You can't have peas tomorrow.

Plant. Cultivate. Harvest.

It’s spring – a time of planting and growing. A time that just happens to line up with another

rejection letter on my book. It’s been four months and just over 50% of the publishers, and agents that I've sent my manuscript to have sent back “thanks, but no thanks” letters.

Since I am not one to dwell on bad news, all I can do is take what I've learned over the last year and add it to the story that, five years from now will accompany my success – a story that will be much stronger because it’s full of hard work and heartache.

After all, we all know that every story needs a middle. “Once upon a time there was a girl who had instant success.” Is neither compelling, inspirational, nor realistic. The problem is in this world of instant gratification we often forget that the middle is the most important part. Anything worth doing is worth doing well – and that means that we cannot skip the all important step of cultivation.

• No one would expect that a seed planted on Monday would give you peas on Tuesday – you have to wait.
• No one expects to walk into a fancy restaurant, order steak and lobster and have it on the table within five minutes.
• No one expects a five year old to enter Kindergarten in September and graduate from high school the following May.

So why do we think that everything we want in life should happen now? 

• I need to send a letter from Chicago to someone in New York. Pony express is long gone and the train just isn't fast enough. (enter air mail, 1920 via USPS) 
• I need to talk to someone right now – someone who doesn’t live in my house (enter the “long range” telephone around 1876) 
• It’s January, I need oranges, but I live in Canada. (enter the food trucking industry) I have food, but it's cold (enter the microwave, 1946) I don’t want to make dinner but I need to eat now! (Enter the fast food industry.) 
• I need to know where my friends are now! (Enter Facebook.) I need to know what Kim Kardashian is thinking at this moment (enter Twitter)…

Clearly we've been working towards this point of instant gratification for hundreds of years – and more so in the last 60 years than ever before. But now that it’s here, is it possible that we've lost sight of the benefits of patience and hard work? Of having goals and working towards them for years instead of minutes? 

You can’t have peas tomorrow if you plant them today and any story worth telling has a middle. 

The middle is the best part 

Today is your "middle." Enjoy it, learn from it, and when you get to the end, look back on it with pride.

14 Questions You're Afraid to Ask Literary Agents

This week I am re-posting a great article from Writer's Digest. 

It is well written, humorous, and worth the read.

(Full disclosure - if you are not interested in the publishing world, this one may not be for you.)

As an agent of more than five years with the Irene Goodman Agency, I am oftentimes approached at writing retreats, conferences, children's birthday parties, nail salons, shooting ranges and quinceaneras, and asked a variety of questions about my take on the inner workings of the publishing industry.  I have no problem straight-shooting the goods in those moments ("Honestly, Father McKenna? I think a young adult series based on Fifty Shades of Grey is a terrible idea...") and in fact quite enjoy the discourse. 

Earlier this year, Writer's Digest reached out and invited writers everywhere to anonymously - without fear of judgement or need to be overly polite - submit the questions they'd always secretly wanted to ask a literary agent, but had been afraid to voice. When WD then approached me and asked if I'd be willing to answer a selection of those questions in print - and to do so with a level of candor that writers would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere - I applauded their creativity and immediately grabbed my thinking cap (read: flask) and dove in. 

by Barbara Poelle

 

I found the questions to be insightful, and I hope I did the responses justice. If not, I am not Barbara Poelle - I am Enid Snarkleftitz and I have anger management issues.

Here's the full article:

Answers to 14 Questions You're Too Afraid to Ask Literary Agents

Co-Publishing

To Publish Together. 

The options that exist for getting your book out into the world are growing.

let's review:

There is the modern way of self publishing – there are many companies to choose from, you are responsible for all of your own illustrations, editing, marketing, but you retain 100% of the rights to your book. Usually digital only or printed on demand (when an order comes in, a book is printed and shipped)

There is the traditional way of submitting your manuscript to an agent. That agent represents your book and often prefers to work with a separate illustrator. They take control of the editing and layout and work with you to strengthen the plot and rework any sections that may need to be refined. For that, they take a cut of sales. They may or may not help with marketing efforts depending on the agency.

There is the less traditional way, but still very selective way of submitting your manuscript to a publisher directly.  Similar to working with an agent, they work with you on editing, layout and plot structure. There is less marketing and and in most cases, they take less of a smaller portion of the sales. The large majority of publishers choose to only work with agents. That vastly limits the options of publishers that you can submit a manuscript to directly.

And the one I most recently ran into, co-publishing. I’ll get back to this in a bit… but first, a story.

At the end of 2014 I buried myself in research and narrowed down a list of publishers in the US that might be a good fit. The publishing agency had to be:

• Willing to look at unagented submissions (I do not have an agent after all)
• looking for beginning chapter books (such is my current manuscript)
• open to topic content with elements of fantasy mixed with the struggles of youthfulness. (Pumpkin Lou is both fantasy and a kid) 

 

I came up with a list of eight.

So before Christmas, I sent out my eight manuscripts – some via email, some via snail mail, but all with very specific (and very different) submission guidelines.

Six days later, I got an email from Renaissance House. 

“We like your manuscript, we feel it has a lot of promise, we want to work with you, but…” 

I know I was excited too!

“… we aren't accepting new projects at this time. However our co-publishing partner is http://laredopublishing.com/ . Would you be interested in working with them?”

Still exciting. 

"Perhaps." I told them… let me ask a million questions and see where this ends up.

I learned that co-publishing is supposedly the best of both worlds – you get the control of your story and the fast turnaround time of self-publishing.  But you also get a professional editor, layout and graphics department, and possibly illustrator depending on the type of book you are publishing.

All for the low, low price of…?  Well in this case it was $2400

You do still have to be accepted by a publisher, so not every Random Joe off the street has this option. But at the same time, publishers can clearly be less picky about who they are selecting because there’s not quite as much time or effort at stake like there is for traditionally published books.

The question that I never got a clear answer to is that of “Returnability”.

What is returnability? Great question.  Let’s say you are Barns and Noble - book store giant. You have thousands of new books at your fingertips every day. How do you possibly narrow down which ones to put on your shelves?  One quick way to shorten the list is the “Returnability Guarantee.” If the book you choose does not fly off your shelves at break neck speed, those books need to be returned to the publisher ASAP. You are wasting useful shelf space!

This means that if the books cannot be returned, Barns and Noble will not risk putting them on their shelves. Or any other large books store for that matter. They may offer them online – because they don’t have to keep track of any physical stock - but that's the best you'll ever do.

With self-publishing, the publisher does not ever want books back. They are not in the business of helping their authors get books sold, so they do not care if your book flops. You can often pay extra for the option, but it’s usually a lot extra. From what I can gather co-publishing falls into the same non-returnability category.  This may not be true of all contracts, but if you find yourself with a co-publishing offer, you now at least know to ask the question.

Needless to say, I turned down the offer from Renaissance House. I have set my standards high and refuse to give in just quite yet. 

It’s coming up on one year since I first submitted the picture book manuscript of this same story. It has gone through major revisions, lengthened by about 9000 words and changed titles twice. 

I have learned a lot, and when I do finally get this book published, it will definitely be because of hard work and perseverance.  And that in itself makes for a good story – and hopefully an interesting blog.

Thanks for reading!

Unwritten

I heard this song on the radio the other morning on my way into work and thought it was a great way to kick off 2015.

Thank You Natasha Bedingfield!

Unwritten

 ...And here's a link to the lyrics if you just want to read her poetic message.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/natashabedingfield/unwritten.html

Jay Z and Dr Seuss

A few weeks ago my fairly eloquent five-year-old was babbling away nonsense word after nonsense word. All of a sudden, my almost two-year-old was repeating every nonsense word she heard. The two of them were having a great time. Harmless enough right? My first reaction was to shout out something like:

      "We only use real words in this house. How is your little sister going to learn the right words for things if she only hears babble?"

OR

     "Only babies use babble words - are you a baby?" 

But before I could spout out a single brilliant word of parenting frustration, my husband cut in.

"Only Jay Z was able to make millions off of nonsense words.  Do you think you're Jay Z?" 

For those of you who may not remember this gem:
        H to the izzo-O V to the izz-A
        Fo' sheezy my neezy keep my arms so freezy
                                    -Jay Z

yup. made him millions. 

Of course my daughter had no idea what her father was talking about and went back to singing her nonsense song, but it got me to thinking. Is there something to the nonsense words in life? 

Dr Seuss definitely thought so.  

     Did you ever have the feeling there's a WASKET in your BASKET? 
     Or a NUREAU in your BUREAU?
     Or a WOSET in your CLOSET? 
     Sometimes I feel quite CERTAIN there's a JERTAIN in the CURTAIN. 
     Sometimes I have a feeling there's a ZLOCK behind the CLOCK. 
     And that ZELF up on the SHELF! I have talked to him myself. 
                                   -Dr. Seuss  from There's a Wocket in my Pocket.



I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. 
-Dr. Seuss


My personal favorite is definitely the tweetle beetles. 

And shockingly enough, I am not the first person to ask this question. Here's a great blog post about how nonsense language helps increase reading comprehension. If you don't want to read the entire (very intersting) post, here's a bit stolen from the middle:

...The point is that creating nonsense words in verse is FUN while being an excellent exercise in language, sentence structure and comprehension. This is particularly important as kids are developing vocabulary and comprehension skills.  So often, when they come to words they can't read or don't quite recognize, readers can use context to help them.  This is the power of playing with nonsense words.  By understanding how the location of a word in a sentence can tell readers if it is an action, a name, a description can help them better figure out its meaning.  Nonsense can be used to teach kids the power of context, rhyme, alliteration, and sentence structure. 
It also makes language learning more fun and less intimidating.

The #1 thing that is great about made up language:

Read that last sentence again - it makes language more fun and less intimidating. 

Let's face it - language is hard. It's so unfortunate that something so necessary is so much work to learn. I would love to speak ten languages, but let's be honest. That sounds like a lot of work so I probably never will. 

The #2 thing that is great about made up language:

 For all you writers out there, nonsense words can help build the world that your

characters live in. Just think of Harry Potter - how many made up words, names, sports, etc. are included in the crazy world of Hogwarts?  I would guess thousands.
These words help help define the magical space that is not initially familiar to readers. But once defined, you are transported into that world and part of the "secret club" that is Hogwarts. 

Or Star Trek - anyone out there speak Klingon? Yeah, that's not a real language... or at least it didn't start out as a real language.

Language created for a fantasy world can help break your reader out of their daily reality and into the "reality" of your story. It helps your readers accept the otherwise unexplained.

Still not buying it? Consider the made up words to be a foreign language. There are thousands

of books that use foreign words throughout a text to help bring the reader into the country or time that the story takes place in.  These are not made up words, but are still initially unfamiliar to the reader and serve the same purpose as the made up words of the wizarding-world.  
Shakespeare did it, and so does Dora the Explorer.

So I guess the lesson here is: babble away my child, babble away!

...unless you're donating blood.

While looking for an agent or publisher, the most repetitive thing I read is to “…only submit to people who are looking for your type of work.” Only submit your story to people who will care about the story you are telling. Which logically begs the question...

why should anyone care about your story?

Hopefully all authors think they have something to say. Unfortunately many of them just like hearing themselves talk (write) and don’t have much to say at all. It’s easy to tell who these authors are because when (and if) you finish one of their books, you are disappointed. You feel cheated out of your valuable time. 

For me it’s even worse because no matter how bad the book, or how bad the movie, I feel the need to finish it. I hear my mother saying, "Finish what you've started!" That's usually great advice. Thanks, Mom.  

I can count on one hand the number of movies and books that I've started, but never finished. It's much more likely that I will force myself to sit and waste countless precious hours just to see if it gets better, or if the ending will be worth my time.  It rarely is.

I like to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's not them, it's me. That this particular author does actually have something great to say, but I was not the target audience. There are likely hundreds, nay, thousands of people who, unlike me, loved the book.

Or, perhaps I was not in the right place in my life to enjoy such a book – in which case I'll try again 5 years ago.  I bet the five-year-ago me would have loved some of these books.

As an author, how do you make sure that your story is getting into the hands of the right people?

• You get the best agent and/or publisher you can for your book.  (see how we've come full circle?) 

In order for you to know who the right agent/publisher is, you first need to understand why your story matters.  You can't sell your story if you don't know why it's amazing.  And if YOU don't know why it's amazing, then how will anyone else? 

Who is going to care about your story? 

Don’t waste your time on everyone else. (There are a lot of everyone-elses out there)

Think of it like picking a new friend – you need to have things in common.  You need to enjoy each other’s company and have things to talk about and experiences to share. These agents are real people trying to make a living, just like you.  (or so I keep telling myself)  If your agent/publisher doesn't believe in you, you’ll have a much rougher go of the whole experience, why would you willingly put yourself through that?

Step 1. Decide why your story is an important one and write that reason down. 

Step 2. Tell everyone you know about the very important message behind your story. Why is your story is going to change the world? How many lives are you going to impact? What makes your message unique?

Step 3. Assess the reactions to your message. If your friends and family agree that this is an important and missing piece of the literary industry, then woo hoo! Start counting the millions that are coming your way (soon, I promise).

Understandably this is tough – what message does the newest vampire/zombie/pre-teen thriller have that is so important to the world?  That is a fair question.  All I can say is hopefully the vampire/zombie/pre-teens are evolving characters and through their trials and tribulations they teach other pre-teens life lessons about personality and personal character and gumption and young love… or something.

Step 4. Don't pick an agent who doesn't understand you!  easier said than done, I know. Once an agent wants to sign on the dotted line, how could you possibly ever dream of telling them no...?!    

I'll leave that moral dilemma up to you.

The other important piece to this puzzle is the following:

Only send out work that you are proud of. 

Even the revisions that you are sending out for critique, should be the best rough drafts that you can put together. If you only send out revisions that you are proud of: 

• You will get better feedback, 
• you will be able to take those critiques more seriously, and 
• you will be more well respected. 

Ultimately, you will have a better platform on which you base your skill as a writer. 

If you only send out your best, then people can only judge you on your best. 

This is true of anything in life.  If you think you are a great chef, but you only ever cook Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, how will anyone else ever be able to say, "hey, I know this great chef..."

If you think you are an amazing photographer, but you only ever use a disposable camera, how is anyone ever going to be able to say, "hey, I know this amazing photographer."

Do your best, be proud of the work you do, and the world will reward you. 

Good luck.

How are you creative?

Just over a decade ago I went in for a job interview. In the end it was down to me and one other person who I knew was far more qualified. Although I would have loved to work for this organization, I did not have high hopes. I'm convinced this fact alone made the interview

more relaxing than it probably should have been. I walked out feeling great about the conversation I had just had with a couple of higher-ups except for one less-than-shining moment.  They asked the best question that I have ever been asked in an interview. A question that I believe tells you volumes about a person and how they view themselves. If we all asked each other this question on a first date, we'd save so much time trying to figure out if we were compatible or not... okay, maybe that's a little extreme, but you see where I"m going with this...

Unfortunately I'd fail at my own quiz because even after a decade, I still don't have a good answer. 

Q: How are you creative? 

If you're first reaction is, "I'm not.", you are wrong.  Everyone Is Creative. 

Some people are artistically creative; they draw, they paint, they sculpt.
Some people are musically creative; they play, they sing, they dance.  
Some people are creative with words; they are writers, they are public speakers.

 
Those are the obvious ones.

I'm pretty sure my answer in the interview consisted of something along the lines of, 
      "I am very visual. um, I am kind of an artist, I guess. I can take colors and put them together... Oh and also I am a creative problem solver."  
I should have ended the statement with something like, "Was that the right answer? are you happy? did I do a good job? can I call my mommy now and ask her to tell me I did a good job?"   

Not the most eloquent moment of my life to be sure. 

As the years go on, and the more people I meet, the more I realize that the world needs creativity of all kinds.  
Some people are the most creative child care givers I have ever met. As a mother, I really, really (really, really) love those people. I know stay-at-home moms who teach and occupy their children 365 days a year AND they love it.  I will be very honest here and tell you that as much as I love my kids, I am a better person because I leave them at daycare every day. I am NOT that kind of creative.

Some people are creative with electrical innovations.  I work with some incredibly smart people who could spend 10-12+ hours a day tinkering with electrical bits and pieces trying to turn them into the next big thing that will make us all a ton of money and put our kids through college. I am NOT that kind of creative.

Some people are creative people-people. I know salesmen, for example who can talk anyone into buying anything. They know how to read people, how people think, how they reason and then, those salesmen present a creative and surprisingly personal sales pitch.  I am NOT that kind of creative.

My suggestion to each of you is to figure out how you are creative and use that to your advantage in life. 
A wise man once said, "If you are going to be a dig ditcher, be the best dig ditcher you can be!"  
And although that's not exactly the message I'm trying to get across here, it is still relevant. 

Find something you are good at, find something you love, and do it to your full potential. This however is not a self help blog. 
                      So writing junkies (whoever you may be) 
                                                                     how does this pertain to you? 
Well, the easy answer is, you are a writer. You are creative with words. Once you acknowledge that you are a writer (often easier said than done), you're there! Nice work. 

Feel free to call it a day, go buy yourself something nice. 

Another possible answer is: when you are creating your characters, consider how THEY are creative. If they are creative problem solvers, use that to help resolve physical conflict. (Think Macgyver, a toothpick, a green banana, and half a fanny-pack.) 

If they are creative people-readers, use that to build and break relationships. (Think Frank Underwood manipulating the world to get what he wants.)

If they are creative artists, use that to help inspire other characters to be more artistic, well rounded people (or dogs, or monkeys, or trolls... whoever your characters may be.) 

My point is: creativity is a powerful personality trait that often goes un-analyzed. 

Unfortunately, a decade later I have yet to come up with an answer for myself that I am personally happy with.  Maybe I'll make that a New-Year's resolution for 2016.  (2015 is already booked with things like, exercise more and be more patient.)

Good luck recognizing your personal creativity!

Thanks for reading