A Day In the Life: Aspiring Writer and Stay-at-Home Mom (Part 2)

In honour of my book review of Water Cooler Diaries: Women Across America Share Their Day at Work, I am sharing my day at work from January 6th, 2009. Part 1 can be found here.

Enjoy!

12:10 p.m. We’re running out of time. My daughter is going to need a burst of speed.

12:21 p.m. We get to school at the same time as five of my daughter’s classmates. Everyone looks relieved that they aren’t the last ones to arrive. Daughter manages to tie her shoes in record time and isn’t late.

12:35 p.m. Home again. Shovel walk of inch of snow that fell as well as the neighbour’s walk. Still hungry despite our ‘leftover’ lunch. Grab a snack. Discover new plates get REALLY hot in the microwave.

12:45 p.m. Work on query. Look at comments. Look at Query. Repeat. Can’t make myself change much. I feel good about this version and don’t want to standardize my hook. Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t. I email it off to a published writer who gives great advice in hopes that she has time to look at this latest version. I trust her more than most when it comes to this sort of thing. The fact that most of the comments are in regards to standardizing the letter and the removal of the last paragraph of details, I know I am getting close to a query that makes sense. Either that or everyone is too scared to rip it shreds. That’s one problem with everyone knowing me, I’m afraid they won’t be brutal and honest. I want you to rip it shreds! How else am I going to improve? Bring it on!

1:08 p.m. I check my email, most of it are email versions of the things I’ve posted or already read on AQ. I’ve learned I get more comments and feedback if I reply to the comments on things I’ve posted for critiques. Time to get off the couch and go outside for a cross-country ski. Hopefully yesterday’s trail that I made through the park beside the house which stretches over to a field out back will be useable.

Brr. Arms cold through sweater—quickly remedied by some movement. Across the fields and highway, it looks like one of two tall blue silos is on fire. I can see flames and smoke from this distance. Silos can’t burn can they? They are made of cement and metal. Hmmm. I make my way around the circle I’ve made in the field. In some places I can glide nicely. Mostly I plod through the extra snow that’s landed on my trail. I try to meditate and clear my mind but today it won’t clear. I keep thinking. By the time I’ve made my circuit in the gorgeous lightly falling snow, I can’t see flames at the silos, but the plume of dark grey smoke goes straight up in the windless air. Dark grey against pale greyish white sky, a slight question mark shape where the smoke met a wind current hundreds of feet above ground.

1:43 p.m. Check email. There is a reply already from my hero. She likes it, she likes it!! Too much detail, but she likes my tone and the beginning. I’m keeping it. Yes! See me pump my fist in the air and dance around the living room. Jack Johnson is the hero of my story’s main character. Whenever I feel as though I am losing hope, he comes on the radio. Is that cool, or what? It tells me this can happen. Yes! There’s a lot of new agent info in the Publishers Lunch email which I’ll post on AQ. It’s helpful for everyone and is a nice place to put all that updated info—which will come in handy in the weeks ahead as I research agents to query with my fabulous letter. ? Send off a thank you to the writer who sent me good words.

1:56 p.m. Make a cup of tea and sit down with manuscript to make some minor edits on paper. Then into the computer in the next few days so it is spit and polished and as perfect as I can make it before querying. Maybe put on someone like Frank Sinatra (Franks ‘n’ Nachos as my daughter calls him) or Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong. Or maybe Jack Johnson. They are nice to listen to while editing as they don’t interrupt. A little different than P!nk. She’s an interrupter!

1:58 p.m. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard back from Nelson on that book PDF they were going to send. I made other comments in my email request and confused them and never got my PDF. I love being a blog book reviewer for them. Free books! (I’m such a sucker!)

1:59 p.m. This time, I’m really off to edit. Really. Not procrastinating. Noooo. Not me. Better check email once first. Okay, must push off and edit. Where’s my pen?

2:09 p.m. I have less than an hour left and I’ve only gotten through one page. I need to speed things up. I get up off the carpet that needs vacuuming and move to the big table where I can spread out as well as drink my tea.

3:00 p.m. Got through 16 pages. Slow, but I found lots of ‘my’s that could be removed or altered. The story is first person, present tense. I found myself laughing at my main character a few times. I hope I make others laugh too. Now it’s time to go pick up my daughter. She could take the school bus home, but that’ll wait until next year. Usually I stay downtown and work in the library while she’s at school. Or when it’s not winter, I pull her there in the bike trailer to save gas. It feels wasteful to drive out to the school two times a day, four days a week. It’s not far, but it is wear and tear and gas. After I pick her up, we’ll return movies to the library and go to Sobey’s. It’s their discount day today and we’ll stock up on fresh vegetables and meat. Yesterday we hit Extra Foods for their discount day, but their meat and vegetables aren’t so great. It’s stopped snowing again. Now I have a thin layer of ‘slippery’ on the sidewalk where I shovelled. Tomorrow is supposed to be REALLY nice, so I think it’ll be okay. The weather has been all over the map lately.

3: 04 p.m. 11 emails came in while I was editing. Might do a quick scan of them before heading out. I like to be early enough I can chat with other moms and make sure my daughter doesn’t feel that I’ve forgotten her. It’s also easier to find parking if I come a bit early.

3:08 p.m. Dad called to talk about skiing. But must get out the door! She’s dismissed just before 3:20.

To be continued….

A Day in the Life: Aspiring Writer and Stay-at-Home Mom (Part 1)

In honour of yesterday’s book review of Water Cooler Diaries: Women Across America Share Their Day at Work, I am going to share a ‘day in the life’ diary I wrote for January 6th of this year. Since it is kind of long, I’ll break it into several posts. Here’s the first bit.

Enjoy!
6:50 a.m. Husband wakes me up to say goodbye. His carpool buddy will be here soon. They are leaving at ‘7:00 a.m. Oram Time’.

7:25 a.m. Wake up again. My daughter will likely wake up soon. Usually she gets up early, but yesterday was the first day back at school after Christmas holidays and school wears her out.

7:30 a.m. Daughter’s up. I do stretches and she goes to the TV room to watch CBC cartoons. No cable/satellite here. I feed the cats who try to convince me they’re starving. I sit with on the futon and watch cartoons for a few minutes. I ask my daughter if she’s hungry. She’s says, “not really.” I figure she’ll come and ask for breakfast once Animal Mechanical is over. Which she does. I take my big bowl of yogurt and join her at the table. (I thought we had more granola, but the cupboard is bare in that regard. Make a Costco list.)

8:30 a.m. Load dishwasher. My daughter wants to play Barbie games on the Barbie website on her dad’s laptop. She’s in a quiet, play by herself mood today. I help her get logged on and to the site. She’s getting good at navigating and finding new games. I had her on the CBC site but she switched to Barbie on her own. I go back to my own laptop. Finish reading email. Check out comments from friends and newbies on Agent Query site. I posted my latest query on there yesterday for a critique. There are some new comments, so I reply and take their ideas into account. I’ve got too many details in this version of the query. They don’t like my ‘hook’. However, I like it and a published writer liked it. It seems that we are alone. Make comments on other’s first pages, etc. I hope I wasn’t too discouraging with a newbie. I can see the potential and told her that. She just needs more ‘oompf’ and she is so close. My mom emails for some advice. I give her my usual blunt, straight forward brand of advice.

8:55 a.m. It’s snowing!

9:00 a.m. Help my daughter with her CD player so she can get to French ‘Jingle Bells’ and then I jump in the shower.

9:19 a.m. Hungry. Yogurt without granola just doesn’t cut it. Must. Find. More. Food.

9:21 a.m. I have book club tonight so I put in some effort and blow dry my hair. However, the chances are that I’ll go cross-country skiing later and the toque will wreck my efforts. At least I tried. Check out the Barbie my daughter made on the website. (I think she is addicted.)

9:27 a.m. Word of the day courtesy of dictionary.com is ‘beleaguer’. I thought it meant to be worn out in an overwhelmed sort of fashion. Turns out it means “to surround with troops; besiege” 2. “to surround or beset” How can that be? Have I been wrong all this time or are there two meanings? I looked it up. I can also mean to surround with troubles. That makes sense.

9:37 a.m. Have a snack and make a cup of tea. Decide we need to write our Christmas thank yous as it is already a few weeks after Christmas. We’ve thanked a couple of people, but there is more to do.

9:50 a.m. We’re still getting organized to write thank yous. I had two more books come in the mail yesterday. One for reviewing on my blog. Yesterday I declined a writer who sent a bulk email asking to review his short stories. I feel bad, but know I couldn’t give it a fair shake as short stories aren’t my focus at the moment. We are in serious need of bookshelves. I think I need a shelf or two just for our ‘to be read piles’. Could life be any better?

9:53 a.m. My daughter is dressed and just about ready to make a few drawings to go in the thank you notes.

9:58 a.m. I realize I only have two thank you cards. Hmmm. My daughter has decided to draw her butterfly Barbie (Mariposa) and has set her up to be her model. Searched for cards and have come up short. We’ll see how far we get without cards.

10:12 a.m. I realize I forgot to tell my grandma I’d mailed her an after-Christmas package. Called and left a message. It had her thank you in it and a coffee cup that we made her with pictures of her cottage and ‘Nana’ on it. Still working on thank yous. Found a way around the lack of notes. Check my email. A thank you posted on AQ from someone for comments I made on their query and a bit of commiserating. Also an email from Publishers Lunch. Back to thank yous. Look up brother’s new address in my email. It hadn’t made to my address book yet. Write it in pen before realizing I’ll probably be erasing it in a few months and putting in a new one. He’s as bad as I was when I was in university for moving all the time.

10:20 a.m. It’s still snowing.

10:25 a.m. My daughter is still making her first drawing. She has 5 left to go. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. I forgot the care she takes with a drawing these days. They are pretty fabulous. I think she just did the math too. We are in negotiations. Solution met. One drawing a day and they don’t have to be fancy. We’ll see how this all pans out. I want drawing to remain fun.

10:31 a.m. Drawing complete! False alarm. More colour needed.

10:33 a.m. Realize I don’t have the in-laws new address in my book. Search my email. Look for Christmas letter.

10:36 a.m. The drawing is complete. Back to Barbie website. I can mail one thank you. Better than nothing!

10:38 a.m. Email the in-laws for address. See an email from Authonomy. Decide to check out their blog.

10:44 a.m. Blog wasn’t much help in terms of new info. Jumped over to AQ and replied to a comment as well as contacted another member who mentioned she’d comment on my query once it was up. Was going to tweak my query in regards to some feedback, but just realized I haven’t posted my blog entry for today. I’m in the middle of a one week stretch of posting writing exercises. I only have about 45 minutes until I have to make lunch, etc. and I have a feeling that this post will take some time.

10:50 a.m. I can’t find the discussion thread I wanted to reference in my blog in regards to the word ‘suddenly’. Frustrated. Thought I could check my deleted emails to see if anything triggers. Have 3069 deleted messages. Somehow I’m thinking this won’t help. Didn’t I just clean that out last month?

11:02 a.m. Solved some of my daughter’s playing ‘crises’. Also found the quote and thread I was looking for. Thank goodness for search functions.

11:22 a.m. The blog entry is done and posted. The actual writing took less time than finding the quote I wanted. Time for a little tidy up before making lunch. Dishwasher is done its work. Gotta love that!

11:41 a.m. My daughter’s snack is made and in her bag. Time to make lunch. Remember to put daughter’s school photos in the thank you envelopes.

11:58 a.m. My daughter is a nut! Excited to be going to school. Still snowing! Read more emails that came in. All from AQ. Log in and make some quick comments while daughter finishes her lunch and gets ready for school. Realized still logged in and there is a request for another pass over of someone else’s work. I’m pleased to see the usual gang has come out to talk about my query as well as a few new faces. The different POVs are great. It seems agreed that although my use of ‘beau’ in the query to agents is dated, it is quirky enough to work with my main character, storyline and query. I’m about ready to send that bad boy out. A few more tweaks–hopefully today.

Stay tuned, more coming tomorrow!

Book Review: Water Cooler Diaries: Women Across America Share Their Day at Work

Book Review: Water Cooler Diaries: Women Across America Share Their Day at Work
Edited by Joni B. Cole and B.K. Rakhra

‘Water Cooler Diaries’ is a collection of ‘day in the life’ diaries all written on March 27th, 2007 by different women. The editors’ goal: “was to gather a true diversity of women’s working lives by reaching across experiential, socio-economic, cultural, and geographical boundaries.” I’d say they achieved that goal.

The 35 diaries are broken down into times of day and cover a 24 hour span of time, making it an easy book to read on the go. They have all sorts of interesting people ranging from race car drivers to literary agents (Yes! They have Tina Wexler of ICM) to trauma surgeons to office workers to boxing promoters to Avon ladies to…you get the idea. Some themes I noticed: a lot of the women didn’t eat properly. They either ate not enough, went for junk, ate on the go, ate really late or even <gasp!> not at all! Whether it is connected or not, many women also seemed to be on a diet, a member of Curves or Weight Watchers and/or made some unhappy comments about their body. Plus there seemed to be a lot of Red Bull being consumed! Yikes! And seeing as it was a day that American Idol was aired, I’d say probably 1/4 of the readers watched American Idol. I’ve never done any of the above, so it was an interesting insight into the average American woman.

From a writer’s standpoint, the book is a goldmine of sneak peaks into different occupations, backgrounds, mindsets and voices. Although the diaries only cover one day, you do get a sense of who the person is and what they normally accomplish/deal with in a typical workday. As a bonus, there are more diary excerpts on the site www.my247life.com.

Enjoy!

Want to pick it up?
Chapters/Indigo   Barnes and Noble    Amazon.ca    Amazon.com

Literary Agent Chat: Jamie Brenner

If you are looking for the opportunity to ask a literary agent a question, the time is now! Okay, actually, it is next Tuesday (January 27th at 8PM Eastern). Agent Query will be holding a free online chat with literary agent Jamie Brenner of Artists and Artisans Inc.

“Jamie Brenner has spent the past decade in book publishing. Her experience includes literary publicity (HarperCollins Publishers), book selling (BarnesandNoble.com), and manuscript analysis and book scouting for major film companies (Miramax Films, Davis Entertainment).” –From the Artists and Artisans website.

She is also the editor of the fabulous site Girl Meets Book. “Whoever said that diamonds are a girl’s best friend clearly never understood the power of a great book.” Hi, my name is Jean and you had me from ‘hello’. Each week the site chooses a hot new release, and I must say there are some great looking books on that site. If my to be read pile wasn’t so huge I had to give it its own shelf, I’d be in there ordering like a dirty shirt. If say, dirty shirts could order books online.

“Jamie Brenner is actively seeking thrillers, commercial and women’s fiction, literary fiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction and books about pop culture/entertainment. She is happy to read first-time writers.”–From the Artists and Artisans website. Hmmm. That sounds like me. I wonder what her definition is for ‘women’s fiction’. Oh, would you look at that, I might just have my first question for her.

If you would like to join me and my best buddies over at Agent Query, make an account (it’s free) if you don’t have one already and log in on the 27th to ask her a question during the chat. You are also welcome to simply listen to her dispense wonderful literary knowledge to the many writers that will be there. And if you miss it, you can catch the ‘replay’, aka, transcripts.

Enjoy!

Numbers or #s?

I’ve discovered lately that there are several standards when it comes to putting numbers in a written piece. Many rules. Many different takes on those rules. It got to the point where I was pulling out thee old hair. Yikes!

So, I did what any writer would do. I asked my friends over on AQ. Then I went to an agent. The best answer? (Or at least the answer that relaxed me and allowed me to cease pulling out my hair….) The one I got from super agent Daphne Unfeasible(aka Kate Schafer Testerman):

“You know, there may be a Strunk and White-esque standard, but here’s my thoughts. In dialogue, feel free to use 288 rather than spelling it all out. If we’re talking about using a number in narrative, consider the voice you’re using. An omniscient narrator may spell out the whole number, but if your 16-year-old protagonist is also the narrator, then again, I think 288 is fine.

Honestly? Go with what looks good and feels right to you. I think little details like this are for the copy editor to correct if need be.”

So there you have it. Follow the rules but bend them when it feels right or the situation deems it appropriate. A big thanks to Daphne Unfeasible! You rock!