Skip to main content

Delayed Celebrations and GIVEAWAY!

If there's one thing (pick just one!) that's frustrating about the writing and publishing sphere, it's how often the things you really want to celebrate have to be kept quiet..for ages.  Centuries.  Aeons, even.

Ok, but even a few weeks or months on the silent circuit can feel excruciating when you really want to run around like a toddler on a cookie high with a fistful of sparklers and order MY BOOK IS GOING TO BE A REAL BOOK AND BE PUBLISHED AND STUFF! on a cake.  You maybe haven't quite refined the cake wording yet.

Which is why I've never really blabbed much about how, a year ago today, I got a quick text from my Agent of Awesome to see if I had a minute to chat.  I was at work at work, at a community college writing center, and a minute something I had to scrape up given that it was nearing end-of-semester time and I was neck-deep in papers submitted to the online tutoring portal I managed.

But that minute was going to have to give, because I Just Knew that this was good news.  

At least, I hoped so.  It was either that, or Jessica was telling me she was moving to Argentina and starting a marshmallow farm because I was such a terrible client.

It was good news. I tried not to bubble over in the hallway of the college, but did a silent internal happy dance.

I then had to go back to work and read freshmen term papers and give them comprehensible feedback in the form of literate, written English.  It was really, really hard.  And even harder--I had to keep mum.  I kept mum for a while, then I got to squeee when the news came out officially.

Even though this is delayed..waaaaaay delayed...I want to celebrate that moment of bubbling-over-happy from a year ago.  So--a giveaway!

Just leave a comment on this post (and pick up extra entries on Twitter and Facebook!) with something you're celebrating--something you're currently proud of accomplishing or working hard on, something that's maybe been "old news" for awhile but still makes you feel a little bubbly to think about, anything at all.  I'll draw a winner at random at 5 pm Eastern time on Friday.  Open anywhere the mail will take it; void if such drawings or these prizes disallowed where you happen to inhabit.

And the prizes!

A signed (and personalized per your request) coy of TORN, plus two of my favorite writerly things:


A notebook from Rifle Paper Co--I carry one in my purse to jot down notes and ideas and things I will definitely forget and what were we talking about? NOTEBOOK! Yes.


My favorite tea, in loose leaf form for optimized tea-strength personalization.

ALSO! If you're a writer, this prize pack INCLUDES a critique of your query letter, synopsis, and first five pages (provided by me, a writerly person who is not an industry pro but is a professional writing teacher and tutor, so that's...something? I guess?).  If you're not a writer...well, you got tea and a notebook and a book :)

Good luck and thanks for celebrating a year late with me!


Comments

  1. HelenApril 19, 2018 at 10:30 AM

    I am celebrating catching up at work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. CassidyApril 21, 2018 at 11:57 AM

    Oooooh! I am celebrating finishing up the rewards for my Kickstarter and getting Mimic of Modes Patterns underway! (And for figuring out that that should be the name of my company ... which shouldn't have been hard, but it took me some time.)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accountable to the Page: Writing and Schedules

Tuesday I shared what gets me motivated to write--today I'm thinking about what I can do to hold myself to write.  Having a schedule or goal or other expectation keeps you accountable to your work--and the best partner, I think, to creativity is accountability.  We writers have a little problem most of the time during our writing careers: We aren't accountable to anyone but ourselves and the page--no boss, no time card, no nosy coworkers--so we have to create that accountability for ourselves.  I want more of a schedule-based writing life, and a few ways of doing so have emerged for me: 1) The Clock Method .  This one is basic--you clock in, you clock out.  Your butt is in your chair for a set number of hours each day, hands on keyboard, writing. 2) The Goal Method .  A little more flexible, but also, in my opinion, harder to hold yourself to.  You have a daily (or, depending on your schedule and lifestyle, weekly) writing goal, and you meet it by ...
5 comments
Read more

Plot Crap

If you ever watch a movie with my husband and I, you're very likely, if it's not a great movie and sometimes even if it is, to hear me exclaim at some point, "OK, this is total plot crap, right?" What do I mean by plot crap?  And does it apply to books? Are you calling this plot crap? Plot crap does not mean crappy plot.  In fact, it can often have nothing to do with how well a story is plotted.  A great example of plot crap is the movie Gladiator .  Now, I love this movie.  I love the story, the incredibly orchestrated battle scenes, even the soundtrack.  But the historical facts framing the film?  Total plot crap.  Sure, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus existed...but there are a lot of factual missteps.  There's no evidence that Marcus Aurelius ever wanted to restore the Republic, therefore the basis of the film's struggle is historical plot crap.  (Commodus also didn't die in the arena, but was strangled in his bath.  Sometim...
3 comments
Read more

Best-Laid Plans: Outlining

Every writer has answered the question at least once--panster or plotter? I'm sure there is no right way--maybe there are more efficient ways, or ways that produce more creative twists, or, most likely, ways that are the most right for each individual.  In college I had a roommate who literally outlined every paper down to the paragraph.  Beautiful, typed, complete outlines, and they took forever to create--but the actual paper-writing part was shortened because she already knew what she was going to say.  Me?  I never outlined more than what was in my head already.  Even my thesis outline was pretty much section titles and quick notes.  (I think that drove my advisor batty.) Still, a novel isn't a five-page essay, a twenty-page paper, or even a thesis.  Despite that, I pantsed at first.  It was what I knew, and what worked for me.  You know what?  It worked for writing novels, too.  Just not very well. That is, I doubled back...
5 comments
Read more