Write Another Book

Several months ago, I had just finished final edits on Eternal Starling and had started sending out queries. I wrote Eternal Starling as the first book in a trilogy and couldn't wait to finish the next two books. I'd gotten about 40K words into the second book and 10K into the third when I went to dinner with a bestselling author friend of mine.

I asked her the question that every writer dreads . . . what if no one wants my novel?

She said, "You write another book." In fact, her advice was to write another book regardless. She said as soon as you start querying, you write something else.

Okay, I thought, that's what I'm doing. I'm already working on the second and third books in the Eternal Starling trilogy. But, then I really considered the second and third book. And here's the thing . . . what's the point of working on two sequels that probably won't sell if no one is interested in the first book in the trilogy? (I know, I know. You can almost hear the sound of the light bulb clicking in my head).

My friend said she had to write three novels before she finally got an agent and then she got one of the most amazing agents in the business. Seriously. One of the best. And even with the agent equivalent of Superman, the book she wrote didn't sell. Her agent tipped her off to a new subject that was gaining in popularity and my friend wrote her debut novel, the same novel that made her a bestselling author.

I just sent my last round of queries for Eternal Starling and I'm still waiting to hear from agents who have partials on the book, but I realized I don't want to put all my eggs in the Eternal Starling basket. I decided to take the advice of my friend and leave the Eternal Starling world behind for a while and write something else. A month ago, I started my contemporary YA, and the chick-lit mystery I just finished.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from an agent. This particular agent asked for a partial with the query letter. She read my partial and emailed me to say Eternal Starling wasn't for her, but she thought I had a good voice for YA and chick-lit and she'd like to read any other projects I was working on.

First, I was completely elated! A personal response from an agent! An agent who liked my writing enough to tell me she wanted to read other things I'm working on! I mean, a real agent who brokers six-figure deals thinks I have a good voice and thinks I can write. Maybe I'm not insane after all and I do have a tiny bit of talent.

Second, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I had followed the advice from my friend and written another book. I was able to email the agent back and say, actually, I am working on other books. I'm almost finished with a chick-lit mystery and I just started a contemporary YA. I told her I'd send her the manuscripts as soon as I finished them and she responded with an enthusiastic thank you and that she looked forward to reading them.

Taking a step back from the book I put so much time into wasn't easy. I was so involved in the Eternal Starling world that it was hard to let it go and come up with other ideas I wanted to work on. But because I did, I have an agent who knows who I am and wants to read my other manuscripts. Because I wrote something else instead of continuing my trilogy, I am a step closer to finding an agent.

Only you can decided when you're ready to write something new. For me, it took a while to find another idea I was as passionate about as Eternal Starling, but now I'm really glad I did. And I'll be forever grateful to my author friend who gave me the good advice to write another book.

First Drafts and Outlining

Can I just say how much I LOVE writing a first draft! For me, there's such a sense of freedom at starting a new story. Maybe it's because I've been writing/editing/revising Eternal Starling for the last two years, but I'm in love with the two new books I'm working on! There's just something about getting to create a new world and meet new characters.

About two weeks ago, I started working on a contemporary YA and a chick-lit romance/mystery. The mystery has been moving at a really good pace so I've decided to finish it first. I'm 100 pages into it and I should be able to reach my goal of finishing the first draft by the end of February.

Let me just say, Eternal Starling did not get written nearly as fast as this book and I think it's because of the different ways I outlined the two books.

With Eternal Starling, I did a skeletal outline of the story. I knew the basics, but I kind of let the characters take me where they wanted to go. If you've read my past posts you know I wrote Eternal Starling in 3 months, then I ended up spending a year doing revision after revision (I think I had about 10 different drafts) because I didn't know my story well enough when I first wrote it. This time around, I decided that since the book was a mystery novel, I needed a more detailed outline. I can't believe the difference it has made. Knowing where the story is going makes it much easier to just fill in the blanks. I know not everyone likes to write that way, and I didn't think I'd like it either, but it worked for this book. I'll have to wait and see if it works for other books I write.

How do you guys feel about first drafts? Do you love them or hate them and just want to get the ideas on paper so you can revise? And what about outlining? Do you write with a detailed outline, or just a basic idea of where the story is going?

Learning from Mistakes

I've been busy the last week working on two new novels. One is a YA, the other is an adult mystery. Writing these two new books has made me realize all the mistakes I made with the first drafts of Eternal Starling. Eternal Starling was my first book and I was learning as I wrote. I feel like my writing has improved dramatically because of my mistakes and what I learned from them, so I thought it might help my other writer friends to post about some of those issues.

1. Contractions!!! Who knew these silly things can be the difference between your dialogue sounding authentic, or forced. Throughout college and for the past eight years, I've worked in the professional writing world where contractions are a sign of poor writing. But in fiction, if you don't use contractions, your dialogue sounds crazy. I'd know, mine was almost contractionless when my beta editor Amazing Ashley got a hold of it. Which leads me to another point...

2. Read out loud! There are so many things you catch by actually hearing what you wrote. Awkward pauses, phrases that don't fit, contractions that aren't being used. I'm not saying break out your manuscript and force your dog and significant other to listen to a 325 page reading, but if you have a section that doesn't seem to be working, read it out loud and more often than not, it will help you fix the problem.

3. Awhile. This is a tricky little word and honestly, until Amazing Ashley pointed it out, I thought it was always one word. It's not. The rule I've read about it says that it's one word if you mean a short period of time, and two words if you mean a longer period of time (usually defined as more than an hour). A good rule of thumb for it is whether the word 'for' precedes awhile. If you say for a while, then it's always two words. If there's not a for in front of awhile, it's up to you whether you decide to use it as one word or two.

4. Painless Grammar. When Amazing Ashley finished editing Eternal Starling she gave me a copy of a reference book that looks like it should be given to a third grader. I take comfort in the fact that Amazing Ashley also recommends said third grader book to her college English students. Painless Grammar was so helpful to me while I tried to remember grammar rules, especially because I've been using AP Stylebook rules for so long in my career. For fiction and even non-fiction writing, it seems like most editors tend to follow the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style. And if you pick up the Chicago Manual of Style to look for rules, I wish you well. Trying to find information in that massive reference manual is harder than finding the Fountain of Youth.

5. Italics. Should you use them? And if you do should you underline them? I know some agents abhor italics, others don't mind them. Some agents say that if they ask for a submission they want italic words underlined instead of italicized, others don't. This is one of those rules that you just have to research to find out what the agent wants. In all the submissions I've sent, I've left the italic words italicized because the agents haven't stipulated one way or another. But like I said, it differs depending on the agent.

Those are all things I can think of for now. I'll add more as I remember them though. What about you wordsmiths? What did you realize you needed to fix as you were writing/revising your manuscripts?

Happy Award!

Cute Courtney Reese was nice enough to give me a Happy Award for my blog. She's a writer with excellent taste in books and a really cool blog layout. Since I've been busy beta reading for one of my critique partners, I've neglected posting much this past week. So the Happy Award gives me an excuse to take time and post ten things that make me happy.

1. My hyper Pomeranian, Pippin, who makes me feel like a star every time I walk into a room.

2. Laughing so hard my stomach hurts.

3. Modern Family, Arrested Development, Glee, and especially Lost!!! I can't wait for Season 6!!!

4. Cupcakes. If it wasn't for my relationship with the cupcake shop, I doubt I'd get any writing or revisions done at all.

5. A good book with characters I fall in love with and want to read again and again.

6. The kiss between Aragorn and Arwen at the end of The Lord of The Rings, Return of The King. Every man on earth should have to take kissing lessons from that scene.

7. The gnocchi at Cucina Toscana in Salt Lake City.

8. The sound of a V8 muscle car.

9. The smell of rain.

10. Hearing a great song that I haven't heard in awhile and remembering how much I love it.

Honest Scrap Blog Award

The lovely Kristin Rae was nice enough to give me my first blog award! As part of accepting the Honest Scrap Award, I'm supposed to post 10 things about myself. So, here are some things you might not know about me. 1. I've been a vegetarian since I was 5. My parents weren't thrilled about my choice and tried to change my mind, but I was a stubborn little kid. 2. I seem to meet famous people at restaurants. Ben Affleck at Hard Rock in Salt Lake City, Michael Jordan at Ghidotti's in Park City. 3. I plan on getting a tattoo for my 80th birthday. 4. Since childhood, I've been terrified of the TV show Dr. Who because of an evil red-eyed monster I saw on the show. To this day if I hear the theme music, I still get chills and cover my ears. 5. I'm a germ freak. I always carry anti-bacterial spray and clorox wipes. 6. In high school, I spent a good deal of time in fields hunting for the hubcaps that had flown off my 1966 Mustang and taken little adventures on their own. 7. I'm terrified of spiders but I can't kill them. Instead I just trap them under a cup. If my husband sees an upside down cup on the floor, he knows there is a spider waiting and he should dispose of it. 8. The first concert I ever went to was Neil Diamond when I was 11 years old. It took me 8 years of dating my husband before I could admit to him that I'm a Neil fan. 9. Much to my dad's chagrin and wonder at where he went wrong, I am a liberal democrat...one of the few in Utah. 10. My husband has started a numbering system for my fictional boyfriends. Ranger Manoso, Peeta, Jace, and Patch. *sigh*

Book Trailers

Book trailers are becoming more and more popular so I decided to make one for Eternal Starling. It was surprisingly easy and if I can do it, anyone can! A bunch of my great YA writer friends on YAlitchat.ning.com gave me suggestions on how to make a trailer. I had no idea there were so many options out there. If you're interested in making one of your own, I used a program that came with my laptop, Windows Movie Maker. I used a sample song that also came with my laptop and the pictures are my own. If you're looking for a good place to get photos, you can buy them at istockphoto.com for $1 per image.

Are You Writing A Book? Do This...NOW!!!

Are you working on a book, finished a book, have a outline for book you think you might write in 50 years? You might think this is strange, but here's a suggestion:

Email yourself!

I'm not kidding. As soon as you finish reading this post, do it ASAP and here's why:

Right before I started querying Eternal Starling I stopped by the bookstore and happened to see a display for a YA Fantasy book. I try to read a lot of YA Fantasy since it's one of the genres I write in and I was especially interested in this book because a local author wrote it. I took it home and started reading, then immediately wanted to bang my head against the wall. As I kept reading, I kept wanting to go to the wall for more head banging. The reason? The book had several plot points that were eerily similar to things in my book. I'd never heard of this author or their book before I saw it in the bookstore, and even then, I just picked the book up on a whim.

I frantically spent weeks rewriting many aspects of the plot and cursing the writing gods for giving the other author and myself similar ideas. Eternal Starling is better now because of the revisions, but if I'd just done something as simple as emailing myself, I wouldn't have had to worry...or at least, not as much. This experience taught me what I need to do to protect myself as an author.

Here's the thing: all ideas are essentially ideas other people have had before, they're just packaged in an original way when you write your novel. There's a good chance some other writer out there has an idea comparable to yours. When it comes to getting sued for plagiarism, you only need to be able to prove that the idea in your book was original to you. One of the best ways to do this is to attach the draft you're working on to an email, then send it to yourself and save the email in one of your account folders. How often you do it is up to you, but if I'm working on a writing project, I email an updated draft to myself about once a month. Having these emails with a time stamp on the email/attachment can help protect you if you're ever sued for plagiarism.

I decided to start emailing my drafts after my software engineer husband suggested it as a way to safeguard my work. I also got some information from a patent/copyright attorney. I later found out that even bestselling authors email their drafts to themselves as a way to protect their ideas.

So start emailing yourself my dear writers! Trust me, your head and your wall will thank you. :) If you have other suggestions for protecting your work, I'd love to hear them! Please post in the comments below.