February Writing Updates

Well, another month has come and gone. I thought that as I start a new month, I would give an update on my progress as of late.

Life - I moved to St. Louis, quite successfully I may add. So far it seems I have only forgotten my birth certificate (thanks for moving that, Mom) and a pair of shoes (which I hadn't actually missed) and I've only had to deal with one dent in the furniture from the move. All in all, the move itself went smoothly and I am loving my new apartment. We're still lacking a couch, but hopefully we will have that in the next few weeks.

Publishing - I had three separate people contact me from Openings, a literary magazine I have contributed to in the past, to submit a fiction piece for publication...after their announced deadline. I had very little notice for this, but I sent them a few options and should hear back on them shortly. I'm also hunting around for somewhere to submit my poetry and flash fiction, at least until I have a more sizable piece available.

Novel - Slow moving as of late, but still around. Mostly what I've been working on is planning and working with the timeline, since that tends to get a bit tricky with a time travel novel.

Short stories - I'm currently working on a piece regarding the day before the end of the world, which will be published in an anthology later this year. Once this project ends, a second one is beginning, which will likely be a straight-to-ebook free release, regarding travel between other worlds.

Writing groups - While I'm sad to have moved away from such an amazing writing group, I've been able to stay a part of Journey through the magic of the internet. In fact, I am currently heading a small group as part of Journey for those interested in working on finishing their novels, as opposed to writing or publishing them. Additionally, I'm on the hunt for a local group that I can meet in-person with, to have a more immediate support system.

The Damsel and My Worst Fear

Has it really been six months? My. I'm sorry, folks. I am still alive and I am still writing. Here's what I've been up to since my last post:

• "The Damsel" won first place in the fiction division of the OPUS writing contest. I was unable to make it to the awards ceremony because I had work, but my good friend Bethany was nice enough to accept the award on my behalf. She read the first few pages of the story and from what I've been told, the audience reacted quite well. One of my professors in attendance emailed me to say that the audience laughed and murmured in appreciation. We're printing the story in our school's literary magazine as well, so we're hoping that "The Damsel" might be a draw for students to pick that up once it comes out. It's rather killing me that I wasn't there to read the piece myself and see the reactions with my own eyes. The whole night at work all I could think was, somewhere out there, someone is hearing my story, and I have no idea how they feel about it. I suppose that's something I'm going to have to get used to at some point.
• I graduate in 3 weeks. 3 weeks to the day, actually. I'm quite looking forward to it at this point. This semester has been eating me alive, between 17 credits and two (and later three, sort of) jobs. That's one of the major reasons why I haven't posted here since late November. Soon, though, I will be done with school entirely and I will have time for these sorts of things. Even more importantly, I will have time for finishing Zenith and moving onto my next project (it involves time travel!).
• Another big reason I haven't been around is that I haven't had the strength. I have carpal tunnel and tendonitis in both hands/wrists and it's been really bad this year. Even with a brace, typing is hard and I was only able to do it in short bursts. Most of the time, I had to dedicate that to my homework assignments, and some of those I couldn't even manage. Thankfully, my professors were understanding and gave me extensions on the larger papers, but blogging was absolutely out of the question. So was writing. I was basically starting in on my worst fear: losing my hands. The absolute worst part about it was not that I was in constant pain, but that I couldn't write about it. That was all I wanted, to write about how it felt, and I couldn't. That pain goes so much deeper.

Querying The Damsel

Well, I did it: I just sent off query letters to four different agents, so cross your fingers for me! I'll keep you updated as I hear news, of course. Since many of you are in the same boat as I, looking for an agent or hoping to someday be published, I thought I might leave you a few tips on querying.

General Rules for Querying

1. Research First. Find out about the agent, what they represent, where their tastes lie, and if they are currently accepting queries. You can find an agent via a search engine like AgentQuery, or by querying the agents of works similar (but not too similar!) to yours.
2. Follow the Guidelines. Now, there's no hard and fast rule here and this goes hand in hand with the above rule, but please make sure you have read the guidelines specific to the agent you are querying. Some want specific fonts, some want only the query, some want sample pages; it all depends on the agent.
3. Keep it Professional. Publishing is a business, so treat it as such. Use formal block formatting in your query email or letter and treat the agent with respect. These agents are not your high school buddies, so please don't write to them as if they were.
4. Personalize Your Query. An agent can tell if you've written one query and sent it out to fifty people at once. Personalize your query to fit the agent, appeal to their tastes and add any information you feel is important that you've learned about them through your research.
5. Proofread Your Query. This may seem like a no-brainer, but do you really want to take that chance? Edit your query just as you would edit your novel to make sure it flows well, makes sense, and is free of those pesky typos. Additionally, have a friend/teacher/writing buddy read over your query as well.

On Querying and the Loss of Inspiration

Hello all, thanks for being patient with my lack of posts as of late. It feels like my desire to write and be inspired has been on pause for a few weeks, no doubt due to a mass of real-life drama, but I'm doing my best to get back to the thing I love most. Unable to truly get back into it full force, I opted for editing one of my short stories, The Damsel, which I speak about here.

When I write and edit my works, I usually know which ones I'm going to query and which ones are mostly just for practice. I get a feeling that Hey, this is really something special, I could maybe do something with this. Or, it's good enough that I'll let my friends read it, so I should try it out with agents, too! And then sometimes I get a feeling that okay, yeah, this is not going anywhere--but I do try to finish those pieces anyway.

With Zenith, the feeling was most definitely I Could Query This, and I will, once I go through one more round of edits (and hopefully hear back from more than one of my beta-readers). With The Damsel, the feeling was more I Need to Share This. I've gotten quite a bit of good feedback on that one, so I hope that no one is lying to me, as this is what I generally assume of people reading my works.

So, yeah, I'm querying The Damsel today. I did some research (mostly utilizing AgentQuery) and will be sending off the queries themselves either tonight or tomorrow. I'm waiting to hear back from two agents that I would love nothing more than to be represented by on whether or not they represent short stories. If not, I'll go directly to my #3 choice whom I am especially excited about also. I'll keep you all updated on the process!

The Damsel: Finished!

The Damsel is a short story, 3,335 words (about 9 pages in a paperback novel, or 14 pages printed out) about Ashton Monroe, a professional Damsel in Distress, who loses her job when the #1 hero falls in love, and everyone knows that Love Interest trumps Damsel in Distress. Now she has to find a way to break back into the business.

I absolutely loved writing this story, and it was much easier than a lot of the other things I've tackled lately. I came up with the idea at the start of a 6:30a shift at work and wrote it down. My coworker liked the idea and I was excited writing about it, so I brainstormed the rest of the day and began writing last night. I just finished, putting in 2,646 words today alone, which is pretty amazing for me. Ashton has such a strong voice in this piece and she is honestly the most fun I've had writing in a long time. I even stuck out first person for her, not something I'm exactly known for.

I'm really excited for people to read it, because I think I did a really good job this time. No clue what I'm doing with this, if I want to get it published or if I can, but if anyone wants to read it, leave a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you.

Damsel in Distress: Playlist

So I have this thing for making playlists for my stories and today I had a great idea for a short story (which I am already writing) and I had to create a playlist right away. I already had songs in mind. This turned out to be a great idea because one of the songs gave me an important plot point that really improved the story. Anyway, I'll check back in when I'm done with the story, most likely, but I wanted to post the playlist here.

The story has a working title of "Damsel in Distress" but I've also considered "Damsel in Need of Distress"

You're So Damn Hot - OkGo
The Fame - Lady Gaga
Save Me - Jem
Take Me - Hawk Nelson
S.O.S. - Rihanna
Stupid Girls - Pink
Girl of the Year - FM Static
White Horse - Taylor Swift
Independent Woman - Destiny's Child
Rock Star - Miley Cyrus
One Girl Revolution (Battle Remix) - Superchic[k]
Down for the Count - Bowling for Soup
Gives You Hell - All-American Rejects
I Will Not Be Moved - Natalie Grant
Me Against the World - Superchic[k]

Found; General; Inspiration

Sorry I haven't been around much, I've been positively swamped with homework as of late. I spent the entire day on Friday reading and researching and reporting, it was torture, but I got my assignment in with 2 minutes to spare. Saturday & Sunday I was out of town, away from my computer.

Last night and today? Writing and being inspired. That's part of it, this writer thing, being inspired. It's a huge part, about 50/50. You cannot write without inspiration first, it just won't work, at least not well. How do you find inspiration? You just keep your eyes open, it's all around you. My first suggestion is to read, similar to what you want to write. Books are a writer's greatest tool. Find out what makes another book great, why you love it, then use that to your advantage. And watch movies, listen to music, look at art. Whatever worked for them, can work for you.

Find things that inspire you: things you see, things you hear, things you feel. For me my tumblr dashboard is a huge inspiration, some of the time, at least. Yesterday when I was lacking inspiration and direction for The Conqueror, I turned to tumblr. I had 79 pages of backlog from one day's worth of being gone (kind of insane, a new record!) and as I went through, looking at everything, I "liked" the posts that inspired me and decided to write a story about them. Find a way to connect these very different pictures and quotes and ideas, so that's what I'm doing. 79 pages of backlog later and I have a love story about an introverted photographer and a fun-loving indie rock boy and the summer they spent together, meeting up in a forest. It's this girl with this guy, a little bit of this, and a whole lot of these, in a place I once visited that mystified me. That's the thing about inspiration: it can only take you so far, the rest lies inside of you. Do something with it.