A Little Thrown, A Little Perspective, A Lot of Sadness

I've been thinking a lot lately about my lack of writing. I haven't felt driven in months. I'm not really sure why the brakes are on my series, but even still, I haven't written ANYTHING.

I want to write some more, but I'm lacking inspiration. This morning, I came across an email from one of my favourite authors, Jennifer Rardin. She is the only author (or even famous person) I have ever written to. When I picked up one of her books, it was just supposed to be a fun, quick read, but i quickly tore through the whole Jaz Parks series, and immediately afterward, began writing again. This was roughly last December...so over a year has passed, and I still have her response, and though it was short, it was definitely a surprise that she even wrote back at all. I've included my letter and her response below:

Dear Jennifer,

I must first start by saying that I don't think I have ever written an author before. But i just picked up Once Bitten, Twice Shy yesterday, (yes, only yesterday) and I am devouring it, and will be buying the rest of your series tomorrow.In a literary world that has recently been dominated by tween "vampire" romance, it is so unbelievably refreshing to pick up something a little easier for my 27-year old self to relate to.

Last February, I began writing urban fantasies for women (also answering that Avenue Q song...My BA in English was collecting a lot of dust) because I was having a hard time finding them at the bookstore (unless of course you are fifteen). I'm almost done my third novel, but I was starting to feel discouraged that the market seemed to only support the teenage market.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make, is as an aspiring writer in your genre, you have given me a new sense of drive. Jaz Parks is an incredible woman, let alone protagonist. Your writing is amazing and the story is nearly impossible to put down (I had to pull myself away from reading to seek out your email). I only hope to achieve that level of intrigue in my characters and plot.

So, I want to thank you so much for renewing my spirit, not just in writing, but also in reading. Unless i slow down (and I really don't want to), I'm thinking I will read your series and finish it by the end of the week. It's such a rush to find a book that does that to you and works your imagination.

Sincerely,

Shawna Logue

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Thanks so much for your kind words, Shawna! I'm psyched to know you're having fun with the series and inspired to do some creating yourself!

Take care!
Jen


You may ask why I am breaking my writer's block silence to write about this. Well, Jen has always had a strong web presence. She used facebook (and didn't hire someone to post for her), she tweeted, and she blogged. I started thinking about my own lack of activity on social media, and how my writing had fallen off the table, when i realized I hadn't seen a post from her come across my feed for some time. In fact, her last post was September 17th.

A little investigating, and I discovered that she passed away unexpectedly on September 20th.
I never met Jen, but I feel like i knew her. So to read about her death has definitely thrown me this morning. I am rethinking my writing strategy and hoping in the new year I will get back in the game. I think that despite whatever tragedy that ended her life, she would want to keep inspiring, and keep writing.

It boggles my mind how this has affected me. It has definitely given me some perspective. Most of all, it has made me sad. The literary world lost a great person in Jennifer Rardin.

True story. Just happened.

Okay, this blog is supposed to be about writing but I had to share this. I didn't know there were people like this in today's age.

A man sat down next to me at starbucks. After five minutes he waved his hands frantically to get my attention.

Actual conversation:

Me: "yes?"

Him:"Can you help me?"

I looked at his laptop.

Me: "With the internet?"

Him: "No, with facebook. I got an email and i don't know how to reply."

He shows me his Gmail which has 55 new messages, all from facebook.

Me: "Okay click the email."

Him: "Where?"

I point.

Him: "Why can't i click here instead?"

Me: "You can click anywhere on that bar."

He clicks.

The email says: "Hi i'm Valentina frm chile be my freind." [sic]

Him: "now what?"

I sigh.

Me: "Click the link at the bottom of the email that says TO REPLY CLICK HERE"

Him: "Where?"

Me: "In the yellow box."

Him: "You mean the red box?"

Me: "No, I think it's yellow."

Him: "Show me."

I point at the YELLOW box.

Me: "Click the link."

Him: "What's a link?"

Me: "The blue underlined text that links to facebook," at which point i take the laptop and click it for him.

Him: "It wants me to log in. Should i click keep me logged in?"

Me: "If you want to."

.... At this point two pitbulls humping each other go past the window.

Him: "I guess I should go get my dogs." He gets up to tie them up, which was my cue to exit.

No, I'm not a slacker, I've just been preoccupied.

I guess it looks bad when someone starts a blog about writing, and then doesn't write in it for over a month.

What can I say, I've been busy!

I just closed on a condo, and the past three weeks I've spent organizing moving and inspections and the like. Needless to say, writing has kind of fallen off the table.

At first I was a bit disappointed in myself for not writing recently, but then I remembered a promise I made to myself upon finishing the sequel to Force: Take a break!

So, after taking a break from writing to enjoy summer, and pursue agent representation, I've decided to pick it back up again. I'm not yet writing the third and final story related to Force, but instead, I've started a new, completely different tangent.

I've tentatively titled it After... Life. It follows a girl who wakes up one morning not with amnesia, but instead with entirely different memories of what her life has been. Alternating chapters are from her husband's point of view as he struggles to deal with the new person his wife has become.

I'm really liking the way the plot is forming in my head, but unfortunately, I may have bit off more than i can chew with this one. It's hard to write two identical chapters from two separate points of view, especially when i don't happen to write them together on the same day.

Anyway, that's my update. Still pursuing agents for Force, but not aggressively at the moment.

Oh! And I had someone finally read my still-untitled sequel, and she loved it! And she's not related to me, so that makes me believe her opinion more :)

I think the compliment may have been the push I needed to start up again.

Getting an Agent

Something I've learned about trying to get published: You can't just write to publishers and hope they will want to read your manuscript. There are a few publishers that accept letters like this, but for the most part, you have to go through agent.

It is not easy to get an agent.

I did some research on how to go about getting one, and it is quite the process. First you need to write a Query Letter. The letter essentially the equivalent of a cover letter on a resume. You need to talk about who you are, what you've written/published in the past, your experiences and also give a summary, including word count, of your story.

For me, it was really difficult to toot my own horn. Furthermore, I hadn't ever tried to summarize my story in a paragraph. Sure, I can tell you all about it in a long drawn out description, but summarizing was difficult. When i finally got my letter written, I did some more research.

Apparently, a previously unpublished author, such as myself, can expect to send out hundreds of query letters, and if you're lucky, you will get a positive response from ten or so. About a 5% return. Yikes.

I jumped the gun and started sending out letters soon after I had finished the first round of edits of my manuscript. Most agents just ask for the letter, but a few ask for the first couple chapters as well. I figured that by the time i started getting responses I would have fine tuned Force enough by then that it would be ready to be sent out in full.

You can expect wait two weeks or so for a response from an emailed query letter (up to six weeks for snail mail). I had only sent off about a dozen letters before i heard back from the first agent. I reprinting it here because he was the only agent so far to send me back a response that wasn't a form letter (agent's name is deleted):

Dear Shawna:

Thank you for your recent query letter. I appreciate your patience while I’ve considered your project.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid I must pass on Force. The prologue got off to a great start, giving Alexis a strong and likable voice and a strong hint of intriguing things to come. The chapter, however, I felt got bogged down in backstory. You clearly know a lot about the characters and world you created, but I feel the story might be too caught up in the details rather than focusing on the plot.

Thanks again for thinking of me. Please accept my best wishes for your project’s success.

I wasn't upset when i read his response. I had known my first chapter needed work. It was 30 pages long, whereas the rest of the book averaged about 10 pages per chapter. But, I also had already started book two, and the ideas were spilling out of me so fast i didn't want to revisit Force. I decided to hold off sending out more query letters until i could properly revist the first chapter.

In the meantime, the rejections kept coming in. I had four come in that week, all in a form letter format. I never heard from the other six (that means no). I did finally hear from one agent who requested my manuscript. Yay!! But i hadn't fully retooled my manuscript. Still, I was too excited to wait. I sent if off immediatly, but was determined not to get too optimistic.

It's been just about six weeks (you can expect to wait 4-6 weeks for a response from a manuscript request), and i still haven't heard anything. I wrote the agent a follow up email, but haven't heard back from that either.

It's okay though. The lack of response reminded me i needed to go back and fix up those first thirty pages. I rewrote them last night. Chapter 1 is now four chapters, and instead of being told in the past tense, i told it in the present tense, giving more weight to why Alex ends up working for Mobius in the first place.

I'm happy now, despite having placed the agent hunting on hold. I think i might try again in a couple weeks.

Late Night Musings

I'm not going to write too much tonight; I just wanted to talk about a problem I am having with my writing.

One of the things you don't expect when you write is that the story takes over your thoughts. I think about plot and characters at work, when I'm driving, and mostly, when I am trying to go to sleep (such as right now).

This is how Force first came to be, mind you. I had an idea and couldn't sleep, so I wrote it down.

Tonight, as has been the case for most nights this past week, I find myself sleepless and anxious. I am coming up to the conclusion of book two, and I'm stuck. I have three paths I can take, but none are quite what I want in order to open up for the final story in the trilogy. At first, I wanted to wait it out until an idea hit me, but then I thought I might go back and re-read the whole thing (something I haven't done yet, but was going to wait until it was finished).

I had just decided to re-read, when I got an email from a friend who is currently reading Force. I asked him to be critical of it, and he offered some great advice. I haven't gone back to Force for about a month (since I started book two), and could probably use the refresher. Plus, I've been wanting to make up character profiles as well.

So tonight, instead of re-reading as I had planned, I decided to go back to book one and re-examine it. I know i need to re-tool chapter one, and possibly add some depth to a few spots, so i figured this would be a good place to start.

Except then I got distracted, and by the time I got back to my computer, it was too late to give my reading the proper attention. So, being the smart person I am, I decided to go to bed.

It's now 12:30am, I'm still awake, and I've spent the past hour and a half writing the third novel in my head, while simultaneously re-writing chapter one of Force.

These characters are becoming such a part of me, that I can't get them out of my head! I'm not complaining, but I wouldn't mind some sleep.

Set the Scene

As promised, here is a bit of background about myself, and about my first novel, Force.

I graduated from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor's of Arts in English. A lot of people have asked me why I got an English degree, and to be perfectly honest, it was because it was the degree that got me out of school the fastest. At the time I had to declare, I had spent two years prepping to go into teaching, then when i realized that wasn't for me, I took another year of random courses trying to figure out what I wanted to do. At the end of the third year, I still had no idea, so I ended up taking my English degree.

In school, my least favourite thing to do was write essays. I never did well on them. The only thing that was somewhat tolerable about writing an essay was that, in the English department, you can pretty much say whatever you want, so long as you back it up. That was the only reason I got through a lot of it. I made a lot of stuff up.

So needless to say, I've never been much of a writer. I've dabbled here and there. The most I've written of anything up until now, was the beginnings of a novel (which I later reformatted into a script), loosely based on an alternate future of my own life, stemming from grade eleven, where something didn't happen, but very nearly did. (Isn't that nice and confusing?) Anyway, I never got anywhere with that story, despite working on it here and there over a few years.

Force came about from a sleepless night. I kept tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep, but my mind kept racing with ideas of this woman who could see magic. I had just finished the Twilight series, as well as The Girl's Guide to Witchcraft trilogy, and found I was wanting more. These books are fantasy for women, a genre that doesn't really exist right now. The closest thing before the Twilight era (which has bred numerous doppelganger books) was a series I read a few years back called Enchanted, Inc. My brain wanted more: more fantasy, more magic, more romance, more chick power.

So finally, after a few hours of restlessness while this concept brewed in my end, I turned my laptop on, more out of frustration than anything else. My plan was to just jot down the ideas so i could safely go to sleep without forgetting them, but I ended up writing the first two chapters. It was 4am before I finally tore myself away, and i literally had to tear. I had to work 4 hours later.

When i got home from work that day, I kept writing, spewing out thousands of words in one sitting. It never stopped. Less than three weeks later, I had written the 70,000+ word manuscript that is now Force. It's not as long as I would have liked (I was aiming for 100,000 words; Twilight is 130,000), but it is still quite substantial for a first novel. Plus, I kept notes of ideas while I wrote, which has now spawned the sequel (currently I'm 55,000 words into that, though I've been slightly delayed due to the fact I've been without a laptop for over a month), and also will breed the final book in the series. Both are untitled at the moment, and i will blog about them soon enough.

So that's the background of how Force came to be. I will leave you with my proposed jacket blurb (the writing you would find on the back cover):

"If you had asked me about myself a few weeks ago, I would have told you that I'm your everyday, girl-next-door, struggling to pay off student loans working in a job I hate. Sounds pretty normal, right? That was before I started working for Mobius, Inc., when my whole world turned upside down.

Why? Well, shortly after starting work at Mobius, I began seeing "force lines," strange energy-filled cords floating through the air. Unfortunately, no one else seems to be able to see them, or store their energy inside themselves like I can. Now, I find myself being chased by a deranged fallen star, watched over by a seven foot tall leprechaun with a penchant for Guinness, and occasionally conversing with an inanimate fossil suspended in the lobby at work. Needless to say, I feel anything but normal."