Hope and Coffee

Sunday morning, and there is not enough coffee to wake me up.

After the past couple days, some good friends on Facebook, and my decision to try self-publishing if I don’t succeed in the traditional route, I feel much better. I am researching self-publishing methods, concerns, etc., right now.

I will have an author’s website (not chatty like this, but to promote writing, events, etc.). I should have one anyway, even if I’m traditionally published.

So I will prepare for the possibility, and even if I get taken in on the traditional route, I will have prepared things that will be needed for that route.

This is what hope does to me. It comes to me in the midst of defeat and illuminates my path — but only for the next few steps. I never know where I’m going past two steps ahead.

But I still desperately need coffee.

Optimism and the Aspiring Author

I wish I had more patience.

I’m playing the long game, wanting to be traditionally published. And it’s a long game, because the market is glutted with people like me who want to be published. The market is fickle, as it wants to pick books without risk. And the market is shrinking, because there are fewer readers.

I have invested a lot in my books. Developmental edits, beta reading, and sometimes massive rewritings. I’m now at a point where I don’t think I can improve them any more. (I could, of course, be wrong). I have gone through cycles of rejection, and I don’t know if I can go through it again.

But I do, because I have optimism. Every morning I wake up believing that my life could change in one day. I’ve heard enough stories where someone’s life changes tragically in one moment; I believe it’s just as likely that my life can change for the better. So as long as I have my works in the hands of agents and publishers, I can hope.

Hope and the writer

An acquaintance told me the other day that every single last one of you are bots.

It may be true — for some reason my readership is down to ten most days. (Probably the fact that I was doing short NaNo updates, which aren’t all that interesting, I guess).

I’m still writing in my blog, and I will keep writing in it for one reason: Hope. Hope is the conviction that there will be better outcomes. It’s what helps us through those things we have no power over — after I have done all the corrections, the dev edits, the query letter improvements, I hope that I will get published. If I keep publishing blog entries and advertising them on social media, I hope I will have readers.

Hope is what keeps me going in the absence of progress.

What I’m up to

What I’ve been up to lately:

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling it — at least not feeling like revising Gaia’s Hands or trying to figure out if another old book, Gaia’s Eyes, was worth resurrecting (as a short story, novel, birdcage liner, who knows what.)

So I entered a couple short story contests and a flash essay contest. I always feel more optimistic when I have things in the pipeline, whether they be queries or submissions. I still don’t know about DAW. I keep hoping.

I got the dev edit back for Apocalypse, and my work is cut out for me there. But it’s so promising now, and I want to get it in the hands of an agent. I’ll be proofing that starting today after I give platelets (or instead of platelets if my hemoglobin is low).
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I have a problem with this blog right now. I keep getting visits from some Eastern European porn site blog. The one time I thought I’d isolated it, it was from Ukraine. The sad thing is, I get random hits now from other Eastern European countries like Moldova and Asian countries like Azerbaijan (sp?). I’m afraid these addresses aren’t real and are being spoofed by the porn vendor. Sigh, time for that marketing plan. (Although I’m likely to wait till I have product.)

Hard Work

Got a rejection for a short story yesterday. I’m not too upset; I think I shoehorned my entry into the theme and it didn’t quite fit. I only have one thing out there now, and that’s Prodigies with a major press. The likelihood of this being accepted is very low, I’ll admit, but it will still hurt a lot if I get rejected.

What from there? Try to shop out the dev-edited version of Voyageurs, which is short at 70,000 words but we’ll see. Work on the rewrite of Apocalypse (which will take a few months at best guess) and send it back to my dev editor. See what tweaks might help Prodigies‘ saleability and shop it back out. Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to dev edit. See if I can salvage Gaia’s Hands in case Apocalypse gets sold and it needs a prequel. Write something else, maybe finish Gods’ Seeds.

It’s hard work, and so far has been fruitless. But if I’m going to be published, I want it to be my best, and my expectations have been raised by beta-readers and dev editors and my own revelations about where my stories could go.

Someday, I hope,my hard work will bear fruit.

Querying progress: Not a lot to report

I haven’t reported my writing/query progress for a while, so here it is:

My Prodigies query got rejected by Tor/Forge and a lot of agents over the past few months.

My query is now out to three publishers — one big, the others small and independent.

One of the small presses asked for my whole manuscript, which is progress. We shall see.

The other two presses — it’s early days yet.

Please keep me in your thoughts and even prayers if you think this unabashedly liberal and universalist Quaker deserves them.

Hope Springs Eternal or, Sisyphus Was an Optimist

Hope springs eternal.

I sent a query off to DAW Books, one of those other Big 5 publisher imprints that don’t require an agent. If my history with Prodigies is any indication, I should hear nothing from them in 6-8 weeks (they don’t send rejections if I understand correctly) and be done with it.

Why do I do it, even though my chances of being chosen for publication are small?

Because if I don’t do it, I’ll never know.

Because I’m the sort of person who tries, even if I fail.

Because I like to make things happen.

Because I’m an eternal optimist.

Because I think my writing deserves to be read.

Because I don’t want to be the one that gave up too soon on a dream.

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.

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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.

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. .

Thirty-six queries and a handful of change

I sent 36 queries out last night for Prodigies. It was time.

I am, as always, hoping some agent takes a nibble or a bite on my query. (Remember that I have one nibble on Voyageurs from a romance publisher and no other pending excitement.)

I have hope. Hope is not the belief that my desired outcome will happen, it is a belief that something advantageous will happen, maybe something I couldn’t even predict.

I was about to say one can’t have hope without taking a risk, but that’s not true. People who don’t like change can hope things stay the same, as those who try to make change can hope that they can make a change. But the person who hopes things stay the same has no influence on the change, while those who try to make change has an influence. Not complete influence, but still.

In addition, the person who tries to make change might find a result even better than they had expected, and being someone comfortable with change, they can take advantage of what they’ve been given.