Aftermath

I survived. Five days of an intense writing workshop, but I walked away, mostly intact, and with a vastly improved book.

I'm really getting to the point where being a published (and successful!) author feels like a reachable goal. My classmates were wonderfully helpful and I really feel like everyone in that class has the potential to be published. Everyone, including me, has a long way to go, but I think we'll get there.

So where am I in terms of my book?

I've finished the first act completely. I'm sitting somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 words (I haven't calculated since the first round of editing cuts). My two main characters have finally collided and I'm getting ready to wade into the middle section.

For many authors, the middle section can get kind of boring. Not for me. I'm about to hit a brick wall of intensity and I think my main problem will be maintaining tension throughout the middle while gradually increasing towards the climax. I need to be careful not to start out so intense that I have no where to crescendo to.

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure my google search history would get me landed on some pretty serious watchlists (terrorism, interrogation methods, torture, etc.)

I'll need all the encouragement I can get to keep going. What helps you stay optimistic about your writing?

Prep for Writer's Boot-camp Phase 2

This Monday, I will be starting William Bernhardt's Small Group Writing Seminar, Level II. Level I was amazingly intense and I'm already beginning to feel anxious/excited about this next week. Not only is he the best selling author of over 10 million books, Bill Bernhardt is an amazing teacher. He's strict and helpful and encouraging. And he's going to kick my ass for not having written more.

He reminds me of my father in a lot of ways, but most especially in his quiet manner and his very high expectations. He expects all of his students to be the absolute best they can be and he pushes each and every one of us to go further. To work harder. To write more. 

And my type-A, teacher's pet self can't help but feel that I could have done more. I know I could have written more, but hopefully now that I have a few other facets of my life straightened out, I will be able to fulfill my potential. 

The first class was one of the best experiences of my life. It was completely draining and completely wonderful. It took everything I had to give and more. I know Level II will be just as intense and possibly more so. The class goes from Monday to Friday and last for three to five hours. Then the homework begins. Even at the height of my college career, I never had as much homework as I have for this class. Towards the middle of the week and on into the end, I will be getting very little sleep. 

I will try to write at least one blog post in that time, but I can't make any promises. 

What I can promise is that, by the end of this next week, my book will be significantly closer to being published. 

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

A New Year: Thoughts of a Twenty-Three Year Old

Today is my birthday. I'm 23. When I was a teenager I always imagined that twenty three would be the perfect age. It was past the uncertainty of the teenage years and far enough into the early twenties that the euphoric joy of new experiences like college, drinking, and sex would have settled into a modicum of normalcy and I would have a pretty solid idea of myself and my future.

Instead, I feel more like I'm on the brink of a brand new journey and everything I thought I knew is up for grabs. I still have the intense uncertainty of my earlier years and, while I do have some basic expectations and understanding of my life, I don't have any idea what comes next. It's like I got to some end point and now I'm starting something completely new.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was nineteen and I've struggled with it constantly. I thought I had it under control and that while my "normal" wasn't close to healthy, I thought that I'd learned to navigate it, learned to operate on a day to day basis without falling off some cliff. And that worked for a while. But when I moved and after I started writing, it got worse. And continued to get worse until it was interfering with my ability to write.

I really dreaded seeking treatment. I'd been twice burned and the thought of medication (which is basically the only option since it's a purely chemical issue) terrified me. But I have an amazing support system. Even when my brain tells me I'm alone in my struggle, it's not true. My amazing boyfriend, although he often doesn't understand me, is always there for me. My mother has gone through the same struggle and she understands how to help me and when I'm capable of being helped. And my brother. My brother pushed me to consider treatment again because he understood that it really is the first step to mental health. Because of these amazing people in my life I have been able to start a new treatment, and, while it's only been a week, I really feel like I might actually get better this time.

So now that I've got my mind on a better path, I'm hoping my writing life will improve drastically. I hope that if I don't have to spend all my energy fighting my own brain, I'll be able to write and get my book finished.

I understand that writing is, technically, something you do on your own, but living is not. Living requires help and love and encouragement and at the cusp of this new year I feel an especial gratitude for the people in my life that are always there for me.

Everyone needs help sometimes. Don't be afraid to ask for it.

The Power of Books and Youth

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” 
― Madeleine L'Engle

For most people who are avid readers/writers there is usually one moment in time that sticks out to them. A moment where a book changed how they saw the world. Changed how they thought about themselves. And this can be especially powerful when we are young.

For me, there have been a lot of world altering books, but I think one of the most striking was The Giver by Lois Lowry.

I read The Giver in seventh grade and it was my first real exposure to a dystopian future. I had already fallen in love with fantasy and science fiction, but there was something much more visceral about the world Lowry created. It was new. It was terrifying. It could happen.

And that is what I love the most about dystopias. There is an element of truth and that's what makes the story truly chilling. The possibility. 

Since that time, I have read many dystopias. From Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. There are many levels of verisimilitude, and, for me, the more realistic the better. That's why I've decided to tackle to the current problem of corporate personhood/deregulation in my book. By extrapolating the themes that I've observed in today's society I hope to create a new and terrifying and possible future. 

What book changed the way you thought about the world?

Write Wherever You Are

Where am I? In a hotel room a long ways away from my desk. My writing teacher, William Bernhardt, emphasizes the importance of writing every day. He also stresses the dangers of rituals. Writing rituals that is.  It's not good to require too many specifics in order to write. 

For instance. "I can't write without . . . ." I can't write without a hot cup of coffee/tea. I can't write unless I'm at my own desk. I can't write without my super special writing cat (though I do miss my cat). Et cetera. 

As a writer, it's best to be able to write wherever you are. These rituals can devolve into nothing more than excuses for not writing. And as a life long practitioner of the procrastination arts, that's all too easy for me. So here I am in a hotel room writing a blog instead of working on my book.

Tell me, how do you get in the mood to write?

My Pitch

I hadn't planned on pitching to an agent. My word count is just under 30,000 words and I only have about a third of the book finished. So how did this happen? I got suckered into pitching. It's okay that your book isn't finished, they said. It'll be good practice, they said. So I signed up. 

At this point, I'd done absolutely no research on the agent. I had a vague idea of what she was interested in, but one of my friends who was assigned to escort the agent around told me she wasn't interested in science fiction. Now, my book isn't exactly science fiction. It's a near-future dystopia, which as a genre, is often lumped into the overarching field of sci-fi. So that's one mark against me. 

Luckily, the agent whom I'd signed up to speak with was giving a talk on pitching. It was a two day conference and my appointment wasn't until Sunday. So I went to her talk, which focused mainly on query letters, and learned that she did, in fact, once choose to represent a first time young adult author who had not yet finished the book when she got it. She went on to say that she absolutely would not do that again. Another mark against me. 

At this point, I'd pretty much given up any hope of her being interested in my manuscript. Yes, that may have been a little premature, but I'm not exactly a glass-half-full type of girl. So that night, after a brief celebration for winning an Honorable Mention in the conference's contest, category: poetry, I did some googling. Turns out, this agent does mostly nonfiction, including a lot of economics, financial-crisis, dangers of corrupt capitalism stuff. And, while my book is fiction, that fits in with the theme of my world in which corporations have supplanted government as the ruling authorities. So +1 for me. Then I read something that gave me hope. "Interested in dark, issue-oriented young adult fiction." 

I wrote my pitch and memorized it (which wasn't too painful). The next day, I was a nervous wreck. My mom was pitching at the same time, but to a different agent and she seemed much more calm about the whole thing. Of course she's already pitched to a couple of editors and had a request from TOR Publishing for the first 50 pages of her book. Me? I was falling apart at the seams. 

So after waiting nervously in the hall, I was called into the room. The agent was young, probably late twenties/early thirties and seemed friendly enough. I made it through my pitch without stumbling too badly. Because this conference is relatively small, we were given an unprecedented 10 minutes with the agents. My pitch only took two or three minutes which left a lot of time for feedback. The first piece of feedback she gave me? Publishers aren't interested in dystopias anymore. Seems they flooded the market after the success of the Hunger Games and now they are seriously backing off. My small bubble of hope evaporated. 

HOWEVER, she continued, she personally loves dystopias and the fact that mine is a metaphor for the current issues swirling around the U.S. with Citizens United and the push for deregulation, she thought my book could prove worthwhile. <insert extreme adrenaline rush here> She asks me to send the whole manuscript to her as soon as it is finished. 

So, with a time frame of two months and two thirds of the book left to finish, it's time to get to work. 

A Novel In Two Months

I recently attended a writer's conference in Midwest City where something both terrifying and exciting happened. A literary agent requested my manuscript. So what's the problem? It's not finished yet.

At the same conference, the importance of a blog and connecting to a community of writers and readers was discussed, so here I am. Writing a blog. I plan on documenting my trials and tribulations as I try to get my novel finished by the end of November/beginning of December (and by finished I mean first draft AND revisions) and sent off to a big time literary agent in New York City.

So I've got a lot of work ahead of me and this may have been the worst possible time to become addicted to Dr. Who (which I had, until recently, avoided)

Wish me luck and I will keep you posted.