2019 in Review: Writing, Writing, and More Writing
I would be remiss if I did not write my annual post about writing in the past year.
In 2019, I wrote more than I have in any previous year, coming in at 734.45 hours. That averages out to about two hours a day, every single day. (In comparison, last year I wrote 675 hours, which was a personal best; in 2017 I only wrote 400.)
Of course, I didn’t spend two hours writing every single day–there were weeks where I did much more, and weeks where I did much less:
And what did I do with those hours?
First and foremost, I spent 381 hours on my Regency Mystery Novel
- Draft 2: 58 hours (I had started Draft 2 in 2018)
- Draft 3: 108 hours
- Newspaper Research: 18 hours
- Draft 4: 6 hours
- Draft 5: 15 hours
- Draft 6: 77 hours
- Draft 7: 16 hours
- Submitting to Literary Agents: 47.5 hours
- Working on Book 2: 34 hours
- And other minor tasks
The big news of the year was getting a literary agent, something I wrote extensively about in another blog post.
And then the rest of the writing time was a mix of writing/revising short stories, critiquing, conferences, writing groups, running an international writing contest for a literary nonprofit, journal writing, etc. I had one short story published during the year, Paradisiacal Glory
During the year, I wrote a solid 55,000 words, and perhaps a significant amount more (during the revision process I rewrite a lot of entire sentences, paragraphs, and scenes, which sometimes doesn’t end up in my word count log).
Not included in my writing chart, but also writing-related: In August 2019, I started a part time job, working as an adjunct faculty member at Western Michigan University, where I now teach first-year writing.
And that’s my year! For the next year, I plan to finish book 2 in my Regency mystery series, and perhaps start researching a new series.
Revising for a Literary Agent (and How I Got my Agent)
I recently signed with a literary agent, Stephany Evans of Ayesha Pande Literary, and like most agents, she had revision notes for me.
But before I talk about my process of revising for a literary agent, let’s start with a little background. A lot of people ask, “When you start submitting, is your book finished?”
The answer is, your book should be as polished as you can make it with the help of your writing group, beta readers, and critique partners.
For this book, which we shall call my Regency Mystery novel, I spent 54 hours doing research, 24 hours outlining, and 135 hours on the first draft. (I actual researched, outlined, and wrote the first draft all at the same time, based on what was needed any given week—it wasn’t sequential.)
Then, I did lots of revising: 88.5 hours on the second draft, then I sent it to readers for feedback, 107 hours on the third draft, then I sent it to readers again, who did not have much feedback, and then 6 hours on the fourth draft.
At that point, I felt like my Regency Mystery novel was as ready as I could make it, so I started querying literary agents.
One of these agents requested the beginning of my book, liked it, and asked to read the whole book. I sent it to her. She read it. She rejected it.
However, it was a really helpful rejection letter. It was only one paragraph long, but it included a couple of sentences about what she saw as a structural problem in my book.
I thought about it for a few weeks (I often have to digest feedback before I can figure out how to incorporate it) and then I wrote a fifth draft. Making the structural change to increase tension took about fifteen hours.
Then I started querying again.
Query. Query. Query. Query. Query.
I queried a lot of agents at this point—I was getting requests for partial manuscripts, so I knew my query letter was working, and I was getting requests for full manuscripts, so I knew people liked my opening pages. I had several dream agents that I still hadn’t contacted, and I wanted to make sure that I queried them.
Query. Query. Query. Query. Query.
I queried 51 agents in all.
One of my dream agents, who I hadn’t queried in the first rounds because she wasn’t specifically looking for historical mystery, wrote back and asked for my manuscript. I sent it to her. A week and a half later she emailed me and said was half-way through and loving it. Not long after, she sent another email: she wanted to speak with me on the phone about my book.
And thus, one of the most anticipated moments for a writer:
The Call
(Despite how cool rotary phones look, I don’t know how to use them. I used my cell phone.)
The phone call went like this:
- General pleasantries and conversation. To my utter horror, the call kept dropping.
- We got a good connection established. We decided to skip general pleasantries.
- Stephany Evans told me all the things that she loved about the book. It was a lot of things. I really got the sense that she understood my vision—she loved my premise, my characters, my writing style, the emotion and the themes.
- We talked about revisions.
I had left a number of loose ends in my book that I didn’t realize were there (an important character disappeared and didn’t have a backstory, several characters were never fully tied into the mystery plot, could the boat serve a bigger purpose, to complete this relationship arc this character needs to apologize, etc. etc.). However, there was something much bigger: I was staying on the fringes of the mystery genre. While my novel included all sorts of mystery and sleuthing and discovery, there was no Big Mystery, no Large Problem that occurs near the beginning and then needs to be solved. A Big Mystery could be a dead body, a kidnapped person, a significant theft, etc.
As we talked about this revision, it was like stepping into a Frederick Edwin Church painting: all of a sudden there was a breathtaking vision before me of what my novel could be.
Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church
One of the reasons I was excited was the feedback felt like it was making more the book into more of I wanted it to be, instead of shifting it into something else. (To me, this is a key for revisions, whether you are revising for an agent, an editor, or a critique partner.)
Back to the phone call.
- Stephany Evans asked if I would be willing to make the sort of revisions we had discussed. I said something along the lines of, “Yes! I think adding a subplot would be work really well.” She then asked me about the time frame—how long would it take me to revise? I said about a month, and then I asked if I could revise and resubmit the manuscript to her. (“Revise and resubmit” is a pretty common request in the publishing industry.)
- Stephany said that she actually wasn’t asking me to revise and resubmit—she was confident I would be able to make the revisions, and she wanted to make an offer of representation.
- I said that I was extremely interested and would love to work with her, but that other agents were looking at it. We made a plan to talk in the not so distant future and that afternoon I rapidly contacted everyone else who had the query or the manuscript.
I didn’t end up receiving other offers or representation. But, one of the other agents who read the full manuscript gave me the same big picture feedback—she pointed out the same, Big Mystery plot problem. This was a great confirmation to me that the revisions I was about to start were really on track with what the book needed.
During the time while I was waiting to hear back from the other agents, I did extensive outlining and planning for how to tackle the revision. And then, as soon as I signed a contract with Stephany Evans, I plunged into the revisions.
I spent 77 hours revising over the course of 5 weeks.
Most of the time went to adding the subplot, which required introducing several characters earlier in the book, adding a new character, and writing three and a half new chapters. A lot of the other chapters had new partial or full scenes; other scenes had to be rewritten to reflect the Big Mystery.
The first hundred pages of the book didn’t change much at all. And then, things started to get colorful.
I used track changes, and so anything I changed, added, or deleted shows up in red. When you look at the book in 10% size it really gives you a sense of what happens when you add a dead body to your book.
My book is now about 15,000 words longer than it was before (sixty pages or so, depending on font and margin size). The great thing was that I was able to solve all of the loose ends by the addition of the subplot—it fixed not only the big problem with my book, but the smaller ones as well.
Over the course of the five weeks, I didn’t just change and add things—I also got feedback from critique partners and my writing groups on every single new scene in the book. It is hard (in my opinion) to make new material match writing that has been through multiple drafts, so I knew I needed eyes on the manuscript.
I only sent the full manuscript to one person, a trusted friend who is an incredible writer (and who also happened to be one of my college roommates). She had never read a single word of the book before, which was useful because she came at the manuscript completely fresh. She knew that I had added a subplot but did not know which one. And when she emailed me after reading the book, she thought it was a different subplot that was new. She was shocked that the new subplot was actually the Big Mystery, because it seemed so essential and interwoven in the story.
And that is the story of how I got my agent, and the revisions I have done for her so far. I love what my book is becoming, and I am excited to see what happens next.
2018 in Review, and Learning Acceptance
It’s that time of year—that blessed time you’ve been waiting for—when I blog with charts! Pie charts, column charts, glow-in-the-dark charts, edible charts, I’ve got them all!
Last year I spent 675 hours writing. That’s an average of 1.85 hours per day, every single day.
The increase in time came in part by failing at other things (or, more kindly, letting go of other things). For instance, I completely failed at my Goodreads reading goal for the year. My garden grew many tomatoes but little else. My kids took only one set of swimming lessons this year instead of three or four. Other time came from the fact that I did not move or have a baby in 2018.
I also used a time tracking app, toggl, which meant I recorded my time digitally, with the start and stop of a button on my laptop or cell phone. In past years, I think I was slightly underestimating the amount of time that I spent working. (If you’re interested in using it yourself, I guest blogged about using toggl to track your writing on The Writing Pal.)
Using toggl means that I have more beautiful charts that try to capture 2018 for me. Here’s my writing time per month:
And here is how my time was distributed across projects:
In second place for time spent was the fairy tale anthology Unspun. Not only did I have a novella in the anthology, but I coordinated the editorial work flow for each of the pieces (making sure each of the 11 pieces went through content edits, revision, copy edits, revision, proofreading, revision), formatted the book, wrote and managed contracts, and helped publish it. I am supremely happy with how it turned out.
The other big push for my writing time was my current novel, a historical mystery set in London in the crazy year of 1814. (1814 was truly a crazy time to be alive.)
Here’s the breakdown for how I spent my time on the book:
I worked on the first draft from January 1st to November 29th. The constant outlining and the research were all essential for writing the first draft, so I actually spent 194.5 hours on the first draft. During the year, I added approximately 67,334 words to the project, which means I wrote at a speed of about 346 words per hour.
So far I’ve spent 42 hours revising and am about a third the way through the second draft. It has an enormity of work left, but it’s really starting to take shape. Also, my six-year-old-daughter, who spent two minutes quizzing me on things that happen in the story, decided to illustrate the book and tape the illustrations to the counter, so prepare yourself for major spoilers:
[There are no kissing fish in the novel, but everything else is accurate.]
In 2018, I also wrote a little over 2000 other words, on two short stories. One of those was “A Perfect Voice,” which won first place in the 2018 Mormon Lit Blitz.
I received 5 rejections for other things I submitted during the year. I was accepted to teach a class locally on the Steampunk genre, but then it was cancelled due to inadequate enrollment.
2018 also brought back to life a story that I had written in 2014. It had received about 7 rejections in 2014 and 2015 and I decided it would never be published. In 2017 I pulled it out again and started submitting it to very different publications (instead of science fiction journals, I submitted it to humor and satire and themed issues) and I got very positive rejections (“we really liked this but it’s not quite the right fit”). Then I found Mad Scientist Journal, submitted the story, and it was accepted. It was published this year and can now be read online.
One of the big lessons for me this year was learning acceptance. I see so much online about how to write faster, and in many ways that is heralded as the mark of success. If you write four novels, or 500,000 words a year, or write 50,000 words in a single month, then you are a writer. But I’ve tried and those tricks don’t work on me, or they produce such terrible results that I end up abandoning projects. (I actually wrote an entire—very dreadful—novel in the month of November 2010 and then abandoned the act of writing for over a year and a half.)
This year I’ve tried to embrace acceptance.
I’m accepting that I’m not a fast writer.
I’m accepting that becoming a better writer has actually made me a slower writer.
I’m accepting that although my first drafts are better than they used to be, they still need plenty of revision.
I’m accepting that I can’t wake up at 5 a.m. like some writers do or stay up late to get more writing done. When I do that I get terribly depressed.
I’m accepting that many of the tricks and tips and sure-fire techniques to write more every month don’t work for me. (Or I’m already using them, and they make possible the 15,000 word months.)
I’m accepting that putting more time towards writing doesn’t necessarily increase my output: I only have so much creative energy to put towards writing every day.
I’m accepting that sometimes I can’t write. There are days and weeks and outside life circumstances that don’t let me write.
I’m accepting that there are weeks I’ve spent too much time writing (in balance with other things) and that I need to pull back sometimes.
I’m also accepting that I can give myself permission to write, even when it seems like myself and other people think I should place my energy on other priorities.
I’m at a better mental place as a writer at the end of 2018 then I was at the end of 2017. In 2017, I considered abandoning my writing goals. And now I feel like singing the line from Hamilton: “I am not throwing away my shot.”
For 2019 I have plenty of writing goals and plans to achieve them, but ultimately, I will put forth the effort and energy that I am able. 2019 does not need to be my best or my busiest or my most successful year as a writer. I will accept who and what I am as a person and as a writer. And that will be enough.
Also, I have a new writing hot chocolate mug and a planner with a unicorn, so I am ready for whatever 2019 brings.
2017 in Review: Comparison is the Thief of Joy
I did not meet the lofty writing goals I set for myself in 2017. That is typically true of my lofty goals–but I set them because they push me to do more and to do it faster. But in 2017, not only did I not achieve my goals, I crashed and burned at most of my attempts.
I feel this particularly when I compare how much I accomplished in 2017 versus what I was able to do during each of the previous three years (in terms of word count, number of novel drafts, etc.). But as I’ve reflected on 2017 during the last few weeks, what keeps coming to me is the quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
In the past I’ve taken this to mean: don’t compare your writing results to others. There is always a writer that will write faster or better or sell more or receive more credit. Comparison is a key to misery.
Yes, it’s a bad idea to compare yourself to others, but it can also be a bad idea to compare yourself to yourself. I am not the same person I was in 2014 or 2015 or 2016. Despite my efforts, I could not do the same things as I did previous years. And I don’t need to beat myself up for it.
There’s a lot of emphasis on being better than you were yesterday or last year. People talk about making this year “the best year ever.” To me, that is a daunting prospect, and sometimes it’s simply not possible. Life is not a continual summit up an ever-growing mountain. It’s a long journey across uneven terrain with peaks and valleys, twists and turns, rivers and plateaus.
In 2017 I looked at writing (and several other aspects of my life that I cherish and love) and considered abandoning it entirely. I am a person who firmly believes it is okay to give up on dreams and pursue new ones. And I seriously considering casting writing aside. After a lot of soul searching, I’ve decided that I still have stories I need and want to tell. So I’m still here. And that is an accomplishment.
A few other accomplishments for 2017:
-I wrote and revised a novella about an ugly princess who rides around on a goat brandishing a large, wooden spoon. The story will be part of a fairy tale anthology I’m putting together with some friends; we’re going to publish it in February or March 2018.
-I received 2nd place in the 2017 Mormon Lit Blitz for my flash fiction story, “Celestial Accounting.”
-I received 5 beautiful, personalized rejections for short stories and essays.
-I received 1 acceptance for a short story (for “Confessions of a Mycologist,” which will be published in the March 2018 issue of Mad Scientist Journal).
-I attended a one-day writer’s conference in Detroit.
-I submitted an adult novel to about 20 literary agents and a YA graphic novel to about 10 literary agents.
-I started a monthly writing group, and critiqued novels, a poetry collection, and essays for other writers.
-I let myself move on from a novel that I am unable to write right now.
As I look at this list, each of these things is good and beautiful–including rejection, including moving on from things that aren’t working. Each item on the list is worthwhile, each deserved my attention. In total, I likely spent at least 400 hours (or a little more than an hour a day) on writing or writing-related activities. I do not regret giving writing that time, even though there are so many other things I could have given it to. (Imagine how much cleaner my house could’ve been for unexpected visitors! Or how many pastries I could’ve baked in 400 hours!)
I’ve set myself a few lofty writing goals for 2018. And I may or may not reach them.
But I will keep moving forward, one word at a time. And I will do my best to not let comparison rob me of joy.
The Eclipse Party: A Short Story by Katherine Cowley
In honor of today’s solar eclipse, I gave myself the writing challenge of creating a story about the eclipse in one weekend. The result is a short story about a woman whose granddaughters force her to attend a rather unusual eclipse party.
The Eclipse Party
Except for a poky rim around the edge that Marisel’s granddaughters insisted represented the sun’s corona, the cookie had been painted black and practically dipped in black sprinkles. Marisel disliked sprinkles of any type and never used black frosting (it was hard to convince your mind that black food was not mold) but she forced the cookie into her mouth and swallowed.
Sophie gave her an approving smile. The nine-year-old had done most of the planning for this party, and for the last thirty minutes had ushered Marisel from one bizarre activity to the next.
Lu, age seven, twirled in a circle, unable to stand still. “Did you know,” she said, half a cookie shoved in her mouth, “that an eclipse is something eating the sun?” Black sprinkles stuck to her chin. “Did you know that there is a demon named Rahu, and Vishnu cut off his head, and sometimes he eats the sun, but since his head was cut off, when he swallows the sun it falls out the bottom of his head?”
“I…did not know that,” managed Marisel.
“It’s actually just a legend,” said Sophie authoritatively. “What’s really happening is the moon is passing in front of the sun.”
Lu grabbed Marisel’s hand with her sticky fingers and they checked the pinhole projector again. “Not yet!” Lu declared. “Remember, grandma, don’t look at the sun until it’s completely covered.”
Sophie approached with a shoe box that had been scribbled black with a permanent marker. “This is the most important thing you’ll do today,” she said dramatically. “Take a piece of paper and a pen. You need to write down something that’s been bothering you. It should be something that’s hard for you. When you finish, you’re going to put it in the box, and when the eclipse happens you are going to let it go.”
Both her granddaughters quickly wrote something on their slips, but Marisel twirled her pen in her fingers. Her husband, Daniel, would’ve come up with something clever, she thought wistfully. And maybe she would’ve too, once. After a few minutes she managed to write, “Getting stressed when I lose the matches to socks.”
Lu and Sophie dragged her to the next activity, which was properly positioning their homemade black sugar crystals—why did they have to choose black?—so they could capture the positive energy from the sun’s return. Then they carefully poured water into a mason jar. Once again, it was supposed to capture positive energy, so then little sips could be drunk later, on days when you most needed it.
“Now you need to stir this water seventy times,” said Sophie, handing her a wooden popsicle stick. “Clockwise. We’ll be right back.”
Marisel stirred but didn’t bother to count. She sighed and shot a glance at her daughter-in-law. She was the type to let her kids indulge in this sort of mystical nonsense. Marisel would’ve said something to her about it, but there was a chance her granddaughters would hear, and she didn’t want to spoil their party for them. She would have to talk to her daughter-in-law about it later.
She had just finished stirring the water what must be about seventy times when her granddaughters returned with the black shoe box. They both looked upset, though she couldn’t tell if it was at each other or at her.
“You wrote the wrong thing on your paper, grandma,” said Sophie. “This was serious. It wasn’t supposed to be about socks.”
Marisel had been right. She should’ve tried to come up with something clever.
“I wrote the right answer for you,” said Lu, holding up the paper.
Sophie tried to grab it from her younger sister. “But it might not work now,” she said. “Grandma has to want to let it go, or it won’t work.”
They bickered, fighting over the paper, until Marisel reached out her hand and said, “Give it to me, girls.”
Heads bowed, they handed her the paper.
Marisel unfolded it. Lu had crossed out her statement about socks, and, in the handwriting of a seven-year-old, written, “stop being sad about Granpa Daniel.”
Marisel swallowed and blinked away the moisture in her eyes. They were wrong—she did not need to let her sorrow go. Yes, it had been two years, and she’d accepted her husband’s death, but the loss was a constant part of her, as it should be.
“You’re not as fun as you used to be,” said Lu.
“That’s not nice,” said Sophie, shooting a dirty look at her sister. “Mom says that you won’t let yourself move on and enjoy things, and that it’s hurting you. And Dad says it will just take more time. But I don’t want it to take more time. I want you to be you again.”
“We miss grandpa too,” said Lu.
Marisel stood there, numb, unsure of what to say, or how to process their accusations. What did they mean she wasn’t herself anymore? She always took days off to do fun things with them, attend their performances and field trips. She looked at her watch. Maybe, today, she should’ve stayed at work. She was running low on vacation days, and she had a project due tomorrow that she’d have to stay up late tonight finishing.
“It’s almost time, girls,” her daughter-in-law called.
Lu grabbed the paper out of Marisel’s hand and shoved it in the black box. Both girls scampered over to the pinhole projector.
Marisel stood there, slid her wedding ring in a circle around her finger, vaguely aware of her granddaughters exclaiming as the moon covered more and more of the sun. She’d tried to move forward, she really had. She’d even met once with a therapist who specialized in grief. But it was too much sometimes to act like everything was okay, too hard to keep pretending.
Suddenly her granddaughters were screaming. It was dark and the air around her was cold, as if a vacuum had sucked all the warmth and light out of the sky.
Lu danced up to her and pointed her hand. “Mom says you can look at the sun now!”
And so Marisel looked, tilting her head upward and for the first time in her life staring straight at the sun.
The sun was black—blacker than the cookies, an unnatural blackness, an absence, a dark beast with light tendrils reaching out from its edges, trying to consume her.
The moon had blotted out the sun, blotted it out completely. And yes, you could see some stars, but she did not want to see the stars—it was supposed to be day. Daniel had died too young, it had not been expected, they still had so many plans for things they wanted to do, trips they wanted to take, experiences they should’ve had, if they had been robbed from her like the light from the sky.
Marisel wanted to look away from what was missing in the sky, but she could not. The eclipse would swallow her whole, and for a moment she believed the legends, believed that it could be a bad omen. It was unreal, impossible to comprehend, just as she still could not comprehend her own loss, still could not move forward.
Sophie pushed a pan and a wooden spoon into her hands. “We have to scare the moon away! We have to bring the sun back, or it’ll stay dark forever!”
Sophie and Lu and even her daughter-in-law started banging their pans as loud as they could, yelling, “Release the sun!”
Marisel banged the pan half-heartedly at first, but then started hitting it with all her might. “Release the sun! Release the sun! Release the sun!” she shouted with them, tears running down her face.
And then, in an instant, the sky lightened.
“Everyone look at the ground,” her daughter-in-law directed. “Right now, so you don’t go blind.”
Marisel forced her eyes away from the sky, to the ground. There was no need to look up anyways, not anymore, for the light had come back like a flash, as if it had never been dark in the middle of the day, as if the eclipse were a distant memory and not something she’d just experienced.
“Did it work? Did it work?” Lu shouted, holding up the black shoe box.
Marisel didn’t know if she’d really let go, or if she ever could completely, but something in her had released, had fled as the sun had returned. There had been darkness, there had been cold, but now there was light and warmth and maybe a bit more possibility.
She set down her pan and her wooden spoon and smiled at her granddaughters. And for the first time in a long time, there was nothing forced about the upward curve of her lips. She pulled them into a hug and held them until they squirmed.
“I think it worked,” she said. “Now can I try one of your sugar crystals? Or are we supposed to wait until later?”
“We can eat them now!” the girls declared and ran to get them.
Marisel sucked on her black sugar crystal. To her surprise, despite the color, it tasted good. Maybe the sun really had given it some positive energy.
Love and Chicken Tenders: A Review of Tender Wings of Desire
Have you ever sat there, eating KFC while you fantasize about Colonel Sanders, the founder and creator of such beautiful chicken?
Well if you haven’t, you are missing out. Kentucky Fried Chicken has decided to solve this problem by giving a new book to the world as a free gift for Mother’s Day.
The novella is called Tender Wings of Desire, and it even has a picture of a ripped Colonel Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken on the cover.
Yes, I am dead serious. This really exists.
I downloaded the book for free on Amazon this morning and thought, “This sounds funny. I’ll just read the first few pages.” But no. I read the whole thing in one sitting.
The dedication certainly helped: “For mothers everywhere, I dedicate this to you—a brief escape from motherhood into the arms of your fantasy Colonel. Whoever he may be.”
Obviously, your fantasy Colonel should be a fried chicken magnate.
The story starts with Madeline, a fine Victorian lady who is engaged, against her will, to a Duke who she thinks “looks like a vanilla biscuit.” (Yes—the cover of the book shows looks like a steamy modern romance, and shows a normal woman in the arms of a modern Colonel. But to me, that’s part of the thrill—why not have modern people on the cover of a historical romance? You can use the best of all romance novels. We can all fantasize about the Colonel however we want.)
Madeline feels no passion for her betrothed duke, so the night before her wedding, she runs away to a romantic coastal town with cliffs—beautiful, frightening cliffs—to become a barmaid. And of course there she meets—and is swept off her feet—by the one and only Colonel Sanders. Add a few barriers in the way of their romance, and you have a thrilling romance.
The novella is a touch steamy (such passion!), though only kisses are shown on the page and everything else is left implied.
And now, for my favorite quote:
“Madeline’s heart was pounding so heavily in her chest that she did not think she would be able to breathe; perhaps she would die like this. It would be terribly romantic, would it not? To be killed by such a longing.”
The story does not take itself seriously (you were warned by the cover and the title!), and yet it still manages to tell a very solid romance.
And of course, the Amazon reviewers don’t take the story completely seriously either (and are actually less appropriate than the book itself). Here are two of my favorites:
Now what are you waiting for? Go download your free book Or better yet, give it to your mom for Mother’s Day.