I've been such a slacker with the diner. Sorry about that. There really is good food here, and I should stop by more often!
So, in two weeks from today, I'm boarding a plane at Pittsburgh International and heading for the Backspace Conference in New York City. I've been revising my manuscript THESE WALLS CAN TALK for months now, and I'm so excited to get back out there and share it with agents and editors who will hopefully love it as much as I do.
I've had some first readers who've loved it, too, it should be noted.
In any case, I'm unagented, but hopefully that will change in the next couple months. Of course, I'll share good news as soon as there's any to share. And the good news I'm sharing now is that I will be the official Twitterer (Tweeter just sounds strange) at the Backspace Conference.
I'll share all the great quotes from agents, the success stories, and the faux pas writers should avoid (as per the agents' requests of course).
So check out the conference and follow my tweets: twitter.com/TamaraGirardi for all the dish.
Showing posts with label Backspace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Backspace. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Updates
I've been quiet for a few days, so here are a few updates for you:
Update #1: I'm still here. In other words, despite my boring diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, and the occasional splash of flavor, I haven't wasted away.
Update #2: This is finals week. No, I'm not a student. I'm a teacher, which makes finals week worse. Students have at most five papers/assignments to write. I have about 20 exams and 40 essays to grade from two classes. I can't imagine how full-time instructors feel this week in grading exams and essays from hundreds of students!
Update #3: THE DINER ON THIRD, my YA paranormal mystery about 17-year-old ghost hunter Leia Angeletti is out on submission with several agents. I've had some positive reponses and two outright rejections. I'm hopeful, but I'm also beginning to think the manuscript could be improved in a few ways.
Update #4: The April Marathon is over, obviously. I spent some quality time with great writers, racing to a finish line of either 500 or 1,000 words, and little by little I developed the plot for Leia Angeletti's second adventure. However, revisions for THE DINER ON THIRD and query letters slowed down the momentum for book two. Although I didn't meet my goal, I'm proud to say I finished the month with 25,000 words towards my next book!
Update #5: I've been looking forward to May for a loooooooong time! Here's why:
Update #1: I'm still here. In other words, despite my boring diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, and the occasional splash of flavor, I haven't wasted away.
Update #2: This is finals week. No, I'm not a student. I'm a teacher, which makes finals week worse. Students have at most five papers/assignments to write. I have about 20 exams and 40 essays to grade from two classes. I can't imagine how full-time instructors feel this week in grading exams and essays from hundreds of students!
Update #3: THE DINER ON THIRD, my YA paranormal mystery about 17-year-old ghost hunter Leia Angeletti is out on submission with several agents. I've had some positive reponses and two outright rejections. I'm hopeful, but I'm also beginning to think the manuscript could be improved in a few ways.
Update #4: The April Marathon is over, obviously. I spent some quality time with great writers, racing to a finish line of either 500 or 1,000 words, and little by little I developed the plot for Leia Angeletti's second adventure. However, revisions for THE DINER ON THIRD and query letters slowed down the momentum for book two. Although I didn't meet my goal, I'm proud to say I finished the month with 25,000 words towards my next book!
Update #5: I've been looking forward to May for a loooooooong time! Here's why:
- May 4, Festival of Mystery hosted by Mystery Lover's Bookshop (FYI - The staff is fantastic, and they offer free shipping on any book orders more than $10, so give them a call). I'm going to embrace a dork moment and say I'm giggling inside at the opportunity to visit with writers I admire and meet new writers as well.
- May 9, Summer vacation begins. To focus my efforts on fiction, I won't be teaching this summer. Although I love my students, this is my first vacation from teaching since the fall semester of 2006. I'm looking forward to it :-)
- May 15-17, PennWriters Conference. I'm a newbie to the PennWriters organization, and the giddy dork inside will blossom mid-month to meet with agents and writers at the annual conference in Pittsburgh.
- May 24-30, New York City, here we come! My great friend and writerly colleague, Liz Hayes, and I are heading to the big city for some fun and some business. Monday to Wednesday, we'll be hanging out with awesome chicas (and I mean you Katie, Chelsea, and Kailen!!!), and Thursday to Saturday, we're attending the fantastic Backspace Conference.
- May 31, Bon anniversaire a moi! For those of you who know French, it's not my birthday. Let me spit out a cliche and say I can't believe a year has passed since my high school sweetheart and I tied the knot. But it has, and let's hope flights are on schedule, so I can rush home from New York to eat a year-old strawberry cheesecake before he eats it all on his own (and because I love him and all that)!
P.S. A.S. King's DUST OF 100 DOGS was discussed as a Great Read on this blog in March. She's an awesome writer and a cool gal, and she's running a contest on her blog this weekend. Write a 100-word story to win an autographed copy of her book. You know this giggling dork will be giving it a shot. You should too. Check it out.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Writing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Speaking of marathon, the Backspace April Marathon is going well so far. Although it's a thirty-day challenge, I've been participating in smaller 500-word sprints with a few other writers (mostly J.E. Taylor and A.S. King).
These races have been incredibly helpful.
Basically, this is how it works. In the Backspace forum, everyone meets at the starting line, and someone types "GO!" From there, writers around the country (and one writer from Germany) clickety clack their keyboards until they hit 500. When they do, they post a victorious "Yay," and we have a winner.
The good news is by the time I hit 500 words, I'm deep enough into the writing that I'm able to keep going for another thousand words or so. And my win-loss record is strong, by the way, or maybe it just seems that way because hitting 500 words in less than 20 minutes is a win for everyone.
Word Count: 12,100
These races have been incredibly helpful.
Basically, this is how it works. In the Backspace forum, everyone meets at the starting line, and someone types "GO!" From there, writers around the country (and one writer from Germany) clickety clack their keyboards until they hit 500. When they do, they post a victorious "Yay," and we have a winner.
The good news is by the time I hit 500 words, I'm deep enough into the writing that I'm able to keep going for another thousand words or so. And my win-loss record is strong, by the way, or maybe it just seems that way because hitting 500 words in less than 20 minutes is a win for everyone.
Word Count: 12,100
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The brilliance of writing bird by bird
On Agent Nathan Bransford's blog earlier this week, he opened a discussion about the best books on writing. I found it fascinating, and two books that were named again and again were On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
I have to say I've read both and would agree they're must-reads for writers.
Taking a second look at Lamott's book this week, I've picked out a couple excerpts that I found particularly interesting.
First of all, to explain the title..."Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"
Lamott suggests to write a bad first draft "bird by bird" or short assignment by short assignment, not allowing perfectionist ideals to cramp your creativity. But there's a downfall with that theory of a bad first draft.
"The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day I'd obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. I'd worry that people would read what I'd written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot."
Presently, I'm working on that bad first draft as part of Backspace's April Marathon, as you know. By way of an update, I'm at 5,000 words (and will be on target if I get another 1,700 by midnight).
I should be writing at the moment, but it's time to make dinner, and I write better late at night anyway. So, on to another Anne Lamott excerpt on procrastination. When she should be writing, here are some hilarious thoughts that steal her focus:
"After a moment I may notice that I'm trying to decide whether or not I am too old for orthodontia and whether right now would be a good time to make a few calls, and then I start to think about learning to use makeup and how maybe I could find some boyfriend who is not a total and complete fixer-upper and then my life would be totally great and I'd be happy all the time, and then I think about all the people I should have called back before I sat down to work, and how I should probably at least check in with my agent and tell him this great idea I have and see if he thinks it's a good idea, and see if he thinks I need orthodontia - if that is what he is actually thinking whenever we have lunch together.
"Then I think about someone I'm really annoyed with, or some financial problem that is driving me crazy, and decide that I must resolve this before I get down to today's work. So I become a dog with a chew toy, worrying it for a while, wrestling it to the ground, flinging it over my shoulder, chasing it, licking it, chewing it, flinging it back over my shoulder. I stop just short of actually barking. But all of this only takes somewhere between one and two minutes, so I haven't actually wasted that much time. Still, it leaves me winded."
I have to say I've read both and would agree they're must-reads for writers.
Taking a second look at Lamott's book this week, I've picked out a couple excerpts that I found particularly interesting.
First of all, to explain the title..."Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"
Lamott suggests to write a bad first draft "bird by bird" or short assignment by short assignment, not allowing perfectionist ideals to cramp your creativity. But there's a downfall with that theory of a bad first draft.
"The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day I'd obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. I'd worry that people would read what I'd written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot."
Presently, I'm working on that bad first draft as part of Backspace's April Marathon, as you know. By way of an update, I'm at 5,000 words (and will be on target if I get another 1,700 by midnight).
I should be writing at the moment, but it's time to make dinner, and I write better late at night anyway. So, on to another Anne Lamott excerpt on procrastination. When she should be writing, here are some hilarious thoughts that steal her focus:
"After a moment I may notice that I'm trying to decide whether or not I am too old for orthodontia and whether right now would be a good time to make a few calls, and then I start to think about learning to use makeup and how maybe I could find some boyfriend who is not a total and complete fixer-upper and then my life would be totally great and I'd be happy all the time, and then I think about all the people I should have called back before I sat down to work, and how I should probably at least check in with my agent and tell him this great idea I have and see if he thinks it's a good idea, and see if he thinks I need orthodontia - if that is what he is actually thinking whenever we have lunch together.
"Then I think about someone I'm really annoyed with, or some financial problem that is driving me crazy, and decide that I must resolve this before I get down to today's work. So I become a dog with a chew toy, worrying it for a while, wrestling it to the ground, flinging it over my shoulder, chasing it, licking it, chewing it, flinging it back over my shoulder. I stop just short of actually barking. But all of this only takes somewhere between one and two minutes, so I haven't actually wasted that much time. Still, it leaves me winded."
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