Moving can be such a stressful time

I have decided to move. It was after over a year of deliberation, sweating, researching, and trying to ignore it. But the fact is. I must move.

I’ve moved homes so many times I can’t possibly count them, well I could but it would bore you. The most in one year – five different schools in the seventh and eighth grades EACH. Yea, that was fun. Really. I actually enjoy travel, and when you change schools that many times in a year, your records just can’t keep up. Of course that was waaayyyy back in the dark ages before records were kept on computers. Basically I was free to behave, or misbehave, as I chose every time I enrolled in a different school. One place I could be teacher’s pet, the next I’d be teacher’s nightmare.

They never knew the truth. But I did.

Of course when I became a teacher, I was savvy to all that nonsense. I also had knowledge of places which seemed exotic to kids who’d never been out of their city.

Moving as an adult was a little more stressful. First, my children didn’t share my love for what’s just beyond that next ridge. And they really didn’t believe that the grass could be greener outside their little fenced world – that is until they reached the age where they started thinking about spreading their own wings. But that’s another story. Also, it’s a little tougher doing all the packing and deciding what stays behind and what goes with. What to donate and what to toss in the trash. Sometimes I made the wrong decision, but hey – it’s nothing but a thing (yet another story)

Moving from one website to another is very much the same. What is the motivation for this cumbersome move? For me it was the advice of an agent. She informed me that ‘MrsPiddles’ wasn’t very professional for a serious writer. Seriously? Do they have any idea how important that handle is? Oh, yea, I need to get a better email address for the same reason. Perish the thought.

Once you’re aptly motivated, you have to decide where you’re going to move, and when would be the best time to do so. You check out the available ‘real estate’ and the community, and then compare about a dozen choices. And don’t forget to check for compatibility. If your computer doesn’t play well with the new site it is as bad as being totally wrong for the community your house is located in. Yea, that can be an expensive trial for sure.

Next you have to budget the move, not just in terms of money, but in terms of time. You do have to keep up with your other responsibilities. A story won’t write itself, and if you leave it lay for too long, it could grow cold. Same with your social media (a nightmare for me).

So when you get all your schedules mapped out, and sign the papers for the new place, it’s time to set up housekeeping.

Oye!

It’s time to start packing up the old place too. What stays, what goes, what transfers. And for Heaven’s sake, do remember to proofread after cutting and pasting a document or a page!

You only thought it would run smooth.

Now you resign to the fact that this is going to be a long, drawn out, somewhat painful experience. No, it’s not Miller Time! You gotta keep your thinking straight to get this done so you don’t look like – well, you know what that looks like.

And you have to put in a change of address, let friends and family know where you are, figure out how to alert everyone else who stops by from time to time. You’re not here anymore, you moved.

Yea, it might take two years.

So, where am I going?

conniepeck.wordpress.com

See you there.

The Dreaded Query – again

I, among others, have an intense fear as well as total lack of confidence of querying my work. And I don’t have a reason in the world to feel so shy. I know I’m a good writer. I have a fairly good education. And I have a pretty good network.

Not much scares me, from flying airplanes to riding motorcycles (yes a Harley with a club) to breaking in young horses. Not even facing a room full of high-schoolers – or kindergarteners – will make me blink an eye. But sending out a query gives me bad dreams.

I enjoy hawking my wares, whether crafty or written, in craft or book fairs. I love meeting new people and talking up the things I do and how I do it.

I’m not afraid to speak to a group, large or small, old or young, on a wide variety of topics – after all, I’m a teacher. I can even do a ‘shoot from the hip’ talk about just about anything and make it funny. But I’m unsure of querying.

I’m not afraid to write outside my comfort zone and then present that work to my critique group, both online and local, in person. But writing a query letter sends me shrinking to the shadows.

So why am I so afraid of sending a little letter and a few lines of my latest book to an agent?

Could it be that I feel the agent is this great and grand (Wizard of Oz) wise and powerful keeper of the keys to the Magical Kingdom of Publication? I suppose so.

Wow, was that an example of pre-judging? Doesn’t that sound a bit like prejudice? Perish the thought, especially in this day and age! The truth is, I think they (the agents and editors) are just as nervous as we are. Like, what if they happen to be the one who rejected Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. But they do read an awful lot of material. And they do have at least a little bit of experience in the game.

I have to get it through my head that agents are not gate keepers, they are skilled members of the industry actively looking for the next great work which they can sell to the big guys and make lots and lots of money. So I have to be the one to write – and send – that amazing book.

Could it be that I feel I’m only a small, unknown beginner. I have no idea what I’m doing, and all my rejects prove that little fact. So maybe I don’t deserve to keep trying. (Oh, don’t ever fall into that trap.) I bet Dr. Suess can tell us something about keeping on keeping on. I’m so glad he didn’t give up.

We all start out an unknown, uneducated beginner. The difference between then and now should be education, workshops, clinics, conferences, and practice, practice, practice. That means the BIC index. How long you keep Butt In Chair. So maybe that will take care of my self-esteem issues. At least it should. I still hesitate in clicking the ‘send’ button on my query.

So what’s my problem? Ah, clue one – it’s my problem, my mindset, my choice to change it.

Ok, so I took a course from Writer’s Digest. I also attended a few conferences, and I follow several agents’ blogs and twitter. Here’s what I learned.

 

1.      Most agents tell you exactly what they want and how they want it on their agency’s website. And you can see what that agency reps in your research. Don’t send if it doesn’t fit.

2.      No two letters are exactly the same, so there isn’t one hard fast format to follow and achieve instant success. But remember KISS – Keep it simple

3.      Keep practicing – read – write – read – write – repeat as needed.

 

A query letter is a tiny bit of information about the work. It needs to be read in under a minute. And it needs to capture the attention of someone (actually the right person at the right time). We’ve all heard it a hundred times – and we should have been hearing it since we took that journalism course way back in high school. The query letter should answer the five ‘Ws’, who, what, when, where, and why. In this case ‘how’ (your extensive research and education) isn’t needed.

Practice writing an entire story in one hundred words. I mean a story with a main character, a plot with action, a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying end. Did I say keep it at exactly one hundred words? It’s a great exercise. Also practice tweeting meaningfully.

Try this format.   Title  is a   Word Count     Genre  about    gender of MC and overall action . Then condense your main plot to one hundred words. (Remember that little exercise I just told you about?) Basically, write the back cover blurb or a cable TV style description of your book. Less is better, but make it so interesting that the reader simply can’t continue life without reading the book. Follow this with a sentence about you and include your contact info – the agent will look you up and you can prove that by looking at your statistics on your website. AND don’t forget to say thank you for your time.

This format got me my very first personalized rejection! Yea, after I can’t tell you how many years or hundreds of rejections, a personal note – with suggestions for making the manuscript a little better. I count that as a huge success and soul-lifting step forward.

I heard a children’s book author speak at a conference. He sends out five queries a month, or was that a week. And then he works on the next book project, or researches more agents and publishers. Then he sends out five more. Then he works on revisions. He said that if you never hear anything, then the trouble likely lies in your query letter. Redo it. If you get a written reject, especially a personalized one, then your query is fine, it’s either the content of your book, or the timing is actually wrong for this agent or editor.

I also learned to never take it personally. But I can tell you: It sure was fun receiving that personalized rejection. So onward I go.

 

I welcome your comments and I’m willing to take a look at your own query if you’d care to share.

There is nothing glamourous about the middle. Consider the middle child, who is not the honored first, nor the favored last, who often feels left out. Or the middle of the swimming pool, which to an un-sure swimmer looks like the center of an ocean and there’s no way to safely reach the shore. Ever try to drive through an open field and find yourself bogged up to your axles in the soft soil of the center? (Oooh, how’s that for alliteration?) How about the middle of a poorly baked cake? The recipe may be right, but the wrong move, opening the oven too soon, and it’s sunk – in the middle.

It’s so much the same with a story.

I’ve written 200 word picture books (still in query) 6K word easy readers (also in query), 30-50K mid-grade, self-published just because I wanted to. And a 90K novel – still in the editing stage.

The length of the work matters not! It’s the middle that gets bogged down. The action slows. The characters go flat. The scenery grows boring.

No matter the genre or style of writing, if you are any sort of a writer you already know where your characters are starting, and you certainly have a good idea where they’re going – although I’ve seen this part evolve dramatically. And you likely have an idea of at least a couple of eye popping actions to keep your hero moving.

However…

Don’t you just hate that word? It’s almost as bad as ‘therefore’…

However, you have a whole bunch of real estate to cover in order to travel from Point A to Point End, without risking your golden words ending up in the corner of someone’s junk box.

Writers largely fall into two categories: Planners or Pansters. My personal solution to the boggy middle draws from both styles. So get ready to cross over. (Don’t worry – it’s not the dark side either way)

A planner has a clear map (Have you ever seen a US road map? There are about a thousand routes from New York to Los Angeles.) The writer’s road map includes a complete outline, full character sketches, vivid scene descriptions, and a bank of witticisms – plus any other cool tools specific to his or her personal style and genre.

A panster writes from the heart, living through each moment, every word, as if watching an amazing movie, and fills the pages with gut wrenching emotion, eye-popping vistas, and wild characters.

Trust me, both must eventually go back to the planning board once they reach the middle.

How do you get un-stuck?

1.       Step back. Take a break and return with a fresh perspective. This will give your brain cells time to catch up with the words pouring out and allows you to ponder the story in whole. Remember, it’s your story and only you know what’s really going on even if you have a crew of critique readers giving you advice.

Also, you can wait for the right inspiration while doing something else like gardening or sewing, maybe art, or working on an engine. A road trip usually does it for me. No one can ever predict when the muse will pop up and give you the exact words to fill in the gaps and finish the work.

A little time out is the best way for any style of writer, including technical writers, even news writers or columnists, to notice the bumps and bogs in their work.

2.       Go back to the original outline, or create one from what you already have if you happen to be a panster. With an outline you will have a one page view of where your plot is headed and what your characters are doing. You may have a plot driven story with bam-bam-bam action, or a character driven story where your hero directs the path. In an outline you will see it all, even if you have a pretty good picture in your mind. Just remember this one factoid: Not every story fits into one particular pattern or formula.

Your personal style of outlining will differ greatly from other writers. I start by simply listing my chapter headings, then in the A’s, i’s, a’s and so forth I list the minutiae – and find the boo-boos bogging my book.

3.       Write a log-line. Can you summarize your entire story in one short – Tweetable – line? And does it portray what’s actually written on the page thus far? Does that log-line fit your vision of what the story is supposed to reveal? Does the first half of the logline even match the last half?

This is a lesson all its own, but, can you narrow your entire story into:  ___Hero___ (must do, or learns) ___scary action or deep revelation___ (before or so that) ___un-fixable disaster or unbelievable accomplishment___ (strikes or happens) _____to self, loved one, or world. Hint-you fill in what’s underlined with your own content, and choose something in the parenthesis.

4.       Write a summary. This is almost like the log line, only a bit longer. Can you shoot an arrow straight through the heart of the story to the bull’s eye at the end, picking up details of the journey to get there as if hanging loops on a peg? Every loop picked up must have the bull’s eye as the goal. Everything else in the story which isn’t on one of those loops is a rabbit trail – wasted words.

Oh, yes, this takes more practice than you’re going to want to tackle. But it is crucial both in sorting out what your story is about – and for writing that winning query letter. Keep it under two hundred words.

5.       Separate your A-story from your B-story. All those loops in #4 above comprise your ‘A’ story. The action to reach the goal stated in the first few lines of the book. This is the juice and heartbeat of the selling part of what’s between the front and back covers. But there’s always another part of a really good book – or movie – and that’s the ‘B’ story. The emotional aspect. The relationships and the inner journey. This tells what the hero is really thinking and feeling. And this is where the cool plot twists can come in to trip up the hero. But this is also where your book can take off on a wrong turn. Your ‘B’ story almost deserves an outline of its very own.

This is a really sappy example, but look at a season of any series you love. Please don’t use soap operas for this example, because you’ll be eighty-nine years old before you get to some solution! Even my favorite Star Trek series of all time, Voyager, is a bit too long to see the whole picture. I like to study the double stories seen in shows like NCIS. In every episode you have the main action. (And this is a great exercise in studying plot formation.) However, look closely at the personal relationships. The beginning of the series will show a character in one state, but the end will show an entirely new – and hopefully stronger and wiser – team member.

When you have a clear ‘B’ story, you have a book.

6.       Can you isolate the plot twists and weed out the ones which carry the reader too far from the objective? It’s true, a well written twist is an enjoyable experience. But, remember that US Map? Too many twists and wrong turns and you will end up in Canada or Mexico – and be writing a whole different and convoluted story.

It hurts, but cut the rabbit trails. Just remember to paste them into your ‘deleted scenes’ file. You may want to use those pretty words later.

7.       Are all of your characters staying true to themselves? You must have a believable arc for your heroes. You might have a wall-flower suddenly become a warrior out of desperation, but you won’t have her going from tender and compassionate, to having the mouth of a sailor and the mind of Jack the Ripper.

If you’re having a bit of difficulty figuring out a particular character, get into that person’s head. Know that character’s likes and dislikes. See how he or she would really respond to a situation. Write from that character’s heart (like a panster). And remember, if you’re having difficulty keeping track of your characters in a well populated scene, just think of how your readers may be feeling about that crowd.

How on earth is all this going to drag you out of the muck and mire of a slow middle?

These exercises will help you cut the flak and remember the heart of the story. Most of the time, as soon as the junk is cleared away, the story reveals itself. You are free to add the action and scenes that will carry your reader on happy clouds of imagination to the end of the book.

Now, sit back, have a favorite beverage and watch something that isn’t your story, and let it soak in. Then go back and give your main character some real meat to chew on.

Happy Writing!

This is my story, but it’s just my own little corner of the world. The great thing would be for you to share how you pump up your middle without filling it so full that you can’t fit it into a book.