A break from the doom and gloom

Alright, so in an astonishingly short amount of time, I'm over that particular rejection. That's SO last hour.

Agent Jim McCarthy posted the contest results today!! Now I need to edit a teensy bit more before sending the manuscript his way. Gulp.

I'm like, 98% excited and 2% scared. Or maybe it's 98% scared and 2% excited. That's what makes it so awesome though.

Click here to read the whole post, though I've pasted a bit of it below:

We have a winner from last week’s poll! At the end of the business day on Thursday, the author who had accumulated the most votes was K whose “I wondered if the girl at the front desk knew that things like me existed,” garnered a healthy 236 votes!

So K, bring it on! Send me your manuscript, and I’ll review it promptly.

Everyone else, don’t be discouraged if you weren’t chosen as a finalist or if you didn’t win. Do feel free to query me—there were lots of great entries!

Congratulations to all nine finalists! There were some amazing first lines!

Also, I must repeat this (because I'm so amazed that this happened): Super huge thanks to everyone who voted, tweeted, blogged, and linked the contest to Facebook! You're all awesome!!! Read my earlier thank-you blog here.

Alright people. Start your engines. Ready, set, edit!

I need a damn key or something

This post is more for my peace of mind more then anything else, but I hope you guys get something out of it, too.

I recently came across a post by Jill Corcoran, called "The Dissection of Rejection." It's full of inspirational quotes that I feel obligated to share with you:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ~ Calvin Coolidge

“Some guys they just give up living, others start dying little by little piece by piece, some guys come home from work and wash up, and go racing in the streets.” ~ Bruce Springsteen

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~ Thomas Edison

Rejection is never the final word about your integrity or talent as an artist. It is even less about you as a person. Chant this in front of a mirror if you have to, but know it's true. Everything in life is subjective. I'm even taking a sociology class that studies how subjective humans are.

But another sad truth is that rejection will ALWAYS hurt. I've heard so many agents say that a writer should get used to rejection, and while I agree with them, I also know that it's impossible to truly be used to rejection. It always stings a little, and I think it's supposed to. After all, it means that someone didn't like something that you probably worked very hard on. Art is a difficult career to pursue, I think, because no matter what, someone will dislike it, and your work is inevitably a very deep part of you. It's not just business. It's personal.

Why am I thinking so much about rejection? Aside from the obvious answer about queries and agents and the publishing business, I just got rejected from a very prestigious, very competitive program on campus.

For the second time.

Like, twenty minutes ago.

A standard form rejection, the letter was straight to the point, and straight to the heart of my goals here at Northwestern.

I'm not going to stop writing, and I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed.

I said I'd be fine, and at the core of it, I am. I still feel like I missed out on a great opportunity though. How does the saying go? Every time one door closes, another opens? Well, I'm sitting here waiting for an open door. I refuse to walk away from it.

A Treat for You

First of all, I want to thank EACH AND EVERY PERSON who voted, because I won the contest! I know I couldn't have done it without you wonderful people (literally, because I got like, 237 votes and I couldn't go on multiple computers or anything), so BIG HUGE THANKS! It was such an intense competition, and there were so many good first lines! I'll keep you up to date on whatever happens after this. Promise.

Since you guys helped me out so much, I feel obligated to share a little piece of happiness with you. So watch this video:

Did you watch it? Isn't it awesome? I know.

I went on a retreat this past weekend, which resulted in much happiness and sunburn. There were so many amazing people I think I would have had a blast in any setting, but to top it all off, we were on a farm (insert ridiculous amount of exclamation marks here)! There were kitehs that fit in the palm of my hand, mud covered dogs, s'mores, fields that stretched towards the horizon, and horses!!! I rode one for the first time, and it literally made my day. Made. My. Day.

Such a good weekend, but now, back to work. I think I'm getting a better grip on my new WIP, but I still miss M-town 2. I think I'll keep dabbling in it as I work on the new WIP, just to keep things interesting.

That's about all, so I'll wrap this baby up with one of my new favorite music videos:

Until next time!

Contests rock my socks off (vote for me!)

Alright, so I feel it's necessary to say that you should vote for the sentence you think is best.

BUT if you want to vote for me, do. Click here.

Now that you've voted for me, let me explain this shindig. Dystel and Goderich Literary Agency has a blog, and each of their agents writes about various things (but mostly advice about the publishing industry.

Jim McCarthy, in a post about the value of first lines, decided to do a contest:

"You’ve all surely heard that agents make decisions really fast, and if we aren’t entranced by your writing within 6.2 seconds or somesuch, we’ll just move on to the next thing. This is, for the most part, entirely true. So let’s see how quickly you can win us (and your fellow blog readers) over. Post the first line of your manuscript in the comments below by the end of the day on Thursday, 4/22. I’ll narrow it down to a select group of finalists, and then we’ll have a poll for you to judge who had the best, most intriguing first line."

I submitted my first line, not thinking much of it. There were hundreds of entries, but it turns out he liked mine enough to put it in the finalist round! The prize for the winner is consideration for a FULL MANUSCRIPT. Whew. That's a doozie!

My first line: "I wondered if the girl sitting at the front desk knew that things like me existed."

There are nine AMAZING sentences there, though, and (not to sound like a girl in a pageant BUT) I'm just really honored to be among them :)

So go vote!

Thanks!

Great Decisions!

As I said yesterday, I had to make a very scary, difficult choice regarding my series. It hurt a LOT, and I felt very freaked out for about a half an hour.

I spent that time talking to one of my writerly friends, and we decided that I needed a new project to sink my teeth into. I had about three serious ones sitting in my computer waiting to be written, and I started telling her the basics about them. One in particular seemed to dominate the conversation, and at one point she just stopped me and said "clearly this is the project you need to be working on."

After staring at her for a minute or so I nodded blankly and opened the three word documents I had on it. This roughly translated into 1,000 words, including the document where I ranted about basic ideas. As I stared at the two scenes I'd written, I realized that both of them would be useless. So I had 0 words.

I started working on it at 3:30 (after another ten minutes of staring into space and mourning the temporary hold on Morgantown 2), and by 5:00 I had a basic list of my main characters.

After dinner, we walked to the library (I went with the intention of writing an English paper), and by midnight I had a full, three page synopsis, a title, and actors to represent my main characters. The synopsis just kind of flowed onto the computer. I'm not going to lie and say it was effortless, but it was extra fun.

Back in my room, I wrote what will probably be the beginning scene for the book before my mind decided it was ok to sleep.

Moral of the story: I made a great decision yesterday, and I can't wait to write this thing.

Sidenote; I've been listening to this song for a solid half hour on repeat. Don't judge me.

Hard Decisions, Rainy Days, and Cool People

Things have happened!

1) It's raining. Not in a fun "let's go dance in the rain" way. No. There is rain, wind, and cold. Cold. I do not like "cold wet things" (Kudos to people who get the Twilight Movie reference there), so today was pretty much a bust in terms of weather. It's ok though, because I spent a while in Kafein writing, and I had appropriate Rainy Day Music. Rainy Day Music, you say? Do explain. By all means. Here:

I'm pretty sure that's more than enough videos to keep you occupied. You get the picture.

2) Today I made a relatively difficult choice regarding my writing. I haven't told everyone about it yet, but I think it's for the best. The book that I'm trying to get published right now, Morgantown, is part of a series. Though it can stand alone, I've sort of always known that there would be AT LEAST two more books in my protagonist's story. As of now, there are three more. I've been working on the second one while trying to get the first one published, but as of today, I'm going to put it away into a little folder on my desktop for a while.

Why?

Because the plot is still going crazy, the way the first book's went before I was ACTUALLY ready to write it, and the first one isn't published OR polished yet. It still may change, though I don't know how much, and why should I be writing the sequel when I'm still not even sure about the first?

I'm not giving up. I'm just giving myself some time to grow as a writer. I think I've got my hands on the beginnings of a new project, and I'm very excited about that, but Morgantown will always be there. I'll finish it eventually.

3) I mentioned frustration and nerves in my last blog post, and I have to say here and now that all of that worrying was for naught. Seriously, I was freaking out for no reason. Basically, the lunch went great and I think I made a new writing friend (who may or may not be reading this now. Hi, if you are!). It was awesome, albeit a little surreal, to meet someone who I met on twitter.

Meeting super-cool-author made me lament all the cool people I know on twitter but might not get a chance to meet in real life. Sigh. I love twitter. And the digital community of writers. Speaking of, if you're looking for a writing community, and you write young adult, check out YAlitchat. SO MUCH helpful feedback. SO MANY cool people.

Alright, I'm off to work on my shiny new book idea!

Beautiful Creatures, Date Night, and Publishing stuff?

Stuff is happening!

1) I finally bought Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I've heard nothing but positive reviews, and if twitter is even half-right, this book is spreading through the YA nation like wildfire. Am I stoked? Is the pope Catholic?

Yeah.

2) Tonight, instead of working (apparently I had my schedule wrong), I went to Chipotle (which was SO good!) and saw Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. The two actors are so amazing normally that I assumed the movie would simply exude crazyawesomesexyfunniness. I was not mistaken, dear friends.

Unfortunately, this will probably lead me to quote a few lines for the next few months, and really, they're not funny out of context.

Oh well.

At least I'll have a few good laughs, right?

3) I'm frustrated. It's sort of a long story, but I'll try to shorten it up for the sake of my beauty sleep. The publishing world gods have smiled upon me, and tomorrow I get the chance to talk to a mega-cool, soon-to-be-published author. This is not the cause of my frustration. What's frustrating is that usually I'm a big huge ball of questions. It's ridiculous. And now? I got nothing.

I have no idea what to ask her, and I'm afraid of sounding like a moron and making a bad impression. I've sort of been meeting writers on the internet for a long time, but to actually meet someone in person? Well, I just hope I don't act like TOO much of an idiot.

Alright, peeps. I'm heading to bed (or to start Beautiful Creatures. Who knows?)