Author: rachelhamm

Weekly Update

| rachelhamm

On Monday I didn’t do any work really, but did jot down a few ideas I had for editing Twenty-Five. Not much, but thinking about edits is better than nothing at all.

On Tuesday I began editing my first chapter of Twenty-Five. I worked on incorporating the first scene I took out and making it less of a backstory information dump by weaving the character stuff into the dialogue of Abigail’s birthday party with her family. I’m hoping it works better, but we’ll just have to see.

On Wednesday I wrote a little of The Death Effect.  About three notebook pages, which is probably like a page and a half typed.  Again, not a lot, but even a little momentum is better than none.

On Thursday, I did nothing!  I had to work at the orthodontist’s all day and then had event review for a wedding in the evening.  Didn’t leave much time for anything else 😦

On Friday, I did nothing again!  I had plenty of time because the only thing I did work wise was the final update of the timeline for the wedding and then the actual rehearsal for the wedding.  But I took some much needed ME time.  I’ve been working non-stop the past couple of weeks, so it was nice not to do anything.

Saturday, sadly, nothing.  I had the wedding most of the day, though, and was too tired and mentally drained to do anything productive when I got home, so I just watched a marathon of Friends.  Freaking amazing show.

Today, I opened up Twenty-Five and tried to figure out how to end my new/old chapter one.  Everything I typed didn’t work, so I tried to move on to chapter two, with the hope of coming back, but then my sister, who lives two hours away, came over because she was getting her hair done by our other sister, and we ended up going out to dinner.  I just got back and I’m going to go work on chapter two.  I’m worried because I’ve decided to take Abigail’s POV of the car accident out completely.  Probably a crazy idea because I got great feedback on it, but I think I’m bogging the story down by having the accident in both her’s and Ben’s POVs, and I just finished a chapter in her’s, so I need to have his now to keep the voices even.  If it sucks, I can always go back to the other version.

So that was my week in writing.  I hope you had more success!

Starting with Action…

| rachelhamm

When I was workshopping Twenty-Five on TNBW, several reviewers told me I needed to delete the opening scene and jump straight into the action.  So many reviewers in fact, that eventually I broke down and listened to them.  And I didn’t have second doubts about following that advice until I got my rejection from Scott Eagan.  He said that there was a lack of character development.  I wondered at the time if my character development suffered because I deleted the opening scene.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately.  I’ve read 13 books since the start of the year.  And not a single one of them starts off going straight into the action.  Granted, one is Jane Austen and no books from the early nineteenth century started with action (at least none that I’ve read), but the other 12 are all late twentieth or twenty-first century.  So….  My thoughts on that are that maybe I don’t need to start with action immediately.  Maybe that’s just a rule they throw out in writing workshops and on agent blogs because it sounds great in theory and because books that do it well, do it great.  But it doesn’t make sense for my romance novel which is based around the characters and not around what happens.

I took a couple days and re-read my MS.  Again.  And I really noticed the lack of character development at the beginning.  I was shocked, honestly.  I never thought that was a problem I had.  I assumed the biggest problem with Twenty-Five was that the plot wasn’t unique enough, which is still a problem when it comes to writing the query, but I actually think it kinda works for this book.  Anyways, my point was, it looks like you can’t listen to everything reviewers say.  Now, I’m not stupid or vapid or naive enough to believe that if I add that scene back in it’s going to magically fix my character development problem.  The opening scene is going to need a lot of editing and the action scene is going to need a lot of editing to make it work with the opening.  It’s going to be a lot of work.  But I believe in this book.  And I know I’ve said that a million times.  But I do.  So I’m going to do the work and I’m actually kind of excited about it.  It kind of makes me sick at the same time, but I’m going to focus on the excitement.

Getting Back in the Swing of Things, Writing Things, That Is

| rachelhamm

I’ve decided to stop p***y-footing around.  And I use the asterisks because I hate that word, but I can’t deny that that is exactly what I’ve been doing with my writing lately.  It is time for me to really try to get an agent.  No more feeling sorry for myself because query writing sucks (which it does, btw).

For the rest of this month, if I’m not working on wedding stuff or actually at work, I’m going to be revising Twenty-Five again, working on my query letter, and researching new agents to query.  A friend of mine from TNBW thinks I have a good shot with British agents, so I’m going to add a bunch to my list.  I’m not giving up on getting an agent for Twenty-Five until I’ve exhausted every single possible agent out there.

Beginning in May I’ll be sending out all of those queries, and since sending out queries really doesn’t take that much time, I’ll be devoting the rest of my free time to writing.  Because I need to finish The Death Effect.  Anytime I read portions of TDE, I love it, but I very rarely work on it.  I’m going to finish it.  I am determined that Twenty-Five will not be a fluke, I will finish another book!  I will, I will, I will!

Your job, my lovely readers, is to hold me accountable.  I am really going to need your help.  If I haven’t posted in a couple of days, leave me a comment or send me an email asking for an update- even if you don’t care for an update.  I need motivation, I need goals and deadlines.  My goal is to have sent at least 50 query letters by the end of May and at least 60k words of TDE.  Since I’ve already sent 18 query letters that means I have to send 32 letters, and since TDE is already at 28,535 words, I only have to write 31,465 words.  Now if I can just forget that it took me five months to write the 28k words I already have, then maybe that 31k won’t seem so daunting…

Think positively, Rach.  You can do it.  You can do it.

Irritated and Inadequate in North Carolina

| rachelhamm

Dear fellow Bloggers,

I’m slightly irritated.  I know, big shocker.  I tend to get irritated at the drop of a hat, but at least I recognize that about myself, right? Possibly why I’m still single?  But I digress…

Okay, so why am I irritated?  I just finished reading a book.  I both enjoyed the book and hated it.  Isn’t that the worst?  I enjoyed it because I was rooting for two of the characters and really wanted a love story for them.  I hated it because it did all the things we aspiring writers are told not to do and did not do them in a way that made me say, “Well, if you’re going to break the rules, do it like that.”  It broke all those rules and did it in way that I was annoyed throughout most of the book thinking, I SO would have loved to critique this book before it went to the agent, maybe then there’d be fewer instances of POV head-hopping, information backstory dumps, more explanation of what certain things that may not be familiar to the entire world are, and a helluv a lot more character depth, growth, and development.

This particular book was the third one published by this author.  I wonder if the glaring rule-breaking was present in her first book.  I wonder if she was able to get the first book past agent gatekeepers with these same really annoying elements.  Actually makes me want to read the first book.  Isn’t that weird?  But my point is, that I think it’s so much easier once you have an agent and you’ve had other books published to produce a mediocre book.  Why weren’t the obvious instances of POV head-hopping addressed before this book was published?  My guess is because it didn’t go through as much editing before it went to the agent and publisher.  Because the author already had the agent and publisher.

And of course, thinking this way about a book that I’m holding in my hands and reading makes me think about my own book.  Makes me wonder if I’ll ever have the courage to attempt another round of queries, if I’ll ever be able to hold it in my hands, bound, with a cover bearing my name as the author.  I think that it should be out there in the world, that it would make people happy to read it.  But I can’t pluck up the courage to sit down, write a query, and send it out.  I believe the book is good.  I know that the only thing holding me back is me, I’m just not really sure why I’m holding myself back.  Isn’t that what cripples most people in pursuing their dreams?  Themselves?  What am I afraid of?  Being told I’m not good enough, I think.

In all honestly, I think that fear has plagued me my whole life.  The fear of being inadequate.  And yet, I make myself inadequate by not just going for it, by not believing that I AM good enough.

I told that story the other day about the waiter who hit on me and I tried to make it funny, because when I step back and think about it, it really was funny.  But the truth is, I didn’t find it that funny when I wrote about it.  When he told me I was beautiful, my first instinct was to laugh and immediately dismiss it as a joke.  I certainly didn’t feel beautiful and couldn’t really understand why he would say that.  The more I thought about it the less funny it became.  When I left the restaurant and got into my car, I imagined telling people what had happened and my next thought was that no one would believe me.  Or that people would believe that it had happened, but not that the guy actually meant what he said.  I did tell a few people, I guess in the hopes that they wouldn’t have that reaction, and no one did.  And you know what my next thought was?  That they did have that reaction internally but were keeping it to themselves.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT PICTURE?

I’m never going to have confidence in myself if my brain automatically goes to that place where I can’t believe it when someone says something nice about me.  I’ll always be “not good enough” if I don’t allow myself to be good enough.  I don’t know why I’m sharing this with the world, if indeed the few people who read this blog can be considered the world.  I guess because I write now.  Even if sometimes it does make me feel inadequate.  And maybe writing this will force me to be good enough for myself so that I can take my book, that I spent a year pouring my heart into, and actually try and get it into the hands of someone who can make it good enough for the world.

Sincerely,

Irritated and Inadequate in North Carolina

Self-Esteem Boost of the Day

| rachelhamm

The good stuff’s at the bottom, so keep reading…

I had a really random weekend.  I had to work at the orthodontist’s on Friday, which I don’t usually do because we are typically off on Fridays.  On my lunch break I had to call all of the vendors for the wedding I’m working on the 24th.

Then on Saturday I drove to Durham to my boss’s house so we could ride to Asheville together for a seminar today.  Stupid us didn’t realize until I was already at her house that my house in Burlington is on the way to Asheville, so I drove an extra 45 minutes for no reason!

So today we went to the seminar and it was really a great class.  We learned about personality types and how we should approach selling ourselves to the different types of personalities thanks to Samantha Goldberg.  Then Mark Kingsdorf taught us about marketing our business and branding ourselves and I won a free hour consultation with him for our business!  SWEET!

Plus, Sam and I have decided to start a blog for Bliss by Sam.  We’re going to launch it next month and it’s going to be called Daring, Devoted, which is our company slogan.  Sam, our assistant Ali, and I are each going to be writing articles and we’ll be posting once a week.  My articles are going to be called: “So You Think You’re That Devoted…” and are going to be all about the aspects of wedding planning that really shouldn’t be DIY and every once and a while will include something that can easily be DIY.  Other recurring articles will be called “How Dare You,” “I Dare You To,” and “I Second that Devotion.”  I’m excited to get started on it and will of course link to it when it’s ready.

Now, on to the reason for the title of today’s post.  We left Ashville at 4:00 today and I drove all the way back to Durham, picked up my car and headed back to Burlington.  I stopped in Mebane to get some dinner at my favorite restaurant because I was tired and didn’t want to be driving anymore and I just wanted a little “alone” time since I’d been hanging out with my boss for the past 28 hours straight.  I got a booth for one, ordered my meal, and pulled out my book.  After the server brought my food and refilled my drink he stopped and said, “You know, I just have to say, you’re really beautiful.”

Whoa.  Ok, so I had just put two french fries in my mouth and I couldn’t really respond, but I could feel my cheeks just burning and he kept talking.  “You’re sitting there, reading your book with your cute little reading glasses…”

All I managed to mumble was “thank you,” and then he walked away.  Then when he came back a little later he asked me how old I am, and I told him 25.  He said something like, “Well you still have it going on,” or something like that.  I said, “Still?  25’s not old!”

He said, “No, but I’m 21.  Well, almost 21.”

Then when he brought me my check, he said, “We’re not supposed to do this, but if you want to leave me your number I’ll give you a call sometime.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that point, it was just so ridiculous.  No guy has ever asked for my number, and here’s this kid server who’s probably just trying to get a bigger tip out of me asking for it!  I told him that he needed to work on turning 21 first and then maybe we’d talk.

He didn’t let up!  He said, “I’ll be 21 in June!”

And my birthday’s in June, too, so I told him that and he asked me when it was, and I told him and he said his was on the same day.  I think he really was lying about that, but it was just so funny.  I laughed all the way home.  I’m going to think about this little encounter the rest of the week anytime that I’m feeling a little down on myself.  It was just so random and ridiculous!  But, it makes me feel good about myself all the same!

Now your turn- share your most random “I got hit on” stories in the comments!

Better to have loved and lost?

| rachelhamm

You know the quote.  Everyone does.  “It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”

I’m thinking about this quote tonight because I actually saw a comment that a couple of reviewers made on a poem on TNBW (not a poem I wrote BTW).  One of the reviewers used this quote and the other reviewer wondered if reviewer #1 had ever felt so broken that death felt like a better option.

I think that’s incredibly unfair of reviewer #2, personally.  If you HAVE loved, even if you have lost someone, then you’ve known the greatest joy there is in this world.  You’ve had a light at the end of the tunnel.  You’ve had starlight and fairy dust.

If you HAVEN’T loved, well, then I totally feel your pain.  You can’t describe that pain to another person who has loved.  They don’t understand it.  The emptiness.  The torment as you ponder day in and day out what the hell is wrong with you and why the hell no one in this world has ever cared about you.  You walk around every day bleeding inside.  Loneliness defines you.  Something funny happens and you have no one to run and share it with.  Not only do you have no one right now, you’ve never had anyone.  You feel like you never will have anyone.  Yet you smile.  You enjoy life.  You find pleasure in the little things.  Because you know what will happen if you don’t.  You really will be alone forever because no one wants to be with someone as unhappy as you truly are.

So.  Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?  I don’t know.  I can’t answer the question because I’ve only been on one side of it, but if I had to bet, I’d say yes.  I’d shout it from the rooftops.  I’d take a broken heart over an un-used one any day.  And I know there will be people who want to argue with me, but I’m sorry.  I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for you right now if you’ve broken up with your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife and it was the absolute worst experience of your life because I’m too busy being jealous of you.

Okay, that’s not completely true.  I will feel sympathy for you and that will just make me hate you even more.

Oh.  And though this post has nothing to do with a practical joke, Happy April Fool’s Day!

Officially Backed Up

| rachelhamm

After the almost-catastrophe of losing my flash drive, several of my readers helped with suggestions on ways of backing up my work should my spaztasticness ever result in loss of all of my writing again.

First, I tried Google docs.  It worked, but it was frustrating.  It took forever to upload all of my documents and my larger documents wouldn’t upload at all.  Not really helpful for backup when I can’t save my MS.  I had to create a new Google Document and copy and paste one chapter at a time.  It wouldn’t save if I tried to do more than one chapter at once.  And it would only let me save half of Twenty-Five in one document, so for both my first and second draft I have two documents: one with the first half, one with the second.  Again, not very helpful and certainly not efficient.

Next I tried Dropbox.  I liked this so much better.  I had to download the program onto my computer, which I didn’t want to do because I hate saving a bunch of stuff on the hard drive, but luckily I have a Mac and it’s still relatively new, so no slow-goings yet.  Anyways.  I was able to highlight all the folders I had on my flash drive and just move them over to Dropbox- no upload required.  It was so fast and I didn’t have to go through and re-create all of my folders from scratch to keep my work organized.  I’m officially in love with Dropbox!

So you’re probably wondering what the picture above has to do with all of this.  Well, it was one of the sample pictures when my Dropbox was created.  I like it.  Too bad I don’t play chess.

In other news- I added a ton of my friends from TNBW to my blogroll.  Check them out!

I’m Freaking Out a Little…

| rachelhamm

…because I’ve lost the flash drive that I keep all of my writing on.  And I mean ALL of my writing.  Twenty-Five, The Death Effect, all of the drafts of novels I haven’t finished, ideas I’ve only written a few sentences of, my short stories, my poetry, EVERYTHING.

Now, normally this wouldn’t be such a huge deal, because I post everything on TNBW and it serves as my “back-up” in case something like this happens, but about a month or so ago I had a bit of a breakdown.  I deleted everything from TNBW except for two short stories that I was entering into a contest, Twenty-Five, and The Death Effect.  So the good thing is that Twenty-Five is all there.  There may have been some editing I did without updating the site, but the whole book should be there.  The Death Effect I think is almost completely there, but there may be one or two scenes that I hadn’t updated yet.  Luckily, anything that isn’t on TNBW should be hand-written in one of my notebooks.

What bums me out is some of the poetry and short stories.  There were some I didn’t hand-write but typed immediately.  And I had all of my reviews from TNBW saved in separate documents for every project I ever posted.  I won’t be able to get those reviews back if I can’t find my flash drive!

So, any ideas for the best way to back-up your writing should this ever happen again?