Category: On Writing

It’s February 2025

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Because it needs to be said: I am not okay with anything happening in the U.S. right now. I support minorities and women and trans people. I am scared.

But this blog is about me trying to get my silly little book published, so that’s what I will continue to write about in this space.

And—I know it’s not silly. To me, it is crushingly important. But. I don’t know. Call your heartsong your “silly little book” if that’s the thing that lets you keep working on it in the midst of uncertain and impossible times. And call your senators!!! But keep making your silly little art, in any way you can.

At a recent gathering, my friend said they were procrastinating on an important task. Another friend cut in and said firmly, almost defiantly: “You mean gathering your energy.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

I’ve been gathering my energy to query again. I’ve also been healing from a difficult critique session. I think it’s very frustrating and unfair that someone who was rude to me about my work and my identity was also correct about some things! Mostly, I feel let down by my own brain. How DARE I feel discouraged when I knew most of the advice was wrong, and kind of mean, even as I was hearing it?

But the correct thing is this: your chances of finding representation for a debut novel are higher if your wordcount is lower. I’ve spoken to an actual agent who said that needing to be below 100k for a debut is a myth, and it all depends. And (according to my research) up to 120k is fine for sci-fi/fantasy anyway. All of which is true! But so is the first thing. And I thought I’d been through my novel more times than I could count, I thought I’d done everything I possibly could—but I hadn’t gone through specifically focused on lowering my wordcount. I was wrong. And my novel is getting better for it.

It’s tedious. To spice it up, I’ve made a beautiful new spreadsheet—it’s got columns and metrics and a sexy toggle that goes green when I delete the correct amount of words per chapter as pro-rated to the chapter’s starting length. So I can tell you with devastating accuracy that I am 83.92% percent of the way down from 112k words to my goal of 100k. It’s going well, in fits and bursts and long weeks of procrastinating gathering my energy. I have deleted very few scenes, but every sentence is getting tighter and better. And I started listening to The Shit About Writing podcast again the other day, which is the first time I’ve been able to stomach even a second-hand query critique in about half a year. I’m not quite back in the game yet, but I’m making progress, and moving in the right direction.

Hang in there, y’all.

January 2024 – A Whole New Year

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

2023 was a banner year for me. I still can’t believe that I wrote an entire novel in four months! And that I’ve stuck with it through revisions, feedback, and endless query/synopsis drafts. I am wildly grateful to the alchemy of inspiration, obsession, and terror that has gotten me this far.

Last week, I started listening to the podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. I’ve found the query/first pages critiques at the beginning of each episode to be very educational, and it is so interesting to hear about the guest authors’ various journeys to publication. Yesterday I listened to the 11/9/23 episode, “Encouragement from NYT Bestselling Author, Jean Kwok,” and I found the interview with Kwok incredibly inspiring. She spoke about her debut novel’s initial rejection and eventual success, and she also spoke about fear, and doing the scary things anyway. This resonated—I’ve noticed that when I write about writing I am almost always writing about fear. She also spoke about her determination following the first rejection to continue submitting her manuscript, and collecting rejections, for as long as it takes. Every episode of the podcast closes with the host, Bianca Marais, saying, “Keep at it. Remember, it just takes one ‘Yes.’”

I’m dedicating the first few weeks of January to more novel revisions and query/synopsis edits, and I am deadly determined to submit my novel to an initial round of literary agents before my 35th birthday in February. My New Year’s Intention is to actively query agents on a rolling basis for the entire calendar year of 2024. And obviously I would hope to reassess and keep trying into 2025 and beyond, with this book and with future projects, for as long it takes. But “as long as it takes” is an ethereal measure of time, while “a year” is solid, definite, and a good place to start. And if I plan for a year, then those first few rejections, or non-responses, are all part of the plan. Right? At the very least, I am determined to stop telling myself “No” by not even asking for a “Yes.”

Yes, we still have our Christmas tree up.

Update – November 2023

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Once again I’ve drafted multiple blog posts about writing that I haven’t posted because—well, because I’m doing the actual work, and I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much or by setting goals here that I can’t promise I’ll keep. And I’ve got my personal journal for all the endless doubts and affirmations that are part of sustaining belief in a project (and myself) over the long-term. (A note: I do think daily long-hand journaling has been an important part of my workflow. Even if you’re not saying anything new, repeating how badly you want something, day after day, keeps it fresh in your mind.)

I’ve finished a second round of revisions on my book, and I’m trying to stay out of the manuscript for a month while a few more readers take a look at it. I think I did a good job? I invigorated the sedentary language of the first two chapters, wrote new scenes to weave an antagonist more securely into the narrative, accidentally (and I’m low-key furious about this) inserted a new background character who might be the main character in a sequel, and confronted all of the sentences that felt clunky or cringey. I’m sure I’ll wince at more sentences the next time through, and I know there will be more, even major, edits in the future, but I think I did my best?

I started this month with plans to attempt NaNoWriMo, but I also promised myself that I wouldn’t finish it just for the sake of finishing if the story wasn’t coming together. And boy did that story NOT come together! At almost 9,000 words the characters weren’t speaking to me yet, and I hadn’t found a plot. It has some elements I love, but it just wasn’t happening, not for me, not right now. I also realized that the aforementioned revisions were not coming as quickly as I’d hoped, and I needed to prioritize the book I’d already written. Still, failing NaNoWriMo has not helped with my fear that I will never again be as inspired by a story as I was by this story, the story for my existing book, earlier this year. It wasn’t easy—I’ve put in so many hours—but I didn’t need to struggle for the story. I just showed up. But it’s also given me so much more confidence in my ability to show up, which can only be a good thing for the next one. 

For now, I plan to spend a few weeks wrestling with a synopsis and other submission materials. The synopsis, so far, has absolutely kicked my ass. I know what my book is about, but summarizing in 500 or so words with enough—but not too much—detail, while also conveying a sense of tone, feels like the most difficult writing assignment I’ve ever had. Wish me luck!

Query Letters, Man

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I had this idea to get back to a spot where I’m blogging more regularly, and I’ve actually drafted a couple of posts about my writing process and what’s actually worked for me, but I haven’t posted them because I’m just SO TIRED of writing about writing. As electrifying as a wordcount tracker is for me when I’m in the zone with a project, I am finding my own words about my own process incredibly boring right now. At the end of the day you’re either writing or you’re not, you know? You either did the thing or you didn’t. You either finish your book or you don’t.

I don’t actually believe anything is that absolute, but I have a headache and I am impatient with my own prevaricating—and my impatience is running up against the lack of a clear step forward for the novel that has been commandeering every extra iota of brain space since the idea first hit me over the head back in April. Because from here on out, there isn’t a right answer, is there? Like, there’s no one out there to tell you which edits and changes are correct. No one’s going to give you an A and say, “Good job, you’re ready to start querying agents!” So…how do you know? Can you trust your own assessment? If people are telling you it’s already really good, do you believe them? How much time do you spend trying to make it even better? How do you know if it shines?

I’m still collecting some feedback before diving into manuscript edits, so I’ve been trying to get a head-start on query letters. I’m hoping to hire some professional advice for my submission materials and would like them to be as polished as possible before then, and at this point I’m not expecting to make any major plot changes. And that’s wild, right? Like, borderline delusional, to feel so confident about a first-ish draft that I’m not expecting any major plot changes??? But query letters, man. Holy heck. The whole time I was writing this book, I was like, “This is the most marketable book I’ve ever written! It’s going to fit right into this queer sci-fi/fantasy niche, right next to Everina Maxwell and Freya Marske and Rainbow Rowell!” But actually writing that sales pitch, actually distilling four months of your life (200 single-spaced pages, 110,000 words) into a 2 – 3 paragraph summary—it’s grueling. It’s exhausting. It’s impossible. You’re endlessly twisting and polishing and rearranging, trying to hone and reshape the sentences so that you can see through them to the gold beneath, with no way to know if you’ve gotten it right, or if what’s beneath is even really made of gold.

The view from Wolfe’s Neck Campground in Freeport ME after last Saturday’s hurricane.

Writing Again

~ Grace ~ 2 Comments
It was bedtime on April 4th, 2023. I closed the book I was reading, placed it on my nightstand, and turned off the light. I’ve been reading a lot of queer romance lately, mostly in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and as I started drifting I asked myself: if I wrote a genre romance following the basic formula of my favorite books, what book would I write? The rough story elements appeared immediately: modern earth, an alien invasion, a gremlin of a main character who can’t believe he still has to go to work during the slow-roll apocalypse. I wondered who the other guy would be, and then it was so obvious: the other guy was an alien.

I started writing the next day and plugged my progress into a NaNoWriMo-style word-count tracking spreadsheet. A week later I had over 20,000 words. 104 days later I had a finished first draft of 112,000 words.

I don’t know what to say except that sometimes the universe, like, throws you a bone? This book just started happening to me, and it didn’t stop. I spent hours writing frantically just trying to get all my thoughts down before I lost them. I could barely keep up. And I eventually had to slow the pace—there’s a reason NaNoWriMo is only once a year—but I kept going. Even at 300 words a day. I continued writing daily until I finished that first rough draft. After a day off to celebrate, I set up a different type of tracking spreadsheet and jumped straight into editing mode. Another month later I had a real, complete first draft that I liked enough to share with a select few other humans.

A huge motivating factor in all of this was the absolute terror of leaving another project unfinished. I’m so proud, but I’m still afraid, because I won’t really be done until I finish the next draft, or two, or however many it takes, and hone my submission materials, and send my first query letters to literary agents. And even that is only the beginning of a long, nerve-wracking process of queries and rejections and revisions that has absolutely zero guarantee of success. Still—I like this book, and I want to try.

Is Running The Best Procrastination Strategy Ever? Discuss

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

LIFE. It feels like I’m looking into fog or deep water, squinting my eyes and searching for defined edges among so many shifting priorities and goals, all moving in and out of focus at different times. Running has been the clearest priority for a while now. I’m also trying to prioritize simple and practical self-care. I hate to use the term “adulting”…but I tend to go from work to runs to social engagements without a lot of time in between, and I’ll leave the dishes in the sink or the work clothes in the pile because getting to the next thing is more important to me than cleaning up my space. I’m really good at working towards big, flashy goals. Training for a marathon, finishing NaNoWriMo, making everything spotless before a party or event. I’m less good at the daily upkeep that would help me feel less scattered and anxious in my environment. So I’m working on it, because it’s winter and I need every bit of positive energy I can get. I’ve also been watching Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot, and it is HIGHLY MOTIVATIONAL to imagine what the Fab 5 might say if they were looking around my apartment.

RUNNING. I am really proud of how much time I spend running…as anyone who’s talked to me for more than a minute has probably figured out. It’s hard not to mention it because any interesting thing I do in any given week probably has something to do with running or one of my running communities. Part of why I’m so proud is because it’s a GIANT CHANGE that I made in my life, and a change that I STUCK TO. I made this change not long after radically changing my hairstyle, which helps with my strong sense of “before” and “after,” and it’s reassuring to be in the “after” and to know that I’m capable of making giant changes. This is who I am now. And it’s a relief to no longer have the constant anxiety of feeling like I should be exercising regularly, because I do. That aspect of my life is now in place. I have different anxieties about whether I’m training properly or doing enough, but BARE MINIMUM I exercise 4 days a week. And even as I struggle with things I have struggled with for years, like keeping my space tidy, and even as I am sad about the things I am sad about, and mad about the things I am mad about (things that ended suddenly, without much closure), at least I am this person now. I ran 27 miles this week. I ran over 1,000 miles this year. This is who I am now, and that means a lot to me.

But… remember those shifting goals, edges obscure, some so vague you have to squint to see the shape of them? I started this blog to write about writing, and sometimes it seems like constantly crushing the running and physical goals has allowed me to slack off on other goals that are difficult, and that I’ve been working towards longer. I get a large or small sense of accomplishment after every single run, and if I’m feeling accomplished it’s easy to put off working on my book until another day. After all, I am tired. I earned this post-run beer. And my laptop is slow and bug-ridden, and I can no longer use it without a mouse and not plugged into the wall. So much hassle. I might as well just watch something on Netflix, or plan out my long run for the week and think about how accomplished I’ll feel after that.

I don’t really have an answer. Priorities shift and life comes in seasons. I may be failing miserably at my December Sketch Challenge, but several times over the past years I’ve been able to use my art training to design athletic T-shirts for one of my running clubs, which combined my big new running passion with my long-term goal to keep making art. Of course doing any of the art I want to do is hindered by my buggy laptop than can barely run Photoshop anymore and my broken drawing tablet…so the real answer here might be that I need to save enough money to purchase tech that would enable me to do the things I want to do. Which means finding a second or a different job and working more hours, which may be difficult to schedule with all the running and won’t leave much extra time for creative endeavors.

And those are some of the things I am trying to balance! Life is always messy and nothing is perfect. I try to make progress every day. Lately when I find myself sitting on the couch, exhausted from a late bedtime and early wake-up and body aching from my strength class the day before, I ask myself, “What can I do to work towards my goals right now?” Sometimes it’s writing a few cover letters and sending out some resumes—each one is a little easier to do. Sometimes it’s just washing my dinner plate and cup before going to bed, or doing a little foam-rolling and stretching to help my legs feel a little better. Maybe tomorrow it’s opening up my manuscript file and revising a chapter, or even a paragraph. A sentence. Who knows, right? Anything could happen. And this is who I am now. I have made changes, and I can make more.

-GM

November Goals and Portland Sweat Project

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Hey it’s the last day of October!

Tomorrow is November 1st, and I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year (National Novel Writing Month, a thing where you write 50,000 words during November). I have done and won NaNo for the past five years. Five is a nice round number, and I’m proud to have finished and reached my 50,000 word goal every single time I’ve attempted it. As it turns out I already had a pretty strong streak of “Reach the finish line at any cost!” even before I started doing foot races. Back in 2014, my NaNo project was this cool little urban-fantasy book about a lady trucker and a telepathic dragon. I still think it’s a cool little book—though with the current draft at over 100,000 words, it’s not such a little book at all. And every year since 2014, November has meant a brand new project and a whole lot of writing energy… directed away from that cool little book that I’d really like to finish. So I want to write in November, but instead of starting a brand new book that might reach 50,000 words without even figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up (did I mention NaNo 2016 and 2017 were basically plot and theme disasters?) I want to really focus in and move forward on my existing project. I want to do the type of writing and editing and fixing that isn’t easily quantifiable by word count, and I want to finish the ending and create a readable draft. So that’s November goals this year. I also have a few other creative projects that I don’t want to completely abandon for the month, so it makes sense and feels right to keep moving forward on what inspires me right now rather than doing something new just for the sake of doing it. But for all of you out there gearing up for NaNoWriMo 2018, I wish you the very best of luck!

Also, a note on today. The temperature was just below freezing when I woke up around 5:30 am. On a workday I would have already been at work, or at least hurrying in that direction from my all-day parking spot a ten-minute walk away. Today I had the option of curling up into a warm bed and going back to sleep…but instead I got up and #JustShowedUp for the first time ever to a 6:30 am free fitness meetup in a city park. It’s called Portland Sweat Project and it wasn’t as scary as a TOTALLY new thing since I knew most of the crew from my run club, but it was still really early in the morning. I’m generally not a morning exercise person, but within minutes of sprints and squats and pushups and burpees I felt awake and alive and took off my parka because I wasn’t even cold anymore. Then we ran around city hall and played duck-duck-goose (with squats and planks) in the square and took a picture with some pumpkins at the farmer’s market. Winter is bad but I learn over and over again that going outside and moving and sweating and running with your friends is pretty much always the correct choice.

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My newbie photo from PSP! (Photo credit © Mari Balow.)

Day 25: Winning

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NaNo-2015-Winner-Banner

Yeah that’s right, I won early! I reached 50,000 words this Sunday afternoon, more than a week before the end of November. This is a first, for me. Here’s what my progress graph looked like on Sunday:

Screen Shot 2015-11-22 at 3.57.32 PM

I love these graphs, by the way. If I could add any feature to the NaNoWriMo website, it would be the ability to compare graphs side-by-side, or spliced on top of each other. You could compare your current year’s progress to every other year you’ve participated, or you could compare your own graph to any of your writing buddies’. I think that would be neat.

I didn’t stop writing, by the way. I’m now trying to reach a new goal of 70,000 before the end of November. Wanna see another graph? ‘Cause I sure do. Here’s where I am today:

Screen Shot 2015-11-25 at 3.39.05 PM
See how the bars are above the goal line?

Current word count is 55,483, and I’m still lagging about a thousand behind where I want to be for today.

Every single person writes differently, but here’s how I made my win happen:

It started with travel plans for the weekend. I thought I would be away on the 21st and 22nd, and I didn’t know if I’d find the time to write. Starting on Monday of last week, I made it my mission to get as far ahead as possible before the weekend hit. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, I have time to write at the end of my workday before it’s time to go home, of which I took full advantage. It was nice. And so the following few days, when I taught right to the end of the school day, I did the same thing. I stayed late at my desk as long as I could, and typed until I had met my word count. Then I cancelled my travel plans at the last minute, and I was already so far ahead and on a role that I said, hang on, I think I can get to 50,000 by Sunday. And so I did.

My new goal, 70,000, will bring me a lot closer to the end of the story than 50,000. I’ve written this story completely linearly so far; it starts at the beginning and follows a plot and there are no missing pieces or pieces that obviously don’t belong. This is unusual for me, and after the current mess of my dragon book I find it relaxing. Even if I don’t make 70,000 this month, or if the story still isn’t done at 70,000, I want to keep writing until I find the end.

Cheers!

Day 18: Still Okay!

~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

I’ve admired my Aunt Ruthanne’s consistent Wednesday blog updates for years now (A More Colorful Life! Erry Wednesday!). I don’t have any classes Wednesday afternoons this semester and, seeing as this is my third blog post in three Wednesdays, maybe I can follow her example and make Wednesday posts a regular thing.

I won’t write much, though, because I’m trying to get as far ahead on NaNoWriMo as I can before the weekend.

Here’s my progress graph! I’m at tomorrow’s goal, and I haven’t even started writing for today yet.

32,007 words!
32,007 words!

 

I like how this book is coming together. I like the shape of it. I like the characters that are popping up out of the darkness. I like my ideas for the ending. The book feels complete, somehow, in a way my books rarely do at this stage in the writing. I know there are some threads that are missing, and I know I will have to go back to the beginning to weave a few new colors into the story, but I feel like I can hold the whole thing in my hands and I feel it is good. This feeling probably means I am in for a lot of surprises, but I’ll enjoy it while it’s here.

I’m also having fun writing this book. I want this to be my job. How do I make this my job? Oh yeah. Keep writing.

Good luck on NaNoWriMo and every other thing, you beautiful people, you.

NaNoWriMo Day 11 Update: It’s Going Okay

~ Grace ~ 4 Comments

The curve of my NaNoWriMo graph has a different shape this year than it did last year and the year before. I won both years, by the way—when I start NaNo, I finish. Usually I start out strong, though and things don’t get difficult until week 2. In 2013, I fell behind on Day 11. Last year, it was Day 9. This year, well, take a look. I started out behind, and didn’t even catch up until Day 7, the end of week 1. And today finds me behind again, but only by 3,000 words. I’ll catch up tonight or tomorrow.

Screen Shot 2015-11-11 at 12.47.52 PM

Last week, nothing was working. The intro I’d planned turned out to be the wrong way into the story. I couldn’t get a feel for my main character. The next episode of Parks and Rec kept happening on Netflix autoplay. Mentally, I think I was exhausted from all the hard story work I’d been doing on my dragon book right up until I put that project down for Nano. My subconscious story-generator needed a few days’ rest before it could start cranking out ideas for a brand new story—even if it’s actually an old story, and even if it’s a story I chose because I thought it would be less complicated.

This is what I like about NaNo, and the monthly goal. It would be really easy to let a necessary few days of rest turn into gratuitous months or even years. I’ve done it before. But when the clock is ticking and a goal is set, it creates a constant nagging reminder that your writing needs you. So even though I didn’t like anything about my story and even though I was feeling discouraged, I showed up on Saturday to see what I could do. It turned out I could do a lot. I wrote 10,500 words that day, which is a personal best.

So, yay?

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t let a few days of inaction towards a goal make you feel bad. Maybe your brain needed that time to recharge. Maybe your spirit needed that space to find the story. Just stay focused on the big goal, and keep showing up to write.