Category: Uncategorized

Courting Change

I don’t know what I want to write today. I’ve changed this topic three times since I’ve started. The first three topics were dirgelike, full of confessing my hubris.

That’s not where I want to be today. I’m sitting on the couch, a purring Girly-Girl beside me, drinking some truly magical coffee. Beginning-of-semester meetings start Wednesday; I have to start transitioning out of my vacation.

Things change, and there is always hope.

***********

My life hasn’t changed much lately. I embrace change; I’m at my best when I’m evolving. My frustration lately has been that I’ve been changing my manuscripts but still seeing the same results in query rejections. But tomorrow, or even today, could be different, and I may swim in change again.

I got a little nervous writing this, because changes can be bad as well. I’m aware of that, but I’m writing about GOOD change here.

Trying too hard

It’s Sunday morning over very good coffee (Bub’s Blend, a limited edition coffee by L’il Bub; full of science and magic), and it’s a good moment to philosophize.

My topic: The seeming paradox of my weight loss. To fill in, I lost 63 pounds over a year and a half period eating a well-balanced 1350: 1500 calories a day, and then I stopped. My plateau has lasted for over a year, so I went to my doctor who referred me to a healthy lifestyles specialist. His words: “It’s possible that you’re not eating enough.”

I go to the specialist, and she has me breathe through this funky machine for ten minutes, and tells me “You aren’t eating enough.” She raised my calorie goal to 1633 (yeah, odd number) and reminded me I need to exercise, too. I have lost over two pounds in the past four days.

So let me wax philosophical: Is it possible to try too hard? That was my problem with my weight loss; although in my defense, I didn’t know that I wasn’t eating enough. I didn’t know that adding a little more nutrition would nurture my body.

So, in what ways am I trying too hard? That’s an interesting question, and one I think I need to ask myself about my writing. When have I edited enough? When can I accept that my work is good enough even if agents aren’t biting on it?

A very good question, and one I will be exploring…

The Plan

I have a plan for how I’m going to handle the whole querying thing. Bear with me:

  1. I will continue dev editing and re-editing my existent books one at a time because that’s just good practice wherever I’m published.
  2. I will wait for six months for this querying cycle on Prodigies to complete, researching self-publishing and self-marketing as I go.
  3. If at the end of those six months I don’t have any takers, I will self-publish Prodigies. You will hear a lot about this and hopefully you will read it. 🙂
  4. I will query other books as they get edited — Voyageurs will probably be the second book in the pipeline, followed by Apocalypse. And so on.

This plan doesn’t include writing. I have not written since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains, which I am sure needs serious dev editing as do the others.  That’s only been a month and a half. I haven’t been inspired to write lately, but there are various directions I could go — a sequel to Prodigies, a sequel to Voyageurs, another book in the Archetype series, a faerie adventure/romance novel … I have enough books that need to go through the dev cycle, though, that I wouldn’t have to write for a while. But I don’t want to get rusty.

I am hoping, of course, that this hard work pays off. I don’t know why I’m getting rejections from agents except for the usual “…I’m very selective … I don’t know if I can represent this novel with the enthusiasm it deserves.” (Question: If it deserves enthusiasm, why aren’t you — oh, never mind.) But at least I have a plan so that I’m not at the mercy of judgments about “what sells”. I just know that I write for a reason, and I want to see what that reason is.

Inching closer to self-publishing

I am closer — much closer — to self-publishing.

 I would be giving up a dream. Traditional publishing is my big dream, I think, because it’s external validation. Someone gives you a big shiny star, someone picks you for the dodgeball team. I was always the last one chosen for the dodgeball team. This might be why I have a dysfunctional relationship with the whole traditional publishing process — I want to be picked for the team and I still end up on the sidelines.

I’m still not easy about self-publishing, because I don’t know how to get people to read my book. I can’t just plop my book on the virtual bookshelf next to the other million people on the virtual bookshelf and expect people to read it. The quality of the books on the virtual bookshelf vary from very good to very poor, because not all people who self-publish go through the dev editor and beta-reader process like I do. How do people figure out what’s good to read? The rating system. How do books get read in the first place so they can earn those stars? Advertising and self-promotion.

I have to figure out how to self-promote, hoping I can get someone to read what I have to offer. I wish someone could do that for me, but I don’t anticipate having any money to pay for that.  Even offering it for free — you can do this sometimes, but if you make it free all the time people think you’re giving it away because you have to.

I feel a certain peace, now, thinking of self-publishing. My career doesn’t end with the rejections. I am not trapped on the sidelines of the dodgeball game. I will wait out the rest of the queries I still have out — rejections or six months out, whichever comes first. Then, if no agents take me on, I will self-publish Prodigies. And hope for the best.

Dreaming of a Garden

I dream of violets breaking through the earth,
presenting themselves with shy giggles,
and the ferns unfurling their fronds in stately parade,
Even the scruffy dandelions will come,
elbowing each other for room,
boldly declaring their rights under the sun.

For now, I must be satisfied with dreams
of introducing new lives in the garden —
rhubarb and greens and humble turnips all
slumbering in shells in cool, dry packages.

Tarot, Choices, and Motivation

I’ve just gotten back to reading tarot cards, having gotten a new deck for Christmas. I’m not great with it — in fact, I still have to read the little guidebook to see what the cards are telling me, mostly because I’m not a visual person.

I don’t read tarot to predict my future or anyone else’s. None of this “slap, slap, slap, your dog’s gonna die” card reading.  I read Tarot as a way of understanding what’s going on in someone’s psyche. I pick decks and methods that are suited for interrogating undercurrents and suggesting right action. The Good Tarot, my Christmas present, functions well in this way.

I don’t see my tarot-reading ability as having great favor from the spirits or anything dramatic like that. Tarot, to me, is a way of unlocking intuition and perhaps giving life-affirming instruction. Frankly, my readings are closer to positive psychology than woo-woo. Given that I teach positive psychology, that’s not surprising.

This morning I gave myself a very short reading. The way I do this is ask a question — the question was “what’s in store for me today?” I had already decided I would take some time putting more description in Voyageurs to make up for the material I cut by advice of my dev editor. So that was very much a part of “today”, but so was going to the weight clinic to try to find out why I haven’t lost this last 20 pounds. (I’ve lost 65 and have been on a plateau for a year).

I laid down one card — the two of fire. Its basic meaning — “creative planning for the future, mapping progress, trusting in the unknown. Spirit-led ambition.” (Baron-Reid, 2017). I laughed, because I sensed that one card told me everything I needed to know. But when I shuffled the cards again, two cards fell out — the aforementioned two of fire and The Fool, the card that symbolizes the beginning of a journey, a child’s enthusiasm.

The way those two cards go together tells more of a story: I am at the beginning of a journey, planning the journey with enthusiasm, trusting in the unknown rather than assuming that news will always be bad. It’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting this and it’s about my class planning for the semester, although that’s less like a journey and more like a walk around the block. I suppose it could be about a journey I don’t know about yet. It doesn’t matter, because what matters is that I take that attitude to all my journeys.

Baron-Reid, C. (2017). The Good Tarot Guidebook. Hay House Publishing.

We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet …

I don’t make resolutions, because they’re more wish than goal without the supports that will make it happen. However, it is my custom over New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day to do all the important things I want to incorporate in my life. In other words, I prefer my superstitious tradition to the superstitious tradition of making resolutions. Go figure.

Therefore, in the next two days, I need to:

  1. Write. Yes, I haven’t given that up yet. I am writing this (because I want to maintain the blog) and I will hit my head against the dev edit of Voyageurs which somehow needs 24,000 words without extraneous information. Or maybe I should write the first page of a future novel. 
  2. Eat well. I’ve actually been doing that for the most part for almost three years. I’ve lost 65 lbs from my heaviest. I’d like to lose 20 more pounds, but my body doesn’t seem to want to, I don’t want to fall back into old habits.
  3. Walk. This is something I need to incorporate in my life. I need to find more supports to walking because it’s not something I love to do.
  4. Work. By this I mean start to organize my new semester. I will probably set up my new semester calendar today or tomorrow.
  5. Self-care. Good smelling bath and a facial mask for fun. Rose perfume (which I got cheaply — it’s a sample size).
  6. Reach out to others. This has been very difficult for me lately. My fears of rejection have multiplied with all the writing rejections I’ve gotten.
  7. Laugh. Oh, hell, I don’t need to try to do that. I laugh all the time.
Love and best wishes for your New Year (if you celebrate this version of New Year)!

Thoughts and Prayers

I know that most of you in the United States are people I already know. My overseas readers, for the most part, seem to be regulars, but I don’t know you (or don’t think I know you). I am addressing all of you.

I need your thoughts and prayers.

Not in the sense of “I need to say something of comfort so I can go back to what I was doing,” as is too often the case when handling preventable tragedies in the US.

But I believe in thoughts and prayers if they occur in the sense of “I hope the best for this person.” I believe this has an effect — not necessarily to bring out a desired outcome, but to provide hope, clarity, courage, patience in the person who needs these things.

I need these things, because I’m struggling with writing. You might have noticed that I haven’t been able to write daily, and that’s because I don’t know if I’m going to continue writing. I have no idea if I’m ever going to be published, and I’m not sure it’s worth the time and money it takes to improve and make a story reading-ready.

But I don’t know if I’m not going to continue writing, either.

So, if you have a spare moment and the intent to help, send thoughts and prayers my way. You don’t even have to tell me you did. But I need to find clarity to move forward in whatever direction opens to me. .

Christmas Eve — a little on the prosaic side

I write this from Ottawa, Illinois, where I am visiting my father and sister and her family for Christmas.

Things I’m thinking about:

1) I wish I could drop Northwest Missouri State (my place of employment) onto Ottawa. This would unite a college town without a college (Ottawa) with a college without a college town (Maryville). I miss the river and the beautiful state parks and the invigorated atmosphere of a town that attracts people from Chicago and the suburbs,.

2) I still have to adjust to being 55. The hardest part is that it’s now unseemly for me to get crushes on younger men (maybe it was before, but I didn’t notice). I’ve gone from being flattering to being an embarassment. This is a major adjustment for me.

3) I can be with my family without talking much. This is a relief.

4) I’m editing Voyageurs, and the big problem is that I have to “fill in” with 34,000 words. I have NO IDEA how to do this. Think good thoughts.

Merry Christmas to all my readers — please keep in touch!