Plants Eating the Water in my Career Corner

Uh, oh. Have I ever been bad. No wonder I don’t have an agent. I have rocks in my career corner. And plants. Lots of plants. This is not good. Not good at all.

In case you fear that I have fallen off my rocker, I have been checking out a book on feng shui. As it turns out, my career corner happens to be located in my kitchen. (North) And a career area, if I have it right, is a water area in one’s life. Rocks and plants eat water. That’s where the ‘uh, oh’ comes in. After reading that I sprang up and put my rock collection which was on the northern most windowsill in a bowl and shoved it in my I-haven’t-read-that-far-in-the-book corner. Next up, plants. Problem is, I like having plants in the kitchen. I like the green, leafy, chi-making plants on top of my cupboards. I have removed two plants, but haven’t quite figured out a loophole to keep the other four.

My husband, who heard me muttering about chi, career corners and water eating rocks, warned me, “Be careful! Last time you messed with feng shui we ended up in this house. Are you ready for a major change in your life?”

While my memory is fuzzy, I’m pretty sure I pumped a fist in the air and bellowed, “Yes! I want an agent!”

I headed out of the kitchen with my water eating rocks. The phone rang.

“See, that’s my agent right now,” I replied.

It wasn’t. Maybe I do have to remove those plants. Or at least finish reading the chapter on career corners.

This is Canada?

You may ask,  “Jean, what did you do today?”

Well, other than going out for a fantastic breakfast (second one of the morning and the better of the two), I watered my shrubs, etc.

“What?” you may ask. “I thought you lived in Canada. Shouldn’t you be up to your eyebrows in snow by now?”

Technically, yes. Or at least up to my ankles. However, it is so dry at the moment, I decided I’d better go out and water things so they won’t die.

While on my watering mission, I discovered two very interesting things. Things I don’t normally see in my garden in November. And thus, I share the photographic evidence of my discoveries.

Oh, look! A volunteer Johnny Jump-up. How cute.

Oh, crap. Those are my tulips!

Rescue mission time…

Awww… tulips for me? How sweet.

Core Writing: NaNoWriMo and Me

Okay, so I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to cross the 50,000 word mark in my new story before NaNoWriMo ends at midnight on the 30th of November.

I knew it would take me longer than a month to write the first draft of this story before I started NaNoWriMo. (I started anyway because all my friends are doing it and it’s a lot of fun.) Now that I’m more than half way through my NaNo days, I’m quite certain I won’t cross 50K in the next week and a half.  I’ve just crossed the 10, 000 word mark. Seeing as this is a story where writing more than 2,000 words a day leaves my brain feeling a bit like a wad of cotton balls, I can’t see the pace speeding up. So, I won’t be done by November 30th. I won’t get a ‘winner’ badge this year. But I’ll have a new story. One I’ve procrastinated on for a long time because the ‘whole’ story hasn’t landed in my head like most do. It’s a one step forward at a time, punctuated by pauses, kind of story.

Will I finish the story? Yes, of course. I figure that by December 30th I should have the first draft down. While in the past I may have been tempted to push and rush and force this story to progress faster, I know that won’t work for this story.

This project is bringing out a different writer in me. My characters do not have names. It kind of works, too. While I wrote the first few plot points, I couldn’t figure out why I seemed to have so much of the storyline down, but still be so close to the beginning in terms of word count. Was I writing a short story by accident? Then last night I realized I am writing the core of the story. The muse has been feeding me the story’s core. Once that is down, I’ll have to go back and flesh out the story’s bystanders. Add more details. It’s interesting. Never before have I written a story this way. I sure hope my muse is still looking over my shoulder when it comes to fleshing out the core.

Banned Book Challenge: The Giver

During October’s Banned Book Week, I issued a challenge to myself. I would try to read five challenged/banned books over the course of the year and report back.

First up was The Giver by Lois Lowry, which I have recently finished reading. This is a soft science fiction young adult novel that has been challenged and/or banned in schools due to some of its content. Jonas, a 12-year-old living in a utopian society, is chosen to become a receiver of memories. In the past, Jonas’ community decided to go to ‘sameness’ and to remove emotion and emotional memories from their lives in order to live pain-free. Naturally, that comes at a cost. As Jonas learns more about his new job (he accepts the memories of the past that include war, hunger, and much, much more in order to serve as an adviser to the community) the more the illusion of innocence slips from his world.

The Giver has been challenged for many reasons. One is that in some ways, Jonas’ community resembles a communist society, two is that suicide is used as an ‘out’ by one character, three is infanticide, and fourth is the role of death in the story. Personally, I would have thought his ‘stirrings’ would have got a few parents squawking. I guess because he took a pill to resolve the pleasurable feelings, it’s okay. (Although, he did go against the rules and stop taking it. I would think that would really bother some parents.)

Personally, I enjoyed The Giver. It is a book that deals with a lot of heady topics and can serve as a forewarning to the next generation in a ‘what if’ sort of way. For example, what would happen if we didn’t remember war? What would happen if we had no choice or individuality?

I believe it to be an important book. What do you think?

P.S. Here is a cool little blurb about a student who is keeping a banned book lending library in a school locker. I love her gumption. She’s creating readers and should be given The Pristine Award (don’t know what it is? Stay tuned, more on that in December). She’s got some great ones on her lists.

Desperation, Finding a Literary Agent and Perfect Matches

The other day a bunch of us aspiring authors were yaking it up in an AgentQuery.com chat room. Litgal, the studious, brilliant type had us read a blog post about writer firsts (first time getting an agent, first time getting a publisher, etc). It wasn’t the ‘first’ aspect of the article that got us talking, but the aspiring author desperation that can make us act in  ways that may not lead us to attain our career goals. (Yes, we aspiring authors can truly be a desperate lot. Note: not an attractive quality in dating, and also not an attractive quality in aspiring writers.)

While we aspiring authors are not desperate all the time, we do have those panic attack moments. That alone, isn’t the reason for concern. (Like dating, it’s when we act on our desperation that things go down a path that leads to nobody’s best interests.) For writers, desperation can lead us to sign with an agent who might not be The One.

To be honest, the idea of The One or a ‘perfect’ agent stresses me out. Why? Well, first of all, how do you know who that agent truly is when you send them a query letter? Yes, I research agents before querying and target ones that seems as though they might have The One potential. Yes, your research may gather a general sense of who the agent is as a professional, but the reality is, you won’t know who they truly are until you have talked to them and possibly even worked with them. So, who do you query? How do you know? What if there isn’t a The One out there for you?

Freaking out yet? Don’t worry, I have a theory. (Purely untested, of course, but I’m working on that.)

The questions is: Are there several The Ones when it comes to matching up with a literary agent?

My hypothesis: Yes. I believe so. This is a numbers game. A business deal. There are a certain number of agents out there that can help you make the most of your business (writing). The more queries you put out there, the more likely you are to reach the right agent. Some folks hit the right partner within 20 queries. Some need to send 200. (And yes, some never do.)

Because this is business and not some life-partner quest, I don’t think it’s fair to aspiring authors to think of finding a literary agent to represent them as The One. When finding the perfect mate, I was willing to wait as long as I needed. Decades, even. With finding a business partner, I am not willing to waiting that long. I am certain that there are at least a handful of agents out there that could connect with me and my work and vice versa (no desperation required to fog my vision). There could be a handful of The One agents that could help me bring my work to the world and help me reach my career goals.

I also think that the odds are in my favour–more than they would be if I were to go about finding a new, perfect mate. With dating, approximately 50% of the population is eligible for match ups. (I know, I know, there are men in that population who aren’t interested in women, who have already attached themselves to someone else, and men who aren’t going to be ‘t suitable. But you what I’m saying.) Of that 50% there is, say, one man in two thousand that you could see yourself marrying–happily–and being partners forever more. Not exactly the greatest odds. (Sorry to any singletons out there who now feel depressed.) With literary agents (around a 1000 in the U.S.A.), approximately 50% of the agents rep women’s fiction or romance (approximate guess, my favourite searchable agent database is down at the moment). Of that 50% (500), there are maybe five agents who would make a very good fit as a business partner and you could see yourself working happily ever after. Look at my odds: 1 in 100. That’s downright inspiring.

Next time you hear someone making an aspiring author hyperventilate by tossing around words like The One in the same sentence as literary agents, do me a favour, smack that person upside the head for me. Thanks.