Runner-Up? I’ll Take It!

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WriteMentor just announced their 2023 Novel and Picture Book Awards winners and I’m a runner-up! I am so excited — perhaps more than you might expect for not winning.

It can be so dispiriting trying to get your book out there. You’ve done your industry homework, developed your skills, learned from critique partners and classes and workshops. You’ve written (and edited and re-edited) a book you know is good. When you’ve finally got it all polished and pretty (complete with the dreaded synopsis and elevator pitch and comp titles and all that) you enter contests and send query letters to agents and then wait.

And wait.

And sometimes get polite rejections but never know why. There could be countless reasons — it’s not a good fit with that particular agent, they’ve got enough of your genre and age range already, the contest competition was just too good — but in the vacuum of what’s often a very solitary job, it’s impossible to keep the doubts at bay. No matter how confident you may be (at the best of times), you inevitably come back to wondering if all that silence and polite rejection is simply because the novel you’ve spent so many hours creating is just … not that good.

Or, slightly-better-than-worst-case scenario, the novel might be good but you’re so terrible at pitches and queries that no one will give it a shot. If only you could get someone to read the whole thing! Or tell you what’s not working. Or anything other than silence. It’s frustrating, and the more it gets you down, the harder it is to send the next round of queries or the next contest submission. You know deep down that that’s what it takes — just keep going, persistence pays off, everyone has setbacks — but whew. Some days that’s a lot easier said than done.

So this — this might be second place, it might not come with a cash prize or a contract, but it’s something. It means industry professionals — people who know a lot about the market and what readers like — not only actually read my book but saw something in it that they found worthwhile. If nothing else, that’s the reassurance my anxious mind needs to help me keep going for the next round of query letters … and the next book*.

*As soon as I decide which of the three books I’m working on will get my full attention…

Hey, Buddy — Can You Spare a Click?

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My pitch for my latest novel, Ruby Madder’s Field Guide to Poisonous Plants, got picked for this year’s Nanowrimo Pitchapalooza. The winner of the popularity contest — er, public vote — gets an editorial consultation that would be super handy for someone like me who’s trying to break into the cutthroat kid-lit market. I’d be absolutely delighted if you could spare a minute to check out my pitch and vote for me if you think it’s good.

The pitch:

Two years ago her life was millionaires’ pool parties and posh private school. Now 15-year-old Ruby Bartek spends her free time helping with her divorced mom’s gardening business and updating her website, Ruby Madder’s Field Guide to Poisonous Plants, instead of having a social life. But her ticket back into her old world — a scholarship to the exclusive Sloane Academy — only makes things worse. Her classmates know all about the scandal that fractured Ruby’s family and uprooted them to the poor side of town. And Addie, Ruby’s former best friend, hasn’t just moved on: She’s skyrocketed up the social ladder with her new BFF, Sloane queen bee Taylor Hampton.

When Taylor is poisoned shortly after a very public argument with Ruby, rumors spread like dandelions in a suburban lawn. Ruby’s fascination with deadly toxins would be bad enough on its own, but her family’s history with the Hamptons — who had more than a little to do with the Barteks’ fall from grace — makes Ruby and her mom prime suspects. To clear her family and save any chance of ever putting down roots at Sloane, Ruby must find out what plant poisoned Taylor, and who — other than the Barteks — would have the knowledge and motive to use it.

RUBY MADDER’S FIELD GUIDE TO POISONOUS PLANTS, a 78,000-word contemporary YA mystery, is Veronica Mars meets Flavia de Luce in a wealthy Columbus, Ohio, suburb where toxic secrets lurk in impeccably landscaped yards and the most beautiful blooms hide the deadliest poisons.

And here’s where to vote (before 11:59 p.m. PDT on April 25, 2022): https://thebookdoctors.com/michelle-heimburger/

Thank you, kind voters!

Hello again!

Michelle Heimburger1 Comment

Wow, it has been … a while.

At first I took a break from updating my site partly because I got wrapped up in some writing projects and partly because I got a little freaked out about how WordPress would automatically email people anything I posted. I felt like if I was going to interrupt someone’s busy day and contribute to their overflowing inbox I’d better have something meaningful to say — not just random musings. And then posting stopped being a habit and I kind of … got distracted. I left my site to its own devices. I neglected it. I’m a bad website parent.

Anyway, I think (I hope) I’ve now disabled the automatic emails and I’m going start tidying things up around here and posting some older writing projects, like that Spark Archive I’ve been meaning to get to for the last 67 years.

I’m also going to post some updates about what I’ve been working on over the past — ahem — few years. I think it’s been about 3.5 novels since my last post, so more on those soon…

Teaching a Dinosaur New Tricks

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(Not a dinosaur)

I’m not afraid of technology, but I’ve never been an early adopter. I resisted digital cameras, digital music, and ebooks for what my techie friends would call an embarrassingly long time. It’s not that I don’t trust the digital versions of analog technology — I just like to have physical objects that I can hold in my hands. They seem more real: I feel more connected to them.

I’ve been especially reluctant, even by my standards, to experiment with digital illustration. Of all the things I’m willing to compromise on — ebooks are more portable, digital cameras more immediate, streaming music doesn’t clutter up my house — there’s something about creating art that just needs that connection between pencil and paper or paint and canvas. It’s just inherently physical to me.

But old-school paint-and-canvas art is also sloooooooow. More often than not when I get the urge to make something I either don’t have the time (like between work and picking the kids up from school) or can’t muster the energy (after the kids go to bed) for the whole set-up and clean-up. The prospect of portable art that can mimic a variety of analog media and be created in small chunks of time started to look more and more appealing.

And then I played with the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro and I was smitten: So fast! So many options! So easy! Well, not that last part. While it’s incredibly easy to make dramatic changes to a piece in no time at all, making it look good is another story. Some tools don’t work at all the same as their analog counterparts. Drawing (see the goofy fire dragon up above) feels pretty similar. Drawing with digital pens/markers is weirder (but erasable!):

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“Painting” with a digital pencil is nothing like actual painting. (I won’t subject you to an example because I still haven’t even worked out the basics.) Using a variety of textures and tools (like this drawing/painting/airbrushing/every-damn-thing-I-could-throw-at-it mess) is fun, if sloppy:

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And I’ve just started trying to manipulate photos, but it seems like it could be pretty satisfying:

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Once I get the hang of the tools I’m sure it’ll be easier, but now I feel like I’m re-learning skills I thought I’d at least had a basic knowledge of since elementary school. For now I’m just experimenting with the tools until I feel more comfortable. No doubt everyone who’s been using digital tools all along (which is probably pretty much everyone but me) finds all this easy, but I’m apparently a dinosaur. Specifically a T. rex with useless tiny arms that can’t hold the iPad properly.

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2018 Goal: 50 Rejections

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Writing is hard on the ego, so aiming to collect rejections probably sounds masochistic. Every single writer gets them, of course, but even knowing that J.K. Rowling and Stephen King were roundly rejected before finally breaking through doesn’t really dull the sting of being spurned. It’s easy to give one negative response disproportionate weight and just abandon the effort and slink off into hiding — but instead I’m trying to change my focus so the inevitable rejections don’t kill my momentum.

Fifty rejections isn’t a New Year’s resolution so much as the evolution of my “stop being so damned negative” mindset from last year. But I’m finally ready to start sending queries (for Ghost Town, the middle grade mystery) and it happens to be early January, so it feels right to make it a goal. I considered making it 100 (like Kim Liao’s inspirational Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year) because it’s such a satisfying round number, but I know my own tendency to obsess to hit arbitrary goals — like writing 11,000 words in the last two days to finish NaNoWriMo in November. My time is limited, though, and I don’t want to give up writing to only send submissions this year. I also want to make sure I’m sending good queries to the right people because rejections to half-assed and mismatched submissions would be cheating.

At least it’ll be easy to beat last year’s total of one rejection. Of course, I only made one submission — and not winning a contest probably doesn’t even count as rejection, no matter how much it felt that way. It certainly stung, but maybe the tenth rejection will sting less. And maybe the 50th will be almost satisfying for achieving a goal.

 

Other creative goals for 2018 (fine, call them New Year’s resolutions if you must):
– Finishing the last couple illustrations for Stealing the Show and getting it printed for my kids — because even if I never try to revise it and get it published I’ve put a lot of hours into this book and want my kids to have a physical copy of it.
– Completing last year’s NaNoWriMo novel before I forget where it was going when I stopped cold on December 1.
– Figuring out what to do with my Franklin Castle novel. Maybe I’ll revise heavily and make it pure fiction. Maybe I’ll write the missing scenes and keep it as it is, a fictionalized semi-memoir. Either way, it needs some attention. Even if I never let another soul read it.
– Hyping my creative friends. I know so many brilliant people who make beautiful, strange and interesting things. I am going to make a concerted effort to not only buy their books/comics/art but to do my part to help them reach a wider audience. Watch this space…

A Flying Leap

Michelle Heimburger3 Comments

I feel like every time I dip my toes into the waters of the publishing industry I get unceremoniously washed back to shore with my swimsuit full of sand and salt water up my nose before I even start swimming. Over and over again, I finish writing a book and actually think it’s pretty good: I’m confident! Excited! Ready to take the next step! So I start looking into the process of getting published — crafting the perfect query letter and synopsis, finding an agent vs. approaching publishers directly, identifying which ones might be a good fit — and then I sink like a stone.

 

Here’s what most industry sites seem to want writers to know:

  • Your novel is probably bad. Everyone has written one, and nearly everything that you first-time authors produce is amateurish and terrible. (Best case scenario: recycling bin. Worst case: subject of underpaid assistant editors’ gleeful mockery.)
  • Agents and publishers are swimming in manuscripts. No matter how good they are, virtually none of them will even be seen, let alone published.
  • To stand any chance at all, you must take as many classes as possible (an MFA in creative writing at the very least), join multiple critique groups, and hire an editor (or a few — you unpublished types probably need the extra help).
  • You have to win some awards. If you haven’t won anything no one will even look at your manuscript. (Unless you’re a celebrity. Are you a celebrity? No? Bad luck.)
  • You must read everything in your genre/market and be familiar with all recent and upcoming trends and titles. Your story must completely different and better than all of them.
  • You need an established online brand and a massive, devoted social media following. (If you’re not spending two hours a day on Twitter, you’re just not trying.)
  • It’s vital to attend conferences regularly and make as many industry contacts as possible, including but not limited to agents, publishers, editors, editorial assistants, and published authors with strong sales records.
  • You must have glowing personal references from top-tier agents or bestselling authors. (That should be easy since you’re now BFFs.)
  • Without these things you will not be published unless you’re the one-in-a-million fluke who’s miraculously written something amazing through some sort of cosmic serendipity or divine intervention and also the stars happen to align perfectly. (But you’re not, you haven’t and they won’t.)

 

Whew. So I brush the sand out of my eyes and start thinking how I’d better get to work on all of that stuff first, before I even consider inflicting my work on anyone else. Sure thing. Easy peasy. Only … I’d rather be, you know, writing. All of that research, online schmoozing and author-stalking takes way more time (and possibly superhuman abilities) than I have. It sounds exhausting. And I’m sure that’s the point: Weed out the easily scared before they even have a chance to add to the industry’s workload.

At this point I often have a terrible thought — a glimmer of not-quite-dead-yet confidence — that maybe those things don’t all apply to me. Of course agents get inundated with terrible submissions from people who haven’t even bothered to proofread and haven’t read enough books to know the basics of storytelling (or the basics of grammar). Except those people are probably having the exact same thought, which means … oh no, I’m one of them! I’ve written a terrible book and can’t even see how bad it is. That’s proof that it’s terrible!

After that I’m ready to just bury my manuscript and move on. The problem is that I keep getting hung up at that stage. Finish book, get excited, do research, despair. I don’t even get to the stage where I actually send things out to get rejected for real — I’m self-rejecting before the professionals have a chance to do it. It’s not that I’m afraid of rejection so much as I’m so sure of it that I just cut out the middleman.

After several times through this cycle, though, I might finally break it. My endlessly patient husband stopped me at the beginning of the Despair phase this time, very reasonably pointing out that this isn’t my first novel, I have taken classes and done critiques, I have done market research, and I’ve already made revisions based on feedback from readers. He also calmly reassured me that test readers have busy lives and there are plenty of reasons why someone might ask to read my manuscript and then never mention it again (reasons beyond my theory that they did read it, but they hated it so much that they can’t even bring themselves to tell me they hated it). And he reminded me that the test readers I have heard from said nice things and gave helpful feedback. Maybe, he suggested, I should trust the positive responses for once and stop assuming that silence is negative.

So I know I’m never going to have two hours a day to spend on Twitter and I have no interest in schmoozing strangers simply for the sake of making industry contacts. But I’ve put a lot of work into this book (and all the ones that came before) and each one benefits from the lessons I learned on the last. It probably will get rejected, because most submissions do, but that’s no reason not to give it a shot. Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about getting every possible thing perfect according to someone else’s standards and, to return to my lame ocean metaphor, just dive in…

Shifting Gears

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The problem with working quickly is that sometimes you get 85,000 words into a project before the second thoughts kick in. I knew from the beginning that the novel I started back in September was either the most marketable thing I’d ever written or a potential disaster. But I was having fun and clearly got a little carried away, writing nearly every day that the kids were at school — sometimes several thousand words per day. From late September through early February I wrote the bulk of the book, with just a handful of chapters remaining to tie some middle sections together. It was rough, dumped straight out of my brain to be harshly edited later, but it was going well.

Then the kids had a week off school and when I got back to writing I realized my momentum was gone. I’d already written the end of the book, which was probably a mistake — it’s hard to go back once the story feels like it’s been told. I stepped back and finally considered what I’d made, and the more I thought about it, the more I leaned toward “potential disaster.”

Luckily, around the same time I started talking with a friend about a children’s book he was working on and I felt inspired to return to a middle grade mystery I’d set aside a couple years ago. I jumped back in and six weeks later my first draft was done. Now it’s in the hands of test readers and I’m diving back into another abandoned project (an alternate history YA novel) for Camp NaNoWriMo — and hoping to use that autopilot speed-writing for something less disastrous!

Making Plans

Michelle Heimburger1 Comment

Today I was looking through some Franklin Castle renovation notes for novel planning and I found this to-do list including the item “find ghost(s).”


I’d also forgotten the Batpole plan. It’s probably a good thing I never got to make that one a reality.

The best thing is that a few years ago these notes would have triggered a panic attack, but now I can enjoy laughing at my own ridiculousness. 

Happy Halloween

Michelle Heimburger1 Comment

…from my 16-year-old self. One of my favorite poems (at least one of the less embarrassing ones) unearthed in a box of random writing:

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Remember

Grade school, Halloween. Daydreams
of impatient toe-tapping, note-passing school afternoons,
all colored red and brown and gold by tinted memory,
and the construction paper leaves
that crashed into rustling piles of fire.
We leapt in
again and again
delighted at the crash and crackle
of their papery flames.
Evening voices shrieked at
jack-o-lantern guts, elbow-deep in orange,
we chattered, ghost stories in our ears,
trick-or-treat spirit clutching us
since September.
And finally the day
our eyes full of candles, our bellies full of treats,
and our minds rattling with the chains
of the ghosts in the haunted house.
We knew then that nothing,
nothing at all in this whole huge world,
was to be as feared
as our own imaginations.
Those Halloween days, all crisp leaves and plaid school skirts,
banished all fears from our elementary heads.
But the haunted-house evenings
the dusk and the shadows,
full of porch lights and masked faces
gave us a new idea of what it was to fear.

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Parental Advice From The Beyond

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Today I was writing a scene about doing home renovations and I really wished I could ask my dad questions about how to describe a particular process. Then I remembered a book he gave me for Christmas the year before he died, a slightly cheesy Reader’s Digest book of DIY tips, “The Family Handyman’s Helpful Hints.” It was perfect. It even sounded just like the way he’d have described things. The gift that keeps on giving, I suppose.

Today I also hit 40,000 words — not bad for 20 days of writing.