the last leg.

With the impending arrival of Palm Sunday, Lent is beginning to wind down. So far I've spent a total of 5.5 weeks without writing. Here are some things I've learned from it.

1. I can't NOT write: While this period of writing abstinence has been good and quite insightful, I know for a fact that I could never voluntarily stop creating stories and characters. They keep popping in my head... Fighting them off and holding them back only create an ache that I want so badly to stop.

2. I must find other creative outlets: I've baked homemade granola, revamped a shirt from the thrift store with my amateur sewing skills, painted a picture with Indian ink and jotted down a few awkward poems (poetry was never my forte). Also, slightly unrelated to that, I bought a bike and started zooming around town on it. On the flipside of this, I've realized that writing takes up a good deal of my time. Not that I mind.

3. Working on my current WIP is the best way to distract myself from pending submissions: I've spent more than a fair amount of time on QueryTracker... poring over the statistics of the agents who have my MS. Sigh. I must get back to LIGHT OF THE SOUTHERN SUN soon or I'm going to become a permanent fixture on that site of obsessive waiting.

4. I will be very happy when Easter comes. (Self-explanatory)

I have had some more bites on GODMOTHER, so hopefully those will evolve into some very good news soon! Another lovely occurrence that happened today is that I won a doodled copy of Ballad from Maggie Stiefvater via a Twitter contest. Awesomeness!

Off to spend my Saturday reading and praying on a rainy porch.

lent

Storytelling. It's in my blood.
I love consuming stories-whether they be in the written word or conveyed through the screen of a television. I love telling stories.
But sometimes, it's easy to get too wrapped up in this cycle of consuming and telling. Which is why I decided to take a break from writing for Lent. 40 days (well, really 46, but who's counting?) without writing.
As of now we're about halfway to Easter, and I'm aching to write. It's almost agonizing, keeping myself from my WIP and any other writing project. Some might call this abstinence from art foolish or detrimental, but I know that this detox will only make my writing (and my life) better in the long run. What good is writing if it's the only thing you do? Life is and should be so much more than that. I shouldn't define myself in my success (or lack thereof) as a writer.
So these 6 weeks are teaching me to rest, to read, to contemplate. My characters will be waiting for me when I return. They will be as griping and demanding as ever. Perhaps they will give me a rough time for abandoning them for so long. But who knows. For now I'm resting, and trusting that my art will be better for it.

role models

First of all, profuse apologies for the horrid state of this blog. Life, as always, has gotten hectic. I've started two jobs and have prioritized my free time around my husband and my writing. So naturally the blog has suffered.
A couple of weeks ago, something very sad and momentous came to pass. Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall Series as well as the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, passed away from a heart attack at the age of 71. I owe a lot to Brian Jacques. I became a fan of his at a young age, when my mother brought home The Bellmaker from the library. I was around ten at the time-- and I was quite skeptical of the mice on the cover. How could a book about talking animals hold my interest? I was a rabid reader of Nancy Drew mysteries and the Trixie Belden series, both books that were based in the real world. I'd never before been encountered with such a fantastical realm as the woods of Mossflower and Redwall Abbey.
For a few days I refused to read it. But somehow my mother managed to corner me into a reading session. I believe her deal was: read the first two chapters and if you don't like it I'll take it back. I approached the first few paragraphs with the staunch belief that I would dislike it. Thankfully, despite my hardest efforts, I started to fall in love with Brian Jacques's universe.
I devoured The Bellmaker in a few short days. Immediately after I was finished, I convinced my mom to drive me to the library to get more books. I ran through Redwall, Mossflower, Martin the Warrior and Mattimeo as quickly as I could. Soon it wasn't just enough to borrow the books from the library. I scrupulously saved up my allowance money and had my father drive me to Barnes and Noble, where I began slowly buying and building up my collection of Brian Jacques's novels. Now, at the age of 24, fourteen of his books line my shelves.
It was Mr. Jacques who opened my eyes to the genre of fantasy and what it could do to the mind of a young reader. I began lost and engrossed in his worlds of warrior mice, badgers and hares. I began to incorporate the Redwall universe into my childhood play sessions in the backyard. I ran off into the woods and made forts and pretended I was a hare named Honeydew. I was obsessed.
I wrote to Mr. Jacques. I even got to see him in person when he visited Charleston on a tour. I was enamored by the encounter. At the thought that he was a real person and I could meet him.
Because of my love for Redwall, I started writing stories of my own. The first few scribblings were clear knockoffs--but as I read more widely and gained more experience--I began creating fantastical stories that were wholly my own. Looking back on my writing and rereading the Redwall stories, I've begun to see how Mr. Jacques's storytelling has shaped my own. There are traces, just a hint of them, in my writings today.
So thank you, Mr. Jacques, for your stories. I'm indebted to you for a childhood of happy reading and a plethora of imagination that sprung from it. Of course I've had many writing role models since then, but you were one of the strongest and one of the first. And I thank you for it.

...waiting...

There are so many things I love about writing-- the way the books seems to take shape of its own accord, the way scenes never quite work out the way you imagine them, how the perfect sentence sends shivers through your spine. I love immersing myself in a world of my own creation. I love sipping coffee and pounding at the keyboard day after day. I love the routine, the dedication.
But there is one thing I dislike about the profession of writing (other than revision, see previous post). That is waiting. Waiting on criticism. Waiting on query responses. Waiting on submission responses.
I've never been an incredibly patient person. Especially when it comes to important things. Sure, I'll try to restrain myself for a few days. But when days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months? I start to get a little whiny. I check my email a ridiculous amount. I pout and make offhanded comments to my husband. I gnaw at my nails.
For me, waiting is so ridiculously infuriating because it's something beyond my control. There's nothing I can do to make time speed up. I can't make the agent finish reading the manuscript. I can't magically produce a response to the dozen or so queries I sent out in the past few weeks. All I can do is wait; try to forget that manuscript out with the agents. Dispel from my memory the queries floating out in the interwebs.
As you can tell by this post, I'm not so great at it. I'm trying to focus on my WIP instead of the slow inching progress of the novel I'm shopping around to agents. I hit 38K on the rough draft of my WIP today. I also realized that it could be categorized as a Southern Gothic. I'm really pleased with how it's turning out so far-- although I must say that rough drafting is usually my favorite part of a novel's creation. It's always so full of possibilities and freeing. You can write whatever you want and get away with it. Until editing that is. ;)

celebrate!

This morning I woke up, braved the chilliness of my apartment and shuffled to the computer. Lo and behold, what awaited me there? Another request for a full manuscript! I'm quite excited about it

revisions in the new year.

Apologies for being so horrifically terrible about updating. Like everyone else, I was hijacked by the holidays and all of the immense busyness they offer. While this does mean that the blog was compromised (and sadly abandoned), the same doesn't ring true for my writing. When I wasn't baking sugar cookies (with buttercream frosting, oh yum!) and hunting down the perfect gift for my baby cousin (a miniature version of the Labbit I received LAST Christmas. Don't know what a Labbit is? See picture below), I was diligently pounding away on the keyboard.
Usually, the holiday season is a bit of a dry spell for querying authors (people hunting for agents), but I actually received some really constructive feedback from an agent who read my full manuscript. Even the fact that I got her to read the whole thing in the first place was nothing short of amazing (it's a rare occurrence to have your full manuscript read). So it was an added bonus that she wrote a short editorial letter- detailing what she loved about the book and what didn't work for her. As an extra treat, she told me that if I addressed the details of my story that stymied her and made revisions, I could turn in the manuscript again for her reconsideration.
While I was initially disappointed that I didn't get an offer of representation, I soon picked myself up and let the editorial comments soak in my mind. I continued spewing out pages of my work in progress and mulled the agent's suggestions in my head.
Two weeks later, hubby and I packed up the car and headed to Texas for a family gathering. There, I was determined I would use the week to start on revisions and see where they headed.

Revising.
I hate revising.
I've always hated it. In high school I never even considered it. Even in college I wrote my papers in a flurry of academic brilliance and didn't look back.
But it's necessary. This fact I've warmed up to in the past few years. Characters need reshaping and developing. Endings must be lengthened. Plot points must be clarified.
No one gets it right on the first try.

I sat at my in-laws dining room table, surrounded by revisions notes and cooling mugs of tea and coffee, I faced the revision monster. Yet again. I wrote an extra chapter. I read the MS two times to see how I could mold and reshape scenes to reveal characters in a deeper, illuminating light. I changed the tone of the overall MS to be more amiable to young adult readers.
And... SURPRISE!... my manuscript is better for it. I've come to enjoy the process of refining and whittling away at what was once a complete mess of a rough draft. To see the characters come into their own, to watch the story take on depths that I'd never originally intended for it.
Yet, in the midst of this chaos called revision, the unthinkable happened. I got a second FULL REQUEST for my manuscript! Instead of being ecstatic, which really, I should have been, I panicked. I was only half-way through my revisions. I didn't want to send the old MS, now that I'd so clearly improved it, yet I could send the mangled mess that I was currently operating on. What to do? I couldn't wait to send the complete revised version because, well, agents appreciate prompt responses with these things.
So I grafted. I took out sections of the revision that were complete and patched them into the old MS. Smoothed it over so no one would notice the incision lines and pressed send.

We'll see what happens. It is, after all, a new year and a new start. 2011, are you the year I'll find an agent? Pretty please?

Labbit-the perfect, messless household pet