THE WRITING PROCESS
I started writing The Cloud Factory back in 1994. At the time I was working full-time and had two school-aged kids, so I had to write wherever and whenever I got the chance, usually in tiny, furtive, highly energetic spurts. When I decided to go back to school for my nursing degree, the novel was pretty much thrown to the back burner for awhile. After graduation, I deliberately picked the 3-11 p.m. shift so I could write during the day while the kids were at school.
To say that it took me 8 years to finish this novel would not be an exaggeration. And although I really didn't "plan" on going for publication (after all, I'd previously written 3 others with no intention of submitting them to anything other than a file cabinet)...somewhere along the line, my thinking my began to change.
So I polished it up a bit and began to mail out queries, and almost immediately I hit 2 major brick walls: 1. It was WAY too long (I won't tell you how long, but if you dropped it on your foot, an x-ray would be in order) and 2. I kept getting the same reply from agent after agent: "Thanks, but I don't do YA."
"It's NOT a YA!" I'd scream at the mailbox. No, it was a mainstream adult novel set in 1970. How could they be so stupid?
In 2001 I attended The Columbus Writers Conference where renown YA agent Andrea Brown was giving a workshop. I asked, "How do know if your novel is a YA?" and her answer was pretty much along the line of, "If it's about a teenager, then make it for teens."
Well, I didn't exactly (want to) agree with her--after all, there were plenty of books out there with younger protagonists that were shelved in the adult sections. But after doing some research, I found three reasons for this: 1. They were classics written long before the YA genre had been established (e.g. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee); 2. There was a LOT of sex and/or violence, or some truly brutal themes (e.g. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison); or 3. They were considered to be quite "literary" in their style and presentation (e.g. That Night by Alice McDermott and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd).
I was none of the above. And yes, okay, I admit it: it was waaay too long!
There is nothing worse for a writer than to have to chop up her book. I slashed away, slaughtering characters, scenes, and entire subplots. When I finally got it down to what I thought was a manageable length, and revised it to fit the more "appropriate" young adult market, I sent out another few batches of queries. The results? "Thanks, but no thanks," and "Sorry, but it's waaay too long!"
This went on for a couple of years, believe it or not (since I couldn't spend every waking moment working on these revisions). I cut, polished, rewrote, polished, read til my eyes nearly bled and then read through it again. Finally I got a bite from a very prestigious, well-known agent. Yes, she was interested, but there were two things she wanted me to do before she would consider the manuscript:
1. Update it from 1970 to the present.
2. MAKE IT SHORTER!
Update it? Was she nuts? What about all my references to music, to movies, to clothing, to current events? What about all my references to the Viet Nam war? One storyline in particular involved a drug-addicted draft dodger, and to this very day he remains one of my greatest characters.
Still, for the first time, an agent was interested, and not some Joe Schmo from one of those Google ads, either. True, nothing was carved in stone, I didn't have a contract or even a vague verbal agreement, but what did I have to lose? What's another few weeks of revising, right? So I took a deep breath, bade my family farewell, and locked myself up for a month to make the changes, even axeing the poor draft dodger. I was pleasantly surprised by the end product, it was sooo much better than the original. I packed it up and mailed it back off to the agent…who unfortunately (or so I thought at the time) said NO in the end.
Honest to God, I nearly threw in the towel. Not only was I not getting any younger, haha, but I was beginning to wonder: Is all of this agony really worth it?
But, like Martha, I don't give up easily, and I don't regret for a moment making any of those changes because it was probably, up to that point, the best feedback I'd ever gotten. Again with the queries (which I’d revised almost as often as I’d revised the manuscript)…and every time I got a rejection, I'd look it over carefully to try and determine, Is this for real or is it merely BS? I got every kind of rejection under the sun, from impersonal form letters, to very encouraging responses with helpful advice, to ridiculous comments such as “Alas, I do not find your story intriguing enough” (do I really want an agent who actually uses the word “alas”?!?) to a scrawl at the bottom of my returned query, stating simply: “Not for me.” If the advice rang true, I took it to heart, reevaluated the manuscript, and tried hard to improve it. If not, I ignored it. After all, c’est le guerre.
I took a very long, much-needed break and then, at the very beginning of 2005, I sent out what I prayed would be my last clump of queries. I was rapidly exhausting my supply of names, and there really aren’t that many agencies that deal with YA. In fact, I’d resorted to looking up agent names in the acknowledgement sections of books “similar” to mine, and that’s when I hit the jackpot. I’d queried Lisa Bankoff from ICM who forwarded my query to Tina DuBois (now Tina Wexler), and Tina phoned in March to say that she loved my story, and yes, she was interested in representing me.
Once I hung up the phone, I practically had to be resuscitated.
After another (minor) revision, Tina sold The Cloud Factory to Bloomsbury Childrens within a matter of several months. MARTHA is ALIVE in 2005 and she'll hit the shelves in the spring of 2007.
http://www.icmtalent.com/flash.html
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/
To say that it took me 8 years to finish this novel would not be an exaggeration. And although I really didn't "plan" on going for publication (after all, I'd previously written 3 others with no intention of submitting them to anything other than a file cabinet)...somewhere along the line, my thinking my began to change.
So I polished it up a bit and began to mail out queries, and almost immediately I hit 2 major brick walls: 1. It was WAY too long (I won't tell you how long, but if you dropped it on your foot, an x-ray would be in order) and 2. I kept getting the same reply from agent after agent: "Thanks, but I don't do YA."
"It's NOT a YA!" I'd scream at the mailbox. No, it was a mainstream adult novel set in 1970. How could they be so stupid?
In 2001 I attended The Columbus Writers Conference where renown YA agent Andrea Brown was giving a workshop. I asked, "How do know if your novel is a YA?" and her answer was pretty much along the line of, "If it's about a teenager, then make it for teens."
Well, I didn't exactly (want to) agree with her--after all, there were plenty of books out there with younger protagonists that were shelved in the adult sections. But after doing some research, I found three reasons for this: 1. They were classics written long before the YA genre had been established (e.g. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee); 2. There was a LOT of sex and/or violence, or some truly brutal themes (e.g. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison); or 3. They were considered to be quite "literary" in their style and presentation (e.g. That Night by Alice McDermott and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd).
I was none of the above. And yes, okay, I admit it: it was waaay too long!
There is nothing worse for a writer than to have to chop up her book. I slashed away, slaughtering characters, scenes, and entire subplots. When I finally got it down to what I thought was a manageable length, and revised it to fit the more "appropriate" young adult market, I sent out another few batches of queries. The results? "Thanks, but no thanks," and "Sorry, but it's waaay too long!"
This went on for a couple of years, believe it or not (since I couldn't spend every waking moment working on these revisions). I cut, polished, rewrote, polished, read til my eyes nearly bled and then read through it again. Finally I got a bite from a very prestigious, well-known agent. Yes, she was interested, but there were two things she wanted me to do before she would consider the manuscript:
1. Update it from 1970 to the present.
2. MAKE IT SHORTER!
Update it? Was she nuts? What about all my references to music, to movies, to clothing, to current events? What about all my references to the Viet Nam war? One storyline in particular involved a drug-addicted draft dodger, and to this very day he remains one of my greatest characters.
Still, for the first time, an agent was interested, and not some Joe Schmo from one of those Google ads, either. True, nothing was carved in stone, I didn't have a contract or even a vague verbal agreement, but what did I have to lose? What's another few weeks of revising, right? So I took a deep breath, bade my family farewell, and locked myself up for a month to make the changes, even axeing the poor draft dodger. I was pleasantly surprised by the end product, it was sooo much better than the original. I packed it up and mailed it back off to the agent…who unfortunately (or so I thought at the time) said NO in the end.
Honest to God, I nearly threw in the towel. Not only was I not getting any younger, haha, but I was beginning to wonder: Is all of this agony really worth it?
But, like Martha, I don't give up easily, and I don't regret for a moment making any of those changes because it was probably, up to that point, the best feedback I'd ever gotten. Again with the queries (which I’d revised almost as often as I’d revised the manuscript)…and every time I got a rejection, I'd look it over carefully to try and determine, Is this for real or is it merely BS? I got every kind of rejection under the sun, from impersonal form letters, to very encouraging responses with helpful advice, to ridiculous comments such as “Alas, I do not find your story intriguing enough” (do I really want an agent who actually uses the word “alas”?!?) to a scrawl at the bottom of my returned query, stating simply: “Not for me.” If the advice rang true, I took it to heart, reevaluated the manuscript, and tried hard to improve it. If not, I ignored it. After all, c’est le guerre.
I took a very long, much-needed break and then, at the very beginning of 2005, I sent out what I prayed would be my last clump of queries. I was rapidly exhausting my supply of names, and there really aren’t that many agencies that deal with YA. In fact, I’d resorted to looking up agent names in the acknowledgement sections of books “similar” to mine, and that’s when I hit the jackpot. I’d queried Lisa Bankoff from ICM who forwarded my query to Tina DuBois (now Tina Wexler), and Tina phoned in March to say that she loved my story, and yes, she was interested in representing me.
Once I hung up the phone, I practically had to be resuscitated.
After another (minor) revision, Tina sold The Cloud Factory to Bloomsbury Childrens within a matter of several months. MARTHA is ALIVE in 2005 and she'll hit the shelves in the spring of 2007.
http://www.icmtalent.com/flash.html
http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/