I want to be this guy when I grow up

Now that I've been doing this writing thing for a few years, I've gotten a chance to rub elbows with all different kinds of published types. And I've rubbed elbows with people who didn't used to be published but are now. And in general, they are confused about why our elbows are rubbing and see it as egregious violation of their personal space, but whatever. I didn't INVENT the practice; I just do it.

Anyway, it's interesting to watch how different people handle success. And it's interesting to watch how aspiring writers handle the published writers' successes. And I learn from watching both groups, and I've made some decisions about how I want to be. Or don't want to be, sometimes.

This is who I'd like to be like when I grow up in this business:

THIS GUY.

Goes by the name of Neal Shusterman. This is him standing in the library of my son's middle school. He wrote a bunch of books. YA books. And his daughter goes to this school so it's translating to some massive perks for us at the moment. Like for example, he's the driving force behind a brand new book club called The Text Factor and the inaugural read last month was The Mazerunner. And he bought pizza for all the kids who came and then led the discussion on the book. And it was awesome.

And then after signing a bunch of books for the kids and patiently answering a bunch of questions, he quietly went about the work of straightening up the school library, reshuffling furniture and picking up trash. Neal Shusterman. He's big time. But you'd never, ever know it and that's how I want to be.

Humble. Approachable. Ready and willing to teach. Or just move furniture around. Because that is seriously cool.

How I got my agent

Yeah, hi. I have big news.

Uh . . . I got an agent.

I am thrilled. DELIGHTED! And I'm just going to tell this story exactly as it happened and anyone who sees their name in here but doesn't want to can just email me and I'll redact it all CIA style and stealth-like.

The story: I pretty much always intended to stay in the niche market where I publish now. Except I got an idea for a story that wouldn't fit there. But it seemed crazy to me to spend eight months writing and polishing a story that might go nowhere versus a story that would definitely be picked up by my current publisher and pay for a fun family vacation or two. But . . . I'd also done four back to back manuscripts in the same genre, and the idea of switching mental gears to try something different . . .

That sounded like a really, really nice break. So I did it. I wrote the story that seemed completely impractical to write. I don't know how many times I heard that what I wanted to do was a hard sale. From agents. And people who know stuff.

It's a contemporary YA story that grew out of a fairy tale I had written in third grade. Think a modern retelling of a fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale only I know. I got to revisit my Louisiana roots, examine post-Katrina New Orleans a bit, indulge in excessive episodes of Hoarders and Project Runway as "research" and then, as my Louisiana grandfather would say, I stirred the whole mess with my finger and voilà: a story.

That I liked. No, loved. A lot.

I finished a solid first draft at the beginning of November. I desperately wanted to complete revisions and query agents and beat the post-NaNoWriMo crush, so I sent it to my pickiest (in the best possible sense) beta readers and begged for a one-week turnaround.

I know. Completely unreasonable.

No sooner was it out of my hands than my small press came calling for the final edits on my spring release. It's my third book in that market but it's actually the first manuscript I wrote and it needed tough love. I worked super hard on it for two weeks. The whole time I itched to get back to my national market project (from here on out referred to as NMP) but I had a deadline to meet.

Once I sent my small press revisions back, I turned my attention to my NMP. Two of the four critiques I was waiting on had made their way back to me. I dove in, and OH, it was painful. I felt like I was picking up, examining, judging and weighing every single one of the 88,000 words in it. But after some swearing, consolation chocolate, and obstinacy, I finished that draft. While I waited for the last two beta readers, I got to work crafting a query letter.

Oy.

I don't want to brag, but I kinda know J. Scott Savage. (That's so not brag-worthy because he's one of the nicest guys EVER and so everyone feels like they're friends with him because he's just a kind man, but I'm going to brag anyway.) I took a workshop in the spring from him about how to write a good hook. When I had the best possible query I could write, I sent it to him with a promise of homemade mint fudge if he could take a look and tell me what he thought. He agreed on the condition of fudge delivery, and offered me some great insights. I ran it by another author friend. (Hi, Heather!)

I tweaked it. I buffed and polished it. I had won a query critique from Lindsey Roth Culli, who works for some top shelf agents. I sent it to her and we went back and forth several times on the fine-tuning. Her advice was SO helpful. I mean, she helped me dial it in down to the teeniest, tiniest words.

By then, a third beta reader had returned her feedback, so I dove into that and made yet MORE changes. And I felt really good about the shape the story was in. And it was now the very end of November. I'd been doing my agent research since October on Query Tracker so I opened up my agent query list and decided to test the query. I sent it out to a selection of agents who wanted queries only to begin with (no sample pages). I had five requests within a day.

So, um, I knew the query was solid.

One of those requests was from one of my top choice agents. I chose her because of a line in her agent bio that read: She is especially drawn to mysteries in mansions, adventures that suspend disbelief, wish-fulfillment premises that linger with what ifs, epic love stories, and settings filled with strong regional flavors.

Since that's pretty much what I had sitting on my laptop, I thought maybe we would be a good fit. Turns out we totally were. For the moment, we'll call her Agent A.

The problem, though, is that I'm an idiot. I hadn't expected the requests to come back nearly as fast as they did. And I had just gotten the last beta read critique back. And it was from my former editor at my small press and she made some pretty valid points. And they were going to take some time. Which I sort of didn't have. And it meant I didn't have a final manuscript for agents who were asking. So for the first time ever in my writing career, I hired a babysitter for the next day, shut myself in my room, and I went to work. I worked all day that day. I worked from the time my husband got home from work the next day until two in the morning. I worked for hours the day after that. And after another twenty hours over three days, I felt like I had it.

It's not that the story was so broken before. But I adjusted two plot elements that meant I needed to check for continuity through the whole rest of the manuscript, and it meant adjusting one minor character's personality. So I had to spend a lot of time thinking about how to do it, then changing a tiny thing in one scene which would set off a domino effect and so on.

But I felt SO good about what I ended up with.

In the middle of all of this, I had continued to query a set number of agents each day. I thought hard about which agents I wanted to query, and I worked to express that in each query letter I wrote by personalizing it and explaining why I was interested in that agent. That took up a lot of that twenty hours, too.

I won't tell you how many I queried, but I will tell you that I was stunned by the number of requests I got for fulls. It was exciting and overwhelming, but I was finally ready to send my crazy baby out. So I did.

I thought with the holidays quickly approaching, I would have a couple of weeks to breathe and then maybe after the New Year, if I were incredibly lucky, I'd have some news.

Nope.

Another agent, Agent B, emailed me on a Friday. She loved my book, she said. She wanted to represent it, she said. Don't sign with anyone until she talked to me, she said.

You guys, Agent B is amazing. She reps an award-winning (yeah, multiple Newberrys and other beautiful, shiny things) author I adore. And she is gracious and wonderful and NOBODY has a bad word to say about her no matter how hard you scour the interwebz to check. She's just lovely.

So following protocol, I notified the agents who had my full manuscript that I was entertaining an offer of representation. And by the time I heard back from everyone, I had three total offers of representation. Agent A loved it, and Agent C did, too. Agent C was so great to talk to. I really clicked with her and she's with a boutique agency that's got great buzz.

So I had three different choices: a YA specialist at a powerhouse agency to end all powerhouses, a revered agent with her own established boutique agency, or a newer agent at a sexy up and coming boutique agency.

And I liked all of them when we talked. And they each offered something unique and wonderful in an agent relationship.

And I had such a hard choice to make.

So I did what any sane person would do. I panicked.

I sent a hysterical email to a total stranger, Natalie Whipple, because . . . look, this story is long enough. But she said, "Relax. Let me put you in touch with someone who has choosing-from-multiple-agent experience." And she connected me with Renee Collins who OH MY GOSH GAVE ME GREAT ADVICE.

And so I let all three agents know I would take the weekend to make a decision. I already knew who I wanted to go with, but I really wanted to make sure I made the right choice.

I talked it out with my husband. We went to a place where we both love to think and meditate, and we did that. And we read and researched some more. And I thought about what I wanted in an agent relationship. And at the end, I felt like my gut instinct about who would be the best fit for me was right.

So I went with Agent A, which stands for Alyssa Henkin at Trident Media Group. HOORAY!

Guys, she rocks. I'm so happy with this choice and hopefully soon, after I work through my first revision letter from her and we get this project of mine into submission shape, I'll have some news for you about what comes next.

But in the mean time, if you want to follow me on this crazy journey, feel free to click the button in the sidebar that lets you do that.

Did I mention I'm super stoked? Because I can't find any other words to describe this feeling. I'll try a few more: blessed, happy, humbled, relieved, excited, nervous, thrilled, gobsmacked.

And good. Just so, so good.

Word

I am developing an irrational hatred for the phrase "at the end of the day." Maybe I just hear it too often lately, mainly from reality show bottom feeders. I hope that's all it is, and not something more insidious, like that my editing brain has now crept into my real life and is mentally rewriting what people say. "That's a cliche. Find a new way to say it."

My editing brain ruins many, many books for me now. That's bad. Good in the sense that I love the good books even better, but bad in the sense that I'm less patient with books than I used to be. But anyway, editing brain, you are hereby ordered to leave Real Life alone.

And now back to words/phrases people hate. I've bumped into a survey in a couple of different places that says the word Americans hate most is: MOIST.

MOIST! MOIST! MOIST!

Raise your hand if you cringed.

I didn't. That word doesn't bother me. It bounced off of me like I was a MOIST-deflecting Superman. Or something.

I can't think of a specific word I hate. But I can think of lots of words that I hate hearing pronounced the wrong way, and by wrong way I mean not how *I* say it. For example, there is no Z in resource. So why is suddenly everyone saying it like there is? If you are one of these people, are you Canadian? Is this why this is happening?

Anyway, back to the editing brain and the sound of words: last night I was reading a novel (self-published, sadly) that was making me angry. It contained this fraction from a sentence: "treated with careful care by Carol." I think it was not on purpose. And so when I read that aloud to my husband, he gently took the book from me, held it up and looked at the cover, and then calmly punched it.

I love him.

White Noise

It's a flood, man. The constant barrage of tweets and FB updates: buy my book, it's awesome, blah blah blah.

I try to follow back anyone on Twitter who follows me unless they're obviously a spammer. But sometimes the spamming is subtle. For example, there's one fairly successful YA writer who ONLY retweets nice stuff people say about her books. After a month of her in my feed, I've learned nothing about her as a person. Not a thing. So I unfollowed her.

And when random writers add me on Facebook, if their first three updates are nothing but marketing ploys, then I immediately hide them.

I get really tired of the Twitter folks who use it is as nothing but a marketing tool. IT WON'T WORK LIKE THAT, DUMMY.

And yet I think Twitter and even Facebook can be incredibly effective for marketing. For example, there are authors whose books I've bought that I wouldn't have otherwise picked up because I've followed them on Twitter for a while and I have a feeling that I'll enjoy their writing voice. I have never once bought a book from someone who tweets nothing but stuff about their own books or about someone else's self-pubbed book because they think the favor will be returned. It all comes off as a smokescreen to me.

And then there's the in-between, the writers who tweet about nothing but writing. I like to talk shop, too. But I need more than that connection point to really click with someone, even at a social media level. So the ones who wear me out with nothing but boring writing updates . . . unfollowed or hidden.

I think I react this way because I'm a classic extrovert, meaning I recharge by interacting with other people. People who don't offer real connection points . . . they just want something from me. In the circles I run in, they mainly want me to buy their book. In real life if you had a friend who always needed something from you without offering anything in return, that would be a toxic friend and ultimately, you'd probably let that friendship wither.

So that's what I do with social media relationships. The ones that don't offer some insight beyond the billboard of a writer's projects, I let those fade.

And amazingly, as many of those as I've let fall by the wayside, I still find some really fun connections.

Maybe that's why blogging is still my favorite thing. It forces more real reciprocity than "like" and "retweet" buttons do.

Research

I hate it.

Dang, I picked the wrong job.

I hate it but I do it.

Maybe I don't hate all research. Sometimes it's funny to me. I've had to explore floor plans for Antebellum homes, take a virtual tour of the Space Needle, and study diagrams of marionettes. I've definitely collected some bizarre bits of knowledge.

What surprises me most is that minutiae I have to research that doesn't have much to do with my story. I've spent an hour reading about the origins of steampunk to get a single, non-plot dependent sentence right.

But it pays off. I wrote an entire novel set in Seattle. I never even visited there until after I finished the novel, but I was amazed to discover that the result of all that research was that I walked around the parts of the city I had described and realized I got it right. Surreal.

Here's a top ten list of odd things I've learned while researching:

1. The homes in Audubon Place in New Orleans were protected by Blackwater operatives during the Hurricane Katrina chaos.
2. There are not a lot of spices that make great names for boys.
3. There are a lot of delicious-sounding places to eat in Seattle.
4. It's amazing how much money things will sell for in a New Orleans antique auction.
5. A surprising number of people skirt the foster system in New Orleans.
6. It's hard to research region-specific slang.
7. The cars that teens find cool are totally different between California and Louisiana
8. Any era you search between the 1960s and now, Converse All-Stars are always considered cool
9. The bad parts of Washington DC are among the worst in the country
10. The best research: sitting on Huntington Beach pier while your husband explains why the surfers are doing what they're doing.

What is the weirdest thing you've ever had to research?

Crazy, Stupid Good

The fun of being a movie goer is that if you sit through enough mediocre movies, you'll stumble into one that's worth the price of admission. Or even the price of popcorn. Which is what Crazy, Stupid Love is. Totally worth it, I mean. Even the popcorn. It might even be worth the cost of the babysitter, popcorn and admission.

I'm saying it was good.

As a movie goer, I loved the acting. Ladies, I'm going to show incredible restraint and out of respect to my husband, I will limit my Ryan Gosling comments to this: he can say so much with the tiniest quirk of an eyebrow. Steve Carrell is in his Dan in Real Life groove here, which I love. And the babysitter is awesome. And Julianne Moore is as good as always. I didn't love the oldest kid, but beyond that, actors=great. Emma Stone: exceptional.

But as a writer, I especially loved this movie because the characters are so well-developed. One of my biggest pet peeves in storytelling is when characters are forced to do something that makes no sense for their personality so that the author can ratchet up tension or complicate the story. But if it's not something the character will actually do, it's super distracting to me. Example: I'm a highly skilled international jewel thief in the middle of a major heist. Oops--forget to turn the cell phone off and now it's ringing. Trouble!

*Facepalm.*

Grrr.  Of course a character can make mistakes; it just drives me nuts when they act against type. The character and writer both lose credibility with me and I lose the pleasure of escapism.

One of the things that I loved about this film is that even though at one point the characters are thrown into a situation that would never, ever happen, it didn't distract me at all because the characters were so consistent. I believed their reactions even though I didn't buy the premise, if that makes any sense at all.

To sum up: Go see Crazy, Stupid Love. I kinda think I might want to go see it again. That's a good movie.

Brain dump

And here's how you know you're a writer. I went on vacation and wrote TWICE as much as I usually do in a day. And I count that as a GOOD vacation.



Why, yes, I am a barrel of laughs and an amusing travel companion. Assuming you're not married to me. And that if you are, you WANTED to take care of our three kids way more than usual.



Assuming that, I'm a vacation delight.



I read lots on vacation. When I think back on all the uninterrupted reading I got to do, the feeling I get is the one I think the pirates mean when they talk about their timbers getting shivered.



I had three fights with my sister today. I'm wrong every time and I still get in there and swing. I wish someone could explain our dynamic because I don't understand it. It baffles my husband. My brother, in one of the middle of our squabbles today, said to my sister about me at one point, "She's being passive aggressive. Ignore her." And also about me at another point, "She's being a nerd. Let it go." But she wouldn't. Which I'm sure is exactly why I kept it up. I think I'll have no choice but to write soon about siblings who behave like this so maybe I can figure it out.



Finally, name a great movie or TV series about a writer. I'm in the mood for one all of a sudden. My favorite is Stranger Than Fiction but I'm open to other ideas.