Stuck?

 Question: What happens when your storyline flows, but your prose doesn't?

Answer: I close my eyes and type.

If I get bogged down with word choice, it is easier to visualize the scene with my eyes closed. I picture my character and what he/she sees, put my fingers on the home keys, and type. This way the typos, word choice, and the way that the sentences look on the page do not get stop my train of thought. Or rather, my character's train of thought.

The world around us can distract us from our imagination, but our imagination will lead to better realization of the world around us.

In short, just write. None of it may be usuable in your manuscript, but then again, you may find yourself comparing the fostercare system to ungathered seed pods.

Taking Undercover to the Mall

One of my dialogue exercises suggests you go to the mall and ease drop on people's conversations, then write down what you remember.  Well, I found several problems with this suggestion.  1) the music at the mall is so loud and obnoxious that you can be standing next to someone and not hear people talk. So, I thought, the food court might be better, but alas, the music and noise is so loud there and the chatter so everywhere, that you cannot hear the person sitting right next to you, either.  This picture is of me trying on a dress as I record the two sentences I just heard when I first entered the mall.  I was afraid someone would notice me taking notes on my phone, so I thought... dressing room!  I bought that dress!

At this point, I am still trying to run to the dressing room to record my snip bits of dialogue I heard.  I was a little disappointed at how little I could overhear in a certain amount of time, but more I was disappointed in how "immature" the language of both adults and teenagers was.  For example: sixty year old white woman with a hickish country accent, drab looking clothes, over weight, and a curved back stated into her cell phone: "When I say she's bad, I mean  she's gone all to heck."  Or... as I was waiting in the Chick-fil-a line, a pimply overweight teenager with red curly hair was rating girls after they left the line, in front of the other customers... just like we didn't exist. "I rate that one a seven," he says about this adorable, petite girl who works at Claire's (I had already run into her at the store and had a conversation ). The other two do a moaning, like they disagree.  "What u don't think so?" They moan again.  "What u think I was being too nice?"  At this point, I am finally at the cash register, and the guy stops talking as if he realized finally that they rest of the restaurant could hear his conversation.  Of course, I had some witty comeback in my mind to berate him in front of the restaurant, "For a guy that I would rate a zero, you are not one to be rating women, especially your customers."  That comment flickered in my head, as did summoning the manager because I really enjoyed the conversation that I had with that Claire's girl, and I knew I was next to be rated.  However, I choose the nobler path... emulating Chaucer... Do you remember Chaucer from A Knight's Tale, "I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity."  Beware the person who scorns the writer!  I didn't buy those clothes in my hands, but I did try them on, along with a two hundred dollar sexy dress that made me look amazing while still having sleeves and going an inch above my knees, but too much money and no place to wear it!

The last dress I tried on and didn't buy- didn't like that black line across my breasts. After this, I decided that running to the dressing room was a waste of time.  I actually found the best way to hear a conversation in the mall was walking in the hallway.  Anyone who was unfortunate enough to walk behind me, I typed what they said just as they said it.  My best conversations went unwritten and were with two different shop employees, which I didn't write down because I was too interested in shopping in the store to focus on my main agenda...my writing exercise. 

So, was my undercover trip to the mall successful?  Four hours, 11 different types of people, and 135 words noted.  Better than nothing, I guess.   

Finding an Agent for my Undiscovered Genius of a Series

Ok, world… I have this incredibly brilliant (choking on my own vanity here) and uplifting children's book series I am writing. These characters are quiet literally my children and I, going through a typical suburban life and letting our imaginations transform the world around us into unlimited possibilities. I know, you are wondering why is that sentence bold; don’t get ahead of me.
So, what is this incredible series called you want to know because you already are hooked on my sassy personality (choking again). Sisters of Sugar Land. I think it is cute, mainly because I’m an English teacher who thinks alliteration rocks the world, but still, I like it. LDS members out there will like the double meaning of “sisters.”
Last Thursday, I sent out my first round of queries to find an agent for my series. (Most of these agent website sites have a pre-apology note posted on their submission page: Sorry it will take 3 months to respond to your query, thanks for your submission.)
Today, I got four responses back (guess they aren’t as busy as they claim). Three said “Not for me” and I kid you not when I tell you that was the entire response. A fourth asked for the entire manuscript. I did a happy dance for about four minutes. When I sat down to send the manuscript, something inside told me to go to the agent’s website again. (I say again, because I really have looked over all the websites I sent my queries to.) Immediately, I get the “no way are you sending it to them” feeling. “But, they want to actually read my work, not some stupid cover letter!” I argue with myself. So, I set out to find out WHY I shouldn’t send it. I re-read the bios of the agents. I write down all of the books they have gotten published and then I look all of those books up online. I know, I know, it is like self-torture as I find each and every one of those books were published and marketed horribly. Many were actually rip offs of other popular series (published with the same name even).
To make up for my rejection, (which I don’t take personally, because they didn’t even read my book…because if they had they would have signed me immediately) I set off to find another agent.
So, I find an agent to query that I like and wouldn’t you know it… this agent has a line by line rubric of what she wants in her query… which is NOT anything that I can just copy and paste from my standard query. So, I wasted an entire day making a special query just for ONE literary agent who had extremely specific sentence by sentence requirements for her submission query... and she is likely to not even request to read my manuscript after all that trouble. And that bold sentence at the top… was line 7 of her special query requirements: Why can you, only you, and no one in the whole world write this story? Duh, it is my actual life… I wanted to write that… but the sentence in bold sounded better.