's worried she's incapable of loving her son.
• "Just Like Stephen," contemporary fantasy, about a guy who's hiding his magical powers so he doesn't get taken away like his brother.
• "Baby Talk," contemporary fiction, about a baby's first words--very short.
• "Uncle Avery's Garden," contemporary fiction, about lessons a young woman learned from her uncle who passed away . . . it's kind of overly sentimental, but maybe publishable.
• "Protector Cat," contemporary fantasy/experimental fiction . . . I go back and forth between thinking this is a good story and thinking it sucks. It's really short though. About a guy who lives with a gang and has a dysfunctional memory.
• "Wind," contemporary fantasy, and sometimes I think I should give up on this one too, but maybe a spit-shine and an open-minded magazine that accepts long pieces will take it. It's about a guy who falls in love with a fairy.

Unwritten or incomplete, hoping to publish when they are done:

• Untitled contemporary story involving a protagonist dodging unwanted romantic attention. Involves queer people. Yay. Partially written, but need to finish.
• Untitled contemporary story about a transgender boy in middle school. Haven't started it but have been thinking about it.

Old stories I'd like to rewrite and publish:

• "The Curse," speculative fiction; it has two intertwined stories, kind of, and I need to revamp one of those stories so it's more readable.
• "On the Inside," fantasy; the original story was from a transgender girl's perspective, and I think I'd like to try writing an alternate version of it from the point of view of an adult woman in the story.

I'll be developing a couple of my short stories into novels one day too. 'Cause I'm ambitious like that.

The latest accepted short story won't be published until sometime in 2015. So don't be looking for it anytime soon. You'll see a link on this blog when you can read it, I'm sure!

On Compromise

Yesterday, I signed my first contract to publish short fiction in a magazine.

I bought myself a cupcake to celebrate that milestone. I think I'll make a tradition of it.

More icing than cupcake, really.

I'm sure I'll talk more about that story and where you can read it when the issue I'm in is published. But today, I want to talk about compromise.

We're starry-eyed people for the most part, we writers. We have big dreams and overflowing pots of idealism, especially at the beginning of our careers. And there's nothing wrong with that. But now I want to say that for all three pieces of writing I've sold (for actual money) and for both of the agents I signed with, there was a compromise of some kind. Sometimes, it was a major one.

• This short story, a fairy tale retelling, actually invoked the fairy tale it was retelling by name and became very, as the editor called it, "meta." She loved the story but believed the association with its fairy tale should be more subtle, and asked if I would rewrite it with that in mind. My rewrite was accepted.

• The short nonfiction piece I recently sold about asexual femininity was accepted by the editor at the proposal stage and she loved my original version, but literally came back to me with a request to make it twice as long.

• The asexuality book got very few content-related revision requests, but there was definitely a fair amount of back and forth at the contract negotiation stage, and ultimately I sold my book to an imprint that specializes in library sales, not trade audiences. (There's always a possibility it will sell well enough to justify releasing it/marketing it to trade in the future, but as such, it's not part of the plan.) I would have liked to have wider reach from the beginning, but this is where everything led.

• The agent who signed my nonfiction offered me representation with the understanding that she did not think large publishers would want it, and she wanted me to understand that she would start in the middle with realistic expectations of selling to a medium or small house.

• The agent who signed my fiction loved my query and sample pages, but thought my word count was far too high. She asked me to take my 146,000-word book down to between 85,000 and 115,000 words before she would look at the rest of it. She signed me, but I had to cut over 30,000 words.

I have also made a few significant changes based on the opinions of beta readers, publishers who rejected me, and pieces I've read by other authors. So what does that make me? Would you like to say "Julie, why do you change your vision for other people? Are you a sellout?"

Well, kind of. Not exactly. But it does have to do with the word "sell."

Let's make one thing clear: if you are aiming for publication--in the sense that someone other than you is publishing your work and offering you money for it, intending to then sell your work to consumers--then you are agreeing that you will be using another entity's resources, time, expertise, and cash to forward your message. You are also agreeing that you want that entity to have input into the product that gets released--and as publishing-industry professionals, people who offer you money for your work have the right to say "I am looking to pay for THIS product, and your product is not quite THIS product. I will pay you for it if you modify it to fit my needs."

They often know more than you do about what, ultimately, will sell in the marketplace. They are not always right. But yes, if you think they are wrong, then in today's world you have the option of publishing your work yourself. You don't need to submit your poetry or short stories to established magazines and journals if you're content to post it on your blog. You don't need to find agency representation and/or get a publisher if you believe your book, as is, represents the best presentation possible of your work, and that you alone with the resources available to self-published authors can get your book out there. And yes, sometimes that works out really well for people--most of whom are both talented and lucky.

But when you offer your work to publishing-industry professionals, they will tell you how to make it appropriate for their audience's consumption, and if you don't agree with them, you can walk away. If what they ask you to do does not compromise the soul of the work--the reason why you wrote it in the first place--it would behoove you to try.

• For the short story: I like meta, so I was sad I had to rewrite it. But I got the idea for this short story because of the magazine's theme issue prompt, and I wrote the original in forty-five minutes. I saw no reason why I couldn't write an alternate version of it for this editor's magazine if I had written the original for her magazine in the first place. Now people get to meet my characters and enjoy the weird little modernization I came up with. And I have a short story credit for my résumé.

• For the nonfiction piece: I didn't think I had anything else to say on asexual femininity, and historically I'm never asked to say more since I'm usually too wordy, so I didn't know what to do initially to double my word count. But having more space to have my say encouraged me to make the piece more personal, with a varied tone and more valuable content, and I think it's a better read now.

• For the sale of the nonfiction book: I had three offers for this book. The library imprint was the best one I got. My choices were to either wait for a different opportunity or take this one, and honestly I think the time for this book is now. Despite not being able to concentrate on trade audiences for its distribution, it will be available at least, and perhaps the decision-makers are right that it's the type of book more people would want to borrow from a library than buy for themselves. If the demand is higher than expected, it may go to trade anyway, and if not, their conservative choices will have been the right ones.

• For my nonfiction agent wanting to avoid the largest publishers for submission: I even got a few passes from middle-sized houses saying they just didn't think the audience was big enough to justify offering me a contract. I doubt the bigger houses would have said something different. My agent knows the game.

• For my fiction agent saying my book needs to be shorter, she knows that it's already so hard to get a debut book deal without a high word count hanging around your neck. Furthermore, I did have my doubts about whether I could shorten it that much and still tell the story I wanted to tell, and I found that I could; it ended up being a fantastic lesson for me in learning to write more concisely, as well as making the manuscript cleaner and more marketable. 

If you are not willing to take these risks, learn these lessons, and accept that professional publication does involve compromise sometimes, that's your choice. And it's not even necessarily the wrong one--I'm not implying that all authors need to make unpleasant sacrifices before their work will be judged worthy of publication. I'm saying professional publication is an acknowledgment that you are pursuing mainstream consumption of your work, and you should expect to adjust your vision when the end result requires you to see eye to eye with others.

There have been several times when I rejected a publishing industry professional's requests because their vision wanted to take my project in a direction I didn't want to go.

Several agents told me my seventeen-year-old protagonist in Finding Mulligan having a romance in a college atmosphere was unsaleable, and that I would have better luck getting representation if I rewrote the entire thing in a boarding school instead of college. (Happily, now that New Adult is a Thing, I should have better prospects.)

One agent said my protagonist's mature storytelling voice in Bad Fairy was unbelievable and she wanted me to reconceive it in a more age-appropriate voice. (The agent apparently didn't realize that the protagonist is presenting an autobiography "written" at the end of her life, not in her voice as it happens. Other agents, including the one who signed me, didn't misunderstand that.)

One agent I offered my nonfiction book to was very adamant that my platform was nowhere near large enough to warrant writing this book and explicitly sent me two publishers that might be "willing to consider me," one of which was a self-publishing service and the other of which was a vanity publisher. (Thanks, man. No.)

One short story magazine editor told me I should rewrite some central aspects of my protagonist to be more similar to a television character they thought was more realistic. (No.)

One beta reader told me, extremely condescendingly, that my sentences were too long and my vocabulary too complex to be palatable for mainstream audiences. "You're a good writer," he said, "but you are NOT Henry James or James Joyce. THEY can get away with writing long sentences. One day you may acquire the skill. Let's just stick with short sentences for now." The reader opined that my sentences reminded him of a thesis or a doctoral dissertation, and added, "I know because I've written them." (No one before or since believed my style was over their heads. Perhaps this fellow just had a low opinion of what level mainstream audiences read on.)

Sometimes people who read your work are wrong about it. Sometimes they might be right but you're not interested in finding out because the compromise they're asking for doesn't sit right with the reason you wrote what you did. And sometimes, it's worth the compromise to have a chance to bring your work to larger, more mainstream audiences. It's up to you to decide whether they're asking you to sing a different song or whether they're just asking you to wear a different dress while you sing it.

Personal Digest Saturday: April 12 – April 18

Life news this week:

• I kinda wasted my weekend with marathon phone chats, partially because I was feeling kind of ill. I spent Saturday chatting with Sarah and Sunday chatting with Kari.
  
  
• I submitted a nonfiction piece about asexuality and femininity to a popular blog last week, and this wek I heard back. The editor said she liked it (with three exclamation marks), but wondered if I can . . . brace yourselves . . . MAKE IT LONGER. She wants it to be twice as long. Can you believe that? Nobody has ever asked me to make things longer before! YAY!
  
  
• I updated my questionnaire full of useful information and media contacts for my publisher. I wanted to send it to her after my UVa appearance. :)
  
  
• Monday I did Skype with my mentee, who had finished reading my book Finding Mulligan and wanted to chat about it. We asked each other questions from a list for people who have finished reading your book. :)
  
  
• Tax return showed up in my bank account, yee-haw.
  
  
• I played DDR on Tuesday and did not die.
  
  
• Still editing for Ryan, my first alternate from Pitch Wars. Slowly but surely.
  
  
• Ate at Flippers's with Jeaux on Wednesday, and we listened to Night Vale and watched an episode of Orphan Black.

Places featured: 

•  My University of Virginia talk was featured on The Asexual Agenda.

Reading progress:

• Finished Amalee by Dar Williams: ★★★
• Currently reading Dangerous by Shannon Hale.

New singing performances:

Recorded "Manic Monday" by The Bangles.






New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0466: "No Questions."







New videos:


None this week.

New photos:

My bridesmaid dress
for my sister's wedding!

And this week was the 15th so it's been two months since the big haircut. Comparison shots!

2/15/14: Right After the haircut:
4/15/14: Two months later

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 3,225 for swankivy (31 new this week), 329 for JulieSondra (2 new). Twitter followers: 470 for swankivy (5 new), 364 for JulieSondra (no change). Facebook: 249 friends (no change) and 122 followers (1 new) for swankivy, 332 likes for JulieSondra (3 new), 45 likes for Negative One (no change), 60 likes for So You Write (5 new). Tumblr followers: 1,281 (14 new).

When you drown

I have a complicated relationship with writing.

Most people who know me know that I'm a very fast writer. Some people think I pride myself on this or think finishing quickly with lots of words is some kind of accomplishment. That's not the case. I write fast because when I'm writing, I'm drowning, and at some point I need to breathe.

Recently I returned to a story of mine that I haven't read in a long time, tuning it up for my agent, and as soon as I opened the book I remembered how overwhelming this character's experiences tend to be for me. It's an emotionally exhausting experience to invite the character's perspective and swim around in her mind, and while I'm glad it's so immersive (since that's what allows me to write authentically, I think), it's also ridiculously draining on the mental resources I have left when I surface.

I'm going to have to return to this perspective sometime soon to write the sequel, and I'll have to spend some time voluntarily drowning again. I expect to plow through the drafting of that book like usual, because I have to limit my time in that mindset or it will be terrible for me long-term. That's daunting, to be honest. I love writing, but I know exactly what will happen. How useless I'll be and how crushing it will be to write what's coming for this character.

But what also happened while I was reading was that I remembered how much I want to share this story with the world. I want to find that editor match with someone who connects with the character--the way my agent did--and through that match, bring these experiences out into the world. I want people to meet this character and learn about her world. I want to share it. I sometimes feel like I bled for this story. And even though I would have bled for the story even if nobody ever read it--and will continue to do so--I've just reached a point where the need for others to feel this story has become a really compelling ache for me.

I don't know why it's now.

But I'm suddenly full of renewed longing and hope for getting this story home.

New video: From Offer to Book Deal

I made a new video about what it was like for me to go from my first book offer to signing a publishing contract. The video just discusses a little bit about dealing with multiple offers, the negotiations phase, and what happened after I signed. Involves rambles.

Whose book sold? MY book sold!

Happy Friday, everyone. I have lovely news for y'all: I have a book deal.

That's right! My book on asexuality is going to be published!

If you want more details about SO YOU THINK YOU'RE ASEXUAL, check out its page on my main site. It gives you the main rundown of what the book contains and its particulars.

We're looking at Fall 2014 for the release. Carrel is a new imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, launching in fall, and I'm supposed to be one of the titles on its maiden voyage. You can read an announcement about it in this Publishers Weekly article. They're primarily a library focused imprint--a new idea in a publishing market that's experiencing some turmoil as the bookstores lose power. Hopefully, by concentrating on library sales for books that people might be more likely to borrow than buy, they can find success. Ideally, my book will generate enough interest that it will later come out on the main label and end up in bookstores. (I don't know that it will happen, but there's a possibility!)

However, individuals will be able to buy the hardcover or the e-book when the time comes. I'll definitely keep people up to date on what they can do to make sure their local library has a copy! But for now, I'm just enjoying the buzz of getting a deal. :)

Obligatory photo of me signing the contract

It's been quite a journey! I began writing the first draft in April of 2012, and in May of 2012 I was finished. (I've said all this stuff so many times that it didn't take long to bust it out.) I wrote a proposal and began querying agents, and got a couple positive responses. I decided to cool off while the considering agents read the proposal and sample chapters.

In August of 2012 I got signed to Michelle Johnson for my fiction, and found myself very distracted--to the point that I failed to follow up with the agents and didn't really notice they weren't responding to me. It wasn't until I went to the Creating Change conference in January 2013--a gathering of LGBT organizers and activists, where I was participating on an asexuality panel--that I decided I needed to jump back into querying.

I sent nudges and queried more agents. One of them was Andrea Somberg of Harvey Klinger, who ended up offering me representation on May 23, 2013. I refined my proposal with her help and on June 6, 2013, we put the book on submission to publishers.

I received three different offers of publication for this book, and they came in slowly during the period from August to October. We had five publishers initially interested, and in some cases the proposal was circulated at meetings or among staff, but oddly enough it was during Asexual Awareness Week that we had everyone's final verdict and could figure out what to do with the multiple offers.

Andrea and I had a little phone conference and discussed what was a must-have and what was a deal-breaker for me. In her discussion with the publishers, we ended up finding the closest match in Skyhorse (though of course I would have ideally liked to get into bookstores at the outset--who doesn't?). Andrea proceeded from there to negotiate with the publishers, and when we finally had a contract everyone was satisfied with, I signed it and submitted it to Skyhorse on November 20, 2013.

If you're interested in what goes into writing proposals and how my submissions process went, one of my YouTube videos discusses it!

I've been steadily working on the book itself throughout this process. An early request for full manuscript readers went out in February 2013 and received 75 volunteers. A request for focus groups to read excerpts went out in October 2013 and received 120 volunteers. As a result of all the fantastic feedback, the book has outgrown its initial estimation of 45,000 to 50,000 words, ending up at nearly 65,000 words and covering a lot more ground. It also includes quote boxes from 20 talented asexual bloggers.

I'm so excited to finally be able to bring a mainstream book on asexuality into the world! If you're somewhat unfamiliar with asexuality and want to read my other writings on the subject, my list of my published articles is here, my interviews in the media are all here, and I have some very informal essays on asexuality on my Tumblr, which is my main asexuality blog. You might also enjoy Asexuality: An Overview--my YouTube video that probably does the best job explaining it.

So what did I do to celebrate, you ask? Not much. I got myself some takeout veggie sushi.

And I may have covered myself in cake but that's another story.

What to Do: While Waiting

I recently became acquainted with Vaughn Roycroft at Writer Unboxed because of his excellent post "A Writerly Pilot Light." (Hi Vaughn, if you're reading this!) I connected very strongly with his piece because it discussed the "waiting is hell" concept and then gave a list of absolutely lovely ways to keep yourself afloat.

I don't yet know Vaughn well enough to know exactly what he's waiting on or what he's trying to do, but I do know this spoke to me as much as it did because of the WAY I'm waiting and how much waiting I'm doing. We writers wait a lot. We write and we revise and then we wait for feedback. Then we submit to agents and we wait for them to reject us (or, once in a glorious while, accept us). And then our agents submit our work to publishers and we wait for THEM to reject us (or, once in a glorious while . . . never mind). Followed by more waiting for feedback and more waiting for releases and more waiting for whatever else comes next.

As most of you know, I have a fiction series on submission and a nonfiction book on submission, so the waiting is doubly hard and I've definitely been looking for healthy ways of dealing with the stress. In fact, I wrote about being on submission back in May, rambling about a weird need to connect with other writers to help combat some of the nervous energy. Back then, I hadn't even signed with my second agent yet (for the nonfiction). It's gotten worse since then.

And then Vaughn shows up with this lovely post, recommending that writers do the following things to keep the pilot light burning:

1. Reading
2. Writing (something different from your usual writing)
3. Revisiting/rereading older work
4. Sharing your work with others
5. Reaching out/connecting with other writers

I'm doing ALL of these things. And I already was before I read this, which really floored me. I'd sensed that I needed to fuel my mind and remind myself why I was trying to do this publishing thing (and stay in touch with the medium), so I started reading for an hour a day six days a week. I've been writing consistently; blogging, book reviews, arguments with jerks (haha), websites, my webcomics, essays, journal entries. I've been revising and rereading my old stuff; really, it's the projects that aren't on submission, fiddling around with them, or reading old blog posts and old comic issues. I've been sharing my stuff--I have new and old critique partners still checking out my work and offering feedback on it. And I've definitely been connecting with other writers--more than ever lately, through blogging and reading blogs, playing on Twitter, making friends on writing sites, and exchanging thoughts on books.

I thought, in order to give back a little, I might offer my additional ways to keep that light burning. Here they are.

1. Helping others. As a person with an editing background, I'm well equipped to help other writers, and as an author who's signed with not one but two agents, I know my way around the querying process. I've been participating as a mentor in contests and help threads, helping people learn about querying and publishing options through creating YouTube videos and writing essays, and for my critique partners or writing friends, I've assisted on the development of their books. It increases one's ability to turn out more polished manuscripts, and it leaves you with a group of people who will never forget what you did for them, ready to support you when you need it.


2. Doing other creative projects. I'm not just a writer; I'm a singer and a sort of passable artist, so I like putting these together with writing sometimes (or not). I do webcomics and share them. I sing songs and post them. I take photos, make websites, bake cookies. Some of y'all might enjoy other things like gardening or sewing or making candles. This can leave you feeling like you're still in touch with that essence that makes you a writer without burning you out by making you do it too often.


3. Writing about writing. If I'm not in a head space to write new material, I might still enjoy offering my perspectives on writing or analyzing my own work. Find a character questionnaire and fill it out. Answer a survey about your writing habits. Do free-writing exercises involving characters from different books meeting each other or inserting one of your characters into a book you liked. Work on the background of your fantasy world--its map, its history, its invented language. Analyze your dramatic arc for fun or write your book's blurb, synopsis, or author bio (seriously or in a silly way).


4. Catching up on what you've been neglecting. I don't know about y'all, but when I'm writing I fall behind on any media I want to consume, fall out of touch with friends more, fall way behind with housework, and indefinitely shelve projects. When I'm waiting for an answer on something, I can distract myself and revitalize myself by reconnecting with these fun pastimes or necessary evils, and it turns out to be very cleansing--making it that much more likely that I'll be ready to create again soon.


5. Planning for the future. If I have a finished project going out to my agent and it's going on submission (i.e., exactly what's happened to me twice now, the second happening when I hadn't resolved the first), I can do things like look for other publishing opportunities for my short stories, decide what I'm going to revise next, do some pre-plotting or research on another project, and get my ducks in a row for whenever I'm ready to jump back in. Preparing to do something often isn't as intimidating as actually doing it, and if you lay the groundwork you're more likely to feel like you're ready to tackle it when the time comes, whereas if you're ready to tackle it but there's all this unsatisfying prep work to do, then you might continue to procrastinate.
   

And that's where I'll leave you with this. I hope my ideas hit someone in the sweet spot the way Vaughn's hit mine. :)

It was New Adult all along

I have a novel entitled Finding Mulligan and it's about a teenage girl going to college.

I wrote this book after my first attempt at Bad Fairy turned out to be monstrously long, striking gold with agents until they saw the word count. I figured hey, let me try a YA story, and maybe it will be shorter. Well, not only was it still not particularly short for YA (at 120,000 words or so), but it was apparently in a no-man's-land of book genres. It was a story set in college. No one wanted it.

And I was told so, with that reason cited, several times.

Of course, this was several years ago, before New Adult exploded onto the scene in the giant buzzword-powered wave we're seeing now.

It's clear to me now that I have written a New Adult novel. Today I read this article, which inspired my blog post:

Industry Perspective: New Adult FAQs

Several familiar names--mostly, for me, the agents--weigh in on what New Adult is all about and what they think, from a publishing-industry perspective. What struck me as interesting was that the agents kept stressing that New Adult is not Young Adult With Sex and that it is WAY more than a "romance genre," but the publishers seemed to somewhat disagree--all of them said they expect to see a major romantic plot. Hmm.

Well, I guess none of that is a huge deal to me, because my NA, Finding Mulligan, is indeed driven by its central romance. Cassie is just starting as a freshman in college, overjoyed to get away from her home life and out of the shadow of her younger sister, whose chronic illness has always forced her into the background. But she's also got a whole second life she's dealing with: At night, Cassie travels to a utopian dreamland where she has a secondary persona. There, she's known as Dia, and everyone in dreamland thinks she's amazing and awesome. But when she meets a hot guy named Mulligan in dreamland and finds out he has his own second life, she's determined to find his other self in the waking world. The plot thickens when she finds herself attracted to both of her most likely suspects, and she has to do some serious wrestling with her identity and confidence before she can execute her detective work and find her love.

There's no sex in it. There's some dorky longing and awkward flirting and attraction experiences that sound more like "tingles" and "warmth" and "flushed faces," but it's a pretty innocent book. The big reason a lot of people want to market as NA instead of YA is that their romances are more mature than anyone feels confident marketing to "kids," but I agree with some of the agents' perspectives in interpreting NA as books about what comes next, whatever that happens to be. Not everyone's maturation to adulthood and early independent adult years have to feature their sexual relationships, for God's sake. Cassie has just gone to college and is carving out her identity. That's about as quintessentially New Adult as I can fathom.

But what kind of bothers me is that I was told so many times that there was no place for this back when I was presenting it as YA (for lack of a better option). I was even told a couple times that the solution for my problem would be to uproot Cassie from college and stick her in a boarding school. That way, people said, I wouldn't have the stigma of having a college protagonist that nobody in publishing wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole, but I could still have Cassie living away from home as the plot required.

That would have been wholly inappropriate for the character. The things she did were college things. The mental place she was in was a brink-of-a-new-life now I'm an adult mindset. And on top of that, Cassie first becomes aware of Mulligan because of a painting on her bathroom door. Who in a boarding school is going to be allowed to paint a bathroom door and leave it there for a new resident to find? I mean, yeah, there are all kinds of plot points that could have been moved around, but why? Just so I could unnaturally squeeze the story into something that didn't scare agents, for a seemingly arbitrary reason? Why were they saying that college protagonists don't sell, anyway?

Well, I guess they were right, because agents have to be conservative; they have to follow the money and the publishing deals, and it's not them who are being close-minded. But now publishers are excited for New Adult. Something has changed in the industry so that what was once a leper of a book might now have an actual chance.

Just goes to show you . . . listen to yourself when it comes to the soul of your novels, and maybe a window of opportunity will open for you.

Maybe I'll be able to get this out there after all. . . .

Jumping Back In

So let me tell you a little story.

(Supposedly that's what I do best, right? Being a writer and all?)

A little over a year ago I signed with my fiction agent, Michelle. A while later we went on submission. We're pitching to very large publishers so sometimes the response times are VERY long. I didn't do what most people suggest you do while on submission--that is, I didn't get going on my next project. Not exactly.

You see, one good way to forget about the anticipation and anxiety of being on submission to the biggest publishers in the world is to distract yourself, and what better way to distract yourself than starting the next novel? Right?

For me, that was wrong. I couldn't do it.

Writing isn't something I do piecemeal. I don't "write ten minutes a day" or schedule special writing sessions that I keep religiously. I am a binge writer. The idea hits. I go.

And let me tell you, it is intellectually and emotionally exhausting to write the way I do.

Writing the way I do yields output that's close to ridiculous. My "record" is finishing a 155,000-word novel in two weeks. My longest book, at 255,000 words, took five weeks. I know what that process takes out of me and I didn't feel that I would be able to knowingly invite that torrential, violently productive experience when I was already emotionally exhausted from the side effects of being on submission.

(Sometimes writers will tell each other that there's no excuse, etc., but I would like to say nobody--even other writers--gets to say what I should be able to handle or how I should be organizing my output. I do what works for me. Do not tell me I'm not doing it right if I'm not doing what works for you.)

So what did I do instead? Well, I picked a different kind of project. I worked harder on my nonfiction projects and other hobbies. I started another webcomic; I wrote more articles on the topic of asexuality and got them published; I began in earnest to write a nonfiction book about asexuality and did research on writing proposals. I went to a conference to speak on the topic. I did and said things that kept getting me interviewed. And I began writing more articles and making more videos to help other writers with their querying and writing. This was a different kind of creativity. It was a good distraction. And it was time-consuming, but it paid off . . . in a weird way.

I began submitting my nonfiction book idea and I got signed to my nonfiction agent, Andrea. Suddenly that book was on submission too. Now I'm riding the wave for two very different books, to different publishers, through different agents. And it's maddening.

Platform is very important when it comes to making it in the nonfiction world, and sometimes the decision-makers think I'm borderline despite all the media attention and wide recognition of my work. (I even get recognized by strangers and excitedly thanked for what I do sometimes. Happened again just today, when a guy called out to me from his car when I was riding my bike to work, wanting to know if I was that girl from the documentary. Though I have yet to be asked for my autograph! Ha.)

I've felt that it's important to continue "performing" for the community, creating content, being available, being authentically engaged, contributing to the conversation. I don't want to stop doing that (though I guess I could spend a little less time on Tumblr!). I think it's vital to my nonfiction career and being in touch with the community I'm going to be representing with my book.

But . . . I need to figure out what I can do differently. Because even though the stress is sharper than ever, I've been away from writing fiction for a long time. I'm not afraid of it. I'm not procrastinating. I don't have writer's block. I don't make excuses about "not having time" for it. I just didn't think I could handle the sheer intensity of what writing stories is for me--not with everything else going on--and I wanted to spare myself the complete emotional exhaustion on a level that will probably exceed anything I've ever dealt with before.

The problem is that being away from writing fiction is emotionally exhausting too.

And I think I'm done.

My vague plan for now is to finish up some editing obligations, tackle a short story first to ease back into this, and finally, start the sequel to Bad Fairy. I will put together a list of my goals and intentions soon and post them here so I can have some accountability, and amidst the other blog posts I plan to do, I will filter in information on how it's going. Soon enough you guys will be watching me pound out a novel real-time, I hope.

Let's just cross our fingers that I don't regret this decision, because given what I know about myself and what I'm dealing with right now, there's a chance I could drown if I try this. I think the short story idea will help me test the waters.

We'll see if I sink or if I swim.

Getting the call: My fiction agent story

I didn't have this blog yet when I signed with my first agent, and I promised readers while telling the nonfiction agent story that I'd tell the fiction agent story when I got around to it . . . and today seems like a good day to tell it!

So here's how I came to sign with my current fiction agent and what the call was like.

The book idea

Bad Fairy began as a short story. I wrote it in response to a prompt from a friend who'd decided we should all write retold fairy tales, and what came out for me was the Sleeping Beauty story from the bad fairy's point of view. I posted the story on my website, got a lot of good reviews, and had one reader tell me he thought it would make a good novel. I decided to find out if he was right.

The short story was written in 2000 and I started writing the novel version in 2003. It was one of those projects that snowballed for me, going in all kinds of directions and ending up at a bloated 255,000 words at the end of five weeks. (I don't mess around when I'm writing.) I was very busy and had a time-consuming job, though, and a lot of editing to do, so it wasn't ready to query for a very long time. I fiddled with it, cutting, adding, editing, changing, revising, for years. And I finally decided--despite its ridiculous length--that this was going to be IT. This was going to be the book I was going to approach agents with. For the very first time. And I sent my first query on January 31, 2006.

The querying process

Querying went very well for me. I had a couple writer friends who had been down this road before, and they had warned me to get ready for rejection. But instead of the smackdown I was half expecting, four of the seven agents I queried requested material from me. I must admit I got a bit overconfident at that point. What were they even talking about? I asked myself smugly. This is easy! I fulfilled the partial requests and was rewarded with a full manuscript request from one of the agents. And I'm sure she spit coffee all over herself when she saw the word count. (I hadn't exactly advertised it in my query. I'd been hoping the agents would get hooked on the story first, which apparently worked, but yeah, that was deceptive.) To make a long story short, the full manuscript request was an easy rejection for that agent; she told me no one would take a book this large, but encouraged me to keep writing because she thought I had a "wonderful voice."

I jumped to another project after that, unwilling to admit that I would need to do some serious work on Bad Fairy before I could get taken seriously. I wrote a shorter book in the YA category, started querying it throughout 2008 and 2009, and almost never got nibbles from agents. I just couldn't seem to hit the sweet spot, and it was all the more maddening because I knew I knew how to query. Given the depressing state of affairs, I went back to the drawing board and dove into a full rewrite: I reconceived Bad Fairy as a trilogy. The first volume's first draft was 171,000 words. It was just as unlikely to hook an agent at that length as its previous 255,000-word version had been. So I trimmed and trimmed until I got to 146,000, and was overjoyed to have written a fantasy novel under 150,000 words.

Querying began again in late 2011. I got the same kinds of responses as the first round: Lots of interest, lots of full requests, etc. But then two agents reading the full manuscript came back with rejections and complaints about pacing or a saggy middle, leaving me wondering if after all that tightening I still had a flabby book.

Finding Michelle

In June of 2012, I went after a new crop of agents and ended up querying agent Marisa Corvisiero. Her profile said she accepted "well developed plots and rich characters with unique voices," as well as fantasy and science fiction, so she was my pick. And Marisa wasn't the one who answered me. My response--an enthusiastic reply just four days after my query--came from Michelle Johnson, a junior agent. I found out later that Michelle had swiped my query from her boss because she had just seen Wicked, the musical, and had fallen in love with the tale of the supposed villain portrayed sympathetically. With my story bearing such a resemblance to Wicked, she was immediately intrigued, and she asked for my full manuscript. . . .

With one huge caveat. My word count was 146,000 words. She said she'd be thrilled to look at it if I could cut it down between 85,000 and 115,000 words, because otherwise it'd just have too much against it in getting published.

A tough choice, to be sure. But after rejections calling me out for pacing problems, I knew there had to be some chaff to find. I figured this must be the kick in the butt I needed, and proceeded to take on the edit of my life. And it was quite a process, I'll tell you. I was enthusiastic about the chopping because I could see where I was going, but at the same time, it was an exhausting and painful process. It wasn't long before I'd been through the whole book once and still needed to lose words, and soon every cut I made was bleeding.

When I posted this online, its caption was
"Don't mind me, just having my soul amputated, thanks."

But I did it. I went in there with a hatchet, then with scissors, and then finally with the tweezers, and at the end of it all I had a manuscript of 115,000 words. No more, no less.

Michelle later told me she opened the document, saw that word count, and howled with laughter. I'd taken her quite literally.

The 30,000+-word slashing had taken me just two weeks. I sent it to Michelle, and she acknowledged receipt and began to read on July 2. By the end of July, she wrote me to apologize for the delay, saying she had been prevented from finishing my book due to rush read requirements for other potential clients. It had annoyed her because she was enjoying my book so much, and she was excited to be getting back into it now. Obviously, I was flattered.

Not long after, I was skulking around on Twitter and saw this tweet from Michelle:

Considering the fact that Michelle's profile picture featured her with coffee, I figured that must be a pretty damn good book she was reading. And I had a sneaking suspicion that she was talking about my book. After all, she'd just told me she was about to start reading it again.

Then it happened. On August 8, Michelle wrote me to ask when we could talk, and the next day during a morning phone call, she said, "I would love to offer you representation for Bad Fairy."

Talking with Michelle

Most authors talk about being nervous during the phone call. I can definitely say I was not at all nervous, but that's probably just my personality. I was excited to talk to Michelle, but I was unsure if I was going to be able to sign with her--I still had others considering my work--and her responses to my questions were going to be what determined that. When I first heard that literary agents were required for most mainstream publishing, years and years ago, I researched the questions I'd want to ask and added to them now and then. I had a whole bushel of questions for Michelle, and some of them were pretty important to me because Corvisiero seemed like a small agency without much publishing history and Michelle had been an agent for a comparatively short time. But as Michelle told me her background, it became clear that she had more experience than showed on the surface. She'd been in the book world for years, managing businesses, editing, consulting, and performing some agenting duties without an official title before she interned with any agencies. She was still being mentored at the time, but she was also a self-starter and had managed to get Big Five publishers to look at her clients' work within a week of signing them.

But beyond her professional qualifications, we connected personally. She began our phone call by immediately launching into the compliments, telling me how in love she was with my book, and occasionally quoting from it throughout the conversation. She praised the cleanness of my manuscript and we discussed our shared editing background. And she had easy answers ready when I asked her what the submission process would be like and who we'd be submitting to. She assured me that I'd be as involved as I wanted to be in developing the pitch package and that she would maintain up-to-date communication with me on the results.

(And yes, the tweet was about me.)

Paraphrased are some compliments and thoughts she offered me:

"I have to tell you it's probably the best book I've read in many many years."

"I can't wait to read the second one and the third one."

"You should have no fear. You will not be a new author long."

"I don't want to give you this hugely inflated ego, but you should have one, really, honestly."

"It was just an incredible work of fiction. It was just incredible what you've done with that story. Okay, I'll stop, I'll stop doing that." [I was like, no, don't. Haha.]

"I have to guard myself because the first thing I want to say about your book is that this is the next Harry Potter, and EVERY publisher and agent has heard that so much our ears bleed."

"I've never read anything that I've been so excited about. And I've been reading really exciting things all my life. But this just transported me. I don't know how else to say it."

"It's so incredibly well-written, and the character is so incredibly intense and real. I don't know anybody who will not associate that, with Delia."

"I usually have a lot of feedback as far as edits and stuff go, but yours was the most pristine manuscript I've ever read. Not just from the really-awesome-story standpoint, but it was really really clean."

"As I was reading it, I was thinking there wasn't a thing that I would cut, and usually there is. There just wasn't a thing, and I really enjoyed going to school with her. You really just nailed it."

"I love Delia. I think she's my new favorite hero."

[On the second volume:] "I can't wait to see it. I can't. Can you please just write it? Now?"

I knew she wouldn't be offering representation if she didn't think the book was great, but it's still really flattering and exciting to get that kind of praise from a publishing industry professional, and to think she must really mean those things if she wants to take a chance on me. After the nice conversation, I told her I'd consider her offer and asked if I could look at the contract. I did more research, thought about the pros and cons (feeling encouraged by this article on signing with a newer agent), did the homework you're supposed to do with other considering agents, and signed the contract on August 20, 2012.

Discussing the particulars of submission isn't really a good idea (unless you're doing it retroactively, maybe), but I will say my submission experience has been great with Michelle. She's always been very communicative and supportive, and she lets me be really involved in the process. In addition, Michelle doesn't just sit around looking at Publishers Marketplace to find people to submit to. She has pitched my book to people she's met at conferences, at events, and even through Twitter-based editor wish lists. She's got her eyes everywhere and I think she's really in that perfect spot between knowing how the industry works and knowing where it might be going. There was a bit of a delay and red tape in my submissions process when Michelle decided to leave Corvisiero Agency and start her own new agency, which is now a three-lady team.

Inklings Literary is doing well, with books selling to large and small publishers and occasional additions to the client list. Michelle represents a broad range of adult fiction genres and a couple specialized nonfiction genres, while her other agents fill in with YA and MG of many genres and a couple different nonfiction genres. I've gotten to know a few of my agency siblings and I follow their blogs and Twitter accounts. It's been a fun ride, and I'm just waiting to have my status changed on my client page from "on submission" to publishing details and a release date. And I think Michelle can make that happen. Fingers crossed!

Watch this space for good news. :)