My First (of many?) Embarrassing Moment In Publishing…

So I get this email from my new editor:

To: Christy Raedeke
Subject: Don't worry . .

I am going to get you notes, etc. on PoD. Brian and I have talked about it and he’s excited about the premise. I think he’ll be even more excited once he gets into the text.

More soon,
AK

I read it and think, what the hell is PoD? I Google the acronym for an hour, in various configurations with words like "edit" and "manuscript" trying to get hip to the whole publishing slang. Can’t find much, so I assume his edits are so big that he’s binding them into a Print On Demand (PoD) book. Realizing I should go ahead and clarify rather than assume anything, I email back:

To: Editor AK
Subject: RE: Don't worry . . .

Print on demand? Payable on death? I’m so sorry I don’t know what PoD means.

Cheers,
Christy

To which he replies:

To: Christy Raedeke
Subject: Don't worry . .

PoD = “Prophecy of Days.” You’re officially working with a publishing house. All books get acronyms.

AK
----

Oh, that. Yes, of course. My book’s title.
It honestly never occurred to me. Doh!

8 - 12 - 8

Here is the publishing agreement. Here are my hands. I probably shouldn’t have made that deal with the Devil about cutting off my left index finger for a book contract.

I finally got the courage to sign it!

Hereinafter referred to as…

I now have in my possession a contract for two books with Flux, an edgy new imprint for teens. On this publishing agreement my name appears and is then followed by these words:

Hereinafter referred to as “Author”

Seeing those five words written after my name has been a dream of mine for decades. It was first a dream so big I put it in the better-to-never-try-than-fail category. Slowly, I circled around it and poked at it until it seemed less daunting. I took endless classes, read all the books, and then I started in earnest. Five years after I typed the first bits of this story I now have an amazing agent and a two-book deal with an editor I respect immensely.

I’m having trouble signing the contract. I ruffle through the glorious 18 pages and gaze at the Hereinafter sentence often, but I can’t get to the last page to sign it. I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s because writing my name on this contract—however small or large the books may turn out to be—will forever put me on the other side of this dream. And that’s a weird concept.

Soul Food

I’m leaving again for the woods. It has been a good week, a very good week, and camping along a beautiful river under a full moon is the perfect way to extend the goodness.

Today’s non sequitur: Writing = India

I’ve been thinking a lot about India lately. Scott and I traveled there about ten years ago but my memory of it is as sharp as it was the day I left. It is a country that leaves an impression. India assaults you in every way—with its crowds, with its smells, with its heat, with its swindlers, and with its beauty.

Anywhere else in the world you can get in a cab and say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and you’d actually be taken to restaurant X. In India you say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and then you are taken to the cab driver’s brother-in-law’s parents’ restaurant. “Is much better here,” the cabbie will say, unapologetically collecting your money even though he’s taken you someplace you didn’t ask to go. “And tell them Dinesh sent you,” he’ll add before zooming off.

The one place I really wanted to see in India was Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first teaching and introduced his doctrine of peace. Sarnath is outside of intensely populated Varansi, which is, at about 3,000 years old, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It's situated on the banks of Ganges River where throngs of Indians come every morning, descending the stepped ghats to bathe, pray, and brush their teeth. No one seems to mind if the ghat they 're using is next to a crematorium where relatives wait next to burning funeral pyres for bodies to become ashes so they can scatter them in the Ganges. There might be more DNA in that river than water.

When we got to Varanasi, Scott didn’t feel well so I set out on my own. I was going to save the big sightseeing for when he was better, so I thought I’d check out a sari silk shop. I got the name of a good one from a guy at our hotel who gave me a card with precise directions for the cab driver to follow. Of course, the cab driver ignored the address. Instead of going deeper into the labyrinthine city, this guy started driving me out of town. I leaned over a couple of times, pointing to the name and address on the card I clutched, and the driver would nod vigorously. When we finally stopped it was at a wholesale fabric warehouse far from the city. “This is best silk in India,” he said, pointing to his meter to show me how many rupees I owed him. “And tell them Pradeep sent you.”

The man in the warehouse helped me call a cab to get back, but of course the driver had other plans for me. This time, though, it was not about commerce. “To Rishipattana?” he asked. I shook my head and handed him a card with my hotel’s name and address. He looked at it and handed it back. “You have been to Rishipattana?” he asked. I said no, but I wanted to go straight back to the hotel. He started driving and in less than two minutes I understood; Rishipattana was another name for Sarnath. The driver stopped, rightly assuming I'd want to visit this sacred place, and put his palm over the meter. It couldn’t have been much—it turned out the fabric warehouse was only about a mile away—but in my experience of India, not accepting money was rare.

At last, I had been taken somewhere I had planned on going. Just not that day. Or in that way.

I suppose I’m thinking of India because it’s very much like writing a novel. You know where you want to go, you just don’t know how you’re going to get there. Or if you’ll be taken somewhere else entirely.

I’m about 40 pages from finishing my current work in progress and I feel like I’m stepping in to a cab in India. Despite having a good idea about where I want to go, I have no idea where I’ll end up.

I'm only posting to get rid of that clown

Over the weekend we took a vacationette to a hotel in the town 12 miles north of here just to swim, order embarrassing amounts of room service, and sleep in a place where every sheet and towel was clean at the same time. Now and then I find it sweet to have our little family sleeping together in 600 square feet of space; there’s something vaguely Little House on the Prairie about it. Plus, when I get home it makes me appreciate my own child-free bed—excessively and immoderately dressed in just the right combination of thread count, white down feather count, and pillow loft—even more.

Now I’m back in front of my computer, my weekly volunteer gig in Juliet’s class is finished, and I’m digging in to the manuscript. I’ll set a weekly goal for myself here, just so it’s in print: one chapter a day, three days in a row. That’s three chapters by Friday. Can I put it any more plainly, self?

The view from my window is wet and green and my mind feels just as fertile. Here I go…

Cue the Funeral Dirge

So I opened my blog today and read the last few entries and wondered when the plaintive violin music was going to start. Geeze, lighten up, man! Since I’m obviously incapable of writing anything unelegiac right now, I bring you: Jokes From Around the World.

According to the Internet, which is always right, these are the top jokes in various countries. If we can glean anything at all from this collection it’s that Belgium should stick solely to beer and chocolate as exports.

US:
A man walks into a bar..........OUCH!

England:
A turtle was walking down an alley in New York when he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened.

The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his face and replied “I don't know, it all happened so fast.”

Belgium:
Why do ducks have webbed feet?
To stamp out fires.
Why do elephants have flat feet?
To stamp out burning ducks.

Italy:
How do you get Holy Water?
You boil the Hell out of it.

Hermit Weekend

You’d think I was going to Hawaii, considering how excited I am to go away this weekend. I’m just going to my Mom’s cabin, about an hour and a half away, but it means one thing: momentum will not be lost!

I hit page 100 in my manuscript yesterday. Okay, there are only two words on page 100, but still. I got there. I only have 17 days until kids are out of school and any dedicated writing time is gone, so I’m going to make the most of the next three weeks. In 48 hours away this weekend I hope to get 30-40 pages written; that’s about 7,000 – 9,000 words. It’s a push, but being without distraction will make it possible.

Once I’m near 150 pages, mass and velocity pick up and momentum cannot be stopped! (She says with hope.)

Thanks to the Moody's for the cabin, and thanks to my husband for taking over weekend kid duty.

HTV (Hermit Television)

There’s just no accounting for taste. Or for obsessions. I can’t tell you why I’m obsessed with hermits, but I can tell you today is a banner day if you happen to be interested in hermits too—there are hermit videos on YouTube!

Yes, now if you’ve ever wanted to see the inside of a hermit cave you can click HERE, or if you want to stare into the face of meditating yogis in solitude you can click HERE.

And really, who doesn't?

Fetish Garden

Does anyone else do things that feel completely normal to you, but may seem bizarre or superstitious to others?

Amongst the requisite computer-related items on my desk sits a tray with collection of various trinkets, my Fetish Garden. It holds a clan Cameron badge, a jade three-legged toad, an ingot, coins from countries I’ve visited in a small clay bowl that my son made, a prism with the Mayan calendar carved in it, a replica Egyptian monkey inkwell filled with shells that I picked up from Big Sur after I’d won an award at a writing workshop there, and a carved stone my Mom gave me before surgery, among other things.

I realize these items have meaning only because I have ascribed it to them, but I still find it hard to start my day without acknowledging my garden of oddities or end the day without straightening them up.

Must. Go. Make. Stuff. Up.

Today I have to take my own advice and just get my asp in the chair and open my manuscript.

Yesterday I was working on a freelance project that involved far too much of my left brain: reworking citations in an essay bound for an MIT Press anthology. This is dull work, closer to tweaking html code than writing—Chicago Style, MLA Style, Turabian Style, they all have their own weird little rules to follow and translating one to the other is tedious¹⁰. For me, this is the soul-sucking part of freelance writing.

Working on non-fiction projects, especially anything academic, always throws off my fiction writing for a while. After double checking each and every word or date to make sure it follows specific citation style rules, it feels a bit weird to sit down and write with no parameters. I can write a sentence without having to hit the “insert endnote” shortcut key? Really? I can just, you know, make stuff up?

The day before last it was over 80 degrees and yesterday five inches of snow fell on the newly mowed lawn. If the weather can move that quickly from one extreme to the other, why can’t I?

Stalking Your Agent's Other Clients

If you are lucky enough to secure representation by a big-time Literary Agent, here are three things you should never do:

1) Never put your Literary Agent’s name on Google Alerts so that you can be notified every damn time they make a sale or sign a client.

2) Never collect a list of other writers they represent, either culled by disregarding my #1 piece of advice or by typing the agent’s name into Amazon to see which authors thank her/him in their acknowledgments, or by any other cunning method yet unknown to me.

3) If you’ve already gone as far as #2, for God’s sake do not, for any reason, spend an evening web-hunting the writers who have made it on this list. You must realize that writers will only list successes on their blogs/websites, which, after reading, will lead directly to some serious self loathing.

There’s a reason most agents don't tell their clients the names of their other clients. Because reading the chipper websites and blogs of writers recently signed to your agent, all full of hope and promise and – ugh – good news, can do nothing positive for your writing. If you’re looking to get a bleeding ulcer they’re top notch, other than that there’s no reason to do this kind of stalking research.

Maybe this whole path to publication, which for me has been one gigantic, slowly meted dose of discomiture, is designed to toughen you up for when your manuscript is published and gets reviewed. Maybe it’s like how being unable to sleep well while pregnant prepares you for the next decade of sleep deprivation. Or maybe my manuscript just sucks.

I don’t know much but I do know this: Google Alerts is a gateway drug to full-blown peer stalking and the inevitable ego mangling that it induces. I wish I’d never taken that first hit, because now I can’t stop...

The internet isn’t the only place to publish crap.

I live in a small town called Ashland, known for its mineral springs and theater. I grew up here and couldn’t wait to leave when high school was over, but after 16 years away, I couldn’t wait to move back. It was a bit like spawning.

I delivered my children in the same small hospital where I was born, my daughter is the Bellview Bobcat that I was long ago, and I only live a short walk from the house in which I grew up. Because this is a small town, I know the people who bought that house. Decades later they still live there; he was my old English teacher and she's the children’s librarian at our local branch. I go to the library often and almost every time I see her she mentions the cutting board.

I was tortured by my older sister, positively tortured. Ask anyone, they’ll agree. I couldn’t fight back so I struck with words—including some choice ones hidden under the cutting board. I remember the day I carved the cruel words about her there, thinking no one would ever get under the thing. I had just made a cup of Personal Frosting, you know a little powdered sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk, all stirred together in a mug and eaten with a spoon. (Admit it; the frosting is the destination. Who needs cake?) I sat on the kitchen floor and looked up at the cutting board that was pulled out above my head and though, perfect. I can’t remember what she had done that day to piss me off, but my thoughts about her that day are now recorded forever.

Who knew Mrs. C would keep her cookbooks in the cupboard under the cutting board? Who knew she’d enjoy sitting on the kitchen floor next to her open cupboard browsing those books? Who knew she’d ever pull out the cutting board and look up while down there?

I saw Mrs. C again today at the library and the first thing my kids asked her was, “Do you still live in Mom’s old house?” They love the cutting board story, no matter how many times it’s told…

Words live on; be careful where you publish.

My Escher Moment

In Making a Literary Life, the book I mentioned in my last post, author Carolyn See talks about the power of the Charming Note. She suggests a five-day a week habit of two things: 1) either writing 1000 words or doing two hours of revision and 2) sending out a Charming Note to a writer, editor, or agent you admire (that does not ask a favor).

So after I wrote about Making a Literary Life, I thought I’d send Carolyn See a Charming Note about how much I loved it, and include a link to the post. Guess what? She wrote back! How great is it to get a Charming Note responding to my Charming Note about the Charming Note’s author of a book about Charming Notes?

While I felt like an idiot because I implied it was her book that spooked my long-lost friend, and while being described as "chipper" does nothing for my Street Cred®, Ms. See’s Charming Note was a fantastically charming treat:

Dear Christy!

That's the cutest damn thing I ever saw! (But I can't help but wonder what spooked the other woman so much!)

Thank you, dear. You were just so sweet to write it -- and to send it to me. Might it be possible to connect on to my web site? I don't know how to do that, but if I forward it to my web master, might she glue it on somehow?

I love the rest of your blog too. It's so chipper!

Many, many many thanks...

xxx

Carolyn See

Five Writers, Five Days

Today is a very special day. My writer’s critique group has decided to start a blog, and today was the first post. At last night’s meeting we hashed out who would post on what day and I didn’t take into consideration that I’d be following Julie, writer and English teacher extraordinaire. She posted first and set the bar high—including graphics! Now every Friday I’m going to post some lame thing that disappoints everyone who has read her Thursday post.

Anyway, I’m deep into working on an article on the ethics of OB-GYNs pushing Botox® and lipo, so I gotta go. But check out the Lithia Writer’s Collective blog!

The more you think about it, the harder it is.

If I ever had to have a fully rendered image of what I was going to write before I started, I’d never open another document. This took me a long, long time to figure out. Some writers speak so romantically of The Muse, of nighttime dreams that turn into four-pound manuscripts that, in a fluke, are read by important agents, sold for hundreds of thousands, and then become best sellers. Stories like this will make you want to create a seductive environment for The Muse and then wait for her to appear.

For me, The Muse never comes when asked and certainly never drops by; I have to chase Her down with all the intensity of a celebrity stalker. I have to capture The Muse, tie her to a chair, put the chair in a pit, and then, if the bird feeders are full, I can write. Because I’m a writer who doesn’t really know what’s going to happen until it does. Sure, with my current manuscript I have a general idea of plot line, but I also know what I have planned for tomorrow and I’m quite sure that life will interfere and what I imagine will happen will not really be what happens.

Each day I force myself to sit in the chair, force myself to open the document, force myself to hunt and peck my way into a story. And that, my worldwide blog audience of six, is my writing process.

So if you are sitting around waiting for The Muse, I encourage you to just get your butt in the chair. She may not come, but you’ll be there. Put your hands on the keys and begin…

It's about the people, people.

You know when you have so much to say about something that you can’t say anything at all? That’s how I feel about the Chiapas trip. It was both magical in unexpected ways and mundane in disappointing ways, but overall it was an amazing experience in an exquisitely beautiful place. Having ten days to think, without the “real world” of kids, TV, phone, email, and writing, was an enormous indulgence.

I have never been on a group tour, and never thought I would. But for some reason this one appealed to me. My general disdain for tours comes from my deep, dark need for complete control, but by giving up the control of planning the travel I freed myself up in ways I hadn't anticipated. I suppose you don’t really know how anxious being in control can make you until you relinquish it.

One unexpected delight of group travel was meeting like-minded people. I was really surprised at the level of education most travelers had; I suppose I thought since this tour was a Nueva Age thing it would attract the flakier types. I must say, I felt like a dolt with my paltry B.A. in Journalism among the many PhDs, MDs, and JDs. Everyone on the tour was simpatico, but there was definitely a front-of-the-bus group and a back-of-the-bus-gang. I loved the delight of making easy friends; in a way the tour was a pre-screening, a net that caught only those who liked to believe in mystery and magic and the possibility that ancient knowledge can have an impact on our modern lives. I hadn’t had that first-week-in-the-dorm feeling for a long time—that sense that I was meeting with people with whom I was making life-long connections. It was refreshing and restorative.

Most surprising, though, was what it did to my writing. I tried to actively not think about the new manuscript, to put the 45 pages already written on simmer in the back brain. Every once in awhile it would bubble over and I’d note a new idea, turn the heat down, and go back to not thinking about it. By the time I was on the plane home I had a fully flushed out plotline. This never happens. Now I’m anxious to get the thing written and have given myself an outrageous deadline of six weeks for the next 200 pages! Once school gets out my time is not my own and I can’t do much writing, only revising, so I’m running scared from June 13^th. But I can do it!

Okay, so much for not being able to write anything about the trip.

At what point can tequila be a tax write off?

I love to pack for a trip. I’d put it up there with skiing and eating frosting on my Favorite Things list. In fact, it might even eclipse the act of traveling itself.

I’m leaving for the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas early Tuesday morning and I’ve been packing for three weeks now. I thought it was a little too OCD to start a month out, so all through February I held back the urge. I had good control until February 29 turned up - damn you, Leap Year! So I started anyway; why should I suffer because the Western World can’t come up with a calendar that doesn’t have to be adjusted every four years?

But I digress, and I know you want to get back to my riveting thoughts on packing for Mexico.

I’ll be visiting some of the most spectacular cities of the ancient Maya - research for one of my Young Adult projects. I’m most excited about spending time with a Daykeeper (basically a calendar expert, the Maya have 20 amazingly intricate calendar wheels) and learning more about Maya cosmology, especially in relation to the muy mysterioso 2012 end date of one of their calendars.

In addition to cosmology, I’m also interested in tequila. I’m thinking about pitching a mini book on tequila so I can write off my consumption without actually having to write too mas about it. What do you think, editors? Any takers? World rights go for a bottle of Del Maguey Mezcal Tobala and a basket of limes!

More from the Mundo Maya to come. Adios!

Caution: Cheating and tight pants can result in physical pain.

When I was in high school, back in the early 80s when we wore tight jeans with names like San Francisco Riding Gear and worked the kinks out of what would later become known as the Camel Toe, the future of computers seemed dubious. We had a couple machines in a computer lab somewhere, touched mostly by the boys who took AP Math, so we thought of them as giant, non-portable calculators. “Those things will never catch on,” we’d say, rolling our blue-shadowed eyes.

I had to take Mrs. McCracken’s Typing Basics junior year (yes, on a real live typewriter a la Mark “I was the first person in the world to apply the typemachine to literature" Twain). I couldn’t see the point. I distinctly remember remarking, “I don’t need to know how to type, I’m going to have a secretary…” I can’t recall what I thought I was going to grow up to be, but whatever it was it involved having a secretary to touch those loathsome keys.

When I saw that I had Typing right after morning break, I hatched a brilliant plan. Mrs. McCracken always wrote the day’s lesson on the board, so I’d go in during break and pretend to practice while I’d really be carefully typing the day’s lesson slowly, without mistakes. Then in class when we’d have our time test, I’d just type crazily like a 4 year old, throw away that gobbledygook, and then turn in the previously constructed work. I aced the class, and came out completely unable to type. My foresight could not have been cloudier.

So now, as a freelance writer who is paid to type, I still hunt and peck. I’m fast, sure, really fast actually, but in a jerky, nonsensical, start-and-stop way. A lot like I drive. Most disappointing, though, is the physical pain my cheating has brought on. I have carpel tunnel in both wrists because of the weird way that I hold my hands as I pounce on letters. A constant, chronic reminder that The Adults were right--cheating only hurts the cheater.

"Cosmic irony" bonus: My first real job out of college was at Microsoft.

Yeah, those things will never catch on...

Who Are You, Secret Reader?

When my agent picthed my manuscript to editors I realized I was free for awhile – free from the characters I had been working with for several years. It felt like I was on vacation from my family; I knew I’d see them again, but I could relax and enjoy the space between us.

Fortunately, that space produced two new book ideas that I didn’t even realize were brewing. In the first couple of weeks I couldn’t stop writing, scenes were just pouring out of me. I worked on both manuscripts simultaneously and then I hit a wall. I realized I had to be monogamous; I had to pick one and deepen my commitment.

I was torn on which one to pursue and my writer’s group was split on the decision. I decided to try Agent Laura to get an objective opinion on which she thought was more viable. She was heading off to a conference, so she sent them off to a Secret Reader to get an opinion until she could get to them. Apparently the agency has readers, kept anonymous to the clients, that review work when even the agent needs a second, objective opinion. Personally, I love the idea of a Secret Reader – I want complete honesty and only someone who has no stake in whether or not you like them can be unabashedly, brutally critical or, on the other hand, give you a genuine compliment.

Yesterday I received the comments from said Secret Reader and was delighted that s/he had such good things to say. One manuscript was strongly preferred over the other, and supporting reasons were given. All of it was true true true, but unable to be seen by me.

Forging ahead with MS #1!