Be Fearless: This is Preparation

How is an editor different than a critique partner?

Someone asked me this question awhile ago, and it's a really good one!

As in the last post (where I gave details about my revision process so far), I have to preface by saying that my experience might be vastly different from other writers'. So, take my thoughts with a sprinkle of salt.

There are a lot of similarities between a good critique partner and an editor. I have nothing but utmost respect for my critique partners. I value their opinion and take everything they say seriously. The biggest difference, then, is how my critique partners and I interact with each other. I send them my work (or vice versa), they critique it, and leave opportunity for me to ask for questions and clarification afterward. But I don't send the same story repeatedly until it's perfect.

With my editor, though, we went through revisions until he was happy with the product. I never felt a responsibility to make my critique partners happy with my books. I knew they would feel fulfilled in a sense, just as I feel fulfilled when I'm able to help them meet their goals, but there's still a certain degree of separation with a critique partner that's not there with an editor. My editor respects my space as an author, but he also shares a vision with me for the book, and we work toward that vision as a team.

With that said, my experience with my excellent critique partners prepared me well to work with my editor. I was already used to getting lots and lots of comments, long "editorial" letters, nit-picky corrections (yay for critique partners who are as anal as I am!). I was used to ripping my books completely apart. Heck, in a couple instances, after sending something off to a crit-buddy, I had started ALL OVER AGAIN.

I'm convinced that's why the ten-page editorial letter my editor sent me wasn't too overwhelming, because I had forced myself, in my pre-published days, to be fearless.

YES, take out that huge chunk of writing you love. The book is better without it!

YES, keep reworking and reworking and reworking that scene until it flows so smoothly you stop noticing the writing and feel only the feelings.

YES, start again. It's not the end of the world. And the new story will be one hundred times cleaner.

When you get used to cutting your work into tiny pieces and sewing them back together, you eventually learn the sheer beauty of revision. So, when an editor comes at you with MAJOR changes, you can skip the nervous breakdown and get to work.

That's why I'm glad for the gift of my years and years of rejection, because I learned to be a writer.

I hope this blog post doesn't come across as cocky. Notice that I mentioned WORK. I didn't sing and dance my way through the editorial letter. I had to let everything my editor told me sink in over several days. I had to think a lot. I had to rework and write a lot of new stuff. It was work and it was a challenge. The point is, I felt prepared.

How do you interact with your critique partners? If you have an editor, did you feel prepared to work with him or her? I'd love to hear your story! 

Photo credit: DarrenHester from morguefile.com

Sneak Peek: My Revision Journey So Far

Sometimes it feels like there's a thick, mysterious curtain  between the world of querying and finding an agent, and the world of signing a contract and starting work to make our manuscripts into books. I'm not sure why that is. I think writers are mostly willing to share their experiences. Maybe it's just that they don't want to show off ... or maybe they get busy (raises hand!).

I thought I'd share my own revision experience so far. Obviously, my timeline doesn't apply universally, but hopefully you'll find it helpful/enlightening in some way.

I signed my contract for Red Butterfly back in August. Of course, I'd known I had a book deal for awhile before that, but I couldn't talk about it until the official announcement came out. You all know how that goes. Secrets, secrets, secrets!

I started my first round of revisions in August. These began with the UPS man arriving at my door and handing me a large manila envelope filled with -- you got it! -- a print-out copy of my book with hand-written notes from my editor. The envelope also included an almost ten-page editorial letter and a November deadline.

MY FIRST DEADLINE!!! Ahhhhh!

Actually, I was pretty excited about it. You know how firsts are always exciting. Even when they're deadlines.

That edit was a big one. I had a ton of back story to figure out/change and a lot of extra poems to write. I added six thousand words, which is a lot for a verse novel.

I handed those revisions in early (because, you know, deadlines were still exciting), in October. My editor got back to me in a little over two weeks (he's amazing like that) with more revision notes. This time the (much, much shorter) editorial letter came by email, with hand-written notes in the UPS man's manila envelope.

This time I had a month and a half to make changes. There was still a lot to do, though not as much as the first round, and, I'm happy to say, despite my laptop crashing, I was able to turn in my edits the day before the deadline. (Phew!)

My crazy-fast editor got a third round of edits back to me by the beginning of December and gave me a week to make changes.

But this time it was little things, and the editorial notes arrived via marked-up Word document in an email. I tidied everything, sent it back and voila! Got the okay. We were finished!

Except for copy edits, which should be arriving on my doorstep sometime this month. I'll keep you posted!

In my next post I'll talk about a related subject to this: how my six/seven years of querying and writing rejected novels prepared me for my first deadlines. I hope it will be encouraging, so come back to read it!

Until then, if you're a published author, was your revision experience similar? If you're not published yet, is this the idea you had of what revisions would be like? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

And, lest I forget, Happy New Year to all!

Photo credit: Sgarton from morguefile.com

Merry Christmas!

The crazy Sonnichsen clan hopes you had a very merry Christmas!

God bless you!

I'm Baaaaack!

Hello, hello, long lost bloggy friends!

I almost had a heart attack when I saw the date of my last blog post. Gahhhh!

But I am still alive. Here I am with the dashingly handsome sidekick on a recent weekend getaway we took to a cute little town in southern Washington called Walla Walla. That's the inn where we stayed behind us. So pretty, and so peaceful! We had a wonderful time.

We needed this getaway because this semester has been ... beyond busy. We've often felt like two ships passing in the night, communicating by Morse code and flashlight beams.

The good news is: football season is over! The DHS's team did well, placing third in the 2A division in Washington. (Go Mustangs!)

Other good news is: I finished all my edits. I'm planning another blog post to go into more detail (for those of you who are interested), but basically I'm up-to-date for everything that needs to be done with RED BUTTERFLY and now waiting on copy edits arriving some time in January.

In the meantime, I'm working on a fun little time travel MG. I'm hoping to finally write an ending for this thing soon. I think it's going to need A LOT of editing, though, before anyone can see it. But what's new, right?

How are things in your creative world? If you're a writer, tell me about what you're working on. If you're not a writer, tell me about something interesting you're doing. I'm going to make an effort to run around to all my long-lost friends' blogs, so please leave a comment so I can dash over and say Hi!

Kidlit Blog Tour

R.T. Freeman tagged me in the Kidlit Blog Tour. Thank you, Rosemary!

What are you working on right now?
I'm about halfway through my second round of revisions for my middle grade verse novel, RED BUTTERFLY.

How does it differ from other works in its genre?
My book fits quite nicely in its genre, but I still hope it's unique. There are other wonderful books that are contemporary, multi-cultural, middle grade novels in verse, too, but I haven't read one (yet) about adoption in China. My character, Kara, is stuck in an unusual situation: she's a Chinese orphan raised by American foster parents in China. The story is about loss and abandonment and finding yourself when nothing of your old life remains.

Why do you write what you do?
I started RED BUTTERFLY as an experiment, because I had a YA manuscript that wasn't working the way it was. I love MG verse novels, so I wanted to see if my protagonist's voice would work better if she were a younger person, and if she told her story in poetry. It turned out to be a good decision!


How does your writing process work?
As Rosemary noted about her own process, mine is also evolving. I'm still a "pantser" (a writer who starts with an idea and lets that idea carry them along without a plan) who admires "plotters" (writers who make detailed plans before they start writing). Once I get the whole idea out in a rough draft, and am pretty sure it will work, I do revisions and then finally hand it off to a trusted critique partner who will tell me if I'm crazy or not. (I have one YA manuscript that is currently shelved after a critique partner told me, very nicely, that I WAS crazy. I have to figure out a completely different plot. So, yeah, I take my critique partner's advice very seriously.) If I'm not crazy, then I keep revising, keep sending it out to other critique partners until it's as close to perfect as I can get it. When my critique partners hand my manuscripts back to me after a few days and say they couldn't put the book down, and they've given me minimal feedback, then I know it's ready for my agent.

Any departing words of wisdom for other authors?
Write about subjects you find fascinating, something you could talk about for hours. When you have that much passion for a subject, it will show in your writing. It was incredibly fulfilling to finally discover a fictional plot for a topic that is so important to me--adoption and the plight of Chinese orphans. Of course, don't start out with the purpose of getting on your soap box. That could derail your story. At the same time, it's cool to write about something you love and to witness your own passion bleeding onto the page.

I'd like to nominate my pals, Julie DeGuia and Melissa Sarno, to continue the grand tradition of the Kidlit Blog Tour. Hope you decide to participate, ladies!

Olivia's Gotcha Day

A bunch of you probably already know that our oldest daughter is adopted from China. Her name is Olivia and this post actually comes at a very good time (I'm participating in an adoption blog carnival through the invitation of my amazing friend Kim) because recently we celebrated Olivia's GOTCHA DAY.

Here is Miss Olivia, looking happy, holding a plate full of Whoopie Pies, the baking of which is our Gotcha Day tradition:

Olivia is twelve years old, and for those of you who don't know what a Gotcha Day is, it's "The Day You Get Your Child" in normal adoptions. Most of the time, this is the day you first meet your child AND within a few days, usually, this child becomes your legal offspring.

Our Gotcha Day isn't quite as straightforward.

I first met Olivia when she was a few days old, in the Tianjin Children's Welfare Institute where I was volunteering. We had just moved to China a couple months before to work at an international school. Olivia was a tiny newborn in a crib closest to the baby room door and I noticed her right away because of her huge, sparkling black eyes. Talk about instant love!

We got to bring her home as our foster daughter when she was six weeks old (because during her short stint at the orphanage she'd become failure to thrive). The bringing-her-home part of our story is humorous--stuff of Sonnichsen-clan legend.

I'd wanted to bring Olivia home for several weeks and I'd been talking her up to the dashingly handsome sidekick (DHS a.k.a. my husband). Well, when I actually got permission from the orphanage director, the DHS was away at fall camp with his school kids and I had no way of contacting him. So, he got home from camp and....

SURPRISE!

We have a baby!

(Yes, he has forgiven me and we're still happily married.)

Fast forward six and a half years and we were FINALLY allowed to adopt our sweet Olivia and make her officially ours (gotta love China's adopting-parent age restrictions!).

So, as you can see, our Gotcha Day isn't quite like most adopting parents'. We decided to celebrate on the day I brought Olivia to our home when she was a baby, instead of the day she was officially adopted.

a snapshot from her baby book

Celebrating Olivia's Gotcha Day is important for so many reasons. Obviously, it's important for her, to remind her of our love for her, to give her a special day that's different from her siblings, because her situation is unique. 

Probably the biggest reason it's important, though, is that it's a marker every year for us to remember God's faithfulness to us. Navigating the adoption system when you have a specific child you want to adopt is difficult. When we set out on this journey we had empty hands--not enough money, no parenting experience, we weren't even old enough for the Chinese law! We had a child with a medical condition that required surgery and we weren't sure how it would all work out. (The $20,000 initial surgery price tag was a little daunting, to say the least.)

But God worked everything out. Even while we were still fostering Olivia, He provided a Chinese passport and American visa multiple times so we could bring her back to the U.S. for surgery at the Shriners Hospital in Portland, OR--a hospital that doesn't usually accept international patients, but they made an exception for us and give her all her surgeries free of charge until she's 18 years old. Besides that answer to prayer,  the fact that our adoption even went through is a miracle. So many people worried for us, told us that we'd be fostering too long, that there were no guarantees ... and they were right to caution us, but I'm so thankful we took that leap of faith.

Gotcha Day helps me remember that all this happened, even though it seems a lifetime ago. We've settled in the U.S. now and are growing accustomed to American ways, but I never want us to forget where we came from and what we've been through.

So, Happy Gotcha Day, Olivia! We are blessed and you are loved.

Anyone, anyone?

Happy Fall!

Life has been so crazy lately. (gymnastics + home school + lots of kids + football-coach hubby + writing = head exploding)

This is when I want to start pouring out apologies for how bad I've been at keeping up with all of you and this blog ... but I will refrain because apologies are boring and you all understand how life can be. (I know you do.)

But I WILL give a couple boring excuses:

BORING EXCUSE NUMBER ONE: I want to visit other blogs, but since Google Reader disappeared, I feel a bit lost. Any advice?

BORING EXCUSE NUMBER TWO: I would also like to blog more, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what to blog about.

I know a couple of you had mentioned that you'd like to hear more details about my publishing process. Do you have any specific questions I could answer? I just turned in my first round of edits a couple weeks ago (phew!). As long as everyone understands that this is all new to me, too, I'd love to be forthcoming about my experience. I just don't know what all of you would LIKE to know, you know?

If you have any questions that I can answer over the next few weeks, leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Photo credit: rosevita from morguefile.com

The Write Perspective

If you'd told me when I started on this Road to Publication that it would take me five years to sign with an agent, that I would lose that agent and have to start all over again, that I would write six novels before getting a contract ... I wonder if I would have begun.

But, since hindsight is 20/20, I'm here to offer a bit of perspective.

Am I ever glad for those six-and-a-half years of practice! I needed every 2,372nd day of them. I needed to learn to revise. I needed to write and rewrite and rip apart and start all over again with six books several times each. I needed to feel that ultimate pain of complete rejection when I split with my first agent so that I could understand exactly what I wanted. I needed to find validation that came separately from anyone else's opinion of me. I needed all of this to feel confident* at this point in the journey.

So, don't feel bad if you haven't hit that golden target yet. Your day is coming.



And you'll be prepared.

*okay, maybe not completely confident, but confidentER :)

Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com

In Which I Finally Make a Decision

Thank you for all the feedback regarding my author pictures (in this post)!

My internet conveniently went out directly after I posted the pictures and it took our provider five freakin' days to get someone out to our house to fix it. So, I'm sorry I didn't respond to everyone's comments, but I'm very thankful for the input. It's a really hard decision because Julie did such a great job, but I think, for RED BUTTERFLY, at least, I'm going to go with picture #4, in the Chinese top, because that's what I really envisioned for this book. I think my overall fave is #1, so that will go up as my avatar shortly and if there's ever a need to choose another author picture (and I'm not too much older and grayer at that point) I'll use that one....

Thanks again for taking the time to give me feedback! I was blown away by the number of responses here on my blog and on facebook. Since I couldn't get on internet at home, whenever I had a chance to log on for a minute I was bowled over with LOVE (which was AMAZING).

Thanks again to Julie for her artistic eye, her friendship, AND, most importantly, her airbrushing and eyelash-adding skills.

As a post script -- my eye is still not healed. Unfortunately I may need surgery to get it back to normal, but I'm giving it a few more weeks to see if it will behave itself. Just one of those many ups-and-downs of life, I suppose!

((Hugs)) to all!

Help! Picture Alert!

My good friend Julie DeGuia (whom I first met randomly at Barnes & Noble and then again even more randomly at a SCBWI conference in Seattle) offered to take my author photo. Since I had already seen some of Julie's work and knew how amazingly talented she was, of course I answered, "YES!"

Julie probably didn't realize how much work taking my picture would turn out to be. A few days before our photo shoot date, I developed a sty in my eye that got infected and then turned into a CYST. (You may all barf at the disgustingness of this now. Go ahead, get it out of the way.)

I put on lots of makeup in an attempt to cover it up, but it was still pretty bad.

Julie, however, was undaunted and made me look PERFECTLY NORMAL in the pictures. I think she even painted in extra eyelashes. She's amazing, I tell you.

So, here are a few of the shots. Will you help me choose which to use in my upcoming MG novel, RED BUTTERFLY? I'm having a hard time picking a favorite.

#1

 #2

 #3

 #4

 & #5

 Thoughts? Suggestions?

Thanks again, Julie!!

Guest Post: Mining the Miraculous

Today I'm delighted to have my beautiful-hearted friend, Wendy Paine Miller, visiting my blog. Her novella, THE DISAPPEARING KEY, comes out next month. I've loved Wendy since I first stumbled across her blog several years ago. Wendy asks hard questions, thinks deeply, and always has something amazing to share from her personal journey. Congratulations, Wendy, on the release of your book!

How would you define the word miracle? What shape would you give it? How would you explain the meaning of miracle while speaking to someone who knew very little about our culture?

I’m asking because I explore the phenomenon of miracles in my debut novella, THE DISAPPEARING KEY.

I wasn’t sure that was exactly what would come out of this work. Often writing a novel (or novella in this case) is like opening a well-wrapped Christmas gift. As I peel off layer upon layer I begin to understand what it is I’m holding.

And at the core of THE DISAPPEARING KEY I’m beginning to see how there’s an undeniable mining of the miraculous.

Apparently, I’m curious about miracles. That’s what my writing does—it points me to those things that deeply intrigue me.

I broach numerous miracle-related questions in my novella. Things like can we create our own miracles? Can something that is once deemed a miracle diminish—lose its marvel? And how does the way we understand miracles influence whether we’re able to identify them as such? 

One of the main characters, fourteen-year-old, Oriana Bivane confesses toward the end of the novella:

“Because isn’t that what makes a miracle a miracle? The lack of explanation.” 

Have you ever experienced a miracle in your life? Back to my earlier question, how would explain what a miracle is to someone?

Here are a few more miracle-related quotes that caught my attention:

“Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear.” ~ Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous  Carnival

 

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” ~ C.S. Lewis
 

“Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive, and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone...or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.” ~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows