Fiction Fragment Fridays: Nowhere to Hide

Although I finally have a bit more of my Final Fantasy novelization written, I’ve decided to hold on to it for a little while longer so that I can build up a little bit of a back log. Instead, today I thought I would share a scene from my (hopefully) upcoming zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide. I’m hoping that sharing a piece of my manuscript with the world will help motivate me to finish up that last round of edits that need to be finished before publication.

This short excerpt is from the end of the first chapter of the story. By this point there has already been one well-publicized attack, but no one yet knows that the doctors involved in the postmortem investigation found some pretty disturbing details. Our main character, Nancy, and her best friend Terri-Lynn, just want an ice cream from the local Dairy Queen when they happen to stumble across attack number two…enjoy!

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Nancy thought she heard something – a whimper, perhaps – from back behind the kitchen. After considering for a moment she lifted a leg and began to slide herself across the counter.

“What are you doing?” Terri-Lynn hissed.

“Shh!” Nancy shot back with a finger to her mouth. “I’ll be right back.”

Walking through the abandoned kitchen was strange and surreal. The fryers were still running, the fries in the bottom of the baskets burned black as coal. A burger was in the heating tray, waiting for the rest of the meal that would accompany it. A mop was propped up against the wall, having been slid across the floor between late-night orders.

The whimpering sound was coming from a broom closet. Nancy turned the handle slowly, paused for a second to take a breath, and then pulled the door open. A young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, was sitting on the floor. She had her back pressed up against the far wall of the closet, as far back as she could make herself go, and she was sobbing into her hands. When the door opened she looked up at Nancy with huge, glistening eyes. “Don’t hurt me!” she squeaked.

Nancy tried her best to smile a warm smile. “I’m not going to hurt you, hon,” she assured the girl. “It’s okay, I’ll help you.” She offered a hand and after a few long moments the girl removed one shaking arm and reached for it.

Nancy had enough time to process that the girl’s shoulder was bleeding through her crisp, white and blue work shirt when a shriek echoed through the store. Terri-Lynn came running toward them. Nancy stared at her with her heart in her throat and the young Dairy Queen employee shrank back into the closet. Terri-Lynn had tears brimming in her eyes and appeared to be holding back a violent gag. She tried to speak as Nancy raised her eyebrows at her, but she could only gesture frantically toward the industrial freezer in the back.

The young employee grabbed at Nancy’s hand as she began to walk toward the freezer. “I-I had to!” she sobbed miserably. “H-he attacked me! H-he bit my arm!”

Be Brave. Stand on the Edge of the Cliff.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it is my belief and experience that writers (and artists as a whole) are a naturally self-depreciating bunch. Oh sure, we all have our moments when we feel on top of the world and are convinced that our writing is the most brilliant thing to come into this world since Shakespear, but the majority of the time we’re meak little creatures, hiding in a corner and insisting that if you just give me more time it’ll be perfect and then you can read it, I swear! Admit it, fellow writers: does this sound like you?

There are two major downsides to this kind of attitude. One, no story ever written was perfect, especially from the writer’s point of view, and trying to make it perfect will only drive you insane. Two, if you never get to the point where you’re ready to show you work to another human being, you’ll never go any further. Sometimes you have to be willing to put yourself out there, if only to know that you were brave enough to do it.

A little while ago, when I wrote my first “Things I Know About Kids” post, I had a thought…the kinds of things I was talking about (and planning to talk about) seemed like the kinds of things that belonged in a parental magazine like Today’s Parent. I considered this concept for a little while, even going so far as to look into how one would submit an idea to a magazine, but in the end I didn’t do it. Why? Because, like many writers before me, I look down on my own writing. I thought to myself, “There’s no point in persuing this idea because it’s never going to happen. Why would any magazine want to publish my awful schlock?” Admit it again, fellow writers: how many times have you thought this exact thing when considering a submission or query?

It wasn’t until three days ago that a little light flicked on in my head. I recalled a ridiculously cheesey quote that my husband once brought up back in high school: “You always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Yeah, it sounds hokey, but it’s true. You can’t succeed if you don’t set yourself up for the possibility of failure. That’s just the way things work. Not many people in this life are lucky enough to be “discovered”. Most of us have to put in the hard work, put ourselves out there, and risk failing. And when we fail, we have to pick ourselves up and go through it all over again. Glamorous? No. Necessary? Yes.

So with that on mind, on Friday I took some time and wrote a query letter that made me cringe, but that I knew to be more-or-less the proper way of doing things, and I shot it off to Today’s Parent. I’m not expecting to have my idea accepted (though it would be nice!) but what I realized was that there was zero chance of it being accepted if I never put it out there.

It’s a scary thing putting yourself at the edge of a cliff with the chance of being pushed off, but if you don’t do so you can never see the view. No, I honestly don’t believe that Today’s Parent is going to write be back and tell me I had a brilliant idea and they want to publish it immediately, but it still feels good to have taken that step, to prove that I’m brave enough to stand on the edge of the cliff. And should I, in the following weeks, recieve a kindly-worded (or even not-so-kindly worded) rejection letter, I shall do as many before me have: I’ll print that sucker out and stick it to my wall, because each rejection is just a step toward acceptance.

If you’re an unpublished writer, have you ever submitted anything for publication, or sent a query to a magazine or other venue? How did it make you feel? If you’re a published writer, how many rejections did you get before getting something published? Do you keep your rejection letters? Please share!

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!

Oh, the cruelty…

Had to make a post to share this submission I saw on FML.com today:

“Today, I came home to find two letters from a publishing house that I’d submitted my manuscript to. The first was congratulatory, stating that my book had been accepted for publishing. The second was apologetic, stating that the first letter had been intended for someone else.”

Tell me that’s not, like, a writer’s worst nightmare right there. Usually FMLs make me laugh, but this one genuinely made me cringe.

Write Everyday!

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

48. Advice you wish someone had given you

Over the past couple of years I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into the social networking aspect of being a writer. I run this blog, tweet when I think of something I think is worth saying, and browse the ‘net for interesting material written by my fellow online authors. During this social journey I’ve found myself regularly stumbling across bits of advice on various aspects of writing, managing the lifestyle of a writer, getting published, and so on. Everyone out there (myself included) feels the need to impart our little pieces of wisdom, and there is one particular tidbit that I’ve seen come up on a very regular basis:

Write Everyday.

There is a saying going around, based on an idea posed by Malcolm Gladwell, that a person needs 10,000 hours of practice with something in order to become an expert. While that number may not be accurate for everyone (natural talent – or lack thereof – have to account for something as well), it’s an understandable concept. In order to become good at something you have to practice, or in other words, spend a lot of time working on it. As with anything, writing is something that takes a good deal of time and effort to become good at (and you should never stop trying to get better), and therefore you should Write Everyday.

It seems ridiculously obvious to me now, but I really wish someone would have imparted this particular piece of advice on me when I was much younger, when it first became apparent to me that I would always want to be a writer regardless of whatever else occurred in my life. If I had taken the time to Write Everyday since the third grade just imagine how much practice I would have behind me! Imagine how many words I would have put to paper, how many finished stories I might have to my name! Imagine how much more confident I might be, how much closer I may have come toward publication! And while it is never too late to change, to do what you think you should be doing, you can’t deny the fact that I would have benefited from this idea much more earlier in my life. These days I have many more responsibilities: I have a demanding work schedule, a husband and daughter who both require my time and attention, a household that needs taking care of, and a host of other daily tasks and concerns that require dealing with. These days it is much harder to Write Everyday, but if I had known to do so when I was younger I could have had years of this practice behind my belt before all these other responsibilities came to light.

In conclusion, if there are any younguns out there right now who aspire to become writers and have somehow managed to stumble across this blog, I’m giving you the advice that I never got: WRITE EVERYDAY!

Synopses are Boring :P

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

44. Mistakes to avoid in synopses

This is an area in which I have absolutely no experience. Since I’ve never submitted anything for publication or attempted self-publication, I haven’t written a synopses since I learned what the word meant back in grade school. Because of this I’m cheating a little on this one and giving you a link to a site I found via Google that explain just this sort of thing quite well:

Synopsis Tips

I’ll try harder later, I promise. 😛

Call This Help?

It appears that the only problem with pre-scheduling my posts for during the work rotation is that when I get home for my off-days I forget that I have to, you know…manually post some entries. I’d like to try and fix myself of this issue if at all possible. One of the big reasons (I suspect) that I’ve been unsuccessful with blogs and the like in the past is because I have no concept of “regular updates”, which as it turns out is a bit important.

In my defense, I had a friend visit from away for four nights, and during three of those nights we devoured a large, large amount of alcohol. A large amount. I may be recovering for another three or four nights.

But I digress. This is an overdue post that I should have made about a week ago when it was originally relevant.

About a week and a half ago there was an article in the local newspapers, detailing a rather frustrating issue with our province’s apprenticeship board. Without going into a great amount of detail, some lawyer (of course) apparently discovered that the apprenticeship board does not actually have the authority to accept work hours that were obtained in other provinces. As an overwhelming number of Nova Scotia apprentices work outside Nova Scotia (i.e. where the jobs are), this is a bit of an issue. It was a topic of much contention out on the work site. But it’s not the main point of the article that bothered me so much…what really bothered me was a quote by an apprenticeship board spokesman that stated how they were trying to help apprentices through this issue and that they were “all about” helping apprentices through to completion of their apprenticeship.

In response to this quote I wrote an emphatic FaceBook status about just how “helpful” I’ve found the apprenticeship board to be over the years. My husband then pointed out that the spokesman I was addressing was unlikely to read my FaceBook page and suggested I submit my status to the newspaper. I did so, expecting nothing to come of it, and was contacted by a family friend a few days later to let me know that he’d just read my letter.

Not the most enormous deal in the world, but pretty exciting to me since it’s technically my first real publication. 🙂 Confidence!

If anyone is interested in reading the letter that I wrote, I submit to you the link to the online version. My letter is third one down, entitled “Call this help?” and signed (obviously) Tracey Tobin.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/letters/130162-voice-of-the-people-august-27-2012