Jenn's World

I have found the secret to getting agents to ask for partials: Go on vacation. If you are in a place where you cannot access your novel, badda-bing, the requests come in.

I dreamed last night I enrolled in a school of ninjas. I fought evil. It was awesome.

I had a weird experience I thought I would write down. I was walking up from the MAX (Portland's metro) to the house of the friend I'm staying with and I managed to get completely turned around. I wasn't thinking about my surroundings because a) of above partial request b) I don't have any sense of direction. By the time I figured out I was lost, I saw a familiar landmark and thought I knew the direction I should go in. Only then it turned out I didn't and, in trying to get out, I landed smack dab in the middle of a set of gated communities and couldn't get out.

Anyone who knows me knows I'll do this. I get lost walking across a street. Ask me how many debate rounds I missed because I got lost. Actually don't ask, because it's happened so often, I stopped keeping track.

It's after midnight. I've walked two miles. I'm a little annoyed at myself, but not particularly worried. Every street I go down ends in another frickin gated community. I go toward an apartment complex downhill figuring the apartments will open out onto a main road and I can find my way back to the MAX station and try again. Unfortunately, there are some twenty buildings, and I pick the wrong direction and find myself wandering from stairwell to stairwell staring up at six-story complexes.

My cell phone got no reception up there, but I managed to find a few bars in the middle of a park, with the sprinklers attacking me full blast. I call my friend, but the reception gives out, though not before my friend gives me a general idea that I should go downhill.

Anyway, I find some girls out on the porch of their apartment and ask for directions. They cannot believe I walked up the hill. It's just a hill, but they make it sound like Mount Everest. They are freaked out and certain I am on drugs. They offer to let me call my friend but my phone has reception again so I do it myself. He's got mapquest up and can give me directions, all I need is the address and a point out of the complex.

Except they cannot believe that I can walk my way home alone in the dark. They are certain that muggers are going to find me and get me. I roll my eyes and point to the fact we're surrounded by mini-mansions and there are like two streetlamps to every house. This isn't downtown Portland. This is suburbia central. How many muggers would be waiting to jump out at pedestrians at midnight on a Monday anyway? Those would be some pretty bored muggers, since I hadn't seen a single pedestrian for an hour. No victims = no muggers.

The kicker--the women don't know their own address OR how to use mapquest. Who lives in that kind of neighborhood and doesn't know how to use mapquest? She kept saying my address was turning up the map to Arizona but that was because her DEFAULT STARTING LOCATION was in Arizona and she didn't know she needed to change it. She thought it was because the address I'd given her was a lie and I was casing her apartment for a burglary or something.

Anyway, they eventually talked my friend into coming out to get me, which I feel horrible about because it's midnight and seriously, I can walk fine, I just need to know where to walk, but he is very nice and comes and the girls wait with me to make sure I'm not kidnapped by all the horrible muggers out on the streets.

It was very strange because they kept asking me my age, if I was sober and "why did you walk up that hill" -- repeating the same questions five or six times. I wonder why they thought my answer would be different, if the fifth time I would say, "Ooh, your clever tactic of asking the same question over and over again has led me to confess that I'm actually on heroin!"

I tried explaining that I knew my friends lived on a hill so I walked up the hill thinking it was the right hill but that seemed an unsatisfactory answer. At least one of the girls was mentally challenged, I believe. She took the book I was carrying from me (Janny Wurts' Traitor's Knot) and started reading it aloud. It was very strange. I felt like I had wandered into a Kafka book. The girl told me I'd inspired her to read Tale of Two Cities.

It turned out I was on the wrong hill--the one next to it was the right one. So all it took to get back to where I should have been was a five minute drive, and probably a fifteen minute walk. I should be grateful that the women were trying to look after me, but I was left feeling bemused. The whole time, they were so afraid of me. Only one of them would talk to me at first. The rest dashed inside their apartment, beset with terror. Of a 5' 4", 120 pound girl who has arms like spaghetti noodles. I suppose I could have been packing a gun. They mentioned some kind of security at the apartment, though I didn't see any.

It's good to know that I'm not the worst victim of suburbanite's terror out there. I am grateful to them for their help. It took bravery to overcome their fear of me, even if it was...somewhat misplaced.

Rejection is part of a writer's life. Here are some websites to cheer you up about it!

inkygirl (rejection factoids and rejection humor--see pic.), Rejection Slips for the Ages (excerpts from a book containing famous rejection slips,) Hooray! My First Rejection Slip (message board musings from authors on their first rejection slips.)

One thing I think it's important to stress in the electronic age is that a beginning author should NOT take out his/her frustrations about editors, agents, and rejection slips in the public--and permanent--internet sphere. You never know who's reading, and you don't want to be 'that one author' who reads far too much into a form letter. Most of the authors you see complaining on certain websites end up looking like they're completely clueless. And when an agent googles my name to see what else I've written...I definitely don't want him/her seeing obscene complaints about the last agent, or the last 79 rejections I've recieved. (Just an example! I haven't really got that many rejections)

I've learned discretion the hard way, when friends of mine have stumbled on things I've written on other blogs and been hurt, and pledge that I'll never be that stupid again. Don't drink and blog is a another good piece of advice.

So, as I begin my epic journey into the novel rejection-o-sphere, I pledge the only thing you'll see from me publically is stuff about...well, probably figure skating. While I may be weeping tears into my pillow, I know how to keep my mouth shut. I might brag about any nibbles I get, but I probably won't. I will keep a running tally, though that I promise I'll publicize after I hit it big. I like my query/synopsis combination, so I expect I'll get a bunch of partial requests...only to end in a lot of "not quite right for us" because the market is so brutal. I can't allow myself to believe I'll get published my first novel out. It's because of my supersticion--if you believe bad things are gonna happen, they're less likely to happen. It's only when you get your hopes up that you get kicked in the shorts.

I'm not sure when I'll start sending things out, because my list of agents in ranking was on my broken laptop, so I only remember a couple of the ones at the top. (Which I'll, for obvious reasons, keep secret. No reason to annoy anyone not on the list...though anyone in my top twenty or so would be fabulous.)

There was one woman at the conference sitting next to me who had a 100 rejection slips before she found an agent. I was impressed, and hoping that she wasn't being represented by a Preditor. I don't know if my psyche could take that much pounding. We'll see, won't we?

In the mean time, I've found it hard to begin a new project. The prologue for my next novel's wicked awesome, though. But I can't quite get a grasp on my new characters yet, or the setting. It doesn't feel like it has the same magic as the old novel. Hopefully, I'll be able to find whatever's missing and fix it. Everything looks good in the outline, on paper, but it's just not fitting together. I tried to work on a Y.A. novel but it didn't go well, either.

I dunno. Maybe I should try and write my mystery. Cleanse my pallet. I think that it's just my head isn't properly wrapped around something yet. It's hard to go from a plot you've been kicking around for years to a plot/world you've only been kicking around for a month.

Patrick Rothfuss is having his annual "Worldbuilders"donate-a-thon (or as I prefer to think of it, 'Heiferfest', where he's selling books and collectors' items such as first-edition copies of Name of the Wind. All proceeds go to the Heifer International, which provides chickens and ducks and things like that to starving people in depressed countries. They're renewable food resources that last, ala 'the give a man a fish' vs. 'teach a man to fish.' (I get the parable, but I've always wondered--why not both!) I will probably donate to get his guide of college newspaper columns. Since the conservative media put us both through a certain hullabullu after we published perhaps less than judicious comments given the heat of the moment, (ah, the love. The death threats. The Drudge Report) so I feel we have a special bond.

I haven't decided whether or not or should request that my old college newspaper should take my newspaper columns down if and when I get the call from a publisher. Well, any news is good news, right? Even if I get hassled for things I may or may no longer believe.

Anyway, Heifer Internatioanl is a great cause. This is my favorite kind of fundraiser, feel good and get cool swag, including a lot of great stuff you can win, lottery style. Last year, Pat was offering 100 percent matching funds, but this year he's only doing 50 percent, which is probably just as well. I was amazed he didn't bankrupt himself.

Later in the month they'll be doing auctions of things such as "agent X will read your manuscript." Rothfuss' agent is Matt Bialer, who has one of the best slates of sf/f clientele in the nation, so if he participates in the auction, it would be a great opportunity for an aspiring novelist.

I'd donate some books for the lottery, but I wouldn't want any poor sucker stuck with my semi-finished manuscript to feel cheated. Though it would probably be worth thousands once I'm a best-selling author (rolls eyes incredulously).

Speaking of semi-finished manuscript, the whips have come out! I'm working on it again and things are going semi-smoothly. It really helps that I have a skeleton to base things on, no matter how flawed. One way or another, this thing will be done by Christmas. Which means that I managed to write and revise the novel in what, seven months? Not quite Brandon Sanderson speed, but not bad, either. Hopefully, once it's done, I'll be able to find some better real life employment, too.

PS: Rothfuss' blog is quite entertaining, and there aren't that many posts, so you can read it from the beginning in a couple of days if you want to. There are some interesting insights into the industry, such as I never thought how hard a translator's job is, catching all the subtleties and changing the language!

Don't do this.