writing

My Projects and Lists for Saturday

By / March 17, 2012 / 6 Comments

Last night I went to bed with a list of things I was excited to get done today. So I bounced out of bed at 9 am to get started. I began with a trip to Home Depot to buy some cobbles. I came home with cobble-ish pavers. I’ll probably have to go to a stone company to get pretty cobbles. But with five cobbles I could do some practice photography. My sampler book is going to need a cover. So far this is what I’ve got:

Things I like about it:

  • The trowel implies a person. It also implies work. Both of these things are part of my book.
  • The cobbles in the background give depth and possibly imply a path or a journey. I would like my cover to imply a journey.
  • The sprouting tulips imply growth. Much of the content of the book is about growth. However there are no blooms yet, just the beginnings of growth. Blooms are finished, these plants are just getting started.
  • I kind of like the bare ground and winter grass as well.

Things I don’t like:

  • I’m not sure how to blend this into a cover image. I don’t really want to just bleed it off the edges of the cover.
  • There isn’t a clear space for a title. The grassy spaces will tend to obscure the title.
  • This picture screams “gardening” and while I do mention gardening, my blog sampler is not about gardening.
  • The pavers are not really cobbles. They aren’t natural stones and they aren’t all that attractive.
  • My blog talks a lot about parenting and nothing in this image implies parenting. (Or business, which I also talk about. But I really don’t want my cover to imply business.)

So, I’m not sure if I’ve got anything usable. Perhaps I’ll make a trip to a stone company and spend twenty dollars getting some pretty rocks. However if I want to use the sprouting tulips I need to hurry. They could start blooming as soon as next week. I may try doing some “studio” shots of trowel and cobbles against a drop cloth to see what that yields. In the end I suspect that the cover will be something I pull together, am not completely happy with, but will deem “good enough” because I simply don’t have the skills and expertise (nor the time) to make it better. This is one of the things I don’t like about self publishing, knowing it could have been better if I had more training.

So I turned to the words of my sampler book. I’m gleaning through last year’s blog entries and pulling the ones I think are entertaining / representative / useful. I’ve reached June and I’ve got 30 pages or 13,000 words. I’m hoping to make my sampler book slim. I figure it needs to be around 20,000 words. I’ll grab more than that and then choose and rearrange. Two good friends have volunteered to help me critique and edit. I’ve got a lead on a really good copy editor as well. Time is short, but I’m fairly confident I can get this thing done. If I hurry. So I pulled entries until my eyes crossed.

Then I escaped my house and returned to the Beauty in Belief exhibit. I didn’t go through it again. I just snagged a pair of ear rings from the gift shop that I’ve been thinking about ever since last Tuesday. They’re filigree leaves with Arabic script on them saying “The best people are those who help other people.” They are lovely and make my heart glad. While I was there I took a moment to close my eyes and listen to the chanting music again. It warmed my heart.

Now it is 5:30 pm. I discover that I’m not excited about the house cleaning aspects of last night’s list. I’d love to have the house be clean, but the motivation to do the work has gone missing. Instead I’ll probably delve my way through June looking for blog entries to pull. Hopefully tomorrow will bless me with energy and motivation to put my house in order.

A Morning of Good News

By / February 20, 2012 / 5 Comments

My sister, Nancy Fulda, has been nominated for a Nebula award. I’m so glad because Nancy works really hard and the nominated story is exceptionally beautiful. I hope that Nancy has a lovely time at the Nebula awards weekend and really wish I could be there with her. However I know she’ll be just fine because that Nebula nominee list is full of amazing people who will welcome her warmly. Besides, I get to have Nancy come to my house later in the summer, so I’ll not feel jealous of a single weekend.

In separate news, my story “The Road Not Taken” is featured today on the Mormon Lit Blitz at Mormonartist.net. One way to really understand a culture is to study the stories they tell to each other. Over the past week and through the end of February, Mormon Artist will be featuring new stories, essays, and poems written by Mormons to a Mormon audience. Feel free to stop by, either to study or to participate in the community. Once all the stories have been posted, there will be voting for a prize. I know the good folks at the Mormon Lit Blitz would love to have as many voting participants as possible. Participation is why they’ve spent so much effort putting this literature blitz together. I am grateful for their hard work.

LTUE Panel Notes: Little Stories Everywhere / Blogging

By / February 15, 2012 / 8 Comments

There were five of us on this panel:
Shelly Brown of Writing With Shelly and Chad was our lovely moderator
Peggy Eddleman of Will Write for Cookies
Jenni James of Author Jenni James
Jessica Harmon of Writing Legends
and me.

Shelly opened the panel for audience questions right away. This approach made most of the panel a question and answer session. It meant that we were able to focus our discussion on topics of immediate interest to the audience. I’ll admit that I did not do as good a job taking notes during this panel. I’m afraid I was a little afflicted by a “one of these things is not like the others” feeling. In the end that may have strengthened the panel because it is important to have a counterpoint opinion. I have to remind myself that though my approach to blogging is different, this does not make it inherently better or worse. I choose the path that is suited to me. I guess it comes down to a question of genre. Blogging is a form of writing, not a genre. My blog tends to be long and thinky. Jessica’s blog is story and geek focused. Shelly, Jenni, and Peggy all write blogs that are upbeat, short, and extremely social. They interacted with other blogs and with their audience far more than I tend to do. There benefits to each style of blogging. In fact Jenni runs multiple blogs to address different parts of what she does.

The first question was how to find an audience. Shelly, Peggy, and Jenni all spoke of the benefits of doing blog hops. Peggy runs them fairly regularly and says they are a great way to get visitors. They also suggested seeking out blogs similar to the one you write and commenting on those blogs. This may prompt reciprocal visits and comments. I agree that this can be a good way to get started. Reading other blogs helps you figure out what you want to be. Commenting and receiving comments can help you build a writing community for yourself. This is also valuable. However what is really necessary to gain readers is to create links between your blog and other places. I’ve never spent much energy deliberately trying to grow the audience of my blog. This means that the readership grows very slowly. This is fine because I’ve never used readership to measure the value of my blogging.

Another urgency that new bloggers feel is getting comments. This only came up tangentially during the panel. There was some direct discussion about keeping things light, positive, and short. Jenni told how her funny stories about kids will always get piles of comments, but that any time she writes longer or more serious topics there is less response. My thinking on comments has shifted in the last six months. I’ve read lots of advice on how to engage readers and encourage them to comment. There are specific techniques that bloggers can apply which will cause readers to engage and leave a comment. Sometimes I use them. For the most part I find the words to express what I meant and am happy if those words inspire a comment. However I know it is possible for my words to be incredibly valuable without inspiring a blog comment. Just yesterday I read a blog post that moved me to tears. I excerpted a section to put in my journal, yet I did not leave a comment on the blog. Just as the value of a blog is not measured in readership, the value of a post can not be measured in comments.

Jessica supported this by pointing out that for every person who comments there are lots of lurkers who say nothing. But they are still there, reading and enjoying.

However, the picture is vastly different if the primary purpose of a blog is to provide a marketing platform for something else. Jenni’s blog is an excellent example of this. She enjoys blogging because of the interactions with readers. She uses it to draw readers to her books. Then her books draw readers to her blog. Other authors, such as Brandon Sanderson, use their blogs primarily as news feeds to update people about what they’re working on or where they are traveling. One of the ladies, I think it was Peggy, told how she was talking to a marketing director in a publishing house. When an author’s book is under consideration all the people at the meeting will flip open their laptops and google the author. They look for readership, followers, friends, and what they find will affect the purchasing decision for that book. This assertion was backed up for me in a completely different panel when Mary Robinette Kowal underlined the absolute necessity of some sort of web presence, though Mary pointed out that it doesn’t have to be a blog.

One thing that all the women on the panel agreed about is that we all feel boring sometimes. It is a miracle of the human brain that we can get bored with anything. The truth is that everyone is interesting because we are all different. Don’t be afraid to keep a blog because you think you have nothing to say. The practice of blogging can teach you what you have to say. Blogging gave writing back to me after I had lost track of it.

Another thing we were all agreed upon is how much we enjoy blogging. Each of us has her own reasons and rewards.

I wish I’d kept better notes of the questions that were asked and answered. If you were there, feel free to leave a comment to remind me. (Look at me deliberately engaging with an audience. Let’s all talk about blogging together.)

Panel Notes: Feeling Fake (Imposter Syndrome)

By / February 14, 2012 / 5 Comments

Sometimes a panel discussion is tightly focused on topic. All the panelists are energetic and engaged. Sometimes there are even vehement arguments as different points of view are represented. This was a more relaxed panel. It was a panel packed with intelligent and articulate people: Ami Chopine of Geek at Play, Chris Weston who has several books (Alas I do not have a link), Stacy Whitman of Tu Books, and me. We all had really useful things to say, but somehow the stories and conversation kept drifting away from a tight focus on Feeling Fake / Imposter Syndrome. I know I was guilty of this. I’d get halfway through the story and realize I was no longer sure how I meant to bring the story around and relate it to the topic at hand. Yet over the next two days I had many people saying that they found the whole discussion very useful, so we must have managed something right. I suppose in a way this actually relates to the panel topic. All during the panel I felt like I wasn’t doing a very good job as a panelist, but the audience perceived things very differently.

Imposter Syndrome is the feeling that one is unqualified or a fraud. The most important point made in this panel is this: everyone feels this way at some point in their lives. Stacy told us the story of how she started up a small press, ran a kickstarter that funded completely, had her press picked up as an imprint, and has now released the first three books. Yet she still has days when she wonders how she got where she is. She often feels small or unqualified. Chris told us about the moment when he truly took up the label of writer and applied it to himself. That moment was long after he’d already begun writing.

I know that imposter syndrome is rampant in my own life. I constantly feel like I’m throwing up a professional facade while behind stage it is all scrambling and tears. Then I remember what Tracy Hickman once told me. It was on the day when he arrived at our house to hammer out a contract for the XDM project. Tracy wanted us to be the publishers and Howard to illustrate the book. I was going to have to do significant layout and design for a 180 page book with actual text. The only training I had for this task was a copy of InDesign for Dummies. I was terrified. We were also going to have to write a contract for a man who had signed hundreds of publishing contracts in his life. I was sure that he would be able to see right through us. He did. But what he saw was not what I thought was there. Tracy launched into a rambling story filled with laughable anecdotes, the point of it was to tell us that in fact everyone in publishing is making it up as they go. Everyone is scrambling behind the scenes. Everyone feels like they’re unqualified and is afraid they’ll be discovered. Feeling unqualified is normal. You just have to put on the clothes of the job you want and wear them until they’re comfortable.

As the panel discussion progressed, we gleaned some useful information about how to manage imposter syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome is primarily driven by fear of exposure. If you can figure out what you’re afraid to expose and to whom you’re afraid it will be exposed, this gives you power. You can take steps to defuse the fear. On the day of that contract with Tracy, Howard and I told him that we’d never written a contract before and asked for his help in getting it right. Instead of despising us for our ignorance, Tracy graciously provided the help we needed.

Perfectionism is also a driving force behind imposter syndrome. Stacy spoke about trying to get every single detail right in the books she edits. Getting everything right is impossible. When she acknowledges this, she can focus on what she does well. As a supporting point to Stacy’s story, I told the story of my son, Patch, and getting things wrong.

To battle imposter syndrome, you need to check the evidence around you. Stacy may feel like she’s an imposter sometimes, but the books which Tu produces are evidence of actual ability. People can sense fakes. If they’re treating you like you have expertise, it is likely that you actually do. It is easy to devalue knowledge we have while valuing what we don’t. Amy pointed out that a light case of imposter syndrome can actually spur a person onward to the acquisition of more knowledge and expertise.

Chris spoke a warm and eloquent reminder that often the answer is to just get back to writing. Write words because that is what writers do. Worry less about whether they’re good and trust yourself to learn as you go. He cautioned against comparing yourself to others. Comparisons lead to insecurity, jealousy, and raging imposter syndrome. Stacy backed up this thought by saying “remember your goals.” Tu Books is not likely to spawn a best seller, but that is not its focus. Instead it is promoting diversity in literature through creating excellent books. When Stacy is focused on her goals she feels happy and accomplished rather than insecure.

My advice was to spectate the imposter feelings. Where do they come from? What situations trigger them? What drives the fear? Keep digging for motivations and answering questions. Those answers are information that you can use to restructure your thinking and possibly your life. I’m in the middle of this process. I am trying to re-shape my life so that I am naturally facing my goals instead of my failures. I’ll never get it figured out completely because life keeps shifting, but even the effort quiets the voices of imposter syndrome.

The thing is, we are all more competent than we believe ourselves to be. I didn’t use this quotation from Mark Twain in the panel, but I wish I had.

We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not posses than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
–Mark Twain.

Whatever it is that you feel a fraud while doing, you are certainly better at it than you feel yourself to be.

The Pounding has Begun

By / January 7, 2012 / 1 Comment

The house is filled with the sounds of pounding. Kiki and Link are deconstructing the shelves in the pantry which is destined to become part of my office. The shelves were made of chip board and 2x4s, so at first we were a bit daunted. Once I gave them permission to destroy the chip board things progressed much more gleefully. I’d love to help. I planned to help, but my wrist has been hurting of late. It is the kind of little hurt which isn’t actually a hurt. Instead it is a pre-hurt, a sensation that if I’m not carefully I’ll acquire a truly painful injury. I don’t want a painfully injured right wrist, so I’m standing back and letting my teenagers wield the hammers. They’re doing a pretty good job too. I’m impressed. Hopefully they’ll be just as enthusiastic about helping me clean up this glorious mess we’ve made. Next Saturday we hope to knock out the drywall and then I’ll have before and after photographs worth sharing.

Last night I was telling some friends that I am puzzled by this drive I feel to re-create my office. Somehow I know that it is the most important professional development thing I’m doing during the first half of this year. But it feels anti-logical. If I profess to be a writer, then I should be focusing my energies on writing. My friends assured me that organizing my work space makes perfect sense. Howard agrees with them. Yet it still seems selfish, turned inward, and somehow profoundly healthy. I need the reminder that common logic about how writing careers should be managed can be wrong for an individual. I must trust my inspiration and intuition, both of which tell me that remodeling my office is important. So we proceed.

In Which My Thoughts Wander from Parenting, to Accomplishment, and End at The Weather

By / January 5, 2012

My pause when staring at the empty blog post box is not for lack of thoughts. I have too many of them, but they are all fragments and pieces which are not gelling of their own accord. I like it when ideas click together instead of me having to pull meaning from them. Tonight I’m too tired to pull on much of anything, having spent the last two nights tending to a sick child. He’s all better now. Hopefully no one else will catch it. This was a particularly nasty stomach flu. Taking care of Patch took my shiny new schedule right off the rails for Wednesday. Fortunately we’re back on track today. Or, if not completely on track, we’re at least headed trackward. Why is it that I forget that the first week of January always feels messy and stressy? Somehow I expect to be able to hit the new year ready for action. Instead I’ve been helping three out of four kids who have all been feeling just as conflicted about their oncoming tasks as I have been about mine. I’m working to remember that their problems are not necessarily my problems. I can’t solve them. It isn’t my job. My job is to help them deal with the problems. It is a subtle, yet important, difference.

Many people I know online are writing Year in Review posts. In one writer’s forum there is an entire thread which was created simply for people to report on how their writing went in 2011. I keep opening that thread. I don’t actually read every post. I skim over them. The truth is a Year in Review post is more valuable to the person writing it than to anyone who may stop by and read. Or so I thought. But several people commented about how much they love to read the thread. Every time I go in the forum I click on that thread. I think about writing a post for it. My post would be a sort of counterpoint. I accomplished a lot during 2011, but not very much of it was as a writer. I never start typing that post. I’m stopped by the conviction that the things I have to say are only me justifying my decisions to myself. The only reason I would need to do that is if I doubt the choices I made. I don’t doubt. Except when I do. During the times that I manage to find calm contemplation of the year just past, I think it was what it needed to be. Some of it was stressful, there are some hard bits which loom large and obscure my view of the rest. It will be interesting to see how my mental picture of the year changes as I compile my annual book of blog entries.

I think I’m also avoiding writing a year in review post because it faces backward. I want to just start where I am and make today be good. I want to reach for goal completion. Last year saw the beginnings of many things, but the second half of the year was lacking in projects completed. Most of the things I began are still pending or in process. The two feel different to me. Pending are the things which I can not control, in process are the things which I can affect. The fact that I’m avoiding it probably means I should do it. I should delve into last year, even the hard bits. I’ll likely discover that my feelings about the year have been colored by various inaccurate perceptions. Because 2011 was a good year. I know that it was. I also know that I made the right choices during it. And then I think that all these thoughts are probably a waste of emotional energy. Either write it up, or don’t.

The weather has been lovely. It has been years since we’ve had 50 degree weather in January. The last time I’m sure of was 1999 when most of February was 50 degrees during the day. That was during my radiation therapy while my mother was here. I remember that she was able to take the kids outside every day. We also planted bulbs because the ground was not frozen. I should probably do that this year, but I forgot to put Gardener on the hat schedule. Perhaps I shall revise. The sunshine would be good for me.

Blog posts I’m not going to write today, but may at a future point write

By / December 7, 2011 / 9 Comments

1. Details of my realization that the week after shipping week is often family member melt-down week. I was the star on Monday. Tuesday featured Gleek and Patch. Today approached normal, but I’m still playing catch-up with accounting, house cleaning, and homework.

2. A great big thank you post to all the people who helped out with our shipping event. They are worthy of praise, warm fuzzies, and treats.

3. The reasons why my shipping system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. The end result may look almost exactly like what I currently have, but the process will either replace my weird Jerry-rigged system, or will demonstrate to me that I just need to continue making-do. This whole thought makes me tired.

4. An intensely thoughtful post about how a hard school year is not necessarily a bad school year. This post would include the definitions of “bad year” and “hard year.” Short version: a bad year results in coping strategies which need to be dismantled. A hard year leaves one exhausted and drained, but positioned well for things to come.

5. My answer to the question “So, are you ready for Christmas yet?” This question pops up everywhere in casual conversation and, while I have a chit-chat sort of answer, the true answer is long. The true answer involves my whole approach to the Christmas holidays, the shape of our traditions, and why I’m just leaving the boxes of decorations out where the kids can decorate, or not, as they wish.

6. A long blog post responding to a discussion on whether the introduction of children into one’s life is the end of creative output for the next few years. Short version: No. It is just the beginning of a whole new set of decisions to make about priorities and how hours should be spent. Answers to these questions will (and should) vary according to person and circumstances. This post would also cover how beginning parenting is a learning process and multiple learning processes have trouble running in parallel. This could be why those established in creative careers seem better positioned to maintain them despite the arrival of small children.

7. A post describing how I’ve been deliberately seeking out things which are visual rather than wordy. This is followed by thoughts about how many photography images on the internet are photoshopped into a better-than-real perfection. This is not just in advertising or photos of people. The internet is full of better-than-real landscapes, product photos, and animal pictures. Then there are thoughts about what feeding ourselves a steady diet of hyper-perfect dream realities does to our psyches and expectations for our lives. This one must draw on psychological research, the Dove “Real beauty” adds, and several articles I’ve read lately.

8. Thoughts about self-promotion and whether there is any benefit to collecting followers, “likes”, etc. There is a definite benefit to having truly committed fans who are willing to support the creator and the work, but people who follow or “like” in order for a chance at a prize are not committed and will vanish as fast as they arrived. Again, this one will have links to articles and supportive research.

9. A post about the office remodel that I am slowly inching my way toward. This includes thoughts on how physical spaces affect the way I view my work and how form can re-shape function in odd ways that will linger for a long time unless one deliberately shakes out of old habits. It is possible that this will include an anecdotal story about a roasting pan. I would try to make my planning-my-shiny-new-office ramble into something relevant.

10. A look forward into the next year and the shape my professional life needs to take. I would view upcoming events with an estimation of whether or not I’ll be attending. I continue to strive for creative balance, pushing, shaking up old habits of thought, and yet being very careful not to spend much time in anxiety land. This would include thoughts on stress, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, anxiety, and probably a measure of whining.

11. An exploration of how my mind is pretty much always this full of 5-10 different thoughts about which I could blog. I fill notebooks. Though lately I’ve been trying a one-notebook approach which has been an interesting switch from my previous methodology of scribble notebook, blog-post notebook, and official journal. This post would probably also include an update on the progress of my River Song journal, which is still accumulating, but much more slowly.

12. Thoughts on calendars and the various holidays all over the world. I recently made a list which had limited space and I had to choose which holidays to include. I would have liked to include them all. The reasons that people declare annual celebrations are fascinating to me. I also find it fascinating that no matter the tradition or geographical location, August appears to be a holiday dead-zone. I wonder why that is.

13. Working on building relationships with kids individually and thinking of them as people rather than collectively as “my kids.”

14. Those blog posts continuing the series about financial structures for creative people.

15. I’m sure there was something else, but I’ve forgotten it now. If it is important, it will come back to me. I’ve had to learn to trust my brain to circle back around to important things.

Stringing Together Some Disconnected Thoughts

By / October 19, 2011 / 2 Comments

5:37 pm. I should really be cooking dinner right now instead of staring at the “new post” box and pondering what to blog. The trouble is that I didn’t blog yesterday or the day before and so I have an accumulation of half-formed blog thoughts. None of them are clicking together in attractive ways. So I shall spill my fragmentary thoughts and label it a blog post.

I had insomnia on Sunday night. This happens to me occasionally, usually because my brain won’t stop thinking about things I’m stressed over. Sunday’s insomnia had a different flavor. I felt quite floaty and relaxed, yet still kept bouncing awake as if the transition into deep sleep had somehow turned into a trampoline. I finally dropped off around 3 am. This meant that Monday was a high energy, focused day. My body shifted into overdrive mode to manage the sleep deprivation. Tuesday was the other end of the pendulum swing and I got nothing much done. More frustrating was that Tuesday night was a reprise of the bouncing awake phenomenon. I was not pleased. Also I have much greater sympathy for the folks of my acquaintance who suffer from insomnia regularly. Though hopefully in the future I can confine my sympathies to normal waking hours.

Patch out grew his bike. Gleek’s bike is the perfect size for him. It is also still the right size for Gleek. Prior to this discovery Gleek’s preferred method for cruising the cul de sac was on her ripstik. Now she must have her bike. Patch also needs her bike with a desperation bordering on tantrum. Two kids. One bike. One parenting dilemma. I have the capability to drive down to Walmart and buy a new bike. However I don’t really want to teach my kids that mom will solve their problems with money, particularly since money has been flowing out at a good clip these past few weeks. Multiple trips to doctors, prescriptions, dental work, and automotive repair have all occurred. I’m pausing to think before buying anything. So I’m pondering the problem and enduring daily squabbles. Eventually a path will become clear. Or it will start snowing and make bikes a moot point until next spring.

Tomorrow the kids are out of school, which spikes my ability to get computer based work done. I tend to focus on more physical organization, like house cleaning. I’ve been needing to assemble more Emperor Bundles for awhile. That may fit into tomorrow. Then there are the omnipresent homework projects for my two younger kids. Friday is also a school free day. Saturday I’ll be helping chauffeur Kiki to an anime convention. So the next few days are not exactly vacationish, but I will get to sleep later. More sleep would be a good thing in the second half of the week.

This is why I write, my brain just clicked a solution together. I will offer Patch and Gleek the chance to help me build Emperor Bundles as a way to earn a new bike. I can feel good about a bike as a reward for working. Whether the new bike goes to Gleek or to Patch will have to be negotiated. For now I need to go make dinner. I’ll do it feeling satisfied that the writing process strung together all those pieces which felt disconnected while drifting about in my brain.

Finding places to query

By / October 7, 2011

The process looks something like this:

See a book on my child’s desk at Parent Teacher conferences. Realize that the book cover and title seems very like the type of book I’ve written. Carefully scribble down title and author when teacher thinks I am writing notes about the conference.

When at home, look up the book at Amazon.com. Read synopsis. It does seem similar in tone to my book. Write down the name of the publishing company next to the name of the author. Scroll through the “people who bought this book also bought” list. Identify more books which look similar to my book. Write down those authors and publishers.

Take the titles to my local library’s online catalog. They do have the book, so the next day when I’m at the library with the kids, take a detour into the adult non-fiction section. Find the book. Peruse the shelves around the book for other books which look similar in content or tone. Shush kids who are playing with the library’s rolling stools. Grab a stack of books to check out.

When at home, sit down with the books and the list. Flip through the books to see who the publishers are. Look at acknowledgements to see if the author names an agent or an editor who worked on the book. Write those names on the list next to author names. Take the list to my computer. Google to identify more agents and/or editors associated with the book titles.

Open agentquery.com and start filling in agent names. See if the agents are open to unsolicited queries. Peruse the “what I’m looking for” list to see if the agent will be interested. Compare the agent’s name to my submissions document to make sure that I don’t already have a query out at that agency. If all looks good, copy the agent’s name and contact information into my “To Query” file.

Google publisher names and editor names. See if I can find submission information. Add that information to my “To Query” file.

I am now ready to send out queries. Each query takes at least 10 minutes as I try to personalize the opening and closing paragraphs. Sometimes I have to print and mail the query.

By this time I am tired of the whole process, so I sigh in relief that I’ve done my job. Either it will sell, or it won’t. For the moment I can cheerfully ignore it… until I happen across another book which looks like it might cater to the same audience. Then I have a job to do again.

Making River Song’s Journal

By / September 23, 2011 / 39 Comments

The new iteration of Doctor Who is by turns silly, clunky, brilliant, heart-breaking, and delightful. I watch every episode. I like the essential hopefulness and joyfulness of it. There are piece of the stories which stay with me even after I walk away from the screen, like the story between the Doctor and River Song. They both travel in time and have met each other many times, but always in a random order. This makes reminiscing difficult because they don’t want to accidentally give away the future of the other person. To solve the problem the Doctor gives River Song a journal. It looks like this:

I love the idea of this journal. It’s tattered condition implies hundreds of adventures that River and the Doctor have together. Through it they are able to find where they are in relation to each other and then proceed to have yet another adventure. Possibly my interest in the journal is due to the fact that I love journals. I always have. I wondered if it were possible for me to buy a journal with a cover made to look like River Song’s. I googled and discovered that the BBC has released a printable PDF which one can use to cover a journal, but that there is no officially sanctioned journal for purchase. There are several etsy shops which sell handmade ones, but the prices were daunting when I’m trying to cut back on frivolous spending. I sighed and gave up. Or so I thought.

The next day I kept bumping into supplies. My on my craft desk was some dark blue tissue paper and Modge Podge (a decoupage glue) which I’d been using to re-decorate some little metal boxes. Sorting through a pile under my desk I found an unused journal which I bought some time in the past six months. I knew I had card stock, scissors, and an exacto knife. I had everything I needed. So without exactly deciding to, I began making a River Song journal.

I began with this black journal. Having it be black was important so that the dark could show through the tissue paper and make the shadows which can be seen in the recessed portions of the journal cover. I colored over the red line with a sharpie marker.

Next I printed out a copy of the PDF and sized it so that it would fit the cover of the book I had. Then I cut out the pieces as a pattern. I arranged the patterns on the book to make sure the proportions were correct before I proceeded.

I traced the pattern onto white card stock. Once I had it all traced, I glued a second piece of card stock to the back to give it the thickness I wanted.

I used a knife and scissors to cut out the pattern pieces. I deliberately made everything not quite square to resemble the PDF better. Once the pieces were cut out, I arranged them on the book. Then I glued them down using Modge Podge.

I waited for that to dry thoroughly before proceeding. Fortunately this particular glue dries quickly. Next I cut a piece of the blue tissue paper so that it was larger than the book. I applied glue to the cover in sections and carefully pressed the tissue paper down so that it got into the recessed places as well as the top of the card stock. On the binding side, the tissue lined up with the edge of the cover cardboard. Glue does not bend well and I wanted my book to be able to open. I had to be gentle and careful so that I did not tear the tissue paper. I used two layers of tissue, letting the glue dry completely between layers.

I clipped the corners of the tissue paper and then propped the book open so that I could wrap the tissue around to the inside of the book. I glued it down, making sure to slather a layer of glue across the top of the tissue so that it was protected. I also put a layer of glue all across the top of the cover, both front and back.

All that was left was the spine. I cut some pieces of card stock to fit and repeated the process of laying down tissue paper. Again I was careful not to glue anything to the binding crease so that the book would open easily.

And here is the journal completed:

It is not perfect. Intentionally so in some places. I do wish I’d figured out how to give it a more leather-like texture. The Modge Podge is smooth and shiny. You can also see the strokes of the brush I used to lay down the glue. I’m pleased with the result even though it definitely has a home made look. Perhaps as I carry it around, and use it, the shine will wear off a bit. I’m far from the only one who has committed this particular act of geekery. A little googling will find similar journals in leather, paint, knitting, fridge magnets, key chains, and all sorts of other forms.

The question I began asking myself almost as soon as I began construction was what I planned to do with the thing once it was made. I already have a journal. Several. It seemed foolish to spend so much work to make another one. Then I realized that what I loved about the idea of River Song’s journal is that it was full of amazing things all out of order. I wanted a book like that. One where my usual self-imposed writing rules don’t apply. I wanted to see what deliberately changing the structures of my creativity would cause to fall out of my brain. Once I knew that, I also knew what my rules for filling the journal needed to be.

1. Don’t write it in order. When I have something to write, pick a page at random and begin.
2. Date every entry.
3. Write only things that matter to me. Nothing boring. That said, sometimes small and insignificant can also be fascinating.
4. Leave the first two pages blank. Write them last.
5. Draw as many pictures as I wish. They don’t have to be good.
6. I can update, change, or alter anything that I have already put in the book. I just need to note the date of the change.
7. Writing sideways or upside down is fine.
8. Find things to clip and tape into the pages.
9. Neatness is not required.
10. I can make stuff up, write stories, or pretend to be someone else.
11. I can invite others to contribute to the pages.
12. I am the maker of all these rules. I can break them if I wish.

And so my River Journal adventure begins. I wonder where I will travel.