Get used to it

There are a few different things you have to get used to if you want to be a published author. One of the biggest ones is... waiting. There's lots of hard work, and deadlines, and goals, and writing, and all that. But then there's the wait. We work, we hope, we send off our stuff. And then we wait. And wait.

Hurry up... and wait some more.

Writing, reading, editing, revising, copy editing, printing, PUBLISHING a book takes time. There are moments of hurrying and then there is waiting. Waiting for the response from a CP, waiting to hear back on a query, waiting to hear back on a request, waiting for revision notes from your agent, waiting on editors to respond to submissions, waiting for your edits, waiting for your publication date.

Another time when there is a lot of waiting? When you're pregnant. I have no idea why that would be on my mind, but it is. It has nothing to do with the little person rolling and spinning and kicking and stretching in my belly; basically making herself very well known. How is that I feel like I've been pregnant forever, and still have so long to go? And yet, at the same time, I can't believe I'm going to have another baby in about 10-12 weeks! A whole new person, a lovely, untouched soul entering the world in such a short time, who will be completely reliant upon me... that'll make you pause for a minute, to say the least.


So, back to writing. Getting an agent can be like this, and having your book coming out on a shelf (aka published) does, too. You want something so badly. You go through all the ups and downs, the pain, the longing, the hard work (that's usually more applicable to writing, not pregnancy), the nausea (usually more applicable to pregnancy, than writing), you get the idea. It takes time and work and effort and patience to publish a book, or to bring a baby into the world. Because ultimately, you can't rush things. And you shouldn't want to. No matter how uncomfortable I already am (hello ligament pain, aren't you fun! not to mention a few other side effects that are new this time around but I won't mention), I definitely don't want my baby coming out too soon. I want her to be fully developed, full term, healthy, happy, strong.


The same goes for my "book baby"--I don't want it out in the wild prematurely. I want it to be fully developed and the best it possibly can be before it hits a shelf. And that means I have to wait. Wait for this baby to be done cooking, wait for the timing to be right for my book.

Hmm... did that analogy actually make sense? Or did it just end up sounding like the ramblings of a crazy preggo who's trying to convince herself it's a good thing she still has about two and a half months to go? Eh, I tried.

What about you? What are you waiting for? And do you ever get used to it?

My thoughts on handling feedback

There were some great responses in the comments on Monday about how you deal with critiques and feedback. I'd suggest going back and reading them if you haven't already.

As for my advice, it's pretty similar. To start, you have to know your story. What is the core of your plot? What are the character traits that are integral to your protagonist? And so on. You have to decide what is vital, so that you can know what you are willing to change (which should be a good portion of the book--this doesn't work if you decide everything you wrote is so important you can't change it). It's good to have multiple trusted CPs, so that you can look for similarities or themes in their feedback. If one person seriously can't stand a part of your book, and another loves it... that's a judgement call on your half. However, if you get multiple people telling you they really don't like something, that's when you know there's a problem that needs addressing. If you get a suggestion that is really difficult to swallow, take a day or two before you respond to it. Let it sink in, let it "simmer." Something that sounds horrible or impossible at first, might end up whipping your book into shape. You might go from thinking "I have no clue how to even fix that" to "Wait! I could do this" with a little bit of time to think it over. Also, it never hurts to try something if there is even one tiny ounce of you that wonders if it would make your manuscript better. You can always change it back.

I could say more, but again, there was already so much great advice on Monday, I think it would be too repetitive. The trick with feedback is to understand that someone is critiquing your writing, not YOU. It is not a personal attack. Someone saw enough value in your work to take the time to tell you what they think. Whether you use their suggestions or not, that is always worthy of gratitude.

If you have any more thoughts or advice about it, feel free to share!

Taking Feedback

One thing you have to learn as a writer is how to take feedback. Getting critiques and edits are a vital and necessary part of the craft. Also, if you ever plan on getting published, you are guaranteed multiple rounds of revisions with your agent and editor(s). The trick is taking the feedback you get and being objective about it. You have to keep the core of you story alive while polishing all those nasty edges until they shine. And you have to maintain your belief in the quality of your writing, no matter how hard the critiques might be to swallow.

One of the most wonderful and hardest parts of being an author is that it is ALL subjective. You may have one person tell you they loved an aspect of your book and another tell you they couldn't stand the exact same thing. So how do you deal with that? Who do you trust? Or what if you get a critique back that tears your book apart? What then? How do you know when to make a change or not?

I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this today, and then I'll share mine on Wednesday.

You know what rocks though? When your husband comes in after catching up on your current WIP, and freaks out at you because THERE ARE NO MORE PAGES. And he tells you that you must write more RIGHT NOW, he'll wait for you because he can't go to sleep now anyway. That kind of feedback, I have to admit, is kind of fun. He he he...

Happy Monday! (And for all my friends in the U.S., Happy President's Day!)

My Path to Getting an Agent Pt. 3

Okay, I'm just warning you guys now. Telling you the whole path to getting my agent is probably going to take a few more posts. I was joking with some of the ladies in a writer's group tonight that if I told you ALL the details, I could stretch this out for four months. Wait! Don't pass out yet--I'm not planning on actually doing that. I will try to condense it enough to keep it to a couple more posts, while still sharing the ups and downs of my story in case anyone out there is benefiting from hearing this.

So, where did I leave off? Oh yes, the lesson I learned. Wanna know what it was? All those red marks on my manuscript meant that she liked it enough to actually take the time and effort to give me such a detailed edit. Because honestly, that must have taken her a LOT of time. And possibly more than one red pen, due to the ink running out from all of my mistakes she marked and her notes on the pages. (It was so bad, she actually stopped marking it after about page 60 and said, "you keep repeating the same mistakes, so try and catch them yourself from here on out and I will go through it again after you revise it.")

The thing that helped me not get completely depressed about her edit, was that she took the time to explain how much she liked my book and my writing, and that the things she'd marked were actually relatively minor, common "pre-published" mistakes, and easily fixed. I learned that when someone takes the time to give you a detailed edit, it means they like it and care. Not that they hate it. If she'd hated it, or thought I had no talent, she would have told me "it was good, maybe you could try and work on ____" and handed me back my manuscript unmarked.

I got down to work, and did pretty much every edit she gave me. My manuscript had a complete make-over. Suddenly, I wasn't thinking "How could Jodi have rejected me?!" -- I was thinking, "Why in the world did she even request this in the first place??" Obviously it had potential, and the story was still there, but wow. I really tightened it up a ton. At that time in my path I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I'd queried Jodi AFTER the revision from Stephanni. However, I may never have asked Stephanni to look at it without Jodi's rejection. Her feedback is what spurred me to ask Stephanni to look at it and help me figure out what I was missing. (Just so you know, I eventually realized that there were lots of other amazing agents out there--the one that represents me included! She was just the only I really knew about at the beginning of foray into this industry because of Stephenie Meyer's acknowledgements. Again, can you say naive?)

Phwew. That was a rough month. But I was ready to get back in the saddle. I was going to start querying again. I revised my query with Stephanni (and her writer's group's) help. I used my new discoveries (agentquery.com! agent blogs! absolutewrite! the list goes on...) to compile a HUGE list of agents to query. I, and two of my friends, spent days and days (morning, noon, and night) researching every agent on that list and then "rating" them from best fit for my book to least, based on what we could find about their likes/dislikes/submissions/etc. I finally picked ten of my "5's" (the highest score we gave them), and I prepared to jump back into the waters, my confidence completely restored. I was definitely getting an agent this time! First round baby! Those two friends gave me so much support and time, I am also forever indebted to them for their belief in me. They got me through more rough patches than you can believe.

Within a couple of months, I'd gotten quite a few requests for partials, and a whole lot more rejections. The ability to query by email was nice for speed and convenience, but it kind of sucked how quickly they could send you a form rejection back. The rejections hurt every. single. time. The first one, the tenth one, the fortieth one. They all hurt bad. But I kept going.

About this time, I finally got the miracle my husband, son and I (and family and friends) had been praying for--after almost two years of trying, procedures, surgeries, losses, hopes and devastation, we were finally having a successful pregnancy with our second child. We'd made it through the scary time when I'd lost a baby the year before right before the second trimester in a "missed miscarriage." Over the ensuing nine months, I had many ups and downs. Some weeks I queried a bunch, and other times I was having complications with my pregnancy, and writing/querying got put on hold. I got requests, I got rejections. I'd revise some more and keep trying. I'd spend hours researching an agent to personalize a query only to get a form rejection the next day or week -- or in some cases, the next hour. Requests, rejections. Lots of rejections.

I was able to carry my baby full term (which was a wonderful miracle), and in the meantime nothing new happened with my querying. I was due the beginning of January, so I figured I'd take a break for Christmas and the New Year (since the industry pretty much shuts down anyway), and start putting my nose to the grindstone again a few weeks after he was born.

After talking about possibly having to deliver him at 25 weeks to try and save his life, then having the situation recover enough for him to hold on until the end, I ended up having to be scheduled for an induction. Not one to ever let us dictate how his life would be run even in utero, Son B decided to come the day before his induction in the most excruciating labor imaginable. (He was face up and turned to the side, the only thing harder to deliver is breech apparently.) But we both did just fine, and there he was! My miracle baby, alive, healthy, beautiful. I had bright hopes for our future, and felt really excited about getting back to work in a few weeks. I was deliriously happy.

And then... I wasn't. Something went wrong. Very, very wrong.

Okay, I think that's long enough, so I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off again. Sorry it isn't the happiest ending place, but things do get better. I promise. Stay tuned! Until then, happy weekend! (P.S. SonB's test and appointment went pretty well. Not fabulous, but the doctors will be able to help him and it isn't as bad as it could have been. Thank you for you prayers and well wishes.)