Archive for August 2009
Waiting
It’s been a week since I sent my full manuscript to the publisher, and I know she received it on Thursday of last week. I promised myself I’d wait patiently for a response–good or bad–whatever it may be; but boy, is it hard. Plus, yesterday, my husband, son and I went to see Julie and Julia. The movie’s about a young woman who writes a blog about her experiences while cooking her way through all the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook. The movie is based on a true story–two actually–and was very good. But I couldn’t help but wonder, how many other people watched that movie while waiting for their own response from a publisher? The writer, Julie, had actually had a movie produced based on her blog. I can’t even imagine the odds of this happening. I cheered for Julie the whole way through the movie, I applaud her talent, especially because I haven’t quite figured out this blogging thing.
For instance, now that Nationals are over and I’ve told my story about attending my first RWA National Conference, what do I write about while I’m waiting to hear from the editor about my book?
I guess, I could tell you about my new laptop. I just got my first Mac–a MacBook Pro. I’ve never owned a Mac before, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it when it arrived. So, I went to B&N and bought a MacBook for Dummies book and I’m on my way. I still can’t figure out how to make my applications open up in full screen view, but I did learn how to grab the lower right-hand corner and drag it to the size I want. I LOVE the speed. My old desktop had really reached it’s limit where speed was concerned, which was a real problem for me because I’m not a patient person when it comes to computers. When I tell it to open a file, I expect the file to open. I don’t want to go to the bathroom, take a shower, and come back to wait some more for the stupid file to open. So, I think I made a good choice in my Mac. I admit, I had some help from my office computer technicians, who were very informative when I went to them for advice before picking which laptop to buy. So, to all you Mac fans out there, I’ve joined your numbers.
Now, back to my favorite subject — WRITING. Since I have my new laptop, I need to finish a project I’ve been working on for a while. It’s one I tend to procrastinate over because it’s a pretty complicated mystery plot, with lots of twists and a long buried secret that isn’t revealed until the end of the story. Plus, I do have a request from an agent for the first three chapters and a synopsis, which I have to get sent out before the end of the month. So, I’ll leave you for tonight and go work on Rose’s Secret.
1 comment August 18, 2009
A Rose by any other name…
…is still a ROSE! And that’s what I earned yesterday from my local RWA chapter for getting a full request for my manuscript. I’m very excited, as I’m sure all of you can imagine. As I promised last week, I wanted to let you know what happened at Nationals during my pitch appointments. I didn’t start out very well, because I didn’t follow the advice to “pace yourself” and went full steam ahead until I finally crashed on Friday afternoon, right before my appointment with an editor. You guessed it, I went to my room to rest and slept right through my pitch appointment. I don’t know if my alarm didn’t work or I slept through it, but it happened.
Luckily for me, the editors from Avalon are super, surper nice and the next morning I was able to set up an appointment with another Avalon editor. They were so understanding and sweet about it. And I got a request for a partial, which I sent on Monday. This was quickly followed by a request for the full manuscript — hence my earning a Rose from my local chapter, which is really a small token to celebrate my success. I’m still floating above the clouds, and I just hope the editor likes the rest of the story as much as she seems to have liked the partial. So, keep your fingers crossed for me; and I’ll let you know what happens next.
All in all, we had a 50/50 split among the four of us from my local chapter who attended and gave pitches, with two of us getting requests. One of us got a request from Harlequin after her first two editor appointments were cancelled, and I got the request from Avalon for my sweet romance and a request from an agent for my ghost story. Another was told she had a really good TV show, but needed a movie; and the fourth person was told she had a lot of good scenes but no story. So, we were kind of all over the board. The positive things I think we all got out of this are: (1) what started out as a potentially devastating experience for me, I was able to turnaround into a success, (2) cancelled appointments by one editor can lead to a successful pitch to another, and (3) we were all able to celebrate each others’ successes and commiserate when pitches didn’t work out as well, while at the same time being able to see the humor in our situations and keep a positive attitude.
All in all, I think everyone would agree we had a very enjoyable, successful conference; and we came back rejuvenated and excited about our writing. Now, we’re all scrambling to see how we can save enough for Nashville in 2010!
1 comment August 5, 2009
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