As I stood before the general membership at the May meeting, I had a strange moment of realization. Every meeting I ask for success stories from our membership, and without fail I receive them. It’s an uplifting exercise to hear the different forms of success and how success differs from person to person.
The end of the GLVWG year and the upcoming election also signals another event that many of us share: rejection season. After The Write Stuff conference in March, the membership as a whole must receive a lot of rejections at the end of May. Count out six to eight weeks from our conference, it brings us to our May meeting.
Every year there’s some good news, but every year at this time many members have a heavy heart. Rejected again. The exact words in the letters and emails change, but the message is the same.
No.
The form letters don’t sting. Writers easily toss those aside easily and forget about them. It’s the rejections that follow requests for partials or fulls that burn, cause doubts. Statements like “Many people will connect with this character, but I didn’t” or “I didn’t like the voice as much as I wanted to” can hit hard.
Many of these statements don’t even make clear sense, because it’s not a conversation. We don’t have the luxury of discussing with the editor or agent what they meant by their words, so it’s like secret code with no real key.
The simplest way to get over rejection is to start a new query and submit, submit, submit. Some people set it aside and continue work on a different project, to let the hurt cool. Some people view rejection as a sign that something’s wrong and set out to fix it.
Unless the agent or editor says there’s basic grammar mistakes, the plot sounds like a cliché or that every character was flat (or equally discouraging remarks), there’s nothing wrong.
An agent, editor or publisher must love the material he/she acquires as much as the author does or the relationship doesn’t work. It’s a tough business. It’s a tough world. Finding that one opportunity or that one person is hard.
Everyone at GLVWG understands.
Showing posts with label writing conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing conference. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Post-conference GLVWG column
Welcome to the Middle
The close of March cleaves a sharp division in GLVWG, those who attended the conference and those who did not. If you’re following the messages on our general membership message board, you’ve read the kudos and inside jokes (“Jon, put that microphone down!”) and the reactions to tips from our presenters and our keynote, Donald Maass.
If you did not attend, you might feel a tad left out right now. If you did attend, you’re probably still super-motivated. If you volunteered at the conference, you might still be tired and suffering from caffeine withdrawal. (And with that, let me thank everyone who served. Tammy Burke and her troops did a fantastic job and from what I saw the board was also very willing to help in any capacity they could.)
I realized something at the conference after Lisa Rector-Maass’ workshop on “middles” and with some augmentation from Donald Maass’ presentations.
We have reached our middles. Not our manuscripts or our characters, but us. We have hopes, dreams, goals, and conflicts. No matter where we’ve come from, what we’ve achieved or what we really hope to do, we haven’t reached our final scene. We all have more to come. We all want more.
According to our presenters, the middle of our manuscripts can always have more. Our middles should have more, too. Not the kind of middle that requires a trip to the gym. Not the kind of middle riddled with strife and catastrophe, although some people certainly have that. Like our protagonists, we must face our middles with more effort, a never-give-up attitude and a new plan in the midst of mounting challenges.
My protagonist would never disappoint his friends or family. I need to give him that same advantage, not to give up on him and his story. By the time I see everyone in April, I think those who attended the conference will have tons of new pages and edits. Those people will be exhausted and smiling.
For those who did not attend, look at the middle of your manuscript. Do the characters experience tension on every page? Do even the secondary characters have small plot lines that weave them into the story? Do you take your characters to places of great loss or joy? You can’t take the comfortable road of storytelling. Not in the current marketplace.
Happy writing and may your revisions be fruitful.
The close of March cleaves a sharp division in GLVWG, those who attended the conference and those who did not. If you’re following the messages on our general membership message board, you’ve read the kudos and inside jokes (“Jon, put that microphone down!”) and the reactions to tips from our presenters and our keynote, Donald Maass.
If you did not attend, you might feel a tad left out right now. If you did attend, you’re probably still super-motivated. If you volunteered at the conference, you might still be tired and suffering from caffeine withdrawal. (And with that, let me thank everyone who served. Tammy Burke and her troops did a fantastic job and from what I saw the board was also very willing to help in any capacity they could.)
I realized something at the conference after Lisa Rector-Maass’ workshop on “middles” and with some augmentation from Donald Maass’ presentations.
We have reached our middles. Not our manuscripts or our characters, but us. We have hopes, dreams, goals, and conflicts. No matter where we’ve come from, what we’ve achieved or what we really hope to do, we haven’t reached our final scene. We all have more to come. We all want more.
According to our presenters, the middle of our manuscripts can always have more. Our middles should have more, too. Not the kind of middle that requires a trip to the gym. Not the kind of middle riddled with strife and catastrophe, although some people certainly have that. Like our protagonists, we must face our middles with more effort, a never-give-up attitude and a new plan in the midst of mounting challenges.
My protagonist would never disappoint his friends or family. I need to give him that same advantage, not to give up on him and his story. By the time I see everyone in April, I think those who attended the conference will have tons of new pages and edits. Those people will be exhausted and smiling.
For those who did not attend, look at the middle of your manuscript. Do the characters experience tension on every page? Do even the secondary characters have small plot lines that weave them into the story? Do you take your characters to places of great loss or joy? You can’t take the comfortable road of storytelling. Not in the current marketplace.
Happy writing and may your revisions be fruitful.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Momentum
Look at that title.
Momentum.
I didn't have any. Now all I want is to rearrange my entire life to renew my commitment to my writing.
I'm typing this on my iPhone. So, don't expect a long entry but do you want to know what made the difference? Not what, but who...
Donald Maass.
He spoke this weekend at the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group's Write Stuff conference and gave an intense two-day workshop. He is dynamic. I was blown away!
And I got a request from another prestigious agency for a full manuscript which I submitted whilE still in the hotel.
More later.
Momentum.
I didn't have any. Now all I want is to rearrange my entire life to renew my commitment to my writing.
I'm typing this on my iPhone. So, don't expect a long entry but do you want to know what made the difference? Not what, but who...
Donald Maass.
He spoke this weekend at the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group's Write Stuff conference and gave an intense two-day workshop. He is dynamic. I was blown away!
And I got a request from another prestigious agency for a full manuscript which I submitted whilE still in the hotel.
More later.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
My Journal
When I was in high school, a fabulous English teacher somehow got me to go to a writer's conference on the campus of UPenn in Philadelphia. I think I was 16. I started my first official journal in the spiral bound Penn notebook they gave us, while my dad drove me home.
By the time I graduated from college I had more than 100 journals of all shapes and sizes.
I used to number them in the corner, every new one got a number on the inside cover. I stopped this process and I wish I hadn't. It made it easier to put them in order and easier to label exactly how prolific I'd been.
I kept pretty detailed journals during my pregnancy. That changed with the birth of my daughter. Then I journaled when I could, but no longer with the intensity or the frequency that I used to. It got to the point, and this was recently, that my journal entries would be a weekly affair instead of the breaking news format I used to follow.
With some of my recent health issues, I thought I needed to return to as-needed journaling. I wanted to record everything I'm thinking and feeling in order to connect or perhaps disconnect my physical and emotional problems.
I have done this for about three weeks. Maybe four. I'm worrying that these entries are clinical, full of my rants and fears, and make me look like a basket-case. But then I see a glimpse of the old me, and the old journals, with hastily scribbled items like this:
How many thaws from frigid winters
until a heart can no longer be reached
with the frayed and weakening stems
of dandelions held by the tiny hands
of strangers' children?
And I do think that journaling has redirected my attention from social media and also put me more at peace. Now, if only I could make the time to resume my bicycle rides and do some yoga, I might regain some real peace of mind.
By the time I graduated from college I had more than 100 journals of all shapes and sizes.
I used to number them in the corner, every new one got a number on the inside cover. I stopped this process and I wish I hadn't. It made it easier to put them in order and easier to label exactly how prolific I'd been.
I kept pretty detailed journals during my pregnancy. That changed with the birth of my daughter. Then I journaled when I could, but no longer with the intensity or the frequency that I used to. It got to the point, and this was recently, that my journal entries would be a weekly affair instead of the breaking news format I used to follow.
With some of my recent health issues, I thought I needed to return to as-needed journaling. I wanted to record everything I'm thinking and feeling in order to connect or perhaps disconnect my physical and emotional problems.
I have done this for about three weeks. Maybe four. I'm worrying that these entries are clinical, full of my rants and fears, and make me look like a basket-case. But then I see a glimpse of the old me, and the old journals, with hastily scribbled items like this:
How many thaws from frigid winters
until a heart can no longer be reached
with the frayed and weakening stems
of dandelions held by the tiny hands
of strangers' children?
And I do think that journaling has redirected my attention from social media and also put me more at peace. Now, if only I could make the time to resume my bicycle rides and do some yoga, I might regain some real peace of mind.
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