I think a writer needs to go on Dancing With the Stars. I bet that Danielle Steel could do a mean tango. Isabel Allende can probably salsa circles around this season's contenders. And Stephen King ... well, I'd tune in to watch him dance.
But the truth is, I want to be on Dancing With the Stars. I've loved to dance all my life, and I've studied ballet, jazz, tap, musical theatre, and Argentinian Tango. The trouble is that I'm not a Star! So I guess I'll just have to keep writing in the hopes that I can work my way into America's consciousness and then become a contender on the show. Surely my future agent will be excited to know I'm open to such methods of self-promotion!
Take note, future agent!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Hope Springs Eternal
I don't know which is more important: hope or a thick skin. Sometimes I think that hope gets in the way of a thick skin. Or maybe hope is what spurs you on to the experiences that give you a thick skin. Anyway, even though just a couple weeks ago I was wondering where my ambition was, if it had finally died even though I said I had accepted it never would.
Then my baby started going to bed EARLIER and WITHOUT ME (key point). So last night I was able to get a query out and that just made me feel a million times better. And then, via Twitter, I heard about this.
You see, as an avid reader I always felt like I'd been dropped into a genre-less void after I graduated from high school. I went from reading children's and YA novels to mainstream fiction. I love authors like Maeve Binchy and Barbara Kingsolver, but rare was the book whose heroine wasn't already middle-aged with children. Even if their ages were closer, they weren't going through the same college and post-college issues that I was. Then chick lit came around, but even that didn't really fill the void for me. And I went to grad school in children's lit, where I learned that publishers defined YA as 12 - 25, but rare is the book that's really for anyone over the age of 17.
So two years ago I see about trying to rectify the situation by writing my own post-YA, pre-adult mystery novel. And the consensus from the people I workshopped with was that my heroine was in a No Man's Land: too old for YA, too young for a mainstream novel. I needed to either make sure 15 or 33 in stead of 23. Ugh. Talk about a major rewrite.
Now once again hope springs eternal. Nothing may come of this (that's the writer's creed), but maybe something will!
Then my baby started going to bed EARLIER and WITHOUT ME (key point). So last night I was able to get a query out and that just made me feel a million times better. And then, via Twitter, I heard about this.
You see, as an avid reader I always felt like I'd been dropped into a genre-less void after I graduated from high school. I went from reading children's and YA novels to mainstream fiction. I love authors like Maeve Binchy and Barbara Kingsolver, but rare was the book whose heroine wasn't already middle-aged with children. Even if their ages were closer, they weren't going through the same college and post-college issues that I was. Then chick lit came around, but even that didn't really fill the void for me. And I went to grad school in children's lit, where I learned that publishers defined YA as 12 - 25, but rare is the book that's really for anyone over the age of 17.
So two years ago I see about trying to rectify the situation by writing my own post-YA, pre-adult mystery novel. And the consensus from the people I workshopped with was that my heroine was in a No Man's Land: too old for YA, too young for a mainstream novel. I needed to either make sure 15 or 33 in stead of 23. Ugh. Talk about a major rewrite.
Now once again hope springs eternal. Nothing may come of this (that's the writer's creed), but maybe something will!
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