Posted by Christine on Sep 25, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
I am having one, right now. What has awed me? Today I posted my first story on the web site This is by Us. You can find a link to it in the box on the right hand side of my sight. Please go check it out. I will be posting more over the next few weeks. The stories I am posting are “news” articles written by the fictitious character Chelsea Cole. The central character of a short story currently entered into an international writing competition. So why am I awed. Well, you see, six months ago I was an aspiring writer. Today I am a writer. So here I sit, in awe. Happy...
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Posted by Christine on Aug 5, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
Well, I have been working at my other job – the one that pays me :). I have a confession or two to make. Confession the first. I haven’t written anything in about two weeks. I haven’t really done anything writing related since I sent out my short story to the contest a week ago and before I sent it all I was working on was editing and cleaning that. The second confession. I have decided to revamp my story. Things will be changing that will totally reshape parts (but not all) of the plot. I am going to be doing some major rewriting. In truth I am kind of glad that none of the agents I sent to requested a partial because I think that the story is going to be even better when I am done with the rewrites I am currently imagining. So why haven’t I been writing? Because this is intimidating. Pretty much the only thing in the story “safe” from revision is the names of the characters. I worked way to hard coming up with all those names. It is intimidating to realize that I am going to basically say lets ditch what I have and start from scratch. Yes, there will be things I keep but in reality I am starting from scratch. My goal – To have a viable draft of my Manuscript ready for agents by the end of October. That gives me three months to rework my novel. So over the next 10 weeks I am going to try to post an excerpt for you once a week. Be prepared, these will be rough, I would love idea and feedback as you read...
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Posted by Christine on Jul 15, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
I’ve made quite a few over the past week. Decisions that is. So What are they: 1) I’ll be attending a writing conference in October. I’m very excited about this as it’s the first time I’ve ever attended a writers conference. 2) I’ll be putting all queries on hold till after the conference. I expect to learn a lot there that will help me in the query process and so I think I’ll wait till I have that information 3) I’m going to submit a short story to the contest at the conference. I have written it (see the post below) and am in the editing process. 4) I need to write more. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time doing research and working on “about writing” stuff, but spent little time actually putting words on paper. I miss that. So having made all these decisions I plan to turn my attention to writing more. I’ve barley started the sequel to Coradonna Lost and I think I’d like to work on that more. The problem of course with working on a sequel is that if I never sell the first book I’ll likely never sell the sequel so it may be a gigantic waste of time (in terms of financial’s). However the story wants to be told and it rumbles around in my head at night as I fall asleep, and often other times as well. So I’ll write it and see what happens. After all, even if I’m never a writer in the published sense of the word I’m always a story...
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Posted by Christine on Jul 9, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
This weekend I wrote a short story. Well actually I wrote the entire thing on Friday night then spent most of the weekend adding, rearranging and changing it. The story is set in the same universe as Lexi however it is unrelated to the Coradonna Lost story. Sort of. I have never really written a short story like this before but I wanted to enter a contest at a conference I am going to and I needed a short story to do it. So I decided to try. I like the story I wrote but I have to admit that I think short stories are a little harder then novels. There is no time to develop plot, or characters or anything. I prefer writing longer things where the story has time to take shape and the characters have a chance to learn and grow. Not that I will not try my hand (or pen) at another short story. I have several ideas of events that happen in Lexi’s world that would fit a short story format. But I think that this will be a skill that takes some time to hone and perfect. I will be working on this particular short story for a few more weeks before I send it off to the contest. I am not crossing my fingers that I will win, however I am excited about the experience of giving my work away to someone to be read. Things are on hold with Coradonna Lost right now and will be for a while. I am working on it but very slowly and I am not sure that I will send the next round of queries until September after some more editing and such. I may change my mind but I know that I have some work to do before the next round of queries is ready to go out and I am not sure I can get through that before...
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Posted by Christine on Jun 18, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
This morning when I opened my e-mail I saw it sitting there among my many other e-mails. A reply to one of my queries. They are all sent now, but this was the first reply I received. My stomach knotted and my heart beat picked up. Where they requesting a partial, or was it my first rejection. I tried to coach myself, it’s a rejection, no big deal, all authors get rejections. But still I couldn’t help the little thrill of excitement that it might be a request for a partial. Maybe someone wanted to read my story. I opened, read and replied to all my other e-mail first as an exercise in patience, and because I was dreading opening that particular e-mail as much as I was desperate to read it. When all my other correspondence was done and I had no more excuses I opened the e-mail. It was a rejection BUT…. It was the kindest most polite and gentle rejection I could have imagined. The agent didn’t rip apart my query, they didn’t say my idea sucked, they simply pointed out that this project was not right for them. They encouraged me to continue to submit to other agents. So I want to tell them Thank you. Not that rejection is ever easy to take, but it is so much easier when it is done gently and with kindness. It was in my opinion the perfect first rejection. One that was harsh would have been shattering. Not that I wasn’t disappointed, even after all my coaching I felt the little lurch you feel in your stomach when you have received bad news. I felt terrible they didn’t want to read my story. Then I realized something- I am an author now!!! Not just a writer but an author. I have received a rejection. How many published authors and even FAMOUS authors received a rejection? I will not venture a guess at the actual number but I will say from what I have read A LOT. So I am in good company. So what does this mean, well I still have 6 queries out that I mailed as a first round of queries. This is only my first rejection and I am working on my second round of queries now. So this basically means that I am going to keep going. There are still many many options out there. I will keep everyone up to date as the responses to my queries come in. I can only imagine that this is the first of many rejections. But I look forward to the “YES” that is coming. Who knows, it may get here today...
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Posted by Christine on Jun 7, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
There is so much information on the Internet. It’s an incredibly useful resource and I cannot image not having it at my finger tips. When I decided to start writing queries I naturally began investigating the Internet to learn how. I learned a great deal. One of the most useful sources of information I have already mentioned was agents blogs. (Have I mentioned Thank you to all the agent who blog and give such helpful and informative advice.) Even now that I have crafted a query I am still reading the blogs of five agents regularly. One problem is that I find myself running into information that I wished I had known 10 minutes ago. It happened this morning… I was reading on an agents blog, the post took apart a query and was very helpful over all. The agent advised only using your pen name once you adopted one. Honestly I had asked myself about this when crafting my query. Should I use my real name or me pen name? I thought since I had nothing published maybe it was best to use my real name with the agent and editor until after I had been published. I guess my thought was Christine Brant does not really exist till her name is on a book. But I know I exist, at least I think I know – ok that’s a discussion for another day. Really though the advice makes sense. I mean I have adopted my pen name for this blog. I have adopted my pen name for the critique group I attend. It makes a great deal of sense to adopt it for my queries as well. I used my real name on my first query, no big deal, but all the queries I send from today forward will use my pen name only. You can read the post here BookEnds...
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