Outline Love

I’m a little in love with my own outline. Is that weird? I am just INTENSELY excited to write, to really really write the rest of this book at long last!

My Own Worst Enemy

…is sitting right here, her hands on my keyboard. She thinks she’s helping me write my novel. But what she’s really doing is spewing out the longest so-called outline in the history of the world, saying it’s the only way she knows how to write this novel, though she knows it’s completely unnecessary and she’s [...]

The Downer Post

I don’t know how many posts I’ve deleted instead of publishing them this week. I’m in the part of the downward spiral where you try to explain it to yourself, to others, and then you see there’s no real reason for what you’re feeling, any excuse pathetic, but you’ve got all this motion going and [...]

One Day, Two Lives

I spent two hours in another life yesterday. I had a long lunch with my editor in the middle of my workday, as if I were a real author. At the restaurant, for a short time, it felt like I was. We talked about what the head of the imprint had to say about my [...]

My Painfully Slow Progress

I am plotting out my book in great detail, scene by scene by scene, a method I’ve only really used for work-for-hire novels (because I had to, under the contract), but I guess for my own stuff it could be helpful, too. I don’t have to stick to it exactly when I’m writing… But as [...]

One Last Bite

My other half, who knows me better than I know myself, has pointed out that I have this quirk while eating—cute? wasteful? just plain annoying?—in which I never finish what is on my plate. I always leave a piece of lettuce, a fallen bit of broccoli, one last bite. It’s just something I do, I [...]

Dispatch from the Library

I have a friend at work (if she’s reading this, she knows who she is) who shares my intense love of the library. She’s a much faster reader than I am, though; the books she can read in a week! I envy her speed. The good thing about her quickness is that she’s always up [...]

Congratulations!

I just heard the absolutely thrilling news that Heidi Durrow’s novel Light-skinned-ed Girl just won the Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change and will be published by Algonquin Books in Fall 2009!
Heidi and I were NYFA fellows together and organized a reading at the Housing Works Bookstore some years ago. I remember when she [...]

Awkward Elevator Moments: Literary Agent Edition

It’s an especially auspicious start to your day at your office job when you run into a literary agent who rejected you on the elevator.
When introduced, hope he does not recognize your name, smile, and say simply, “It’s nice to meet you.” Do not say, “Why didn’t you give my [...]

Payday

I came home today to a check. THE check. The first half of my advance for my tween novel.
Excerpt of running commentary inside my head: Seriously, they paid me? And I haven’t written it all yet? Did the person cutting the check know that? Am I aloud to cash it now? Should I buy a [...]

Return to the Scene of the Crime, But Free!

I’m back at my morning writing spot, the place where my laptop’s hard-drive died, peeking at the table where it happened. I’m not being all doomsday, or even nostalgic—someone else is sitting in the table: a man charging his cell phone and drinking something out of a paper bag. So I can’t sit there even [...]

To Do, and Not Do

Now that the signed papers are in, and now that the other revision is in (though more revisions could be forthcoming, I cower at the thought), it’s time to think about what comes next. And that’s my first original novel that will actually be published*, now under contract, and really real (I think) and begging [...]

After Revision

I turned in the revision yesterday morning before work. The weekend was spent doing only that; on Sunday I think I worked at it for 11+ hours. There were moments when I felt sure I couldn’t finish, but somehow I did finish, looking back I don’t know how. Then, after it was all over, I [...]

Honestly

I really have no idea how I will manage to finish this revision today, honestly.

Finish It Already

“Have a good writing day,” e said to me at the door this morning. “Now finish it already, goddamn it!”
The “it” that has taken residence in the apartment, larger in the room than the largest elephant, is of course the revision.
It is a hurdle to write something you don’t want to write anymore, made worse [...]

Here I Am Still Revising

Happy Earth Day. Happy Passover. Happy Spring. What day is it again? I am still revising. I am mad-scramble revising, push-it-till-you-drop revising. Can’t-even-form-a-proper-sentence revising. Stop-staring-at-me-from-across-the-room I’m revising. Revising so this can be over. Revising so I don’t take on another freelance assignment like this again. Revising, revising, revising until words have no meaning. When I [...]

First Book Contract Stupor

Today, while I was at work, my book contract arrived at my apartment. I was fifty blocks away and couldn’t see for myself until after 5 o’clock. E called the moment it was dropped it off. He described the contract, read me choice bits. My name is there. The name of the novel. A plot [...]

A to Z

I have the revision notes for the work-for-hire manuscript I’ve been ghostwriting. I am overwhelmed. I am wanting to revise this and make it good. But I am still digesting the notes. Compliments go a long way with me, yes, so when I feel freaked out I just read the editor’s first paragraph where she [...]

The Revisions Are Coming, the Revisions Are Coming!

You heard right: the revisions on my last work-for-hire manuscript are coming my way. They will be messengered to me tomorrow. Sounds daunting that they must be messengered rather than emailed, no? I’ve also been warned I have to cut 7,000 words.
Guess what I’ll be doing all weekend?

Saying Yes to a Yes

I am so flattered and surprised by the outpouring of support from my announcement about my tween novel. How can I say thank you enough? Thank you!
I formally accepted my formal offer from S&S* on Friday, so this whole publishing-a-book fantasy is real. (I think. I’m still in shock about the whole thing.) I never [...]