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On Receiving Critique with Grace

/ Kaela Coble / Leave a comment

Recently I was accepting into the Womentoring Project (@WomentoringP), and I’ve been working with the lovely and generous mentor, Louise Walters (@LouiseWalters12), author of Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase. I was at a point where I had revised my MS many times and had gotten a lot of interest from agents based on my query and sample pages, but ultimately was rejected without much helpful feedback as to why. I was so excited that she chose me, and a little unsure what to expect. She gave me some great, honest feedback about what was working and what wasn’t, and I was super grateful…

After about a week.

Guys, it’s never easy to get critiqued on your work. It comes from your heart and soul, and showing it to others is the literary equivalent of having a baby and then asking someone if they think it’s pretty. It’s hard. It’s scary. And no matter how professional and gentle and diplomatic the response you receive, and no matter how much positive feedback is sandwiched around it, anything that varies from “It’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen!” is crushing to the writer’s ego. So when I first read the feedback, my confidence went into a nosedive. Despite all the nice things she said, I only focused on the things she said needed work, and for a couple days I was completely miserable. Because 1) I knew she was right, 2) It became clear (without her saying so outright) that the beginning of my book needed a major overhaul, and 3) Because I had no clue how to do it.

So, first, even though my heart was stinging and my mind was cycling through horrific, unkind thoughts about myself and my abilities, I shot off a quick email thanking her so much for her feedback. After all, if you’ve ever beta read someone else’s work you know it’s more work than just reading pages. It’s like reading a book but without the fun of it, because you’re looking out for everything from the major things like character development, continuity, and plot points to the little things like grammar and punctuation. And if the writing style isn’t your cup of tea, this can be quite a chore. Even though I was despondent, I wanted her to know I was appreciative of the work she’d done.

Second, I got good and truly depressed. See above re: ego.

Third, after a couple days of that, I tried something new: I made myself stop thinking about it. In the state of mind I was in, I wasn’t going to be able to make any kind of good decisions about how to move forward. I kept opening the file only to tearfully close it again a few minutes later. So, I said to myself “Self, it is not for you to solve right now,” and I mentally pictured myself physically tucking it into a distant, dark fold of my brain (that I imagine also understands how a car works and all the different rules of football), and left it there. Every time I started thinking negative thoughts about it, I said “Ah ah ah. Not yet,” and pushed it back down. I set a time limit, that I could live in this state of denial for up to two weeks, while I worked on another project.

Miraculously, after one week I was sitting and watching TV, giving myself permission on a Friday afternoon to be a lazy bum, and it came to me. I suspected all along I would have to rewrite the beginning, but suddenly this idea wasn’t so daunting. Suddenly I would start here, move this chapter up, move this chapter back, cut out this chapter, add this scene instead, etc. As Louise told me in her feedback, “I know it sounds like an awful lot, but all novels are an awful lot of work and it can take a long time to get them right.” Reading through her feedback with rested eyes, I was able to hold on to more of the positive things, and the negative didn’t seem so bad. Because 1) I knew she was (still) right, 2) I had accepted the fact that the beginning needed a major overhaul, and 3) I knew exactly how to do it.

So I made a list of all the edits I had to make, chapter by chapter (lists do for me what Valium probably does for other people), and I set to work. Slowly but surely, a new draft came together. And, after much editing, I sent off a new copy to my mentor. About a week later, I got her feedback. She loved the new beginning, but mentioned a few entirely new overwhelming things that needed work. And of course my mind went immediately to “HowdoIfixthisit’stoomuchIcan’tdoitmybookiscrapI’mafraudI’mgivingup,” but this time I remembered my process. I thanked her so much for her hard work, I allowed myself to be mopey that the MS needs more work for only one day, tucked it away for another, and this time I only needed that day and a half before I started my list.

The message here is: it’s okay to be sad when you realize your MS isn’t perfect, and frustrated that there is more work ahead on something you’ve already poured so much of yourself into. You’re human. You’re a creative, you have ALL the feelings. But if you really believe in your MS (or if you did ten second before you received your critique), it’s not okay to give up on it. Give yourself a minute, dust yourself, and get back in the ring.

 

 

 

On the Querying Process – Rejection

/ Kaela Coble / Leave a comment

You’ve written the query and three versions of the synopsis (1, 2, and 3 pages). Revised them. Revised them again. Threw them out. Started again. Revised the new versions twice. Sent them to Twitter friends (thank you, lovely Twitter friends). Revised them based on feedback. Twice.

That sounds like a lot of work, right? Distilling the essence of your beautiful baby (your MS) into a page of marketing speak? It is. There’s a lot of “it’s not fair!” that goes on during this process. In fact, most writers consider writing queries and synopses the bane of their existence. We’re writers, creatives. We don’t want to worry about being salesmen. Luckily, I have a marketing background which makes it a teensy bit easier. But only a teensy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I enjoy this process, but one thing I can say for it is at least it’s an active process. Just like when something really heavy strikes us anger is often what comes up first because it feels active and powerful. While we might feel lost sometimes when doing a query and a synopsis, lost for the right words to describe our literary child, it’s not the hardest part.

I’m actually torn between which is the hardest part – the waiting or the rejection. But more on the waiting later.

Rejection sucks. There’s no other way to look at it. It sucks. Everything I’ve read tells me it gets easier, but I’m finding the opposite. It’s getting harder.

Why? Because I’m getting closer.

With my first novel, I was a complete newbie who knew nothing about the process. The fact that I had finished writing an entire book length work and was actually ballsy enough to let people read it and send it out into the agent world was enough to make me proud. When the rejections (or crickets, in lieu of a response) rolled in, I wasn’t too surprised. I was actually kind of excited, because it meant that someone had read something I had tried to put out, even if they didn’t like it. It made it real. It was the first step. Of course, after dozens of rejections, revisions, and more rejections that came it eventually lost its luster, caving in to a general hopelessness. But I could feel good that I had tried my best.

My second book I have higher hopes for. My writing has grown up a bit, I’ve learned a lot more about the process, I know what agents are looking for. And I truly love the story I’ve written. The characters feel more real to me. The dream is more alive than ever. So the rejections, when they come, are more crushing.

It’s also because I’m more focused on the kind of agent I want, so the agents I do query are people I really wanted to work with. It’s like when you do speed dating and walk away without a connection it’s disappointing but not a big deal, because it was a crapshoot in a room full of strangers. But when you go out with someone you’ve had a crush on for months and then they don’t call — that’s the stuff that sends you right to the Ben & Jerry’s.

The worst part is, 9 times out of ten you get a form rejection, so you can’t gain any valuable insight that can help you improve. (Side note: I am not on my soapbox demanding that every agent should send a personalized rejection to every querier. They do not have time for this, so I understand. See, agents? See how easy I am to work with?) But I’ve been told, and am really starting to believe, that when you do start getting those personalized rejections you’re getting closer. It means your hook is strong enough that they wanted to read more. It means your sample pages kept them reading, even if not for as long as you had hoped. It’s the next step.

But that doesn’t make it any easier. If a game is neck and neck and your team is thisclose to winning, the moment when the other team scores and you realize you’ve been defeated is absolutely flattening.

There are two pieces of advice I can give to querying writers, with the disclaimer that I am not yet published and therefore you may not care what I have to say. But for your sanity’s sake, just listen up.

1) When you’re querying, start your next book. The querying process is long, my friends, much longer than you can imagine, and if all your eggs are in your querying book’s basket, you will go insane. Like legit, rocking in a corner, insane. Shed all the excuses to start a new project (“I want to see if anyone likes this one before I waste time on another one” is common. I used this one for a bit). No. Ignore this. If you are a writer and this is your dream, you need to write. Not only will it help you stay connected to the writer inside, it will help improve your writing. It will give you a sense of control throughout a process that you have almost zero control over. And no matter how good a writer you are, your craft improves with time and practice. So if your book (God forbid) doesn’t find a literary home in the end, at least you’re still moving toward the target.

2) There’s a way to frame rejection, but you have to believe that there is something at work larger than yourself to find it helpful, and that is this: Every rejection you get clears the way to the agent who will be the champion of your work. There are tons of agents out there, all of whom bust their butts for their clients. But even if you think one of them is your dream agent and will be the one to launch your stellar career, if they don’t fall in love with your work, then you aren’t, in fact, the right fit. You don’t want someone who has lukewarm feelings about your book! You want someone who is in love with it as much as you are (more even, given the writer’s slant toward self-hatred), so they can sell it! So for every agent you get a rejection from, try being grateful that something even better is out there for you.

Advice on Writing Your First Novel

/ Kaela Coble / Leave a comment

So you’ve decided to finally start writing that novel. Congratulations! Whether your dream is to be a bestselling author or you’ve just kind of always wondered if you could do it, it’s quite a journey that will teach you a lot about yourself (if you’re willing to learn).

I am currently working on my third novel. At the time of writing, I am not yet published, so I am not going to tell you that following these tips will land you on the bestseller list. But I do know what it’s like to be writing that first novel, and there are things I wish I would have known when I started.

You can do it!

I know this is a little cheerleader-y, but embarking on such a daunting project can be a serious case of mind over matter. Just like any goal (from losing weight to going back to school), it’s going to take time to achieve it. It might not be the Great American Novel. It might even suck! Don’t let yourself get bogged down in questioning yourself. You can complete a novel. If you don’t think you can, walk into any Barnes & Noble in the world and just THINK about all the people behind the books that line those shelves. They all had to write a first novel, too. And they all finished one, (probably more like six) before their pile of pages was bound and displayed proudly on those shelves.

Schedule the Time

People who don’t write (this might still be you at this point) have a somewhat romantic notion of what it is to be a writer. They think how nice it must be to be walking along and suddenly have an urge to write that is so powerful we have to stop and spend the next 36 hours hunkered down with our chosen writing device (in this fantasy, it’s almost always a pen and paper). That sounds lovely. It’s also complete propaganda. Because in real life, you have bills to pay. Dinner to get on the stove. Relationships to tend to. You can’t drop everything just because you’re inspired (although maybe you can carve out ten or twenty minutes here and there if you’ve really got the itch). And to be honest, even though I truly love writing and feel like it’s what I’m meant to be doing, 99 times out of 100 I would rather go home at the end of the day and space out to Wings on Netflix (and that’s not even that good of a show), than turn my computer on and write. Once I’m doing it, the time flies, hence why I still do.

Now, a lot of writers have a word count goal, and I think this works well if you are writing full-time. But for those of us who have day jobs, especially those of us just starting out, it’s probably more realistic to have a time goal based on the other things you have going on in your life. I have to write for AT LEAST an hour a day, and if the words are really flowing I’ll extend it. Some days I write a paragraph in that time. Some days I write three pages. But on the days where only a few sentences come out, I’m not staying up all night just to churn out 950 more crappy words. This leads me to my next point.

You’re Allowed to Care about Your Quality of Life

There is a popular school of thought out there that if you really want something, you have to basically make yourself miserable and give up everything you love in order to get it. Some people think the idea of balance is complete crap if you are really committed to your dreams. I call bullshit. Trying to strike a balance in your life, by scheduling time for all the activities you love (including some Netflix time, and, you know, SLEEP), doesn’t mean you’re not committed. It means you want to be happy and healthy. It might take you a little longer to get to THE END, but hey you didn’t completely destroy your relationships and your body while you holed up in some room hunched over a keyboard, so you still WIN. And be honest with yourself, do you really think you’re going to keep something up if you feel like you have to sacrifice everything else that makes you happy? Don’t think so.

Do What Works For You

I did a whole post on the wonders of Twitter for writers. I do think it will be great tool for you as you’re writing (AFTER your hour is up though, right? Right.) for the sole purpose of connecting to other writers who can encourage and inspire you, or even serve as resources for your book or beta readers when you’re finished. But I urge you to take it all with a grain of salt. Behind every 140-character post, there is a human being. And that human being is coming at writing from their own perspective. From what works for them. (Including me!) There is no one trick or secret to writing the perfect novel. There is no right way. Some people are plotters; before they even sit down to write the words Chapter One, they know everything that’s going to happen in their story. That’s great! Some people are pantsers; they “fly by the seat of their pants” (at least I think that’s where this comes from), not knowing where the characters will end up too. That’s great, too! Me, I’m a combination. I sketch out a few things I know I want to happen, but when I try to plot out every little thing and every character arc, I freeze. I end up stuck in that land, doubting my ability to write because I can’t see everything ahead of time. Once I learned this about myself, I started doing a little of each. I plot out a little, and then I write, and a lot of times the story goes in a completely different direction than I thought it would. Then I plot a little more, and then I let it fly. You have to do what works for YOU. If you’re feeling stuck, try switching to the other method.

Just Write the Damn Thing

In the end, no matter what your style is, no matter what your goal is, just write. Block out all the noise, all the self-doubt, all the statistics that say you’re not going to make anything out of it, and especially all the worry about the end reader. All that stuff is for your second, third, fourth and umpteenth draft. For the first draft, your job is just to write the shit out of it. Let your fingers fly, and don’t worry so much about getting every sentence exactly write, every punctuation mark perfect.

I have two post-its by my desk. One says “It doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s what editing is for,” to remind me when I’m being too finicky about sentence structure or the exact right way to describe the specific shade of blue my character’s eyes are. The other says “You’re getting closer. Every day you’re one step closer than you were the day before,” to bring me back to Earth when I’m stressing about getting to the end.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither were any of the great books of our time. Do what you can. Every day is not going to be a spectacular writing day. Sometimes you’ll get stuck. Sometimes you might even put it down for awhile (my first book took me over two years to write because I kept abandoning my writing schedule when life got in the way). But as long as that story is in your head (or better, your heart), and as long as it feels good when you’re in the flow at least some of the time, stick with it. And feel free to whine about it on Twitter occasionally. We all feel you.

 

 

A Writer’s (Very Basic) Guide to Twitter

/ Kaela Coble / Leave a comment

I’m not going to lie. I used to hate Twitter. I had an account. I posted links to my blog posts on it. And that’s about it. Turned off by the endless self-promotion (which, of course, I was totally contributing to), I never checked my home feed. I followed people who followed me back. In short, I was a passive user at best.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m checking Twitter twenty times a day or that I think in 140-character witticisms, (at least not with any regularity). But I have been awakened to the powers of Twitter, especially the power Twitter has to connect writers to each other.

Writing, as you know, is a solitary business. When it comes to doing the work, however you get that work done, it’s all on you, baby. Whether you accomplish your daily word count goal sitting in a bustling coffee shop or in a sound-proof bunker somewhere, it’s not a team sport. You have to force your fingers to keep tapping away at that keyboard. The words, the dialogue, the genius plot twists–they all come from inside your own scary little brain.

Couple that with all the feelings—oh my, the feelings—that come with writing. The self-doubt, the self-loathing, the confusion. The sting of rejection. And even (because it’s not all bad) the occasional victorious thrill of “Hey, that was a pretty good sentence,” or, “Wow, I accomplished a lot today,” or the ever elusive “Holy s@#% I got a full request!” It can get pretty lonely. And you can share that stuff with your family and friends, but they can’t really understand, and they’re quite frankly probably sick of hearing it.

That’s where Twitter comes in. A place for us creative types to share all those feelings—again, SO many feelings. A place to commiserate and congratulate (and secretly envy) the people who are in pursuit of their dream. A place to share resources that may make the journey that much easier. A place to educate each other on the market, the industry, the secret (Good God, someone give me the secret) to getting published.

I mean really, that’s pretty fabulous.

So here are some things I’ve learned about Twitter that I wish I had known when I first started tweeting:

Hashtags are key

In order to be plugged in to the conversations which are relevant to you, you should be searching hashtags. The most used and most broad of which is #amwriting. Type that into your Twitter search and watch your computer explode with data. It’s everything from articles about writing to people promoting their books to people just wanting to whine that they are blocked (I am not knocking this as a practice, as I certainly do this when I’ve had a bad writing day). So that means, guess what, if you include that hashtag in your post, it will show up in the search of another lonely writer who is trying to delay facing that empty page they’re supposed to fill with words. And they just might follow you! #amediting is slightly less used, although I like to differentiate between what I’m talking about, most people just use #amwriting for everything. There are also hashtags for specific genres–for example, I check #womensfiction to see what’s trending. And #amreading is helpful too, but you’re finding out what actual readers out there think of what they’re reading.

For querying writers, like me, #MSWL is my favorite, which stands for Manuscript Wish List. This hashtag is used by actual literary agents who are posting about specific likes/needs/wants. This could range from announcing they are accepting a new genre (hop on that quicklike if it’s yours), to a very specific taste, like “I’d really like to see a novel about a 12-year old boy who lives in Albuquerque and wears a yellow jacket that allows him to fly.” They can get pretty quirky, but the cool thing is that little quirk could fit your manuscript exactly (or exactly enough that you could fudge it and get their attention anyway). Other handy agent hashtags are #querytip, which just gives advice about how to construct an effective query letter and conduct yourself during the querying process; #tenqueries, in which agents give you a 140-character summation of why they did or did not request more from the next ten queries in their inbox (without naming names), and #askagent, which I haven’t quite figured out but sounds pretty cool, right? Note: these hastags are NOT to be used in your own tweets, only to be followed.

Also for querying writers, the new thing (confession, I don’t know how new it is, but I just discovered it a few months ago), are pitch contests, where you can pitch your book in 140 characters, and agents troll the hashtag to find something that interests them. If they “favorite” your tweet, they are requesting more, and you visit their Twitter feed to find out exactly what they want you to submit. It’s not like they’re committing to rep you or even read your full MS, but you have that connection through Twitter first that may make them more likely to request more, and it’s better than cold querying with no connection at all! I have participated in a few #pitmad’s, and have gotten FIVE requests for more material from that. Pretty cool, huh?

There’s some good information

Sure, you have to slog through the zillion people who are quoting from their own novels and announcing their book is on sale at Amazon for .99 (No offense to the self published writers out there, work it girls. And boys). But there are actually some great blog posts from agents and other writers about how to better your query letters, how to create better characters, how to give and receive critique, how to balance your writing life and your pays the bills job, how to format your manuscript correctly, etc. It goes on and on. By the way, if you find something you think is actually helpful, retweet it with the #amwriting hashtag so other writers will see it. The original poster will be psyched, because it means more people will read it, and if you’re posting good stuff (please don’t just retweet every post of other people’s, that is supahdupes annoying), people might just want to follow you!

You can make real friends

I didn’t think this one was possible when I first started. But I’ve actually made TWO Twitter friends who also write fiction and are also in pursuit of traditional publishing. Both of them became critique partners! We email each other semi-regularly to check in on our progress towards The Big Dream, and give each other feedback that is maybe a tad more subjective than our mothers, who think we are geniuses. (Genuisi? See, I don’t even know that, so obviously I’m not really one). I found them by throwing out some tweets about wanting more writing friends who want to talk about the process, or who would be willing to trade books, (hashtagging them with #amwriting, of course).

You can burn bridges

I know it’s tempting to fire off a tweet at a literary agent who’s sent you a form rejection, but don’t do this. Ever. Don’t even allude to it. Don’t waste your precious 140 characters complaining and displaying your misery to the world. Yes, an occasional “Blocked today, grrrrrrrrr,” is fine. I mean, be real. But always remember your profile is public. More and more agents hit the web before requesting to see what kind of person you are and get an idea of what you would be like as a client. If your feed is full of unprofessional attacks and whining, how likely are they going to be to want to work with you? My guess is not very.

It’s important to remember that at the end of every @[insert clever handle here], there is a human being. Don’t say things on Twitter you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Don’t use your Twitter exclusively to quote or link to your MS. Reply to people. Have conversations. Spread some encouragement. Retweet good information. Send an occasional tweet that has nothing to do with writing (pictures of my dog, anyone?). Be human.

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What’s your favorite thing about Twitter?

What basics am I missing? Feed me your great hashtags and tips!

When I Knew I Wanted to be a Writer

/ Kaela Coble / Leave a comment
When I Knew I Wanted to Be a Writer
I decided I wanted to be an author when I was 23, sitting in front of a waterfall in the Northern Territory of Australia. I guess you could call it the first true meditative moment of my life, or at least the first which sparked an epiphany as monumental as what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was on the third and final day of a tour of Kakadu National Park outside of Darwin, somewhere in the middle of my four months of backpacking around the country on my own, and it wasn’t until this moment that I knew why I was even on the trip in the first place.The trip started out as an escape from my first job after college, a marketing job which I hated but didn’t know why. The job was exactly what my education had prepared me for, and yet I found myself dreading going to work every day–not in the normal “I wish I could stay in my sweatpants and catch up on DVR” kind of way, but in the “I’m close to a nervous breakdown” kind of way. At first I thought it was the way the company was run, or perhaps it was agency work in general, but something in me must have known it was something larger than that, because I didn’t just look for a new job with higher pay or less stress or better benefits. I quit and took off to Australia.

Trust me, this sounds way more impressive now (even to me) than it felt back then. Because back then I was running. Running away from figuring it all out. Running for my life.

Back to the waterfall. As I mentioned it was the third day of the tour, and it was the last stop before we bushwalked the 800 meters back to the 4WD vehicle, packed into the tailbone numbing confines of the bench seats, and drove back to a hostel where I could take my first hot shower in over 72 hours. It was the second tour I’d been on in two weeks, and I was exhausted. This tour in particular involved an encounter with a spider so large I’m not prepared to talk about it, it involved a sunburn to go down in history, pushing a fallen tree roughly the size of a sequoia off a flooded road so we could reach our destination, holding a wild python our tour guide rescued from another flooded road, and miles and miles of hiking in the wet season of an area in Australia as close to the equator as I ever need to get. The waterfalls made it worth it. So did the company.

But as the rest of the tour group was about to climb up the final mountain for a little cliff jumping (something that would normally be right up my alley), I found myself too tired to join them. I was physically beat, yes, after all I’ve mentioned above, but it was more than that. My very soul was tired. I was in my third month of meeting new people every day, putting my best foot forward every day, explaining who I was and where I was from every day on a shallow level while trying to figure that out myself on a far more personal level. I longed for a few moments of solitude after the constant chatter and movement of the last weeks.

We were at a low waterfall that seemed to be begging for me to stay a little longer, to pay it a little attention, so I told the tour guide I was going to stay behind. They had to come down the same path they were climbing, so he agreed. I believe his exact words were “Too easy, mate.”

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“My” waterfall, Kakadu National Park, Australia

I sat and stared, the pounding water drowning out the static that plagued me on those long, lonely bus and train rides and in the toddler sized bottom bunks of hostel rooms while I cursed my snoring roommates. What am I doing here? Who am I? What does life want from me? It wasn’t until this moment, when I finally set the questions aside and simply watched as the water violently crashed into the lagoon, that the answers finally came. The gratitude came first, for getting to sit and experience it. The waterfall, the tour, the trip. Life. And then a thought came to me out of nowhere. “You should write about it.” And I knew that didn’t mean in the leather bound journal I was already obsessively scribbling in daily, or in a blog, which I did anyway a few years later. It meant books. I should write books. I needed to write books.It wasn’t a completely shocking thought. I’ve been a strong writer since I was little, and always talked about writing children’s books that my more artistic sister could illustrate. But I never really thought about it seriously. At different times in my life I wanted to be a teacher, a librarian, an actress, and an event planner. Writing was always going to be something I did, but not professionally. Until this moment. Something about it felt like coming home. It was the most certain I’d ever been about anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve doubted my ability to become a novelist. Many times. Many many times. Almost ten years after that moment at the waterfall, I am looking for an agent for my second book and busy sketching out an idea for a third one. (My first one, which was based on my travels in Australia, was unable to find an agent to love and nurture it into publishing, but that’s a story for another post). I’m not published, but I’m at the point where I can add “yet” to the end of that sentence and actually believe it. I know I will be published. I know because I can’t NOT write. It’s the thing I do that makes me feel special, connected, plugged in. And I can’t give up on that dream, no matter how many times I get rejected. And when you know something that deeply, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.

And that’s what this website is about – the pursuit of a dream that is statistically improbable. The journey to becoming a published author. If you like, follow along with me as I pursue this crazy dream!