Step 2: Try Not To Cry (But Cry Anyway)

I suppose the real reason for starting this blog is to be able to channel my successes and failures in a healthy way. Facebook has never really felt like the best place to write about my feelings; it always seemed a little too in-your-face to me, in that people don't really have a choice whether to read about your dead cat or not. In ur [blank], [blanking] ur [blank], as we used to say back in the days of LiveJournal.

I do miss LiveJournal a great deal. There was something totally raw about chronicling my early twenties completely unfiltered. I'm not sure if the Great Facebook Migration of 2009 caused everyone to be more guarded in this age of superficiality, or I simply matured beyond sharing every inane detail of my pitiful existence. Whatever the case, I feel like my true voice disappeared and was replaced by the TL;DR version of myself, the here's-everything-great-that-is-happening-to-me-and-I'll-spare-you-the-details-of-my-innermost-thoughts summary. Facebook's lack of editing features didn't help things; I mean, how can I really emphasize how emo I am if I can't even use italics when I'm ranting? At least I found a way around the strikethrough feature (sort of). And they finally added gifs, which pleases me greatly.

Indeed you did, Facebook. YUGE.

Anyway. Reading about other authors' challenges has helped me immensely, so I'm going to share my current failures hiccups with you. My problems are a drop in the bucket, and I'm paying the same dues any newbie in this business inevitably has to cough up, but maybe reading about my plight will give you hope that you are, in fact, not alone.

To give you a little background: I graduated from the University of California, San Diego, with a Bachelor's in Visual Arts (after flunking out of the aforementioned biology department in my previous post). My dream was to become a comic book artist, but I specifically wanted to write and illustrate graphic novels in the vein of Blankets and Fun Home. I was on the right track--I won TokyoPop's Rising Stars of Manga contest in 2008, and was developing a story to pitch to them per the contest prize.

But TokyoPop made a lot of terrible mistakes right after the RSOM anthology book was published and the whole company eventually imploded, and my idea was shelved for the better part of a decade. It wasn't until this year that I was financially stable enough to revisit it, and when I sat down to work on it I fully intended for it to be a graphic novel. I decided to write the first chapter in novelization form to help me set the story and script the dialogue, and before I knew it I had four more chapters. Four turned into ten, then ten into twenty, and suddenly I had a 90,000-word manuscript on my hands.

Is that how these things happen?

I never really considered myself a great writer. Even my RSOM story wasn't an original idea; the story was adapted from one of my favorite songs as a teenager, Strawberry Wine by Deana Carter. My dad is a retired investigative reporter, so I guess you could argue that the pedigree is there, and yeah, I wrote my fair share of terrible Jaina Solo/Jag Fel fanfiction back in the day and I will never tell you where to find it because OMG it's so bad, but I've never taken a creative writing class in my life.

So, what to do?

Well, I beta-ed it out to a good friend of mine who is an actual writer (you know, with real books and credits to his name), and he encouraged me to pursue the story. He thought it was an original enough idea that it was worth querying out. My first question was: What the hell is a query?

Oh, boy.

The learning curve was pretty steep. I didn't know anything about the writing industry when I started on this adventure, but I found out pretty quickly just how hard it is to 'make it'. I'll admit, I'm making all kinds of newbie mistakes: doubting my abilities, becoming too invested in this one story, taking rejection personally, etc.

WHY U NO LOVE ME???

However. (Cue bad anime dub.)

I found that I really enjoy writing. I have other ideas. Failure has not stopped me from continuing my exploration in the writing field. And I am at the very beginning of my journey with this particular story, so I'm not about to quit. Here are the stats so far:

Defining Lines, Contemporary YA Romance, 90K words:

• 14 Query letters
• 2 Requests for full manuscripts
• 3 Rejections
• 9 Unknowns

That's not so bad for a couple of weeks of querying, right? I got two requests for a full right off the bat, so I suppose my cover letter is hitting the right spot. One rejection was from an agent who had read the full, but said agent is also at the top of their game, so it didn't come as any great surprise. And although I wished I had gotten some feedback on what worked and what didn't, I also recognize that agents are inundated with queries all day, errry day, so it is what it is.

Onward and upward.

I'll try to keep my excitement in my pants.