Still At It

It’s been a while since my last post in March for Vivian Kirkfield’s #50PreciousWords contest. I ended up getting an honorable mention! That’s the second year in a row I’ve gotten on honorable mention. Maybe next year will be the year!

Since March, I stopped working on the adult fantasy. I ended up cutting out the last 20,000 + words, and have written a few hundred more here and there. I wrote, and have since worked on, a flash fiction piece that I’ve submitted to a few places, all ending in rejection, though one was a positive rejection. I’ve also been rejected on a few different picture book manuscripts.

But, that comes with the territory. I’ve only gotten rejections, but that’s bound to change, and can only change if I keep working, and keep submitting.

I restarted The Right to Write by Julia Cameron, got to about a third of the way through, but am taking a pause. Sometimes her writing bothers me- she comes across as full of herself, and I can only take it in small doses. I do like her prompts, though. I do recommend reading the book and doing ALL the prompts as you go!

I’ve been listening to the Book Smitten podcast as they read Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul, discuss the chapters here and there, and follow each assignment as the podcasters write a picture book manuscript. I’ve been doing the same, working on a new manuscript, but have fallen a few episodes behind. It’s amazing how much getting back to teaching can throw my routine into a loop.

I’m still reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders with a reading group. The discussions we have each month are extremely valuable! The book focuses on Russian Authors, and a select few short stories by them, but we also work towards translating this to picture books.

I’ve been reading The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker as well, examining her poetic style, and slowly making the attempt to move my poetry into a more formal style- well, any style really. I have yet to examine her short stories as my reading group has been doing with A Swim by our dear friend George (not really, but it’s how we feel!).

What have you been up to lately? Let me know in the comments!

Moving On

There’s one particular manuscript that I’ve been working on regularly for a couple years. Before that, I would work on it once in a while in a rotation of several picture book and scripts I’ve worked on.

I love it.

It’s probably my best manuscript.

I’ve gotten a rewrite and resubmit, it’s made it to the acquisitions table of a small publishing company- though, ultimately, rejected- and it’s gotten a couple positive and personalized rejections.

I just got an incredible, in depth critique that I won from an agent. It was filled with some excellent, in depth advice, and reasons why she rejected it. I did like that in the couple e-mails she sent she called me by the main character’s name, which sounds and looks nothing like my own. I took that as a slight positive (hey, I can cling to little things if I want!).

But, I was overwhelmed by everything in it. I’ve made plans for what to do, how to tackle it, but I keep putting it off.

Finally, earlier today, I decided it was time to shelve the MS and work on other things. It felt like it was holding me back from working on other manuscripts.

It’s definitely NOT gone for ever, just a couple months. Then, I’ll tackle it.

Writing Challenges

I usually do one or two challenges a year. StoryStorm is always a go. It’s the perfect way to start the year. The idea of StoryStorm is to come up with 30 picture book ideas in thirty-one days. There are posts, and prizes, each day to help you come up with ideas. This year I finished with thirty-one! I still need to weed through them and figure out what I should prioritize and what I should just put over here…next to the trunk…

The other that I’d done in the past, though not the last two years, was Julie Hedlund’s 12x12 Picture Book Challenge. The idea of 12x12 is to write 12 picture book manuscripts in twelve months. Sounds easy. Sounds hard. And you’re right. It’s easyhard (see Websters? New word! You’re welcome). 12x12 is so much more that just writing 12 manuscripts in a month. There’s a whole group out there doing it with you. I think there’s about 1,000 people this year that signed up for it. There’s a forum to interact with other people, critique each others manuscripts, pitches, query letters, etc. People form critique groups outside of it, and forge friendships that last. I wrote a previous post about rejoining it, and I’m still really glad I did.

I plan on doing more this year. I signed up for NonFiction Fest (aka NFFest) this year to help with a non-fiction idea I’m researching and turning into my first non-fiction picture book manuscript. There are helpful posts each day, as well as prizes, to help you along with writing and researching your NF MS.

I think Reading For Research Month is coming up in March, and I plan on doing that one as well.

There’s always NaNoWriMo in November, but I’ve never accomplished that, or the mini writing related goals that I set for myself. But, I always move forward faster with NaNo.

After that? I’m not sure. I’ll have to dig around and see what ‘s up.

What writing challenges do you partake in? Are there any I missed?

SURPRISES!

I’m writing this post as part of Day 2 of Julie Hedlund’s 12 Days of Christmas for Writers. You can check out the series by clicking the linky.

Day 2 of her series is titled, Surprises. Our assignment was to focus on positive surprises we had during the course of the year (2019). Besides my (not so much) surprise in my love for minions, here’s my list:

1. An editor loving a PB manuscript enough to ask for a revise and resubmit (my second ever!).

2. The same editor loving the revision so much it is now at the acquisitions table.

3. The same PB MS also got the best rejection ever just before I submitted it to the above editor.

4. A critique partner loving a CB so much they said they felt invested in the characters and wanted to read more about them.

5. Finding enough romancy (if I add a y to a word, does that make it funny- because it does with fun…) type poems to have a working MS for a romance type poetry chapbook.

6. I completed eight PB MSs in 2019.

7. Coming up with an idea that I love for a NF PB MS (yeah, I know, I still need to research and write it :) )

8. How easily the words have come for the first half of the second in a potential series for a CB MS.- WHY DID I STOP?!

9. The changes I made to a MS I originally wrote in 2014 completely changed the story and it may have potential.

10. A story I wrote for Vivian Kirkfield’s 50 Precious words contest turned into a slightly longer PB MS dealing with loss- one I did not expect when I started.

11. I agreed to run- and will be running again!- the silent auction for the EPA SCBWI conference this past Spring (I peopled massively and loved it!).

That’s my list of surprises! The next post will be successes. If you didn’t click the link above for Julie Hedlund’s 12 Days of Christmas for Writers, do it NOW!

Ow! My eyes!

Did you ever stare at something so long it hurt your eyes? Or stare at the eclipse :) ?

That’s how I felt after looking at just one picture book manuscript after over an hour.

It may not sound like much, but there were four colors of Sharpie markings all over it based on three critique partners feedback, and my own edits. So, yeah, OW MY EYES HURT!

I made changes onto Scrivener on my iPad, and began looking through that. But, the damage was done.

They didn’t literally hurt, it was more focus. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I tried to go to some poetry.

But, no.

I tried another manuscript.

Nope.

Maybe next time I’ll set a timer if I know I want to look at just one 450 word manuscript. Take a break after twenty minutes, do something else, then get back to it. Of course, I’d have to set a timer for my reward time.

I do have an app called ‘Be Focused’ which I LOVE, but haven’t used in quite a while. I have it set for twenty minute work periods, with five minutes of reward rest, then it resets itself. I’ve used it successfully in the past, I just need to get to it again.

Would it have helped the other night?

Who knows. But it wouldn’t have hurt.