Do I Overwrite??

So, I finally had the resolve to open up the synopsis response email and it wasn't nearly as tragic as I feared (which is good since I was fearing a massacre of Jurrasic proportions). She told me that my premise was saleable - once again not the genre I specified though - and suggested some changes that I can easily fix.

So, why am I not over the moon then? Well, she also told me that it seems like I overwrite and she thinks there's a good book in there but it took a scythe to get it. Now I did throw a few sentences in there that didn't tell what was happening with the plot to try and convey a sense of my style and if synopsis is all about word conservation then i get that.

But what if that's not just it? What if she's telling me that I overwrite all the time, that my book is a great big mess of a jungle that no one is ever going to hike through because it's just too much trouble? Now I understand that if I ever get this damn thing on a bookshelf it won't be what it is now but i think I'd rather never get it there if it means going for word economy and cutting out everything that's special about it. Maybe I just need to find the right agent, the right publisher to go take the chance but this doesn't seem like the path of great risktakers if everyone is only worried in what will sell right now.

So the question is - am I delusional? Do I overwrite? I know that I think the beautiful nature of the words is the most important thing but I don't think they're purple, not just there to take up space and ramble and complicate things. If that's how I want to evoke an image or a feeling, why can't I?

Man, if this is how much stress and second guessing I have now, imagine if this actually ever happens. I will become the biggest basketcase that ever lived or learn the get over what other people think. There's a lesson in there somewhere I think -it just might take a scythe to fine it.

-- Post From My iPhone

Some Things You Can't Take Back

I get it – I hear the words coming out of my mouth and I know they’re going to get me in trouble. I know they’re not right, that they’re not what anyone wants to hear. And yet, when it’s important, when it’s THIS important, how can I NOT say them?

I could have been more delicate. I could have been more calm and collected and poised. And I know that what I say isn’t going to make a lick of difference – that people are going to do what they’re going to do and they’re not going to listen to anything I have to say. And for someone whose goal in life is to make people stop and listen, that’s something it’s not easy for me to take but I do.

Maybe I’m a bitch, setting myself up to be the person who gets to say ‘I told you so’ down the line. Maybe I’ve just burnt a bridge and there’s nothing I can do to fix it, risked everything with one spark for a damn cigarette I didn’t really need. Maybe I’m just narcissistic and needy and need everything to be about me. Maybe I actually truly do care. None of these things matter, not my intentions or my goal or even the damn conversation. None of it.

But I’m not sorry for what I said – it was the truth. People always say the truth is good but only if you’re willing to hear it, sometimes not even if you’re ready to hear it. It was probably overkill, it was probably too much. I want to believe, I want to see it like she sees it, understand what she understands, but I don’t get to come in. I have to comment on the pretty drapes and the lovely tea cozies and just blow right over the point, tiptoeing around the elephant in the room that I’m dying to talk about. I’m not someone that easily avoids the point – I’m the one digging like crazy to get to it. I’m the person that comes up with funny names for the damn elephant.

Does she know that I want so badly to accept it and be done with it? Does she think I like being like this – always questioning, always worrying, always wondering? I want to be reassured – to ask all the questions and get all the answers and then believe that everything is going to be alright, even if it’s not, even if it’s never going to be. I wouldn’t even care if she lied and long as she doesn’t do it badly. Well that’s not true – and I guess that’s my problem. I want her to want to tell me. I want her to want to know what I think. I want her to want to include me in her life. I guess just like everything else, I want it so badly I just end up pushing it away. The time for wanting any of those things vanished with a slammed door.

Who cares if I happened to be right? Look at what the hell being right just cost me.

Anti-Climactic Because I Am An Idiot

Well, I did it. I finally got a query letter off my desk. And yeah, it's not really as great as I thought it was going to be because:

a) I worried so much about the query letter that I forgot about my unpolished synopsis sitting in the corner that's not ready to go out and, lo and behold, a lot of people are asking for both,

b) most agents I was looking at don't accept snail mail so my beautiful letterhead and paper was benched for this game and there really isn't anything quite like sealing an envelope and dropping it in a mailbox to feel monumentous,

c) the first two of three email queries I sent I did without any type of letterhead so if they like me I hope they don't want to call or mail me anything because I forgot my contact info (though, thank goodness my email they do have), and

d) my email editor means its impossible to double space anything so I have a sneaking suspicion that my three queries will arrive looking like a crazy, spaced out mess and no one will take me seriously.

So, in short, I am an idiot. I accept it but wow, how I wanted to NOT be an idiot this one time. And as I sit here, worrying over my synopsis and my new idea nagging in the back of my mind, wearing my "inspiration antennae" hoping to sap every bit of creativity and productivity out of me, I just can't get it out of my head. Idiot . . . .

The House

Damn Daddy! He did it, he pulled me back in.

He was trying to be nice when I walked into the house today for dinner and handing me the listing of a cute little house that he thinks I should buy. Let's forget that there's no way I could qualify for a loan even if the payments would be about 2/3rds of what the rent is on my renter now or that it's kind of in an area I know my roommate doesn't want to live in or that I'm not even sure I want to make such a big purchase.

It makes me feel sad all the same. Because I hate that there are so many can'ts standing in front of me. I hate that I'm watching all of these people around me settle down and get married and buy houses and have kids and I'm . . . not, . . . just stuck in where I am. Not that where I am is bad or anything but . . . it just scores the fact that I'm still aimlessly alone.

My friends like to say that they're still single because they were focusing on their careers, they had other things that they wanted to do. That was never me. Maybe I suffered from a lack of a plan. Betsy wanted to be married before she was 27 and she's going to be. The only vague ideas I ever had never came true so I stopped having vague ideas and rejected having concrete ones.

Sometimes it just seems like I'm the only one not growing up. I'm aging, I'm getting older, but I'm not growing up - I'm still transient, I'm still untied, I'm still around. There is nothing to keep me in this place, in this moment, except for my undying hatred for change. I guess I just want a reason to stay, to be here, to belong.

Off To A Good Start

So, I did it. I made a decision, I made a plan, I made sure too many people knew about it to back down now. My deadline is July 31st. By August I will no longer be agonizing over my query letter - it will be in the mail and I'll just be awaiting rejections as I move on to the next project percolating on my desk.

And it feels good. It's only the second day of my new Plan Of Action (I picture an announcer saying that it in booming, echo-y voice that asserts how important that is - yes, yes, I DO come with sound effects) but so far I've accomplished all the things that I scheduled to do.

The next one's a big one. By Saturday my query letter is going to be done DONE. No more changing or rewriting or brooding - just a best effort, the best I can do.

But this is good for me. In ways I'm very much a planner. I have lists upon lists scrawled on pads of paper, post it notes, - even a book of only to-do lists! - across my desk at work. And they help me remember everything that I need to get done. I've never missed a deadline at work yet and the ones I've had to push back I've pushed weeks ahead of time because if I'm paying attention, I do budget my time well.

So, the key is to remember that just because this isn't the ivory tower with the crazy staircase and the cartoon bosses breathing down my neck and comical emails besieging me every ten minutes, it's still important and a deadline that can't be moved, that needs to be stuck to. If I commit to it, I should be fine.

But then, wrench thrown into the mix, while trying to get my dreams off the ground I'm also throwing a baby shower by my sister-in-law. Wouldn't be such a big deal if I wasn't also trying to finish making her surprise baby quilt that is SO not done and needs to be cause if its not, she ain't getting no present and that won't fly.

Plan, budget time, you'll be fine - that's my new mantra going through my head at all times. Plan, budget time, you'll be fine. Plan, budget time, you'll be fine. Plan . . .

Stuck Between Floors

I hate how I get to the point where I think I've got it all figured out, I know what I need to do next (just take the leap, jump off that cliff and go for it) and then . . . nothing. Anti-climactic much? (Oh, so that's NOT the edge of a cliff just a ledge you can't quite see from this vantage point. Interesting.)

I feel like I'm always on the verge of making a BIG decision and I get that I'm being too preoccupied and weird and just stalling because I'm either afraid that I won't make it or afraid that I will (must be afraid of one but I think I might be afraid of both which is just so useless it makes my ears bleed and then all I can think is how can I put this frustrating contradiction into some character passing by and get it to work - is it bad that I use fictional people as ad hoc therapy?) but then I realize that I'm avoiding making any decisions.

And its not what I want to do. It's not what I NEED to do. And yet, there I am, doing it anyway. Even though I kept saying I was going to start taking the stairs at work everyday it took getting trapped in the elevator (which was pretty much 100% my stupid fault anyway) to get me to actually start with that next step.

So maybe I have to hit the STOP button and get myself stuck in my metaphorical literary elevator. But what does that mean? And do I have the guts to do it - to commit and not turn back and damn all the consequences? If I can get myself to believe it, I know I can persevere and power through and do awesome things. (I've completed NaNoWriMo both times I've tried, I completed most of my senior thesis in 4 hour blocks over 3 weeks and still managed to pump out absuridsm at its best, I wrote a really good novel inspired by a box of fishsticks in the freezer.)

But it's getting myself to believe it that's the hard part. Am I ready to pick up the phone and call for help, no false alarm just a true literary emergency?

What a Differene A Week Makes

Wow - it's true. Time is good for a lot of things. It gives perspective and lets levelheads start to come through. Wow, what a week.

Besides the action packed stuff (Val was in an electrical storm, Val was trapped in an elevator, Val was almost in a drunken brawl at the airport), the thing that's changed everything the most is that I got that teeny, tiny bit of validation I was looking for.

I know, I know, we shouldn't pull our worth from other people and all that matters is your own opinion but, come on, I'm a writer, that can't ever be 100% true. And when I was feeling down I gave my book to someone to read and they loved it. As in couldn't put it down, stayed up all night reading it, sent me an email at 2am to tell me how much they enjoyed it loved it. As in sent me a really long explanation on thier opinion and quoted parts of my book back to me loved it. As in is making their husband read it loved it. Gotta say, that is just the best kind of loved it that you can get.

And that inspired me to reread my book a little bit and rediscover what I loved about (dude, I totally forgot I was kind of funny) and reaccess what my genre is (though I still have trouble calling it romance because it does not end that way but romanitc comedy I'll take). And, well, yeah - I have reread that email more times than I care to admit out loud. *guilty look*

Ahh, but what a difference a week makes . . .