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Of course we want to be read.

I feel invigorated, simply because I’m being read.

I have three beta-readers now, and I’m getting constructive feedback that’s helping me make good substantive changes to Voyageurs. And, occasionally, expressing what they like about the book.

You, the reader, have read excerpts from this and other books here online, but it’s different. I don’t know if any of you are real or just bots. I assume some of you are real, or else I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. But its murky, and since I know only a few of my readers, and I know nothing about whether you’re enjoying what you read, it hasn’t been like being read.

As a result, I am becoming increasingly convinced that writers don’t write just for themselves.

If they did, there would be no self-publishing. There would be no Wattpad. There would be no FanFiction.net. There wouldn’t be a whole industry based on improving writers’ skills if writers didn’t want to be read.

There would be no hashtags on Instagram like #writersofig. No writing-related memes on Facebook that the writers (usually the unpublished ones) reblog. There would be no shirts like the one in my closet that says “You’re coming dangerously close to being killed off in my next novel”.

There’s enough of us who want to be read that there’s a multi-million dollar industry who wants to make money off us.

Therefore, I will quit apologizing for wanting to be read, and for agonizing over rejections. I write for myself, but I want to be read, and I am willing to craft my message accordingly, even if I won’t change my themes or characters.

A Sense of Purpose

Having a beta-reader read my work has been a revelation.

All the frustration at not being published has dissolved in a sense of purpose I hadn’t expected to find. It seems I want my writing to improve more than I want my writing to be published. I actually anticipate the latest chapter report from my beta-reader as an opportunity to refine the book, to allow its message to shine.

This is who I am. At least this is closer to my self-image than the frustration I felt when getting rejections that gave me no idea of what to improve. With my writing, I don’t want to be told “It’s not you, it’s me,” I want to be told what didn’t work. (On the other hand, in relationships, I’d rather be told “It’s not you, it’s me.”) To tell me what’s wrong and what needs improving communicates that my work is worth improving.

So I welcome my beta-reader making comments on “This scene goes by too quickly” and “What’s all this focus on smashing his eggs?” and I’m taking her out to dinner when this is over. Thanks, Sheri!

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I know my blog posts have been really short lately; I hope that isn’t a problem. revising a class of mine from the ground level. All my deep thoughts are going toward family resource management, poverty, and basic financial skills — which is my field of study, but still requires wrestling up a lot of material to inform the class.

I’ll keep writing because I enjoy talking to you, and I hope you enjoy reading. This too will pass. And if you want to be a beta-reader (or just want to say hi), drop me a message!

Seeking beta-readers

I would love to invite you to be beta-readers, now that I understand how absolutely invigorating they are to the writing process.

I know this is a little bit of work on your part, but on the other hand you can say “I knew her when…” someday (ha!)

All I would need from you:

1) read a manuscript
2) comment on it honestly (at least chapter by chapter).

You’ll be recognized by name in acknowledgements if it gets published.

Please let me know!

A Pattern to my Days

As a professor, summer has a different pattern than the rest of the school year. The belief is that professors are “off for the summer”, and that’s generally not true for the faculty I know. The focus of our work changes, and we teach more concentrated courses and hold our office hours in Starbucks. We do research projects and revamp classes and write, and we may supervise internships and field experiences.

I’m currently splitting my days into three parts. Early in the morning, instead of writing this blog, I work on the next week in my drastic revision of People, Money, and Psychology. Instead of running it as a cognitive psychology class about money, I’m creating a class about poverty and all the ways it’s not just about lack of money. I’m two-thirds the way through the lesson plans. The rest is easier once I have a shape to the class. 
After that, I write the blog. Not that I don’t love all twenty-something of you, but I have to give my freshest coffee-fueled brain cells to the classwork first. I haven’t felt too inspired lately on the blog front, and I apologize.
Finally, my day is split between getting some sort of walk in, editing Voyageurs, and planting plants in my soon-to-be amazing garden. 
So what are you up to today? 

Pushing toward growth.

I have one condition I need to fulfill before I keep writing — well, maybe 2 — a developmental editor and beta-readers for my finished books.

I need to find beta-readers. This is a difficult task, although my beta-reader for Voyageurs, Sheri Roush, is doing a wonderful job of pointing out where my book gets confusing and where it’s really working.

I need to find money in the budget for developmental editing.

I need to find beta readers.

Would you like to be a beta reader? Let me know!

Well, Tor rejected my novella of Gaia’s Hands.

The myth of becoming a recognized writer goes like this: a writer writes original work, writes what they love as their friends exhort them to, and after a double-digit number of rejections, finally gets published and makes big splashes in the publishing world. You may recognize this as the storyline of J.K. Rowling, but it’s been told about almost every big writer (“Do you know that Big Name Writer got rejected 23 times?”).

I’m not feeling very optimistic right now. I’ve been rejected somewhere over 100 times; I’ve lost count. I write, revise, submit, and fail. I cling onto the hope that this time would be the time I get published.

You’ve heard this all before. I’ve said it all before.

I’m supposed to write for just myself, and that makes no sense to me. Why would someone write several novels — 80,000 pages apiece — and edit, and polish, so that nobody will read it? If I did this all for myself, I’d write short romances with damn near zero for plots. I’d never get them published because by “romance” I would mean “romance” and not sex.

The optimist in me feels crushed for trying something new. The pessimist in me says “I told you so.” The realist in me can’t figure out how “writing for myself” justifies writing novels nobody reads.

Realistically, I may have to stop writing novels. I don’t know if I will have the motivation to write much if I give up novels, because the possibility of being heard (an antidote to a childhood of not being listened to or believed) was my major motivator, and the reason that not being able to be published is so heartbreaking.

I know I’ve come back before, but right now the thrill is gone.

The Optimist vs the Pessimist

I’m discovering that I am an optimist.

I’m waiting for a few things in the pipeline as I explained yesterday, and I feel good about my possibilities, despite all the times I got rejected before on these very same writings. This is why I keep submitting to agents and publishers. I fantasize about getting published. Again and again, I’m drunk on possibility, captured by potentiality, suspended in rosebuds, surrounded by perpetual spring.

The pessimist in me tries to shut down the optimist to no avail. Optimism provides a kind of high that pessimism can’t compete with. The pessimist in me is in its full glory when I get rejected, and feels no obligation to commiserate with me, preferring to kick me while I’m down.

I’m trying to find a way around the Pessimist’s great timing when I get rejected again, which I suspect will happen (despite the optimism), because realistically, there are a lot more of us writers than there are agents and publishers.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Ther eis one phrase that shows up in every novel I write — “hiding in plain sight”.

This phrase refers to the fact that every novel of mine involves people with some sort of preternatural talent — the strength and teleportation of the Archetypes, the time travel of the Travellers, the Gaia-given talents of those who eat of the Trees, and the inborn random talents of the Prodigies. All of these beings, human and other, live in the world of ordinary people, and all of these people deal with what “hiding in plain sight” means.

Josh, poet and Keeper of the Garden, believes that one can do anything in the open and people will re-explain it as something plausible. He is the only human who believes in humans’ obliviousness to this degree. It could be because his given talent is to have visions, which are not very obvious to other humans.

The Archetypes, immortals in human form, are reluctant to “out” themselves to humans, and so generally don’t teleport or lift objects, nor do they transport themselves in view of others. Usually. Lilly (who lived as a human for 30 years) once teleported a car — with her husband in it.  Archetypes even carry themselves differently around humans — their natural state is to look like superlative examples of humans, so they shake themselves into less beautiful forms of themselves — a kind of reverse glamour.

Meanwhile, the Travellers are the most hidden — they don’t hop out of rooms when non-Travellers are looking, and they stick with their own kind complete with secret societies. If humans understood that the Travellers could manipulate the future by changing the past, Travellers’ lives would be endangered, and they have no non-human strength like the Archetypes.

Prodigies’ talents are most often subtle, and so are often practiced in public. A little emotional manipulation here, a little polyglot talent there — nobody catches on. Except for the man who can cure or kill by touch — he’s very guarded by his talent.

There’s a logic here — a risk/benefit analysis. What is the risk of disclosure versus the benefit? It’s the type of thinking I don’t see in superhero movies, where the heros don’t understand why there’s so much anti-human sentiment.

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*Lilly tends to be impetuous and imperious, like her namesake.

What am I waiting for?

I’m waiting.

What am I waiting for?
The first thing I’m waiting for is 8:00 AM Central (US) Standard time, which is the point at which I can submit the novella of Gaia’s Hands to the Tor Novella program. Remember that Gaia’s Hands is the first book I wrote, the “problem child”, and I took a metaphorical chainsaw to it and reduced it to a little over 20,000 words. I will submit it and then wait some more.
The second thing is the outcome of my latest (and last) Kindle Scout campaign for Voyageurs. I don’t have much faith in this, as Kindle unceremoniously dumped the program on April 3, two days after I got in. They immediately dismantled much of the infrastructure, quit collecting votes, and belatedly let us know that they would choose the winners themselves. Nothing I’ve seen assures me that they’ll choose any of the books, much less mine. 
The third thing is results for a blood test. Nothing scary, I assure you. The test is the HLA antigen test, and if it’s negative, I can become a platelet donor for my local blood bank (apparently I have a dreamy platelet count.) If it’s positive, then I was definitely pregnant at one point in my life. The time I could have been pregnant was 40 years ago, when I was 13, as a result of a rape. (If it’s negative, it doesn’t mean I was never pregnant.) So the blood test has the potential of solving a mystery, one that I’m not sure I want to know the answer to.
Waiting has its advantages. It is ripe with potentiality, a period of time where the optimist can imagine big things to happen. However, I prefer knowing so I can know where to go from here.