Category: The Writing Path

Posted in Agents, Getting Organized, Picture Books, Progress, querying, Research, The Writing Path

Query Prep: Researching Agents

Posted on by beckylevine

Luckily for me, I enjoy research. I like doing a quick search and seeing if I hit anything interesting on the first try. I like going down rabbit holes. And I like pulling my discoveries together into some kind of recognizable order.

All of which is a good thing. Because, as I started getting serious about agent research this month, I remembered that it is a particularly twisty-turny rabbit hole.

It’s pretty easy to find a list of picture book agents. It’s pretty easy to find an interview or a quote that tells you a tiny bit about the agent, what they like, and if/where you might connect. It’s pretty easy to start popping their names into a spreadsheet.

And it’s pretty easy to find a reason why you won’t be querying them.

I took a bit of time to set up a spreadsheet, with a tab for research and another tab to actually track queries. I know lots of people like QueryTracker, and I may go back to it when I actually start sending out queries. But I’m not very visual, so it helps me to see all the info in one place. If you decide to use a spreadsheet, obviously, you’ll set it up for the info you want to track. But I did this a little differently than the last time I was querying, so I thought I’d highlight some of the columns that I added this time around.

  • I have two columns for Publishers Marketplace rankings. One is for the agent’s ranking, and the other is for the agency ranking. This will let me watch for newer agents who may not have a lot of sales yet, but who are working at an established agency and who may have support from the more experienced agents there. I want to sort by this column, so for any agent/agency I can’t find a PM ranking for, I’m just entering 1,000, so those rows will filter down to the bottom of the list.
  • I have a column for whether or not an agent represents picture book, and I’m making sure to separate out those agents who are looking for authors and not just author/illustrators. Because I can barely draw a stick figure!
  • I have another column for whether or the agent is currently open to queries. This column was really frustrating me. I felt like I just kept bumping up against agent after agent who are not open to querying. I knew QueryTracker information included this info for each agent, so I posted in the 12X12 Facebook group and found out that the QT info is almost always accurate and up-to-date. So I did a filtered search there and came up with a list that only includes open agents. It was a decent length and has me feeling much less discouraged.
  • I added a column for the most recent date on which I’ve added research info for each agent. I remember, last time, not doing this and finding out that I was definitely not carrying that factor around in my memory.
  • I put in one more column for my own ranking of agents on a scale of 1-5, 1 being the agents that go to the top of my query list (and get added to the tab for actual querying and tracking). 4 is for the agents I would love to query, but who aren’t open right now or aren’t taking any more picture book authors. 5 is for the agents I don’t see myself ever being a fit with; again, if I delete them, I won’t remember that I’ve already researched; this keeps them on the spreadsheet, but out of sight. 2 and 3 are kind of nebulous, more a gut feel where I think the agent falls after my #1-ranked agents.

This is really getting into the weeds, and you may be reading it and saying, “Duh!” But I remember when I was first starting to do this, years ago, I felt like there was a lot of info floating around out there, and I wasn’t sure how to best organize it, and I kept finding info that didn’t fit into my spreadsheet. I’m feeling better about this one, even though I’m sure I’ll keep modifying it as I go.

So if you’re already set, my best wishes to you for a successful query path. If you find this helpful, I’m glad to have tossed it up here!

Posted in Progress, Revision, The Writing Path

Moving On: New Plan, New Path

Posted on by beckylevine

So for the past few months, I’ve been working to get a draft of the WIP done, for the possibility that I would get accepted into a SCBWI mentorship program. Best laid plans and all that, lots of reasons, that plan didn’t work out.

But I still have my finished draft!

My goal for this next pass has been to work with someone over time to strengthen a few building blocks of my story. The biggest challenges, in all my writing, but especially in my novels are

  • To come up with ideas for strong actions for my hero to take
  • To build a character-driven plot, where the things my  hero does are truly based in the person they are
  • To make my scenes part of a plot arc that grows in tension to the crisis/climax.

I don’t know why these are my sticking points, but they are, so I’ve got to deal with them. The rest of the WIP is still quite the mess, with about a gazillion unanswered questions, undeveloped side threads, and characters who kind of drop in and out of their own subplots at random. But those are all revision areas I feel like I can deal with. I have dealt with them on other projects. But these building blocks…

So I’m hiring an editor. I’ve done this before, to get some help on my first picture book, and the woman I worked with them also does middle-grade and is awesome sauce. She also just did a couple of more picture book edits for me, and her feedback was wonderful and brain-spark inciting. Anyway, she was open to my need for her to work on an earlier draft (let’s not go into how many drafts you can have and still call them “early,” okay?), to focus on a few specifics, and–hopefully, for her sake–to put aside the pain and heartburn of ignoring all the other elements that are still beyond rough.

So the manuscript is out there, if not to the place I originally expected it to be. I have the two picture book critiques to be revising from, as I try to bring two more books up to the as-ready-as-possible stage. And I’m keeping a notebook of Things That Occur To Me about the MG WIP, that I will want to tweak, strengthen, improve when I get that critique back and begin the work of re-stacking the blocks. Maybe even re-carving them.

I love revision, so in many ways, I’m really looking forward to the next step. But I know I’m also in this for the learning process, for understanding more than I do now about those elements I struggle with. I have this sense that now is the time to stop spinning in a circle, to climb out of the skill level I’ve been at for years. If not now, then when, right? So, yes, my end goal is still agent/aquisition/publication, but I’m trying hard not to focus on that goal for a bit (because it tends to play mind games with me.) Instead, my focus will stay on skill-building, strengthening myself as a writer, learning how to weave more power into the scenes I write.

“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”
-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

 

Posted in The Writing Path, Writing Goals, Writing Tools

Leveling Up on Craft (Hopefully)

Posted on by beckylevine

I wrote this post just before the election. And since then it has felt off and unimportant and irrelevant to be sticking it up on the Internet. It felt all of that to even be prioritizing my writing. But as I talked about here, creativity is still important, even if all it does is let us fall into a good place for a while so we can step back out and do battle. And maybe it’s important for the impact it has on our readers.

Anyway, I wrote a little bit last weekend, and that did help. This week and next are regular-life-busy, and I think still having all this other crud in my head makes the focus and time commitment harder. But regular-life will settle down and I will carve pieces of time and focus out to stick with my WIP and make progress. Because…and here’s what I was thinking about way back when.

I had a realization the other day. Well, kind of a two-fold realization. The first part was that I love this WIP enough and am writing some stuff in it that, I think, means it could be–if not The Book that gets me out there–the book that takes me to the next level of my writing.

The second part of the realization was that it could just as easily NOT be. I feel like I’m at the point where I can make just about any scene work–as a scene. I can create conflict, I can pull the balance of dialogue and action together, I can polish the words until they shine in an actual good way. But…I also feel like I could be doing that into infinity and beyond, over and over and over, without somehow making the story work as a whole. I can make tension build to a turning point in a chapter, but I’m not all that sure I can do it well/right over the story as a whole. I can produce, if need be, a set of perfectly fine, even good, chapters that still don’t make a book that holds together, that engages over all the pages, that keeps people reading to the end.

And I kind of want to do that.

So this next year is about getting off the plateau I’m on and climbing to the next peak.

climbing

The first step in this path, I can identify: Finish this draft, with care. I’m on Draft 3, and it’s the first one that feels like…something. I’m making myself slow down, get to some actual depth in each scene, reach for that truth about my main character and his journey. So steady progress on this, but without rushing, that’s where I’m at.

And then…I don’t know. I know there’s a new/different kind of learning for me here, and I know that recognizing the goal is a good thing. But I still don’t see the steps of the path clearly. I will probably do some more reading/re-reading of craft books–so if you have any new ones to suggest, please stick the titles in the comments! I am looking into more in-depth workshops and learning programs–specifically, I’m waiting to hear about next year’s Nevada SCBWI mentoring program. I may end up hiring a good editor, but that may stretch the old budget a bit too far. And I will ask my critique group and possibly some Beta readers to do a whole-manuscript read, focusing on the connections and the overall story arcs.

So I expect I’ll be exploring all this here at the blog. And I’d love to hear from any of you who have found yourself at a place where you wanted to level up–what you tried, what worked, what didn’t…it’s all helpful and good to hear about!

Posted in Plot, The Writing Path

There’s Plotting and there’s Planning…and Then There are Surprises

Posted on by beckylevine

I’m a plotter, never a pantser. Would I love to be (more of) a pantser. Oh, heck, yes. In writing and in life. In life, I’m a planner, although I will stake a claim to have loosened up at least somewhat in the last decade or so. But I love and use lists and calendars, and if they’re not crutches, they are definitely tools.

Still, I’m learning to welcome surprises, even when they sneak up on me without too much warning. As I headed into Asilomar two Fridays away, I knew that I hadn’t really identified what I wanted to get out of the conference. I had hopes and dreams, as we always do, but I hadn’t done much visualization or intentionalizing–probably fear of failing at those dreams was getting in my way. It turned out well, though, because the big surprise (for me) was how resoundingly I responded to all the motivational and dream-based talks I hears. Typically, I am looking and hoping for craft support–specific writing tools and how-to’s. I surprised myself with some of my workshop choices, and I surprised myself by how well I came back from down moments and by how deep into my heart I felt the happiness of the weekend.

When I look at where I am on my writing path, there are surprises there. Oh, sure, there are some that feel more like disappointment than happiness, but there are some pretty good ones, too. If you’d told me ten years ago, even five, that I’d have switched my agent search from agents who represent Middle Grade and Young Adult to those who rep MG and picture books? I’d probably have laughed, you know, in a nice way. Picture books? Seriously?

Well, yeah. I started that part of my journey while I was writing The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, with an idea that I wanted to follow through outside the book. And now I have four picture books that, well, while they’re not as ready as I thought they were before last weekend, they’re pretty darned good and I am definitely in love with them. With the characters, the stories, and–oh, yeah–the writing process of bringing them together. Young adult? Doesn’t feel like anything I want or need to be writing. Twists and turns, and surprises.

Who knew? When I started this blog, I knew logically that the writing path I was going to talk about would be one of curves and hills, fallen trees and patches of quicksand. But as I move along it, continuing the climb, I understand the challenges of the route at a deeper level. And I know, too, that there’s always the possibility I’ll come around a corner and catch a glimpse of a rainbow, maybe even the shimmer of that pot of gold.

Because there are always surprises.

Posted in The Writing Path

What’s It All About, Alfie? It Being this Writing Thingamabob!

Posted on by beckylevine

When I was little, I named my pet guinea pig after this song, even though I’m not sure I’d even heard it. Something about the title…

And it’s what came into my mind today, when I was thinking about this post. I spent part of the morning working on my WIP, alternating with popping on and off of Facebook to whine about working on that WIP. I’ve been reading an old favorite: Jean Webster’s Dear Enemy, and smiling & laughing on just about every page. Basically, I was feeling jealous of the “they” out there who are working on light, funny stories, with true heart, and wondering how much longer I was going to commit to digging deep into figuring out the dark, grim one I’m working on.

Yeah, whine, whine, whine. Instead of, you know, gratitude that I HAVE this awesome story idea to work on, that’s pushing me to explore my craft, my values, and my understanding of human nature & personality dynamics.

So instead of whining, I thought I’d look a little more closely at what’s going on with me today, and see if any of it sounded familiar to you guys, and check out what you do about it!

Okay, yes, I took three yoga classes in three days, which perhaps has made me a little extra tired. And I came back to my WIP after three weeks off to deal with my husband’s broken bones (healing well!) and my own NF deadline. And the days of this week have been pretty chopped up into small pieces, pretty much interspersed with me getting into a car to drive somewhere, getting out at that somewhere, getting back in, driving home, and a little later, getting back into that car. Which never does wonders for my mental state.

But…separate from that: the book. I think one of the big things getting to me is the time that this story is taking me to write. Longer than anything I’ve ever actually come close to finishing, so that question of Will/Can I ever finish does loom large on certain days. I have a weird brain that sees books I’ve read and books I’m writing as typeset fonts on physical pages, and this book looks light and sparse with short chapters, short paragraphs, and lots of white space. Which is cool, except that the physical reality of this book is, currently, long chapters, long paragraphs and yawning amounts of space covered with text. So…how long is it going to take me to make the reality fit the vision?

And the question always arises: Do I chuck this and pick up something else. I could revise that light, funny MG mystery that’s in the drawer (I know, bad idea!). I could do some plotting on the urban fantasy idea that’s been sitting in a file for a bit. I could take a look at that MG novel idea that has a little boy I am SO in love with. I could go back and spend a lot of time on the picture books. Lots of choices that would feel like real reasons to put this book aside.

But then I open that file, and I spent five minutes, and the questions I’m trying to answer catch me up again and shout at me and get my juices flowing. Even if I don’t get very far in answering them. The feeling of slog has that one sharp, bite of Yes! mixed in.

Backing up that Yes! is the strong feeling that there is a craft learning-curve involved here for me. A big one. Which is, of course, tied to the fact of how long this book is taking to write. And the almost-certainty that if I fool myself into letting this go, all I’m going to face are more story ideas that need me to learn that missing part of the craft.

So there you have it. Not sure if I succeeded in keeping the whine out of this post, but I do think I’ve come back again to the fact that the best thing for me to do is push on. Push on and push away thoughts of the calendar.

How do you handle this struggle: this battle between the I-Want-to-Finish and I-Want-to-Write-THIS-Story? Do you put things away for a while and work on other ideas? Do you play lots of loud music that shuts up that evil counting-down-egg-timer monster? Do you have a mantra taped to your computer?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you haven’t tuned into Debbi Michiko Florence’s posts on her Year of Writing, check them out here. They’re a good sanity check and reminder that this is a problem other writers face, that we’re not alone in the battle.

Posted in The Writing Path

Changes

Posted on by beckylevine

Two statements of fact:

  1. The earth does not, as much as it seems, stay still in one spot. It rotates on its axis, and it orbits the sun.
  2. I wrote a scene this morning.

There is, actually, a connection between those two facts. And that connection is in the post title: Changes.

July seems an odd time for me to be thinking about changes. The New Year? Sure. My birthday? Okay. The start of a new school year? Yeah. But July? I’m guessing it has something to do with the heat the last few days, and family visits, all of which added up to slow me down and give me time to muse on life. Which, as usual, is changing.

I think, when I was older, I knew about change. I saw it all laid out before me, in a pattern-school, work, marriage, children. And, of course, mixed in with it all: writing. I think I saw it as nice, neat chunks–I’d do one thing for a while, then there’d be a change, and I’d be doing something else. I’d do that for another while–in a nice, calm, settled manner, and then,yeah, another change would come along. And I’d always have time for consideration, preparation, and development.

What was I thinking?

That kind of change would imply that the world was, in fact, standing still, letting us control our movements, letting us be in charge of where our feet landed in space and time. That the spinning of the planet had no agenda or impetus of its own, that external events had no impact on us, personally. Or, to use Terry Pratchett’s imagery, that the disc is not resting on the back of four elephants riding on the shell of Great A’tuin, the Giant Star Turtle, all of whom are traveling along with no help from us.

Change happens. As I get older, it seems to happen faster–perhaps because I’m watching my son grow up, perhaps because I’m more deeply invested in friendships with people who’s lives also have their own ebbs and flows, perhaps because the increasing numbers of my age really do mean something. Overall, I try to look at change as a good thing, as an opportunity. I listen for the chafing in my psyche that says it’s time to do something different, to add another element to my day. When the irritation gets to great, I start to look around for that something–other people may be able to let it come happily and comfortably to them; I seem to need to chase it down.

All this is the long way of saying I have added something new to my life. It’s the first small step on returning to paying employment when my son moves out for college. It’s volunteer, so no money yet,  but it feels like a good door into a dimension I need to be heading toward. At the first meeting, I felt my brain waking up to that attraction something new can bring, especially something that takes you a little further away from excess navel-gazing. Of course it’s hours out of my days and weeks. It’s hours that I could be writing. Which is a little bit scary.

But which also brings us to the second fact above. The scene I wrote this morning.

Change doesn’t just disturb a pattern, it can actually pull us out of a rut. I woke up today with the knowledge that I would have less time for writing. Guess what that knowledge did. It made me write. It got me to open the laptop, start Scrivener, turn off social networking, and write. It put me back into the awareness that, if I don’t get my writing done first, it isn’t going to happen. It reminded me how much I want to be able to work for income and work at my writing: If I can’t do both, I am not going to be happy.

So here’s to change–to watching out for when we need it, grabbing the good stuff as it comes along, and welcoming the sharpened focus it often brings.

Posted in The Writing Path, Writing Goals

Balancing Love and Ambition

Posted on by beckylevine

Last week, Jordan Rosenfeld blogged about getting back to the joy of writing. She posed the question: “What would it be like if you wrote because it made you feel worthy, bigger, and joyful?”

This is a very important question, I think. My basic answer was the one I always come back to–the dreams I have about getting published are impossible to guarantee, so if I’m not loving what I’m doing (at least overall!), I’m in big trouble.

But I think my answer there is a bit too simplistic. Because, yes, I do have the dreams. I think most of us do. The dreams about getting published–whether it’s via agent/traditional publishing house or by way of our own self-publishing journey. We want to see our book in print, on a shelf that isn’t our own, in the hands of other readers than our family & critique group (as wonderful as they all are!). We want to know that someone else thinks it’s good.

As I said, there are no guarantees of this dream. We can work and work and grow our craft, strengthen our skills, revise our little hearts out, and still…we may still “just” be writing. Which is, I believe, the important part–at least for my happiness.

I also believe, though, that while I try to rest in the joy of the writing act, I need to take as many steps as I can to forward the dream–or to put it in more practical terms, to push my ambition. It’s actually hard for me to think of myself as an ambitious person–it brings up visions, for me, of having to become seriously competitive, to work past my emotional limit-switches, to put aside other things in life that are important to me. I have to remind myself that ambition can be a good thing, that it can hold us to a level of commitment that we need to grow, that it can bring out a professionalism in ourselves that can supplement what we’re learning about the art of writing.

I can read blogs to find out what’s happening in the market. I can make sure that a decent % of the books I read are recent publications. I can attend conferences and take webinars that teach me both craft and strategy. I can, obviously, continue to turn out chapters and send them to my critique group and really listen to their revision suggestions. I can think as I write, trying to feed what I’ve learned in the past few years into the story, so that I don’t just sit, too comfortably, at the same writing level I was back then.

So, yes, there are times when a publication goal seems so far away as to be overwhelming, scary or depressing enough to threaten our writing brains with shut-down. There are times when focusing on what we’re “supposed” to do can poison our ability to find the truth in the story. There are times when we have to pull the shade over that future vision and just write. And then there are times to look ahead, dream, and do something about it.

Jordan is absolutely right–writing without the joy is bloodless. I don’t believe that for me, that approach would ever bear fruit. The trick, I think (hope!), is finding the balance. And, somehow, staying sane as we go for it all.

Posted in Nonfiction, The Writing Path

A Little Snippet on Writing Nonfiction for Kids

Posted on by beckylevine

News Flash: I am no expert in this genre. But it’s one I’m trying to stretch myself into, another curve I’m trying to include on my writing path. So you’re going to get bits & pieces about it here, as I work along and figure out the process.

The last few weeks I’ve been working on some samples to send out to one or more publishers, hoping what I write will click with someone there. To get started, I bought a few books of the type I’m trying to write, and I spent some time reading & analyzing, breaking down what kind of information they share and how they deliver it. Then I started writing.

I’ve got the first book nearly finished–I need to come back to it and do some last revision. This book was an animal one–fits into the science category for very young children. We’re talking a sentence or two a page–short sentences. With active verbs and strong words that, mostly, will fit into a young reader’s palette. Challenging. And fun.

The one I’m working on now is a biography, for older kids, which I have to say is my real love. This was the kind of nonfiction I devoured when I was young–the series biographies that opened a tiny window into another life, another time. The kind that had me tying grass on my father’s fruit trees to act out Luther Burbank’s grafting technique (Note that I did not become a biologist.) and “building” phonographs out of binder paper and scotch tape after reading about Thomas Edison (Note that I also did not become an engineer.). Anyway, I had recently read a wonderful grown-up biography of someone who felt like an ideal subject, and I’m now in the process of picking and choosing eentsy-weentsy, intriguing details from that book, ones that will show the big picture about this man to a young reader who, today, is a lot like I was then.

And I’m loving it.

The reading, the research, the weaving is so different from doing the same for fiction. Which, yes, I also love, but…I don’t find particularly relaxing. Researching for fiction seems to be a matter of looking for the information you already know you need–hoping it’ll fit into your plot and then, if it doesn’t, grappling with your plot again to make the reality and the story come together. Or looking and looking and not finding the details you need. Still.

With the nonfiction, I find myself reading in a more open kind of way, antennae out for the thing that makes me say, “Yes! That’ll get them!” The part of the story that is fascinating, that might tie up with something a young teen is already interested in, or that will intrigue them enough to start them thinking about something new. And then finding the word, the exactly right words, to share it with them. It feels a much more relaxed process, at least for me, more like finding the puzzle piece that really goes in that spot, less like trying to press one in that might very well belong somewhere else.

Relaxing. Some people, I know, find the constraints of word counts and vocabulary limiting and restrictive. And I can see that. I don’t know that I could do it full-time, without giving myself the room to go beyond them in my fiction. But…as another layer to my world of writing, I love this puzzle time. I guess it’s something like taking a cookie mold and a huge bowl of batter, pouring the batter into the mold and getting something like this.


With lines that clear and precise.

How about you? Is there one kind of writing that you do most of the time and another that you do less frequently? One that adds contrast and maybe, in some way, gives you a breather from the norm? Leave a comment and let us hear about it.

Posted in Picture Books, Thankful Thursday, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, The Writing Path, Uncategorized, Writing Goals

Thankful Thursday: Ideas

Posted on by beckylevine

I think I’ve talked here before about how I used to be a one-idea person. I had one idea for many years, and I wrote on it and wrote on it and wrote on it and sort of revised, and–honestly–it never went anywhere.

So I was really glad when another idea came along. And that idea turned into a story I write and learned-about-revising on, and that I hope–someday–someone will love as much as I did.

But when I was done, then I was sort of staring out into nothing. No more ideas. And this, as you can imagine, was pretty scary. I’d sort of known this possibility was lurking there all along, especially as I wrote and wrote and wrote on that first book and didn’t have any story characters poking at me, asking for my attention. But I had something I was working on, and so I didn’t let myself worry too much about that something maybe not being enough. Until…it wasn’t.

What changed? A couple of things. Caro called to me from the pages of a history book, demanding a place in a real-life moment. I got the contract to write The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, and, in the course of that project, I had to come up with many passages from “fake” stories. I used these passages to show my readers what to look for as they critiqued. When I went to think of a picture book idea, I got one–and it turned out to be one that I didn’t want to be fake. It was a story I wanted to write, for real. That idea turned into the picture book I’ve been working on this year. Which, if not done, is at least well on its way to that point.

Somehow, having two projects to work on seemed to loosen the latch on my idea door–I’m now at the point where I have several I’d love to dig into, when I have time. A friend of mine talks about “princess problems,” and I think having too many ideas fits under that umbrella-so no complaints here!

But…I’ve never been in the position of having to actually think of an idea. (I know, another one of those problems!) And I’ve decided that–guess what? I want to write another picture book. There are a few reasons behind this want:

  • I have figured out that I like writing in this genre.
  • I’ve heard recently that some (all?!) agents want a writer to have several picture books in the done pile before they’ll consider signing that writer. (No, I’m not letting this scare me, but I’m accepting it as a possible market reality.)
  • I like having not just more than one idea, but having more than one project I can actually work on at–basically–the same time. I like switching between the two. The thought of doing that with two novel projects pretty much blows my mind, but I do feel like I’ve been able to make steady progress on this picture book and my YA in the past few months. Which is good.

So…the other night, as I was heading into sleep, I let my brain drift. I don’t even know where I was sending it, just…out there. Maybe I was hoping for a visit from the muse, maybe just reassurance that I hadn’t turned back into a one-idea writer (or at least a one-picture-book-idea writer). I went to sleep without the visit or the reassurance, but I’m learning not to let that stress me out too much.

The  next day, I didn’t worry at it, but…sometime in the afternoon, I opened up a new Scrivener file and popped down the basic idea for, yes…another picture book.

Is it magic? Is it just being open to possibilities? I’ve heard this is the most frequent and challenging question authors hear–where do you get your ideas?

As of today, I have no clue. But I’ll tell you one thing–not knowing is definitely a princess problem.

Posted in The Writing Path

More Thoughts on Juggling and Balance

Posted on by beckylevine

The Writing Path. That’s part of my blog title, but I haven’t mused out loud about it here for a while. There’s a thought, or a few semi-connected thoughts, that have been simmering in my mind for a while. I’ve put off blogging, because I don’t want it to sound like whining, but what the heck. I’ll just try and edit out the whine!

For many years, I thought my dream was to have nothing to do with my life but write fiction. Note, this was probably because what I was doing full-time was writing computer manuals! 🙂 I thought that, if we never needed me to work for another penny for the rest of my life, I’d be just fine with working on my fiction–and, of course, getting published–but that whatever they paid me would be enough.

Part of me still feels that way, but it’s tinged with some more realism. Fiction-writing doesn’t pay enough and never will. I’m ready to deal with that, as long as I don’t spend too much time figuring out what that means for my hourly rate! And, yes, if we won the lottery, it would make those numbers a lot easier to face. And, obviously, the day that someone comes to me and says, yes, we love, love, and want your stories…sign here, I’ll be whipping out my pen and coming back to this same topic, from a very different angle.

Today, though, the bottom line is that I want to write fiction, and I want to earn some money. Right now, our family is still at the point where it makes sense for me to be writing and editing from home, and sort of seeing where I can grow skills and connections to bring in more than I did the year before. In four years, my son will be going to college, and my goal for that time is that I can feel like I’m contributing enough from this desk that I don’t have to move my stuff into some other desk in a cubicle somewhere. I don’t know, right now, if that will be possible. And, if not, I’ll take the other step and keep the juggling going.

This goal, however, sometimes makes me feel like pulling out the magic telescope to look into my future, and see if I’m doing that juggling “correctly” right now.  (I know, not a question that can be answered.) Between my fiction, some nonfiction articles I’ve got going, prepping for conferences and workshops, and keeping on top of a bit of marketing, I feel as though I’m working full-time for the first time in years. (Hugs and kisses to my husband who made sure to tell me that I am.) I have to tell you, overall, it feels fantastic. Yes, stressful; yes, scary; yes, tiring, but…wow. I love being a mom, and I love my son, but short-term-goal-responses and rewards? Not a lot of that in parenting. Taking on a proposal, getting it accepted, and carrying it through to it’s end product? I always loved that feeling, even with those computer manuals, and it’s great to be getting back to experiencing it again.

And then you flip the coin and look at the money. Last year, I reached a point where the numbers got bigger than zero, and it seems like I may be on that stage of the writing path where I can see this continuing…even if, from day to day, I can’t see how or in what direction. Enough to feel like, in four years, this would be enough to really help with college and life? Um…no…Enough to feel like maybe, maybe, I’m taking the steps to get there? A bit.

Basically, I like ths part of the path. I’m busy and happy, and I have a family who’s totally working with me on going through the changes. The trade-off? Well, you can probably guess. I’m not writing fiction full-time. In fact, some weeks, I’m finding it hard put to do the juggling that will get me that first hour-a-day-for-fiction I’m trying to commit to. I’m learning that I can get through pieces of a couple of projects in a day–with some time for checking off phone calls and appointments, runs to the grocery store, TIME WITH MY FAMILY, and maybe even some exercise. And when I look at it like that, I think I’m doing pretty well and it’s a sane way to be living. Last week and today, those two projects for the day were getting out some conference proposals and an outline for a magazine article (one they ARE paying me for!). For the rest of the week, I’m going to try and slide back in that hour-of-fiction first and do some more work on my WIP. And I think that’s good and okay and, again…sane.

I have a few role models out there, from people I meet on blogs and other social-networking sites. People who are juggling all this and more (usually with full-time jobs or part-time-out-of-the-house jobs or younger children). People who still manage to make forward progress on their ficton and do it beautifully. People like Jo Knowles whose books, if you haven’t read them, are testimonials to the idea of staying true and focused with your fiction in the midst of many, many other commitments. And Beth Revis who has written a book I haven’t read, but which I am impatiently waiting for, all while she was a full-time (and I’m guessing brilliant) high-school teacher. If I could even manage to teach high school, you can bet I wouldn’t have much time, energy, or imagination left.

And the lesson I take from these people, and many others like them, is that you just have to keep stepping forward. In some sense, it doesn’t matter how big or small those steps are, or if you know which way they’re taking you, as long as they’re heading out from where you are at the moment. As long as you aren’t standing still. I picture my writing path a lot like the picture at the top of this blog–a gentle path through soft green and brown woods. Except that along that path are doors–maybe instead of forks. I can’t see what doors are coming, or which ones will feel like the right ones–at any given time–to open and walk through. But I know they’re there, and I’ll get to them and be able to make some kind of choice…as long as I keep traveling.

There. Not too much whining, I hope. I’d love to hear from all of you how you feel about your path right now and the steps you’re taking.