Searching for the love of my life...

Otherwise known as the perfect agent.

In the midst of my never-ending editing I have been researching agents. The compulsive nerd in me has made a spreadsheet of agents as I come across them so when the editing is finally done I'm ready to query. This has been almost as fun for me as the actual writing and editing process. As I referenced earlier, I love to learn and research, for me, is a big part of that. I still intend to a post about all the helpful websites I have found, as there have been so many.

Essentially this has culminated in me trying to identify my idea of the perfect agent. I would ultimately be happy if anyone took an interest in me and my book, but in order to find someone I have to decide what would be the best for me.

So what does my ideal mate look like? At this point, I am only looking at women agents. I feel that they would understand my book better, especially since they represent my target audience. I am categorizing this book in the fantasy genre, most fairy tales are. But the perfect agent would have a specific interest in magical realism or high fantasy. So that's the easy part, every agent pretty much has that information available on their website. What am I looking for beyond that? I want someone FUN and QUIRKY like me! That's harder to see. For that, most times, you have to go beyond the company website. Google them, look at their blog, their twitter, or wherever they are.

I haven't been exclusive to my dream agents, which I have found about 5 thus far. I'm searching everyone who meets the criteria because you never know where you might find your perfect agent. The whole process works like a dating match where you have to like me and I have to like you, and dating scares the crap out of me. I haven't dated for at least 13 years... But I guess we'll get to that when I finally am ready to query!

What I'm reading: The Shifter, by Janice Hardy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/6316125-the-shifter



On my iPod: Chocolate, by The 1975

So you wrote a book?

I've been secretly writing for about two years now. Most of it has been unpublishable fun stuff. Until last June when I started HB. So I would sit at my computer and write in secret at night when my kids were in bed and no one really knew besides my husband and the people online who read my work. Thank you all! But now, I'm getting close to a point where I'm going to submit and I want to shout it from the rooftops. In practice though, I am slowly divvying it out to people closest to me.

So now when I tell people, I'm getting a lot of questions. What's the book about? When can I read it? So are you going to get it published? I have an idea for a book. Its odd for me, something I've kept so close to my heart, and now I'm just sharing it with everyone. But it feels to get it out there. Even if I have to be terribly embarrassed when I don't ever get it published. Who knows though, maybe it can beat the odds, maybe I'll never sell a single copy. The one thing I'll never feel is regret because at least I did it, at least I tried.

Just finished reading: The Elite, by Kiera Cass

The Painful, but Essential Critique

It sounds so easy. I mean, the story is in your head, just sit down at a computer and pound out some words. Once you are finished you will have a beautiful masterpiece that you will bestow upon an editor and they will be oh so happy to publish you thousands of copies and you will make tons of money and all your dreams will come true. I think I missed the singing mice somewhere in there, but I think you get the gist.

Somewhere along the line you get writer's block and convince yourself to just pound through that chapter, you'll fix it when editing. Eight months later you have a very rough draft of 60,000 words, which is apparently unlikely to ever be published that needs tons and tons of work. Where oh where to start? I sat down at my trusty little laptop and started reading through that very rough draft. Ouch! And so I made my initial run of sweeping edits and try not to cringe at sentences that make no sense.

One thing I've done throughout this process is research. Its my nature, I love to research. So along the way I've learned all the other fun things you get to do, such as have other people look at your beautiful, perfect novel and rip it to shreds. It hurts, it hurts so bad, like being forced to listen to Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus while watching Firebirds bad. No, that's not true, nothing is worse than watching Firebirds. Just trust me, DO NOT go try and watch it. You will only hate yourself later.

Editing, revising, and critiquing are all very similar things. The point of all of them is to find things that don't work and make them better. Editing my own stuff is difficult because I am a very harsh critic on myself, but then I get the opportunity to hear a bunch of other people tell me that it isn't working as well. At some point, I assume every author says to themselves, maybe this isn't any good and I should scrap the whole thing. I've had my moment, and I'm over it. For now at least.

So that's the bad, there's also the good. And the good is really good. I was in a panic over going to the critique group. I have shielded this so carefully because I know it is so imperfect that the thought of these other writers looking at it and critiquing it made me want to just scrap the whole thing. But I went and it was great. The people are great, they're really knowledgeable and while they don't always agree, we have a lot of enlightening discussions. And when I've been only able to talk to myself about this baby of mine for the past eight months, it's nice to be able to talk to someone else about it.

Every website, every article, every chapter critique makes me better. And even though it hurts to be told you have a lot of work to do, at least you know where to start. Thank you critique group!

P.S. I think my critique group would point out at least 5 commas that I missed in this post. :)

My Sister #1 (The middle sister)

My sister is amazing. On Monday she wrote a beautiful post on the Facebook about me, and since it was a group effort I felt I owed her a post all her own.

I think we've established by now that I have a lot of fears. My husband gently puts it that I need a lot of hand holding. I did bite the bullet last year and signed up to lead a class in the middle school youth group. But I didn't want to do it alone so I dragged my sister with me. She didn't exactly kick and scream. :)

So the leader of the big youth group has been begging all year for small group leaders to lead the big group for a week. At the beginning of this year Kelly saw something I didn't, a class that would play to our strengths perfectly. Words with Friends. So after weeks of preparation we finally held our class and it was amazing. My teacher-in-training sister put the program together, came up with games, tempered my crazy ideas- and that was just in the planning stages!

I'll just say we knocked it out of the park. We had other group leaders telling us how great our program was, it was an amazing feeling. Especially when our program was geared to using our words in a positive way!

But what I can't stress enough is I would never have done it without her. I would have been totally lost this whole year without her. Scratch that, I would have been lost my whole life without her. So what I'm saying is: Thank you Mom, for deciding to procreate beyond me.

Critique Group

Last night I stepped out of my comfort zone and took off my super soft yoga pants and put on real pants to go to a real writing critique group. With real people and everything! I don't know for sure what I was expecting, but for some reason I think it went better than my expectation.

For starters, I think that I am pretty good with meeting new people. However, it is usually a terrifying experience for me. I get very flustered very easily and I will revert back into myself. When I'm around people I know I need to be the center of attention. But I will take the time to sit back and get to know the group first. That's just the way I am, I like to think it's progress that I can at least admit that much about myself.

So when I came in 15 minutes late (I could kill that terrible waitress), I expected to come into a huge group of 15 people looking at me like I had interrupted a C-section. Instead I found four people sitting around computers who welcomed me in. They weren't overly talkative except for their work. That was the aspect that surprised me the most. When the group finished half an hour before the two hours was up I expected they would sit around and chat a little, but instead everybody picked up and left. Part of it is just that I'm such a natural chatterbox that it's my natural state, but I was so excited to be around people who got it that I just wanted to talk their ears off. I badger my husband with all of it and I have shared my story with a choice few, but it's not the same as someone who truly gets it. The love and passion that a writer feels for their work, it's unexplainable to those who haven't poured months into their baby. So for the first time since I started this journey, I was going to get to sit in a room of people who get it.

And they do. This group is dedicated to getting your piece into shape that it's a publishable place. So at least I feel like I'm in good hands. And they are smart and quick and their writing skills and critiques are so spot on. At this point the biggest concern I have is that my writing is not quite up to par. It was one thing that I thought I did well, my grammar was usually correct and I am pretty good at catching any misspellings. The more I read though on the craft of writing, the more concerned I become that my writing isn't good enough. Not by a long shot. But that's why I'm going, that's why you have to put yourself out there. And next Thursday chapter 1 of HB is going to be critiqued by the group and I guess I'll find out how much work I will really have to do on my technical writing before this is even close to publishable. But now at least I don't have to do it alone.

Editing Mach 1: Where to start?

The first read through, ah how it sucks.  I rushed through the last chapters of the story to get them down on paper, thinking that I could fix it in the editing process.  I had such grandiose plans and a schedule.  Best laid plans, right?

Now I sit down and I have my software up and I don't even know where to start.  I have characters coming in and out with no purpose, plot lines with no purpose, a story world that exists in the second half to incorporate into the first half, and just all over terribly written stuff.  Not to mention about two thirds of the way through process I read some articles about not including adjectives and to keep the writing brief and to the point.  So I toyed with it a little in my last couple of chapters and the response I got was overwhelmingly negative.  Now I get to fix that as well.  The one thing I can say that is positive is that since there are people who have read it all the way through, I have a lot of great feedback on how to fix things.

But at the moment I sit down at my computer and try to figure out where to start in my huge list of problems.  Does anyone have a specific way that they complete edits?

A Deep Sigh of Relief

Last night I finished my first draft.  I feel like a weight has been lifted from me.  Scratch that, a boulder.  I was having such trouble getting through the ending because I knew that some of the earlier chapters wouldn't really make sense since the novel morphed some time around chapter 8.  But I've been avoiding fixing anything just so I could get through to the end.  Now I get to go back and fix it all.  So exciting!!  Let the revision process begin!