Querying is NOT Awesome

    So you've written a book and you can't believe you actually did it. Hell yes!!! You finished a book!! Go you!!

    Now what??

    Editing. Cool. You send off your manuscript and pray to ALL the gods that they don't eff up all your awesomeness. You sit on your hands, hoping they don't return your work with nothing but red streaks through the entire thing. Is your editor going to be as harsh as that asshole English teacher you had back in high school? What happens if your editor just sends you an email saying, "I can't help you, this sucks way too much." I know that these thoughts were some of the many thoughts that crossed my mind after I sent off my own manuscript. It won't happen, I promise. Your editor is on your side!

    After WEEKS of waiting (not so patiently) you've finally got an edited, ready to be sent out to different strangers, book. Are you ready for judgement?? Me either. I have almost zero self esteem. I always worry about what everyone else thinks of me. Why in the hell would I purposely send out something that I created, to strangers, so that they could judge me?? That sounds like a TERRIBLE idea. Here's how that monologue went through my head:

    "Um, here, stranger. I have this massive typed story that I made up all by myself and um it's probably terrible. It is terrible. I don't even know what I'm doing. Sell you the idea? Okay, there's this guy and he's um a great guy but also an idiot. And there's this girl and she's cool, oh but she's like me. I'm not cool, so maybe she's not? Never mind. You're right, this is a terrible idea and no one will EVER like this story. Can you read it, judge it, without hurting me? No? Okay then, maybe I'll just keep it to myself. I wouldn't want to read it either. Why am I doing this? I can't do this. But I want it so much! I'll do it. I'm just gonna do it.......Crap. I shouldn't have hit send."

    Welcome to the fun of querying!! Isn't it exciting!?! No! It's not. It sucks!!! The entire point that I am trying to make here is this:

YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT HATES QUERYING AND IT MAJOR SUCKS FOR US ALL!!!

    No matter what stage you are at, or how many times you've gone through this stage, it still sucks! You have a goal in mind, whether that be just getting your story out, just publishing, just wanting to help people, whatever the reason, querying still sucks! And it takes FOREVER!!! Not only are there guidelines that you have to follow, (they change per agent/publishing house) you have to sell your stuff to them. You have to be able to be confident in your manuscript. Confident enough to make it sound like something they need/want to work with. If you can't, you gotta fake it. If I figure out how to do that confidently, I'll let you know!

    It will be three years this July since I first put that opening sentence for my debut novel onto a piece of paper; in the middle of the night no less. Two years of that was writing, and four months was editing, but I'm still waiting on something other than a rejection. Why is this taking so long?? Doesn't anyone understand that this is important to me???

    So far what I've learned is that if I keep up a total amount of queries out there in the universe, it keeps me from hating it too much when I do get a rejection. To explain better, my number is 20. I have 20 queries out there to 20 different people at a time. If I get a rejection (or five) on Monday, Monday night, I'm sending out more queries to different people to get back up to that amount of 20. It keeps me out there, trying; ahead of the game. Some of those queries take WEEKS to come back with an answer. It's NERVE WRACKING! Waiting and wondering who is going to respond, when, and what they are going to say? Let me say it again. Doesn't ANYONE understand that this is important to me???

    One of the best parts of all of this hard stuff is that 99% of the rejections are nice. That other 1% wasn't not nice, just kind of short. I keep hearing over and over again, "It's subjective, keep trying". So I am, and you should too! It sucks, and it's hard, and it takes WAY too long. I think we'll make it!

    Try to remember that you are not alone! Get on Twitter and join the #writingcommunity. They are amazing! The group is full of authors in so very many different genres, and different stages of their writing careers. The entire group is super supportive! Reach out! That includes to me! I'm here for you and we can definitely work through this together!

    Cheers to making it, one day! Hopefully sooner rather than later! Don't forget you are a badass and you'll make it! Don't stop fighting for your goals!!

Is That Me In That Book?

    Creating a main character isn't all rainbows and sunshine. You have to create someone relatable and important. In my case, I created two. Why not? Go big or go home. Right? The two main characters had already taken up space in my mind. They were running around with their own stories in my head, (you can read more about that here) so I put them on paper. 

    I started out with Juliana. She was a lot more like me than I had originally meant to make her. We don't necessarily have to talk about all of her little quirks that are also my little quirks. That is an entirely different post for an entirely different day. Let's just say, I am also late to a lot of things. As much as she is like me, she is also not like me. Juliana is my quirks, my good qualities, and my insecurities magnified. Juliana is also everything that I wish I was and with I wasn't. Does that make sense? Maybe not. Maybe that only makes sense because you have written yourself into a book too. There it is, good or bad, Juliana and I are written into my book for other people to read, enjoy, and yes, judge. 

    Juliana is my main character; my masterpiece. Very soon, I will be handing her off to strangers in hopes that these strangers will understand her. There's something very scary about allowing people to judge Juliana and therefore judge me. It's important to me though. She's amazing, she's smart, she's kind, and eventually she figures out that she is stronger than she once believed. Throughout the first book, Juliana gets stronger and becomes a better version of herself. I love watching her evolve through all the tough times that I put her through.

    Then there is Elijah, who fits the standard literary description of tall, dark, and handsome. I wanted to create a main character that had a strong description. I wanted to give Elijah a box to fit into and then make sure he didn't fit into it. I wanted him to have all the want and desire that I could imagine but also not make him some unrealistic person. Maybe I did that? Let's hope so!

    I think that people put little tidbits of themselves into what they create. I know I did. It's easy for me to write what happened. It's easy for me to write what I wish had happened. Writing is my therapy. I hope that my writing gives people the escape that I get from reading. I can't wait to be able to introduce all of the characters to you. 

Creating an author

    When I first started writing this book, it came to me in the middle of the night. I was fighting sleep, playing games on my phone. Let's be honest, I knew I was tired, I've read all about how being on your phone before bed doesn't help you sleep. Did I care? Nope! I was yawning so hard that tears were streaming down my cheeks. I had to blink quickly so that I could see the colors of the pieces I was swiping across my screen with my thumb. I could have put the phone down, I could have settled in my bed and closed my eyes, I could have counted sheep. Sleep wouldn't have evaded me very long, as all my yawning was showing me. Did I do any of those things? Nope! 

    I have always had a very active brain. I say brain instead of imagination because I wasn't one of those kids that had imaginary friends or played make believe all the time. Active though, yes definitely. There were always stories playing in my mind and they evolved into more complex stories as I got older. Maybe like schizophrenia? Maybe not, that's probably a bad comparison. I had that normal voice in my head, letting me know the difference between right and wrong. My Jiminy Cricket worked just fine. I had more though. I had other voices living out their lives like a movie in my mind. No they didn't tell me to do things but they entertained me. They evolved with my brain and they told me stories. They fluffed up my running life story with their own additives and their own endings. I didn't know that more than that one voice was not the normal for everyone. Didn't everyone enjoy the many scripts running inside their minds? 

    When I was a teenager, I tried to put their stories on paper. I wanted to be able to record their stories for myself and to share. During my teenage years was when I realized I wanted to be an author. I wanted to have the ability to take my various stories and share them with other. I wanted to have the ability to make my words a universe for others to enjoy. I wanted to give other people the escape of getting caught up in a book so much that they forgot their own problems. Books had always done that for me. George R. R. Martin said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A man who never reads lives only one." I fully believe that. I wanted to give that to people.

    No one, absolutely no one, starts out being a perfectly amazing author. It takes work, practice, and then MORE work and MORE practice. You have to start somewhere. I started with pen and paper and not a clue where it was going to end up. I wrote three small books. Novellas filled with the stories rolling around in my mind. I didn't stop, I just put pen to paper and let it happen. I still love using pen and paper. It's not for everyone but the physical act of my hand movements while using a pen on paper is therapeutic for me. I don't remember how many pens I went through but I remember writing so much that I ran out of ink a couple of times. I wrote down everything. I didn't edit it, I didn't reread and change things, I just wrote. 

    One of my first critiques came from those novellas. I was stupidly naïve about letting my work be read by family, when I would have been better off giving them to strangers. My family was harsh and discouraging, effectively making me doubt my ability to ever accomplish my dreams. I don't know how many of you have ever experienced that or how many beautifully successful authors went through that and came out on top but it was awful. It was debilitating. I threw out the novellas and didn't create another for almost a decade. That's not to say I didn't write. I wrote down everything from my every day experiences to my new goals and new dreams. I gave up on being an author and just journaled my life away. 

    Let's skip a few years and get to the cell phone era. Aren't cell phones amazing?? They give you unprecedented access to literally everything and those games...yes please! Those games helped me escape so many things but they never succeeded in helping me escape all those voices in my mind. Those characters that ran their own life stories as movies made just for me. The characters got more advanced, louder, and more needy. They got harder to ignore as I got older. They seemed to directly talk at me instead of just running their own stories behind the scenes. They offered little tidbits here and there, showing me different versions of how life could have played out. Until one very early morning two and a half years ago, they screamed at me. I was swiping away on my phone screen (getting in all those necessary thumb exercises) and an opening line screamed inside of my mind. I was yawning, refusing to give into sleep and the voices screamed; just one line. 

There ought to be a law against stealing someone's bright and shimmering soul and chopping away at it until it fits into your tiny little box. 

    I wrote it down on a journal that I had sitting next to my bed and I just stared at it. I stared at it through bleary, tired eyes. I must have reread it a hundred times. It didn't change, the words just stayed there, almost mocking me. I closed the journal and set it back down on my nightstand. As I laid my head on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, I noticed the characters in my head were quieter. They were just the tiniest bit more quiet than they had been in a long time.