A whole weekend without Internet...oh, the pain...

I can't believe how much I use (and take for granted) the Internet. Friday night, while I was on-line chatting with a friend, I was suddenly disconnected. (And, no, it wasn't because I forgot to pay the bill.) ;)

I spent the weekend trying to unplug and replug everything to no avail. I didn't call it in right away thinking that sometimes things come back up after a day or so. Today I caved in and finally called the cable company. After the guy on the phone decided that I wasn't the problem, he suggested that I trade in my modem and/or schedule an appointment with a technician. Fortunately, the cable company was still open so I traded in the modem for one that was half the size as the one that I had for almost 6 years...apparently those things don't last forever.

After another call to the company due to an error message (always fun to receive those things), I finally got back on-line! Woohoo!!!

Now that my Internet is reconnected, I am trying to catch up with everything I missed for the past 4 days. I am really tired but I am afraid that I will miss something if I go to sleep too soon tonight.

I wonder if that means I'm addited to the Internet. Nah, I just need to keep up with Farmville/Facebook, Amazon, emails, QueryTracer, various blogs,.... Hmmm, maybe I am addicted...

Ways I procrasitnated today....

So I should be working on query letters after I get home from work but today I found myself very busy...

For example, this evening I had to try on some clothes to make sure they still fit, harvest my virtual Farmville crops on Facebook, enter the guest blog contest on Nathan Bransford's forums, and I had to post something on this blog. How can I possibly work on query letters and making sure my novel in is good shape, when there are so many other things to do!!!

Hmmm, perhaps I better read some of the blog enteries that talk about procrastination...

Alas, have I been influenced by Disney too much...

I have read a lot of young adult novels the past year. Many of them are pretty dark in nature. Even if they aren't scary, they still have vampires, dream-readers, or ghosts in them. Perhaps I have been too influenced by Disney and other more "happy" stories. Or, maybe I am still influenced by the middle school books I read growing up - like the Judy Blume books that had some humor woven into them. I do think it is possible to have a good story and some mystery in a book without it being dark but will those be accepted by agents today and the target age group.

Although my main character is a high-schooler, perhaps I should look for agents that do cross-over work with middle school/young adult books. In other words, maybe I need to acknowledge the lighter aspect of my book and play it up in the query letter. Or, should I look for ways to increase the struggles in them to make them darker. Hmmm. (Maybe I should stop stressing about it and just send in more query letters before I further contemplate how I need to change the book.) ;)

Honorable Mention -Woohoo!

The highlight of last week was receiving an Honorable mention from Nathan Bransford's blog contest. Woohoo! I have printed it out and plan to look at it when the rejections start pouring in for my novel. =)

As for the other querys, I have joined Querytracker. I have searched their database for agents looking at young adult proposals which turned up quite a number of hits. I then went through and narrowed down the list by looking at their statistics. Wow! There are so many proposals that are rejected!!! Sure, I've seen the numbers that agents have given from this past year but it is interesting to see the figures that are reported through the Querytracker service as well. As a result of what is listed in their statistics, I have unselected (at least temporarily) the agents that did not appear to request partial or full manuscripts in the young adult field.

So, now I need to get up the courage to submit my work to those people. It is a bit scarey to turn over something that I've spent so much time on to professionals that might not think it is worth the while to read. I guess I am following the path of many people before me. Yikes!!!

The first rejection...

Alas, only the 5th day of 2010 and my first rejection came via email.
Perhaps I should give up writing now...okay, I might be overreacting. If nothing else it was a nice rejection form. Plus, I am in good company with the others rejected by this particular agent but I still greatly enjoy his blog. You never know, maybe I'll win him over in the future with a different book. =)

So, now is the time to query the agents that don't share so many useful tidbits with the wannabe writers. They seem a bit scarier since you can't find out as much information about what they want to see in an unsolicited query letter. I also signed up for QueryTracker to keep...track..of querys (funny how that name shows what it does - what a concept!)

First Query Letter...

So I have submitted my first query letter and have bookmarked a couple of other agents that work with books of the same genre.

I must admit that I have new respect for all the other authors that have not only gone through this stress but have also been successful. Say what you want about authors such a Stephanie Meyers or others who often get heavily critiqued but they not only got an agent, they received an impressive book deal (and I'm not even mention the movie deal.)

It seems that there is a demand for literature for middle school boys. Too bad that is not my intended audience. Oh well. Some agents are also looking for more literary stories aimed at teens. Hmmm, I guess I won't get them to represent me (special apologies to my wonderful high school English teachers that tried to get me to appreciate literature.) There are also several agents looking for dystopian societies...I guess I am too Disneyfied to write about things like that.

And so the journey begins...

Well, this blog is to document the journey of yet another wannabe writer. I know that there are many people who are also documenting their stories, but this blog is about me. =)

So, here is some background on why a person with two masters and a doctorate in education decided that it was more fun to write about an imaginary world instead of the non-fiction education book that I also started at the same time. Yes, I did start writing a book about education but really, where's the fun in that...it would mean lots of picky research that didn't seem nearly as interesting as making up characters and studying information that would help me to create their world.

A little over a year ago I began to think that instead of hiding my enjoyment of watching and reading stories aimed at teens, I should work on writing my own young adult novel. With that in mind, I started officially reading young adult novels to get a better feel for the material (after all, I could claim all the teenage novels I was reading were actually "research".) After spending some time brainstorming and thinking about some story ideas off and on for a couple of months, I finally started really writing each day after work until I had the first draft of my book and sections of its "sequels" that I thought would be fun to write.

I really didn't look at first draft much for a few months to get some distance from it. It took a few months to finally get through editing it because for me, it was harder to do the editing than the initial writing. When writing, you can just write down the things as they come to you...editing means that you have to ensure that what you wrote makes sense.

So, now I have written a book and it is time to brave the scary world of finding an agent. I am bracing myself for the rejections to come.