Mother's Day and the Waiting Game

I celebrated Mother's Day with both my mom and my children. It was a perfect day really, complete with homemade gifts (my favorite) from the kids. My oldest is developing just enough sarcasm to start using humor in her cards, things like, "aren't you happy you're raising such a great kid?" Since I'm inherently sarcastic, this works for me, and it's true...she's awesome. My youngest still thinks I hung the moon, so hers say things such as, "my mom makes dinner in three minutes and always gives me hugs and kisses." My son, well, his affection is always enough to make me smile. 

I was also able to fly out of state, by myself (!) to visit my brother, his wife and their ten-week-old daughter. They commented on how low maintenance I am. Apparently everyone else who comes to visit likes to go shopping and drive around town all day. Honestly, all I wanted to do was hold the baby and sleep. I worked out, I slept, I watched television. I didn't even bring my laptop because if I had, I'd have felt the urge to work. What I needed was to rest, and rest I did.

I recently finished (finished being a very loose term) my current WIP, a contemporary young adult novel. I literally pushed forward to make my self-imposed deadlines. I edited draft after draft, anxious to get it out to my betas before mid-May. When I did, the real wait began.

I checked my email.

I checked my email again.

I worried they hated it already.

I checked my email again.

I realized just because my life revolved around this novel, theirs might not.

I checked my email again, then my phone. They might text.

Would they email? Should I send them a text?

Why am I stressing? They have lives.

They hate it. I'm sure of it.

I wrote the seventh draft of my query.

I checked my email again, then my phone.

I put off writing the synopsis.

I decided to wait it out. I know they'll get to it, and they're all busy. After all the end of the school year is busy for everyone.

But just in case, I'll check my email again.

And I'll keep working on the synopsis, and editing the query, and checking my email again.

Hitting the Brick Wall

13.1 miles.

That's the length of a half-marathon. A full is 26.2 and that's another story entirely, a goal I have yet to achieve. Believe me, 13.1 miles is plenty. There's this point between nine and eleven miles when I always hit the brick wall, so to speak. My feet go numb, stopping at the water tables feels like more work than it's worth, and I begin cursing myself for having this stupid, horrible idea. That's the point when I say I'll never run another half as long as I live.

And then I hit the twelve mile mark and think...I can do this. Am I stupid? Probably. Was this a horrible idea? Ask me tomorrow.

I hit the brick wall recently in other areas of my life. The querying of my women's fiction novel wasn't going well. I'd received several rejections, a couple on fulls, and I write this knowing there are several queries still lingering in the ether, which I may or may not, ever hear responses to. I was attempting to revise, query agents, research agents, blog, and keep up on social networking. (if you don't think there's research involved in querying, you're not doing it right.)

Then there's the housework, taking care of the dog, doctor's appointments, after school sports, yardwork, Booster Club Meetings, school volunteering, cooking, laundry (oh, the laundry).

I started to feel that I wasn't completely there for my husband and three children, the most important people in my life. I was letting the query rejections control our lives, and it made me sad to think that the subjective opinion of one agent was resulting in my children having to eat leftovers for the third night in a row. In essence, I started to feel like I was failing in every area of my life.

When I hit the brick wall, I honestly thought about giving up. But it wasn't until I was running one morning that an idea popped into my head. Maybe it's symbolic to say that on mile four of a six mile run, I had an idea that hasn't yet left my head, for a contemporary young adult project. I sat down that afternoon and began to write again. I stopped querying, social networking, blogging, and volunteering for awhile and finished a first draft in three weeks. 

Maybe my women's fiction won't be published. Maybe it will. But I'm not yet ready to give up. Because no matter how hard it is to write, or how numb it makes you, it won't let go. Sometimes you've just got to take a break, clear out some of the extra stuff bogging you down, and run with it.   

Oh, and I registered for another half-marathon. Stupid? Ask me in June.

Writing with Heart

My children and I have been reading Barbara Park's, Junie B. Jones series, together before bedtime. Although I occasionally have to put a disclaimer out, "it's not okay to say you hate people," when reading, I find Junie B. to be a fascinating, entertaining character. One of the reasons I believe this to be true is because she is so stunningly real. She's passionate, says whatever comes to mind, and transverses through life with a single mindedness that only a young person (or a complete narcissist) could possess.

I once told a friend my writing wasn't complete unless I could make people cry. By people, I'm selfishly referring to myself, as I routinely mist up when my characters hurt. Consequently, that's what I look for in quality writing...characters who are real enough to bring out emotions because we feel empathy when they hurt.

Real life is messy. Marriages fall apart, engagements break up, spouses get deployed, children are up all night with ear infections, families spend months or years watching loved ones suffer from illnesses, once close relationships unravel and sever completely. The ability of an effective writer is to channel those emotions from real life into a believable manuscript.

I suppose this is why I'm drawn to both reading and writing literary and women's fiction. I like stories that have the ability to merge a strong plot with characters who tug at your heart, therefore making them impossible to forget. A perfect example of this is Miriam from Khaled Hosseini's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS.

Of course we all need a love story, too. I think there's a part of us who needs to believe that it's possible to meet our one true love on a weekend in Paris. We all need tension, love triangles, stolen kisses, and the intensity of young love to balance out the drama of our own lives.

Luckily, I get to do both as a reader and a writer. I'm fortunate to write with my own heart while reading the words coming from someone else's. 

But at the end of the day- while trying to balance life with writing, and query letters with hopes of publication- you can always read about a funny kindergartner named Junie B. Jones. As she said in SOME SNEAKY PEEKY SPYING, "A 'pology is the words I'm sorry. Except for you don't actually have to mean it. 'Cause nobody can even tell the difference."

Maybe that isn't completely true, but some days it's worth a shot.