Fear & Bravery

I’ve been reading Veronica Roth’s DIVERGENT and INSURGENT the last few days. Of all the themes in her story, the ones that stick to me most are bravery and fear and how they’re so intertwined. In DIVERGENT, the main character has to have enough bravery to face her fears before she becomes an adult in society’s eyes. Then there’s war, which brings in another level of fear and bravery. For the sake of this blog post, the rest of the story is irrelevant—but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the books. If you’re interested in YA dystopian stories, or even if you’re not, I recommend reading them. I’m obsessed with them. I read INSURGENT in about twenty-four hours because I had to know what fear drove the entire plot.

This has gotten me thinking about my own fears. Right off, four big ones come to mind (although if I were a character in DIVERGENT, I’m sure I’d have the average of ten to fifteen fears). The first three may be relatively normal.

FIRE: When I was in elementary school, some fire safety people (who may have been firefighters for all my traumatized childhood mind remembers) brought in burned items to help with their demonstration. I think their burned items were supposed to encourage us to stop, drop, and roll among other things, but what I remember most is the burned teddy bear. I remember its charred fur and melted eyes and mouth and the grimace on its face. I’ve been scared of fire ever since.

WATER: I can’t tell you where this fear comes from, but I know I don’t like water, especially when it’s opaque and especially at night. I had nightmares the first night I stayed in Venice because we’d arrived after dark and walked around the city. I don’t like lakes and really don’t like the ocean. I’m leaving this at that.

DEATH: Mine and others and the ways it can happen. Not to say I’ve ever experienced anything like what the main character in DIVERGENT and INSURGENT goes through, but read those books for more on this.

And then there’s my fourth fear. It’s not so normal, at least for the average person, but I’d bet it’s huge among my writer friends.

NO AGENT, NO PUBLISHED BOOK, NOT EVER: I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I’ve been trying to find an agent since college, though only in the last few months have I learned enough that I feel like I might really have a shot at this. Still, there’s no guarantee that I’ll sign with an agent, no guarantee that I’ll ever have a book published. And that scares me, not quite the way my other fears do, but in a way can wrench my gut and leave me breathless.

Beyond this huge writer fear, I have a couple of others. I had them in college, but it wasn’t until I found and starting working with my CPs that I realized how much they’re a factor in my daily writing life.

MY CPs COMMENTS ON MY WRITING: I was spoiled by my first CP—she loved my manuscript and still has more confidence in its chances for success than pessimistic me. Still, I was terrified to read her comments. What if she hated it? What if she wanted me to rewrite the whole thing because there was some huge plot hole or bad plot line? However, her suggestions were mostly minor, and that was good for me, though it hasn’t rid me of my fear. My fear comes back again every time I get comments back from someone in my CP group. I let those emails pile up until I’m crushed by the weight of them.

MY COMMENTS ON MY CPs WRITING: What if I’m too harsh? What if I don’t tell them enough? What if—and yes, this has happened—I tell them their stories would be so much better if they rewrote the first five chapters? (See my post Let’s NOT Start at the Very Beginning for more on that.) Even worse, because I love what my CPs write, what if despite all my comments, despite all my help and all our efforts, they don’t get an agent either? I want my CPs’ books to be published because I want other readers to love them as much as I do.

What the main character is DIVERGENT and INSURGENT keeps learning over and over again is that despite her fears, she has to keep going. She has to be brave in any way she knows how because she doesn’t have any other choice. This is true for me, too. I have fears about writing, about my CPs, about never finding an agent, but that doesn’t mean I stop. It means I push through the fears and keep going in hopes that someday all this will pay off.

The Curse of Dialogue Tags

One of my Pitch Wars mentors told me in her rejection letter that dialogue tags were one of my writing weaknesses. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson. I thought I had—until one of my critique partners pointed them out in one of my chapters. I’d gone back through my manuscript after Pitch Wars and removed the ones that stuck out to me, but either I missed some or I’m blind to them until someone else points them out. A third option is that I have a dialogue tag curse that puts these things back into my MS when I close it for the night. Yes, true, that’s not likely.

Those of you who don’t write may be asking what a dialogue tag is. The explanation is simple. When a character says something, dialogue tags are what appear outside the quotation marks, like he said, she cried, I demanded, you told me, etc.

You might next be wondering what the big deal is. A quick answer is that when dialogue tags are used correctly, they give information the reader doesn’t already know or they blend in so well that the reader doesn’t even notice them. When I’m reading, my mind tends to skip over the he said, she said tags. A more in depth answer is…well, I don’t really know. I have issues with them, remember?

I think my dialogue tags issues are rooted in my middle and high school creative writing exercises. I remember one teacher emphasizing that you can’t always use he said, she said. She gave us a variety of other tags and made us use them in our writing. Didn’t this make my writing better? Yes and no.

Yes: Sometimes you need to say something other than he said. An example of this is if you want to give the reader some idea of the emotion behind what a character is saying—assuming it isn’t conveyed in the words.

No: The tags that aren’t he said stick out if they’re used too much or improperly. Sometimes the reader doesn’t need help getting the emotion behind the character’s words and he said works just fine. Another example is that if a character curses within the dialogue, you don’t add a dialogue tag that says he cursed.

No: Sometimes, the reader doesn’t need a dialogue tag at all if the reader can tell who’s speaking. Two characters can carry on a dialogue-tag-less conversation that lasts half a page if you tell the reader who says the first line. This helps the flow of the dialogue and sucks the reader into the characters’ words.

No: There are places were the dialogue needs something else, but not a tag. Sometimes, it’s better to show what the characters are doing or what’s going on around them.

I don’t normally do this—because for all I know, this is a BAD idea—but I want to show you an example. Here’s part of the scene from my MS where my CP pointed out my dialogue tags. I’m going to paste it twice—first, the way my CP saw it; second, the way it is now after my CP’s comments and my corrections. I’ve put the bad dialogue tags in bold.

“You aren’t going,” my father declared. I’d seen his stern face before, but there was something different, harder, about it this time. He snatched my sleeping bag off my bed and stalked into the hallway.

                “Come on, Dad.” I rolled my eyes. “Everyone’s going.”

                “And if everyone jumped off –”

                “Seriously?” I cut him off, anger springing into my voice as I wrenched my sleeping bag from his hand. “You’re going to try that cliché?”

                “Hazel,” he answered, his voice low and warning, “it’s not safe."

                “Safe? Safe! Dad, it’s not like there are going to be boys there. There won’t be any unprotected sex, I promise.”

                “Hazel!” he shouted, shocked.

 

              “You aren’t going.”

   I’d seen my father’s stern face before, but there was something different, harder, about it this time. He snatched my sleeping bag off my bed and stalked into the hallway.

                “Come on, Dad.” I rolled my eyes. “Everyone’s going.”

                “And if everyone jumped off –”

                “Seriously?” Anger sprang into my voice as I wrenched my sleeping bag from his hand. “You’re going to try that cliché?”

                “Hazel.” His voice was low, a warning. “It’s not safe.”

                “Safe? Safe! Dad, it’s not like there are going to be boys there. There won’t be any unprotected sex, I promise.”

                “Hazel!”

So what’s my point? Dialogue tags are important and I’ve gone back through my MS. But more than that, my point is that no matter how long I keep doing this, I learn something new ALL THE TIME—and I keep learning these things over and over and over again. First, my Pitch Wars mentor (who didn’t pick me) pointed out my dialogue tags. Then, one of my other CPs mentioned her Pitch Wars mentor (who picked her) wasn’t happy with her tags. And then, my CP commented on my tags in this scene.

Writing a novel and prepping it for agents (and ultimately publication) is a process. It takes a long time. There may never been an end to the changes you can make. Still, you keep going. You learn something, fix things, learn something again, and fix them again. It doesn’t matter how long it takes because it’s about getting there in the end—and I will get there.

The Magic of DOON & The Booksellers

I’m old enough (young enough?) that when I was little, I saw Disney princess movies in the theatre. I remember loving Ariel but being terrified of Ursula. I remember dreaming of having a library like the Beast’s and of visiting a quaint little French village like Belle’s. I have loved The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and fairy tales ever since.

Last week, a friend and I had tickets to see The Book of Mormon at the Aronoff Center in downtown Cincinnati. The show started at 7:30, we had dinner reservations for 5:30 at an elegant restaurant called Boca, and we arrived downtown around 4:30. With about an hour to spare, we decided to stop in The Booksellers of Fountain Square bookstore.

I’d been to The Booksellers once before prior to the Bengals playoff game against the Chargers. I had an extra hour that day, too. I loved it the moment I stepped inside. The smell of coffee greeted me along with the comforting scent of new books. The walls were painted a soft green and the shelves were chocolate brown. I wandered through until I reached the YA section near the back. This is the first place I took my friend last week. 

We were looking for a specific YA book—the name of which is irrelevant at this point—when I spotted a different one. This one had a green cover, a dark-haired girl in a gorgeous red gown standing on a bridge and facing away from me, and a fairy tale castle nestled among mountains in the background. DOON by Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon. The cover was beautiful, but what also drew my attention was a small sticker in the bottom left corner of the book. The Booksellers of Fountain Square Autographed Copy the sticker said. I picked up the book. Inside, Carey Corp had signed her name and added the message Cross the bridge! That was enough for me. This book was mine. 

I showed the book to my friend because I knew she loved fairy tales—I’d once let her borrow ENCHANTED by Alethea Kontis and THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS by Ruth Long. Luckily, we didn’t have to fight over this signed copy because there were two more on the shelf. We each bought DOON before settling down with some coffee to wait for our Boca reservations. Boca was delicious and The Book of Mormon was hilarious, but the most important part of that evening was our discovery of DOON.

I finished DOON on Wednesday and the thing that strikes me most is that it’s about two American girls, best friends, who find an enchanted bridge that allows them to cross into the fairy tale kingdom called Doon. I’d like to say that my friend and I, two American girls, found an enchanted land that day last week, but what we really found was an enchanted bookstore and an enchanted book.

The closest I’ll ever get to Doon may be a high school trip to Scotland, but that doesn’t matter—I gave DOON a five star rating on Goodreads. I loved this book. It’s a fairy tale. It’s about best friends and handsome princes. It takes place in Scotland and Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon capture the Scottish accent so well that the word dinna will echo in my head for days. It’s about an evil witch, true love, danger, and happiness. Its end is both—spoiler alert—perfect and heartbreaking.

If you like fairy tales, YA, hot guys, or best friends, you should read DOON. You should also stop by The Booksellers (if you live in Cincinnati or are lucky enough to pass through) and see if you can find your own magic there. I, meanwhile, will dream of visiting Doon while I wait for DOON’s sequel.

Humor? Are you sure?

One of my critique partners and I have been slinging names at each other’s main characters for the last week or so. I called his MC an ass and he called mine a buzzkill. To be fair, I started it; to be honest, we’re both right. His MC is trying to be funny and charming, but comes off as a jerk. My MC is always brooding, dark and gloomy, and reminds me of Angel in Angel. Any Whedonites out there? Anyone remember how annoying Angel was? Or was that just me?

I helped my CP by pointing out where his MC went wrong and why it bothered me so much. He’s made changes since then and his character comes across better, though sometimes his humor and thoughts still border on ass-ish. I told him I like it this way. It makes me laugh, and that’s good thing.

As for my buzzkill MC, my CP suggested I add some humor. It’s funny that he said this. A Pitch Wars mentor told me she didn’t pick my MS because it didn’t have any humor in it; another of my CPs has a ton of humor in her MS; and, few days ago I finished reading Mindy McGinnis’s NOT A DROP TO DRINK and I remember she mentioned in her acknowledgments how one of her CPs helped her add emotional accessibility to her MC. That’s part of what my CP was trying to tell me—my MC wasn’t likeable as she was. She needed to have more depth, which will help readers connect to her and enjoy the story more. Therein lies my CP’s request for humor.

Problem is, I don’t do humor. Seriously. (Sorry about this adverb, CP!) For those of you that read my blog, have you laughed at anything I’ve written? I’m horrible at telling a joke—whenever I try, it falls flat and anyone listening stares at me. If I’m not trying to tell a joke but if I’m trying to be funny, my words come out tainted with sarcasm, which also kills the humor. Then there are the times when I don’t mean to tell a joke or be funny, but everyone laughs at me anyway even though I have no idea why.

I also have trouble getting into comedy on TV and in movies. There are very few comedy TV shows that I like because most of them just aren’t funny to me. The exceptions are The Big Bang Theory, Friends, and…well, I can’t come up with anything else off the top of my head. As for movies, a huge example is that I don’t find Will Farrell funny, which I think is a rare thing. The only movie I like him in is Stranger than Fiction, though I think this is more because of his interactions with Emma Thompson than because of his humor. Other than that, I don’t laugh at Will Farrell, not in Talladega Nights, not in Elf, not in The Anchorman. The same is true for a lot of comedic actors—Will Farrell’s just the first one that came to mind.

This isn’t to say no movies or TV shows are funny to me. My humor’s darker than average and I prefer serious subjects. Still, there’s no denying that there are entertaining lines in movies like Love Actually or The Avengers (Whedonites!) and in TV shows like The Vampire Diaries and (more for fellow Whedonites!) Firefly.

So maybe after all of this, you can see why when my CP told me to add humor to my book and main character I wanted to say, “Humor? Are you sure? Don’t you know me at all?” Thing is, he doesn’t really know me. We met online and we email back and forth, but we live hours apart so it’s not like we’ve ever met for drinks or anything.

Still, my CP has got a point. My MC needs to be more accessible. I’ve started to dig through my MS, searching for opportunities for something funny. I’m hoping that what I’m adding comes off as funny and not something awkward that doesn’t at least make readers smile. I’ve found several scenes that might work. I’ll find more. After, I’ll email my MS to the CP who pointed out this flaw, as well as to the one who excels at making her MC funny. And after that, my MS will be that much better and will have a better chance of catching agents’ attention.

Query Fear

I wrote in my last post (This Isn’t the End) that I’m giving up contests so that I can focus on querying. It’s a good call—I still believe that—but I’m hesitant to start sending out queries. It’s not that I don’t think my MS is ready. One of my CPs says over and over how excited she is for me to query because she thinks my MS is in a great place and she loves it. It’s not that I don’t know how to query. I’ve done that before with a different MS. It’s also not that I fear rejections. Again, I’ve queried before and I know how this works. So what’s the problem?

I’m scared to query.

I love my MS, my CP loves my MS, and it’s ready to be queried. The problem is I don’t know if agents will love my MS. It didn’t do well in contests, though I know those things are so subjective that they’re not representative of the way agents will react. Or is that not true? Agents are subjective, too. I’ve gotten rejections where the agent basically said my (other) MS wasn’t right for them. That doesn’t mean my MS was bad; it means they didn’t love it enough to represent it. Agents spend so much time with your MS that they have to be passionate about it. You have to find the right agent at the right time. So is there an agent out there who will be passionate about my MS like my CP is? I don’t know.

There’s only one way to find out, of course, and that’s querying. Still, I’m hesitant.

I’m also analytical and think far ahead—maybe too far ahead for my own good (though not far enough to be good at strategic games like chess). What if agents don’t like my MS? What then? There’s always the option to query again, but a lot of blog posts and online articles I’ve read state that this is an iffy option. Some agents don’t like to be queried an MS they’ve already rejected even if it’s been over a year and you’ve made significant changes. Not to mention that if they didn’t like it the first time but are amenable to querying again, what’s going to change their minds about it the second time?

If rejections happen—and yes, I know they will—and if I reach the point where no agents offer representation and if I decide against querying again, what’s my next option? Well, there’s the MS I queried this past fall. It needs a lot of revisions, including in the query and a new beginning (see my post Let’s NOT Start at the Very Beginning for more on that). I don’t know, once I’ve made changes, that agents would even recognize it from the first time around. So there’s that…except that I’d be querying again.

My other option? I start over. I write another MS. I have a file folder full of more story ideas, a few of which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I pick one and write it. I send it to my CPs and make revisions, I write a query and ask others to help me make it better, and then I query that MS. This option would take me at least a year, probably more. *headdesk* We writers use this phrase a lot on Twitter. It’s for embarrassment, for those hopeless days, for the feeling in your gut that you have to keep going no matter how much you don’t want to at that moment. Writing and prepping another MS is a ton of work and there’s no guarantee that it’d be worth it.

But I’ll say what I’ve said many times before—I want to be published. I’ll do what it takes. I’ll quash my query fear, I’ll query this MS, and I’ll see what happens. Then I’ll decide what comes next.

This Isn't the End

I hate cold. Any temperatures below fifty Fahrenheit and I want to either hibernate or fly south for the winter. It’s not surprising then that I’m not a fan of snow—it has to be cold to snow. Plus, in Cincinnati even a few snowflakes can mess up traffic so bad that it can take me two hours for the twenty-three miles from work to home. Let’s not forget that for the past three days my neighborhood’s roads have been covered in some kind of ice-snow amalgam that makes me slide at least once per trip. Sure, sliding’s fun the first two or three times, but after that it’s not so fun anymore.

This isn’t to say that I only have bad things to say about snow. Snow’s pretty when I can stay inside by our fire and cuddle up with a good book. It was also amazing a few summers ago to hike to the snowline on Mt. Rainier. Overall though, I wish snow were something that happened at warmer temperatures.

If I’m not fond of cold, winter, and snow, you’d think I’d be all for summer sun. You’re partly right—I do love when it’s warm out. There’s nothing more satisfying on a summer’s night than to sit on our desk and watch the sun set or to go to a Reds game and not have to worry about how many layers I should take. Still, my relationship with the sun is tenuous. I’m fair-skinned so I burn easily. One time in Ireland, when I was on the Aran Islands and it was sunny, I smeared on some stick sunblock. Turns out, I didn’t rub it in right, so I ended up looking like a red and white zebra. Embarrassing at best. I hated the sun for a week.

Yes, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m ranting about sun and snow. Truth is, I found out this morning that I didn’t make it into Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood’s Sun vs. Snow contest. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I’m not overly fond of sun or snow—but we all know that had nothing to do with it. My MS just wasn’t right for them or the contest. It’s subjective, I know, but that doesn’t make me feel much better. I want to ask why they didn’t pick me. I want to know what’s wrong with what I wrote. The answer could be there’s nothing wrong—it just wasn’t what they wanted. Still, it’s getting hard to believe that. It doesn’t help to see the success of writer friends. (See my post from last December called The Hard Stuff for more on this.) All I keep thinking is lyrics to Bon Iver’s Holocene, which I had on repeat this morning. I was not magnificent.

There’s an upside to Holocene, however. I can’t begin to tell you what the song might actually mean—poetry and me, we don’t get along so well—but other lyrics are I could see for miles, miles, miles. I feel a positive connotation when he sings these words. That helps keep the hope alive.

Hope is so important for me in this process. I renamed my blog a few weeks ago to include the words hope and grit because I don’t think I could make it through this without them. Hope is what keeps me entering contests and thinking that someday my dream will happen. Grit is my determination to keep moving forward, to learn from everything I experience, and to never give up, not until I get a book published. After all, a girl’s gotta have a goal, even if it’s a longshot at best.

Right, so, what now? I ask myself this after every contest. What currently helps with my hope is an email I got on Tuesday. It made my day—though that’s all the details you’re getting unless you’re one of my CPs. What helps with my grit is that losing this contest isn’t the end. I haven’t begun to query my MS, but I’m thinking it’s about time for that, or at least time to stop with contests and start serious preparations for querying.

So I’m thinking I’ll start Lent a little early this year and give up contests. I’ll cheer on my writer friends who made these recent ones and hope for their success. I’ll hunker down and keep at it, just not through contests, not for now.

Lucky Number JEIL1TZZ

As you know, I like to reflect on contests after they're over. On a whim last Monday, I sent my first 250 words to the Authoress's January Secret Agent contest. The winners were revealed yesterday afternoon...so here's my reflection:

The contest was simple. The number of entries was unlimited and the fifty winners would be drawn by a bot, ensuring no human bias (or work) in the selection. The secret agent, the rules also said, was interested in historical fiction, historical romance, and all genres of YA. I had a feeling the secret agent would be more selective than any genre of YA, but that didn’t mean he/she wouldn’t want mine. There was no way to know how many other people would submit and the rules were clear that I could only submit once (at least for awhile, anyway). Still, I was waiting for Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood’s Sun vs. Snow contest. No harm could come from entering, so I did.

Moments after sending my entry, I received an automated response from the Authoress’s email telling me that JEIL1TZZ was my lucky number.

Later that night, the contest winners were posted on the Authoress’s blog. I started scanning the list, searching for that key J at the beginning of my lucky number. No such luck, I thought as I read down the list—until a few from the bottom. There was number JEIL1TZZ. I was more stunned than anything.

By Wednesday, my first 250 words were on the Authoress’s blog for anyone to read. Let me repeat that because, wow. MY FIRST 250 WORDS WERE ON THE AUTHORESS’S BLOG FOR ANYONE TO READ. I’d entered a contest, made it past the first round, and now my words were on the web. Again, wow.

As a part of getting into the contest, I had to comment on at least five entries. Since I’d submitted in YA sci-fi, I searched the list for those first, seeking out the ones that were somewhat similar to mine. I treated those first, precious words like they belonged to one of my CPs and told them what I liked and what I thought might need some revision. Other writers did the same for mine.

Then came the waiting. The contest was vague about a lot of things, one of which was how long until the secret agent would pop by and review the entries. I figured that wouldn’t be until the weekend. Turns out, I was right.

The secret agent’s identity—Taylor Haggerty—was revealed yesterday morning with a promise of winners to soon follow. I didn’t need to see the list of winners to know my entry wouldn’t be among them. Ms. Haggerty’s short bio mentioned that she was looking for historical fantasy, friendship stories, and contemporary with unique settings. My MS fit none of those. True enough, when the winners were posted yesterday afternoon, my entry was not among them.

While it would have been nice to be chosen, it’s hard to be disappointed when you know your MS wasn’t what the agent wanted. That’s the thing about a secret agent contest—you never know what the agent’s interests are. At least when querying you know you’re sending your MS to an agent that wants your genre. That increases your chances of success.

So, no worries. I’m pressing on. I’m taking the comments from my fellow winners and changing the necessary things. I’ve entered my MS for the Sun vs. Snow contest. Even more, I’m looking forward to the days when I will query.