The Lull

I just got a letter from a writer friend of mine asking how I deal with "The Lull." The Lull is when you've finished one project and you have absolutely no interest in writing anything ever again. You know that you need to get back in the saddle and just do it because that's what writers do. Yet you're suddenly like the worst kind of couch potato. And you feel guilty about it, which couch potatoes do not!

The Lull always fills me with a kind of anxiety. My identity is so wrapped up in writing that if I don't have a project I'm writing or brainstorming I feel like a slug. I also start worrying that maybe I don't want to be a writer any more, that maybe I'm done before I've even achieved what I've always wanted.

I've gotten a little more relaxed about it these days. I have accepted that I will never lose that ambition -- if I were, it would have happened already! But I always have to have something I'm brainstorming about. It gives me hope that not only will I write again, but that I'll want to write again. So the way I get through the lull is to know that it's all part of the ebb and flow of the creative process. As a participant in that process, I just need to keep an eye on the surf so I can catch those waves!

The Chocolate Challenge

One of the hardest things about writing is feeling like you're not getting anywhere. You sit, write, read, edit. Then you sit some more, rewrite, read, and edit some more. For years my problem has been that I'm hard on myself, and I'm hard on myself because I never felt productive unless I was writing new material. But the art of writing is really in the rewriting, right?

Enter the Chocolate Challenge, a friendly competition created by the Sisters in Crime. They have use an Excel tracking sheet that helps you keep track of how many words you've written every day, but also adds a word count for editing hours. Now, I didn't win the competition, but I got so much done! February was an incredibly productive month!

Back on Track!

I got off to a slow start on Marketing Weekend this month -- I assigned myself 5 agents to query on the 4th and only now got out those queries. I spent $7.99 on postage and it feels a futile, but I'm doing it anyway.

Only now I have to figure out what to do about my 5th query, which is to a Canadian agent. U.S. stamps can't be used in other countries, but none of the post offices near me have any International Reply Coupons in stock. I also can't buy those online! It's driving me crazy!

Stuck

I am a recent convert to plotting. Once upon a time I liked to jump into my novels with nothing but my own excitement and momentum. Every day was like a sprint -- I had to build myself up before I sat down to write and then let everything out in a frenzy. This was a lot of fun, but it resulted in fragmented novels that were really difficult to edit and relied on inspiration.

Now I try to figure out all angles before I start writing. I make stepsheets, character journals, character lists, event lists, theme progressions, etc. In fact, I'm doing even more of this with my current work in progress than I did with my last one. That way I can avoid other problems -- like deciding that my murderer was way too obvious and switching it about halfway through the novel.

The blessing in all this is also the curse -- planning in advance doesn't mean you don't get stuck. You just get stuck earlier -- well before you've written hundreds of pages.

So right now I'm trying to figure out what happens next. I'm writing my stepsheet and my protagonist has to be tested and fail. Um ... how? Gonna have to think about this one.

What I'm Reading Now

Here's a peak at what I'm reading right now:

The suicide index : putting my father's death in order / Joan Wickersham.
Blue genes : a memoir of loss and survival / Christopher Lukas.
Old friend from far away : the practice of writing memoir / Natalie Goldberg.
The chocolate jewel case : a chocoholic mystery / JoAnna Carl.
First draft in 30 days : a novel writer's system for building a complete and cohesive manuscript / Karen Wiesner.

Dilettante

My husband teased me the other day by calling me a dilettante when it comes to my writing. Like all jokes, it had a grain of truth in it. Actually, more than just a grain. In the past three months, I've gone from editing my memoir to finishing my mystery to polishing my YA novel and, finally, to writing a picture book.

I know that the rule is that you should write what you love to read. The truth is that I love to read everything! So this feeds into my writing anxiety -- am I doing the best thing by working on whatever it is I'm working on at the moment? Do I need to focus more? I suspect that the answer is "yes" to both questions.

Marketing Weekend

No matter what business you're in, you have to learn how to sell yourself. I'm a lot better at this when I'm at a corporate interview than when I'm trying to sell a book because of the normal attachments to a creative work. After all, when I go for an interview for a technical writing job, I know that the company expects a certain set of skills or personality and I have to prove that I'm capable of fulfilling their needs. With a book, I have no idea what specific things the agent or publisher is looking to acquire, what they're sick of seeing. Plus, my book is finished. It's not like I can put some sort of spin on it to convince them that it's what they want. Finally, it's something I created! I won't go so far as to say that my books are like my baby, but it is a lot more personal.

When you're looking for a new job, it takes a lot of time -- it's often said that finding a new job is a full-time job. Trying to find an agent or a publisher can be the same way. Once I get in the zone of researching people to compose that perfect, individualized letter, I can't stop. I want to know everything about all of the people on my list (which usually starts with just a couple, and grows to close to 100, depending on genre).

Many agents today accept queries via email, which is wonderful and terrible. It's great to get a quick response, especially considering that about a third of my queries still feel like they go out into the ether. A fair number of agents still say, "We'll respond if we're interested." The trouble with quick responses is that I immediately want to send out another submission. I like to have at least 5 queries out at once (obviously, only to people who accept simultaneous submissions). This brings out my obsessive side. If I let myself submit another query for every quick rejection, I'll never actually write anything new!

So I've established the first weekend of every month as a marketing weekend. I set different goals for the two books that I'm currently trying to sell: 5 agent queries and X submissions to publishers who don't require agent representation. Publishers take a lot longer to respond to submissions than agents, so that number can be anywhere from 0-3.

This weekend is a little different, however. Word on the street is that nothing gets done in publishing between Thanksgiving and New Year's. So instead of submitting queries, I'm going to post my mystery query letter to a new workgroup I've joined. Hopefully, by Jan. 2 I'll have a better letter!