No Time for Writing?

Hope Clark, founder of the Funds For Writers website/newsletters, doesn’t have much sympathy for you:

I don’t care if you want to be a writer or a plumber, a doctor
or a teacher. You need to establish your path and lay out
benchmarks to reach those personal goals. The television, the
movie and the dust mop can go to hell.

The only time you have is now.

Hope

Well, this was the kick in the pants I needed after deciding I didn’t have time to blog today (I did work on my novel, though, so there ). Still, it’s good to be reminded from time to time. We always find the time for the things that are really, really important to us. So the question ends up being whether writing is really, really important or not. And I’ll be honest: to me, it isn’t always. I used to bust my butt to be the most hardcore writer I could be, but now I strive for balance. Living life is at least as important as writing about it. And I think I know myself well enough to know that by now I am a writer; I no longer just want to be a writer. No matter how busy things get, or how much I procrastinate, the writing will build up inside of me and eventually, I’ll have to get it out, whether there’s time for it or not. But still, there’s a lot to be said for doing away with excuses. And Hope’s lack of sympathy did convince me that I had time for a blog post after all.

My life as a writer is returning

In the last week, my life as a writer has been coming back to me piece-by-piece, as my life as an “in transition” person starts to fall away. Today was the day that all excuses came to an end. Today was the day that I finally started writing on my novel again.

And it wasn’t nearly as intimidating or difficult as my anxiety during my month’s absence would have me believe. Turns out, it didn’t go anywhere without me and patiently awaited my return. Good novel.

Additional signs of progress: I made my first trip back to Duluth on Sunday to attend my writers’ group. (And if you think a ten hour round-trip drive for two hours of interaction is ridiculous, it’s only because you haven’t met my writers’ group). And I’m finally writing on the Young Adults Catholic blog again, too — with pictures, even!

Follow-up Friday

I kept my commitment for the second Friday in a row. Here’s what I did this time:

• Submitted a query about head-hopping to Writers’ Journal;
• Updated my bio for DemandStudios (who seems to take it very personally that I haven’t written for them in a while — I’ve gotten a “What are we doing wrong?” survey as well as a “please come back!” email);
• Sent my bio off for the Unruly Catholic Women Writers anthology;
• and dug through my files to find the one-and-only novella I’ve ever written, with the intention of seeing whether it’s worth dusting, polishing, and sending to Failbetter’s novella competition.

I’m also still anxiously awaiting my contributors’ copy of Queer Dimensions, especially after reading that a friend already has hers (and of course, I loved the mention).

Writing Website Review: Wordhustler

So, I’ve mentioned Wordhustler many times in my blog; I read all their enewses, and I adore their comprehensive market listing of agents, publishers, and contests (which they’ll soon be expanding to include listings of editorial services). But even though I’ve been a member for over a year, last Friday was the first time I actually used their primary service: sending manuscripts out via the site.

Here’s how it works: you upload your projects to your dashboard on Wordhustler. When you’re ready to submit a project, you can hunt down markets and click the handy-dandy “submit to this market” button. From there, Wordhustler walks you through a wizard that allows you to select one of your uploaded projects, write or paste a cover letter, pay the fee(s) where applicable, and send that baby off. Wordhustler takes care of printing, packaging, postag-ing, and sending the manuscript, for a reasonable fee.

I used their service to submit to their Literary Storm Novel Contest, and there were a few things I really liked about it: the easy format of the wizard, the security of knowing that I wasn’t forgetting anything and that my submission was properly formatted for the market, and not having to deal with the mess of pages and envelopes and stamps strewn about the desk (or a trip to the post office). One thing I didn’t like was that, when WordHustler converted my Word docs to PDFs, the pagination came out slightly different. Not a big deal for the novel submission, but it bumped my carefully crafted one-page query over one page. So, for future reference: err on the short side when uploading queries to WordHustler, and double check submission paginations (i.e.: did your text get bumped down enough in the conversion to add pages? If so, you’ll both have to pay for those pages, and depending on how strict the market is about following their guidelines, you may jeopardize your chances of being seriously considered.

Now, I’m one of those people who balks at the idea of paying for anything online. One of my first thoughts when encountering WordHustler was something along the lines of, “Sweet! I have access to their markets for free, so I can use that information to send my own submission!” But since the Literary Storm Contest requires submission through them, I was forced to give it a try their way. And it’s a good way, especially if you’re a person who hates dealing with all the pesky details of submitting. Submitting is definitely my least favorite part of writing, so I just might let them ease the burden again in the future.

Writing Quote: Throw it Back

“I think, in part, writing is a way to complete my experience. It’s as if something–an episode, thought, emotion–hasn’t fully happened until I put it into words. It’s somehow not enough just to receive experience, to catch it like a baseball in a glove, so to speak, as I used to when I played catch with my father in the backyard. I need to throw it back.” – Jerry Spinelli, author of Stargirl.

Are you a writer in need of funds?

Last Friday, I blogged about using Fridays to follow up on various opportunities I’ve come across that I’d like to pursue. My list of markets and contests relevant to the type of writing I do has grown in leaps and bounds thanks to FundsForWriters, a free newsletter highlighting various opportunities for writers to actually earn money doing what they love.

Usually, I sign up for free newsletters with the best of intentions–to be well-read, well-informed, and generally plugged in to issues I care about. However, in the busyness of day-to-day life, I usually end up deleting those newsletters without reading them, unsubscribing from the mailing list, or redirecting them to my “spam” account (which I always have the best intentions to clear out.) But even when things were crazy in the midst of moving and wedding planning, I didn’t delete a single FundsforWriters newsletter, and I took time to read them all when things slowed down. Yup, FundsforWriters is that valuable.

Follow-up Fridays

Back before I started freelancing full-time, I had a beautiful vision of how my schedule would lay out. I had two steady clients at the time, and I decided I would devote four hours to work for each of them Monday – Thursdays. On Fridays, I’d focus on pursuing new opportunities, all toward the goal of making my living doing the most enjoyable work possible–or at least getting paid well for the less enjoyable bits.

I did stick to that schedule for a while, but it didn’t take long for me to lose track of it. Part of freelancing is flexibility, after all, and I found my weeks rarely fell in line so easily. Still, now that another transition is settling around me, I’ve decided to try to re-instigate the Friday opportunity hunt and application. Throughout the week, I’m always bookmarking publishing opportunities and potential clients, but those bookmarks won’t do me any good if I never follow up on them. So, starting today, I’m going to attempt to re-instate Follow-up Fridays.

Luckily, I had a couple opportunities shored up that I knew I wanted to pursue to get me off on the right track. This morning, I

• Took Demand Studios‘ Title Proofing Test so that I can be considered for a wider range of work from them and
• Submitted the first 50 pages of my current novel to WordHustler’s Literary Storm Contest.

I’m slightly exhausted, and I haven’t earned a cent today, which reminds me why I may have let Follow-up Fridays fall by the wayside before. But pursuing new opportunities is definitely worth it — that’s how I managed to acquire two new clients this past year (both of whom have steady work and pay reliably) and how I made my three publication goal. In a little bit, my younger sister will be coming over so I can help her write her artist statement for her art opening next week at a local coffee shop. It looks like I’m not the only one thinking of opportunities today.

Transitioning to October

Ah, October, the month that holds so much possibility. Before I moved, I remember thinking of October as this oasis — by then, my sister’s wedding would be over, and surely I’d be all settled in, and working out of my cozy little office, and producing coherent, beautiful streams of writing.

It’s only October 1, so I’m not going to give up my dreams for October just yet. However, I will say that my office is still full of paint buckets and ladders, with the doors and flooring stripped, and that cozy is certainly not the word I’d use to describe it. Half my possessions are still in the garage, and so are a good portion of my sister’s (she had to be out of her apartment to move in with her husband before Oct 1). I’m only doing paid work at a rate of about 30 hrs/wk now, but my mind does not feel in any way uncluttered enough for productive writing. I make mini goals for myself: as soon as I’m settled in, as soon as I have a desk again, as soon as the sun comes out! I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have trouble writing during transition.

Yet, I was realizing a few days ago how ironic, and perhaps pathetic? it is to let transition interfere with writing. After all, good narrative arcs are all about transition. Both fiction and nonfiction gravitate toward the places in between — the transition from leading an uncomplicated, single life to all the complications of falling in love; the transition of taking a new job, of moving to a new place, of learning to live with or without a loved one. The stories of our lives, the thickening of our own plots, are really contained not in the “settled” periods, but in the transitions. That’s why I’ve started special writing projects around transitions in my life, and I’m working on one now, too. Sometimes all my other writing needs to take a back seat, so that I can take the time to make sense of my own life story. Still, I hope the outline of the next chapter will become a bit clearer as I sink deeper into October.

Where I First Met God accepted for preliminary submission

I just heard from the editors of Unruly Catholic Women Writers: Volume II that my personal essay about growing up Catholic and bisexual has been selected for the anthology. They’ll be submitting it to the University of South Carolina Press and have included the disclaimer that USC may wish to change the final content of the book before publication, meaning my essay could be cut or require serious revisions, both of which I feel OK about. Any good editorial project will require a series of “cuts” before the final product comes out, and any writer should consider it an honor each time she manages to dodge the knife.

If USC decides to keep the essay, it will officially wrap up my three-publication goal for 2009. A letter in the Unsent Letters anthology and the QueerDimensions short story were the first two, but the third has been a little nebulous. A version of the essay mentioned above has also been accepted into an anthology about Catholicism and lesbianism, but that book doesn’t yet have an “in” with any particualr press, as far as I know, and I’m not sure whether it will ever see print (although I hope it will). I’ve also published an article through the Call to Action newsletter; it was unpaid, but still published for a real audience. Perhaps three nebulous publication credits can be considered equal to one official one — although I’d still feel much better about claiming victory with a third contract in hand.

Upgraded Opportunities for Writers

I’m finally checking all my email accounts today, and in doing so I came across a couple offers to “sweeten the deal” on already exciting opportunities for writers.

1. WEBook is hosting a new feature called “AgentInaBox,” which is similar to WordHustler’s submissions feature. Essentially, you put your query package together and submit to an agent through the site;  if an agent is interested, s/he will contact you directly. One of the main differences between WEBook’s AgentInaBox and Wordhustler’s offerings is that WEBook’s is free. However, WEBook currently doesn’t offer the option of submitting directly to publishers, literary journals, or contests the way Wordhustler does (and, for the record, Wordhustler still contains the most extensive market list I’ve ever encountered — online or in print).  And speaking of WEBook, they’ve recently announced the results of their poetry contest.
2. I recently blogged about Wordhustler’s Literary Storm contest which can win you a professional critique. They’ve added another incentive to the contest: the top ten submissions have been requested by Flatmancrooked to consider for publication. I can hardly wait to send my 50-page submission off (while short story, poetry, and essay contests seem to abound, novel contests are much rarer, which is why I’m so stoked about this one).

Now, off to dig through the other 20 emails in my writing account!