A Glimmer of Success

Yesterday, an agent asked to see my full manuscript for the first time. Mind you, I have sent out hundreds of queries for my five novels.

Let me be honest — I have sent out queries for books that I hadn’t sent through developmental edit or beta reading. I have sent out queries not knowing how to write a query letter. I have, rightly, gotten rejections.

I have learned a lot from my failures. The visual above doesn’t really show the road to success because it doesn’t incorporate learning from failure. One can work hard but wrong, and all that effort means nothing.

This is not to say that I will get an agent out of this. I could get rejected by the other 27 agents I have queries out to. The agent who has my manuscript might pass. Hard work and learning from failures may not be enough. The book might just be “not what we’re looking for”.

But it’s a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of success. I’ll take it.

Writers Block (warning: very short)

I have writer’s block.

Under the Weather — Time for a Free Write

Under the Weather
I’m feeling decidedly under the weather (literally — this weather is weighing on me) and uninspired. Not a good thing for a daily blog. I’m writing this because I know I have to write something or else I will fall away from writing the blog after 1000-some posts. And that will really depress me.

Free Writing
So I’m going to use this as a free writing exercise. In free writing exercises, you put your pen down on paper (or fingers on the keyboard) and you just write without editing. It’s a great way to come up with ideas.

Here goes:
Brother Coyote and Kel are returning the twins (Kira and Nala) to Ridgeway III, a restricted planet. Thus what Kel is doing is borderline illegal, just as Coyote’s leaving ridgeway III was illegal. Nonetheless, he’s going on a walkabout of sorts with Kel, offering his uncanny talent of opening wormholes to her shipping business.

One of the interesting problems they will meet with arriving at Ridgeway III is Coyote’s mother, the Convener of the Moot (i.e. Prime Minister). Coyote’s mother is a charismatic, expansive person who thinks Coyote and Kel are a good match. Given that they’ve just met and they get along like cats and dogs, she’s sorely mistaken. Probably.

Ridgeway III is a closed world through their own choice — they don’t want their beauty planet defiled by commerce, and they’re a bit edgy about how outsiders will take their occasional inborn talents — of which Coyote’s talents are an extreme example. But Coyote is their test case, and Kel and Coyote have to keep his talent under wraps out in space.

Reflection
Note how the free writing isn’t that organized. That’s okay; it will still make a good start of a story. I hadn’t gotten these ideas hashed out on paper; now I feel more anchored to what this story will flow like.

Mission and Vision Statements (Personal Development)

Mission and Vision

Mission statements for writers encapsulate who we are as writers. Vision statements propel us forward. It’s nice to have both, because writers have to deal with a lot of delayed gratification. Missions and visions motivate, much in the same way as

Mission Statements

I found source material that describes how to write a mission statement better than I ever could. Here you go. If you are not a writer and you want a personal mission statement, go here.

Here is my mission statement using their methodology:

My Mission Statement:

I am a chronicler of an earth filled with unusual talents, both inborn and gifted. My readers delve into their reading and love exploring the unknown and preternatural in their own world. I ground my fantasy with sociology, psychology, and humor. I write to create modern mythologies that could be right before our eyes if we knew where to look. I plan to write short stories and novels, and to obtain a traditional publishing contract in the next five years.

Vision Statements: I didn’t learn them this way

Writing a vision statement seems a bit more difficult, especially as all the sources I read about writers’ vision statements seem to refer to mission statements, and mission and vision statements are not the same thing. Vision statements describe where we want to be five or ten years down the road. This one, however, gets close, if a little long. For non-authors, this worksheet may be helpful for both writers and non-authors, but it will yield a longer vision statement.

I learned vision statements as a very short blurb describing one’s future trajectory. Thus, my vision statement is shorter than those in the links.

My Vision Statement:

My vision is to be a published author of contemporary fantasy by a well-regarded publishing house. My works will introduce a modern mythology for the 21st century which detail the preternatural shoulder-to-shoulder with the mundane.

A Takeaway

Write a mission and a vision statement. Hang them on your wall or put them on the desktop of your computer. Use them to focus, use them to reassure yourself that the work is worth it. And tell me how it goes: lleachie@gmail.com

Once Again

Sorry I skipped yesterday, but it was a full working day for me. I sent out some queries for Whose Hearts are Mountains yesterday, and I will send some out today. And again.

It’s not the first time I’ve sent queries out. I’ve never received a good response on queries, but I keep improving and I keep sending queries out.

I believe in my work. Maybe I believed in it too much when I sent the first queries, before I discovered dev editors and harsh re-edits. Maybe I believed in my queries too much before I learned to write queries (and I hope I’m doing them right now).

I hope this time around is the time I get an agent.

Valentine’s Day — a whole lotta love (Personal)

Yesterday, I taught my personal adjustment students about love. No, not the deeper, profound experience of love. But I taught them that Valentine’s Day celebrates only one type of the seven types of love that the ancient Greeks celebrated.

So, those types of love:

Agape – love of humanity.
Storge – love of family
Philia — love of friends
Pragma – love which endures.
Philautia – self love
Ludus – flirtatious/playful love
Eros – romantic and erotic love.

Valentine’s Day only seems to celebrate eros, and it does so in a big, splashy, commercialized way.

I want people to reclaim the other types of love for Valentine’s Day and go out and celebrate them. Galentine’s Day is a good start, for those female friends who want to celebrate each other. But we should be celebrating our families, our friends, our flirtations, the world. Wouldn’t the world be better for that?

If you liked this blog post, please drop me a note at lleachie@gmail.com or @lleachsteffens on Twitter.

Every Good Thing Has Its Cost

This morning I read a note in Facebook from an author who spoke of the time-consuming process of promoting her book. She spoke of the responsibilities of social media, the realities of watching her ranking on Amazon.com, the need for self-promotion.

Reading it, I realized that getting published will have its price. Starting with the process to publication — galley proofs, advanced review copies, building one’s social media platform (which I have been doing as evidenced by this blog post). Then, when the book is published, some or most of the responsibility of promotion falls to the reader through social media, book tours, and sales at conferences.

Am I ready for that? I think so. I have known that being published, especially if I get published by a house with some presence, will be life-changing, and that some of that life change will be work. I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

So You Want to Write a Blog Part 2 (Personal Development)

So, I have a blog now. Do I just write?
Not exactly. You have to think about what you write. It needs to fit your theme and audience — if you’re writing to writers about writing, writing about politics will probably feel “off”. You can be an essayist in your blog and write about whatever crosses your mind, but it may be harder to convey a theme in your blog. On the other hand, John Scalzi, a science fiction writer with a multi-book contract, writes about everything from writing to politics. His blog, fittingly, is called Whatever. If you’re as big as John Scalzi, you can write whatever.

How do I know what to write?
If you have a theme and an audience, you’re doing them no favor by just free-writing. This is your personal/professional presence on the Internet. If you’re a writer, it’s a chance to market yourself. You can compose directly on the screen, but compose. cut and paste to make the document flow. Proofread. Read it aloud to yourself like any other document you want to write to impress people.

The blog should not be too long, in order to cater to today’s readers. I’m divided on how excerpts of novels and short stories should be presented in blogs, but I think that short excerpts are the best.

The 29th Annual Edition Guide to Literary Agents 2020 (Brewer, 2019) suggests that one should have a list of topics for six months or a year. This works great if one writes weekly; I write daily (which is insane, but so be it). I do have a list of weekly topics, but intersperse those with more personal observations about being a writer.

Other suggested tricks
The 29th Annual Edition Guide to Literary Agents 2020 (Brewer, 2019) has a chapter that presents several other reader- and SEO-friendly suggestions for blogs:

Short paragraphs and headings, as you see here. This works well for informational blogs; not so much for narrative.
An SEO tag in the title. I have a few that I use for my blogs, although I sometimes forget these because they’re new to me.

There are probably more tricks, but I haven’t learned them yet. I am still working on getting readership for this blog, but it may increase after I get published (I hope).

Reference:

Brewer, R.L., 2019. The 29th Annual Edition Guide to Literary Agents 2020. Writers’ Digest Books.

So You Want to Write a Blog Part 1 (Personal Development)

Writing a blog is an admirable pursuit. It’s also a lot of fun. But randomly throwing blog posts into the ether is not rewarding, and the thrill will be gone soon.

Over the next couple days, I want to explore the things you need to do to start a rewarding blog.

First, find a reason/theme/audience. These options have similar aims: to focus your writing. This gives your writing a particular “brand” for people to follow. For this blog, my theme is writing, and my audience is writers and potential readers. (This latter purpose will step up when I get published). Despite this theme and audience, however, I estimate 50% of my readers right now are not writers, but may be potential readers.

Commit to writing. Continuity is one reason that people come back to a blog. Many writers commit to weekly blogging; that’s a reasonable amount. For some reason, I write daily. I’m not sure this is a good thing, but one of my reasons for writing this blog (other than what’s given above) is to warm up and sharpen my writing skills.

Find a platform. Commonly used platforms are Blogger (where this blog is), WordPress, Tumblr, and Wix. Each has advantages and disadvantages; some have access to more options in the paid version. I have used Blogger and Wix; I use Blogger because of its simplicity and because, when I tried to migrate to Wix, my readers didn’t migrate with me even though Wix has a superior visual interface. But which one you choose is up to personal preference.

I will explore further blog-writing ideas and tips in the next installment and would welcome your ideas and tips in the comments or by email: lleachie@gmail.com

The Luck Factor

I need more luck. Of the good variety.

It occurs to me that my writing may not be enough to get published. There are people who get published because they know someone, or because of some random set of events that get them to the right place at the right time with the right person.

I don’t know anyone in the industry, so I’m praying for just that sort of luck.

I know every good thing is a two-edged sword — the lottery bestows money, and with it, tension. A publishing contract would invite paperwork and other life changes into my life. But the status quo isn’t necessarily the best place to live either.

So I am wishing and praying for the kind of luck, the serendipity that changes my life in a positive way.