Author: lleachie

I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.

Working on Optimism

I got another rejection today; that makes four out of 25 on Apocalypse. I might have to accept the fact that I get through this querying cycle without any offers, or even nibbles, again.

I’m not sure what to do. I suppose I can wait and query my novels again, to see if the climate has improved. Or I can self-publish, and I’m still very opposed to doing that. I don’t know if there’s an editor that can help at this point. 

I’m going to try to stay optimistic, mostly because it feels better that way. I am going to let this adversity strip me down to gold, and I don’t know what that version of me will look like, but I’m willing to go there.


Beyond Thoughts and Prayers

I don’t normally go political with this blog, but in the face of this weekend of deadly shootings in the US, I need to say something.

Why won’t Americans make wise decisions about guns, ones where we don’t assume we need guns because we don’t trust others not to have guns? The ones where we realize that our chances of getting shot at the Walmart may become as likely as getting shot in a home invasion? 

My suspicion, one which others share, is that guns are too thoroughly woven into American mythology and thus in American consciousness for us to disarm easily. Our existence started with a guerilla war of colonists against the mother country. We took land from its rightful owners through firepower, we fought wild animals on our journey westward, hunted our own food … Guns are as much a part of the mythology as log cabins and wagon trains.

I don’t think it’s inevitable that we give up on gun control completely. We should ban weapons designed to deliver a barrage of bullets in a very short time — our ancestors didn’t have those. They’re not needed for hunting. They have been banned before, and deaths from guns decreased by 40%. Since that ban expired, deaths from guns increased by about 240%. The only reasons people want them is for status, for fun (it is fun blowing things up), and for killing people.

We could require gun owners to lock their guns up when not in use, with stiff penalties. Granted, no penalty is as stiff as the death of children from playing with an unattended gun, but these deaths don’t seem to prompt families into locking up their guns. 

We should require background checks — not just for mental illness, but felonies, domestic violence, reports of violent ideation. These should be reciprocal from state to state or federally managed. I understand that gun owners are afraid to be put on a “list”, but there should be a responsibility gun owners take when taking on a lethal weapon that can be used for multiple deaths quickly.

Most of all, however, we need a new mythology in the US, one which supports ingenuity, creativity, adaptability, and community. These qualities are represented in our history — settlers needed to rely on each other to survive, vibrant and colorful communities developed across the country, we learn and adapt from our trespasses in the past against those not like us (at least I hope so).  We have to find a way to make the American Dream accessible to everyone, so that guns are seen as superfluous to our identity.


I need to remind myself

I didn’t write yesterday, because I was busy with getting set up for the beginning of the school year. The hard part’s done — all online class presence is sorted out and in order with due dates accurate, the syllabus pristine, and all that. 

I’m also in the middle of a miserable summer cold that’s been hanging on, so I’m a bit dopey.

I confess that I haven’t written in a while. A week at least, what with the classes and the queries and the cold and the like … I haven’t written more than a half hour to finish a story. I will try to write today, because writing. Even if I only write a couple paragraphs, I need to write.

I need to remind myself that I’m a writer.

The Changing Seasons of the Academic Calendar


It’s August first, and I can feel the season change even though it’s warm outside. That’s because I base my seasons on the academic calendar, and there are only three seasons: fall semester, spring semester, and summer.

I’m approaching the end of summer right now, so I’m beginning to prepare for fall semester, updating my online classwork, getting a new work computer, finishing up my internships, cleaning up and rearranging my office (already done!), setting up my calendar … the rhythm of life changes.

Fall semester is the beginning of my calendar, as it brings new things: A shiny new school year, new students, beginning meetings (ok, not everything about the new school year is wonderful). It also embraces football (American) tailgates, dressing up for Halloween, the feast of Thanksgiving, the Christmas season and its associated rituals on a college campus. 

Spring semester starts with winter — the Christmas snow is now slushy and dirty, the beginning of the semester meetings seem like same old same old, and Valentine’s Day as a holiday just doesn’t measure up to Christmas. But then come Spring, and the unexpected: the Northwest Yeti comes out of hiding, there’s a big cow statue in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store, art installations spring up like mushrooms, and students plunge into the chilly waters of Colden Pond for charity. 

Then we come back to summer, where things slow down, and faculty spend their summers teaching abroad or taking on interns or taking summer classes or teaching short, intensive summer classes. And going on vacation. My summer has been spent supervising interns, taking a class for my certification in Disaster Mental Health, doing moulage (simulating physical injury and illness for training purposes), and taking a mini-vacation. And writing. 

So that is my year, and the signs of a seasonal change keep popping up: the announcement of beginning of semester meetings, the back-to-school sales, discussions of how well our football team may do this year (we have one of the best Division II teams in the nation, which for those of you in other countries would be like a lower division soccer league), and emails from students trickling in. 

It should be a good year.

******************

Yesterday was a tough day — two rejections (one agent, one submission of a short story). I don’t feel so bad about the short story rejection, because I think my choice of genre (fantasy) might keep my work from being accepted by some markets. And there’s a lot of competition.

I need to toughen up about agent rejections. 

I truly believe at this point that I’m getting rejections because of something as simple as fashion, and I will believe that until someone says otherwise. I’m willing to improve, but I’ve improved as much as dev editors, beta readers, publishing coaches, and my own judgment have allowed me to.

Please wish me luck. I’m serious. 

What if everyone rejects me?

So I have twenty-six queries out right now. No, twenty-five, because I got a same-day rejection yesterday — same day service! I’m going to stop querying for a while (I have close to 45 left to send) to see what happens with this.

I have to remind myself that there are several reasons why queries get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality of my book: 

  • The topic of my book isn’t “hot” right now
  • The agent only has one slot left in their list and they know exactly what they want to put in it and it’s not my book
  • My query didn’t “speak” to them or they didn’t “feel” it (literal rejections I’ve gotten)
  • The agent had a bad day (I’m not kidding)
  • There’s a lot, a LOT more queries coming in than there are books being sold in traditional publishing
So I’m left with that question, always: What do I do if I get 25 more rejections?

I send the rest. 

And if I don’t get an agent then, I tweak things and try again. And remind myself that the agents are rejecting my query, not me.


Revving the treadmill engine

I guess I got tired of that idyllic end of summer crap, because I’ve sent twenty queries over the past couple of days. 

That’s twenty chances for rejection, I know. That’s also twenty chances for requests for manuscripts. That’s twenty chances for someone to share my query with another agent in the agency. Twenty more agents who know my name.

No, I’m not always as optimistic as I sound. It’s just that my hedonic treadmill, the constant state of moving up and down from our hedonic set point , really gets revving up when presented with possibilities. 

So I have to get more queries out there to rev my treadmill engine, and so I’ll be writing those up until I work New York Hope as moulage crew and then start my semester. 

In the meantime, I dream of someday having a book release party. Locally, where I’m with the people I know. Cake and coffee and punch. What quirky things do you think should happen at a book party? Humor me.

Making things happen

Yesterday, I sent a few queries out for Archetype. I was going to wait, but I felt like it was time. I like having queries out, because it makes me feel like something good could happen. 

The strange thing is that I’m not feeling that burning feeling to get something published lately. Maybe because I have gotten published (or will be anyhow) — my short essay in A3. Or because I’m feeling the season slip into autumn and classes. Or because I’m used to getting rejections. Or because my feelings have nothing to do with how well-received my letter is if I wrote my letter well. 

I am really motivated to send out queries these last couple days. I’m trying to pace myself, though, because I’m always afraid I will become manic. 

The Hedonic set point

So, yesterday’s introspection left me at an interesting place. I’m considering a concept I teach in positive psychology called the hedonic set point. The concept is backed by research, so it’s not new age hoo-ha.

The theory goes like this: whenever something good happens to us, we feel great for a while, but then we get used to that feeling and it fades until we’re back at our set point. When something bad happens to us, we feel bad for a while, but then we start feeling less bad and then it fades until we get back to our set point. 

So, if I get rejected, and I don’t beat myself up over it, I will feel better eventually. If I beat myself up over it, I generate bad feelings and will feel bad for longer. But I will find myself once again at the set point.

Conversely, if I get accepted (for my manuscript or by an agent), I will feel great for a while, and may try to make the feeling last longer by celebrating and telling all my friends, but I will eventually fall back to the set point. 

In other words, it’s folly to look at happy-making moments in order to become happy. In a lifespan, major achievements don’t reset our hedonic set point.

What does reset our set point higher?
  • Practicing gratitude
  • Significant relationships (friendship, family, intimate)
  • Building self esteem = success/hopes and expectations
  • Giving back to community
  • Regular meditation
So, given that, there is one thing about getting published that could permanently put my set point higher and that is building self-esteem. I get that. 

Building self-esteem can be done in two ways: More success and modest hopes and expectations.*  I’m working on it.


* My fantasy of getting published is pretty modest. In it, I have to find an entertainment lawyer, look over a contract, argue the contract, go through all those intermediate steps that might take a year or four, have a modestly attended book party, travel a few places on my money, and make less than $40k. None of my friends will be particularly excited. My university will not count it as academic achievement. I’m okay with this. 

Enough

No signs of outward success will be enough. I think every writer falls into it: 

  • We want an agent
  • Then we want a publisher
  • Then we wish we’d gotten a better publisher
  • People who self-publish wish they’d gone traditional
  • People published with traditional publishers wish they’d sold more copies

On the other hand, it’s human nature to want to improve, and how can we tell we’ve improved? By external validation. We recognize that “I think it’s great” has its limitations as proof of success. We want experts to say we’ve improved. 


I know I’m in this “not good enough” cycle. I have gotten compliments on my writing. I got runner-up in one publisher’s writing contest and first place in a small journal’s essay contest. And that’s within less than two months of sending my short stuff out. I’ve gotten many more rejections, and for once I’m not counting the rejections, so that’s progress. But I’m starting to belittle what I’ve gotten as “not enough”. 

I think the key is to not belittle those successes as “not enough”, but to push forward. And this includes doing anything I can do to get better. Maybe I could count getting through dev edits, peer critiques, and beta readers as success. 

PS: I just discovered how to do emojis on 😁😂💖Windows!