Insomnia mumblings

Awake again, too late. Insomnia and nauseous. Feeling restless and emotional, like I want to cry but I don't even know what for, other than I'm too tired and feel weepy like a tired little kid.

And waiting for things to happen and working to make them happen, and then just... alone here in the middle of the night sitting in a chair and feeling like my guts are empty.

Feeling too much, but I don't even know what about - emotion without substance, even though it feels very meaningful, here alone, in the middle of the night. I feel like curling up and sleeping for days and waking up after life starts to have motion again.

Ok, ending emo-girl post now.

The Things an Aspiring Author is Not Supposed to Say

I sent out four query letters to agents today. I don't know how many you're supposed to do at once. I'll probably do more tomorrow, but I figure I'll space them out. All I have is time - I mean, excluding my extremely impatient nature. I'm starting at the top with the best agencies, because, why not? I'll work my way down the list I'm compiling. I'm researching each agent, finding the ones that sound like they might fit - aka, interested in young adult, fantasy, romance. I queried a couple who are the agents of books that I really liked.

I read a very good YA book tonight - Blue Moon, by Alyson Noel (better than the first book in the series, I thought), and after I finished it, I was like, crap, I think I've been thinking my book is better than it is. Over-estimating it. So then I opened up my long document and sifted through it... and it's good. It still needs some tweaking here and there, small things, but it's good.

Here's the thing. I know a person is supposed to be all about false modesty. I get it. I try not to tell people I'm writing a book, or have written one, because I know how stupid it sounds! I know it sounds ridiculous saying out loud, or digitally writing it here, that I have this good feeling that I'll be able to sell this book. Maybe not with one of these first agents who are way out of my league. But I know my genre. I love my genre - young adult - the genre that's not a genre almost because it welcomes everything - just with less sex :) I'm a good storyteller. I've written a good book that is both like enough to what is out there, but with a new angle to make it stand out. A marketable book from an agent's perspective.

These are things you aren't supposed to say out loud. To say them out loud means you will jinx yourself, or make yourself look like a fool when the months pass without a bite. What the hell. I think my young adult novel will sell, if not now, then eventually. There. I said it. Jinxes fall upon me as they may!

Thinking Ahead

Ahh, this is the life - getting back to what is just hilariously fun about writing - planning out and doing basic outline for book II (Persephone Rising) after being elbow-deep in editing the first book for so long. I've given out the manuscripts of the first to friends, and now I'm forcing myself to take a week or two off from it and get thier feedback before I send out. And in the meantime, looking into getting on paper all these ideas that have been swirling amorphous in my brain about Book II.

And it is just so much fun. Just straight storytelling - thinking of the first obstacle, resolution, next conflict, relationships built along the way - new characters, new conflicts. I'm introducing Hercules, who will be kind of a bastard out for his own ends, and Prometheus, who will teach Persephone to learn how to finally value the beauty and dignity of mortal life - all the more beautiful because of its fragility and transient nature. Figuring out where Hera is during all this, and Zues' sneaky longterm plan (which will come to fruition in Book III). I'm finally understanding what author's mean when they say that even if the first book doesn't get published, they still have to write the others, if only for themselves. Because the stories are banging away inside, wanting to be told.

Plotting a book is like creating a puzzle - sneaking bits in at the beginning that won't click till the end. But right now, I'm discovering it as I create it - I run into a problem, and get to brainstorm around a solution - usually resulting in something else super cool I can incorperate from mythology. It's an endless mine of great characters, images, themes, stories. Freaking fun.

My working tagline for the entire series is:

Ages from now, bards will tell tales of the times when the gods walked among men. This is the story of how that era came to an end.

Hubris?

Sorry all I'm talking about lately is the book I've been working on, but it's what's been filling up most of the brain space. It's completed. I'm giving it to three friends to read and edit, I've written a good query letter and a not-so-good synopsis that I'm still hacking away at. Then I'll super-edit the first fifty pages for a partial in case requested. Then, I think in two weeks when I get the manuscripts back from friends, I'll start querying agents.

I feel a lot different about it this time than I did when I sent it out before, over a year ago. It's a different book, a much more interesting book, a much better written book. I feel this giddy optimism, which I know will soon be crushed by piles of rejection letters, but no matter how much it gets rejected at first, I think I've created something special this time around. Something akin to the piles of published YA books that I read on a daily basis. And I'll keep pushing to get it into the hands it needs to be - go to conferences where you can schedule time with agents, and query, query, query. I'll let it sit for four months, then do even more re-writes in December after my classes are done, then do another pile of querys. For the first time, I really think this is a book that is publishable. Now, we'll see in a few weeks if any agents agree!

And either way, in three weeks, when grad school starts (eek! yay!), it will get put on the side-burner, and I'll get to fill my brain up with entirely new things - namely, reading Old English in my Midieval Lit class (eek again!), and Hemmingway short stories in the other.

Oh, and because I'm a total dork, I like to document the process:

Novel Notions

My husband took the day off of work yesterday for the sole purpose of sitting down and reading my whole book. I don't think I mention often enough how much I love this man and how I got the best man in the entire universe for a husband, hands down. But it's true.

In spite of my determination to be patient, I did some research for literary agents yesterday, and have found two perfect agencies to send off the query and book proposal to. But I will clamp down my impetuous streak and make sure I've perfected the manuscript first, and synopsis. It's a one shot deal with each agent, and I'd hate for a few weeks left polishing to make it an easy reject for them.

So that's what I'm doing today - writing the world's greatest query letter and synopsis... ;)

Strange July

This has been a bizarro couple of weeks. Last week, for about seven days straight, I was an emotional PMS-y wreck. I'm not usually a cry-er, other than PMS, but even then, it's like maybe once or twice a whole month. But last week PMS from hell decides to descend out of nowhere and there was one day I swore I woke up crying and went to bed crying!! It was like some strange weepy robot had taken over my body!

And this week - ta da! Back to my normal happy go lucky self. Bizarro and disturbing. But back to the good times. Which this week has been, with minor interruptions of wanting to pull out my hair because I feel overwhelmed with the Persphone novel for young adults I've been working on for about four years. I finished it... again. And it's much, much, much better than the draft I did two years ago. And the story I think is solidly good. It's logical and I've worked hard to make it move, move, move. But now I have this 300 page bohemouth to edit. I feel like every time I work through and cut and hack and edit a chapter, then print it out, a hundred new things pop up to fix. So I never get forward, because you can always perfect what has been already edited. It seems like an impossible, never-ending process, and how is one person supposed to do this?? I keep thinking about those damn thank-you pages at the end of novels where they list off a ton of people who helped them and I'm like - YES! - you need a freaking team to produce a book. How is one person supposed to do all this?!!

I'm still going to my writer's group, but it takes a month to work through two chapters, and my finished version is twenty-one chapters. And I'm freaking impatient. I think impatience might be one of my defining characteristics actually.

So today I sat my butt down in a chair for five hours and made a detailed outline. There's just so much that happens in a novel, how can you even begin to grasp the whole thing in the same scope? I keep trying. At least paging through the entire thing and pointing out the key moments of each chapter and scene did get me really excited about it. I think in the end, this can be something special. But then I try to tamp down those feelings, because I thought similar things about the draft two years ago, and it was crap. Anyway, I'm still aiming for workable draft by the end of the summer that I'll start submitting out places. Then I'll have school to occupy my time, which will give me four months away from it, and fresh eyes to edit again at Christmas, and send out more places. My eyeballs hurt from looking at the computer screen all day. And how did it get to be the end of freakin' July already???

The Good Times Continue

Know I've been out of pocket lately. I've just not been much for communicating in any way lately - I'm backlogged on emailing people, seeing friends, blogging - I've just been taking this space lately. This beautiful pristine space just to BE and to DO. What I've been doing is writing.
I quit my job totally (I'd been slowing down on hours, until I finally just decided it wasn't worth the stress on my body even part-time). And I've been writing, and writing, and writing (randomly I'm back to working on the Persephone novel for young adults, which my goal is to complete in fair shape by the end of the summer). And I completely love my life and know that this is completely unfair and nobody gets to actually DO what they WANT to be doing, and believe me, I feel very lucky!

I just got the official acceptance today into the Master's in Literature program at Texas State. I'd talked to the advisor after taking the four extra undergrad class throughout last year, and he said everything should be fine, but it's nice to have it in writing now. Yes, I will be a graduate student. Deal sealed and locked. I have to wait until mid-August before I can register for classes, but I'm still super-stoked. I'll be taking two classes either way.

If anyone's interested, you can check out a short-short story published in a little online zine at: MudLuscious.