Dory the Fish

Ok, I'm back now. Kind of. We're currently suffering some crisis on the childcare front - so I'm a little stressed out.

Any who - I'm just about finished with my second manuscript and feeling pretty good about it, as a rough draft anyway. My sister hasn't finished reading what she has yet, so I'm still waiting for that review. And the crappy economy is really taking a bite out of this road to publishing adventure for me. With publishers purchasing so far in advance (similar to the way movie production companies buy scripts), they can go several months - possibly up to a year, without buying anything and still have new books coming out for up to two years out! Doesn't help on the patience front, but what do you do, right? .....

**Deep Breath** and ... (to be heard in the voice of Dory the fish) Just Keep Writing, Just Keep Writing....

And honestly, there is something to be said about the satisfaction of finishing a manuscript. My first completed manuscript comes in at 529 pages. My current one - unfinished - is at 566. What can I tell you, my characters have a lot to say. I've been trying to keep myself motivated, and that sense of accomplishment is a great feeling.

Okay, that's it for now, I think. Oh, wait, one more thing. Rejection is a lot easier to handle if you have someone or something to blame, so I suppose the current state of the economy is my scapegoat. At least there's a positive thing about it. I guess.

An Easy In...

So by now many of you may have heard that Lauren Conrad from The Hills got a 3-book deal from HarperCollins. After a long ranting /venting session about this with someone near and dear to me who I know will not hold it against me that at one time I was a fan of this show (lasted about six episodes), I think John Green was able to sum it up best here.
This is one of those things that makes you want to give up your dreams and runaway to Hollywood and (in the words of J.T.) "...get into second rate acting as a stepping ladder to your book deal..."

Oh well, back to my non-celebutante (though still thoroughly fulfilling -have you met my kids?) life...

Interruptions

Have you ever noticed how often life gets in the way? Not necessarily in a bad way, there are some things that just cannot go on a backburner. When you have got family coming into town, a house to clean, a blessing to plan, plus the normal day-to-day stuff.... I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Who said a vacation day from work is really a vacation?

Something in Common

As my first manuscript is out there in the world of submission slush piles (hopefully not - I'm hoping that it could be open and happy on someone's desk about to be replied to with a big smiley face) ... I am almost done with my second manuscript. No one has read this one yet and last night was the first time I parted with a portion of it -- three chapters to my sister.

I didn't tell her about my writing for a long time, and when I did she was really skeptical that I would write anything she'd even be slightly interested in reading. I surprised her and in turn her support and interest and excitement over my work was somewhat of a surprise to me. We've never had much in common. She's always been so much younger than me that we were in separate worlds - in such different places in our lives. As she's grown older, we've found that we have a lot of similar interests. I love that I can bounce ideas off of her and that she's been the inspiration for some of my work - though she may not know it.

We used to fight a lot and argue over stupid things, like all sisters, but now we understand each other better, I think. I've done my best to guide her where possible, and though she may not realize, she's been somewhat of a beacon of light for me too. I appreciate her a lot more now, for who she is, what she's done and what she will accomplish in her life. The one thing that I know we do have in common is the will to keep trying.

Although I have included some good thoughts and a little cheese today, I'd like to close with some parting words from the one, the only Hannah Montana, "Life's what you make it So let's make it rock."

...... I'll be back when I've finished laughing at how big of a cheeseball I really am.

Glass Half...???

Patience has been working with me and against me these last few weeks. I've already blogged about waiting and the virtue that patience is a couple of times. The next thing to determine is whether I am an optimist or a pessimist. I have received responses to half of my queries. Yes, exactly half. And herein lies my dilemma...

Definitions

To define a word depends much on one's personality and relationship to life, others and oneself. Some people may say that all you need is a dictionary to define a word, but I would beg to differ. Case in point:

The meaning of the phrase "to be supportive" is a huge matter of semantics. I have learned this through experience. For some people, "to be supportive" means running (whether physically or virtually) to your side and gasping and sighing with you and offering a shoulder (again, physical or virtual) to cry on if needed. For others, "to be supportive" means looking you square in the face and saying "well, at least they didn't just come out and say 'you suck'." Personally, I have found it is good to have an equal balance of these two kinds of support in your life. One to let you have your moment to wallow and the other to pull you back to reality. Sometimes being blunt hurts, but it's like ripping off a band-aid: once the initial sting is gone, you can move on with your day.

According to Webster's rejection is defined as: the action of rejecting; the state of being rejected. I, however, have decided that rejection is really defined as motivation in it's rawest form. I spent my fair share of time hearing I wasn't good enough, smart enough, fast enough, strong enough. The only one that I may admit to being true, maybe, is that I'm not tall enough... but that's a topic for another blog. Now that I have been rejected several times, and I'm sure several times more to come, I've decided that it is serving its purpose to make me better. Being told no just makes me want to say, "You wanna bet?" Every "no" is taking me one step closer to the eventual "yes" that, unfortunately, involves a good deal of waiting. (See my thoughts on waiting from Aug 08.)

The dictionary definition of a word is perfectly valid in most circumstances. Unfortunately, there is an entire gray area, life, that the words and their dictionary definitions may not really work for. Because of this, I'm starting my own dictionary.