And... DONE!

Whoa. It's been an intense couple of weeks. SHH started traveling for work again (rather suddenly), so I had to start flying solo with all three kids day and night before I knew it. I had this major revision I needed to get done for my agent, I had to try and figure out how to go running without SHH there to help with the kids (his mom came over and watched them so I could go once), and yeah. Just busy, busy, busy.

I didn't get much sleep, but I did get my revision done last Thursday. YAY! That was such a big relief and weight off my chest. Of course, now I'm sick, so I may be wearing myself out a little bit, but oh well. What can you do?

That's the thing, when you want something bad enough, you make sacrifices. You endure, and fight, and keep going. Whether it be running a hard race, writing your book (or revising it as the case may be), or any other goal you have. Life doesn't get any easier, nor does time just magically appear so you can "finally get around" to that thing you've been wanting to do. For me right now, I'm trying to keep balance in my life. I am cherishing my baby girl and my boys as much as possible, because I don't want to have any regrets when they get older. So that means sacrificing sleep to pursue my goals - staying up late to write and getting up early to run (when SHH is here anyway). Normally I would keep working on a new book or some other writing project after finishing one project, but this time, I think I might take a break for a week and enjoy an extra couple hours of sleep--or time cuddling Baby Girl. :)

How about you, what do you sacrifice to meet your goals? What have you been doing these last couple of weeks?

Summer is drawing to a close...

If you wonder where I've been, here's a snapshot...

Cherishing my time with this little one. (Or trying to anyway, in between the hectic life of taking care of two young boys and my house and the revision I'm trying to work on for my agent and the half marathon I'm training for [which I signed up for in October in an apparent moment if insanity, but I'm excited to accomplish something that hard], and yeah. Oh, and SHH just found out he's going to be traveling for work again a whole bunch. Yikes. Busy much? Oh my. So if I'm still sporadic with blogging for a while, you'll know why. I am reading your blogs as much as I can, I just don't have any extra time to comment very often, so I apologize for that. But I honestly don't know how I'm going to do it all and still be the kind of mom I want to be. I'm just taking it one day at a time.

However I did sneak out for Kiersten White's signing for SUPERNATURALLY--another NY Times Bestseller! Woohoo! Congrats Kiersten, I'm so happy for you.

So what are you doing these last few weeks of summer?

Friday Five: Bedrest edition

Here's my limited observations and thoughts from a week of being stuck in bed:

1. Thank heavens for good books to distract me. This week was brought to you by Holly Black (RED GLOVE), Simone Elkeles (PERFECT CHEMISTRY), and I'm currently reading LOCK and KEY by Sarah Dessen.

2. Trying to work on revision notes while lying on your left side is really hard.

3. Typing while lying on your left side is really hard. Hence, I've been reading everyone's blogs, but unfortunately not always commenting if I've already been typing a lot on my mss that day.

4. Never, ever eat an entire Iceberg shake by yourself. I don't think I've consumed that much ice cream in the last two years combined. It was amazing, but yikes. I'm not feeling so good right now...

5. I am so grateful to my family and friends who have stepped in (and up) to help me during this time: taking care of my kids, cleaning, cooking, taking my BP, you name it. I can't thank you all enough. It's hard feeling like such a burden when I'm used to just pushing through and doing it all myself. Thank you, thank you.

So, tell me, how was your week? Any fun plans for the weekend? I'm hoping to have a baby, but we'll see how well that works out. ;)

My Path to Getting an Agent Pt. 5

Phwew, are you still there? Betchya didn't realize what you were signing up for when you asked me to tell you about my path to getting an agent, did you? Well, for those of you bravely continuing to read, let's continue.

So, I have a full out with an amazing agent when we last left off. After about a month and a half (I don't remember exactly anymore), she responded to it and let me know that she loved it, but just not enough. However, she gave me a bunch of notes and said if I was willing to revise it, she'd be happy to read it again. At first I will admit I was dismayed that it wasn't a big, huge YES. But, then after talking to Julie and taking a few deep breaths, I realized what an amazing opportunity this was. I spent about a month tearing my manuscript apart and revising it. I even found a great writer's conference at BYU and signed up for it, hoping to get some more feedback on it and meet more people in the industry. I met some amazing people at that conference, including my morning class that ended up becoming a critique group for a while. We've since split up because it was just too big, but we still get together quarterly for BBQs. All those ladies are so wonderful and fun!

I also became good friends with one of the nicest, most genuinely sweet and humble people I've ever known, Ally Condie; and I got to learn at the hysterical and wise feet of our morning class teacher, Janette Rallison (whom I also am lucky to count as a friend). I learned so much at that conference, met such wonderful people, and am so grateful I went.

Then... I waited for another month to hear back from the agent after I resubmitted my manuscript. I got a couple more requests for partials in the meantime from some great agents. I was feeling pretty confident. For reals this time. This. Was. It.

And then they all rejected HIDDEN. All of them said about the same thing, they loved the writing, the characters were wonderful and so real, the plot was intriguing, etc. But they just didn't love it enough to offer representation. I really grew to hate the word "enough" over the next few months. My rejection letters had evolved into reading like an acceptance letter, until you got to the part where two little words "didn't" and "enough" got shoved in before and after "love it." Ugh.

This was a really low time for me. I seriously thought about giving up. But even at my worst moments, I knew deep down that I couldn't. As much as I wanted to sometimes, I just knew I couldn't give up. I was determined to make it. I would send out more queries, and got more requests (some partials, some fulls) and kept getting the same responses. Ally joked that she'd never seen such nice rejections before--and so many of them, too! That was funny, but unfortunately it was also small comfort, since they were still ultimately rejections. And what do you do with nice rejections anyway? There's nothing to work on, or revise, or change.

After talking with her, my other friends and family, and Janette, I finally came to the realization that after two YEARS of querying HIDDEN, maybe I needed to step back and try something else. It broke my heart to give up on Gareth and Ava, but I was running out of options. I wanted to fight it, but the truth was staring me in the face. I had to write a new book if I wanted to keep pursuing getting an agent. I still had a few more hopes for HIDDEN left to try before I shelved it for good, but in the meantime, I began working on a new book, a completely different story with a totally different narrator. Ethnie started whispering to me, and grabbed my full attention in a very short time. IMPACT (as it was titled then) took me over three months to write (which was VERY slow for me), but it came out very clean. All my other hopes for HIDDEN had by now been squashed (yay for more incredibly nice rejections), and so, with the encouragement of my CPs and everyone else who read IMPACT, I decided to start over at the top of my agent list with my shiny, new book. By this time it was October/November 2009. With renewed hope and confidence, I sent out my first wave of queries.

My hope is to finish up this story in the next post (we'll see if I can do it!), so make sure and come back for the exciting conclusion. PLUS as a reward for sticking with me through this long and arduous retelling of my journey, I am going to have a fun contest. So stay tuned for that!

The love/hate relationship

Can you guess what I'm talking about? Yep, you got it. Revisions.

Why am I writing about revisions? It probably has nothing to do with the fact that I'm waiting for my first revision notes from my agent. Nothing at all. (Did I mention I'm going to be revising my book for my agent? Wow, is that an awesome feeling!) Anyway, I digress.

Revising can be hard, or it can be liberating, depending on how you view it. You can look at it as taking your carefully plotted, written and finished manuscript and tearing it to pieces. Destroying all your hours of work. Making you feel like a worthless loser who really can't write at all. (And if that's how you feel, take two deep breaths and keep reading.) Or, as I've learned over the last couple of years, you can look at it as an opportunity to take the basis of what you've done and perfect it. Polish it until it shines. I love getting a suggestion and having an "aha!" moment, where I realize just how right it is. When I can see the shape of a more perfect novel coming to light. Revising is a gift. Trust me on this--it really is. If rough drafts of novels were what got published... Yikes. That's all I have to say.

So how do you get to the point where you enjoy revising? First, find a good critique partner (or partners). Any good CP (or agent or editor, I assume) is going to give you suggestions you can see value in. They might sting at first, but they should eventually make a ton of sense. The "why didn't I think of that? You're a genius!" kind of sense that brings a grin to your face. Not all suggestions will, but if more than half do, you know you have a good partner (imo). For me, those moments where I'm grinning and typing furiously as I see the diamond emerging from, well, you know the saying; that's when I get excited and remember just how much I love revising.

I learned this lesson the first time when I was lucky enough to have a friend of mine (who happened to be a former acquisitions editor and a published author) read my WIP and edit it. She only marked the first fifty pages because it took so long (and told me to find all the similar mistakes throughout the rest of it). Every one of those fifty pages were marked from top to bottom in red pen. Whoa. I was embarrassed. Humiliated. Ashamed that she had to read such crap. (What else could it be to have been marked up so much? Didn't "publishable" authors write perfect books?) Then she explained that all her red marks were actually compliments. She told me she wouldn't have spent so much time showing me the mistakes I was making, if she didn't think I had the talent and potential to make it worth her time. If my writing had truly been awful, she would have just said, "looks pretty good, maybe try working on ___." She wouldn't have taken the time to be detailed and thorough if it wouldn't have been worth it.

So remember, getting those revision letters are compliments. It means someone thinks your writing is worth their time and effort.

Remind me of that when I get my revision notes this week, okay?

:-)