Stop the World. I Want To Get Off.

Does anybody else feel like their life is out of control? I can't seem to keep up or find enough time to do what I really want to do--write (some reading would be good, too). I recently received my manuscript back from my editor and I'm so anxious to dig in full-blast! I have managed to get through 71 pages (pats self on back) but want to give it so much more time than I've been able to. The immediate future doesn't look any better. My family will be arriving tomorrow for a visit (yay for that one!); one of my dogs has an ear infection (so vet visit); in the next few days I'm scheduled for a hair cut (already rescheduled once), allergy shot, annual female checkup (about an annual overdue), and a mammogram. I also need to pick up my dry cleaning, pay for my car registration and pick up some things from the grocery by tomorrow or my visiting family will starve. I'm trying to squeeze all that around extra hours at work settling into a new job. I'm sure I have other things to do, but my "to do" list vanished. My e-mail was hacked which caused a domino effect that included all my notes disappearing from my iPhone, not to be recovered. They contained every note I've ever taken about books, writing, publishing, and even had bits of manuscript that I'd jotted down until I could get it onto my laptop. I can't even count the other information that was lost never be reconstituted from this tired brain of mine. But, I'm on this side of my expiration date, which is good. Things will settle down, or maybe they won't. Either way, I need to do a better job of putting everything on pause for just a moment here and there to breathe and take in the beauty of this Earth that I pass by everyday without notice. Who's with me?

Happy Writing (or Pausing)!
Traci

What's Your (Query) Number?

Querying for a literary agent can be a long and arduous process. Rejections are plenty, so get used to that if you decide to take the traditional publishing path and are in search of a literary agent to represent you to one of the big five publishing houses—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House (a fairly recent merger between Penguin and Random House), and Simon and Schuster. Even the best, most successful books can be rejected multiple times before finally being published. Here are examples of some best-sellers, along with the author and number of times they were rejected:

Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, 12

A Time to Kill, John Grisham, 16
M*A*S*H, Richard Hooker, 21
Dune, Frank Herbert, 23
The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks, 24
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, 25
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle, 26
Carrie, Stephen King, 30
The Thomas Berryman Number, James Patterson, 31
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 38
The Help, Kathryn Stockett, 60
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde, 76
The Lost Get-Back Boogie, James Lee Burke, 111
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig, 121
Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, 134
Roots, Alex Haley, 200

Always assess and re-assess to make sure you're giving the best query you can and that your story is truly ready, but don't get discouraged and don't give up. These authors didn’t and look what happened.

That being said, the traditional path might not be right for you. Only you can decide that. I was determined to follow this traditional publishing route and query agents for as long as it took to find that just-right agent who connected with my story and would help my book's world find its way into your world. But, as I queried, I also researched and ultimately came to the conclusion that I'm too much of a control freak to publish traditionally. I want to have more involvement in the process and decisions than I feel I would have with traditional publishing. I write because I can't not write (you writers out there will get that), and that’s all there is to it. I don’t need a deal with one of the big publishing companies for that. It just happened to be the only way I knew to share my story with others, and at the time I started querying, it was really the preferred path. But things have changed (or maybe I've just become better educated) and many publishing options are available, including self-publishing. With print on demand (POD) now well established, self-publishing has become a very viable choice, one that is quickly growing into a legitimate and respected publishing path, and the path I've decided to pursue. I've learned to never say never, but right now, that's the plan.

Granted, there are still those who throw a half-cooked book out there via a self-publishing avenue just because they can, giving self-published books as a whole a bad reputation. But, more and more, authors are doing what it takes to put out a great self-published book and turn that negative perception of self-publishing around. I have a lot to learn in order to do this right, but I've never shied away from a challenge and I'm not going to start now. I'll tackle this one step at a time, with the first step being to make sure the book is the best it can be. So, that's where I'm at. After multiple reviews and revisions prior to this self-publishing decision, I feel I've taken the book as far as I can on my own (which included lots of critiquing eyes) and have now passed my manuscript off to a professional editor (for probably only the first round of edits). I'll share all about that journey in a future blog.

So, are you wondering what my query number was? Drum roll please…61. Anybody else want to share how many queries it took them to get published by whatever means - big publisher, small press, indy press, vanity press, self-published, etc.? Go ahead, tell us, what's your number? Feel free to share even if you are still on your journey (example - 61 and counting). And remember, every rejection puts you one query closer to a published book and no matter the number, you're in some pretty good company. YOU WILL GET THERE, just like they did!

Happy Writing!
Traci

The Sandwich Occupation

You’ve heard of the sandwich generation. An entire generation (and generations to come) squeezed between taking care of aging parents and their own children. Full loads on both sides of running their own lives, including (usually) working full time jobs. They’re sandwiched between multiple slices of life, pressing down on them from every direction. A triple decker life sandwich, or more. 

If I had to give the occupation of writing a moniker, it would be the sandwich occupation. Let’s face it, this occupation (for most) does not afford us a life of luxury. And, even more realistically, often times, does not even pay the bills. Many aspiring writers have yet to make any money at all. But the call is still there, the drive, the passion. So we write. We don’t do it because we expect it to provide that life of riches, allowing us to live in huge houses and drive different fancy cars every day of the week. We do it because we love it. We do it because we can’t not do it. To not do it, would be like not breathing. Even though we don’t get paid to do that either, it must be done. So, we continue to slog to our “paying jobs,” squeezing in whatever precious time we can to devote to our true calling. Sandwiched in between all those other sandwich generation things, but adding one more layer, squeezing in the thing that calls to us most. Writing.

So, to all my fellow slices of ham, Tofurky, tomato, lettuce…may the thing calling to you like lungs call for air someday be the slice of life that pays your bills. 

Happy Writing!
Traci

Living the Dream (Temporarily)

I’ve been living my dream, truly, for the past week or so. I took time off work to give my writing undivided attention and loved not having to work it in around my “paying” job.

A normal, paying-job-day consists of trying to avoid interruptions during lunch long enough to at least get a new paragraph or two written. At times I’ve even slipped away to a closet where no one could find me. That worked, until they found me. In the evenings, I’ll squeeze in an hour or so between the suppertime and bedtime rituals. Weekends are tougher, things need caught up at home by then. Yet, I’ll usually huddle up at Starbuck’s or Barnes and Nobel with my laptop and a hot chocolate so I’m not tempted to dive into cleaning up the dust bowl that my home has become or I don't get pulled away by my dogs and their Frisbees and miss out on a precious full day devoted to the dream. The home and the dogs get squeezed in between the suppertime and bedtime rituals on weekends. My poor dogs. I owe them more exercise. I owe myself more exercise.

Oh, I’ll tease my co-workers that I’m living the dream there, but the comment is always accompanied by a sarcastically tone and an eye roll. The dream lives in this laptop, in those other worlds I’ve created. Worlds I can’t get back to fast enough, worlds I can’t wait to share.

On this, my last dream day before returning to work, my mood will drop lower and lower following the setting sun into a pit of darkness. First thing in the morning, I'll be back to the grind and to grabbing whatever precious time I can find to live my dream, if only in temporarily patches.

Happy Writing!

Traci

Not a New Year's Resolution

Many people make resolutions at the beginning of each year. Setting goals is a good thing (“spoken” by a list-checker), but why wait until the first day of a new year? I set goals all year, no matter what the date. On the top of my list for a while now has been to polish my manuscript, A Special Project (working title), find an agent and get that manuscript published. I’ve been challenged for over a year now to stay focused on that goal, but still managed to keep it in the crosshairs. The challenges? I’ve dealt with a nightmare government move to a new state and a new job, where I had to find and adjust to new everything. On top of that came the loss of my first grandbaby, which made all the rest seem like nothing.

On my first day in my new home in Moore, Oklahoma, after living in a hotel for a few weeks, the movers unloading my life into this new house couldn’t finish fast enough. A storm boiled on the horizon and they didn’t want to be anywhere near that city when it hit. I thought they acted a bit silly, it was only a storm, with some hail, maybe. But, I’d barely gotten the garage door closed when my daughter, who’d been there to help manage movers and box count, received a call from her husband saying a tornado had been confirmed to be on the ground in Moore. Everything I owned, my weather radio, my flashlights, everything, lay trapped in boxes somewhere in that house.

But, no problem, at least I had a shelter. Well, maybe one problem. I couldn’t figure out how to get the darn thing open. So, as the storm raged outside and the lights flashed on and off inside, my daughter, my two dogs and I huddle in the bathtub. Luckily, the tornado missed my new home by about a mile and no damage occurred—that would come from a tornadic storm in another couple months. That’s how my new life in Oklahoma began. And so it went.

As you can see, there have been challenges. Some greater than others, like the loss of little Lawson, but the goals remained: polish my manuscript, find an agent, get said manuscript published. After a re-write that started before I left Ohio and a couple rounds of critiques, the querying has begun. The timing just so happened to fall at the beginning of a new year, but querying has been on my radar for a while, just like the other goals mentioned. So, look out 2016, the culmination of these goals has been waiting for you!

Happy Writing!