Writing Slump

On the morning of Friday, March 5, I received All Falling Things back from my editor. I asked for a timeline since they didn’t offer a deadline, and the response was by the end of April if possible. I returned the manuscript March 18. [strained smile] Any moment I wasn’t working or sleeping, I was editing. It felt really good to get back into Alice’s story after not visiting for over six months. Once the overwhelming feelings faded, I was just excited to see the story fill out.

After I sent the manuscript back, I decided to take what I had learned from the process and apply it to Lucy’s story (now titled Wherever Would I Be), which took about eight days. And then on to the YA WIP, which took about four. (They move quicker when they’re shorter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) Between the three manuscripts, I added 11K words. And it felt GOOD.

I spent a solid twenty-one days editing. And I’ve been trying ever since to shift back into writing mode. But nada. I’ve gotten a couple hundred words down for the newest WIP, but it was a struggle, feeling like I was wrestling the words onto the page. To be fair, there’s been a lot of grading, and after spending an entire day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I want to do…is stare at a computer screen.

Writing is such a roller coaster.

Editing Alice

I will say this – the process of turning a manuscript into a book can be a humbling experience. I mean, here we are – finally ready to query. Because we’re done. The book is done.

[enter sad laughter here]

When I received my manuscript back from my editor, I felt like someone had doused me with a bucket of ice water. HOW ON EARTH did I feel like I was done writing Alice (All Falling Things)? It’s so strange to think there is this woman in New York (who I have never met) who is reading over and steering the fate of my book – but it’s also a really helpful process (at least it has been so far *fingers crossed*). My editor had done a detailed edit with tracked changes for the first fifty pages, which I was then to carry out through the remainder. Her comments, as well as coming back to the manuscript after not touching it for a good six months, let me see the story with fresh eyes.

I just email the manuscript back – and I already know Alice is better for this. 🙂 I’m looking forward to the next step in the conversation – because this book is not yet done.

Celebrate Good Times (Even During COVID)

A couple weeks ago, the U.S. passed 500K deaths from COVID-19. So many others have lost their jobs, their businesses, their homes. They’re struggling in ways they weren’t even a year ago. There is so much chaos and hate. It’s staggering. This last year has been nonstop.

It’s been 363 days since I’ve been remote for work. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to work safely from home – but I am still so saddened that I didn’t know until the week was over that this was happening – that the last time I was in the classroom with my students would be the last time I’d see them in person. The last time I’d set foot inside a classroom for a long time. Remember that hope? We thought moving remote for two weeks was all it would take. We’d be back soon.

It’s also been almost six months since I first signed a contract for publishing my first book. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, a dream came true. I haven’t told a ton of people about it just yet, partly because it hasn’t felt real, or like something could still happen that will rip this dream right from my fingers – but also because it feels a bit out of touch to be celebrating (even when rationally I know it’s emotionally important to celebrate the good things at times like this). I was reading an article a few months back in Bustle, an interview with Dan Levy about the added success his show Schitt’s Creek has found amidst the pandemic. In the interview, he said, “There are moments when I think it is important for your sense of self to also be OK to say, ‘Something good happened to me this year, and I worked really hard for it.’” This struck a chord with me. (Also, if you haven’t seen the show, what are you doing??)

On Friday, I received my manuscript back from my editor. She had gone through and edited the first three chapters to give me an idea of what she is looking for, and I’m to take it through the rest of the book before handing it back. My initial reaction, of course, was an emotional one. Not a bad one, just emotional – this is my baby – and a woman I have never met is telling me what to do with it! I understand the process, though, so I allowed my feelings to romp for a bit, throw their little tantrum, run off to Kavarna for some lunch – and then I set those feelings in the corner for a timeout so that I could get to work.

All I want to do is edit my book. That’s it. Well, edit and sleep. But there is life to attend to – there is work and cleaning and cooking. I have cats demanding snuggles sans laptop. Even so, I’ve managed to edit my way through a third of the manuscript so far, and I’m feeling good about the process and how the story is filling out.

I’ve also started telling a few more people the last few days. This step in the process is making it feel a bit more concrete.

In Today’s Research

In today’s research, I learned that L. M. Montgomery used her initials to mask her gender when she was trying to publish.

I also learned that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was on the list of books that inspired her to become a writer, eventually leading her to write the Anne of Green Gables series (the inciting incident came from a newspaper article she had read).

The more I learn about her, the more I think that we would be, dare I say, kindred spirits. ❤

Looking for Lucy

I’ve got a working title for my work in progress! *pops champaign*

Titles are hard (as I’ve written about before). I don’t know why – but they are. I find that if I don’t have the title first, if the story doesn’t evolved from a pre-picked title, it gets incredibly hard the longer into the piece I go to find the title. I always love when a title appears somewhere in the story, so I’ve looked through to try and find something – but to no avail.

But last night I decided – I was coming up with a title – come hell or high water. I played with words, with themes, with the script of While You Were Sleeping. (It’s my favorite romcom of all time – and Lucy is, of course, named for the title character. The movie also makes an appearance as Shelly’s favorite movie, and they spend time at the train station where chunks of the movie had been filmed.)

The two others I’m rolling around with are Someday We Will and Wherever Would I Be, both bits of the script.

It was a bit of surprise with All Falling Things to discover that the publisher has the last say on the title. Rationally, I understand this. But I can’t imagine thinking of that book any other way.

I guess only time will tell is Looking for Lucy will stick. Maybe someday I’ll look back and not be able to see this book any other way.

A Love Letter to Scotland

I first fell in love with Scotland when I took a Scottish Lit course in college. Our professor, hands down, was the best prof I’ve ever had – I kid you not, when he taught History of the English Language, it was the first time in the university’s history that the course had a waiting list. His enthusiasm for whatever he was teaching was so infectious, it was hard not to get swept away. I took a course with him every single semester – whether it counted toward my degree or not.

In Scottish Lit, we learned all about William Wallace (and learned all the inaccuracies of the film Braveheart). We learned about Robert the Bruce. We learned about the poems of Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas. I should also note that this prof is of Scottish descent and would share his own knowledge about the country and its history. He would share stories of his own adventures around Scotland, would wear his kilt on Scottish holidays, and break out the Scottish brogue whenever it was deemed necessary. (He could also speak old English and quote poetry in Latin.)

It was in this Scottish Lit course, though, that I learned about the magic that is Scotland, and I wanted to someday visit.

Cut to about five or six years later years later. I was working for a film company under my boss-turned-bestie. I was fresh out of grad school, and I missed talking about books, so we bonded over reading a couple series together and then coming to work and complaining in the morning about everything we disliked about them.

We also bonded over Scotland. Though my love of the country came through Literature, hers came through her ancestry. We joked for a bit that we should take a trip together someday, and about six years into our friendship, I finally asked – how serious are you? We started planning and saving.

We took the trip summer of 2018 – and I have to tell you, you cannot truly know the magic unless you’ve set foot on Scottish soil. I knew before we even left that I would be returning some day. (Was supposed to go this next summer, but obviously that is on hold.) I also knew I wanted to write something that involved Scotland.

Enter Lucy. My still untitled second novel. (Why are some titles so hard?? I’ve got a title and a backup for the new WIP – but Lucy? Nope.) Probably my first of many stories involving Scotland, Lucy visits places from my own 1200 mile road trip we took around the country (and a couple that are on my to do list for the next trip). The bulk of her trip centers around Isle of Skye. In the story, she describes a piece of scenery which I wrote side by side with this photograph. There was indeed a heart-shaped cloud that had formed in the sky above us.

And hard as I tried, as many as I took, I just could not take a photograph that captured Loch Ness – it is hands down the most incredible body of water I have ever seen in my life. As I write in the book, “It looked as though the loch were filled with black oil, a thin slick of water skimming along the surface.” The little doodle Lucy does is also something I took from the trip. (It was cloudy/foggy at the start of our cruise – the sky was bright blue and clear by the end of it.)

It was a lot of fun reliving the trip in this way, pulling up photographs to help me remember details. I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to see these places with my own eyes first, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Lucy is Now Luminous

I always require that my students title everything – and not just “Narrative Essay” or “Haiku”. I tell them, if the introductory paragraph or first few lines are like the first impression upon meeting someone, then the title is like catching eyes across the room – it is the thing that will get them to come across the room in the first place. And I’m not walking across the room to read “Narrative Essay.”

I also admit that I understand fully what it is that I am asking them to do because I hate writing titles – I would hire someone to write my titles for me if I could. In my own experience, I either have the title first, and the story or poem stems from that – or I finish what I’m writing and pull all my hair out trying to find something suitable to sit above it.

My nerdiest title is still PS129.I7646 2015. (I even have a version in case I ever published it under my pen name.) It’s the title of a poem that uses a book as a metaphor – the title is the Library of Congress classification for this metaphorical book. It took me four librarians to figure it out. 🙂 Librarians are magic rock stars. Seriously. One of them (Hi Carol!) even took the time to write out why she thought I should use PS129 (memoir) over CT25 (autobiography).

The title of my first book came about because I misread a billboard while driving. I can’t even tell you how I got from “All Feelings are Valid” to “All Falling Things,” but I’m grateful for it. 😛

My third book, the YA, I had the title for before I wrote it. My new work in progress I have title for that fits within the world it comes from – and I even have a backup.

But my second book? It has really been like pulling hair out of my head trying to figure out what to title it. I finished the first draft of this manuscript on Oct 31, 2020. I just called it “Lucy” after the main character knowing it would be a working title. Though there have been moments where I though, nope, it’s just gonna be the title ’cause I got nothin’ else, and I’ve written an entire other manuscript in the meantime…

I tried out a few phrases and words and tossed them around and sat with them. There was Looking for Lucy and Someday We Will and Wherever Would I Be. There was Catching Lucy. There was, for the briefest of minutes, The Girl with the Sun in Her Eyes (a lyric from The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), but my beta readers thought it was a bit cumbersome for a title, and they were right. My beta readers even offered a few ideas of their own – Firefly’s Journey; Firefly’s Light; Path of the Firefly.

But still, nothing felt right.

I went down another rabbit hole of words yesterday, starting with a word and clicking through synonyms. Playing with sound. Looking up fireflies (I know more about them now than I ever thought I would). And somewhere along the line I stumbled upon Luminous. And I found I kept returning to it throughout the day, so I decided to sit with it overnight.

The next morning, it was still with me, so I passed it along to a couple folks, and they dug it. So that’s it – Lucy’s manuscript is officially named Luminous.

The hardest thing to know is that if this book ever finds its way into a traditional publisher’s catalog, that all this stress and worry could be for naught. Publisher’s have the last say on titles for a number of reasons, so there’s a chance they will come up with something else. BUT – one needs a title to catch their attention in the first place, so here we are.

Though now I’m back to thinking about Wherever Would I Be. [strained smile]

Research Rabbit Hole

I really love doing research for a project. I love learning random facts and exploring places and meeting people – even if it’s only via the internet. I definitely would not have been as productive with my writing during this quarantine if not for the internet. Well, the internet and my training on how to suss out credible sources.

I can’t even tell you how I landed on it, but in the midst of researching for a project yesterday, I ended up in an ancestry rabbit hole. I have a book for my mother’s side of the family (put together by her aunt). We’ve always known from where her family lines had descended – Germany, France, and Poland.

My dad’s side is a bit a more of a mystery, but we were always told Germany, Italy, and Norway. Well, it turns out, we can add Luxembourg, Austria, and Ireland to that list – and that’s just from my paternal grandfather’s line. I’m even more of a mutt than I originally thought! 🤭

The Irish ancestry caught my attention, and I did a little more directed digging. It seems we descend from Clan Ó Duibhgeannáin (anglicized to Dignan), which was a “family of professional historians in medieval and early modern Ireland.” Suddenly, my love of research and Irish Whiskey makes a lot more sense… (Looking at you, Writer’s Tears – which I had sought out because I loved the name, and now it’s one of my favorites!)

I realize fully what a privilege it is to know as much as I do about my ancestors, and there is still so much to learn. (My paternal grandmother’s line is a bit of a mystery beyond the Norwegian.) It is mind boggling to consider all of the people that had to line up for me to exist.

A Year Since…

It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year since I completed All Falling Things, but Facebook reminded me of how I had posted this picture when I finished.

Life looks a lot different today than when I typed those two little words. For one, we’ve been in quarantine for almost ten months due to a world wide pandemic – I’ve forgotten what three dimensional people look like. And yesterday, a mob breached the U.S. Capitol while the House and Senate were attempting to confirm the electoral college votes. The H/S members were forced to evacuate, and the mob ransacked offices and hung confederate flags in place of American flags. (The Capitol was eventually cleared, and the certification did finish a bit before 3 a.m. CDT – and yes, I was still awake for it.) And so much chaos has happened in between. The mind boggles.

For me, life has been relatively small and quiet. I’ve been working remote since March 13, and we are slated to be remote again in the spring (*sobs with understanding and gratefulness for being able to stay safe and still work but also with the missing of my three dimensional students*). I spent the two weeks after finals to get spring up, and so I’ve been “off” since Dec 24, and it’s been lovely to not be glued to email and constantly grading and putting out figurative fires (I teach over summers, so this is my first true break since…well, last winter break). But I miss being in the classroom so so so much. It’s going to be so weird the first time I get to step back into one.

I’ve been able to spend extra time with my nephews. Starting over the summer when school ended, I’ve helped out watching them (both my sister and brother-in-law are essential workers). When my oldest nephew, my lima bean, was a baby, I watched him a bunch – we spent a lot of nephew/auntie time together for the first few years of his life before he started school. I was a bit sad that I didn’t get the same experience with the second, my mini muffin. And then voila – that all changed. (This is me trying to be all silver lining – when in reality, the reason behind this chance to spend time together is devastating.)

I’ve gone in fits and spurts with reading. Sometimes I just can’t get myself to sit still. Sometimes I get this insatiable thirst that can’t be quenched. Stress sure does interesting things to a person. (I’ve been stalled at starting the second chapter of Little Women for almost two months. I had to look it up – and I was shocked to realize it’s been that long…what is time?)

Probably the one truly consistent thing for me has been writing. Well, writing and my youngest cat’s demands for constant lap snuggles. It’s astonishing to me that it’s been a year since I finished the initial draft of All Falling Things. Partly because it took me two years to write it. Partly because it seems much longer than that. Since then, I wrote the initial draft of my second novel, still untitled (and I’m waiting on feedback from two of my beta readers), and I’m 3/5 of the way through my third. Amazing how much time one has to write when they aren’t driving eight or nine hours every week. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s also astonishing because that year also feels so short. In the eight months that followed me finishing it, I edited and revised it several times, got feedback from my beta readers, edited and revised some more, and then started querying agents. Eight months after I finished it, I was offered a contract to publish it. Eight months seems so very short considering I had been dreaming about this for almost thirty-eight years.

At the moment, I’m waiting on the editor (my book is in their queue) and to see the cover design. I know publication is a slow process, and I’m doing my best to be patient – especially since there are so many other things to be impatient about. Like the vaccine and the chance to teach in the classroom again. Or the package I ordered from Singer that has been making its way from Ohio to Wisconsin for *checks calendar* eleven days now. (Please know – I fully understand the issues COVID and the holidays and people not traveling and instead mailing their presents have causes. Just confused since three other things I’ve ordered since then have already made their way to me. Again, I say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

If someone had told me all of these things a year ago, I never would have believed them. And yet, here we are.

Goode Versus Melville

In 2015, I got an idea for a Young Adult superhero novel. It would be told in first person by the son of a super villain hellbent on revenge against the man who killed his wife, the mother of his child. Our narrator, though, both used and neglected by his father, would want nothing to do with the family business – and he would be gay – and in love with the son of his father’s nemesis. I think I wrote three or four pages – I even gave it to a couple friends to see if they would have any interest in reading more – which they did.

And then I didn’t touch it. I wrote two other novels instead and a screenplay instead.

I think part of the thing that scared me about writing this (I’m now admitting I was scared) was the technology I’d have to learn about and potentially create – which is not my forte. Before I started Lucy, though, I did write out a summarized plot for what I’d want this book to be.

Then came November – NaNoWriMo. I’ve never been able to commit to 50K words in November due to that being a busy time for grading papers. So instead, this year I decided to write a script. I’ve had another idea floating around since last summer, and I figured a script would be an easier/quicker way to at least get the story down. I did manage to do so, and while it’s short even for a script, the idea is on paper. And I was left with thirteen days in the month.

So, I opened up and reread those three pages I had written five years before – and then kept the story going. Goode Versus Melville is sitting at a little over 20K words – not to mention countless hours into researching things like how a ray gun might work and how to put together an IED. (Pretty sure I’m on a government list, now.) It’s been fun, and in the midst of the final weeks of the hell that is COVID-teaching and grading, it’s been fun that I have definitely needed.

Now to finish grading final papers so that I can dive back into this world and figure out how to create a freeze ray.