Oh, hi! You came to see me, but today I’m over on Harness Magazine with an essay I wrote what feels like forever ago and stuck in a drawer. I’m glad it finally has a home, and just in time as the school year winds down to single-digit days. Happy summer and happy reading!
Head on over to read “Wait, I was supposed to register my kids for summer camp in January?” on Harness Magazine.
Leave a CommentI had a self-imposed deadline of finishing the first draft of my newest manuscript by my 41st birthday, which is why I’ve been a little MIA as I write and write and edit and polish. My birthday also happened to be just a few days before the deadline for the 2023 Writer’s League of Texas manuscript contest, so I decided to enter it, looking forward to getting some early feedback of things I could work on as I am knee-deep in my editing phase.
Since it was a first draft, I went in with very low expectations, so imagine my shock when I receive an email today congratulating me on being named one of the 5 finalists in the romance category (yes, satire romance is still romance)! It’s kind of a big deal, y’all… my new book’s already getting accolades, and I haven’t even finished it yet.
And since it’s on the internet, it’s as good a time as any to announce the (working) title for my satirical romance novel – DON’T GIVE ME GRIEF. Wish me luck in the final round, and check out all the other finalists in this year’s contest; word on the street is the competition was fierce!
I have a little more than four weeks left until Community Klepto comes out, which means I have to spend a lot more time paying attention to social media. To prepare for upcoming podcast interviews, I’m listening to episodes with other authors to get a feel for the aesthetic and the kinds of questions they might ask me, and then also seeing how authors and the media are promoting their episodes.
Algorithms working the way they work means that you’ll start to see the author, their book, or both everywhere. Every other book stack contains that book that you just heard about 5 minutes ago for the first time, but all of a sudden the book has exploded and gone viral. That’s when you start to wonder… why isn’t my book everywhere? Why don’t I have a different Instagram live author salon every hour for the next four weeks? Am I really the talentless hack I feel like when I read my own book for the 800th time and find a typo I missed the first 799 times?!
Okay, so maybe that one’s just my own impostor syndrome projections, being so close to pub for this novel and deep in the dreaded saggy middle of writing the next one. But we’ve all been there, wanting to call the printer at the 11th hour and stop the presses because the book’s no good, right? Well, it’s too late now. The books are already in the warehouse and it’s time to put an end to this pity party of one and give myself a pep talk.
Here’s why I need to stop comparing myself to influencer authors on Instagram, and you should too.
Behind every celebrity-status author you think rose to stardom with a book that came out of nowhere is a human being who was rejected by 100 other agents and publishers, who submitted the same short story to open reading periods for three years in a row before it got accepted somewhere.
And the reason you suddenly start seeing a book everywhere is because algorithms work. They know it takes a number of impressions before you’ll take action and buy the book, and they also know a lot about you. It’s the same reason you search for a shoe you’ve never heard of and then you start seeing ads for it everywhere. And several of the social media platforms are pay to play. You’re seeing the book everywhere because someone is paying for it to be seen everywhere.
Which brings me to my next pep talk…
Anyone who tries to say publicity is free is full of shit. I interviewed several book publicists as part of my book journey for Community Klepto, and not a one of them offered to work for me for free. Even the big New York book publishers only invest marketing dollars into a book that they think they will make their money back on. Even authors who finally land that big 4 book deal with a sweet advance aren’t promised much, if anything, in publicity and marketing budget.
So who pays? The author, usually. Book bloggers might enjoy the perks of getting a mailbox full of free books every week, but they’re also in it for the money. No one buys a book they’ve never heard of, and getting your name and title heard will cost you.
And lest we forget…
Neither is Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or whatever the hell the new-new thing is that I won’t hear about until the olds take it over. No one posts their rejection letters on Instagram (not all of them, anyway – some of them make for good entertainment; I once got a rejection for a book that wasn’t even mine). No one live streams the hours they spend rewriting the same sentence 20 times. No one makes a reel of all the pitches they make that go completely unanswered, but I’m willing to bet there’s a lot.
For all those live events that seem to happen every hour for those authors I see over and over, there are plenty of them with single-digit audiences. For every TikTok, there’s a quick shirt change and parting the hair on the other side between filming five 1-minute videos while the kids are upstairs watching Disney Plus because we don’t have time or energy to spend doing our hair and makeup for something spontaneous (at least I don’t).
Okay – pity party’s over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna suck it up and make the most of my release because I have to out-earn my publicity spend!
Leave a CommentWriters deal with a lot of rejection. Years, sometimes decades of rejection. And when they discouraged, their fellow rejectees bolster them up with the same refrain: It only takes one yes.
Sadly, the inverse is also true. It only takes one stinging rejection for all the impostor syndrome to creep back in. I’m lucky in that while I’ve had my fair share of manuscript rejections in the past year, I’ve also had a lot of yeses. This year, I’ve had 3 essays published, a poem, a flash fiction piece, and my third novel is crawling along to its June 2022 publication date.
I recently entered a contest for both fiction and poetry for an all-writer voted publication. Everyone who submits also votes on the submissions, the best from each round move on to the next one, and the top 30 submissions make it into the final issue.
I entered round 1 with 3 of my best poems and a short story I haven’t touched in years, thinking that as a serious, multiply-published author, surely I could crack the top 30 with both my submissions.
Well, I didn’t. My short story finished 131 out of 221, and my poems finished 147 out of 239. I didn’t even make it past the first round, and I read some very weak submissions in the first round. I felt immediately dejected. How could I possibly expect to publish and have any level of commercial success with my novel if I couldn’t even have a short story in the top half of a contest? It wasn’t too late to call my publisher and stop the train and go back to the drawing board. It’s not like I deserved that yes!
But that’s the thing about pity parties. They never last long. And I read the nice feedback I got from the writers who read and ranked my submissions in round 1, and all the criticism was totally fair. And prose and poetry are both incredibly subjective, as they should be. In round 1, one writer ranked my poems the best… another, the worst.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself and listening to those negative thoughts about not being good enough, instead I’m going to be happy for the winners because (the ones I read and voted on anyway) their work was really good. I’m going to look forward to reading the final issue with the top 30 stories and poems because I bet it will be amazing. And I’ll keep grinding away at my work and submit something even better next time.
Leave a CommentThis essay was jostling around in my mind long before Moms Don’t Have Time to Write put out a call for submissions about holiday topics, but I was hesitant to even give voice to the negative feelings I was having. More than anything, I was scared to submit the essay because I was worried how it would be received by my family.
However, as a writer, I’ve found that whenever I find myself writing something that scares me, that’s actually the place where the gold is. The minute I start self-editing is the minute I stop being authentic, which is a disservice for me and my readers. Needless to say, after much hand-wringing I submitted the essay for consideration. This week, they surprised me by publishing it!
Check out my published essay here.
Leave a CommentIn 2019, I had only one writing goal – it was to get serious about submitting Community Klepto for publication and secure a book deal for it. On January 1, I hit the ground running and sent three query submissions. Then, I finally marked an item off my to-do list that had been on there for FAR too long; I dumped GoDaddy and (with the help of my husband who is way smarter than me) stood up hosting for my website myself and gave the website a little facelift. Before the end of January, a publisher wanted to see the full manuscript. Before I knew it, I had my first offer from the same publisher. I thought to myself, holy crap! How could it be this easy?!
Well, it wasn’t. The proposal was with a hybrid publisher who, while selective, required a pretty hefty investment on the part of the author. As attractive as the offer was, I said I wasn’t ready to commit to it yet. I told myself that if 2019 came to a close and I didn’t have any other prospects, I’d go back to the table and take the deal. Over the next 6 months, I sent over 20 more query submissions, one of which I didn’t hear back from until the last day of the year, and it was one of the three I’d sent on January 1! (That’s got to be some record.)
In July, I got a response back from another publisher. This one was local, a small but traditional independent press. The acquisitions editor and I sat down for coffee (outside, in August, in Austin… it gets hot in August in Austin). We discussed possibilities for Community Klepto, shook hands, and decided to move forward! This year, my primary goal is of course to put in the work to bring Community Klepto to market. We’re still editing, and there’s no date yet, but I’m excited about working with Lit City Press to make this book happen! Outside of Community Klepto, I have the following goals:
Lots to come in 2020! Hope y’all will be along for the ride…
Leave a CommentI put off writing my query letter for Community Klepto for way too long. After all, it feels almost reductive to turn years (many years, in my case) worth of work into a three-paragraph sales pitch some acquisitions editor at a publishing house who doesn’t give a crap about my work. It IS reductive. And it’s hard. But it’s also necessary, and will make or break you as an author. So, I made myself sit down and do it.
On some advice from the brilliant Rachelle Gardner, I pulled a couple of my favorite books off the shelf and took a look at the back cover. I was able to get a few lines out but still struggled with how to write about myself. At one time in; my life, I had a side job as a freelance writer, doing other people’s online dating profiles, so I am intimately familiar with people not being good at writing about themselves. The more I spun my wheels with writing my query, the more I felt like I was trying to write an online dating profile…
So I did just that. I started applying the same principles that I employed as a profile writer to my query; and you know what? It worked. I was able to step out of my hamster wheel and actually come up with a pitch that was worth a damn. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the query letter was really just a dating profile for my book. So if you’re struggling with how to write a really good query, try applying some of these dating profile writing techniques –
ADJECTIVE LISTS, NO.
No one wants to read a dating profile that’s just list of boring adjectives that you think describes you. Likewise, no publisher wants to hear you talk about how your book is visceral, humorous, horrifying and uplifting. It’s just not convincing. What is convincing, though, is humor that comes through in your voice when you talk about your book’s plot, its characters, its setting.
PAINT A PICTURE
Reading is an experience. A publisher can’t get a feel of what that experience will be like for a reader if you don’t give it to them in your query. Rather than describe or summarize your work, paint a picture of what it’s like to be inside your book. Pick out a specific scene or character trait that can take the place of those boring lists of adjectives you’re supposed to be avoiding.
KEEP IT SHORT
Yes, publishers and agents read for a living. That doesn’t mean they want to open a query submission only to be confronted by a wall of text. Keep your query to three paragraphs – four max. Here I employ another freelance writing gig’s strategies: Groupon. First paragraph, introduce the concept and create an experience the publisher can be a part of. Second paragraph, tell the publisher what they’re buying if they get your book. Third paragraph, talk about you. You have to do it at some point and this keeps the focus on the work. (Of course, these rules are completely different for non-fiction authors.
Of course there is a lot more advice on query letter writing out there, but the dating profile strategy really helped me make my query into something I can be confident putting in front of publishers and agents. Now I just have to actually do that… stay tuned.
Leave a CommentYesterday, I received a rejection letter for four poems I sent as a manuscript submission to a literary journal. It had been a while since I had submitted anything – I’ve been heads down focused on getting my third novel ready for primetime – so I went and checked the submission record. Turns out there was a reason memory of this poetry submission had receded to the dark depths of brain nothingness; I had submitted it all the way back in February. For those counting, that’s nine months (and one day, to be exact).
By comparison, it only took Bank of America seven months to issue me the escrow refund from my refinance, but I digress…
I won’t name names or anything, but it’s a literary journal run by the graduate creative writing program at a college you would probably not know by name. They do have a couple things in their favor: they allow simultaneous submissions (so I didn’t have to have the poem under their sole consideration for the same length of time as a human pregnancy) and they do online submissions (so I didn’t have to send in a self-addressed stamped envelope in the frigidness of February). But looking at the auto-response I received when I submitted my poems way back during the last winter, it read: We’ll consider your work carefully and get back to you in as timely a manner as we can. Apparently the better part of a year is the timeliest a manner they can muster.
Not 2 minutes before I received this email, I also got one from another academia-run literary journal I have submitted to in the past (since once you submit, you receive their spam forever), asking me to donate so that the journal can be saved. It’s not the first journal to ask for “save us” donations, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But it did make me stop and ask the question – are these types of literary journals really worth saving anymore?
No one reads them anymore.
Content in all forms has moved online and the departments still putting out annually published print journals are relying on smaller and smaller audiences of circulation. Even the journals I have been published in, I rarely read the other works that are included alongside mine. Everyone will say that if you’re going to submit to a journal you should also subscribe to it, but who really does that? I certainly don’t, and I don’t know anyone who does. Besides, if I subscribed to every journal I submitted to, I would go broke.
There is no money in it anymore.
In fact, many journals have taken to charging writers to submit to their journals, sometimes calling these “maintenance fees” to defray the cost of taking submissions online. Some journals say they will pay writers with copies, but (like I said) no one reads these copies and last time I checked, the self-checkout lane at my grocery store doesn’t have a slot that accepts literary journals as payment. Few of the journals that once paid writers for their work are still doing this, if they are even still in existence.
There is zero incentive for the writer.
Why would anyone spend the better part of a year trying to find a literary journal to publish his or her work for zero dollars’ worth of reward? Especially when they can publish a piece or a collection of their work on any number of online publishing platforms in minutes, not months, and sell it for more than zero dollars. For prestige? Of the literary journals I have been published in, very few of them are around anymore, and apart from the academic creative writing elite, no one has heard of them anyway.
Maybe you disagree with me and think we as writers need to do everything in our power to save the grand old institution that is the Clever Name Review, courtesy of the MFA program in creative writing at Nowheresville University. Or maybe I’m right, and we need be thinking about what we can do to usher in the next technology that will replace these outdated mediums. What do you think?
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In the before time, the long long ago (circa Feb 2010), Kelly I. Hitchcock had her first two poems accepted for publication by Clackamas Literary Review. These poems were Crayola Caste System and Skipping Stones. Many moons passed and Kelly began to wonder when the journal would be published and whether she should start sending some of her work to other journals. After all, this was one of those ancient texts which operate on mailed in submissions and federal grant funding. She at one point even used a telephone device to contact the Clackamas English department after several electronic mail pony expresses went unanswered; she just wanted to know if and when the fruits of her labor would appear on the page of this mysterious volume.
Well, just three short years later, that day is finally here. As of May 2013, the 2010 edition (I know, right?) of Clackamas Literary Review is finally published, along with the two poems that were accepted all those years ago. You can even purchase it on this newfangled thing called Amazon.
Okay, I poke fun a little bit. It’s certainly a poorly kept secret that the publishing industry is slow-ass-slow. Even so, a three year publication timeline for work that was already submitted by contributors and accepted by the editing staff is embarrassingly slow. I mean, in over three years, the following things have happened:
The work computer on which I wrote Crayola Caste System was two work computers ago.
The guy I was seeing (?) at the time I wrote Skipping Stones is now engaged to someone else, and I am married to someone else.
Obama was elected to a second term.
I had ten other poems and short stories get accepted and published by other literary journals.
I published one novel and wrote another.
Still, I never take a publication for granted. Any time I can have my work be accepted by a journal, it is a distinct honor, and having these two poems appear in Clackamas Literary Review is no exception. We all know it’s tough for print journals these days, but I can’t help but look at this situation with an adapt-or-die viewpoint. If it takes a publisher three years to go to print, eventually its reputation for slow-ass-slow publication timelines will supersede its reputation for quality contributions. Also, if you’re going to charge people to buy the print journal using online retailers such as Amazon, wouldn’t it be easy enough to offer it for electronic reading and open a new revenue stream?
But hey, that’s why I’m the writer and not the business person. And if you have $10 to spare, feel free to grab yourself a copy of the 2010 edition of Clackamas Literary Review. And maybe the 2011 issue in 2015, or the 2012 issue in 2025…
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It’s that goal-reflection and goal-setting time of year. The time when the whole world reflects on its activities completed in the year as it comes to a close, and determines what activities will transpire in the year to come. And buys a gym membership they use a lot in January, sparingly in February, and completely give up on by March.
I, for the record, spent far more days of 2012 in the gym than skipping it. So, what writerly activities did I complete in the last year?
I read 60 books.
Not to be all braggy, but that’s more than a book a week. The secret wasn’t having more time, although quitting my shockingly low-paying freelance gig did free up a little bit more time, the secret was having more access. I started volunteering for the library, which meant I could bring something home every week, download audiobooks to my iPod Touch, and borrow Kindle books. I had never really gotten into audiobooks before, but I found it to be a great reading addition for certain activities like lifting weights, putting away laundry, and walking to the bank.
I finished writing my second novel
It was a collaborative effort between an academic, eleven women with tattoos, and a handful of tattoo artists. The writing part was great; in fact I think it’s one of the best things I have ever written in my lifetime. Getting a publisher was a bjillion times easier than what I experienced with my first book, but boy howdy going through the hoops of the book deal process is hard. I’m not sure if it’s actually hard, or if it just feels that way, but stay tuned because it’s going to be hitting the shelves before you know it… I hope.
My first novel celebrated its first birthday
And in its first year, it got over 5,000 promotional downloads, and had significantly far less paid copies sold. It got 14 reviews on Amazon, only one of which was a 1-star-er, 3 reviews on Barnes and Noble, and 18 ratings on Goodreads. It made it to the semi-final round of The Kindle Book Review best independent book of 2011 contest. It also pissed off my mom.
I started writing my third novel
Full disclosure – it’s barely one chapter at this point, but it’s going to rock. It’ll also be my first novel-length work that uses true chapters instead of a series of short stories. We’ll see how the long form story works out for me.
I wrote other stuff
A handful of poems, a couple flash fiction pieces, nothing too crazy, and not nearly as much as I should have written. I only got a couple of things featured or published, which I again should have hit harder.
Yep, that was 2012. So what’s 2013 going to bring, besides more steady gym time (I do, after all, have to fit into a wedding dress)? Here are my goals, in no particular order.
Authors – always be looking to improve your writing, your platform, and your abdominals. My New Year’s Resolution, for the record, is to schedule my tweets each week so I am consistently building my platform. And to floss more.
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