Rejection and why it doesn't kick my ass as much as it used to.

This is what rejection feels like;




This year of querying is my third time. Not first, not second, but third time querying the same WIP. Granted, after the second round of rejections I flipped a poo and rewrote the entire thing, and the result was AWESOME.

A lot of agents talk about the 'practice novel' and how the author will sometimes query it to them. I made that mistake twice, and it killed me. Right now, I'm doing something rather devious and querying the same agents I queried before, but with this shiny new WIP and new query with changed character names.

I'm relying on the fact that agents tend to FORGET a terrible past query. (I hope.) D:

So now that the REAL DEAL of my WIP is done and out there in the query world, I feel pumped. Excited beyond recognition. For the past two query times, I had no confidence in my manuscript at all - I expected all rejections and I mostly got all rejections. But even if Satan came up and slapped me in the face, I wouldn't quaver away from my confidence with this WIP.

So far, the rejection count goes something like this;

Formal Rejection: 3
Partial Requested but Rejected in the End: 1
Haven't heard from yet: 56

Rejection doesn't hurt anymore, but not because I've grown used to it. I have this crazy glowing trust that defies rejection, because the WIP is just that good. It deserves nothing less than getting published, and very soon. I KNOW it will get published, because I can feel it. Hard to describe, but the feeling is there, like a deja vu I've yet to trigger, but know is around.

And when it happens, I'll probably just explode. And throw a party. Not necessarily in that order. Or maybe in that order. I've always wanted to go to a party as a cloud of unrecognizable fleshy bits.

Put your WIP in Wordle and Weep.

Slow day at the office.

I did this instead.

http://www.wordle.net


I pasted my ENTIRE 306 page manuscript into there and it comes up with a wordcloud, with the largest words being the most used. It's a really handy tool, actually, and the list of most used words goes like this;

1. Shadus (UH OH. MAIN LOVE INTEREST UH OH.)
2. Miranda (She's one of the top five main characters, so this is expected)
3. Eyes (hurr durr)
4. Back (what the fuck?)
5. One (uh...sure.)
6. Lara (yup. Main character.)
7. Like (and I'm not even from California)
8. Head (???)
9. Face (I'm concerned because body parts seem to be a trend.)
10. Away (??? I don't recall writing it that much?)
11. Know (I recall writing this MORE.)
12. Time (Ditto above.)
13. See (Verbs are really common on this list. Bad or good? No idea.)
14. Around (An Approximate word. Ugh lots of these fags)
15. Away (APPROX. WORD)
16. Joseph (Yeah! Mexican badass.)
17. Geoff (No! Evil guy!)
18. Look (...kid's book much? I coulda used 'gaze', but nooooo)
19. Moment (MAKES SENSE.)
20. Anything/Something (TIED FOR 20th place the irony does not escape me.)
21. People (Duh.)
22. GCIP (Mofos.)
23. School (Ugh.)
24. Cure (Disease isn't even on this list. Suspicious.)
25. Makes (VERB.)
26. Stands (VERB.)
27. Kill (I'M STARTING TO GET WORRIED ABOUT THESE VERBS.)
28. Light (Yeahhh a noun!)
29. Even (APPROX WORD. FUCK.)
30. Go (VERB.)
31. Get (VER-UGH.)
32. Voice (Noun yay!)
33. Cassie (lololol the Main Character is down here because it's first person POV.)
34. Good (I don't know whether to cry or commit seppuku.)
35. Basement (THIS ONE WAS A SURPRISE.)
36. Gutters (duh.)
37. Quiet (Not silence? Weird.)
38. Life (i herd u liek mudkipz.)
39. Feel (VERB.)
40. Every (APPROX WORD jesus christ.)
41. Quickly (ADVERB. I am so dead by the syntax nazis)
42. Never (APPROX WORD I wish I never used dem.)
43. Right (WRONG.)
44. Now (APPROX WORD)
45. Still (APPROX WORD)
46. Just (APPROX WORD WHERE IS A NORTH KOREAN BOMB WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE SWALLOWING ONE?)
47. Mr. (Yeah, Geoff rigged this one.)
48. White (Where's black. I r disappoint son.)
49. Blood (HURRRRRDURRRRRR)
50. Smiles (gay.)



So, this was informative. I'm going to slash and burn as much as possible. The main theme of the most used 50 words was verbs and generally unneeded approx words. Body parts were also very common even though I don't remember writing about them so much. I also thought Kill would be higher up (and Cassie). And I expected more colors.I was disappointed in myself that Shadus was #1. Oh well.

YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY - *brick'd*

Post-coitus....for writing?

In sexual terms we call it the afterglow. In less creepy terms, it's the calm after the storm, the recovery, the disarming lull that settles in once you've completed something that felt monumental.

Having written three (rather shoddy) books, I'll tell you this right now; when it's done I feel a distinct emptiness in my chest. I'm pretty lucky in the fact that I can put in two to four hours of writing a day, but it's not always the most productive - some days I get 6k words, others I get 500.

When I start typing out the very end, the epilogue or the last few words, it's always a teary time for me. The ending might not be particularily sad (but being me, it is always sad) but I am still real emotionally volatile. This being my third time going through the process, I'm able to pinpoint it now - I get touchy because I no longer know if what I did was right.

I begin questioning myself; did my material deserve more than what I gave it? Did I shape the clay accurately after the dream, so to speak.

(Writers aren't artists, but that is a discussion for another day.)

Inevitably, I make peace with myself but the nagging emptiness remains. I want to write again, and I make slipshod plots in the notes section of my phone while running errands or checking into work - I want to be writing again as soon as possible, please and thank you.

I think it's an addiction.

It's taking a bit of a tax on my social life. It's hard enough to have a social life on a cesspool island like this, but in all honesty I'd rather be writing than grabbing coffee with people I don't know well enough to like. This is how it's been since I was little - it was just disguised. I had notebooks filled with dragon gods and maps of worlds. (So did everyone else, it seems, but you understand.)

Writing is not the only path in my life, but it's the only one that matters to me.

Maybe my passion does not equal my output. Maybe what I produce doesn't reflect what I feel for it, and if it doesn't then that's the only true failing I'll admit to.

When I'm not writing, I want to be writing, and that's all there is to it. Maybe I'm mentally unwell?

This is not to say the real world holds no interest for me - it very much does. I have no illusion of being a creator of worlds, or an artist. When a story leaves me as a finished manuscript, I feel very empty and immediately scrabble to fill the hole with another endeavor. I feel like I'm wasting time if I'm not churning out words.


I don't know what it is, really. I'm just happy to be alive and writing.


Querying is terrifying and an exhausting process. I would rather write seven more books than query one. But it's one of those things you have to do!


who likes bourbon?
I don't.

Infinitely better than Winona Ryder in striped socks, Jason, and those weird kids in that one hippie van.

America fails at halloween.




































SPICED PUMPKIN CIDER AND HIDEO NAKATA
IF I DIE IN SEVEN DAYS YOU'LL KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME.

1001 (tales)

It hurts!


It hurts.





Just kidding?

Anything to throw at your head
shake the floor, burn the forest.
This is the only month of the year (every hundred years) that has five sundays in it. I am returning to a state of ____. neutral. I have no people to meet or places to be, for a while I was crazy central and now all is quiet.

I couldn't think up 1001 one of them.



It's hard to explain.
My work defines me. I think I've finally learned how to seperate myself from the work and the difference is firing a cannon from under the surface of a swamp and having it come out clean, free of all slime.


So this is way better than her other stuff;




dtiedidetided:

So, forget kichiku. Kuudere megane is where it's at.




fffffffffffyeah.
oh but I promised no more boys.

oh.

dang.

(but if you are a good looking boy and you have glasses on (NOT THOSE FUCKING HIPSTER GLASSES, ACTUAL GLASSES), or if you just like, you know, don them occasionally, that's totally cool with me too.)



PS. I'm fine with being a fucking weirdo.

In which I promise you I don't do drugs.

Uh, so this new draft is romantic.
I don't like it at all, but I like it in a way where I'll never admit it, except, you know, just now.

I don't especially know a lot about romance. I suspect I am mostly jaded, but I don't know it for sure. I could just be feeling detached for a few weeks (years).
This is a point that has been pointed at by several people lately; Do boys really matter that much to me anymore?

And it's funny, because the people (you! and others!) in my life will all seem to nod at once in a metaphysical way at each other and agree to ask me similar questions of similar topics all around similar times. This principle already having a name; Murphy's Law, made by some guy named Murphy who was Lawful (good? neutral? evil? The mystery remains, but I'm thinking evil).

Do boys really matter to me anymore.

I think the bigger question is this; Did boys ever really matter to me at all? Did love in itself ever really matter to me at all?

I think they/it did, to both those questions! I think it did matter, at some point.
But all good things must come to an end. Magic doesn't happen until it happens, and forcing or faking it is stupid.
(People build it all the time.)

The other side is thus; quit waiting for magic.
I'm not waiting for anything. That's just it. The fact that people call it waiting when I'm doing nothing of the sort irritates me. I'm not waiting, goddamnit, I'm just not doing anything. I'm not saying yes or no, I'm just moving on without a steady boyfriend or string of one night stands. I am neither extreme.

I think I just don't care enough.

It (the big It) always has been this strange feeling I've never quite fully grasped, or have been given the chance to embrace. Maybe I was given the chance, and I just didn't take it, but either way I've never had it. Sometimes I can stare out a window and look at the light on the trees and the spirit of it will hover just above my eyes. Someone else is there, flooding me with their experience and feelings. Most of the time I don't even feel the person, the feeling just hits sharply and strongly and I get a little wistful. All of a sudden I can understand, for the briefest moment, what warm, surging affection means.

For those few seconds, I'm in a relationship with someone I don't know, but know intimiately.

Crazy talk.

But then it goes away and I'm normal again. And I have pancake flour on my face.

So.
I'm not the cuddly type. Or, correction. I'm mostly only the cuddly type when I'm drunk. I don't like touching people, or being excessively close to them. Hugging was, and always will be, a little weird for me - I'm only just now learning to take it in stride.

Where was I? Play me off, keyboard cat.
No! I remember. Romance.
I have no idea what it is. I assume it's made of candles and nice thoughts, and quaint things that shouldn't be romantic at all but are because humanity thinks romantic irony the most romantic ever. This is due in part to their desire to stand out, and for completely unrelated things to come together as a chaotic (therefore fair and true) spiritual hint that they (or their connection) means something to the universe.

When in reality all the universe wants you to do is fuck.

So being cuddly when you're drunk is okay, I guess. I used to only drink with people I liked and knew, and so I could cuddle on anyone I wanted to without severe reprecussions, but now that's all out the window. I don't know the people I drink with now, but one or two of them are okay. I search the crowd when I first walk in the house and pick which one won't try anything devious or will accept me without too many annoying questions. This equates to me either A. Picking a girl, B. Picking a young kid, or C. Hanging with the outcasts of said party, who are a little ways away from it and not REALLY outcasts, they usually are just out for a smoke and happen to find nice, isolated places to sit.

The problem with A is that people start egging you on to make out with her, the problem with B is that the kid gets way too excited and his boner starts becoming obvious and from there it's all shades of awkward, and C is difficult because the outcasts smoking usually smell like smoke (which I have always disliked), or are too 'detached' and 'cool' to let some random girl lean on them.

And drinking messes with my ability to write honestly, so I've really actually given it up.
(We will see how true I stay to that this Saturday, hohohoho)

I don't know anything, but I am learning all the time.




I wish I was braver and smarter.


And now, an interlude on the interbuttz;

The Waiting Disease

There is a disease that afflicts querying authors.

No! Pray tell, it is not what you think it is. We have patience in abundance. Mayhap we have more patience than a professional turtle racer! We are writers. We write tremendous things and then we revise said tremendous things, and when all is said and done we do things tremendously. Some of us are slow, some of us are quick, but to the cosmic singularity it's all very relative.

PRITHEE, we finish said tremendous thing (tremendous thing being our manuscript), and we have polished and spit polished and car-gloss polished and we've just generally polished the shit out of it enough to see our reflections. We query! Oh boy, do we query. We query and send out partials and fulls and wait with bated breath.

PERCHANCE, the disease strikes!

After four months, you begin to exhibit symptoms that include irritability and fitful doubts of skill. At seven, the disease has a full grasp on you, and it roars only this into your buzzing head;

WHAT AM I DOING WRONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

With occasional variants of this nature;

SHOULD I WRITE ANOTHER BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK BECAUSE MY FIRSTTTTTTTTT IS SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTT?


There is no known cure, or cause, save for a 'WELL DONE LET'S PUBLISH YOUR BOOK' phrase from an agent that you love, not just because they are an agent that will accept your crap and turn it shiny, but because they are a real person and they are tea enthusiasts like you are and they watch Hitchcock movies like you, and they really like your book! They think it is simply rad.


Ahhh, the waiting will kill you. Don't give up.



I have a purikura application on my iphone.
This is dangerous territory.

FOR INSTANCE:



this will be my author picture on the back of the book.