The Story Thus Far...

My last post was my Pitch Wars bio, which I posted almost exactly two years ago. Some of you may remember that I'd completed a novel revision at the behest of one of my dream agents. We'd met at a writer's conference, he was very enthusiastic about me and my novel, and he coached me through the revision for three years loving everything until I turned in the completed revision, at which point he said no to taking me on as a client. Which was fine. Agents are allowed to change their minds. Their lists and needs change. Something else new and shiny comes along that is a better fit. Doesn't mean it didn't hurt and I didn't care. It  meant there was more work that needed to be done on the novel.

So I looked at Pitch Wars, which is a fabulous program in which you apply for a mentor and, fingers crossed, get picked by your mentor for a couple months work on polishing your novel and your query before you get to try it out for agents during the Twitter pitch-fest called Pitch Madness. I didn't end up with an official mentor for Pitch Wars, but my number one pick offered to unofficially mentor me. Unfortunately, I wasn't really in a place where I could take advantage of having a mentor. I didn't realize how much I was still reeling from the agent's rejection (TBH, I actually didn't realize it until last month) and how much anger I was suppressing because I was trying to be very professional about the whole thing and just move on. Having Jenny offer to be my unofficial mentor was probably the best thing that could have happened at that moment, though because it meant my novel was good enough to get someone to champion it. That meant everything at that moment, and Jenny has become a good friend and AMAZING cheerleader for everything that has happened in the past two years since we met.

But the novel just sat there. I fiddled with ideas, created mountains of notes on things I thought was wrong with it, broke it down into individual beats (which resulted in an enormous document over 500 pages long), read craft books, and gradually watched the steam go out of any writing practice I might have had. I tried to work on another novel. I tried to work on short stories. Eventually, though, I stopped writing completely.

This isn't to say I wasn't doing writing-related things. I read voraciously (more on that in another blog post). I started editing professionally (also more on that in another blog post). And I started doing some freelance writing again (another future blog post).

My writing retreat partner/bat shit crazy twin and I continued to go away for retreats and even got ourselves a two-week residency in Bend, OR, in November 2017. One of the best things about that writing retreat was visiting a friend who lives in Hood River, OR, and who is my artistic mentor. She's about a decade older than I am and a professional photographer (she's the one who does my headshots) who recently closed her studio business in order to return to her art. In between visits to Columbia River Gorge wineries, we talked about art, writing, photography, and getting back on track. I came home from Bend with copious notes of what I wanted to do with the novel as well as an invitation to read at two SF reading series, Shipwreck and Literary Speakeasy. The reading for Shipwreck meant that I actually had to write something new based on a character from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. It was the first new writing I'd done in almost a year and a half, and it was, by far, the most fun I had writing anything EVER. I loved the characters I created so much, I started planning out a novel for them.

But the big novel, the one I'd been working on for years, the one I'd worked on during my MFA program, was still languishing. I simply didn't know what to do with it.

Enter my friend, Sheena, who contacted me and asked if I could write her a letter of recommendation for a year-long novel finishing program run out of SUNY-Stony Brook by Meg Wolitzer and Susan Merrell. Of course I said yes, and then I looked at the program. And then I asked Sheena if she would be upset if I applied for the program, too, because it looked like exactly what I needed. I told her, if it wasn't okay, I would be fine waiting until 2019 to apply because her friendship meant more to me than the program, but she generously told me it would be fine. Fortunately, we both got accepted to BookEnds. Go us!


The program started in mid-July at the Southampton Writers' Conference, but I knew I needed to get my head back into my novel and start applying all the things I'd thought about doing to it over the past two years. So I packed up the dogs and myself and headed for a friend's cabin in Oroville where I toasted each sunset, and spent the days reading my novel.


I also had an assignment from BookEnds: choose the ten weakest pages of my manuscript and write a 1-2 pages summary of why I thought that way. I was pleasantly surprised to find there weren't as many candidates for "weakest section" as I'd feared, though I did come back from my week in Oroville feeling like the entire novel was horrible, overwritten, and didn't even come close to doing what I wanted it to do. Still, I got the novel read, got some work done on the other "fun" project, got some work done for editing clients, and got some reading done. Basically, I started behaving like a writer again, which was good because....


A week after I got home from Oroville, I boarded an airplane and flew to New York for the Southampton Writers' Conference and the start of the BookEnds program.

Twelve days of living in a dorm room tiny enough that the door couldn't be opened fully without banging into the dresser. Twelve days surrounded by other writers. Twelve days of panels and readings and talking about books. And twelve days of getting to know Meg Wolizter and Susie Merrell and the other eight BookEnders. It was not all peaches and cream and sweetness and light. It was a lot of hard work, stress, anxiety, and, ultimately, a breakthrough on how to get my novel to where I want it to be, plus the development of an incredible support network who will be there for me over the next year. Deadlines, accountability, phenomenal writers, and a commitment to advocate and assist and support each other in achieving the novels we want. Yes, please!

Talk about feeling like a writer again!

After the conference was over, I got to decompress at a friend's house and spent a phenomenal day in Manhattan at the Guggenheim where I reveled in the Giacometti exhibit.

I found myself fascinated with the space the artwork occupies as well as the space that surrounds it, and how my presence interacted with the artwork, hiding some facets while revealing others as I moved around the piece. It was, in visual form, a representation of everything I had been thinking about my novel and helped settle those revelations and insights deeper in my brain.

Then, I got on an airplane and came back home ready to get back to work on my novel.

So, over the next year, I plan on sharing insights on how revision happens, how it stumbles, where I completely go off the rails, successes and failures, and what the BookEnds program is like. I also hope, along the way, to give insight into what the writing life looks like and how one writer's process moves forward.

Seriously the best piece
of conference swag EVER.

Watch out, world, the Word Slut has returned.