On word repetition, stuff that makes your ass go funny, and tattoos

My focus needs focusing.

You know why? Because I'm drinking a diet Coke that has been sitting on my desk for three days. I can't stop checking Twitter to see if anyone's mentioned me for #WW (Writer Wednesday) because I am just that needy, and because I used the word "focus" or some variant of it thirty-four times in my manuscript. Freaking THIRTY-FOUR times. (Granted, there are 119,000 words, so it's a frequency of only 0.000285%, but still. Thirty-four? Annoying as hell.) It's a sign. I need some focus.

My best friend is from South Africa. She says funny things, with her funny accent that for the life of me I cannot replicate, and she paints beautiful paintings. One of the more notable things she says: "Ohhh, that just made my ass go funny." She might say it if I tell her I just saw a cat get run over by a car (which I did), or if I tell her about smashing my finger in the door (done that), or if I tell her about these photos I saw online of this guy's leg after he had most of the flesh of his calf removed due to a terrible bout of flesh-eating Strep. You get what she's saying -- and your ass really does go funny when those images, those thoughts of "omigod" enter your brain. Right? (Maybe you're tougher than we are. My best friend is sorta squeamish, and it is rather like a party trick to say things that will make her blurt out, "Oooh, you just made my ahss go funneh." That's what her accent sounds like.)

There is definitely something making my ass go funny today: my manuscript is due at the formatter bright and early tomorrow morning. Omigod, you mean all this talk about turning this into a book is really going to happen? You mean, I'm going to be like the folks who have literally taken me under their wings in the last two weeks and pushed my Twitter followers into the triple digits, like Heather Hildenbrand and Megg Jensen and Angelina Kace and Tiffany King and Angela Carlie and Ashley Bray and Kara Helen, writers who have crossed over and are now called authors? Did you know there's a difference? Writers write. Authors publish. I'm freaking out a little, hence the lack of focus, and every time I think about the MS coming back to me in its finished form--yup, you guessed it. My ahss goes funneh.

So...yeah...after I wrote the post the other day about being afraid of stuff, I started to obsess (I do that) about another big milestone happening this year. I'm sorta turning...40. When I was in my twenties, I went through a divorce. I moved in with my parents, my then-3-month-old daughter in tow, until I could get my bearings, go back to school, get a job, all that. The woman across the street (super weirdo lady) had a bumper sticker on her crappy car that read "39 Forever." And guess what? She died. At 39. So she really was going to be 39 forever. I'm careful not to say stuff about not wanting to turn 40, because then I might jinx it and maybe I really won't make it to 40.

For my 37th birthday, I got a tattoo--William Shakespeare's autograph on my right forearm.

It's bad-ass. You can say it. The neighbor said I was having a midlife crisis and wanted to know if my husband was offended that I had another man's name inked forever into my flesh. Considering he paid for it and held my other hand while the needle scraped its way into my tender cells, I'm guessing he wasn't offended.

For my 39th birthday, I got another tattoo. This time, it's Joan of Arc's signature:

(Her name in French = Jehanne.) I'm fully protected now. I have creativity flowing through my writing arm, and courage streaming through my punching arm. (Okay, that's a lie. I punch right-handed. And I'm a weenie, so it's usually me getting punched. If there's a fight. Which there hasn't been since I was, like, 12, when Scott T. turned my sister's wheelchair off mid-ramp and she tipped backwards and struck her head on the asphalt. I punched him then. But I'm prepared nevertheless...oh! There was that one time when my step-sister chased me through the house with a rolling pin because I wouldn't stop making fun of her boobies, but let's leave that one alone. In case she's reading. Shout out to Sandi and her boobies!)

Maybe the tattoos are part of some lame midlife crisis. Maybe the desire to publish my book fits in there, too. I'm not getting any younger. And waiting for NYC to validate my existence is not helping the cause. I have to remind myself that this last year in the query trenches has not necessarily been a waste. I started querying a year ago Easter. Easter Sunday, in fact. The first one went out to Daniel Lazar at Writer's House. He answered me back in two hours and asked for the full. He read it, passed on it, told me to rewrite a few things, and then he'd reconsider. So I did just that, but I rushed it. I should've waited a month and brought in more beta readers/critique partners, but I didn't. I was panicking. I gave the MS another go-through, changed a ton of stuff, and then resubmitted. And he shook his head no again. Devastating. I think that one cost me two days hiding under the covers.

Things went on like this for the whole year. Suzie Townsend asked for a full (and I love her, so that was big). Then she said no. It sat at Random House Canada for three months, and I had high hopes because some important decision makers were reading it, one of whom told me that they liked it so far and were going to take it to the editorial committee. Then the rejection came in on December 12, and it stopped my life. Catastrophic is the best way to describe what it did to me. The kids tiptoed around me. Husband made pancakes. My youngest (6) wrote me a note that said I was the "best writer in the whole wide wrold," typo included.

A few other agents have asked for fulls, and partials, but most haven't bothered responding with even a thanks-but-no-thanks, the last of whom was just in February, an agent from Toronto. I was getting better at hearing no--not great at it, but better--when I started to consider the unthinkable: publishing it myself.

I don't know if you guys do this -- tell me if you do so I don't feel like the last kicker to be chosen for the dodgeball team, as per usual -- but writing anything can be very difficult if you slip into the mindset of No one's ever going to read this, so what's the point? My artist friends tell me that you write/paint/sculpt because you have to, because not doing it will eat you alive. Okay, so fine, yeah, writing keeps my Prozac dose lower, but moving forward with a project that is dead in the water? It sucks. NOW I feel energized, like there is something to write for, that I have to finish Book Two (and Three?) because someone might want it. Maybe. The point is, there now exists "hope" where before there was only "no."

I've stopped shopping for that perfect pen to use at book signings, stopped worrying about dyeing those new gray-ish hairs so people won't snicker at me being almost 40, and that energy has been redirected into where it should've been all along: in the words. Oh, and on Twitter.

I won't go on ad nauseum, but the thought of having the work out there is definitely making my ass go funny. And yet, I'm confident that the new contacts, dare I call them friends, I've made in this incredible community of writers and authors will make the transition easier, even if the book tanks.

And that, my friends, is enough to pull any sorry suck outta bed every morning. Now I'm going to go finish this flat diet Coke so I can hack at the word "focus" and send my baby for its day at the formatter. Tweep me: @JennSommersby.

That blue typewriter along the margin...

...was where it all started. My older sister, who recently passed away (love you, Shell), was born with cerebral palsy. She couldn't use her hands very well, certainly not to hold a pen. So she had a sky blue Smith Corona electric typewriter that looked something like this:

I loved it. I think I used it more than Michelle did. My first story (I was 5, maybe 6) was a ridiculous epic about a trip to a dentist. Had I known at that time that dentists would become a totally scary part of my future, I perhaps would've chosen a different topic to write about. Maybe bunnies or unicorns. Or maybe unicorns who spear bunnies with their horns and then host barbecues for their troll friends. Unicorns and trolls are friends, right?

My favorite part of that keyboard is the chunky, fat button of goodness on the right--the return key--isn't it just delicious?

The reason this is important: when you hit that button, you've moved onto a new line. Maybe that line is a continuation of the prior line, a sentence still incomplete. Maybe it's a new thought, on a line all its own. Maybe a poet is using the sky blue Smith Corona, like my buddy Shakespeare (although they didn't have typewriters, or electricity, in Shakespeare's day, I suppose), and that new line is an introduction to a sparkling-fresh, compelling thought that will leave its reader breathless and wanting more. Maybe you just like to hit the button because it's so damn big and fun and it makes the coolest sound. (I have yet to find a keyboard that gives me the same clicky sound satisfaction. Maybe my friend Lauren's keyboard--it has a nice click to it. Very satisfying, indeed.)

When you hit that button, no matter what you're writing or have written, it is a commitment to move forward. You're moving on, skipping to the next part of the page. After you hit that button 10 or 20 times, you've moved to the bottom of the page. Time to insert a new page. Clean, white, begging to be desecrated by whatever is clanging around in your cranium. It's weird, really, but the Big Blue Button wants you to hit it. It's begging you to hit it.

By hitting it, you're making a decision. You're moving ahead. You're moving.

Moving.

That's the important part.

I'm trying to do that. I am awaiting my turn at an e-formatter (March 10th is my date); I'm working on cover art options. I'm going to offer my YA paranormal/magical realism tome as an ebook and perhaps as a print edition in the future. I'm moving ahead, even if it is in a way I never imagined I would consider. (I'm a snob. There are a lot of us out there. This guy is one: http://crossroadsroad.com/. And this fellow has had mad success stemming from his self-publishing endeavors. He earned himself a fat, multi-book deal with Crown, subsidiary of Random House. He earned it, for reals. Lots of hard work marketing oneself. It can happen.)

If I do this, then maybe, someday, I'll be able to say thanks but no thanks to the folks who didn't believe in me the first (and fifteenth) time around. And I'll say LOADS of thanks to the folks who WILL believe in me, or who, at the very least, will believe in my story. It's not for everyone. I know that. But it's fun. I think you'll like it. If you don't, well, we'd probably still be cordial to one another in line at Starbucks. I might even buy your coffee for you. Well, that is if the book sells. Otherwise I will probably give you googly eyes in the hope that you'll buy coffee for me instead.

In the meantime, I'm gonna keep hitting that Big Blue Button. I'm gonna keep moving, one line at a time.

Jenn, you need a new post. Slacker.

Yeah, so I'm a slacker. But my shrink would probably tell you that it's all due to a lack of confidence. I mean, I could blog something every single day, but that would mean I'd have to think of something witty to say every single day. And I can't do that. Some days I'm really bitchy and mean, like, I-want-to-drive-over-the-neighbor's-cat sort of mean. Other days, I'm still bitchy, but less mean; those are the days I want to kick the beagles. In fact, I tried to start a new holiday called National Kick A Beagle Day, for September 19 this year (also happens to be my birthday AND National Talk Like A Pirate Day!), but no one was interested in kicking beagles with me. In fact, some said I was downright mean. But that idea came to me on a day where I was just bitchy, and not mean. I'm so confused.

Anyway, back to the point: I can't write all the time because sometimes I just don't have anything interesting to say. Sometimes I sit down to write a post, and all I can think is, "Wow, Jenn, no one wants to read this shit," simply because there are a million blogs out there that can teach you HTML, how to make tiramisu, how to scrapbook, how to replace the transmission in your car, and how to get a better love life. This blog does none of those things. Sometimes, if I have a book or movie review I must share with you, I do post that. Or at least I did. But mostly, those things were originally intended for publication on other sites. Not this one.

The most important, viable of my excuses: I was sorta busy last year.

I spent the latter half of 2009 and all of 2010 writing. A lot. I finished my novel and started querying agents. The process led me to rewrite the damn thing four times, after eight different readers vetted and two NYC agents provided invaluable feedback. It's a better book than it was in April '10, but apparently not good enough in January '11 to get an agent. Or so that's how the story goes. I get a lot of this: "Thanks, but not right for me. Good luck." The book spent three months at Random House Canada with the director of publishing and her senior editor, and they provided some kick-ass praise any wannabe writer would kill to get about his/her first book. Alas, RHC didn't chase after me with offers of advance money and reams of savory contract jargon. No still means no, no matter how much glitter and chocolate you drizzle on it.

As I await the final few rejections to come in (and no, I'm not being a Negative Nelly -- I'm being Proactive Patricia with a little Antsy Annie and Let's-Get-On-With-This-Shit Shirley), I'm venturing into the unknown abyss of e-publishing. Doing lots of research, looking for authors who have had success taking this route (eg, Scott Nicholson (http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/) seems to be burning up the charts). I mean, seriously -- we "unpubbeds" (my catchy new word for unpublished novelists) spend SO much time and energy and money and blood and sweat and buckets-full-o-tears to write these books. We sacrifice time with friends and family. We dream about it. We have nightmares about it. We obsess, make notes, and do research. COPIOUS amounts of research. We talk it over with our therapists and just about anyone we feel we might be able to trust to NOT steal our ideas. We sit in our cars, alone, at local coffee shops and drink peppermint tea until 1 and 2 in the morning in subzero temperatures, braving parking lots full of cops and schizophrenics and Mercedes-driving gang-bangers, just so we can write undisturbed. And for what? So these agents can tell me I suck? Thing is, none of them have said that. They've said that they like it. The editor and director of publishing assured me that I definitely have a future in publishing in this genre. Yeah...sure.

I'm an editor, too, so I know the grammar and syntax is squeaky clean. I know there is tension in every scene. I know the characters are interesting and that the plot is well structured and that nuance oozes from all the right places. I KNOW this. But the agents aren't loving me. The requests for fulls have come back without the Magic Call; the requests for partials have stopped at partials and haven't progressed to fulls. That SUCKS. The unpubbeds can't even send unsolicited manuscripts to publishers anymore, like they used to in the olden days. Thanks, digital age, environmentalists, and Unabomber for making cryptically labeled brown envelopes that contain manuscripts bound for the slush pile so un-PC.


I know my shit is better than some of the stuff that's out there on the store shelves, but then again, every unpubbed who is halfway down Bitter Street is singing the same tune. There are so many of us, we should start a damn choir. We could challenge the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to a sing-off. But they probably have Stephenie Meyer singing with them (she's allegedly Mormon though she only has THREE children--I'm a better Mormon than she is 'cuz I have FOUR, even though I'm totally not Mormon). Word on the street is, she can sing like a diva--and she'd crush us with her sparkly vampires and staggering sales records. (If I were her, I'd go on a crazy diet and have surgery to restore my honeymoon vagina so I could steal Robert Pattinson away from K-Stew. He's cute. And as I am technically eight months shy of being classified a "cougar," I'd be all over that delicious Brit like a fat kid on a box of M&Ms.)


There has to be a better way. I'll keep you posted if I figure it out.

In the meantime, go buy a Kindle, a Kobo, or an iPad so that when I do e-publish this flaming ball of volcanic sputum, you'll be ready to splurge on the $1.99 cover price and send me into publishing infamy.

Yeah, it's probably mean and bad for my karma, but what the hell...

Writers, those curious about writers, editors, sadists, whomever...check this out:

http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/page/1

Damn, damn funny. Thanks, Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary for posting this on her blog today. Omigod, my stomach hurts from laughing. All evil laughs, of course. And I feel mildly better about my query letters because of it.

Enjoy!

Flu...in summer?

Second to the last week of school, one of the kindergartners shows up hacking his brains out. As often happens with the younger crowds, the communicability was, shall we say, considerable. Everyone got sick. Lucifer brought it home, shared it with Bueno, who shared it with Princess. By proxy, Dad got it, and because we breathe the same air for eight hours every night, I got it. Which is weird, 'cuz I rarely get it. I think this time I was the biggest baby, though, believe it or not, flat on my back for two whole days last week feeling super sorry for myself. But that was soooooome headache, dude, seriously.

Back in the saddle here, though, and catching up on all the crap I didn't pay attention to while I was whining away the hours. Watched The Eclipse (Ciaran Hinds, Aidan Quinn) as promised, and while it was good, it didn't make it for review this week. Wrote and submitted A Single Man for the ChicMom column (should be up sometime in the next few days), with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. I'll keep you in suspense and send you to the review itself before telling you if I loved it or not.

I've been watching so many friggin' movies lately--I do that when I'm stumped on a writing project, hoping it will provide inspiration. Managed to get hold of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo--terrific film, if you can handle the subtitles. I <3 Lisbeth Salander! Caught up with an oldie from 2002--Sam Rockwell in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind--if you haven't seen this, it's definitely worth picking up. Sam Rockwell is THE most underutilized actor in Hollywood, and certainly in the top three BEST actors out there. Dude is a chameleon. Coincidentally, we watched Moon last week, too, another Rockwell flick (we're on a Rockwell kick around here), and while the premise was a little weak, his acting is grade A.

I'm embarrassed to admit we watched Hot Tub Time Machine and laughed our asses off, but don't watch it with the kiddos around. LOTS of swearing and sex. I found myself blushing with my 16-year-old on the couch next to me. "Cover your ears, Princess!" If you were at all a John Cusack fan wayyyyy back in the '80s, you will get a chuckle out of HTTM. Ridiculous but good for a laugh.

Took the kiddos to see Despicable Me on Sunday. Great film. Tight writing, awesome comedy, even some terrific subliminal stuff tucked in for adult enjoyment. (Gru, the super-villain, played by Steve Carell, is walking into the Bank of Evil for a loan. The sign reads: BANK OF EVIL / Formerly Lehman Brothers. I laughed out LOUD and embarrassed my whole family. Seems I was the only one who caught it, which is understandable considering the average age in the theatre was probably, like, nine, but Lehman Bros., as you will recall, was the banking and investment firm that initiated the most recent global economic meltdown. Bank of Evil is right!) Fun film, adorable little kids to yank at those heart strings. We loved it.

For this week, there are so many titles to choose from (it IS DVD Tuesday today!) -- Chloe (Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried), The Greatest (Pierce Brosnan, Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon), Greenberg (Ben Stiller), 8: The Mormon Proposition (award-winning documentary I will NOT be missing!), and Our Family Wedding (America Ferrera, Forest Whitaker -- looks cute). I'm definitely going to need a bigger column. I should talk to my editor about that...

Again am entrenched in the waiting game, waiting to hear back from queries sent to agents. Had some bad news last week--these two messages literally arrived within 30 seconds of one another, no shit--a hard-core rejection from an agent I thought may have liked me, and news from my oldest child that he will be deploying to Afghanistan in Feb 2011. THAT was a rotten day. But move forward, I must, and the feedback I've had from a few early readers has been really positive. Really the only thing that has kept me going on this project at all. I love it so much, but what if no one else does? What if it ends up in the round file like so many other projects have? I've long passed that million-word benchmark the veterans tell us we have to write. I'm not a newbie. I just haven't ever tried to publish anything because I've been too...scared. Now I want into the game, but the game is being fickle. As hell.

That's the thing that people don't get--if you're a writer, it's expected that you just...write. That you have an endless supply of words. Perhaps for some writers, that's true, but for me, a raging perfectionist with OCD tendencies, every word has to be perfect. I obsess over every combination of letters I choose--too many adverbs (I HATE adverbs!)? Is that adjective necessary? Should that be past perfect or just past tense? What would Hemingway do here? Obviously the obsessive tendencies do not extend to the blog (lucky you!)--this is a different beast altogether. But when I look at recently published titles that have hit the Big Time with Great Fanfare and Giant Movie Deals, some of the writing is...subpar. I don't want to be that writer.

And don't feed me your line of BS that you write because it makes your heart sing. If you don't want to make money doing this, you're a fool. Or maybe your bank vault is already bursting its seams. Mine? Not so much. I write because it's like a cancer. I can't excise it from my body. It's just there, always has been. No matter how much I've ignored it in the past, it rears its ugly head and somehow makes me feel better. Like built-in heroin (though, I must admit, I've never tried heroin. Maybe like built-in Prozac?).

The heroes exist among us, in all genres of writing. And there are so many I love, I cannot even begin to bow low enough to present myself with adequate humility. Maybe if I crawled under the top layer of soil and groveled at their feet... For YA, JK Rowling is phenomenal, as is Meg Rosoff, old-school Judy Blume, my fave up-and-comer Hannah Moskowitz, Suzanne Collins. In fact, Collins' third book in the Hunger Games series (book 3 is called Mockingjay) comes out in August--I cannot WAIT. The Hunger Games is a raw piece of work, brilliantly crafted, genius idea. Lions Gate has optioned the film rights and a screenplay is in the works with novelist Collins at the helm. Fabulous! Yeah, get your hands on it if you haven't. It's pretty hard core stuff for a YA title.

But I digress. (Imagine that.) Bottom line is, if I don't have words, I ain't got nothin'. I want the words to lead to publication, to readership, to strong out-of-the-gate numbers, to consistency, to more work, to more books, to more built-in Prozac. I don't want to be a one-hit wonder, a one-trick pony. What's wrong with wanting it all?

Rejection sucks, like a leech, bleeding me out...

Rejection means rewrites. Rewrites mean reworking. Dismantling. Reconstruction. Confusion. Despair. A day lost hiding under my pillow, in my room, questioning my existence, wishing I were Faulkner or Hemingway or Parker or Salinger, someone who wrote important crap and stayed drunk the entire time to make it even more meaningful.


I've been told that the story takes too long to get started. I constructed it with the framework of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" as underlayment. Familiar with it? It's a slow, romantic, heartbreaking build until the ultimate climax two-thirds of the way through the piece, at 6:08 or so in the 9:03 version. I'm going to stand by that slow build. The payoff is too rich to make it happen any sooner.

But alas, rewrites will continue. Never say die.