Tag Archives: Conferences

BEA + What Happens Now + HELLO AGAIN

30 May

Hi y’all! It’s been SO long, or at least it feels like it. I’VE MISSED YOU, INTERNETS. *GIANT CLAIRE BEAR HUGS*

I feel like a total failure for the past, oh I don’t know, two weeks? Three? I haven’t been blogging, I’ve barely been tweeting, I haven’t been checking in with ROW80 (BAD sponsor, BAD!), and it’s all making me a little PANICKY at this point. See, I went to Chicago to visit my dear dear Dr. Splanchett, and then I went to NYC for BEA, and this weekend I attended a family wedding and SLEPT and MORE SLEEPING YES. And there just wasn’t a lot of time in all that (and the preparation for all that) to stop and BREATHE, much less blog, etc.

But now I’m back.

And thank GOODNESS. Because I’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot to TELL y’all. Yesss many many things.

HIGHLIGHTS:

  1. In Chicago, I performed THIS with my dear dear BFF, the abovementioned Dr. S. He played oboe (instead of the violin in the original score), I played piano, and one of his awesomely talented musician friends played alto flute. It was the encore of his FANTASTIC senior recital (which blew everyone away), and it was so fun and special for us to perform this together. The last time we performed together, he was still in high school and I was an undergraduate trumpet player, and we played Aaron Copland’s Quiet City. This time, we got to perform a track from the Firefly score, and, that being one of our favorite TV shows and something that means a lot to us, it was a moment I’ll treasure forever.
  2. P.S. Seriously. You should listen to Quiet City. It is gorgeous.
  3. BEA. WHOA. INSANE. SO MANY BOOKS. That was how I felt the first morning of BEA, when I met up with Agent Lady, Suzie Townsend, and the Fine Print crew. We lined up to get into the exhibit hall, and as soon as they opened the gates, we ran — RAN, like CRAZY PEOPLE — through the hall, following the route Suzie had explained to us all a few minutes before. “Do NOT fall behind,” she told us. “We will NOT stop for you.” Agent Lady added, “This is NOT the Army. We will leave you behind.” The gate opened and BAM! We ran. We ran through that exhibit hall and grabbed every ARC we could find. Publishers had them in towering STACKS by their booths, and oh how we PLUNDERED them.
  4. SERIOUSLY. SO MANY BOOKS. On Thursday, the last day of BEA, I culled through the week’s haul (two giant boxes’ worth, mind you), and managed to end up with only ONE giant box, aka, 46 pounds of books, aka, HEAVEN. When this box of heaven arrives at home for me and the roomie to sort through, it will be like CHRISTMAS MORNING. Perhaps we will bake.
  5. I met so SO many awesome people. For real. The publishing world is full of people like me! Like you! Like us! People who love books and obsess over books and pick apart books and cuddle books, and squee over beautiful covers, and are often more than a leetle bit crazy. And I was in a ginormous (seriously, it took up like five city blocks) convention center with THOUSANDS OF SUCH PEOPLE. Librarians and agents and editors and authors and book bloggers and booksellers and on and on AND ON. I shook their hands and geeked out over Game of Thrones with them and talked Dr. Who with them, and it was basically this MECCA of awesome, like-minded, slightly crazy-eyed (BEA is TIRING, y’all) people who love stories and storytellers as much as I do. That, my friends, is an AWESOME feeling.
  6. People knew about my book. Seriously. And it doesn’t come out for another year! And if they didn’t know about it, they were totally nice and sweet and got excited about it with me. That was one of the strangest, most incredible, most HUMBLING feelings ever, to shake hands with someone and have them say, “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of this book, and I’m so excited to read it!” I mean…just wow. Also? SCARY. Will it be good enough? Will they love it? Will they be disappointed? ACK. NO. I will NOT follow that train of thought today, no way. *switches off self-destructive neuroses* *CLICK*
  7. People on Twitter have FACES! And are REAL! It’s true. Crazy, right? Like, they’re in the Internets, but then they’re also in the REAL WORLD, and you can poke them! But seriously. I met Emilia Plater, Phoebe North, Kirsten Hubbard, Michelle Hodkin, Joanna Volpe, Brooks Sherman, Sean Ferrell, Dan Krokos, Kaitlin Ward, Kody Keplinger, Seanan McGuire, and Claudia Gray, all of whom are delightful and brilliant and some of whom I’d talked with on Twitter and some of whom I’d just stalked followed on Twitter, and I got to shake their hands! And hug them! And be like OH IT’S YOU THAT PERSON IN MY COMPUTER.
  8. Speaking of, my roommates were AWESOME. I’d followed and chatted with Trisha Ziegenhorn and Denise Swank on Twitter for a long time, and they graciously allowed me to share a hotel room with them. They are amazingly sweet and talented ladies who were a whole lot of fun to hang out with, and did I mention they’re supermegatalented? Seriously. We chatted writing and WIPs, and trust me when I say that they’re pretty much gonna rock your faces off.
  9. I met my editor! Who is lovely and wicked smart and just all kinds of awesome. Dinner with her and Agent Lady on my last night in NYC was nothing short of magical. And insightful! And entertaining. Mainly because we got to watch Agent Lady dissect and conquer a giant lobster. It was good times, y’all.

So, yeah. That’s where I’ve been. And as amazing and fantastical as all that was, I’m SO glad to be back! I’ve got lots of work to do, and I’m so inspired to do it. Being at BEA, in the fuzzy, adrenaline-soaked midst of books and authors and panels and MORE BOOKS, was terrifying at first. I thought, “Why am I here?” “I am SO not cool enough to be here.” “I am so not TALENTED enough to be here.” “I mean, LOOK at these people.” “Don’t talk don’t talk don’t talk, if you don’t talk, they won’t find out you’re a fraud.” ETC. ETC. ETC.

I still feel that, to be honest. It’s a terrifying feeling, to have my strange, scary little book still so fresh and new, being revised and poked at and prodded at, not knowing what the next year or so will bring, wondering if I can ever live up to the brilliance and talent of the other kidlit authors I met and gaped at like an idiot.

But BEA did show me that I’m doing what I should be doing. I should be writing. I should be a writer. I knew it before, but I often forgot it, or I convinced myself I was wrong and went cowering into a little sweating corner of self-doubt and anxiety. I’ll still do that, I know. That little sweating stinky lonely corner never goes away. But when I sat at the young adult and middle grade buzz panels, tearing up because I felt so inspired and humbled by the books being highlighted; when I got into conversations with bloggers and authors and editors and realized that, hey, I kind of know what I’m talking about here; when I connected with an author signing her book or speaking at a panel or whom I met on the floor, and got chills up my arms because we both GET it, we both GET words and writing and books and this crazy, all-consuming love of storytelling that makes us get up too early and stay up too late and forget to eat and eat too much and stay in when we could go out — I knew. I knew I was in the right place, that I’m doing the right thing, that doing anything else would be contrary to everything I am at my very core.

So, now? Now it’s time to work.

I’ve got a second round of Cavendish revisions to complete (God, I love this book). I’ve got a first draft of Cracked to complete (HEY LOOKIT I LOVE THIS ONE TOO). I’ve got a second MG to plan, potentially the beginning of a series (so so so excited about this newest project, I mean REALLY).

And I’m so ready to get started.

Thank you, BEA, authors, editors, agents, roommates, FRIENDS, for shooting me up with such crazy electric inspiration last week.

Thank you, lovely ROW80 peeps, for bearing with me while I was MIA. I promise, I’ll be back to normal with this Wednesday’s check-in.

And thank YOU, blog readers, Twitter friends, etc. etc., for just being your awesome selves. I’m so glad to be back! I’ve MISSED you! *MORE GIANT HUGS FOR EVERYONE*

And now, to unpack and clean. The author’s life is a glamorous one indeed, amirite?

ROW80 Round Two: 5/18/11 Check-In

18 May

Oh HEAVENS, y’all.

You know that scene in 40-Year-Old Virgin when Steve Carell comes home after the poker night with the guys (I think) and is kind of stressed and freaking out about what went down, so he walks really fast around his apartment with his arms pinned to his sides, screaming? (I cannot find this clip ANYWHERE, by the way. Internets, you have failed me.)

This is so me right now. And has been for days, hence the lack of recent ROW80 activity, for which I apologize profusely.

Reasons for the screamy-busy-crazy:

  1. A few short days ago, I finished Part Uno of Cracked.
  2. Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Chicago to visit my dear dear BFF and perform in/attend his senior oboe recital. Yes, perform. He wants to keep it hush-hush for now, so I cannot say more, but rest assured that if it isn’t a complete disaster (*knock on wood*), I shall be posting a video clip!
  3. On Monday, I’m flying from Chicago to New York City for BookExpo America, which is exciting for all kinds of reasons (hanging with Agent Lady, meeting Editor Lady, consorting with fab writerly types, FREE BOOKS, New York-style pizza oh yesss).
  4. I realized while preparing for this trip that I had a terribly lacking professional wardrobe, in that it did not exist. So I went shopping. SHOPPING. For real, grown-up clothes. And they are CUTE. I will probably be hating myself at this point next week, traipsing around the Javits Center all like, “GIRL. Why did you insist on dressing up? You could’ve gotten away with something much more casual.” But whatever. My clothes kick serious arse.

So, the blog hiatus will continue while I’m out of town, but I intend to return with a vengeance after BEA. However, my inspirational sponsor post for ROW80 WILL go up on Monday the 23rd over at the ROW80 blog, so feel free to check that out, especially if you’re feeling discouraged with whatever writerly thing you’re working on. INSPIRATIONAL post. That means you read it and then basically become a superhero.

Also, I’m going to try my darnedest to tweet a lot of BEA-related things for those interested people who aren’t able to go this year. I set up my agenda last night and am READY TO RUMBLLLE.

Oh, and re: my ROW80 update? I wrote, like, a bajillion words last week. And when I say bajillion, I mean 10,737. This obviously exceeds my goal by…a lot. ROCK. I haven’t written anything this week for the reasons listed above, and I probably won’t get much writing done while I’m out of town, but who knows? Maybe I’ll find inspiration amidst all the BEA hoopla and sneak away for coffee shop time.

Check out the other ROWers’ updates here! You know you want to.

The Story of Me and Agent Lady

21 Feb

So, as promised (and because I adore reading other people’s How-I-Got-My-Agent stories, and because by now my flail is a bit calmer and I can actually, you know, compose sentences), I present to you The Story of Me and Agent Lady:

In November 2009, I was in the midst of querying my YA fantasy, Earthshine. This was a couple of drafts ago, and it was ridiculously long. When I say long, I mean 250,000 words long. And this was almost 100,000 words shorter than my first draft.

Yeah.

LONG.

This was also before I knew pretty much anything about the publishing industry. And the thing is, I knew I didn’t know anything, and this terrified me. So, instead of, you know, DOING my research and learning the ropes, I chose to bury my head in the sand and query a manuscript that was way too long and nowhere near ready for querying.

Funnily enough, if I hadn’t done this, I’m not sure I would have an agent now. Or maybe I would, but it wouldn’t be Agent Lady. It’s difficult to say.

See, even though the manuscript was 250K words long, something about the query and sample pages grabbed Agent Lady’s attention. She requested the full. Incidentally, I didn’t include the word count in my query (again, because I didn’t know what I was doing). I can only imagine what Diana thought when she first opened up that Word file and saw the word count. It must have been somewhere along the lines of “Jigga whaaaaaaaaa oh HELL.”

But she didn’t send it back to me with a “OH NO YOU DIDN’T” note, and she didn’t send me a rejection.

Meanwhile, I obsessively poked around Diana’s blog because OMG SHE REQUESTED THE FULL *FLAIL* and I saw that she would be attending the D/FW Writers’ Conference in April 2010.

“Perfect!” I thought. “I live in D/FW! Permaybehaps I can meet her! Zomg!”

So, I registered, and I requested Diana for my 10-minute pitch session.

Fab!

I emailed her around February, I think it was (she had been silent since I sent her the manuscript). I told her I would be at the conference, that I had requested her for my pitch session, and that I hoped for the chance to meet her.

She emailed me back and said that sounded great, and also that she was still reading Earthshine and might even give it a second read-through.

Fab once again! If she was even considering a second read, that must mean she likes it!

Well, yes…with some caveats. But hold on.

So, the conference approached. I was so excited and terrified, the phrase “pee my pants” took on a new, dangerous meaning. The week before the conference, Diana emailed me. It was a fairly long and detailed email–certainly more so than any an agent had sent me before. In the email, she told me that there were a lot of things to like about Earthshine (she listed these; I flailed), but also some things that needed work (she listed these; I cringed), and that she would love to talk more about it in person. So, we tentatively planned on getting coffee or something in addition to my pitch session.

I had no idea what to do or what to think or how to prepare for this conversation. I knew Earthshine like the back of my hand (or at least, I thought I did), but talking to a real live AGENT?! No way. For real, though. Holy crap.

Then, the conference happened.

Oh GOD it was awesome and also terrifying. I met my first ever writing buddy, my dear Kendra. I attended classes taught by Kristen Lamb and Rosemary Clement-Moore.

I had my pitch session.

By the way, I recapped all of the conference goings-on and aftermath in this post from way back in the day (warning: is super dramatic, but I wrote it in the midst of many FEELINGS, okay?), but suffice it to say, Diana did NOT in fact offer representation (an event of which I had daydreamed for like five months straight at this point).

Instead, Diana basically ripped me a new one.

After our pitch session, we relocated to her hotel (where the conference shindig was to be held later that evening, which I did not attend because OMG emotional trauma), and we talked for, like, I don’t know…three hours? Four? It was a long conversation. I have never sweated so much in my entire life. Somehow, I managed to keep from being a complete idiot…I think. Anyway, during this Epic Conversation, Diana elaborated on the points she’d addressed in her email–the things she liked, the things she didn’t, what needed work, what REALLY needed work, what books I really needed to be reading holy crap Claire you need to get to WORK is basically the message she conveyed here.

It hurt. But it was good.

As she talked, I scribbled down pages of notes, listing the books she recommended, the issues to address in Earthshine, etc. (By the way, I still have that notebook, and I hardly recognize my own handwriting. It is piss. It’s like my hand was scared out of its mind and instead of writing, it pissed itself.)

At one point, Diana paused and said, “You know, you’re taking all of this really well.” I don’t even remember what I said in response. I think I laughed it off and hopefully managed to not babble something inane. There was a serious disconnect at that moment between Outside Claire, dutifully taking notes and nodding thoughtfully, and Inside Claire, curled up in a corner of her brain, mortified and overwhelmed.

I went home. I cried. A lot. I was convinced that I would have to abandon these characters to a drawer somewhere. I had had a serious wake-up call. It hurt.

The next day, I wrote a 20-page paper for one of my graduate classes (seriously, all in one day; how I accomplished this with all these emotions running rampant, I have no idea).

I relayed the story to my family and closest friends.

That Monday, I started on revisions.

Okay, so I really should have let that conversation with Diana sink in for longer than that before diving into revisions. (This reminds me about a post I really want to write someday about skee-ball. Keep me accountable, friends.)

But, again, I knew very little about what I was doing at that point (although much more after talking with Diana). My entire heart was with this book. It was the first book I had ever written, and I had put so much time into it that the thought of letting it go was unacceptable to me. It still is unacceptable to me.

Luckily, that’s not an issue anymore.

A couple of months later, I finished that round of revisions. This draft was 130K words long, 120K words shorter than the draft Diana read, and 210K words shorter than the original draft.

I started querying again. I sent the revisions to Diana.

This time around, I was a little smarter.

I started on my next book–not Earthshine, book 2, but a completely different project.

In the meantime, I started reading again. I hadn’t read in a long, long time. When I was younger, I was a voracious reader of anything I could get my hands on. Then, middle school and high school happened. Band took over my life. In college, I studied music and had ZERO time for anything else, including reading. (This is largely why I changed my major from music to English, but that’s a story for a different post.)

So, like I said, I started reading again. I started researching the industry, connecting with other writers, following blogs, following people on Twitter–learning, learning, learning.

I got better responses on Earthshine during this second round of querying–more partials and fulls requested, more personalized feedback. I worked on my new project–The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls.

This project was much simpler than Earthshine–shorter, for younger readers, and just plain fun. Instead of writing à la Word Vomit (which is what happened with the first draft of Earthshine), I wrote slowly, deliberately, choosing each and every word with care. I wanted the manuscript to be pristine. I wanted it to have, much like its heroine, a sense of burning purpose.

As I wrote Cavendish, life seemed to do everything possible to get in the way. Personal problems, friend problems, SCHOOL EVERYWHERE. I finished it anyway. I sent it to betas. I kept reading. Mom was diagnosed with cancer. I kept editing anyway.

During these long months of crazy, Diana and I maintained a correspondence, talking Earthshine and books, and just keeping tabs on how the other was doing.

I finished Cavendish. I sent it to Diana.

She loved it.

She offered me representation. Other people offered me representation. Crazy flailing ensued.

Now, 1 year and 3 months after she requested Earthshine, 10 months after our conference conversation, Diana is my agent.

And you know what? After all that, I don’t have to abandon Earthshine. With Diana’s approval and support, I’m going to work my ass off and make it happen. Something about Earthshine grabbed her; last April just wasn’t the right time. I needed to prove that I could do more and do better, and I did. Earthshine will be ready as soon as I can get it there, and in the meantime, I’ve got a couple of awesome projects to keep me busy and help me learn even more. And the great thing is, now I have an agent behind me every step of the way, an agent who believes in me and my books 100% percent.

What is the lesson here? There are actually several:

1) Attend writers’ conferences. You just never know. They could change your life.

2) Don’t get hung up on one project for so long that you ignore the chance to write the one that’ll get your foot in the door.

3) There is such a thing as destiny. Or at least, there might be. I don’t generally like the idea of destiny, it being a crappy cop-out to avoid doing the real work and accepting the mystery of the universe and all that. But sometimes things you never believed could work out actually do, and in strange ways.

4) That clichéd crap everyone says about working hard and not giving up? Those trite phrases that make you want to claw your eyes out sometimes? Yeah. They’re true. Work hard–really hard, so hard you start to think you might be a leetle crazy for working that hard–and never, ever, ever give up.

5) I <3 Agent Lady. (<< This is not a lesson. It is a fact of life and just needs to be said.)

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