YA Origins

I wasn’t always a YA writer.

When I started writing, I was still in elementary school. At the time, I was reading a lot of R.L. Stine books, both Goosebumps and Fear Street, so many of my short stories were similar. My friends liked my stories and I enjoyed writing them. That was enough then.

By middle school, I’d given up on those thriller/horror short stories. Most of what I wrote was for class because outside of class, I spent a lot of time reading. My favorites then were the Sweet Valley books, along with some Baby-sitters Club, mostly because they were so many to read. I also liked Ronald Dahl, Avi, Madeleine L’Engle, and Lois Lowry. I didn’t try to imitate any of these.

I still read a lot outside of class in high school, but my mind often wandered during class. I started writing while my teachers talked, partly to make it look like I was paying attention and partly to be doing something. By my senior year, my short stories had grown longer. Eventually, I wrote my first novel. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the novel was YA. It was probably better than what I’d written in elementary school, but it was still crap. I tossed it aside.

College was different than high school in that I was too busy for any long-term writing projects…until my senior year, when I took a seminar in creative writing. The class was year-long and we were required to write something throughout both semesters. One of my classmates wrote poems, a couple of others short stories, and two or three of us tackled novels.

I didn’t know what I was doing then, not really, and my seminar professor was an older man with little experience outside of his own genre. Still, he knew what it took to write a novel and helped me get through mine. So did my classmates. Though the characters in my novel were adults, one of my classmates once commented that they often sounded more like teenagers. At the time, I was insulted. I also didn’t listen.

I should have listened.

Because after I wrote my novel, after I graduated from college, I did some revisions and sent out some queries. I didn’t know what I was doing. I also tried to sell the novel as Adult fiction. It wasn’t, but I didn’t know that. Eventually, with no success querying, I gave up.

Sometime after that—as I moved cities, got a job, and started my “real” life—I started reading YA novels. One of my first was Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. The cover caught my eye while I was walking through a bookstore (and yes, I judge books by their covers). Though it’s never been one of my favorites, that novel got me interested in reading other YA books. I read more and more and more. Because I loved YA.

A year or two after I picked up Twilight for the first time, I was reading more YA novels than Adult ones. And I was starting to think about writing again. So I wrote. This time, I knew right off that I was writing YA with the hope of getting one published someday. Now, I’m three YA novels deep, querying and contesting and searching for a literary agent.

Until yesterday, I hadn’t thought about my college classmate who told me my characters were acting like teenagers, but I wish I’d understood what he was telling me then. It might have saved me a lot of time, gotten me on the YA track back in college.  But I also believe that if I’d started writing YA back then, there would have been no guarantee I’d have found an agent and gotten a book published. Like I said, my professor was an older man who knew nothing about young adult books. He wouldn’t have been able to help me much and I would have flailed around awhile before figuring things out. Or I may never have figured them out.

Now, I know where I am, what I’m writing, and how to query. I know how to go about finding an agent. I don’t have one yet, but I feel like I’m finally on the right track, that with a little more persistence I might actually make it.

Be Ostrich

In French you wouldn’t say “I am a writer.” French doesn’t use the indefinite article, so instead you’d say “I am writer.” (Je suis écrivain.) It sounds weird in English, but I’ve spent enough time around the language that it makes sense and almost feels more natural. Sometimes in English I find myself dropping the indefinite article when speaking or writing. I’ve confused more than one critique partner doing this. Oops. But that doesn’t deter me.

Like today. Today, I want to be ostrich. I want to say “Je suis autruche.”

We have ostriches at my hometown zoo...and though I might want to say "Je suis autruche," this is probably as close as I'll get to actually being one:

I was smiling in this picture because...well, I'm hoping I didn't know there was an ostrich behind me. What I remember from our frequent zoo visits back then is that ostriches hiss and bite and overall aren’t the nicest of creatures. But for this post, I'm ignoring those faint memories.

I did some research. Ostriches are flightless. They’re also the world’s fastest two-legged animal and run like crazy if they’re threatened. Or, if they can’t run from a predator, they lay flat on the ground, stretching out their necks and heads, so that from a distance they appear to be a mound of dirt, nothing more. In other words, when ostriches feel threatened, they run or hide and they do both really, really well. (According to my Wikipedia research, they don’t bury their heads in the sand when in danger. Pity, because I could also go for some of that right now, too.)

Because the thing is, the more I spend time on Twitter and reading writing blogs, the more I hear success stories for writers I know. I’ve talked to these writers, entered contests with them, traded pitches with them. I can’t say for sure that they’ve been trying for this longer than I have, but they’ve definitely succeeded before me. And that’s rough. That makes me want to bury my head in the sand (if only that were something ostriches did for something other than finding food).

But I can’t bury my head in the sand. I can’t run away and I can’t pretend I’m a mound of dirt, invisible to the world.

I’ve been querying agents on and off for almost nine years now, but I’ve learned more this last year than the rest of the years combined. I can honestly say that before last August, I had no idea what I was doing when I queried. Now, I know. And how? Because I’ve been talking to writers, following blogs, and entering contests. I’ve queried enough to get feedback and figure out what I’ve done right and wrong.

This isn’t to say that everything I’ve learned has gotten me what I’ve always wanted. There’s no guarantee that all my newfound knowledge will ever get me an agent and a published book, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. I hope that at some point I’ll learn enough of the right things, I’ll write the right book, I’ll find the right agent, and my dream will come true.

In the meantime, I’ll keep querying and entering contests. I’ll keep talking to other writers and learning what I can from them about my writing, their experiences, and just what it takes to be successful.

Also, I’ll keep doing silly things like researching ostriches when I should be working on my manuscript’s revisions. And I won’t be ostrich.

Mythbusters, Roller Coasters, G-Forces, & My MS

For the last few days, I’ve been working on revisions of my latest manuscript, hoping to be ready in time to enter Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest on August 18. Two of my critique partners have finished reading my MS and sent me all kinds of comments. Some of these are little things I’ve missed (a the here, an in there), while others are bigger (where one of my CPs says, “I’m confused!”).

Most of the time, my CPs see and comment on different things, which is why they’re so great. But sometimes, they agree. Usually, I know this means I have to change whatever they’ve noted…but every once in a while, they say something that makes me want to whine, kick my feet, and refuse to do it.

I came across one of these examples yesterday. My paragraph initially read:

I could totally see Molly doing that and it scared the shit out of me. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, if Molly grabbed my SUV’s wheel and pulled so hard that I got whiplash. The g’s, being so out of control, wanting to punch Molly so hard that my hand would feel bruised for weeks.

Two of my CPs highlighted g’s, saying they didn’t know what that was. Do you?

Because I do. I’ve always known. Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of Mythbusters, where the mythbusters talk A LOT about g’s when they’re doing experiments with cars and people. Before that, I took physics classes in high school and college. And before that, for years when we were younger, my brother was obsessed with roller coasters. There was a time when he’d talk about the design of roller coasters, about the heights of the hills, about the g-force associated with every curve.

So let’s stick with the roller coaster example and take this picture of Cedar Point’s Maverick:

g-force is what you feel when the roller coaster goes through the turns and curves, some of which are in this picture. It’s what pulls your body to one side or the other and it often feels like a weight pressing on you. Roller coaster curves have to be below a certain number of g’s to be safe for riders. This is why the mythbusters are so focused on g’s in their experiments—they want to know if people would survive whatever they’re doing.

To me, g’s is an everyday word, but I guess that's not true for everyone else. So now comes the problem. I don’t want to delete the part about g’s from my MS’s paragraph. For one thing, my main character is a science girl who talks about things like Mythbusters and g-forces. For another, I feel like if people don’t know it, it’d be okay for them to wonder, to grab their cell phones and Google it.

Still, I know that I can’t leave things vague. I can’t expect everyone to know about g’s or be curious enough to Google it. I knew this, but I wanted to make sure. I posted on Twitter and Facebook and got the responses I expected. Basically, change it. So I did. Now the paragraph reads:

I could totally see Molly doing that. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, if Molly grabbed my SUV’s steering wheel and pulled so hard that I got whiplash—the heavy pull from the g-force, being so out of control, wanting to punch Molly so hard that my hand would feel bruised for weeks.

Does that explain it better? I hope so. It’s not quite what I want, but I’ve learned from talking to writers who’ve been through MANY edits that you don’t always get to keep the things you like in your MS. I guess that means it’s better to fix it now, so that hopefully when an agent picks it up, that agent doesn’t read the paragraph and think, “I’m confused!” Because maybe that’ll increase my chances of an agent wanting to represent me and help me get a book published.

Grammar Girl

I’m a grammar girl. I blame this on two things, the first of which is that I had a hundred times more books than friends when I was younger. The second is that throughout high school and college, I took extensive French courses—some of them in France and completely in French—in which I had to know the parts of speech and the proper ways to use them or I’d get bad grades or humiliating French stares.

Because I’m (pretty much) obsessed with grammar, I have grammar pet peeves. At the top of my list is the misuse of I and me. I hear people say these wrong in person and on TV all the time and I’ve read many books where they’re used incorrectly. For some grammar things, I’m willing to let the mistakes go because they’re part of a dialect. Not so with I and me. When people misuse them, I cringe. Sometimes, I correct. (Yes, I know this drives people crazy, but I just can’t help it.) It sounds SO WRONG. It’s like nails on a chalkboard…only worse.

What makes it so bad is that the rule is simple. (And yes, it's a rule, not a guideline.)

If it’s the subject of a sentence, then it’s I.

If it’s the object of a sentence, then it’s me.

Okay, so, if you’re not sure what the subject or object is, that might make the rule a little harder. Basically, if you’re the person doing the action in the sentence, you’re the subject. If you’re the person receiving the action (or stuck in a prepositional phrase), you’re the object. You might be still confused…so I’ve come prepped with examples. First, here’s the picture I’m going to use for these examples:

 

 

This is from a trip my family and I took to Alaska a few summers ago, but don’t get any wrong ideas here. I don’t like fishing or fish. Note that I’m not even touching the fish. I can’t even tell you what kind of fish it is. I picked this picture because no one else in my family is in it.

Anyway, back to the point. If I were to caption the photo, I could say: “I went to Alaska a few summers ago.” Here, I’m the subject of the sentence, so I use I.

Or I could say: “This is a picture of me in Alaska a few summers ago.” Here, I’m the subject of the sentence, so I use me.

But, of course, this isn’t where people have problems. It’s when they throw other people into the mix that they get confused.  They say stuff like: “This is conversation is between you and I.” And then I cringe, correct, and cover my ears. So back to captioning the picture.

Though my brother isn’t in this picture, I could say: “My brother and I caught fish in Alaska a few summers ago.” Or: “This crewman and I are holding up my fish.” These are correct. If you want wrong examples, put me in place of I and read the sentences aloud. Do they sound wrong? They should. And many people get this part right.

It’s when they’re the object of the sentence that people get it wrong.

It’s NOT correct to say: “This is a picture of my fish and I.” Ugh. Did that sound right? It shouldn’t. It should be: “This is a picture of my fish and me.” It’s the same rule as above, when the fish wasn’t involved, where most people use it right, but for some reason that fish confuses the hell out of people. Because it’s just wrong to say: “This is a picture of I.”

Similarly, if I cut off the start of the sentence and caption it with just a phrase, it shouldn’t read: “my fish and I in Alaska a few summers ago.” Because you’d never say this: “I in Alaska a few summers ago.” Right? (Or, at least, I hope you wouldn’t. Please say you wouldn’t.) You should say: “me and my fish in Alaska a few summers ago.” Then I wouldn’t have to cringe.

When I’m writing, I’m very careful to use I and me where they’re supposed to be…and not just because I don’t like it when they’re used incorrectly. Yes, many people use it wrong, but I don’t think that makes it okay. (It’s like how people say irregardless even though it’s so wrong. Even Word is telling me with its squiggly red line to change it. And if you Google it, the definition is regardless…as if Google’s trying to tell you that you’re wrong. Why waste your time with the extra ir if you don’t have to?)

My hope is that if I use I and me right, people who read what I’ve written will also use it right. Even if I get one person to stop using I in a prepositional phrase, that’d be worth it. Of course, for that to happen, I’d have to get my stuff out there where more than just my critique partners can read it. I’m working on that.

Without a Deadline

You loved college, right? I didn’t. That’s not to say I hated it or anything, just that it wasn’t as amazing as most people made it sound. Because I was always on a deadline for something. That’s what happens when you cram two majors and two minors (two degrees) into four years. Almost every semester, I took an overload of classes. During my entire college career, I took one class—yes, ONE—that was an elective (not necessary for me to graduate with those two degrees). And I graduated on time because there was always a deadline to keep me going, always something I needed to do for at least one of my classes.

Post college, for my first real job, I worked for a private company that processed umbilical cord stem cells. These stem cells could be transplanted into a child and (help) cure numerous forms of blood cancers, along with many other diseases. Every day at that job, we were on a deadline. Forty-eight hours after the baby’s birth, the stem cells would start to degrade, which meant we had to process and cryogenically freeze them before that forty-eight hour mark. Some days, it was a nearly twenty-four hour job.

Now, I work for a flavor company. Flavors aren’t life and death like stem cells—or even like how graduating from college felt—but I still have deadlines. I compound the small, initial samples that go to customers to test in their consumer products. These customers then decide if they want to purchase this flavor from my company. They’re often on a deadline, which means I am, too.

As for this whole writing thing, this whole God-how-I-so-want-to-find-an-agent-and-get-a-book-published thing, I don’t have deadlines, not really. There’s no one who needs me to send them a query letter for one manuscript or finish my revisions on another. There’s no external push to get this done.

But there’s an internal one. When I wrote my latest MS, I gave myself seventy days (one thousand words per day) to get it done. I blew that out of the water and finished in fifty-three days with seventy-six thousand words (see here). The reason I wrote so fast was because I loved what I was writing and couldn’t wait to get home from work so I could put my newest thoughts on paper.

I’m not so self-motivated when it comes to revisions. Sure, I’d like to enter that newest MS into Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest in August, but even that’s not a firm deadline. I have to finish a query letter and revise the first few chapters or so by August 18, submissions day, but there’s no saying I have to be completely finished with the MS then. Because it’s several weeks after submissions day before the mentors’ choices are announced, which is the earliest I need to be finished with my MS revisions (assuming I were to even get a mentor).

Plus, revisions are tough. While my critique partners know all about constructive criticism and tell me what I’m doing right, the whole point is that they have to tell me what I’m doing wrong. I hate this. I mean, I know it makes my MS better and it helps me (theoretically) catch an agent’s attention, but it’s hard to see so many mistakes crammed into one file. To be honest, I’d rather go read a great book (currently Brodi Ashton’s EVERTRUE) or go to my third Reds game of the week (true story).

Despite these tempting distractions, I’ll get my revisions done. I’ll create some deadline and pretend it’s absolute. I’ll do those revisions by that date, just like I processed every cord, completed every lab, and finished every paper. Because I want this BAD. I want to be published and I don’t want to give up or slow down. I want to do whatever it takes to reach the end of my quest, real or faux deadline.

Confetti Hope

People say you have to be careful what you write on the internet for others to read, especially when you’re trying to get an agent and a book published. You have to be positive, you have to market yourself (and your writing) well. One wrong thing could leave a bad impression that could taint how others see you.

I get this. I’m good at being positive…or at least realistic. But some days are harder than others, like today. I’d like to blame it on the heavy clouds hanging over the city, but I actually love rain, thrive in thunderstorms. It’s more about all the success stories I’ve been reading lately. It’s one thing to read random success stories; it’s another when those success stories are about people you know, people you’ve chatted with on Twitter, people who’ve been in the same contests as you.

It’s so great for all of them. It’s awesome that they’ve made it after all they’ve been through, that they have an agent and (probably) will soon have a publisher. I cheer for them, offer them my congrats.

But when I read about their successes on blogs, in tweets, I can’t help but wonder will that ever be me? The answer, of course, is maybe. Most (non-writer) people I talk to about this process say of course it will! but they don’t understand how this works. This isn’t one of those things that if you keep going, if you try hard enough and put enough effort into it, that you’ll eventually get what you want (an agent, a published book). There are no guarantees here. So to those of course you will! people, I make sure to say maybe. Because it’s not that they think I’ve got what it takes—they just think that it’s either possible for anyone or that it’s what I want to hear.

Honestly, I would rather they were more supportive. I would rather they were sympathetic. I don’t need those promises of of course you will! I like it better when people understand that I don’t need those offers of false hope tossed at me like confetti that’ll be swept away and trashed as soon as we leave the party.

I have my own hope. I keep it in check most of the time because I’ve gotten too excited, too hopeful before and been rejected…but I still have it. I have two manuscripts that I love and there’s a good chance someone’s going to love one of them too, assuming I can find that person at the right time. I’m querying and prepping for contests (Pitch Wars in August, anyone?), in theory increasing my chances of finding an agent.

But will I find an agent? Maybe. In the meantime, I’ll keep reading success stories of others. As hard as they are to read, I’ve learned a lot from them—how this process takes A LOT of patience, how to improve my query letter and overall pitch, some questions to ask if an agent offers to represent me. I’ll keep cheering for and helping my writer friends, because no matter what, that’s what we writers do for each other. And I’ll keep hoping that maybe will turn into yes.

So It Goes

I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in high school. I probably read it for an English class, though I can’t say for sure because I liked it enough that I bought several of his books and read them, too. At this point, it’s been long enough that I only remember vague details about Slaughterhouse-Five. One thing I remember well is the sentiment so it goes, which Vonnegut uses throughout the novel. People die, buildings are bombed, war happens, and all the main character thinks about all these things is so it goes. The expression is either devoid of emotion, the MC so desensitized to everything around him, or is so full emotion too deep for the MC to otherwise express. Maybe, if I were to go back and read the novel, I’d have a better grasp of the expression than my faulty memory currently allows. Maybe not.

But the point of that expression isn’t whether I remember it right, at least not for this blog post. It’s about what I remember feeling as I read those words back in high school. And what I remember is the helplessness, wrapped up in the well, shit, there’s nothing I can do so I best move on.

This is about how I feel now when I get rejections. The most recent of those rejections wasn’t even from an email or an agent—it was the Authoress posting the winners of her #BLOGPITCH contest…and I wasn’t among them. At first, I felt a sharp disappointment. Then, like I’ve come to feel with so many rejections over the past year or so, I shrugged my shoulders and thought so it goes.

So it goes.

Because each rejection has no impact on other contests or other agents. A email rejection from an agent and a loss of a contest are about the same thing, and neither will prevent me from continuing on. So much of this writing world is subjective that even if several people hate something, so many others may love it.

As for the #BLOGPITCH loss specifically, I don’t think my pitch was bad. (Or, well, maybe it was. See here.) Authoress may have liked other pitches better, or better liked the concept behind the other pitches. Or she might not have picked me for some other reason. There’s no way to know for sure.

While not knowing the reason for rejection used to bother me, I’m number to it now. (So it goes, remember.) Or, at least, I don’t let it bother me for as long or as much as it used to. I think this is because I know there’s always another contest, or in the case of queries, always another agent to email. And if I run out of agents or contests, I can always write another novel. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. And someday, if I’m lucky, I’ll write the right one.