Five Chapter Middle Hump

 Ahh ... the hump. Sometimes it's hard to get over.

For me, the hump comes right around the middle of my wip. I don't know why. I have a feeling that it has something to do with the moment when something is getting ready to change. When a twist or turn arrives. Just when something happens in the middle of your wip. It's dramatic. It's powerful.

Let's face it ... it's hard.

And that's where I get stuck. It's happened with all three of my books. I've stopped--almost dead center (or 3/4 of the way through)--and had to literally PUSH my way through five chapters or so (hence the name).

When I reach the hump--everything stops. The plot, the momentum, the drive (that's the worst). And it lingers. I can't get away from it, and I can't really walk away. 

It's painful to face the hump. Don't confuse the hump with writers block. It's not the same thing. I've only had writers block once and that was because of stress. The hump is different. You're a peak of your story, your mind is going in a million different directions. You're confused. You're scared. You're uncertain of what to do next ... but the ideas ARE there.

Sometimes the hump lasted a few weeks (like book #2), sometimes a month (like book #1), and sometimes...it lasted A LOT longer. Book #3 had a six month hump. Granted, the book itself wasn't the only problem. I had also been stuck in editing hell.

How do I get over the hump? Once I actually stopped writing and did somethng else all together (rewrite nightmare, anyone?) The other times I pushed myself through it. I sludged. I painfully worked my way through the problem until I thought my eyes would bleed.

 And then? Whoa! Watch out! After I get over the hump, the book is done in a matter of days. Okay, maybe not days ... sometimes weeks. The point is, once I'm over the hump, I fly to finish line. 

I'm scared of the hump. Every time I write a new book I think ahead and I know its coming. I'm just not sure when. Watch out for the hump. And above all--don't let it stop you!

~JD

Guest Blog: Scott Eagan, Literary Agent from Greyhaus

It is a pleasure to introduce Literary Agent, Scott Eagan, from Greyhaus Literary.

I know most of you are YA writers, so you probably don't know Scott. He only reps romance and women's fiction. To give you an idea of how huge and cool he is, check these out:
He's got a website.
A blog.
He's on Twitter.
He's on Facebook.
And he does blog talk radio!!!

Basically I saying he's out there--giving authors all that great information we need. (No matter what genre you write). And today, he has graciously answered the age-old, headache-inducing question: whats up with all the writer "rules"?

ARE THERE RULES OR SIMPLY GUIDELINES?

A lot of talk has went on in the blogosphere lately about " the writing rules" all new writers are told to learn and follow. Like not using author intrusion, limiting (or avoiding) head-hopping, limiting the number of dialogue tags, and how adverbs are bad. Of course, the dilemma comes when we find all these "rules" being broken in published books. Many people understand how successful authors get away with breaking them, but I think the frustration comes when debut authors are found breaking the same rules many of us are trying to avoid.

I think it would be very helpful for us as writers to see what an agent has to say about these rules.

Ah, are there really rules when it comes to publishing? I love this question and the best answer to this comes from that great line from The Pirates of the Caribbean. When Elizabeth complains to Barbossa that he isn’t following “the code” his answer is priceless. “…the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.” So for your frustrated writers out there, Welcome aboard the SS Publishing World.

When it comes to specific rules to follow, there really aren’t any. There are a lot of suggestions that will certainly make the story read much better. There are things that some editors and agents want and others don’t care about. There are some things that just don’t work well with stories and other things that work really well given the specific circumstance. Now, with that said, please understand that I am not saying that you can go out and do anything you darn well want to. That is far from the truth.

As an editor or agent, we look for projects that are well written and something that can sell well. If an author is able to tell a story with some great marketability, but in the process, they are “breaking rules,” then so be it. If it is a major problem, we ask for the changes to happen in revisions. If not, we just let the story go as is.

What writers need to realize is that many of these “rules” and “guidelines” are the things that separate one publisher from the next and one editor from the next. This is that subjectivity that we talk about in publishing. I was recently looking at a story that an author wanted to see at a particular house and I knew it simply wasn’t going to work. Why? The story was doing things that publisher simply doesn’t produce. In this case, the publisher tended to go with more dialogue heavy manuscripts and less introspection. The manuscript I was looking at did the complete opposite. Is this wrong? No, just not right for that particular house. Some houses like less adjectives or adverbs. Some don’t mind semi-colons. Some want dialogue tags to be action or emotion tags.

Your job is to determine what that publisher, editor or agent really wants. That comes from the research that you do.
The other area I hear writers scream about “rules” are in the query letters and submissions. This idea simply comes from many of the websites out there that preach one idea and downplay others. Again, this is subjectivity and something you need to focus on when you submit. For myself, I don’t like a synopsis written in 1st person and will frequently recommend to not do it. Others say they don’t mind. Is there one person right here? No. Again, this is subjectivity.

In the end, the only rules to consider are:

• Making your story well written.
• Following the basic rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation.
• Being professional when you submit projects.
• Meeting the guidelines of who you are submitting to.
• Sending in projects that are “right” for that editor, or agent.

If you have other “rules” you want me to talk about, let me know and I’ll give you my thoughts.

Scott

* * * * *
 
So, um, yeah. Scott's awesome. I've queried him--twice. Got requests--twice. Got rejected--twice. BUT, his rejections are like no other. He gives pretty specific and helpful feedback. He is one of the reasons I have been overhauling my two novel length romances. (The beta is the other, btw).

Have questions for Scott? Drop it in the comments--he'll be popping by to answer them!

THANKS SCOTT! ! ! ! ! !
 
~JD

Grammar Police! Who's vs Whose

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've got SERIOUS problems with this one. Let's tackle another mischievous grammar problem: Who's vs Whose

* * * * * *

Who's is a contraction of "who is" or "who has".

You would use it like this:

Who's using my laptop? I need it now! I have an idea!!

Who's seen the phone number to that literary agent I was supposed to call? (Eep!--this is why you don't delete any emails....ever)

Who's up for a twelve hour writing fest?

K, notice in that the sentences above, you could replace the "who's" with either "who is" or "who has". You can't do that with "whose".

* * * * * *

Whose is the possessive of "who". That's why this rule is tricky/confusing. When we generally talk about possession, we simply put a apostrophe at the end and add an s, like this:

DL's book is going to be best seller one day.

Lenny's blog is on of the best I've ever read.

And so on and so forth. Those apostrophe "s's" mean possession, so we've made them a contraction. However, for "who" to have "possession" you actually change the word. Like this:

I know a girl whose beta has sick grammar skills. (mine...teehee)

Whose side are you on anyway?

Whose wip is taking up all the room on the kitchen table?

* * * * * *

See the difference?!?!

So, to keep it simple in a moment try this: if you can replace the "who's" with "who is" or "who has", you've got it right. If not, change it to "whose". Now you're ready to rock n' roll!

One more thing be the sheriff dismisses class for today--did you enter my 250th follower contest? You should! It's REALLY easy! Go HERE!

Oh! Oh! And make sure to come back tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow ... err ... sorry--love that song, btw. Scott Eagan from Greyhaus Literary has prepared a wonderful guest blog on those darn rules we keep hearing about as writers. Trust me, you don't want to miss it!

~JD

Whoop! Whoop! Friday Update!

WARP SPEED FRIDAY!

WARP SPEED!

Let's see how fast I can roll this puppy out!

Ready? Set?

GO!

Did you enter my 250th follower contest?
Did you?
Did you?
If not--go here!!!
Cool prizes! Lots of fun to be had.
Go! HERE!!!

1. I'm getting ready to enter a new milestone as a writer: exhausting my queries for BTTB. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. So, here are updated rejection stats for a book I can only sit back and wait to offically cross off my list:

Total queries sent to date: 113
Total Rejections: 93 (that’s a lot of rejection!)
Queries still awaiting a response: 20 (some of these no responses, but I haven’t the heart totally cross them out)
Current Partials Out: 2
Current Fulls Out: 2

Once it's done--it's done. There will be nothing more I can do. That's kind of a scary feeling. Good thing I got other things going on!

2. RD has been with the publisher for 14 days. Man, this wait might very well kill me!

3. AAG is frozen like a fish in the middle of a two foot deep pond in Alaska--in the dead of winter. Brrrrr!!!!

4. TR (new wip) has seen a word upage of 1K--now it hovers just over 14K. Not bad, but no great, either. I'm thinking about stopping this one and writing something else. Maybe I'll flip a coin. ;-)

5. NEXT WEEK!! Don't miss a Guest Blog from Literary Agent Scott Eagan from Greyhaus Literary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not and answer/question session ... and actual guest blog where he talks about the age old dilemma: "writer rules". Oh, you DON'T want to miss it!!!!!!!!!!

Now it's time to say another HUGE THANK YOU to those who have donated to the Suicide Prevention Walk!!!

DL Hammons from Cruising Altitude
Susan Quinn from Ink Spells
February Grace from Pitch Slapped
Lenny Lee from Lenny's World
Wendy Eads, my big sis
Sarah, the Great and Powerful Beta of Oz
Tamara Narayan from Get Your Giggle On
Emily White from Stepping Into Fantasy
Jeff from Life Can Be Funny (Sometimes)
Melissa Gill from Melissa Getting Published

Don't forgot to donate!! Even just $1 makes a difference! Get more entries for my contest, too! Go HERE to donate! *PS...if you do donate, please donate to one of my team members (Emily, Candlyland or Candice). I have met my goal, so I would like to help my team members meet their goals! (You still get entries for helping my teammates!!!)*

All righty everyone! Have a wonderful weekend! CHILAX!

~JD

JD's 250th Follower Contest! Come! Enter!

Do you see that number over there?!? -------->>

Do ya?

It's says 258 followers! Whoot!

You know what that means, don't you?

WHOOT! WHOOT! WHOOT! WHOOT! WHOOT!

Time to roll out the contest, peeps!

First I wanted to give a GIANT BLOGOSPHERE ((HUG)) to all my followers! You guys are the best!

First I'll tell you about the prizes, cuz contests are all about the PRIZES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All right...here we go!

1. A copy of Andrew Neudecker's book The Butterfly Key. (I will be giving away two of these!!)

(sorry about the Amazon photo...couldn't find a different one). But isn't his book cover AWESOME?!?!?

2. A query critique from Elana Johnson!! Whoa. If you don't know her, she's an author, the creator of querytracker.net, and one of the minds behind the free writeoncon conference this past summer. She IS the awesomeness of awesomeness!

3. A three chapter line edit from Candice at LiveWife. Candice is recently graduated English major, freelance writer, and all around great person.

4. A FULL ms copy edit (grammar/tenses/basic english stuff) from Katie Knish. Katie is a soon-to-be copy editor, and in need of some cred. You help her build a resume and she helps you edit your ms for free! Double-mint-awesome!

5. This is my personal favorite prize (only because I am part of it...lol). The beta, Sarah, and I will be giving you a hard-core, no holds barred, 3 chapter beta critique! Don't be scared though. We're nice! Most of the time. ;-) The cool thing about the dual crit is that Sarah and I have very different strengths when it comes to crits, so you will be getting the best of BOTH worlds! If you would like to know more about how Sarah and I critique--go check out the posts from Beta Week here.

6. A copy of Noah Lukeman's "The First Five Pages--A writers guide to staying out of the rejection pile." Now, this is my copy that I bought used on Amazon (so it's used, but in good shape) and I've pretty much gotten everything I can out of it. So now I shall pass it on!

7. A super-secret grab bag. Ooooohhh-aaaaahhhhh. (Nothing heart-stopping, but it is fun).

Now for the one and only rule (everyone contest has to have at least one rule, right?):

1. You must be a follower of this blog to enter.

Now--how to enter!

1. Leave comment in this thread. = 1 entry

2. Tweet/FB the contest = 2 entries for each tweet/update

3. Blog about it (or sidebar it)! = 4 entries

4. Old Followers = 2 extra entries
New Follwers = 1 extra entry

5. Donate money to the Suicide Prevention Walk I am participating in! For each $5 you donate, you will gain one extra entry. To learn how to donate go HERE.
It's a SUPER important cause that is near to me, so please donate--even it's only $1.
Donating to me, Candlyland, Candice, or Emily (all linked on the post) gets you entries! Just drop me note if you donate to one of the other three!

Now, tally up your score and leave it in the comments (you don't want to rely on my math skills...trust me).

Here's an example:

New follower who left a comment and tweeted about it: 4 entries

Old follower who left a comment and blogged about it: 7 entries

Old follower who left comment and donated $10 to the walk: 5 entries

Easy? Good!

This contest will run until October 10th (the day of the Suicide Prevention Walk). Spread the word, donate to save a life, ENTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~JD

You Tell Me ...

First, Grrrrrr Blogger!! Messing up my posting schedule!!!

Yesterday (when I tried to do my Learning about Justine post) blogger wouldn't let me upload pictures from my disk! I was going to brag all about Emily's horse show! Stupid blogger. Now that will have to wait until next Wednesday--sorry everyone!

So today, instead of Learning about Justine, it's an impromtu You Tell Me ... (notice it doesn't have the fancy picture I made for it, either) Shame, Blogger, shame! Err ... okay, moving on.

Time for the age old question--

Boxers or Briefs? Or now...boxer briefs?

If your a guy, which do you prefer? And of course, ladies, which do you prefer on your guy? ;-)

I'm gonna have to go with boxer briefs on this one. Although, there are times when commando is best.

~JD

Guest Blogger: Andrew Neudecker--His Self Publishing Journey

No ado needed at all here! Right into the swing of things:

My name is Andrew D. Neudecker and I would like to share with you all a very personal story.

Shortly before Christmas of 2008 my wife Nicole suffered a miscarriage of what would have been our 4th child. Devastated, my wife experienced not only a loss of faith in God, but also a vast range of emotions toward Him. The hardest part for me was to watch all this transpire and feel completely helpless to allay her pain. I wanted to somehow show Nicole that God has a plan in all He does, even the heartrending events in life. I wanted my beautiful wife to find her faith in God once again. And that’s when I decided to sit down and write her a story, a touching novel that I gave to her as a gift the following Christmas which she would then entitle “The Butterfly Key” (Yes, I let her pick the title).

When I first started writing “The Butterfly Key” my original plan was to print out 5 copies for the wife and kids, but my friends, family, and co-workers who were helping proof and beta read started bugging me for a copy too. With my wife’s blessing I decided to try querying agents, however, when that didn’t pan out I was left with two options.

I could either publish the book myself, or put the manuscript in a drawer and move on. Now this is the part where I tell anyone who asks me about wanting a career in writing my advice: DO NOT INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISH! You see, I wasn’t planning a career in writing, nor was I planning to write another novel. So independently publishing made perfect sense for me. I would agree with most people and believe that 99% of the time its best to put your manuscript in a drawer and hone your craft and write another novel. However, I also believe that I fall in that 1% category where self publishing was the correct decision.

Now that the decision to publish myself had been made, I did tons of research to make sure I did it the best possible way. I wanted to maintain control of everything. I hired a professional editor who was a senior editor at Magraw-Hill for 23 years and had been in the business for 40 years. I found her through a co-worker of mine and I interviewed her for 90 minutes. We really hit it off and she really loved the story and wanted to help me make it better. My line of thinking wasn’t to put out a book to sell; it was to make this the best possible gift for my wife as possible—this time in book form. We did the highest level of editing, totaling 3 rounds of editing (was it expensive? YUP) but well worth it. Same thing with a cover designer, I hired out a professional to do the work and he came up with concepts based on my ideas and the book itself. I did all the interior formatting for the book, using the fonts I wanted too. I then purchased my own ISBN number.

I decided to use 2 companies for printing the book. The first was lightning source, a subdivision of Ingram, this is where I print my copies and have them shipped to my house. They also post you book for sale on Barnes and Nobles’ online website. The other was createspace, a subdivision of Amazon. This is how people can order off of Amazon’s website. I also used Smashwords as the ebook distributor. This has platforms for downloading to nook, kindle, etc.

In 2 months I have sold 240 copies by word of mouth only. I now have “The Butterfly Key” stocked in all three bookstores of my church, the largest in the state of Minnesota. I also have 2 book signings on my plate, 1 at an independent bookstore, the other at a Barnes and Noble, and am working on a few more. I also will be at the Twin Cities book festival with an author table in October.

My goal now is to connect with people, one person at a time, and touch their hearts with this novel I wrote for my wife, and hopefully, I have touched you all, too, with this story.

I look forward to any comments posted on this blog and will do my best to answer any questions about “The Butterfly Key” or any self publishing questions any of you might have.

Thank you
Andrew D. Neudecker

Thank you SO much for sharing this story, Andrew! I am not a fan of self-publishing, but like you said--you're the 1%. And the reasons you mentioned make all the difference in the world. I respect that choice, and agree that it was the best route for you. I'm sure there are others who fall within the same 1%.

I have read this book and I must say the story is touching. I will be doing full review on my blog soon. Also, Andrew has graciously offered 2 copies of his book to be given away in my 250th follower contest! The contest will be announced this Thursday, so make sure to stop back by.

In the meantime, visit Andrew's website at: www.thebutterflykey.com or click here.
And thanks so much to Andrew and his positive story!

~JD

Grammar Police!! Cannot vs Can not

Last week, one of the RA's I work with asked me the following question:

"Justine, which is right: cannot or can not?"

My first reaction was, "Use it in a sentence."

It didn't help, I'm really not that smart, peeps. So, I turned to Google. Google didn't really help either. Apparently there are A LOT of little bits and pieces to this rule. So, at a loss, I told him to just use "can't" because that just made sense to me.

He said no because it was a formal email to a professor. Bleh.

Then I gave him a speech about how stilted writing sounds when you don't use conjunctions. The writer totally came out and gave him a big, long, lecture. It was funny, though.

Nonetheless, we never really found out the answer to this question. There were too many answers! So I turned to the trusty Quick and Dirty Tips from Grammar Girl. She says:

Both "cannot" and "can not" are acceptable, although it's more common to see the one-word spelling--"cannot."

A quick and dirty memory tip is to think of a magician taunting a rabbit with a carrot saying, "You cannot have the carrot." Extend the r's in "carrot" to the bottom of the line and, voila, the "carrot" turns into a "cannot."

People posted some comments on her site about the "little rules" she was missing and my head started to spin again! So I stick with my original idea: just use "can't". (I will admit there are a few...very few, though...instances when this won't work).

Good luck with this one, folks! I'm afraid I really haven't taught you anything! Maybe the sheriff is slipping ;-) Time to check the batteries.

~JD

Whoop! Whoop! Friday Update!

Yup, peeps! It's that time again already.

H A P P Y * F R I D A Y !

First, let me say how stupid I am for not having a post yesterday. Umm...let's just say it was blogger user error. LoL. Hey, it happens. ;-)

Okay--on with the updates!

Contests! Let's do contests!

Shannon's Messenger is having her Epic-Giveway-of-Epic-Epicness! Stop by and join in the fun!

Now, next week I will be rolling out my own 250th follower contest. Whoot! The prizes are fun, but nothing too spectacular. Hey, I'm human. :o) More details will be given away next Thursday (so make sure to come back) -- but in the meantime, you can earn extra entries by going here. That's the link for my Suicide Prevention walk. For every five dollars you contribute to my team, you'll get an extra entry. Save a life! Get extra entries!

Now we'll move on to writerly stuff.

1. I have officially sent out ALL the queries I can for BTTB.
That's a total of ... wait for it ... 111 ! ! ! !

There a numerous ones still out, so I'll wait and see if I need to give this book an official death certificate. I'm guessing the answer will be yes. Ah, well.

2. The full manuscript for RD has been with the publisher for 7 days. We have a long wait on this one, folks.

3. AAG is currently on the chopping block (for a rewrite, that is). I'm struggling with it, though.

4. OMG! I've learned how to cut little darlings with no mercy! NO MERCY! Maybe not enough mercy. LoL. Let me tell how well I've managed to cut and tighten up my writing:

BTTB: Original word count: 92,K
Word count after cutting: 79K (whoa!)

RD: Original word count: 46K
Word count after cutting: 41K

Those are the only two I've completed, but man, that's A LOT! Mind you, I wasn't rewriting--I was simply cutting redundant phrases, dialogue tags, over descriptions, and general words/phrases that I decided could be cut and not effect the story line. That was truly liberating. You should all try it!

That's it for this week! Make sure to stop by next week to read Andrew Neudecker's guest blog on his self-publishing journey. And my 250th follower contest details!!

Now it's time to say a HUGE THANK YOU to those who have donated to the Suicide Prevention Walk!!!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! To:

DL Hammons from Cruising Altitude
Susan Quinn from Ink Spells
February Grace from Pitch Slapped
Lenny Lee from Lenny's World
Wendy Eads, my big sis
Sarah, the Great and Powerful Beta of Oz
Tamara Narayan from Get Your Giggle On

Don't forgot to donate!! Even just $1 makes a difference! Get more entries for my contest, too! Go HERE.

Have a great weekend!

~JD

Grammar Police! How to write standard Numbers

It feels like forever since the sheriff has given a lesson! To get back in the swing of things ... we'll take it easy.

Numbers, peeps! Let's talk about how you write numbers in your ms!

We're only going to cover standard numbers. (No decimals, no hyphens, no fractions, no "large" numbers). Today--just standard numbers. That's what we use most, right? Yup!

Let's carry on!

There are only two rules to follow when writing numbers.

Rule #1:

Spell out single-digit whole numbers (0-9). Use numerals for numbers greater than nine (10+).

Examples:
I want three copies of my book delivered asap!
I want 14 copies of my book sent to the harshest critiques out there! (Eep!)

Easy, right?

Rule #2:

Be consistent within a category. If you have one category in a sentence (i.e. horses), and that category is greater than nine, and you use numerals for it--you must use numerals for ALL the numbers.

If you choose to spell out the number because one of the numbers is single digits--you must spell out ALL the numbers.

Examples:
My 2 horses started a nasty fight with their 12 mares.
My two horses ran their twelve mares out of the pasture.

If you have numbers in different categories (like horses, cats, and dogs all in the same sentence/paragraph), use numerals for one category and spell out the other.

Example: The word on the street is that 13 horse thugs have come to town. They want to fight our small posse of five cats. Only 3 horses are against it, which makes our odds of winning slim. Do you think we could find fifty or more cats to take on the beasts?

("Horses" are given numerals, while "cats" are spelled out. See the category difference?)

K, peeps. How was that for lesson? Easy...short...and useful!

The sheriff will be here all week. Have a great one!

~JD

Whoop! Whoop! Friday Update!!

Seriously peeps--it's been one of those weeks!

Work is still a wee bit crazy.

Writing is way crazy.

But blogging is my outlet. YAY!

Okay, let's do a wrap of all the cool stuff that happened this week, shall we? Yes. Yes we shall!

Ready?

Set?

Let's go!

OMG! OMG! OMG!
My blog has had 10,000 hits! WOW!
THANK YOU EVERYONE!
I put in a statcounter (on the very bottom right hand corner of the page) back in April. And since then, you guys have rocked it out! *CYBER HUGS ALL AROUND*

Oh, oh, and check this--------------------------->>>>>>
254 followers!!!!!!!
Double awesome!!! Have I told you all how much I love you? Too mushy? Well, I do! I think a contest shall be in our future. ;-)

1. I started a new book! I started a new book! Whoot! The Reckoning has arrived. 12K in and chugging away. One problem: it's not a romance. It's not even a mainstream w/romantic elements novel. It's ... it's ... heck--I don't know what it is yet, but it HAD to be written! It demanded it! We'll wait and see where it goes. ;-)

2. AAG is done. It's had the first round of edits. Beta hated the ending (sorta--and I agreed eventually--lol). An agent also commented that the heroine had too many problems after reading the requested pages. I love me some personal feedback!! So, I stewed...and now I'm going to fix it--when we get more hours in the day. Seriously though, I will fix it--as soon as I get through the next thing:

3. BTTB is getting an overhaul!!!! Funny story (I'll make it short). After reading The Breakout Novel book, I had an idea. Since the book was DOA, I started a major overhaul. THEN an agent I queried three months ago decided she loved the query and wanted to see pages! EEK! Figures, right? LoL. So the beta (man, I can't live without her) checked out the new first three chapters after I furiously made the changes. She gave it her seal (I can't do anything without Sarah's seal) and I sent it off.

Now the clock ticks down. I don't know how long the agent will have the partial. I hope she wants to see more. And if she does ... I have to have it done! Gah! Don't worry though, I'm halfway done and the beta has agreed to read it again (thank God for her).

I don't know if anything will come of it. I'd like to think so, but the odds are stacked against me. We'll wait ... and see.

4. RD (short contemporary romance). Let's do a quick recap (again ... I'll try to make it short). Queried publisher. Publisher asked for pages. Publisher had pages for 2 months before giving me an almost rejection. She suggested changes and encouraged me to resubmit. I did. 2 more months passed. Got email this week--pages passed! Full MS request! Whoot! Oh ... oh ... and she gave me the best line I could EVER hope for in an email. I mean really, it made my day. She said:

"Your prologue does a lot to improve the submission overall. Your writing is very good."

So--beta is finishing another quick read through--then I'm sending it off. *Fingers crossed*

5. So daughters book, and another silly book I started have been on hold. I'm not superwoman. I wish I was though, that'd be cool.

Man, I've got more stuff to say, but I try to keep the post short! Next week! Come back next week!

Oh, and has anyone noticed the new "stats" function on your dashboard? Pretty awesome!

Have a great weekend all!

~JD

I'm a storyteller, not a writer.

That's right. I'll admit it.

I'm a storyteller--not a writer.

There's a difference you ask? Yes, according to many people (Nathan Bransford included) there is. And according to the same people, you must be good at both in order to become successful in this business.

Whoa.

That's a difficult statement to handle, isn't it?

I'm writing this post for two reasons: one, my beta helped me realize the difference. And two, an intern on twitter really ticked me off with a tweet on day.

She said, "If you don't have background in writing--don't write."

Grrr.....

First, let's talk about the difference between storytelling and writing. Obviously, storytelling is when you tell a great story. To people, to friends, in a funny notebook you carry around.

Wikipedia defines storytelling as: is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment.

YUP! I can do that!!!! ;-)

Writing is when you know all that "other" stuff: grammar, tenses--all the jargon about the English language.

Wikipedia says writing is: writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols.

Boring! ;-)

Then you have all the other "writer" stuff: plots, tension, character delineation, backstory, turning points, plot layers, subplots, personal stakes, reversing motives, character dimensions, blah, blah, blah. (This stuff is learned, peeps).

So, before I knew anything about "writing"--I wrote. Whew, and what a hot mess I had! But does that mean I shouldn't write? Heck no! I so wanted to throw my computer out the window when I read that tweet. I mean--come on!

Not every novelists has a background in English. Not every author has taken a creative writing class. Not every best seller has a "background" in writing.

I even did a little research. There a MANY novelists (famous and not) who didn't even go to college. There are some are who went to collage, but not for writing/english. There are even a few high school dropouts.

So what do I say? I don't care if you don't have a background in writing. You're creative and smart--so WRITE!

I don't mind just be a storyteller. That works for me ;-) Someday I'm sure I'll crossover and be both. Hey, a girl's gotta have a dream right? What's your dream?

~JD

I'm Guest Blogging! (And Rejection Stats)

Yup! That's right. Amazing Roni over at *Fiction Groupie* is taking some time away from the blog, so I've done a guest spot for her.

Today, check out my post over there!

(Oh, I hope I got the day right....and I hope it's up!)

If not, I'll entertain you will some query stats! This should give you a nice laugh!

Book #1 (mainstream w/strong romantic elements)
Total queries sent to date: 91
Queries still awaiting a response: 9 (I’m thinking most of these are no response means no).
Rejections to date: 82
Form rejections: 45
Personalized rejections: 10
No Response Rejection: 35
Requests for pages: 6 (four turned in rejections, still waiting on two)
Requests for manuscript: 1 (turned into rejection)

This book is currently getting an overhaul!!!!! 'Bout time ;-)

Book #2 (short contemporary romance)
Total queries sent to date: 3
Queries still awaiting a response: 0
Rejections to date: 2
Form rejections: 2
Personalized rejections: 0
No Response Rejection: 0
Requests for pages: 1 (received a revise and resubmit response—resent with changes.)
Requests for manuscript: 2 (1 turned into rejection, the other was recently submitted and was requested from Revise and Resubmit submission—whoot!)

This book is currently being looked at by an editor, and it's the last type of publisher who handles this type of short story (48K). If it fails here, I'm going to try to up the wordage and take it from novella size to novel! We'll see. :o)

Book # 3 (Contemporary romance. Btw…this book is my baby—the rejections for it are painful!!)
Total queries sent to date: 5
Queries still awaiting a response: 0
Rejections to date: 5
Form rejections: 4
Personalized rejections: 1
No Response Rejection: 0
Requests for pages: 1 (turned into rejection—but with some good feedback!)
Requests for manuscript: 0

The queries for this one just started, but I've stopped to tweak the story line a wee bit after the personalized feedback from the agent who requested the pages.

And there you have it!

Have a wonderful Wednesday--and I hope you enjoy the guest blog I did (and I hope it's there today...lol) Go check it out here!

~JD

Query Slamming. Writing Slamming. Just Plain Slamming.

Slamming.

Do you know what it is?

If you're on twitter--it's #queryslam, #queryfest, #queries, and the like. On the Internet you can finds sites such as Slushpile Hell, or certain agent blogs, some intern blogs, and certainly some anonymous blogs.

Let's just say that query slamming is everywhere. Basically, people query their book and some agent or some intern somewhere in the world is slamming it for the whole world to see.

Some comments are helpful (they tell us what not to do), some are even funny, but I've noticed recently that the comments have went from helpful (or funny) to just plain mean.

I was huge fan of queryslam until several weeks ago. I was huge fan of many other blogs/sites as well. But as the meanness meter went up, my interest went waaaay down.

The man himself, Mr. Bransford even made a comment about it on his blog not too long ago. 349 comments later, the people had spoken.

I can understand when someone purposely hands over their query to Mr. Bransford for query critique Monday (or something like that), but I cringe when I think that for comic relief, people have their query slammed all over the Internet--we writers didn't ask for that. Helpful is great. Funny is all right. Mean? Nope, that just doesn't fly.

On average, it takes the minimum of five minutes to create a short blog post (this doesn't include turning on your computer and logging on). It might take a minute or two to create some catchy, funny (or mean) twitter post in 140 characters or less talking about someones query.

So my question is this--why not take that time and send a personal reply to the querier? If you don't like their pages, don't tell the world--tell the person. If their story is antiquated, don't tell twitterville--tell the person. If you think the writing is poor, don't try to make others laugh about it--tell the person (oh, but do so nicely, because this one would hurt!).

Sure, there are people out their who need to learn what to do. But those people don't deserve to be made fun of. And they certainly didn't choose to be made fun of. Some of you might be thinking they asked for it because they didn't do their homework yet.

But then I'll ask you this: did you do all of your homework first? As writers we don't wake up and just "know" what to do. Wait--some of us might--but when it comes to querying, must of us didn't have clue. We learn, we grow, we make mistakes.

Basically, when it comes to slamming--I'm out. What about you?

~JD

I'm Back!!!! ;-)

It's been awhile, eh?

Well--NO MORE! JD is back!!!

I've missed you all terribly and I've also missed tons and TONS of stuff that's gone on here in the blogosphere (and the internet in general).

First, HAPPY LABOR DAY!

Second, let's do a quick recap of everything I wanted to mention quickly:

Congrats to Roni @ Fiction Groupie. This woman with mad writing skills has snatched herself an agent! And, just this past week she was announced as a finalist in the Heart 2 Heart Contest (with the book that landed her the agent). Yes people--she is awesome. AND, she's going on vacation soon and asked little ol' me to do a guest spot on her blog while she's away! Squeeeee!

YA Author Tamara Hart Heiner has asked me to do a book review on her soon to be published book Perilous. Double Squeee!!!!! Her book will be released October 31st, so look for my review right here on my blog sometime before then.

WHOA...there has been A LOT of talk recently on the blogs, twitterville, FB, and the like about agents talking smack about queries---places like queryslam, Slushpile Hell, just to name a few. Mr. Nathan Bransford got in the discussion himself last week on his blog. I have some words to say about this, but I will save that for a stand-a-lone post.

OMG! OMG! IMMA MEET CANDYLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Candance Ganger (aka Candyland) is walking in the Out of The Darkness Community Walk to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). RIGHT HERE IN MY HOMETOWN! This cause is dear to me and I am walking too.

So me, Candyland and Candice from Live Wife will all be walking together!

And Lenny (if you don't know this cool little dude--go follow his blog right now--he is the definition of awesome!) from Lenny's World made the coolest banner EVVVVVVER for us! It's on his blog, so go check it out. Okay, here's the awesomeness he made for us:

Isn't Lenny the greatest?!?! I will talk about this walk more (and the importance of it) in a few days.

There's so much more I want to say and soooo little time! Well, there's tons of time, but I don't want this post to be novel length. ;-) So, lots more talking in the next few days. The normal blog posts will start up again next Monday. Yippeeee!

~JD