My First Blog
I am new here, even though I signed up several years ago. I just have not figured out how to blog. The idea just hasn’t ever come to mind. But I know I should blog to help get the word out about my writing.
I’ve written a bunch of stuff — short stories, poems, novellas, and full-length novels. I’ve written in some form or another since grade school, but never considered myself a writer, I always considered myself a painter. But I never made enough money painting to live on, like so many artists. But when the company I was working for in 2014 was sold to a large competitor, I found myself most days taking a train into my new office in NYC. That 75-minute ride twice a day gave me time to sleep, play video games, or write.
My first major attempt was a story called Bobby’s Story. I started writing this while I was working at an art gallery. There was a lot of time when no one was in the shop and so I wrote a story about an Art Gallery Owner. The story took me to places that I had not expected, wonderful places, scary places, and hard places. While writing that book, I learned so much about writing and creativity, and maybe most importantly, me. I was “Bobby” as much as I didn’t want to be. When Bobby got hurt, I said “ouch”. When Bobby laughed, I did too. When the love of Bobby’s life died, I was heartbroken.
Bobby’s Story took a couple of years to write, another year-plus to re-write and in the end, I had almost 300,000 words and a work of art that only the author would love. But it was a starting point. It made me do research, learn grammar, and think about why people do things, but most of all it took me on a journey that felt amazing.
I re-read and reworked Bobby’s Story three times more, cut it into two volumes, and still ended up with 235,000 words. It was far better but still a work that only the author will love. I’ve thought about doing a complete R&R to Bobby’s Story, but maybe it’s best to let it go. I also thought of posting the story — chapter by chapter — on some literary site for feedback and a fix. I’ll keep thinking about that.
Since then, I’ve written dozens of short stories, five of which were included in anthologies: two won awards, one with a cash prize, and two were purchased. Other stories I submitted that were rejected, I thought were some of my best. It continues to surprise me which stories the judges reject — one such story that was rejected brings tears to not only my eyes every time I’ve re-read it, but each of my beta readers teared up too. A friend of mine who asked to read something I wrote, took the printed story home with her. The next week when I saw her again, she recounted the story to me as tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She said she’d never been so moved reading a story. But I guess the judges weren’t in the mood for a tear-jerker.
I’m not a great sleeper. My husband falls asleep before his head hits the pillow and doesn’t wake until the next morning. It takes me a long time to fall asleep and then I wake in the small hours, changing position, counting sheep, trying to push work out of my mind — doing anything to fall back to sleep. Nothing works, and I don’t fall back to sleep until five or six o’clock. So during those times, now I think about writing — well more like storylines, characters, scenes, plots. I work out plots or think of how to fix issues with a scene and how to move the character to the right spot. I create scenes and refine characters. I find flaws, mistakes, and oddities. I re-work the current chapter on my screen and sometimes do a full re-write in my head.
When a good idea comes along, I pray that it stays with me until the morning. I’m not one to get up and write down notes on a pad for fear of never getting back to sleep. Only once do I remember having a great idea only to have forgotten when I woke. Try as I did, the story did not come back. Usually, I remember and make quick notes as soon as I get up to keep for later.
The downside of working this way is the number of plots, stories, and scenes that I have logged is more than I could ever complete. To keep my focus, I started a spreadsheet of character names so as not to reuse names. Soon enough, I was keeping track of the stories themselves. Before I knew it, the spreadsheet had taken on a life of its own and now lists every story, novella, and novel, the stage it’s in, whether it’s good or bad, changes that need to be made, and word count. I only track the current word count. If the first draft of a story comes in at 200,000 words (and yes, I’ve done that) and the re-write/first edit comes in at 100,000. I only record 100,000. To date, I’ve logged over two million words. That seems so crazy, but I love it.
Today, I sent my novel, Meant To Be, to a literary agent for submission. I’ve submitted it to a few publishers without success so I’m trying the agent thing. The last plan would be self-publishing but again, the Writers Market is completely against doing that.
This is the novel I am most proud of. It’s a gay romance work of fiction and I hope someone will like it enough to want to publish it. Funny, I think I spent as much time drafting query letters as I did writing the story (that’s close to an exaggeration). Unlike writing fiction, query letters are tough. You need to shrink 100,000 words into a couple of paragraphs, all the while keeping the feel and tone, and truth of the story; making sure the full plot is explained; revealing the ending; making it something that the reader wants more of. It has to be concise, succinct, and in the voice of the writer. I wrote dozens of drafts and still prayed that the final draft will make some literary agent want to take it on. And even then, there’s no guarantee of being published.
Now the hardest part: waiting the 6 to 12 weeks for a response, if any. At 12 weeks, I will assume the agent didn’t care for it and I will look for someone else who might.
Wish me luck.
