The Week of July 20th

Well I’ve had a very productive week (which I’m sure I owe entirely to the fact that I had a week off from work) and I’m well on track to meet every single one of my goals for the month. I revised 6 chapters of my thesis (and am down to only 3 left!), did some work on my new novel (and had some really exciting breakthroughs about who my main character is), sent out 4 story submissions, and spent 5 hours on short stories. I also got back on track with the agent hunt and sent out 5 more queries. I had sort of a dry week as far as hearing back from agents is concerned, didn’t get a single response all week.

I did, however, get a couple of short story rejections this week, both with personal comments from the editors, so that’s good. One of them was extremely encouraging, saying some very complimentary things about my writing style and letting me know that they ultimately decided to reject the story because they weren’t that in to the subject matter of that particular story. It’s a nice sort of validation, to be told by an editor that they recognize the worth of your writing and they think you’re a good writer, even if they don’t feel your piece fits with what they’re looking for.

So far this month I’m at:

1. 16 out of 19 novel chapters revised
2. 16 out of 20 hours spent on short stories
3. 8 out of 10 submissions sent to journals
4. 19 out of as many as possible queries sent to agents (and received 4 rejections; 1 manuscript request)

The Week of July 13th

Well I’ve pretty well gotten back on track with my goals for the month. This week I revised 6 more chapters of my novel and it’s coming along very well. I’ve also spent some time working on the first draft of my next novel.

When I’m beginning a new draft of something I usually start by basically freewriting and just exploring the story. I write down whatever pops into my head and let the story take life. I generally only begin with a very general idea of who the main characters are and what the major plot points are going to be. I find this a really useful way of beginning because I don’t hold myself back by worrying about whether or not this is actually any good. And then I probably won’t ever even look at that first draft again. Instead, I’ll just use what’s now in my head, the information that I now have about the story, and rewrite the entire thing from page one. Much of what I write in that first draft won’t even happen in the next draft, and the few things that do will probably be dramatically different, but it’s okay because it’s through the process of writing that first draft that I figure out what the story really is.

So I’ve written the first few pages of my next novel and I’m pretty excited about it. I think starting next month I’ll add working on that into my goals so that I can try and have a complete draft ready to start rewriting by the time I’m finished with my thesis. Completely as a fun side project, too, I’ve been working on a sequel to the children’s book I’m currently trying to find an agent for.

Otherwise, I’ve spent only 3.5 more hours this week on short stories and I haven’t sent out any more story submissions or agent queries. I also received two more agent rejections (but not from the agent who requested the full manuscript. I haven’t heard back from her yet).

So, for the month I’m at:

1. 10 out of 19 novel chapters revised
2. 11 out of 20 hours spent on short stories
3. 4 out of 10 submissions sent to journals
4. 14 out of as many as possible queries sent to agents (and I've recieved 4 rejections; 1 manuscript request)

Agent Update

Well, the very day after posting my thoughts on how it's pretty much impossible to get anywhere by querying agents and I'm assuming this will just be a good learning experience for me, I recieved a manuscript request from one of the agents I queried. Now, this doesn't mean she'll offer representation; it just means that she's willing to read the full book and decide from there. But I feel really excited, anyway. Even if she ultimately decides it's not for her, I feel good about having gotten to that next step with someone. And who knows . . . maybe she'll love it and want to represent me. I feel much better about my chances of finding an agent, now, and feel refreshed at the knowledge that it is possible, after all, to get someone interested just from a query. Of course now if she rejects it I can't blame it on anything but the work itself . . . but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

The trick now is going to be to try to push this to the back of my mind and not think about it until I hear back from her. Like that's possible.

The Week of July 6th

Already, I have to hang my head in shame and admit that I haven’t gotten much done since the last time I posted. I haven’t spent any more time on my novel or on short stories this week, nor have I made any more submissions to journals. I did send out 2 more agent queries, and have gotten a few more ready to send out next week. I also did some more research and have added more agents to the list of possibilities.

Considering that the month is almost half over and I haven’t come anywhere near halfway with my novel revisions, and am just a little under half with my other goals, I definitely need to pick up the pace if I’m going to actually meet my goals by the end of July.

I also received my second rejection from an agent and have spent some more time looking up information on how to snag an agent. It turns out it’s pretty difficult to get plucked from the slush pile. Not impossible, of course, but very unlikely. The number one way to get an agent is to be referred by another client of the same agent, and the second best way is to meet an agent at a conference. So I’ve reconsidered my chances of actually finding an agent for my children’s book right now and have accepted that the chances are so low I may as well consider it a 0% chance; it’s probably closer to that than it is to a 1% chance, anyway.

But that’s actually not a pessimistic outlook. Believe it or not I feel really good about this whole experience. I’m gaining a lot from having to scrutinize my book closely, make sure the first few pages are really engaging, write up a concise but at the same time really interesting synopsis, and try to figure out how best to market myself in a query letter to a busy agent who receives hundreds of query letters a week and probably doesn’t have more than a minute to spend on each one. I assume I won’t find an agent, but I also assume I’ll come out of this a much better writer and with a much deeper understanding of the non-writing side of writing. And in a year, when it comes time to try to find an agent for my novel, I will be ready, man, I will be ready.

July 2008 Goals

I am currently working on so many different projects it makes my head ache when I actually think about them all at once. I've got a novel that I'm revising, and I'm finishing up the third draft of it. I've got another novel that I just recently started outlining and writing the first draft on. I've got a children's book that I'm trying to find an agent for (with the realistic assumption that I probably won't and this'll be more of a learning experience for me). I've also got several short stories that I'm revising and/or writing the first drafts of. And as always, I've got several finished (or at least, as ready as they''ll ever be) short stories that I'm submitting around to literary journals.

So, my goals for the month of July:

1. Finish the third draft of my novel (which is my MFA thesis), The Straight and Narrow. It's current incarnation has 19 chapters so the goal is to rewrite all 19 by the end of July. (It's important to note that my goal for June, which I met, was to go through all 19 chapters with red ink and make notes for what I want to do with the revision.)
2. Spend a minimum of 20 hours working on short stories.
3. Send out a minimum of 10 submissions to journals.
4. Add to my working list of children's book agents and send out to as many as I can.

Since I'm posting these goals already on July 10th I'll add that so far for the month I've:

1. Revised 4 chapters of my novel.
2. Spent 7.5 hours on short stories (mostly working on a revision of a short story I wrote for workshop last semester, "Sanctuary").
3. Submitted stories to 4 literary journals.
4. Sent queries to 12 agents (and recieved 1 rejection already).

I'll try to update my blog every week with the nitty gritty of what I've done so far for the month.

My Process

Every semester I teach my Academic Writing students that the writing process is more important than the final product, itself. This confuses them, usually, and many of them don't believe it. They want to pump out a rough draft in half an hour and turn it in as the final product. It meets length requirements, why shouldn't that count? Because writing is a process, and if you keep the focus on process and not product, you stand a much better chance of that final product being something worthwhile (and of actually having a good time, too).

In my opinion, this is even MORE true of creative writing, because if you're not doing it for the process (if you're doing it, for example, because you want to be "a writer" and you think it's going to make you tons of money and fame), well, you're doing it for the wrong reasons and your product, ultimately, will probably not be very good, anyway. If you don't enjoy the process, why do you want to write at all?

My process is very regimented. At any given moment, I usually have numerous writing projects I'm working on at once (all of which I'm always really excited about), so in order to keep focused and keep my brain from exploding, I keep close track of everything I do and set goals for myself on a monthly basis.

I keep an Excel Spreadsheet where I log everything that I do related to writing, and at the beginning of each month I set new goals for what I'd like to accomplish by the end of the month (I tried doing this daily but I found that if I missed the mark on one day I would lose my resolve and start slacking off for the next several days, as well).

I don't follow such a strict process because I don't enjoy writing and have to force myself to do it, or because I actually think it matters in any real way whether or not I meet my goals by the end of the month. I do it because, for me, that's what writing is about. Doing the actual writing. It's fun and I like it, and I like to keep track of what I've done and what I will do because otherwise I may forget, or get confused, or think that I've done nothing all month because I only have one finished story but in fact I've spent hours and hours revising and revising and revising that one story. I keep track of everything I do because, to me, that's the point of it all, the doing it, not the product. The process IS the product.