Fiction Fragment Fridays: Monsters

For the next little while I’m going to be busy building up a new backlog of material to post on Fridays, amidst the other stuff I’m working on, so for the next few weeks I’m going to satisfy myself to simply post a drabble a week. For you writers out there, feel free to use these drabbles as prompts toward writing something bigger and better, and if you care to share what you’ve written, please send me a link so I can check it out. 🙂

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Monsters!

Why does Godzilla always attack Japan?

As a young monster growing up I idolized Godzilla. He always seemed like the biggest and baddest of all the monsters. Even when he lost the battle he was still the coolest because he always came back.

But I did always wonder what exactly he had against the Japanese. I mean, with so many other countries just ripe for the picking, some of them even very close by, why constantly torment the same poor nation over and over again?

I’m all grown up now, a fully grown monster, and I’m going to attack Canada.

The Success in the Failure

My Facebook friends and Twitter followers already know about this, but I thought that, considering the subject matter, it bore repeating as a blog post.

Yesterday morning, a little less than one month since I sent out my first real manuscript submission to a publisher, I received an email back from said publisher.

It was a big, fat rejection letter.

And it wasn’t even an overly impressive rejection. It basically read, “Ms Tobin, sorry, but your story isn’t for us, good luck in the future.”

Now, here’s the thing. I’ve been expecting this since the second I hit the “send” button on my submission. While I wanted to have a glimmer of hope, I had a dozen voices shouting pessimism (reason?) at me. I thought, “It’s my first submission, and who the hell ever gets published on their first submission?” and, “You don’t even read romance novels, so what makes you think you would be able to write a decent one?” I wasn’t terribly hard on myself, I was just trying to be reasonable. I didn’t want to get my hopes up when the chances are so terribly low of getting a deal with a publisher these days, particularly on your first try.

But, here’s the other thing: I’d be a dirty, dirty liar if I said the rejection didn’t sting. Despite my 99.99% certainty that nothing good would come of my submission, there was still that tiny little glimmer in the back of my mind, holding out hope. And that glimmer imploded in upon itself when I read the words “your project isn’t right for us”. I had a wave of disappointment, followed by a wave of anger, followed by a wave of almost physical pain – all this within a 30 second span.

But then something wonderful happened. It was over. After weeks of checking my email fifty times a day, wondering if I would get a response today or not for months, telling myself that it was going to be a rejection but also praying for it to be an acceptance, it was over. My story was rejected. Submission saga complete. Nothing left to worry about.

I learned several things about myself and about the system by submitting that manuscript…

For one thing, I learned that I hate the traditional publishing process, not because it rejected me, but because of the time and waiting required. I only had to wait a month to get that rejection letter, and the waiting drove me right up the wall. Most big publishers quote up to 6 months or more, and many of them make it very clear that they expect to be the only one looking at your manuscript at any given time (if they find out you’ve submitted to multiple publishers at once it’s an automatic rejection). So say for a moment that I start submitting my zombie apocalypse novel and that it takes 5 publishers before one says yes (which is generous, as some people submit to dozens of publishers before hitting pay dirt). Now say that each of those publishers requires that you can’t submit to anyone else until they’re done with you, and say that each one of them quotes a 6 month waiting period, which they dutifully use every second of. That means that it would be two and a half years before that fifth publisher decided to take a chance, and that’s before the long process of contracts, cover design, copyediting, etc that can also take years. In other words, by the time my zombie apocalypse novel was actually in print people might not give a flying rat’s tail about zombies anymore, and my sales might be abysmal. Alternately, I could self-publish the book by the end of this year if I put my heart in it…I’d have to do all the cover/editing/marketing work myself, but it would be out years earlier, during a time when there are tons of zombie movies and games around because zombies are in right now.

Another thing I learned is that I’m not nearly as delicate as I thought I was. Sure I had my moment of depression that sparked anger and frustration as well, but it was all over in less than a minute. I didn’t mope or tell myself that I got rejected because my story was crap. I didn’t turn into a miserable ball of self-loathing. I had a burst of emotion, and then it was over. I’ve moved on. Back on the road and heading into the great beyond. No turning back now.

And another thing that I learned is that I’ve gathered a great community of family, friends, and fellow writers around me over the past months. When I took to Facebook and Twitter to announce my first official rejection letter, the response I got was just wonderful. Amongst the messages I got were:

“Some day your writing will pay off for you. You love it too much for it not to!” – my father

“Just save it for when you do sell your book. You can frame it next to a glowing review.” – @writerreese

“Celebrate! It means you’re a dedicated, professional writer!” @SaraMThorn

There were many others, and it really gave me a burst of confidence, an invaluable thing to me. So I want to say thank you. Thank you to the people who rallied around me to make sure that I knew this wasn’t the end of the world (or, at least, my writing career), thank you to all the writers and references that have let me know what I can expect from both traditional publishing methods and self-publishing methods, and thank you to the editor who gave my manuscript a chance and was relatively quick in letting me know that it wasn’t what they were looking for. Now I can move forward, which is the direction that one definitely wants to be headed in.

Camping while there’s still snow on the ground…yikes!

This special weekend edition post of No Page Left Blank is brought to you by Camp NaNoWriMo, in which I will be participating for the first time this year.

I’ve mentioned National Novel Writing Month before; for those who have never heard, it’s a challenge to all writers across the globe to write a 50,000 word novel entirely within the month of November. The challenge is run by a group of wonderful peoplel at the Office of Light and Letters, and participating (which is free!) grants you access to a community full of writers of all ages, enthnicities, religious groups, skill levels, and whatever other group designations you can think of. It’s a wonderful challenge that has really helped thousands upon thousands of people to finally get that novel out of their head and down on paper (or computer screen). The community aspect is so supportive and helpful, and there are lots of fun little distractions on the website as well. There are even in-real-life meetings organized by Municiple Liasons (or whoever takes up the task) where writers can meet each other and have write-in events. All in all, it’s just a great and fun event that I’ve participated in several years in a row now.

Camp NaNoWriMo is a similar event that is also hosted by the Office of Letters and Light twice a year. It’s like NaNoWriMo, but a little less structured, a little more freebase, and a little more casual. This year they’ve pleased many people by making the word count goal variable. If you want to participate but don’t think you have a chance of hitting a goal of 50,000, you can tailor your goal to suit yourself. If you think you’re a superstar and you can double, triple, or quadruple that goal, then that’s what you can do!

I’ve chosen to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo this year because of the motivational advantage. NaNoWriMo always revs me up to write as much as I possibly can because I love the challenge of it, and that’s something I sorely need these days. While I have been writing quite a lot since my Wildly Improbable Goals post, my enthusiasm has been waning. I’ve been unmotivated to the max, and have been finding myself struggling to get through each sentence. I hope to banish these lethargic feelings by taking up the challenge that starts tomorrow on April 1st.

I don’t think I have it in me to get through 50,000 words, considering my work schedule and how active my daughter is getting, but I don’t think it will be pushing it to give myself a word count goal of 30,000 for April. That’s slightly less than 1000 words a day, which I did with some amount of success back when I first started this blog. Can I do it again for one month? I think so. I hope so. We’ll see!

If anyone is brave enough to take up the challenge with me, visit the website ASAP! The challenge starts tomorrow, people! Seize the day!!

Contesting Your Writing

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

99. Writing Contests

To be perfectly honest, it hasn’t been such a long time since I first discovered that the world of writing contests actually existed. Mind you, I knew of the concept of writing contests, but I didn’t realize it was such big business, so to speak. Do a quick search on Google and you will find sites upon sites upon sites toting contests for those brave enough to submit a piece of work. There are contests for short stories, contests for poems, contests for drabbles, contests for every type of genre. There are fun contests amongst fellow writers and serious contests with prizes and/or publication on the line. There really is no way any one writer could even consider them all, never mind enter them all.

Personally I haven’t been able to pluck up the courage to enter any such contests yet, but for those who might be interested I offer this little nugget of advice: research the contest first. Anything with prizes, in particular, is likely to have a laundry list of rules, terms and conditions, and possible sneaky ways to bite you in the ass. A contest from a publisher, for example, may have a clause hidden in the terms and conditions that states that the publisher retains legal rights to reprint your submission without compensation. I’ve heard a few horror stories about things like this, so I urge you, do your homework before submitting to a contest.

And if I ever do pluck up the courage to enter one myself, I promise you will all be the first ones to know!

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

70. Writing an ugly draft vs editing as you write.

The people behind National Novel Writing Month would have a field day with this one.

There are a lot of arguments for both sides of this conflict, but mostly it comes down to personal preference. Most writers I know tend to edit as they write because silencing your internal editor can be a herculean feat that hardly feels worth it. Then again, there are plenty of writers out there who subscribe to the NaNoWriMo method, which is basically “worry about quantity now, quality later”. I’ve also been told by fellow writers that there’s a specific way you should go about writing a novel: planning, ugly first draft, revised second draft, any number of further revised drafts until your story plays out exactly as you want it to, and final editing. I don’t know about you, but just looking at that system makes me want to gather up everything I’ve ever written and sacrifice it to the god of bonfires.

Like I said, it mostly comes down to preference. Some people can follow steps like the ones above and be perfectly happy and content. Other people completely lose the ability to move on with the story if their internal editor is screaming at them to go back and change things. Additionally, some people can revise their work a hundred times and still find stuff they want/need to change, while others manage to hit the bulls-eye with the first shot and just have to worry about editing. It all really depends on what kind of writer you are.

As for myself? I’m still working on exactly what kind of writer I am. When I was younger I could never finish anything I wrote because I would regularly find major issues with my plot or decide that I wanted to make a significant change, and instead of dealing with it as I continued to write, I would start the damn thing over from scratch. In fact, my current work in progress is a story that I’ve completely rewritten from scratch no fewer than six times over the years. I’ve never reached the end. In fact, until about a month ago I’d never even reached the middle. My internal editor is just that powerful…she is a cruel witch who should be burned for her crimes.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. So as I was saying, my default setting seems to be edit-as-you-go, but as I’ve just described that’s not always a good thing for me. What really showed me the error of my ways was when I participated in my first National Novel Writing Month. I really wanted to reach that 50,000 word goal, and I knew that my current habits would not allow for that, so for one month I let myself just write. No matter how many mistakes I made or how awful some sentences sounded, I just forced myself to keep writing. Guess what happened? No, I didn’t finish my story. But I wrote 50,000+ words toward it, which was way better than I’d ever done before.

So clearly adopting the “ugly first draft” method was good for me, but even after several more NaNoWriMo’s I determined that it wasn’t something I could strictly adhere to. These blog posts are a great example. I edit these posts as I go, and it works just fine for me. Maybe the wording isn’t always as good, my thought process as organized as it might be if I were to draft my post first and then revise it, but I’m happy with what I produce. Alternatively, I continue to force myself to (mostly) ignore my internal editor (as she screams at me from her burning stake) while I’m writing fiction because NaNoWriMo has taught me that its more important to get the full story written than to make that one chapter absolutely perfect the first time around.

So I guess the short answer is that I do ugly first drafts and I edit as I go. In this, as with many things, I am a rebel. Sexy, huh? Yeah…you know it.

Making up for lost time…

The hardest part of NaNoWriMo? Real life. Participants (and fellow writers) know what I mean. Sometimes the real world just interferes, and in most cases is more important in the long run.

My husband and I got up at 5:30 am Saturday morning, drove to Halifax, and spent two full days shopping for Christmas. It was something that had to be done (there’s almost nowhere to shop around home), and it was a successful trip (we are now poor…j/k!), but that doesn’t change the fact that it kept me away from any kind of writing for two straight days. Today was also a bust because of recovering from so much driving and lack of sleep, and also because it’s my last day to hang out with and enjoy my daughter before I fly back out West for another two weeks. But tomorrow…oh tomorrow… Tomorrow I’m going to spend 17 hours traveling in planes, hanging out in airports, and taking one very long, very bumpy bus ride into camp. I have 17 hours during which I have nothing better to do than write. Write, Tracey! WRITE! WRITE!!!

Stay tuned to find out what my one day word count will be! Wish me luck!