Peter's Cross Station

Quick Hello

In the land of the in-laws which is 99% Internet-free.

Is it a happy or sad development of the 21st century that I miss my people in the computer?

For now, I'm going to say it's happy.  I know a lot of wonderful people I'd never have known twenty years ago, sans my Internet life.  

Meanwhile, sonnet-writing on hold while I deal with two small kids in a small space with Very Old People who might trip and break something important at any moment.

Hope you all are well.

Changing Everything...and InSoWriMo #3

I made a difficult decision yesterday and today I'm feeling really good about it.

I'm chucking the first novel and focusing on the second, which will now be the first.

I have been mulling it for awhile and--I know, I know--some of you suggested it back when I told you the second one was so much better than the first.  But you know, I was quite attached to that first book.  Because it was my first book.  It has taken a little while, but I woke up this morning feeling hopeful about this whole fiction-writing thing for the first time in weeks, remembering my decision.

As a writer of nonfiction, I know how absolutely critical it is to be able to toss work you've done to do better work.  And I know how hard it is to do, yet I've mastered it.  But a whole book?  That just seemed too hard.  And yet, the more I tried to revise it, the worse I felt about it.  I just couldn't revise it into what I felt was the quality of the second book--on the first draft.

The fact is, I learned to write fiction on that first book.  I began not really knowing if I could write fiction and by the time I got to the end, I had found that I could, but there was a clear learning curve right there in the pages of the text.  After the revisions, I do feel really good about the first section of the first book--I do feel I revised it to a high enough quality to please me.  But now there's a different problem I just can't revise away.  And that is the problem of genre.  The book begins looking really, really like your standard (well, maybe not standard, but...) romance novel.  Then it morphs into something...not...a romance novel.  But selling it is just not a simple matter.  Romance people have shown interest in it, then when they look at a bigger piece of it, they decline.  Non-romance people are like "I don't do romance" and decline sooner.  And this can't be revised away.  I do think the narrative makes logical sense--if complexly--but I just don't think it's a good choice for a debut novel.  It's just too confusing.  It requires too much hand-wringing and explanation.

Now, the second book?  I feel really confident about.  The only question is, can I really make it stand alone/be a first book when it was originally envisioned as a sequel?  And I think I can.  It's actually an excellent exercise for me, because I really want all the books I have planned to stand alone, in spite of sharing settings and characters and plot elements.  So I'm doing a little audit on Book Two now, to smooth out those places that were clunky reminders of Book One plot points and make it all original.  And it's going rather more easily than I thought it would when I first started mulling the idea.

I have this little personal pantheon of lesbian novelists I fantasize about being BFFs with and when I was banging my head against the Book One revisions wall, I just couldn't imagine them giving me the time of day.  Book Two?  I feel I could hold my head up in their company.  Sure, this is all in my head, but boy am I realizing just how important it is to have the right things in my head when writing fiction!

Now, some of you have been absolutely FABULOUS and have read early drafts of Book One and given me invaluable feedback.  Two things 1) In the end, however I resisted at first, I have taken every scrap of your excellent advice and the book is virtually unrecognizable from what you read for me (in the best possible way) and for that I am eternally grateful.  There is no way I could have improved it so much on my own and I really appreciate your honest feedback.  2) I said I was chucking it, but what I'm really doing is tucking it away.  I will come back to it someday, I am 100% certain.  It will be a longed-for prequel when my fans are wondering How It All Began, right?  I just need to step away from it for a good while and come back to it fresh much later.

In other news, I owe you folks a sonnet.  I have an idea and the first two lines, but this week, I think I'll be late.  I was ill in bed for three solid days this week and am not really 100% better yet.  It's a shame, because the sonnet is Winter Solstice themed and I was hoping to post it today.  I suppose it could still happen, but probably not.  I suppose maybe I'll get it up here by tomorrow and it will still be cool.

Post links/sonnets of your own below, please!

No Virginia, There's No...You Know

For more on this, see my latest BlogHer post.

InSoWriMo: the Second

Slight improvement over last week, I think.  This is based on a true story of how I had to go across the country (um, the country of England, that is) on an emergency basis on the day before my twenty-first birthday.  And there was a crazy blizzard the like of which Southern England had not seen in fifty years.  And BritRail was stumped.  And then I got really lost when I did manage to arrive at my destination.  Not sure why I thought of it.  But I figured it was as good sonnet fodder as anything else. Well, not really.  But anything that came to my mind this week.

The Wrong Kind of Snow, 1991

 

When I turned twenty-one it snowed all night

And in the morning all the trains were stalled

I set out for the station before light

I told them “Epsom” and they were appalled

 

“You cannot get there in this kind of snow,”

The ticket agent argued with a frown

But I stood my ground at her small window

And in the end I got to Epsom town.

 

Circling around my goal in snowdrift dark

I searched for my hotel room in the cold

No sleeping town had ever been so stark

As midnight struck, I suddenly grew old

 

I wonder where the dancer is today

Who turned nineteen on that year’s shared birthday?

See What I Mean?

Just found a book blog that has this thread about the slush pile.  Don't drink anything while reading it.

More on Darts in the Dark and Being a Sport about It

I got two rejections in the past twelve hours or so.  Neither was a surprise.  Actually, one was kind of a pleasant surprise, because it had been out a while and often enough, I've found, agents don't tell you when they pass.  So there's a folder in my bookmarks of agents queried that never move into the rejection folder.  The loose ends are aggravating.

It's not bothering me too much.  There's a little twinge, a whisper of doubt about the writing in the back of my head, but mostly I chalk it up to a another days' work and actually, to progress, because at least now I know I need to move on.

I have been accruing a few agent and editor acquaintances (mostly via Twitter, who knew?) and through links and clicks and second and third hand referrals, accumulating knowledge of this particular area of publishing.  The thing is, one agent/editor/blog/website will say "dear god, for pity's sake don't EVER do X!" then another will say "geez, why is no one doing X!  You've got to do X, people!"  And if you ask five of them is Y is helpful, one will say "No." One will say "YES!" One will say, "well, it depends."  One will say, "only if also Z." One will give you an inscrutable emoticon in response and leave you scratching your head.  The upshot is each and every query demands a ton of research into that individual's preferences, ideas, philosophy, style, etc.  And you know, actually, it's kind of fun.  I seriously kind of enjoy that part.  But it can get annoying to be told (not ME being told, but to read general info for the general public including me) that something is absolute and carved in stone, when in fact it's only so for the person doing the telling/writing/tweeting/whatever.

So again with the darts in the dark.  Because you just never know when what you've done is going to align perfectly with what some agent thinks you should do or misalign entirely.  And so I for one believe the rejections that say "this is not a good fit, but that's no commentary on your project." 

Mind you, I'm cynical enough to know that sometimes it is a commentary on my (or anyone's) project.  I can only imagine the slush to be found in those slush piles.  Really.  Me?  I could NEVER do what agents do.  I laugh when people say "famous, rich, successful Writer X was rejected fourhundredandseventythree times!"  Because you know what?  For every rich famous, successful writer who was rejected a lot, there are approximately twelve million losers who never published a sentence fragment who were also rejected a lot.  While success may = a history of rejection, the inverse is not, by any means, necessarily true.

For me it will be though!  Stiff upper lip!

InSoWriMo: the First

Here's REALLY hoping they get better as the month goes on, but the week is slipping by and I was desperate, so here you go.

Ode to the Morning Routine Around Here

Shall I compare thee—“two girls want to eat!”

Cereal flakes, buttered waffles or toast?

Milk first, the kettle filled, Sesame Street

Cued on the laptop—the one you like most.

Batter my heart three—“scrambled eggs and cheese!”

Where is the frying pan? Still in the sink—

Crusted with last night’s leftovers and grease

By the bananas beginning to stink.

I caught this morning—“the milk on the floor

Needs to be wiped! But I didn’t mean it!

Just an accident—I’ll do it no more.

Especially if you make me clean it.”

Writing a sonnet in the morning is

Not easy when you’re waiting on two kids.

Now, where's yours?

Bilingual? Raising Bilingual Kids? I need you!

Writing an article about kids and second-language/bilingual/emersion school education.

Can I interview you?  If so please leave a comment and I'll send you the questions.

Thanks!!!!

Considering Adoption?

Take thirty minutes to watch a brave father tell his story about broken promises in an open adoption.

Open adoption can be a great experience.  It's been shown in many studies to be best for all parties to the adoption.  But until the promises made in open adoption are legally binding contracts, stories like this will be too common.  Too many prospective adoptive parents are willing to promise the moon to get a baby.  They probably usually mean to keep their promises.  But there is too little real training and education to prepare people for open adoption and there is too little post-placement support and counseling for parties to an open adoption.

For peer support for your open adoption, go register at Open Adoption Support.

For more things to consider when considering adoption, see this post.