Thank You Janet Reid

I'm not sure if any of you follow Janet Reid's blog, but you should if you don't. Go back through her archives and find this:

BE READY

So, after this advice and changing my intentions of conference attending, I am ready. I have pages printed, I have queries printed, I have business cards. I am ready for this, if anyone is willing to look at anything or critique anything. Even if they tell me what I wrote sucks, it's a starting point.

Be better, get better.

I'm ready.

(And off I go. No...but really, I probably won't blog until I come back. Tomorrow I work all day *I'm actually writing this at work* and then I'm powerkiting, buying clothes for the conference, and then packing, doing laundry, and cleaning out my car. Then I'm off!!)

In Responce To The Wall Street Journal Article

For those of you who haven't heard, the WSJ has written an awful article about YA and how it's just so horrible now. How it's all dark and curses and it's just not good for teens today. They claim that years ago things were different (I take it they never read Cynthia Voigt's Izzy, Willy, Nilly or Fat Chance by Leslea Newman, or any of the other various novels....)

But here's the truth, if you're ready for it. Are you ready? Okay....here is it:
High school can be a very, very dark place for some of us. 
Some of us don't even make it out alive.

When I was a freshmen, the very, very hot boy who sat near me in my seminar class was killed in a drinking and driving accident. His name was Fred Horak, and I barely knew him...just the sadness that surrounded his death (oh, and a year or so prior, his sister died of meningitis.)
As the year went on, my sister's best friend, Kara died from cancer. Less than 4 months later, my best friend, Kellie, died in a car accident (non-alcohol related). After Kellie died, I fell apart and nothing was the same. I couldn't deal with life, I barely moved or got out of bed....things just stopped. Then the girl who sat next to me in my creative writing class tried to kill herself because of a boy and other issues....It was like a slap in the face. When she came back to school, we showed our scars to each other and I tried to tell her that there was something to hold onto, but I wasn't even sure if I was telling the truth...

Add in the fact I lived with my crazy mother and her alcoholic and mentally abusive boyfriend...and things were not so happy in my world.
Soon enough the boy who made my world start revolving again cheated on me. (I found out the day before Valentine's Day). Then shortly after I tore my ACL snowboarding and had to get surgery and was told I may never run again. My high school cross country coach treated me unfairly to the point my sister cursed him out at a meet, in front of the entire team (and parents). I had to meet with the principal, the super, and various other higher up figures in the school system.
And then when I was 16-17, I moved out of my mother's into my sister's and the boy's because if not, if I had stayed I would have killed myself.
But this is my own, personal story and even still, I'm leaving out a lot.

And I survived.

How?
Because I spent a majority of my time writing Confessions of an Immortal Heart, because I read books that kept me sane. Because I watched Soap Operas and stood up for myself and refused to be treated shittily ever again.

So here's to you, Wall Street Journal. For those of you who think that growing up is easy, or full of puppies and kittens and happy little rainbows, or whatever else kind of lies that you're looking for in our novels, it's not. If anyone tells you that it is, it's complete bullshit. Not all of us survive, and those of us who do are left with scars that will always be apparent, that will make future relationships difficult, staying alive even harder. And we write about these experiences with our characters because while, yea, they may be dark, they do happen in real life.

High school sucked for me, and I'm sure beyond any doubt that I am not the only one. So I write truth, and about friends who die, and mental health issues, and how deeply words can truly cut people because that is and that was real to me at the time.

YA Saves.

Things I Am Looking Forward To:

Usually, my days tend to be kind of bllllaaaahhhh. Work 9-5, clean the warehouse on my days off, ogle agents and people who are published. Write..edit...read....play with my sister or my dog...or the Wii Fit

But, these days, I'm constantly finding myself jumping up and down (no, I have not yet landed an agent, nor have I heard word back from the magazine competitions...which reply closer to April or May)

Early April:
The lovely agents at FinePrint Lit will be announcing their winner for the Backspace Query Competition, also Burnside Review and various other magazines/competitions will be announcing their winners.

April 12: Rebecca Rasmussen's novel, The Bird Sisters is released!

April 19: My birthday!!!!

April 26--Take Action Tour:
Silverstein and Bayside concerts in Raleigh!

July 13--LeakyCon 2011, LitDay
John Green, Scott Westerfeld, Kate Schafer Testerman, plus other awesome people and agents, and publishers (I'm swooning right now!)

August 4-7--PNWA Conference!!
You get to speed pitch, listen to speakers, meet agents, SOCIALIZE, make friends....I cannot wait. I cannot wait. Not only this, but I will be staying with my lovely friend, Jennifer Olson who I have not seen in far, far too long. (Yay!!!)

Things I will need for the writing conferences:

• My voice recorder cleared out (currently has battery acid) so I can have fresh batteries and record notes people say to me. Also so I can be all Dirty Work and say "Note to self..." (Or so I won't have to call my voicemail and say "Steph, this is Steph. This is the idea for a story/novel/portion of your memoir I was thinking of while stuck in stop-and-go traffic." Driving a stick is hazardous (sp?), talking is not.
• Business cards (awaiting them, any day now!)
• Pages of two FINISHED and EDITED novels: Confessions of an Immortal Heart and Igniting a Firestarter
• Speed pitch--written, practiced, verbalized (at PNWA it's 3 minute sessions. Gotta talk quick! Be ready to provide pages. This is what I learned from Janet Reid's blog).
• Confidence
• A good hook
• Nice clothing (thank you tax refund!)
• Money to buy books! And apparel! And awesomeness!



50,000+ Words, Day 17

It's DAY 17 today and still early. I just surpassed the 50,000 word mark! Which means, I need to get at least another 10,000 in 3 days (to reach the 20 day mark). That sets the pace at: 3333 words/day (at least). Double that if I'm hitting the 70,000 mark. (Confessions of an Immortal Heart finished up at 73,000). This of course is negating how far I get by the end of today :)

This daylight savings time crap is throwing off my groove. Well, that and my sister's presence in the Outer Banks. We stay up too late and it's distracting. (Although, technically, I can say it's research...as my narrator has a sister :) ). It's been awesome having her here, but I need to ration my Laura time and increase my WRITING time. It's kind of pivotal now, right?

Getting back to the topic of the blog...Submissions stand at...
Submitting to an agent earlier this morning.
Submitted Breaking Myself Down last night after some heavy edits. Yet another $15 submission fee :(, but oh well. Hoping to win a contest sooner or later :)
I've also submitted to three other competitions this week (different pieces)...which brings my submission fees up to a whopping $72. Yackkkk. I'm also missing my debit card, which is SUPER lame. I may need to order another.

I'll keep you all posted on the progress :)

Also..I'm not sure if you've noticed. I really like smiley-faces. I REALLY, REALLY like the :/ face, which on some chat forums doesn't turn into a face. Either way, it's my favorite.

An Interview With Myself About Confessions Of An Immortal Heart

So...I'm bored and tired so I'm going to interview myself to answer all of your lovely questions about Confessions of an Immortal Heart. Why am I asking them? Because they're things I've been wanting to explain to people who are in the process of reading, or potential agents:

When did you write this?

I wrote this my sophomore year of high school? I know it wasn't my freshmen year, but I may have started it then. I finished it sometime in college when I submitted (kind of crappily) to an agent. Of course I got rejected.

Why did you write this?

Erika Wilke told me one day to write a story for her...so I started...and kept going...and it kept going. I felt bad because I kept saying "Oh, you'll have it by Easter, by my birthday...by the time I graduate...." but she still hasn't gotten a copy....(Now she and I don't really talk that much..)

So.....What happens if this gets published?

Well, hopefully I'd be able to do a book tour. I've moved around a lot, so I have three solid fan bases: in the towns of Shepherd, Mt. Pleasant, Auburn, and Bay City, Michigan (my home state), so I feel like that would be a good place to start. (I'd LOVE to have a book signing at Book Mark in Mt. Pleasant, or somewhere in Bay City, and I feel like I would have a good turn out.)
In Biddeford/Portland, Maine, where I attended the University of New England (getting a Med Bio degree!). I have a lot of friends that way who constantly say, "When you get published, I'll be in the store to buy it!" When I was published in Zephyr, a few people made me sign their copies which was HUGELY flattering. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have a signing at Bullmoose. And then on the Outerbanks of North Carolina where I currently reside. It's a smaller following, but I work for a pretty big company (Kitty Hawk Kites), so I feel maybe we could do a co-thing? Try to get both of our names out there?
Thankfully with these places, I feel I'd be able to set up the book signings myself (with maybe some research and direction from an agent/editor...but if they don't have time, I could figure it out. It's not that hard to call places and I'm familiar with the areas in question/the bookstores.)

So, the main characters don't have names...why?

When I first wrote it, I just kept going back to "I" and "me" and "he" and "him" thinking that I would name the characters later. But as time progressed, I listened to people talk about their significant others, and they constantly said, "I'm going out with him" "She's mad at me again". The more I listened the more I heard that we as people don't usually use names, and it's seems like it's a sign of affection. If you're with someone, you love them, and everyone else knows. You talk about them without using their names....so...if you're telling a story about losing the person you love, everyone should know who that is without having to say the name.
I feel like this tactic makes the character more relateable (some may disagree, like my sister). But without names, the characters can become anyone they want to be, it can become your story, it can become mine.
Plus, I read Swann's Way in college, and the narrator was "I"...so I felt it was okay.

How many rounds of editing has this piece gone through?

Oh geeze....umm...a million?
When it was first finished, I left it alone for a few years and went back to it. As I read through it, I found that the writing was unGodly weak, but I had some solid ideas behind the writing. Around the same time I read Three Weeks With My Brother, by Nick Sparks, and he talked about his first book, and how he scrapped it, and I considered doing the same with this...but there was something about it saying "Just edit me, just edit me!" so for the last few years, it's what I've been doing.
When I finally got it to the point I started considering submitting to agents, I sent it out to friends who were avid readers and read things like Twilight, or Harry Potter, and things that were slightly outside our realm of comfort (except, again for my sister...this is NOT her genre). They LOVED the idea behind it. My sister on the other hand said, "I read three pages, lost interest. Please don't make me read anymore."

Wow, that was harsh....what did you do?

Well...I looked at from the reader/author relationship. If she's not connecting well enough to the character, it's a problem on my end of things. I ended up cutting the intro from about 20 pages, down to 5. I described in more detail the world the narrator lived in and rearranged a million scenes.
She later had a problem with the first meeting scene, so I added more dialog with that. I also completely deleted chapter 9 because...well...it sucked. I'm not afraid of changing things as long as it conveys what the story is about

And what is the novel about?

Hahahaha, I hate this question. Actually after the first rejection today, I went to Taco Tuesdays and told the bartender about being rejected after she asked me how I was. We finished our conversation and I heard someone behind me say "So...what's your novel about?"
I laughed and said, "Okay, but you gotta not judge me."
So in short: The narrator is immortal (and unnamed as previously discussed). While most stories have the man stronger, this one revolves around her trying to protect him in some way. Well....he gets murdered, and she basically loses her mind and goes on a killing rampage.
(In this description, I leave out the fact that 90% of the novel builds up to that moment, and explains their relationship together. It follows their meeting where she hated him, to falling in love with him, right up to his death).

Wow. That's pretty intense. What is your inspiration behind this?

Well...there's a lot. The relationship/emotional aspect of the story revolves around my relationship with the guy I loved in high school. Some of the stories are based around things we did, and really it gives me the strongest sense of love and the ability to write about what I felt at that time period.
The death scene and those emotions around it are tied into the death of my best friend, Kellie Lynne Wheeler, who was killed in a car accident when she was seventeen. (I was in my sophomore year of high school when my sister called and told me the news...). It's hard going from returning home from school each day and waiting by the computer to chat with her...to suddenly never seeing her log on again. I wanted something to cement the fact that it's okay to grieve forever, to be in pain from the absence of someone you love. I was so pissed when I went to school, and a week later one of my friends said, "It's been a week, you're not over it yet?" I wanted to strangle him.
I wrote the murder scenes when I was pissed off at my sisters for one reason or another. It helped manage my anger :)

What do books do you consider to be similar?

Umm....the romances are similar to that of the Twilight Saga (the whole "Oh man, this person is my entire world, and I feel like I'd die without them) and the Kissed By An Angel Trilogy (the guy dies and she has to learn how to function again....)

What is your target age group?

When I started this, I was in high school, so that was my original target. But now I'm 22, and have friends my age, and older, and younger. Most of the people who've been reading this are between the ages of 20-40+, but most of us still feel like young adults. I think because of the LOSS and LOVE factors of the novel, anyone who has lost someone can related to the narrator's story. So really, all ages, I guess (though there are some rather graphic scenes)...so maybe young adult and older? If you're making me be specific, I'd aim for 14 and older.

Would you be willing to do an audio CD or anything like that?

I would be. I'm not sure how those work, like...would I be the one reading, or do they hire someone to do it? I'd honestly kind of like to be the reader (don't get me wrong, I hate the sound of my voice), but I LOVE Sylvia Plath, and for the first time last year, I heard a recording of her reading, and it was....horrifying, and inspiring, and if my work reaches anyone, I'd like them to be able to hear -me-. If not...that's okay, I'm sure I'll get to do a partial reading at some point in my life :) Yey youtube!

What other things are you working on?

Well, I'm midway through my second novel, which I started writing because of the great Tammy Henry. If that one gets published, it will be dedicated to her. It's tentatively called The Secret Keeper. I've been working on the ending for quite some time now....
I also write short stories, nonfiction, and poetry, so a lot of my time has been spent submitting things to competitions and trying to bulk up my resume/publishing background.


Okay, I feel like that's sufficient. If you guys have any questions about the novel, the submission process, or anything else, feel free to let me know and I'll answer!

The Finished Product

Alright. After years of editing and revising and writing, the grand total stands at:
220 double spaced pages
Approximately 73,000 words
And one exhausted potential author. :)

Here's the game plan for the remainder of the week:
Today--Rest up, read my book "Writing Great Books for Young Adults" (Thank you Elizabeth!). See if there's more that needs to be edited.
Tomorrow--Go to work, continue reading said book. Make three perfect query letters that say "My novel rocks, finally!" without saying it.
Monday--Get edits back from my readers. Go to work, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit. Sleep.
Tuesday--Go to work, be nervous the ENTIRE day. Send out three awesome query letters, and however many pages they ask for and hold by breath. Whew.

At this time I'm also looking at getting some business cards. I also sent out my creative nonfiction story this morning, it cost $1.39 for shipping and $20 for the competition...

Have I mentioned I'm broke?