To Wait or Not To Wait or To Write

Oh the anticipation…”You’ve Got Mail”.

You shyly read the sender’s name, yes, yes, yes, it’s one of the agents that you’ve queried, your mind screams to your fingers, “CLICK THE BLOODY BUTTON ALREADY!”

But your fingers stubbornly revolt. See, they’ve taken this trip before, and they know the ride ends in failure, so you wait. The battle rages between your mind and your fingers…open, open, open!

Your body unable to take the tension roiling through you, weighs in…get another cup of coffee, go take a wee, get a little exercise, or check your other email? Or maybe you should get some coffee and exercise? So, you perform these other suddenly monumentally important tasks, but once finished, it’s still there, it’s still waiting…

Your mind forces you to return to the agent’s magical response, your pinkie finger, such a little guy to be put in such an important position, hovers over the ‘enter’ key. Your heart paces like a wild caged animal, and your breathing stops altogether.

Should you wait a little longer? Maybe you should go work on your current WIP, you’ve only written two paragraphs of worthless drivel today…

Your pinkie, unused to such extreme tension, strikes! The damage is done…

G is for Gassler

I galloped through the gamut of ‘g’s but couldn’t garner one that got me going so I gave up.

And will use one of my own, “gassler”.

Writing YA the vocabulary changes as rapidly as Paris Hilton’s lovers.

I have a couple of online sources that I go to often http://www.thesource4ym.com/teenlingo and http://onlineslangdictionary.com. I also ‘Google’ like mad for new Adalonic (Adolescent Vocabulary) Dictionaries. But sometimes even that’s not enough.

For instance, my current WIP is a dystopian set in post apocalyptic America, vaguely set about seventy years in the future. Writing dialogue becomes more of a challenge.

Will ‘lame’, ‘tard’, ‘sick’, ‘sweet’, ’awesome’, or ‘bank’ still be common teen usage of the future? Or will they have gone the way of ‘stoked’, ‘stellar’, ‘tubular’, ‘dude’, and ‘chill’?

The language of the future is just as unpredictable as the fashion sense of their generation. But instead of taking this as a roadblock, I’ve made up a few of my own words and given an alternate meaning to common words. For even though the words will change, a teen’s need to be different and possess their own vocabulary will not.

So that brings us to ‘gassler’. It’s a slur. A newly seized genetically unaltered human and is non-gender specific. So go ahead and insult someone today, call them a gassler. The worst that can happen is they think you are accusing them of wasting too much fuel or burning up the ozone layer.

Frenzied, Fabulous...Failure

I spent three days dreaming up the perfect “F” word and all I could come up with was that song by Cee Lo Green, F______ YOU”. Regardless of the version you choose, the result is the same. While I adore the song, both versions, decided I’d best not choose either of those “F”s.

Frenzied describes my life right now. I write, I blog, I cook, I edit, I query, I tweet, I FaceBook, and do all the things that have to be done, eating, cleaning, bathing, pretending to listen to my other (money man), and all at a frenzied pace, but I still feel three days behind.

Fabulous is my first grandbaby. She’s beyond amazing and I could spend every second holding her, and kissing her little fingers and toes. In fact, when I get to spend time with her I don’t set her down, much to my son’s chagrin, but he can get over it.

Failure. No matter how big the pep talk I give myself prior to reading that email. You know the one, the response to your query one. When the answer is no, whether it’s an eloquent note, a long description of why not, or the evil abominable form letter, I feel like a failure. I know there are thousands of agents out there and I only need one, but each reject makes me sick, literally.

Failure. Failure. Failure. I read the rejection ten times at least, trying to glean every shred of useable info imparted. I take that chunk of criticism and go back to edit and then despair. Unless the agent has specifically said I can resubmit, I sit there and stew, and pout, and frown, and curse the futility of trying to get published and then the inevitable. I google self-publishing websites and read their promises of automatic success and world-wide recognition. I’m not ready to go there yet, but it gives me a glimmer of hope. It makes the failure easier to swallow anyway.

Schedule Wisely or Get a Job

The above are the sage and heartless words of my dearest..

Several of the NYT Best Selling Authors churn out multiple novels in a year, which in itself with the required hours of editing and rewriting is monumental. Add in Twitter, FaceBook, a myriad of other social networking sites and a blog and the task seems unattainable. How do they do it? Where do they find the time?

I’ve spent 3 years beating my head against the wall, not literally (I hate pain), and I feel no closer to being published than the day I scaled down my real estate brokerage in order to do this. I’ve come to an impasse. (My husband is losing patience with my lowered income, but I’m fine with not working 80 hours a week.) It’s time to get serious, to get organized, or admit defeat and go back to work fulltime.

I have three finished novels and two under way. I write, I edit, I rewrite, I edit, but I really suck at querying. I have queries for each of the aforementioned novels but sending them out? Ewww! I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it. I do the research, I find my dream agents, but… just...ewww.

Enough! I will, starting today.

Since I have three completed novels, I will work on one book at a time rotating them weekly. The new and improved (first ever) schedule I came up with went like this: 10 query letters per day-three hours, two hours of editing, two hours of blog reading/writing, two hours of FB/Twitter (time suckage no longer allowed), and four hours on the WIPs. A full thirteen hours of devotion.

Extremely proud of my spurt of industriousness, I boasted of my eminent success to my other. He rolled his eyes and sagely noted that I hadn’t scheduled time for him, bathing, eating, exercise, or (OMG how could I have forgotten?) chardonnay.

Okay so something has to go, and it won’t be my wine. Do I really need to query?

First Day a New Way

Thanks to my innate laziness I'm the world's worst blogger. Besides the fact that I find writing about writing incredibly sad, especially as to date I'm unpublished. Sure, I could go the indie way lots of today's millionaire writers have done that very thing. I've even read a few of those books, but I haven't found one yet that made me stay up all night reading it. They read like early drafts, the potential of something great is there, the yeasty scent is enticing but the bread is only parbaked.

So, I shan't give up my quest, I shall lumber on.

This new blog will be my rant at the futility of my search to obtain that goal. It will be filled with angst and guest bloggers and contests. Why? Because I've been assured by the “oh so wise”, Office Girl, see her blog under blogs I follow, that this is the key to wild success. And she knows all. She is wise beyond her tender years.

What I won't do is curse the heads of those sage and venerable creatures, otherwise known as agents, even when they turn down the unbelievable opportunity to represent my work. I will sadly keep a public count of my humiliation here for your pleasure.

Why? Dare you say I should wail at the beasts that could so obtusely refuse such a gold plated sweet deal? I should spit in their eye? After all they must be blind; they couldn't see the spit coming.

Well I won't and I'll tell you why. Because one day, one of those higher beings is going to pick up my query letter, laugh their asses off, and request a full. And it goes without saying that the wise one will love it! Find me a publisher with a flick of his/her cellphone and rocket us both to instant success. So there!