Put it Out There

Lately I’ve been putting it out there. I figure, if I keep putting it out there, eventually it will come back to me.

What exactly have I been ‘putting out there’ you may ask?

Well, I have been critiquing other people’s writing. I have been active in online writing communities. I have been asking agents questions on their new blogs and making comments on their posts. I have given Query Shark my query to slice and dice. (No slicing or dicing yet, but others I have told about QS have had their’s sliced and diced. Oh, pick me already!) I have been entering contests (like the RWA Grand Beginnings Contest and Nathan Bransford’s blog contest (pick me, pick me!). I have also answered another writer’s research questions for her upcoming article. I’ve bought and read the book of a writer who was kind enough to comment on one of my blog posts (funny book with the most unappealing sex scene ever. Also very humourous voice! Read it.). I’ve spread the word about Brenda Novak’s online auction (which includes critiques galore which are sadly waaaaaay out of my price range). I’m putting it out there. I’m trying to be a helpful, share the info kind of gal.

One day it shall come back. One day Karma will look at me and hand me an opportunity. And hopefully I won’t be asleep and I can seize that opportunity because I am pretty sure I am on the right path, I just haven’t reached the right town yet.

 Oh please, oh please pick me.

Friday Internet Fun

Well folks, it is Friday again. Since I am having a ‘people who use other people suck’ kind of a day…let’s have some fun on the Internet. The Internet is fun and will never use you to make themselves a better mom.

There is a great quiz here which figures out which Disney Character you are. Guess who I am? I’m Goofy! No, really, the character Goofy. Isn’t that great! Here’s why: “Your alter ego is Goofy! You are fun [true] and great to be around [very accurate], and you are always willing to help others [also true]. You aren’t worried about embarrassing yourself [SO true], so you are one who is more willing to try new things[Bingo. You've got me pegged].” A close second for me is Peter Pan. I suppose I am a goofy person who doesn’t want to grow up, dammit. Then again, with questions like, “You like to walk around with no pants on” are always excellent indicators of a reliable and true quiz.

I tried the ‘Which Patronus [like in Harry Potter] Are You’ Quiz but all the spelling mistakes started to get to me and being asked if I was brave (for the 6th) time wore me down and by question #118, I gave up and wandered off. Apparently impatient folks like me don’t have patronuses.

Uh, okay. Apparently I am a rap song. The options were pop song, country song or rap song. And I’m a rap song. Maybe I should have said I liked mud and my grill or MTV.

Huh. If I were an infectious disease, I would be Syphilis. Attractive. I guess the fact that my ‘passions run high’ and ‘I never forget anything’ signed me up for this one. And this quote, is just funny, so I guess I will revel in my ‘disease’: “Your recent comeback tour is going well, especially since you stopped listening to your critics.” Ha. Ha.

I took the Super Powers quiz with disappointing results. My super power is ‘can stretch really far’. Big freaky deal.

Well, so long and I think I’ll just sit here and grab myself a new drink from the other room…

Word Count Blues

What the heck?

I’ve been editing my ms, trying to pare down the word count. Cut out the repetition, the frivolous scenes, all that stuff. And through hard work and determination, I have been whittling away at the word count. From 110,000 words, I got down to 109k, then towards 108k. Then the thing started retaining water or something. I noticed, halfway through this edit that gee, the number of pages in this document has swelled. So, out of curiosity’s sake, I checked the word count. Ack! 120k!!!! (Eeeep!)

What the hell has my ms been eating? Whipped cream and chocolate bars? Oh no, wait. That’s me. I’ve been whittling away at the Mother’s Day Feast leftovers. I’d hate for anything to go bad. Now, where was I? Ah yes. The five pounds that my ms, okay ten pounds, that my ms put on while I wasn’t looking. I had that thing working out every day, eating right and everything and then bam, there it is; ten pounds.

It’s like this thing is trying out for the cheerleading team and has to weigh 100lbs so the ground team can toss it in the air without anybody breaking anything and there it goes and gains weight. What is it doing? Sneaking behind the bleachers to eat deep fried Twinkies (which are actually not half bad) when it’s on break? How the hell is this thing ever going to make the squad?

I’d better do some research on word count and genres before I poke myself repeatedly in the eye.

My Devious Plan

My devious plan is working.

With airfares on the rise it is becoming a bit out our reach to fly out to my grandma’s cottage this summer. Thus my devious plan: drive.

See, I started small a few months ago. I suggested we fly to Ontario (4 hour flight) and then borrow Dad’s Ontario van and drive from there to Nova Scotia (30 or so hours) where we could hang out and explore for a few weeks and then drive back to Ontario, bum around for a bit longer and then fly back. Ta-da summer over and lots of adventures under our belts. A little balking at that plan because Ontario to Nova Scotia is quite a long drive.

Then I moved to a slightly bigger plan (and more unrealistic plan) around Christmas time. How about fly to Ontario, then drive to FRANCE! (There is a little island still belonging to France off the coast of Newfoundland.) Come on, there is even a ferry (about a 40 hour drive, plus ferry time) so you don’t have to drive the WHOLE way. No problem. Buckle up, let’s go. (No takers on that one even though I pulled out the globe and showed them how short a distance it really was and waxed on about how cool it would be to go to France for the summer.)

Now the idea of driving to Ontario (35 hours or so) doesn’t seem so bad. It is, in fact, quite reasonable.

To make it even cheaper we could tent! Fun adventure! Well, actually I had to work on that one a bit. I promised my hubby a Thule so we’d have lots of room in the economy-mobile. Plus, I promised to bring an air mattress to sleep on. And that I would set up the tent. And blow up the mattress. And find the campgrounds. And plan the food. And maintain the car (actually that one is still up my sleeve). And  promised we could stay in a hotel every other night. It would be so much fun!

Now, I’m trying to convince my mom to come too. Come on mom. Lots of coffee! And fun. And tacky monuments. You know you wanna…

(We’ll just sort of gloss over the fact that my five-year-old has a meltdown if we have to drive farther than 20 minutes in one day.)

If I Were American…

If I were American, I would so totally vote for Obama. And not just because he is smokin’ hot.

You see, I was reading Maclean’s (March 17, 2008) the other day (a little behind on my reading evidently) and came across an article on him and how he would govern. After gawking at all the photos, I mean after skimming the article for interesting bits, I came across a column of text that won me over. Allow me to share.

First of all, he is a supporter of teachers. He is against teaching to the test, which inadvertently happens all over North America. He proposes that tests be given at the beginning of the school year so they may be used as a diagnostic aid. Therefore, find out what the kids know and specifically, what they don’t, and then go teach the stuff that will fill the holes in their knowledge. Brilliant! Yet, it doesn’t seem to out there of an idea if you stop to think about it. Hmmm…are we talking common sense solutions to be used by the government?

Second, he’s hot. Oops, I mean he has some great thoughts on parenting. Here’s a quote: “It doesn’t matter how much money we put in if parents don’t parent. It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, do good in school, but when they get home you have the TV on, the radio on, there’s not a book in the house and you’ve got the video game playing.” He also tells parents to give their kids a good breakfast. I know it is basic, but it is SO right. Those small things can really add up to big differences.

So when it comes to problem solving, Obama seems to be the president of common sense solutions. Now his only job is to get parents and teachers to turn their thinking around and follow his gospel.

When I’m Famous

When I’m famous and an interviewer asks me how many edits it took to get my book ‘ready’, I think I will have to lie. I have seriously lost count of how many times I have edited this one piece that I am working on right now. It was a panster plot which means that I have had to go back and do a lot tweaking bits here and there, adding things in, making sure my themes are carried all the way through; all that sort of stuff.

So, here I am in what is likely to be an edit in the 40s. Then again, how do you even count what is an ‘edit’? Is it when you go in and change one sentence or each time you go through the whole manuscript from top to bottom? Either way, I’ve lost track. If you look in my documents folder on my computer you will see the names of the different versions of this piece evolve from the original working title and its version numbers on to the next working title and its version numbers on to the system I currently have. And let me tell you, this system is not without its flaws! I have about ten or more versions of ‘final’, ‘final with italics’, ‘final American spelling’, ‘really final’, ‘completed’, ‘tweaking’, ’almost done’, ‘edits’, finalbackup’… Seriously, I could go on. It has simply gotten out of control. I have finally dumped all the old versions into their own folder so I won’t get confused and start working on the wrong version. Could imagine what a mess that would create? My head hurts just thinking about it (not including my eye–which already hurts due to a hairspray incident which I will not get into).

Secondary Characters

A few weeks ago I took out a scene that I felt wasn’t sitting right in my story. It felt purposeless and that it wasn’t progressing the story and was rather catty–basically not being true to the story nor the characters.

Then I sent the chapters surrounding the missing scene to my critique partners and they were all up in arms with comments that were along the lines of what the heck happened? Why did you lead up to this scene, skip over it all together and then sum in up in a sentence later on? How did this rift happen between these two characters? What? What? What?

Ah crap. It wasan important scene! So, I dig through old versions and pulled the scene back out and plunked it back in, adding another three pages to my already big manuscript. And reading it afresh, I realised that it was important to the story and it was true to it–whether I liked it or not. The scene showed the rift begin between the heroine and her boyfriend as well as the beginning of the heroine identifying her inner strength and pulling on it in a time of need.

So, the scene is back and everything makes more sense again. Strangely enough, I learned something about myself as a writer with this scene. I think the real reason I originally took this scene out is that it has a secondary character being mean to my heroine–who I loved dearly. I came to this conclusion when I did an edit when I was plunking the hated scene back in, because when I was done, I was a little pissed. I was grumpy! So I sat back and thought, why is this? It can’t be the peanut butter cookies I just ate. Well, it is because I HATE the secondary character that I created. Seriously. She is a mean, conniving bitch that ensures that she illustrates how my heroine doesn’t fit in at a party. I disliked her somuch and the way that she made my heroine feel, that I eliminated her without realising what I was doing to the story. So now, The Bitch is back and is as mean as ever. Well, for her one scene…then I give her the awful boyfriend back. Ma-ha-ha. The rest, as they say, is history.

Honesty and Writing

“Why is real so hard to find?” –Sheryl Crow

Lately there has been talk among the writers that hang out on Agent Query about their goals. To my surprise, the idea of honesty came up. Honesty in their work and with themselves–that sort of honesty. Which I must say sort of took me by surprise. I had assumed that if you had progressed to the point where you were conversing with other writers and sharing your work within the forum that you had progressed to the point where honesty was simply implied.

As a teen, writing in my diaries, I was not particularly honest with myself. Know why? Because it takes courage. Because it opens up a whole new door to yourself that may or may not be hiding a flood that once released, you may not be able to handle. Therefore, my diaries stayed on safe ground. They were honest accounts of my days, but they left out a great deal of who I really was, my motivations, my feelings, my take on things. My diaries were more like a grocery list of my day’s events. Ocassionally, in a different journal, the real me came out in safe, short bursts of soul-bearing honesty.

I suppose in some ways, when a writer is honest in putting it all down in their work, this is why it can be hard for them to share. There is this deep layer of honesty that others–particularly those that they know as family or friends–may not like or may take them by surprise. By sharing your work you’re allowing them to see that layer of yourself which previously may have gone unnoticed. I suppose this is why when I saw ‘honesty’ come up, I was surprised. I thought it was an element that had to be deeply ingrained safely within you before you would be ready to share yourself on a forum.

Then not too much longer after that, I discovered that I was wrong to assume that. Just because I had matured to the point where I could release that part of me, that I could be honest and have the courage to stand beside myself and my work, it didn’t mean that others had as well. One writer began a post which got a lot of other writers all up in arms. Know why? Betcha can guess! Because the writer was not honest with the other writers nor with him/herself.

But mostly what I learned was that not all writers are honest in their writing. And strangely enough, once you become aware of ‘honesty’ you can see when and where it is lacking. When you write, you have to put it all down. All the thoughts, feelings, motivations, everything. Even the painful stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the delicate stuff. There has to be a trust within yourself in order to lay it down. I think this would be especially hard in a memoir–judging by my own diary writing–which demands that you put it all down. If you don’t do it, then you don’t reach that level of honesty for your reader. They may not realize what it is exactly, but they likely will leave the work early thinking something along the lines of, “It didn’t really speak to me. There was something missing or lacking and it didn’t draw me in.” If they know how to spot honesty, they might think, “Very well then. If you are not going to give me what I want and are going to hide behind your potted palm and toss out interesting ideas and events without giving me the real grist of it, I am not going to read on any further.” And like that you have lost your reader because you were not real, you were not honest.

As a writer, one of the hardest things to do is to trust your reader. You have to trust them not judge you at an incredibly deep level. You have to trust them to feel for you, to read it all and say, “Yes, although you have done some very bad things, I still think you are a fine person because I can see what has driven you to these things. I forgive you for what you have done and I thank you for letting me in and most of all, I like you all the more for being honest about it.”

Have you read Sting’s memoir? He was not honest while at the same time, being honest. It was as though he knew that he has an element in his personality that is not as favorable as others and so he tried to hide it. It made me not like him as a person. Before I read his book, I liked him. Now? Not so much. And it came down to honesty.