Twenty-Five

Confidence

| rachelhamm

Where do writers get their confidence?  Because I can’t seem to find mine.  I used to have some, remember back in November when I was so excited to start sending out queries?  Well, now I feel paralyzed.  I have no confidence, no courage to send out a new round of queries.  I know I need to.  I’ve edited Twenty-Five to death. TO DEATH.  It’s at the point now where I don’t want to make any changes again until a professional (i.e. an agent, editor, or publisher) has read it.  But I can’t work up the nerve to send it out there to professionals.

The whole query process just makes me sick to my stomach.  You have to write a query letter which has to be so knock-your-socks-off fantastic that the agent thinks, “Hmmm… that’s interesting.  I want to read the first couple of chapters.”  Because no matter how knock-your-socks-off fantastic the query letter is, chances are it isn’t going to be soooo fantastic that the agent is going to want to read the whole book.  Unless you’re a friend of mine who has 6 full requests pending at the moment!  (YAY!  She’s so freaking talented if she DOESN’T get an agent than I might as well give up forever.)

Then, once the agent has the first couple of chapters, they have to knock them out of their chair, pick them up, and knock them out again in order for the agent to think, “Hmmm… that’s interesting.   I want to read the rest of the book.”

Then, the rest of the book has to be the ABSOLUTE BEST THING that agent has ever read.  And even then, you may get this response: “While I think your writing/book/story has promise, unfortunately it is not a project I can take on at the moment.”  Or something similar.

So, if you are out there querying- how are you doing it?  Because I can’t.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I don’t think my book is bad.  I want people to read it.  But I can’t send out a damn query letter.

I think it’s the query letter that is my actual problem.  They are so freaking hard to write.  I can’t seem to boil the 96K words down into 250 words and it still be interesting.  I know that people do it every day, so why can’t I?  Every time I try, I lose my voice.  I lose the spark that makes my book special.  Because the truth is, even though it deals with a very simple idea- love found, love lost, love found again- it is incredibly complex.  There are so many components that make it unique and special and different, but I can’t put all those layers into a query letter.  And I can’t seem to figure out which ones are the most special, the most unique- the ones that are going to knock the socks off an agent.

If anyone can share some of their confidence with me, I’d really appreciate it!

Official?

| rachelhamm

**Update 11/21/11** I tried to go to Mezzo Magazine’s site, and it was gone 😦  My previous triumph now seems premature.

 

I’m officially a published writer!

Well, sort of.  My poem, “My Pen,” has been published in the online magazine, Mezzo Magazine!  It’s amazing to go to the site and see it and know that I didn’t upload it for feedback, or as something random on my blog, or as a note on Facebook.  I submitted to a group of editors and they chose it for the magazine.  They Chose My Poem!  I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that.

BTW, I absolutely love the graphic they came up with to go along with my poem.  It’s really beautiful.  I wish I could  get a jpeg of it.  Maybe I should email the editor…

Okay, so now a question.  Should I use this publishing credit when I’m querying my book?  It really has nothing to do with my book, but it’s the only publishing credit I have right now (keep your fingers crossed that there will be more in the future).

Does this mean I’m a “real” writer now?  I don’t know.  It doesn’t feel like it yet.  But will it ever?  I guess I’ll just have to wait for some other little writing victory to come along to see if I feel any different.  For now, I’ll say, I’m one step closer.

The editor saw my blog post and emailed me a copy of the jpeg!  So, here it is, my beautiful graphic thanks to Mezzo Magazine!

What the Hell

| rachelhamm

I’m entering a contest.  A writing contest.  SCARY.  The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

I know that I am not going to win this thing.  It’s a 1 in 5000 shot.  Literally, they accept 5000 entries and choose one winner.  There’s no way I have the talent or luck to make it.  I spent days, no, weeks, convincing myself not to enter because there was no point.  But tonight I said to myself, four hours before the site was open to entries (10 minutes and counting right now), “What the hell?  You have nothing to lose!”

Why can’t I think and act like that more often?  I never have anything to lose, and yet I live my life in constant fear of failure and rejection.  I stop myself from truly living, from taking risks and going after the things I really want because there’s no scariness in the status quo.  There’s nothing to be afraid of when you never try for anything.

So, my new motto: What the hell.  Give it a whirl.  What can it hurt?

When I get hurt, well, that will be another story.

Am I a Writer?

| rachelhamm

What is a writer?

Am I a writer?  I’ve written a book and I write a blog and I have a couple of works in progress, but does any of that make me a writer?

What is a writer exactly?  Is it anyone who can pick up a pencil and make markings on a piece of paper that resemble letters and words?  Or is it someone who knows how to string together those letters and words into sentences and paragraphs and pages– into pieces of art.  Or is it someone who not only makes art out of words, but someone who gets paid to make art out of words?

Today, I had a horribly jealous reaction to the idea of a friend of mine beginning to work on a new book.  I thought to myself, how can this person start a new story when I’m so pathetic I can’t complete mine.  Which of course made me wonder, yet again, if Twenty-Five is just a fluke.  I wrote the one story I’ve wanted for myself my whole life.  Maybe I have nothing else in me.

I hate that I doubt myself.  I really do hate it.  But I do.  I doubt myself constantly.  I never believe I am good enough or that anything I do is good enough.  And I don’t even know why I’m like that.  I shouldn’t be like that.  I know I’m smart- I’ve never doubted that, though maybe I should.  Why does anyone doubt themselves?  Fear, I think.  For me, fear of failure and fear of rejection.  It’s a hard life, trying to be a writer, trying to be published.  I just know that I’m going to fail at it, like I’ve failed at so many other things.  And I can’t stand it.  Because I want it so bad.  I want to do something worthwhile, be someone worth while.  That’s what got me started on this whole writing kick in the first place.  I wrote a book, with a main character who is a lot like me, but I made her prettier and I gave her a boyfriend and a career with the potential to go somewhere.  And she got everything she ever wanted.  I still cry reading the ending of my book.  Imagining that a wonderful man could be so in love with a girl so like me.

And now I wonder if this wonderful book about the girl who is like me but isn’t me whose dreams all come true is the extent of my writing abilities.  Do I have any other stories inside me.  Am I really a writer, or was I just desperately seeking to make something out of the life I have but hate?

All of this doubt comes just two days after I find out that a poem I wrote (the poem which inspired the title of this blog, BTW) is going to be published in an online magazine.  That has to mean something, right?  A poem I wrote was selected for this magazine’s next issue, and yet, I still doubt myself.  Maybe because I have no one but an online community to share it with.  I told my mother and her only reaction was “That’s great.  Wait- is that a good thing?”  And nothing else.  No one is excited for me, well no one that I know in real life.  Is that where doubt comes from- lack of validation?  Lack of enthusiasm?

It all brings me back to the same question: Am I a writer?  Or am I just kidding myself?

Why I Love Hand-Writing My First Drafts

| rachelhamm

I don’t hand write everything. But I think I get in a better flow when I’m writing by hand. Mainly because I don’t have the distraction of Facebook or TNBW or Absolute Write or even the dashboard of my blog!

Also, when you write the first draft of something by hand, you get a second shot at the first draft when you type it. For example, I hand wrote part of a chapter of The Death Effect during down time at work the other day. Shhh, don’t tell my boss! (Not that it really matters that much because down time at work is literally seconds in between phone calls and guests checking in and out and stylists needing help with their schedules and the purchase order being checked in, etc. etc. etc. And, my last day is January 9, 2010, so, I think it’s a moot point anyways.) Here’s a few sample sentences that I hand wrote:

They each dropped a rose into the grave. Donny took Geri’s hand and put his other arm around her waist to lead her back to their seats.

Okay those are sooo not exciting. But! When I typed it into my draft I saw how unexciting it was and my inner editor changed it to this:

Her fingers trembled as she loosened her grip on the roses meant to be the last gift to her daughter. The stems rolled out of her hands and tumbled into the grave, a few petals breaking off as the flowers struck the casket. Her husband’s touch replaced the roses as he took her hand and put his arm around her waist to lead her back to their seats.

Still not amazing, but can’t you see the VAST difference! Handwriting is great because it gives you a chance to have 2 first drafts. If I had been typing my first draft, I probably wouldn’t have gone back through and changed that sentence until a couple of months from now, if at all, once I’ve finished the whole book.

I wrote the entire first draft of Twenty-Five by hand and didn’t start typing it until it was 75% complete.  I think that’s how I even finished it in the first place.  It feels more tangible when you can hold the pages in your hand, and it feels more like your work when you see your hand writing expressing the words making up a story.  I feel like I need to stop staring at a computer screen and pick my pen back up if I want to have any shot of finishing another book.

What’s at Stake

| rachelhamm

My desperate wish is for someone out there to see something valuable in the stories I’ve written.  I’ve been feeling really pessimistic about Twenty-Five lately, but deep down, I don’t think it’s a bad book.  Even though the subject matter isn’t really unique, it isn’t a formulaic book about love.  That’s where I have a problem in writing my query letter.

I keep getting the suggestion to answer three questions in my query:
1. What does the MC want?
2. What does she have to do to get it?
3. What happens if she fails to get what she wants (the stakes)?

Okay, so I’m going to try, but this is where I’ve been having problems, answering these questions.  You would think this would be easy, but I don’t think it’s so black and white as these questions seem.  Here goes:

1. Abigail wants love.  She wants it so badly she doesn’t believe she’ll ever find it.  She wants to be a journalist, she wants to have a column published in the magazine she works for.

2. To get love, she just has to be open to it.  She has to believe that Ben really does care about her and that she deserves his love.  To get her column, she has to persevere and write from her heart.  She has to not care what others think.

3. Here’s the issue.  She can’t have both, but she gets both.  Ben falls in love with her, she falls in love with Ben.  She gets her “Facing Your Fears” column and then she gets offered a column in London.

She can take the column in London and advance her career, but doing so means leaving Ben behind.  Why does it mean leaving Ben behind?  Because she’s scared- her old insecurities pop up and once again she thinks she’s not good enough for him.  She thinks that he won’t be willing to do long distance and when he doesn’t encourage her to take the job she takes that as him saying their relationship can only exist while she stays in America.

She could pass up on the column and stay in America with Ben, but to her that means facing a lifetime of regret and resentment.  Regret that she didn’t take the opportunity to advance her career further, knowing that turning down one job puts her in a negative light with her editors and the possible chance that she won’t be given any more opportunities.  And resentment of Ben that he didn’t support her and allowed her to pass up the opportunity.

To her it seems like an impossible decision.  She chooses to take the job and break up with Ben.  She’s wrong- but that’s the decision she makes.  He would have been willing to do the long distance, but she never asks him to.  Of course, the fault isn’t all on Abby, he doesn’t offer it either.

So what’s at stake?  Her relationship with Ben and her job.  In the end, they find a way to make both work, but it’s a long time coming.

So now, how the HELL do I put all that in a query letter?

Visualizing the Scene

| rachelhamm

When I was writing the first draft of Twenty-Five, it was so easy.  Scenes just came to me.  I knew exactly how the characters were going to act and react because I could see it.  I would visualize a scene for a couple of days and then write it down.  It was really cool because scenes from all over the book would pop into my head, so I didn’t have to write chronologically, but I knew exactly where they were going to go.

With my other attempted books, the visualization of scenes hasn’t really worked.  It’s not really something I can WILL to happen, you know?  But with The Death Effect, it’s starting to happen again.  I’m seeing scenes in my head, but they are only little moments, so I have a little less to go on.

***Spoiler Alert!*** For example, I keep picturing this one moment, at the funeral of one of the MC’s where her birth mother and her adoptive mother see each other and thank each other.  It’s just this little fragment in my head, but it keeps playing over and over again and I can’t wait to write it out.  I know one other scene that is going to result from this encounter, so the visualization is beginning to work for me again.  I just hope it keeps up, because I REALLY want to finish this book.  I’m already proud of it, and I’ve only written thirteen chapters!

I think I need to do some kind of outlining/planning for TDE because all these ideas are floating around and I have no idea where they fit into the book.  With Twenty-Five it was easy because I wrote it knowing the time-frame and knowing that I wanted each chapter to represent one month.  But TDE is only spanning a couple weeks at most and there are so many POV’s and each character is affected by different things at different times.  The timeline is very complex and I’ve only gotten a few days out in my head.

But with outlining, I’m worried about pigeon-holing myself.  I don’t want to say, THESE ARE THE SCENES THAT ARE GOING TO BE IN THE BOOK.  I want to be fluid and free to change the direction of the story.  I’m going to give it a try and hope that I don’t have to throw it in the trash in a couple of weeks!

And I’m going to hope that little scenes keep appearing in my head.  I don’t want to FORCE this book to be written.  I want it to WANT to be written.

Who Would I Cast…

| rachelhamm

So I was watching License to Wed on TV the other day. It’s a really bad movie, actually, but I’m in love with John Krasinski, so I watched it anyways. As I was watching, I thought to myself that he would be a good actor to play Ben in the movie of my book. I know, getting ahead of myself- especially since the past couple days I’ve been thinking how terrible my writing is, but still, it struck me. Krasinski has this very sweet demeanor, he’s funny, and he’s tall. All qualities my Ben must possess. The only problem is I can’t tell what color his eyes are. I think they are hazel-ish.  I’ve looked at hundreds of pictures and can’t find one that’s close enough on his eyes to be really sure. My Ben needs blue eyes.

Mandy Moore is also in License to Wed. Again, I do not recommend this movie, but I happen to have a girl crush on Ms. Moore. I think she would make a very sweet Abby to John’s Ben. Her eye color is not nearly as important to me as Ben’s, though in the book Abby’s eyes are green and I believe Mandy’s are brown.

I think these two actors could have chemistry with the right story. Neither exactly fits the image I have in my head of my main characters, but truth is, I don’t think anyone can. I just like thinking that maybe someday there will be actors bringing them to life. Surely this is me living in fantasy land, but sometimes you’ve got to keep hope alive!

If you’ve read Twenty-Five, who would you cast as the leads?  If you haven’t, who would you cast as the leads in your own writing?

I’m having an “I Suck” day

| rachelhamm

So a while back I posted that I kept writing because I thought I was good at it.

Today I’m not so sure. Today I pretty much think I suck. I think about the very talented writers I’ve gotten to know in the past nine months and I realize how crap I am.

My book sucks. It’s never going to get published. 18 agents have seen my query letter. Only one wanted to see more. And once they saw more, they rejected it. My book sucks.

I’ve started writing five other books. They suck. And for some reason I can’t seem to finish them. My writing just sucks.

Will I ever not suck? I hope so. But if I can’t finish another book, how will I ever get to the point where I don’t suck?

I’m feeling really chicken about starting more edits on Twenty-Five. I love the story, but if the writing sucks, why bother? If no agent is ever going to be interested in it, then why spend the little free time I have trying to make it perfect? It won’t be perfect, because I’m not perfect. Because I suck.