This Girl!

I watched Angie Ziederman's audition on American Idol during the past week and couldn't help but relate it to writing (shocker I know.)   First watch the audition, the whole thing.  Then come back and we'll chat.

Can you spot her huge mistake?  Her first query song was a mess.  Definitely rejection material and definitely not the way to get out of the slushpile to Hollywood. Then with her second song it turned out she could actually write sing quite well.  She got lucky because for some unfathomable reason Jennifer Lopez saw something in the hot mess that was her first song.  We as writers probably won't be quite so lucky.  That's why we have to put our absolute best out there with every query, every pitch, every conference because chances are none of us will have Jennifer Lopez tagging along with us begging the other agents to give us another chance (and if you do why are you bothering with queries, just have her publish it for you).

A Quick and Likely Discombobulated Post

Here in the Paxton household my children are on their seventh (not exaggerating, seventh!) cold since Halloween.  My little man spent almost all night last night awake and alternately crying and coughing.  Thankfully, little blond person is old enough to take OTC medication so she slept like a lamb.  I, however, did not and now I'm exhausted and not sure the connections between my brain and the parts of my body that actually do things are functioning properly, so please excuse me if I ramble.

I just wanted to do a quick announcement.  The folks over at Throwing Up Words are having a contest called Project Writeway (with a title like that I bet you can't guess what reality TV show it's spoofing). I would have put up a link for you guys to enter were you so inclined, but I only found out about it just in time to squeak in under the deadline.  Anywho, it looks like it's going to be a fun little contest and since the outcome is 50% judges and 50% popular vote I thought I'd tell you all to get on over there, read the entries and pick your top six favorites.  Voting opens up tomorrow and continues through Friday.

Hope you all had a great weekend! 

Spring cleaning (on the blog)

Well, that blogcation was a bit longer than expected. This weekend I cleaned up a little around here. I added blogs I've recently started following to my sidebar.  I deleted some blogs that haven't been updated in over a year. However, I spent most of my time going through the blogs I link to on my sidebar and moving those who've been published in the past year from the 'aspiring authors' category to the 'author' category.  I went from having five or so blogs under the 'author' heading to over twenty.  There were also a few who signed with agents and I'm sure they'll be making the move from 'aspiring' to 'author'very soon as well.  It was amazing and inspiring to see how many of my blogger friends have made such huge progress in their writing journey over the past twelve months.

As I went through all the blogs I follow, I saw a lot of other happy news besides agent signings or publication deals.  It was great to read all of that as well.  I also came across quite a few blogs that have gone dark. Some gave reasons for ending their blogs.  Some just stopped posting.  Some gave up on their dream.  It was these that stayed with me.  I just kept thinking about them, so much that I actually got depressed.  I think I understand why they did.  Heaven knows I've been close to taking the same step myself especially over the last couple months. It was tough for me to see people who actually did.  I hope that at some point down the road, they'll rediscover their dream and decide this time to really go for it.  And I hope when I feel like giving up, remembering them will give me the oomph to keep going.

How about you guys?  What are your tricks to keep pushing through when it all seems hopeless?

Gratitude, an epiphany and a publishing opportunity

First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who commented on my last post.  Your comments were helpful and encouraging and just what I needed.  Thank you so much.  I took a week off and while I'm still having a rough time getting momentum on my WIP I think I figured out why.  If it hadn't been for your comments I wouldn't have given myself a break and perhaps wouldn't have figured out the reason for my funk.

So here's my epiphany.  All the work I've been doing on my WIP has somewhere inside made me feel like I'd given up on SEEDS.  And somewhere inside I wasn't prepared to do that.  I still believe in SEEDS.  I still think it's a good well-written story that deserves to be published.  I've got to somehow strike a balance where I put time into finding a home for SEEDS while still doing work on my WIP.  That's going to be tough.  Finding time to blog and work on the WIP while taking care of two young kiddos with all that entails is tough enough.  I'm not sure where I'm going to find the extra minutes and hours it takes to ferret out possible agents/publishing options for SEEDS, but it seems I'm going to have to try unless I want my writing to be on permanent hiatus (shudder).

On a semi-related note Dragon Moon Press is open for submissions for the month of December.  They are only looking for novel length (85,000 to 110,000 words) fantasy, but if you have a manuscript that fits those specifications this is a great opportunity.  Their submission guidelines are very specific, so if you're interested go here and read them carefully before submitting.  It was this tidbit of news and my subsequent submission of SEEDS that led to my little epiphany about the reasons for my funk.  I hope you find it similarly helpful in your pursuit of your writing dreams.  Good luck!

In a funk.

Do you ever find yourself going through your daily routine and thinking 'what's the point of this again?'  Yeah.  Today is one of those days for me. But I haven't been questioning everything today, just those things that relate to my writing life.

I logged on to blogger at few times today to do a post and that's the question that kept running through my mind.  Don't get me wrong.  I've met some great people and made some good friends through my blog and I love it for that reason, but I started my blog because of my writing.  And as I said, I've really been questioning the reason I'm putting all the time and effort I do into my writing.  That encompasses the blog as well.

I don't know, I guess it's just one of those days when I'm doubting my ability to get published, heck, even my ability to write anything worth giving to my critique group.  I'm sure it will pass, but for today I'm in a funk and I think instead of working on my WIP tonight I'm going to take a long hot bath and get a good night's sleep.  Hopefully that will be all I need to recharge.

How about you guys?  Anything you've found particularly helpful in banishing self doubt or getting out of a funk?  I'd love any suggestions.

Deleted!

No, I'm not talking about my WIP.  But I am talking about all the videos from my children's lives over the past five months, which is actually more tragic than had it been my WIP.   I'm still not entirely sure how it came about that I completely erased (as in not even Geek Squad could find them) those five months worth of videos.  Actually, I deleted the last three years but thankfully I had all but the past five months backed up.  But they are gone.  And it makes me tear up a bit every time I think about it.

That's my excuse for my late post.  I was scrambling frantically all day to find a way to restore those files and have only just in the last few minutes admitted defeat.  So here I am to blog and apparently to mourn some more.

On the writing front I'm approaching 25,000 words on my WIP and am reasonably satisfied with what I'm turning out.  I know it needs A LOT of work but the skeleton is there and what is revising for if not to put the muscles and flesh on the bones? 

And now the children are sleeping all snug in their beds and I'm off to add some more words to my WIP.  I hope you've all had better days than I did today and if I may offer some advice BACK UP YOUR FILES!  That is all.  Goodnight.

Writing during a rough week

In the past week both of my kids got their second cold of the cold and flu season and it's a doozy.  Despite humidifiers, baby rub, homeopathic cold remedies and everything else we could think of they've hacked their way through every night, waking up multiple times, sometimes coughing until everything in their little tummies come up.  I took them to the doctor and he said it was nothing that could be helped by antibiotics.  They're miserable.  I'm miserable.

On top of that I got my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday and started hacking and sneezing myself on Friday.  Then my poor husband got his dose of the crud on Friday.  It hasn't been a great week.  But here's the funny thing I've written more in the past week than I've managed to put down on paper in a long time.  I'm not sure how it happened.  I know I had a lot of time to think about my WIP while I was laying in bed at night wincing with each little kid cough, waiting to see if my kiddos would settle back to sleep or need me to comfort them.  Apparently that translated into a high word count.  I'm glad the gray cloud that hovered over last week had such a great silver lining. Now to see if any of the stuff I wrote while sleep dazed and drugged up is any good.