The Me That I Am

 10 Responses »
Apr 182012
 

I’m having a pretty shitty Writerly Ego day. Actually, it’s kind of been a shitty Writerly Ego month, to be perfectly honest. And when I’ve shared this little emotional nugget with the BFF and The Husband, I’ve received a raised eyebrow and a “YOU HAVE A FUCKING AGENT” in response to my pity party. I get where it’s coming from. I am in a position a lot of writers would kill for. I have a wonderful agent who thinks me and my writing are worth something and deserve a place on the shelves at Barnes & Noble next to writers I admire like Jenny Lawson ,  Jill Smokler,  Robin O’Bryant,  Anna Lefler and Heather Armstrong.

It seems, however, that the platform I am currently standing on may not big enough to get there. Or maybe it just feels like that because I’m a writer and us artistic types are moody and overly emotional and maybe I just need a vodka-flavored cookie. Because really? I’m pretty proud of my little platform. I bust my ass for free because writing is who I am and what I do and the writing part is actually more important than getting paid part…for my sanity, at least. The bills sitting on my desk waiting to be paid, however, would rather I stop trying to stay Not Crazy and just get a fucking job that probably wouldn’t leave me the time to write for the awesome sites I contribute to.

I love sharing the funny on An Army of Ermas and Funny Not Slutty. Getting a spot on best-selling author Lissa Rankin’s Owning Pink site is something I will forever be proud of. I’ve been published on Hippocampus Magazine and almost fell over when StoryBleed accepted the same piece for publication on their site. And then what I’ve got going on over here on this little ol’ blog o’ mine. I’m working on getting my name out there and my writing on more outlets, but these things take time. And Platforms don’t build themselves overnight.

I’m by no means in the same stratosphere as the likes of Dooce or The Bloggess or Scary Mommy and that’s okay with me. I’m not trying to be them. Just me. And hopefully the Me that I Am will one day be enough.

Maybe this sounds like a Poor Me post, but I don’t mean it to. Instead, I wanted to let other aspiring writers out there know that the days of doubting yourself don’t end the moment you sign that contract with your dream agent. And, I’m sure my published writer friends will tell me that they sure as hell don’t end when a book deal is offered or the day their books were released or even the day they got their first glowing review. Because once someone Other Than You believes in your work, it’s not just your ego riding on how many readers connect with that essay you got placed in that literary magazine that you love or how many hits per month your blog is getting or how much better you feel just for having taken the jumbled words out of your head and making some sense of them in a new piece you just started.

Every level of success reached is both a validation of our talents and a new reason to Freak the Fuck out, but it’s a lesson in the writing life that I seem to keep having to be reminded of. Three months ago I was still waiting for the Moment All of My Dreams Would Come True and then the world turned upside down when they did because I signed with my agent. That singular moment took two years to make a reality. And you would be right of you guessed that the Freaking Out commenced after the shiny newness of my situation sunk in. It’s not just me and my ego on the table anymore. It’s me and my ego and my agent’s time and effort and enthusiasm and Belief in What I Am and Have Yet to Become.

But if I think back, I probably went through the same little Self-Doubt Fest when I was accepted onto my college newspaper’s staff and when I saw my first byline and when I was assigned to cover my first murder case at the city newspaper that hired me right out of college. And then again when I left the newspapers to freelance and when I started this blog and when I woke up this morning and my little girl told me that I’m the best mother in the world.

So maybe shitty Writerly Ego days are just part of the process and part of what makes us who — and what — we are. It’s our literary equivalent of the trap women set for men when we ask if This Dress Makes Us Look Fat because we really only need to be reminded that in their eyes we are beautiful no matter what how that dress fits us. My platform is what it is. My ass? Probably looks horrible in that dress. But it’s okay.

Because tomorrow I’m still going to write something. And someone is going to read it.

Get Down with BBC (Ya, You Know Me… Or Something Like That)

 17 Responses »
Mar 072012
 

A few years ago, I struck up a twitter friendship with one person that led to me signing up for my first social media conference that led to an invitation from another to car pool since she lived in my neighborhood that led to, well, a hell of a lot of awesome.

That first conversation was with Dr. Lynne Kenney and the car pool invite was from Becca Ludlum. And that conference? It was Bloggy Boot Camp, y’all. A last minute decision on my part that fit my budget, was close enough to home that maxing my credit card out on plane fare wasn’t necessary, and turned out to be the best of all of the conferences I have attended to date.

I showed up not knowing what to expect and left knowing that I wanted to stay. I haven’t had the opportunity to attend another Bloggy Boot Camp since, but I can promise you I will when I live on the same side of the country as my family and free childcare.

Because this conference was such an incredible experience for me, I jumped at the chance to share my one and only chance to tell Tiffany she is pretty in person with all of you for Bloggy Bootcamp Day. Better yet: here’s my original ode to the fabulousness that is the BBC.

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I wasn’t going to go. There really wasn’t a point, after all. I mean, I don’t do reviews. I don’t really have time to make IRL friends out of the people I already talk to online. And my spare time should be dedicated to that getting famous/book deal thing I’m kinda invested in, so do I really need to be spending a weekend with a bunch of women I probably have nothing in common with in the name of networking and social media at something with a cutesy name like Bloggy Boot Camp?

 

Answer: You bet your ass.

Here’s the deal: When you have familiar avatars and scary-impressive numbers attached to every tweet your send out, it’s bound to intimate the little fish in the pond who might wonder if responding to something your super-famous-self said or if you are even going to see the comment from not-so-famous us. So we follow. We lurk. We type and delete and then figure we’ll try again later when our numbers get just a bit bigger.

But those avatars are tricky little fuckers. They’re teeny. They can be grainy. They might not look so much like the In Real Life you. And that’s when people like me walk up to people like you and forget about the numbers and the followers and the influence and just smile and say “hello” and tell people like Loralee that her purse kicks absolute ass before realizing who I was talking to.

Because it’s that easy.

And that hug Tiffany said she wanted before bloggy boot camp? Ya know…the one she sent me a tweet about? Yeah, she remembered!

And ya wanna know what happened when I opened my mouth? (Aside from making an ass of myself when I heard Katja speak and realized it wasn’t just a cute red head at my table but Katja herself, that is. Because that’s when I turned back to Theresa and loud enough for Katja to hear and said, “OMG. I just realized who I was sitting next to! She’s Katja!” Which I’m sure is a moment Sugar Jones can relate to. Ask her about Patrick Duffy if you weren’t at Bloggy Boot Camp.)

I connected with people. I laughed with them. I learned I wasn’t the only mom-writer there who thought it was going to be a waste of time and left totally high on renewed energy and lots of new dreams.

 

Then there was meeting Carolyn McCray for dinner on Saturday after the conference and before the cocktail party and showed up with my heart in my throat while trying to not sound like I had no clue what I was talking about with her, Dee Dee and Piper Heiney.  I’m thinking I survived, but I may need that vodka Dee Dee provided in her little swag bag to get over any glitches in my portion of the conversation that now make me do some face-palm action.

 

I was only there because Dr. Lynne  Kenney thought it might be a great idea to give it a try and I reluctantly signed up. (And I can’t thank her enough for making me try something new.)

I may have been the picture of confidence but I’ll tell ya a secret. I freaked before I got there. Becca, Melanie, Michelle, Chelsea, and Shey were okay with the fact that I packed a week’s worth of clothes so I could have choices and blend when I got to the Xona Resort, which was nice because I seriously looked like an asshole next to the people flying in from other states with those adorable little over-nighter suitcases. (Note to self: I will not be repeating this mistake next year.)

(Okay, that was a total lie.)

I may not give a damn about SEO (mainly because thinking about it makes my head hurt) or have plans for monetizing the blog. But I did learn to keep an open mind when entering into each and every new situation. Because as I listened to authors who blog talk about making their dreams a reality and to presentations on vlogging and branding yourself, I realized I fit right in with every other mom blogger in the room with me as we work on leaving our marks in the world with our words and figure out how to stay sane while doing it.

 

****

Fine print: I suck at poker and am incapable of BS so this is all me and my own thoughts. If I remember to link up I might have a chance at a free trip to a BBC in 2012, but I might also win the lottery if I remember to buy a ticket, so whatever. I wrote this because I wanted to. The End.

How I Got My Agent

 16 Responses »
Mar 022012
 

So this one time a writer finished a book she thought was just dripping of awesomeness and, because she figured those silly old rules about letting the story sit and the very real need for multiple revisions and advice about maybe hiring an editor all applied to Writers Less Incredible Than She, the first set of top agents had said writer’s query in their inbox faster than you can say “Rookie Mistake.” Oh, and the one agent — named Michele Martin from MDM Management — that she was referred to by a pretty friend never actually got a query, but instead got a simple email stating that Tiffany Romero had referred her.

Of course, she got turned down. By all five of the agents she had queried and had assumed were going to make her the next Exception to the Rule. BASTARDS! Didn’t they know WHAT KIND OF TALENT THEY WERE DEALING WITH?

Obviously…..not.

The writer shook off the rejection (it MUST have been a glitch in How The Universe Operates, after all) and started researching the next five agents or so. And lo and behold, there was an email from the agent she had emailed on Tiffany’s referral. The agent wanted to talk.

On. The. Phone.

With me. (I mean…oh screw it. It’s hard writing about myself in third person without falling into a fit of girly giggles, so I’ll stop.) So yeah….the agents wanted to talk with me! Maybe she was going to sign me! Maybe I was the exception to the rule. Maybe…

Maybe I needed to keep querying and slow down and practice not squealing while speaking with Michele the following day. Of course, there was no contract to sign after our conversation. There were suggestions to tighten the manuscript and how to make things work better and where I needed more and why this area needed much less and Just Cut That Part, Okay? So I sent out another few batches of query letters and tightened my work.

After the next batch of rejections, I figured my query sucked and wasn’t getting past round 1 at the agencies they were going to, so I took a query workshop and came out on the other end with a query that sucked so little it was positively pretty.

So I sent that bad boy out to even more agents while I worked on making the manuscript Not Suck with Michele (turns out what I thought was literary gold was no more than first draft dribbles..who knew?). All told, she probably worked with me for three months before gently bursting my Bubble of Happiness by telling me that I had talent but the manuscript just wasn’t ready. She suggested an editor and invited me to resubmit after I had revised. A Lot.

I told her to bite me (in my head) and thanked her for her time (in an email).

That’s when I pulled the plug on queries and put my manuscript in a forgotten pile and went on with my life by keeping busy with the strangest hobby which involved writing more and submitting my work to Other People. I know, sounds strangely like work and building a platform, but don’t let yourself be fooled. I was actually just pretending the book I had written didn’t exist and this was just one way to stay crazy busy enough to do just that.

And then one day I found myself being offered a featured blogger spot at Lissa Rankin’s Owning Pink.

Another found me giggling like a school girl in front of an ice cream truck when Leah Segedie asked if I wanted to be an editor on Bookieboo.

The email inviting me to bring some funny to An Army of Ermas had me at hello.

And the one asking if I was interested in contributing to 30 Second Mom would only have been answered faster if the subject line had read “A yes gets your face on an iPhone app.”

And I guess all that got me enough confidence to start submitting individual pieces and that’s when Hippocampus Magazine accepted an essay and Funny Not Slutty decided I was worthy and THE POINT IS I FINALLY GOT OFF MY ASS AND GOT TO WORK!

Somewhere in all that craziness I also put my ego away and reread my manuscript. You know, the one that Michele had said showed promise but wasn’t ready? Yeah, funny thing. Turns out she was right. I mean, it not only sucked, it also S-U-C-K-E-D. So I took her advice, hired Brooke Warner to edit, and busted my booty turning that manuscript around.

Eventually, I found myself at the Point of No Return. My manuscript was ready to go out into the big wide world or back into hiding. I decided to put on my big girl panties.

That’s when I got my pretty new(ish) query out and sent it off to five agents. Right after that I emailed Michele.

And on Valentine’s Day I was signing a contract to be represented by Michele Martin of MDM Management, who was originally referred to me by Tiffany Romero of Bloggy Bootcamp and Other Social Media Awesomeness and also now represents Lissa Rankin, who runs Owning Pink, and the synchronicity of the whole bit tells me that some things are just meant to be.

Moral of the story?

It’s entirely possible that my query letter still sucks. I wouldn’t know. I got my agent with an email.

For CJ Redwine’s Sister’s Eyes Only

 4 Responses »
Nov 042011
 

 

See these earrings?

And these?

 

Pretty snazzy, aren’t they? Betcha wanna know how you could possibly get your hands on a pair of these little babies, don’t ya?

Yeah?

Well…I’m not going to tell you. Turns out I suck at getting other people to pony up for a worthy cause like The Julian Project, even when offering Pretty Things to encourage participation, so I’m just gonna go with what works this time. CJ Redwine’s sister, a.k.a. HC Palmquist, happens to rock the socks off of earrings like these. In fact, she’s the only one who donated for the last pair, and she basically offered me a pie to just hand these over to her. (She makes really good pie.) I was about to say yes and then we both came to our senses because there is the Julian Project and all so we  decided to proceed and pretend like I have influence over all of you by admitting I don’t have influence over any of you.

Clever, right?

CJ Redwine happens to think it’s genius. Also? She totally let me pimp out her were-llama famousness for the sake of maybe helping me donate more than what I can talk Buttercup into giving me from her piggy bank. Which? Makes CJ even more awesome than I had previously assumed based on how much I like her sister’s pie.

And I really like her sister’s pie.

But that’s neither here nor there because no one wants to donate $5 to be in the running for one pair of these earrings or $10 for a chance at both pairs except for CJ Redwine’s sister, right?

Right.

So here’s the deal, CJ Redwine’s sister: click here and do that donation thing then come back to this post and leave me a comment letting me know if you are trying to win one or both sets of earrings. Tweet this. Facebook it. Blog about it. None of it’s gonna get you extra entries because I’m revising a manuscript right now and don’t have the time to keep track of all that craziness but tweet, Facebook, and blog about this if you can spare a moment and it makes you feel good inside. Don’t get all anxious and stuff since you’re probably the only one entering, anyway, so this is as good as in the bag, right?

Right.

The reverse psychology worked, yes?

Let the craziness begin.

***

Fine print: Earrings were graciously created and provided by the very talented mother of Born to be a Dragon author Eisley Jacobs for the sole purpose of raising funds for The Julian Project.

More fine print: CJ Redwine rocks.

Even more fine print: And so does her sister.

Donations and comments will be accepted through Friday, November 11, at midnight, EST. The winner(s), presumably CJ Redwine’s sister, will be announced the following day here on the blog.

No Room for Good Intentions

 2 Responses »
Aug 102010
 

You may recall that I may have mentioned something about possibly squeezing in a workout during the Craziness For Which I Was Not Prepared at BlogHer.

And, like, i totally meant to! I really did. I even packed gym shoes and workout clothes in that practically empty suitcase the day before heading out to New York. I really totally meant to when I saw Mamavation Queen Leah in person for the first time at The People’s Party and realized how absolutely adorable she is in person. I may have even told her that I was going to make good on last week’s blog post and sweat my booty off BlogHer style. She said something about thinking I was adorable, too, and I walked away hoping to got she was drinking enough to forget about my promise to be good and motivated.

I may have been able to make it to the gym during expo hall hours, but that would have meant that I missed out on chasing down Elmo like a mother posessed for a chance at a photo and solidifying my place as the Best Mother in the World upon my triumphant return home with this photographic tropy. And really, I’m thinking you would have done the same in my position.

Normally, I’m just getting revved up when the rest of the world is starting to relax for the evening. I get my best work done at night and as soon as Buttercup is asleep for the night, I’m ready to write, blog, clean house, and find a way to get a good work out in between 9 p.m. and midnight. Of course, my suitcase didn’t have any room let over for good intentions, what with all that swag, and all, so I spent my evenings in New York fan-girling with the best of them while acosting innocent little Bloggesses like Jenny just because she was sweet enough to punch out poetry for her minions while The Voices of the Year Gala raged on a few rooms over. Luckily, I convinced Her Blogessness to drop the stalker charges with promises of self-mockery and photos of my pretty up-do un-done in its Mexi-fro glory for the world to see. (You know, because it wasn’t embarassing enough the first time around Stay tuned on round 2. It’s coming.)

I did have a few hours in the afternoon when I could have stolen away and gotten myself good and sweaty, but I spent that little segment of time in a shuttle and at a luncheon at BLT Fish where I had my Yo Gabba Gabba moment when I was presented with a plate of fish. It was either eat the salmon and tuna I’d been avoiding since I was pregnant and my taste buds mutinied on me (Try it! You’ll like it!) or starve while I learned about the importance of seafood intake during pregnancy (ironic, I know). So I dined on this…

 

and I actually liked it. DJ Lance would be so proud.

And I’m plenty sure I could have made time to work out to my heart’s content while traipsing around the big city in an attempt to keep up with my TBFF, writing partner, and roomate, Juliette, on her multiple mad dashes to see Time’s Square and shop at Macy’s and take a bike taxi and get whiplash in a taxi. But well, by that time I had whiplash and how smart would it have been to work out?

So I had pizza instead before getting my minimum 2 hours of sleep before hopping on a plane away from the crazy and back to the slightly less (but not much less) crazy that I’m like, totally used to.

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