#Magicday…Choices

Tags

choices, happiness, Julie Hutchings, publishing, thoughts, writing

I just read a blog post by the FABULOUS Julie Hutchings. Go…go read it…I’ll wait…here, let me help.

The Joy of Not Playing Well with Others

Isn’t she great? She’s my Gorky.

Anyway, her post made me think, as good posts do.

Taking control of your life is the greatest thing you can ever do. Having control means different things to different people. Everyone is different. Control means seeing the choices, it means not allowing life to put you in a box, afraid to take a chance, afraid to live.

We’re here. Alive. We should be living.

When you’re not happy, look at the choices. There are always choices! Always.

As Julie says, “WAIT I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT PERIOD THE END OH MY GOD.”

Words to live by.

For writers, we have multiple ways we can go, agents, small presses, self-publishing… Like Julie, if you aren’t happy with previous choices, you can forge another path. Things in publishing (as in life) rarely go as planned, a big giant awful fabulous mess, one we jump into because we love it. But don’t ever feel like you don’t have control over your life. You do. In this glorious time, writers have so many choices, more than ever. Even if those choices are scary. Even if those choices mean more work, mean stepping out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes we forget. We forget we can leave the rut we have carefully worn. We forget to look at the things in life that frustrate us or make us unhappy and ask what else can we do.

Remember that when you climb out of the rut, when you find another path, there are people who will always be there to help. As I will be there to help my Gorky, and happily read all her books! Though, dude…five books in one year?

YOU ARE A MAD WOMAN, JULIE!

 

When you find what works, go with it. Happiness will follow.

Heart vs Brain: Facing the Great Writing Dilemma

Tags

dead genres, love what you write, publishing, thoughts, write what you love, writing

I have a friend in my writers group who is always telling us that she did everything wrong. She was always writing the wrong thing at the wrong time. She’s no good at marketing. To get a readership, don’t do what she did and jump around to other genres. We should learn from her mistakes.

Let me just say, she is the ONE person in our group with an agent. She just finished writing The Mill Pond romance series…if you like cute romances, these will make your heart sing. Go here and check them out!

At the beginning, she wrote mysteries, but she didn’t think that would get her anywhere, so she went with urban fantasy. Norse Gods, witches, and battles…OH MY! Her Babet and Prosper novellas are pretty darn fun. Go check out those books here! Well, she signed with her agent with her urban fantasy.

BUT…

Her agent just didn’t think they would sell. The market for that genre was glutted. Publishers weren’t asking for UF. After a long fight, trying to get her UF published, she finally got the go ahead to put them on Amazon. Then she was encouraged to go romance, because romance sells.

Now, me? I would have fallen over laughing if someone had told me to write romance. No way. I would have failed completely. Remember my whole thing with kissing…we won’t even get into my Happily-Ever-After feelings (saves that for future post). But this writer took the challenge and wrote a romance. Then another…and another… she liked writing them!

Now she’s doing what she told us not to and is preparing to switch genres again. BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO. Because the writing muses have been spreading their magic. This started a debate in our group… Write what you want to write? OR Write what will help you get a readership, write to make money?

Heart vs brain.

You should like…NO, LOVE what you write. And write what you love. And don’t let anyone tell you not to. However, be realistic. Be prepared to wait, to get rejections, to struggle with the fact that publishing is a business. If there are a million books like yours, you’re going to have a hard time finding an agent and/or publisher because they want to make money. Be prepared to leave certain fans of your work behind if you switch genres.

None of us writes to make money…well, most of us. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great to earn a bit of cash, but we do it because it calls to us, because we can’t live without creating.

I’ve heard discussions on how we shouldn’t write certain genres because they are “dead”. A few days ago, I saw tweets proclaiming the ridiculousness of “dead” genres. I wholeheartedly agree.

We’re told not to write to the market. As much as that means, don’t look at what’s selling and write that, hoping to get in on the fun…because by the time yours is ready, the fad will have moved on. But also the opposite. Don’t look at what’s not selling and decide to not write that book that’s screaming in your creative brain.

Remember the shelves labeled Paranormal Romance? When that genre was everywhere? And now it’s faded. The wave has ebbed. But the wave isn’t gone. People who read PR will always be there. But the money is elsewhere, so publishing follows.

And fads always come back. Eventually those PR readers will start begging for more and BLAMM-O, you know that manuscript you have sitting in a drawer, start querying!…or that PR you self-pubbed, start marketing!

I write YA fantasy. You know how many people write YA fantasy? A BIG FRIGGIN TON LOT OF PEOPLE. But I have to write it. I choose to face the odds of being lost in the sea or of never being published, because I love it. The writing faeries in my mind don’t know how to make up anything else.

I’m soon going to dip my toe in MG and YA horror. Switching genres? Maybe, but not really, my fantasy gets a little dark. Will the market allow those to swim? Who knows? No one knows. I’m going to write them and LOVE every single second. Then I’ll see what happens. Maybe it’ll be what people are looking for…maybe not. Not now…but maybe later. I’ll wait. I am patient.

And if you’re not patient? Self-publishing could work.

Mistakes? Nah.

Following your heart is always the right answer.

 

#Magicday…Hope

Tags

contests, hope, magic, Magicday, never give up, RevPit, thoughts

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. And whether you’re religious or not, the magic of that day is for everyone.

Hope.

Humans have an abundance of this power, we cling to it, raise it when it’s needed. Hope is so woven into our beings, it’s impossible to separate it from our souls.

The best kind of magic. The kind that persists. The kind that drives us forward even when we face terrible odds. The kind that keeps us smiling even when we want to cry…or helps us cry only to return stronger after the tears.

Pure magic.

The Human spirit is amazing.

Today, a contest RevPit comes to its dynamic conclusion. I have no idea how many, but A LOT of authors sent their words to a group of editors, who each offered their time and will each help one person make their manuscript shine. Authors sent their words to a certain number, three or four, of these editors depending on the editor’s wish list. The editors have been reading queries and the first five pages, tweeting about which ones they like and the reasons why they pass on others. Teasers. The stress and nail biting has been off the charts. Today, the announcement goes live, the participating editors make their choices, choose one manuscript out of the pile they had…(was it 50?). Together, editor and the author will work on revisions. I am not participating. I am not one of those brave souls who submitted, holding onto hope that their name will be announced.

@ReviseResub…the contest’s Twitter. Go see #RevPit on Twitter and meet all the fabulous people involved. I’ve been lurking there for days, and followed all sorts of cool people.

Go see their website here for all the details.

I remember being one of those people, in past contests. One of those many people sure they wouldn’t be picked, yet still stuck to the screen waiting to read the list of those chosen.

Because that little voice talking to me that…

Maybe…maybe…maybe…

Because hope.

I remember not seeing my name and that terrible sinking feeling of failure. I remember how I hated that hope for whispering those maybe’s. Yet that darned hope never went away. It came back.

The voice of light told me I hadn’t reached the end of my journey, just as those chosen in the contest hadn’t either. We were merely on different paths. That bright voice of never-give-up said that my time would come. Those shining thoughts of next time, of wait until you see what happens tomorrow made me keep working.

I have a dear friend who is participating in RevPit. She’s brilliant and marvelous and her time is coming. Maybe today she’s chosen for this. Maybe not. Like I said, her time is coming. Entering this contest is a step. Don’t know if being chosen is a step…yet. As her hopes soar in these final hours before the announcement, so do mine. Whether her name is announced or not, I’ll be by her side ready to cheer her one as she continues her journey. Just as she will be at my side as I walk my path.

Let the hope fill you today…everyday. Acknowledge those moments when it fades, when the shadows of failure and doubt nearly extinguish its light. But pay attention. Because hope doesn’t die. It will always return. Embrace it when it does.

Hope is the best magic.

We Don’t Have to Hear the Kissing Parts: YA and Romance

Tags

first love, kissing, love stories, romance, teenagers, thoughts, writing, writing for teens, writing for young adults, YA, Young adult books

Most people who know me know that I don’t do kissing. I don’t do romance. The genre doesn’t click with me. Not that I don’t enjoy a good love story now and then, but most of the time, I don’t buy into what I’m reading or seeing. It doesn’t feel real.

That’s just me.

However, romance is everywhere. It is unavoidable. Now I don’t read straight romance books, but when the kissing invades (like a bit of peanut butter on my chocolate) my horror or fantasy I accept it, though it doesn’t always add anything to the story for me.

After critiquing the first part of a YA horror manuscript, there were a couple of times where the mc, a girl, went all swoony over a guy. I commented that it didn’t fit with the mc’s character…well, with the ms really. The author was so glad I thought that! He added those in because he had been told that romance was NEEDED in a YA.

Well…let me tell you what I think about that…

Needed?

Let me tell you about a teenage me. Now, YA wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I was all about high fantasy/sword and sorcery stuff. Fighting and magic. A glorious world in which to escape. If YA was around way back then and every book I read held love stories, held the perfect girl looking for the perfect guy and finding him…I would have felt more broken than I already did.

Broken, Kathy? What do you mean by this?

Teenage me didn’t date. She didn’t talk to people much. She didn’t fit in. I thought something was wrong with me because I wasn’t like my peers. I didn’t have a group of friends. I didn’t have guys talk to me, school dances were pretty much my nightmare. And when a guy did ask me to a dance (after his first pick turned him down)…I said yes, but pretty much panicked and hid from him during the event. So does YA NEED romance? Nope. Teenage me didn’t need anyone showing her how much she didn’t fit. She needed stories of kids who were searching for themselves, not for their first kiss.

Kissing wasn’t important to me. Though I thought it should be. Forming relationships with boys wasn’t important to me…though I thought it should be. No one showed me it was okay to not care about that. No one told me it was fine to be different, to be me.

For teenagers relationships with people outside their families start to become important. They start to connect to people, look to make connections because they begin to understand that soon they will go out and merge with the world. But being a teenager is so much more than that. It’s about taking the first steps towards who you will be. It’s about questioning what you believe. It’s about realizing you will have to find a place in the world where you belong, exciting and gosh diggety darned scary.

When I write a teen character, I can’t help but channel teenage me. The girl who wants to love herself, not some hot boy. The girl who dreams of finding where she belongs in the world, not of touching some guy’s muscular chest. Not that I haven’t had a character have a crush, and it was awkward and horrible just like I remember. Not that I haven’t had a character fall in love, (though I tried to stop her!) with her best friend for heavens sake…and it was scary and exciting and a bit weird, as it should be.

Does YA need romance? Nope. Because not all teenagers need it. I admit that most teens out there probably like to read the kissing, the head-over-heals sensation of first love, the stories of boys and girls and making connections. But not everyone. Not me. So I write for those people like me.

So when someone tells you that a certain category or genre NEEDS something…stop and think. Does it? Is there someone out there making up rules for every style of writing? Nope.

There’s you. There’s the words. There’s your characters and how they feel and what they think. And all of it is relevant. All of it is needed.

#Magicday…Silencing the Shoulds

Tags

expectations, magic, Magicday, perfect is boring, pride, thoughts

Time to add a bit of magic to Monday!

I discovered something about myself. I had a revelation. Every morning, I wake up with a list of things in my head. A list of what I have to do, what I should do, a list of expectations. If I could do this…this…this…and this…I will have succeeded. I will not be a failure. I will be worth something.

Then I don’t…I don’t do one thing on the list…I don’t complete as much of a project as I wanted…I don’t live up to those high expectations.

And I fail.

I go to bed, preparing my list for the next day, I will do all the shoulds. I will do better. Be better.

And fail again.

I began to look at what I did do each day. WHAT I DID DO. Well, that put a new spin on my outlook. Maybe I SHOULD (Haha) stop trying to be some perfect image of me and be me.

I like me. I’m pretty cool.

Spring break was marvelous. I had a great time with my family and the voice in my head constantly telling me to be perfect, to do all the things, went away.

When I got home, the flood of words returned.

AND I WAVED MY MAGIC WAND AND SILENCED THEM.

I don’t need a head full of shoulds hounding me all day. I don’t need to have a mind full of demands to be perfect as I fall asleep. I’m not perfect. I don’t wanna be! Perfect is boring. Perfect is stupid. All the should dos…I magicked them into oblivion.

I will do what I need to do. At the end of the day, I will be happy and proud of my choices.

THIS IS THE MAGIC OF LIFE, OF LIVING. Do what you do and be proud.