Standing on the Ramparts of my Castle of Perseverance. Well, my Fort of Perseverance. Okay, my Small Cardboard Box of Perseverance

One of the things that they don't tell you about trying to break in as a writer is that it frequently involves a number of concurrent processes, many of which are totally outside your control, and that all unfold in their own time*.

And that sometimes, those unfolding processes intersect in ways that aren't much fun.

By early January, I had four short stories out on submission to four different markets at the same time -- that's my most ever, and I’m pretty proud of that.

By late January -- as I mentioned here -- I had started the process of querying my novel and seeking representation by approaching eight literary agents.

I had no idea how long it would take to hear back about any of these. Sometimes you put your work out there and hear back within days. Sometimes it’s months.

I knew that not all of these attempts were going to pay off. Between the short stories and the agent queries, I was expecting to get some rejections. That's par for the course.

I wasn't expecting to get four rejections in a single day.

But on Friday, January 24th, I got four "thanks, but no thanks" emails -- from two different agents, and two different publications.

I posted an update on Facebook when I got my second rejection that day, (less than) half-amused and (more than) half-pained, noting that it was a "personal best"**.

I was, and I'm not even kidding, still in the process of doing that when I got the third rejection, which actually made the whole thing even funnier, although not really less painful. The fourth came later and was just icing. I mean, I actually, literally laughed out loud when I got that one, because one punch in the gut from the universe is awful, but four of them is comedy. 

And it did feel a bit like a punch in the gut from the universe. Rejection hurts. I've gotten more used to it for my short stories -- I have yet to have anything accepted for publication -- but the agent queries were new and a bit sharper. I was feeling really good about my query letter, good enough that I was expecting to get at least some requests to read my manuscript before potential agents made their decision to say yes or no. And my novel... well, it represents more work, and I'm more deeply emotionally invested. It's closer to my heart.

So yeah, by the end of that day I was feeling raw and bruised. I understand that it's not personal, that the folks sending those emails weren't rejecting me, but one more story or query among the dozens or hundreds they receive, that didn’t match what they were looking for. But in the moment, not being personal doesn't make it easier.

Rejection hurts.

So what did I do?

I fought the impulse to try to analyze the rejections to death. I'll look at my query letter again when this process is over, and consider how to make it better, but trying to sift through the entrails in a more specific way is just rejectomancy, and that's an exercise in both frustration and futility.

More importantly, I started researching. More agents to query. More markets to submit stories to. How to keep moving forward.

There's an old idea in writing*** that success is based on some combination of talent, persistence and luck. By definition, I can't do anything about my luck. I'm already doing the best writing I can, and striving to improve, and that's all anyone can do about talent.

That leaves persistence. Persistence is the thing I can really control. I can decide to not give up.

I am not going to give up. Even when it hurts. Even when I get rejections. Even if I get four of them in a single day, I am not going to give up.

More on this process as it continues to unfold. Until then, I persevere, and I hope that you will too. Onward!

--

* Or possibly they do tell you that, and I wasn't paying attention.

** Yes, I was fishing for sympathy. C'mon, people, that's what Facebook is FOR.

*** And, I imagine, in other endeavours, creative and otherwise, where success is partly dependent on gatekeepers.

This is What I'm Doing: The January 2014 Edition

I kind of went heads-down over the last few months of 2013, more than I intended or expected to. Between family and work, the holidays, the extreme weather adventures (I know I'm not alone there -- for a while it seemed like the entire continent was snowed in and frozen solid), I was pretty engaged in other things. 

Oh, and there was winning NaNoWriMo, but I kind of feel like I bragged about that one enough, on Twitter and Facebook, when it actually happened. It's worth mentioning, but more because obviously it was taking up a lot of my time and my writing energy in November. 

(It left me with a post-NaNo hangover, too. It was hard to buckle down and write in December. I spent a lot of the month feeling wrung out and like I needed to recharge my creative batteries.)

The important thing is that I used NaNoWriMo to kick off what appears to be my next novel, a science-fiction story with the working title Nobody's Watching. 

So, what am I doing now? 

Nobody's Watching was on hold while I shook off the post-NaNoWriMo doldrums, but I'm about ready to resume work on it. It helps that it's the work-in-progress that I've been taking to my writers group, because I do get motivated by deadlines. 

I've been continuing to take my short fiction to market, so far without success. I currently have three stories out on submission (with a fourth that just got a rejection, so I really need to get it out there again as well). More news on that as it happens. In terms of time and project management, short stories tend to be one of two things for me: the short, sharp idea that gets stuck in my head and won't go away until I write it; and/or creative palate cleansers between long stretches of working on a novel. 

The result of this is that I have a backlog of short fiction pieces in addition to the ones that are currently out to market -- about six or eight, I think, in various states of readiness between "just needs a polish" to "oh my FSM what was I thinking this calls for a page-one rewrite". 

My plan is to work on revising and finishing these stories over the first half of this year, in between working on the big ticket projects -- Nobody's Watching, until it's done. I have a pretty good sense of what the novel after that will be, too, but I'm going to keep my powder dry on that one until Nobody's Watching is actually a finished draft.

In other news, I spent a lot of the fall polishing All That Glitters, and my other big initiative for the New Year is going to be using it to query literary agents and seek representation. I'm not sure how much of this process I really should go into -- certainly I'm not going to name any names, that's just unprofessional. So let's just say that the manuscript is ready, and I've been honing my query letter and, more painfully, my synopsis. And now I'm as ready as I'm going to be. It's time to see if my first novel is ready to fly. 

Nervous? Ha. I'm feeling a combination of heady excitement and stomach-curdling anxiety that reminds me of nothing so much as when I was in theatre. It's exhilarating and terrifying to be confronted with the prospect of taking a step that could lead to either success or showing my ass in public (which has actually literally happened to me a couple of times, but that doesn't seem to make this any easier).

For now, let's just say there'll be more news on that when I have something I can share. 

I'm also continuing to focus on home and family, work and on my own health, the latter of which I sort of lost the thread of over 2013, and need to get back on top of. And there are other creative projects on the horizon, including some interesting potential ones relating to my comics work. Again, more on that when it's less nebulous. 

2013 was a remarkable year, full of peaks and valleys. I did some of my best writing last year, even if it has yet to see the light of day. I also had a personal health crisis that literally could have killed me. The peaks were high. The valleys were real nadirs. All in all, I'm glad it's a new year. 

It's January, 2014 and on reflection, it seems like I've got rather a lot I want to do. It's time to do it. It's time to move forward. I hope we can all move forward, together. And I look forward to telling you about the steps I take in my journey -- and hearing about yours. 

Onward!

Reviewed -- TT: Full Throttle, an excellent debut YA novel

I'm not terribly into sports -- it's great if people enjoy playing them, and hey, if you're a passionate sports fan, there are way worse things you could be excited about. But left to my own devices, I don't follow any organized sport beyond having a sense of what's in the headlines. I particularly am not into motorsports. Not a sports fan + environmentalist = some serious apprehensions about watching motor vehicles drive around in a circle.

All of which is to say that I am so not the target audience for TT: Full Throttle, the debut novel by my friend Nicole Winters, set in the world of motorcycle racing and specifically, at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race. A YA novel about motorcycle racing? Yeah, so not my usual thing.

I love this book.

Nicole has achieved something really rare, special and admirable in this, her first published novel -- she has created a window into the world and the passions of a group of very believable characters, and she has done it in a way that makes me, someone who would normally disdain motorcycle racing for all sorts of reasons, deeply interested and invested in the outcome. 

TT: Full Throttle is the story of Scott Saunders, a young man in his early twenties who lives for only one thing -- to race in the annual Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the TT. Scott comes from a racing family, and planned for years to travel to the Isle of Man with his father for the race. His father's untimely death has changed all that, and now Scott eats, sleeps and breathes the TT, intent on travelling to the Isle with his friend Neil so they can race to honour his dad's memory. 

Scott shares his home with Neil, Mags, a gifted motorcycle mechanic who Scott is attracted to, and Dean, a former juvenile delinquent who Neil has taken under his wing. The story begins as Scott and Neil are moving forward with their training for the TT, but when tragedy strikes again, Scott must decide whether to go ahead or give up on his dream. With the help of his friends, who join him on his journey and act as an ad hoc pic crew, he travels to the Isle of Man. There, however, the pressure mounts as Scott struggles to qualify for the race with limited resources, no sponsorship, and his amateur crew of well-meaning but not always skilled friends. Together, they must all work to rise to these new challenges if Scott's dream is ever to come true.

I'll let you read the book to learn how that works out, and read it you most definitely should. Nicole has a remarkable ear for dialogue, and every single one of her characters pops off the page. Scott, Neil, Mags and Dean are more real to me now than some people I've met in my real life. In the abstract, I don't care much about motorcycle racing, but I care about these people, their struggles, their tragedies and their triumphs, and I was deeply invested in following them on their journey and rooting for them to succeed. 

And if that was my reaction, I can't even imagine how strongly a younger reader, especially one with an interest in sports, would react to this book. This excellent novel is primarily aimed at YA readers, especially boys and reluctant readers generally, but there's plenty going on here to catch and hold the interest of an adult -- even a sports-indifferent one. 

TT: Full Throttle is available from online booksellers everywhere in print and ebook versions. I recommend it unreservedly.

--

In the interests of full disclosure: I originally posted this on Goodreads -- but a) I'm still figuring out how to integrate Goodreads with the rest of my social media activity and I didn't want this to get lost in the shuffle and b) it's past time for another volley in my Blog! War!!! with Greg Beettam. Mr. Beettam, the ball is in your court now.

And also in the interests of full disclosure: I did mention this in my review, but it merits repeating. Nicole is a friend, and I am in that sense not at all unbiased here. That being said, I think I would love TT: Full Throttle just as much if I didn't know the author at all.

And finally, if you still need convincing, why not check out the book trailer here?

This Is What I'm Doing: The End of August 2013 Edition (and a Slight Declaration of War)

So, first order of business - I feel kind of compelled to say this whenever I go radio silent for a while, these days - yes, I am indeed still alive. Busy, but well overall.

But since it has been a while since my last post, I'm going to defer the exciting conclusion of my epic 'A Not All That Hilarious Heart Attack' series for now, and instead do a scattershot update on the state of the me.

The Summer of Live
I've been focusing on home and family over this summer. Partly, just because that's what I've been most interested in doing, but also partly out of necessity. The kids have been out of school and unfortunately, the summer activities we had hoped to get them into didn't quite pan out - the demand for summer services for autistic kids being rather in excess of supply. Which would be complicated enough, and has been a huge amount of work for Sarah, who's been at home with them full-time while I've been at work. But on top of that, the change to activity levels has switched up their sleep cycles. They've always been night owls compared to typically-developing peers, and now they are up late. Late. Very late.  The opposite of early, is what I'm saying here. L-A-T-E.

This means that we don't get our usual time to unwind or do stuff after the kids are in bed - and we're up so late, I haven't been able to get up early, either. Although Sarah has done her level best to support me getting time to get out of the house and do me-time things, including writing, it hasn't always been possible, and I certainly haven't been anywhere near as creatively productive over the summer as I imagined I would be, before we realized how impacted we were going to be by the kids' schedules going wonky.

On the plus side, the kids are happy and healthy, and they're cheap dates - the splash pad at the local park will keep them entertained for hours. I love getting to spend time with them, and minor kvetching about free time aside, it's been a wonderful summer.

But boy, am I ever looking forward to the day after Labour Day this year!

Write On
Not as productive as I imagined doesn't mean that I haven't been productive at all. I've been polishing and submitting my short fiction - I generally have two or three stories out to market at any given time. No sales yet. This has had the beneficial side effect of making me much less sensitive about rejection, and will make the eventual acceptance, at whatever publication that ends up being, even sweeter. I expect that I'll be hard to shut about about that when it finally happens.

And revisions to the novel continue - that's really been the big-ticket project this summer. I'm about half-way through the manuscript, but since notes from my readers are a bit thinner on the ground in the second half of the story (because it was, you know, better than the first half) I'm likely more than half done. Then it'll be a matter of doing a final read through, making my own notes, and the resulting final buffing to get it into shape.

And then I'll start shopping it around to agents.

So, this is obviously not going to be done this month as I had originally hoped - but I am in good shape to finish in September. The important thing is to start contacting agents well before December, when they'll start getting flooded with everyone's NaNoWriMo output.

More on the process of finding representation as it unfolds.

Blog! War! Declared!!!
I was reminded that it was time (okay, past time) for me to post something new by two friends who are now blogging. Nicole Winters, whose debut novel will be out in September, has been updating the blog on her new website with all sorts of interesting content, and I recommend you check it out - and pick up her novel when it's out, too!

And Xeno's Arrow co-creator Greg Beettam just made the inaugural post on his Bleakwhimsy blog, which I also very much encourage you to check out.

Now, so far, Greg just has the one post up. An auspicious beginning, and his clearly-stated desire to blog regularly going forward gave me an idea. With this post, I hearby declare Blog War on Greg Beettam and his Bleakwhimsy blog!

What exactly does that mean, you ask? It's a fair question, since a Blog War is something I'm pretty sure I just made up.

A Blog War is a challenge to spur us both to post more regularly. When I update my blog, the gauntlet is thrown down to Greg to respond - not to the content, although he certainly can do that if he wants - but by updating his own blog with a new post. And, to keep this interesting and fair, I'm adding a word count stipulation - the new post must meet or exceed the length of the post it's in response to. So if I update with a 500-word post, Greg's response needs to be at least 500 words - and the armour-plated glove is thereby thrown down to me to respond with a comparable post.

(Greg gets a pass on the word count of this current post, to be fair - he just needs to post something, and the length it ends up being will determine the minimum length of my post in response.)

The goal is to keep the chain unbroken and the posts flowing, challenge and response, thesis and antithesis, Bert and Ernie. And on January 1, 2014 we'll tally up our total number of blog posts between today and New Year's Eve. The blogger with the highest total number of posts wins the Blog War and gets massive bragging rights, plus... I dunno, a cookie? Greg, is a cookie a good prize?

Mr. Beettam, I await your bleak and whimsical response. And may the bloggiest blogger win!

This Is What I'm Doing: The October 2012 Edition

Lots of little updates this time out...

The Short Fiction
I have continued to take my short stories out to the market. One advantage of starting with the most prestigious and professional genre publications is that I know the bar is high, and my expectations are therefore low. So far, I've been getting rejections, which I am trying to frame as valuable experience in dealing with the realities of the short fiction markets. Currently, two stories are still out and I'm waiting on responses. If I get a sale, you'll hear about it. Believe me, everyone will hear about that.

The Novel
I have forward momentum on the novel again, at long long last. After letting the notes I got from my esteemed Alpha readers lie fallow for a while, I'm now going through the manuscript and making edits and revisions - if you follow me on Twitter, that's what the #RewriteMonth hashtag is all about.  I'm also making notes for broader, bigger revisions that need a little more thought than "That line's out, that line stays in" - things like fine-tuning character arcs and bringing themes into focus. It's going quickly, and most of the big-picture stuff is going to be a matter of adding touches at a few, key pinch-points across the whole story. Oh, plus one scene that needs to be entirely rewritten, but that should be relatively straightforward.

My goal is to have the new draft done, and out to my Beta readers, before the end of the month. Yes, this month, October. I know it sounds optimistic, but like I said, I have forward momentum at last, and I don't intend to squander it this time. 

The Next Novel
My timeline for the Novel (which I'm calling the Novel because I'm a between names for the darn thing) seems to be sufficiently realistic that I'm thinking about the next big writing project. It's one that's been waiting on the back burner for even longer, a collaboration with my dear friend, once and future partner in wordsmithery, the all-around awesome writer Nicole Winters. It's called Underground. This is going to be fun.

November is of course National Novel Writing Month, so I'm strongly considering taking another stab at NaNoWriMo this year with Underground. Now, I haven't had much success with NaNoWriMo in the past, but I seem to have gotten better at making time in my schedule to write and I've done my own, effective, not-part-of-NaNo Big Pushes on various projects since then. I think it's worth another try, especially since with Underground I'll have a detailed outline and won't be starting cold.  Again, this is something that I'm sure you'll hear all about while it's happening. 

The Comic
I've also been doing some scripting! In September, I started in on really writing Book 2 of Cold Iron Badge, and I took the loose outline from where I left off and turned it into something rather more detailed - with page breakdowns, for instance, so there won't be any pagination surprises this time out - and then started scripting.

I got about a third of the script written before #RewriteMonth started eating all my writing time and energy. Right now, the script is paused, and waiting for me to get back to it. That's looking like it might be a December project. I'd like to finish the script by the end of 2012. 

The Other Comic
It's in the early stages, but Greg Beettam and I have been discussing plans for Xeno's Arrow - and we've got interesting ideas in the works. The question now isn't what we'll do, but when we'll do it

The Fitness
I haven't made a big deal about it, because I wanted to make sure that I was in a groove first, but I've been eating better and getting to the gym more regularly. How is it going? Slow and steady, but well.

Life, the Universe and Everything
There's lots more to talk about, but they're a little more substantive and deserve being discussed at length. I mentioned that I've been making more time to write, but not the whats and the hows. There have been some great developments at home. My children been amazing at transitioning into the new school year and all the changes it brought with it. The progess I've been making on the fronts I mentioned has put me into a positive frame of mind that I've carried through to all the rest of my life, and it feels good.

That's where I am, and how I am, in October 2012. How are you?