Do not let your odd cat distract you from your writing. Like mine. She meows at me and expects me to meow back. So I do.

It would be nifty if I could live the life of my vision of a writer.

I imagine bang – up, mega successful writers in their organized offices overlooking a pristine lake where they scribble away all day, the words flowing, the blue herons landing smoothly.

Or they’re in their beach house. They watch the sun rise and set, smiling serenely, seagulls cawing, a cup of peppermint tea nearby as their story pours out of their brilliant brains.

Or they visit their family’s rustic cabin in the woods with comfy red plaid blankets, wandering deer, and a hunky man who moved in down the lane with whom they have a brief but mind blowing “writerly affair.”

Oh yes. I imagine the life of a writer to be filled with words, books, imagination, excellent views, romantic struggle, and flowing tequila.

The truth is, unfortunately, harsh.

I know a number of writers.

NONE have a clean office. In fact, many have their “office” on their dining room table. They push the kids’ homework out of the way, the dead and hardening oatmeal, the odd cat, and write.

A beautiful view helps, but don’t depend on it. Sometimes you have to write leaning against your kitchen counter while you’re making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It is what it is.

I only know one who owns a beach house. She goes there to regain her sanity. If a seagull bothered her too much she would probably shoot it.

I know of no one who has a cabin in the woods or had a “writerly affair,” with a hunky guy down the lane. Most of the writers I know are boring married ladies like myself. A few are in hot – flash hell like me. This is not conducive to a passionate affair. Also husbands do not generally approve of “writerly affairs.”

I don’t know any writers who slam down tequila. Why? Because we have to write the next day. Hangovers and writing only sounds romantic if you’re Hemingway. And his hangovers were no more romantic than anyone else’s, he simply had them out on a boat.

Plus, I rarely drink. I quit – almost completely – when I was twenty after a bad round of tequila myself. This makes me no fun in the drunken writers department.

Truth is, all the writers I know have some very, very heavy responsibilities. Children. Jobs. Spouses. Sick parents. Illness. Divorce. Bad dates. Addictions to chocolate and ice cream. Difficult mother in laws. Teenagers. You name it, they have it.

Get out into nature and go ride a horse.

But I believe it’s important, when you’re a writer, to take time out to BE a writer, at least once a week. You need to take that cool/introspective/dreamy image of being a writer and live it.

How do you do that?

Keep a small notebook with you to jot down what you’re thinking, story ideas, or even list the reasons why you hate your ex husband or your skinny, prissy neighbor down the street.  You can use your ridiculous and destructive hatred  for ideas later. If you feel like committing a crime, write that down, too. Who knows? You might become a crime writer. Do you like thinking about aliens, mummies, or gargoyles? Good. Write your plot down. Who knows where that could lead?

Make friends with writers in your town or over facebook or writer’s groups. Talk shop. Do not make friends with the negative or whiny wanna be writers. They’ll drag ya on down to the sludge. Go for the wild ones teetering on the edge. The thinkers and rebels. The ones who have opinions different than yours and a thought process that is jagged and funny.

If there’s a cool conference you want to attend, by all means, go. You can learn a ton and meet people.

Take a writing class at a university or a community college. I LOVED the classes I took. You’ll meet people you will never meet in your own circle, and this is always good. Same people, same ideas. Go forth and chat.

Drive somewhere totally new, find a coffee shop, slug down caffeine, and write.

Travel.  Photograph. Sketch. Go to plays and musicals and the symphony. Writers are artistic. Work on being artistic. You do not need dreadlocks to do this, but you could grow them if you want.

Travel. Even an hour out of your town will give you a new perspective. Or go to Rennes, France, pictured here. That was fun. They have great bread.

Say hello to nature. I run about four days a week in a forest. Helps my head. Go to a lake, the mountains or a beach. Go to a field.  But get thy ass out there.  It is hard to be creative when you’re inside all the time, surrounded by the same four suffocating walls smashing in on you.

Read like a fiend. Read in different genres and enjoy what you read, but study it, too. Only read the best authors you can find, and then figure out why you like them. If you read crap, your writing will be crap. Be CAREFUL.

Read brain – cell popping writing books, too. Jessica Morell. Annie Lamott. Natalie Goldberg. Julia Cameron. Read Writer’s Digest. I just started getting that magazine, and it’s full of amazing advice, even for someone like me who has been in the trenches of this business for years.

Walk. Walk without your ipod, or with it.  Write in your head. Think creative thoughts. Go away from your problems and think about your book only. Dedicate that time.

Journal, baby, journal. First, verbally vomit on your journal. Write down what you’re thinking or worrying about. Then, write down your character’s name in the middle of your journal and jot down everything you know about her. Write down any problems you’re having in your book, then write down ALL ideas – no censoring – on how to fix them.  Let that pen flow over the pages.

Write all the time. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be publishable, if it’s crap you can burn it later in a bonfire and run around it naked. Just write.

Remember that you are a writer, no matter what rejections are hitting you in the face.  You need silence. You need time alone. You need to listen to your own thoughts.  Writers take time out of their chaotic/busy lives to BE. Just be.

Now go be.

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My family sells lingerie.

Negligees, bras, panties, thongs, bustiers, pajamas, nightgowns, and robes.

My grandma, who is in her eighties, started Lace, Satin, and Baubles when she was sixteen. She said she arrived from Ireland after sliding off the curve of a rainbow with a dancing leprechaun and flew to America on the back of an owl.

I thought that was a magical story when I was younger. When I was older I found out that she had crisscross scars from repeated whippings on her back, so the rainbow, dancing leprechaun, and flying owl part definitely dimmed.

Grandma refuses to talk about the whippings, her childhood, or her family in Ireland. “It’s over. No use whining over it. Who likes a whiner? Not me. Everyone has the crap knocked out of them in life, why blab about it? Blah blah blah. Get me a cigar, will you? No, not that one. Get one from Cuba. Red box.”

What I do know is that by the time Regan O’Rourke was sixteen she was out on her own. It was summer and she picked strawberries for money here in Oregon and unofficially started her company. The woman who owned the farm had an obsession with collecting fabrics but never sewed. In exchange for two nightgowns, she gave Grandma stacks of fabric, lace, satin, and huge jam bottles full of buttons. Grandma worked at night in her room in a weathered boarding house until the early hours and sold her nightgowns door to door so she would have money for rent and food.

Lace, Satin, and Baubles was born. Our symbol is the strawberry.

My grandma still works at the company. So do my sisters, Lacey and Tory. I am back at home in Portland after years away working as a documentary filmmaker and more than a year of wandering. You could ask me where I wandered. I would tell you, “I took a skip and a dance into hell.” It would be appropriate to say I spent the time metaphorically screaming.

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Written by Stevie Barrett.

I am going to plant a garden this summer.

With the exception of two pink cherry trees, one white cherry tree, and one pink tulip tree, all huge, I have a barren, dry backyard and I’m tired of looking at it. I almost see it as a metaphor for my whole life, and I think if I can fix this, I can fix my life. Simplistic, silly, I know, but I can’t get past it.

So I’m going to garden even if my hands shake as if there are live circuits inside of them and a floppy yellow hat dances ominously through my mind.

I’m going to build upraised beds, a whole bunch of them, and fill them with tomatoes, squash, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, carrots, peas, and beans. But not corn.

I’m not emotionally able to do corn yet – too many memories – but I am going to plant marigolds around the borders, pink and purple petunias, rose bushes and clematis and grapevines.

I’m going to stick two small crosses at the back fence, but not for who you think. I’m going to build a grape arbor with a deck beneath it, and then I’m going to add a table so I can paint there, as I used to, before my memories took that away.

I’m also going to build three trellises for climbing roses over a rock pathway, one arch for me, Grandma, and Grandpa, which will lead to another garden, with cracked china plates in a mosaic pattern in the middle of a concrete circle, for Sunshine.

This may sound way too ambitious.

It is. But I see this as my last chance to get control of my mind before it blows.

I can wield any type of saw out there, and I have to do this, even if it takes me years. That I can even think in terms of a future is a miracle.

Why?

Because two and a half years ago, when I was thirty two years old, I had a heart attack.

I used to be the size of a small, depressed cow.

The heart attack led to my stomach strangling operation, and I lost 170 pounds. Now I am less than half myself, in more ways than one.

My name is Stevie Barrett.

This is a story of why I was the way I was and how I am now me.

I am going to plant a garden.

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The poison oak was hiding on my trellis. Part of it had creeped into my trumpet vine. It secretly attacked me, second year in a row.

Getting poison oak is like being ambushed by miniature space aliens wielding blister producing guns while the devil is throwing welts at you from the depths of hell.

It’s an ugly scene.

The blisters spread and pop.

And spread.

And pop.

The red, fiery welts grow and spread, too.

You itch so bad you can think of only one thing: Scratch. Yes, scratch! (Evil laughing). Scratch!

It’s enough to stop rational thought. It’s enough to stop functioning. It drives you to absolute distraction until you want to cut the offending parts off with a buzz saw and be done with it.

I could hardly write my new book. It was a struggle. I wondered if I should give my character poison oak. I didn’t. There’s a limit on how mean I’ll be to my characters.

The more you scratch, the more inflamed you’ll be. DO NOT SCRATCH.

But, you do. I did. It’s this compulsive, horrible thing that brings us to our pathetic knees. I hid my arms for two weeks.  I looked like I’d been in a fight and lost badly.

Here are my only solutions if one does contract poison oak. I am not a doctor so don’t take my word for it and don’t combine the drugs I did unless you talk to your doctor because I don’t want to get sued for drug cocktailing advice. Use your thinker on this one. Think, think, think.

Take thee butt to thee doctor’s office. My doctor put me on Triamcinolone Acetonide cream. That helped. Next time I get it, I’m going to the doctor’s immediately, not waiting a week and trying home remedies while my body goes up in welty flames. I hate going to the doctors. White coats make me nervous. Stethoscopes make me feel rather ill. Waiting rooms bring on my anxiety and trip my nerves. Go to the doctors. Say yes to drugs.

Use calamine lotion but you may want to read this first. (http://www.drugs.com/cdi/calamine-diphenhydramine.html)

Use Gold Bond. This worked and made me stop trying to scratch my arms and neck off.

Use Cetaphil. It’s the cream I use on my face. I buy it in bulk from Costco. I love it. It soothed my arms as they itched, dried up, wrinkled, itched again, dried, wrinkled, you get this very sad picture.

Consider using very hot water. I blasted hot water from the sink directly on my blistered, welty arms about three days after exposure. This helped enormously. This is controversial. One website said it would spread the poison oak, one said to do it.

It produced instant relief.  I cannot describe how glorious that hot water felt. It almost made me breathless. In fact, now and then, I had to pull my arm away from the water, breathe, relax, then stick my arm back under again. It’s poison oak ecstasy.

One poster on a website said putting hot water on his poison oak was better than sex. I would not quite agree with that, but it would be close.

The hot water blasting on my arm – and yes, I’m sure I scalded my arms because the pink area did not go away for days – smothered that itch and allowed me to think for about four hours afterwards.

Did the hot water spread it? I don’t know. I kept breaking out in hives and bumps for two weeks, but that’s probably because the poison oak was in my system and simply spreading like the poison from a nasty vampire bite would spread.

Benadryl. I have, in the past, only been able to take half a benadryl, at night before bed, because it just knocks the heck out of me and puts me to sleep. The benadryl also caused a mild depression so I have used it only sparingly for spring allergies.

So, with this allergic reaction, I started off with half a pill. It worked for a few days. Then I had to move up to a full pill every six hours. Then I started popping them every four hours. It did not make me sleepy at all. By the end of two weeks I was seriously considering taking two benadryls at a time, but my poison oak finally settled itself down.

(Note: Don’t take two benadryl. This would have been stupid. For heaven’s sakes, don’t drive if it makes you sleepy. You could run over a giraffe or a fallen star or, much worse, a person.)

I drank a lot of water and tried to eat healthy except for my chocolate.

Argh.

Here are the things I’ve learned: The urushiol oil from the poison oak will sink into your skin after about an hour and you are not contagious to anyone.  Even when those gross blisters pop and those welts make you look like a giant chicken pox you are not contagious. Also, soap from the shower kills the oil.

However, the oil can be on your garden tools or your gloves and clothes – or camping equipment and sleeping bag if you got it out in the woods – and you need to get rid of it. Some websites said to wash the clothes. I pitched the clothes and my old gardening shoes. I pitched the rakes I knew I had used in the area of my yard where the oak was.

I washed down my lawn furniture and my cutters and other gardening tools and my hose with tons of soap and water.  Then I washed them down again.

I cleaned my house and doorknobs/handles especially. Every day I washed my towels and wash cloths. This was probably a little paranoid but I could not help myself.

Nothing is worth getting this again. In addition, when I got poison oak last summer it was only a fifth as bad as this summer. Apparently the more you get it, the worse your body reacts because it sees the poison oak as a foreign invader and your immune system attacks.

My immune system attacked and kept on attacking, like a samurai warrior having a temper tantrum.

I paid a man to come and dig the poison oak out. When he was done he took off his clothes (not in front of me) and threw away those clothes.

I hope none of you ever gets poison oak in your life but if you do, I hope these suggestions will be of some help. Be prepared for about two weeks, maybe a little more, of hell fire welts from the devil and blistering from those miniature space aliens.

I feel for you, I do. Good luck.

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When I was seven, two of my little girlfriends died.

Joni was eight.

Danielle was six.

We lived on Deauville Drive, in Huntington Beach, California. Across Garfield Street there was an area that had a hill, and the hill and land next to it had been bulldozed to build houses. Joni and Danielle, and brothers from one of the families, and a couple of other kids, ran lickety split across the street to play one sunny day.

They told their mothers they were going to our elementary school, through the path between the houses, past the barking dogs and the honeysuckle that poured over a fence.   They snuck to a place they weren’t supposed to be, looking for an adventure.

They dug a cave into the hillside. A neat cave. Kids like caves.

And when Joni and Danielle were in that neat cave, having lots of fun, the cave collapsed and they suffocated.

We realized something was wrong when our family was driving to church and Mr. Amato, whose family made great sandwiches in a shop at the mall, was half carrying Danielle’s mother up the street along with another man.  She was crying, head back. There were mobs of people, fire engines, and police.

Joni and Danielle were there one day, and then they were not. We drew pictures at my house, then we didn’t.

Joni was darling. I wanted to look like her. Dark hair, page boy cut, lots of thick black lashes. Danielle was thin and quick with huge green eyes. They were fun.

As an adult, I realized the devastation that Joni and Danielle’s deaths caused. Their families were ruined, the community  shocked and grieving. At the time, I simply went back outside to play under the blue sky, daydreaming under the pink bougainvillea in the backyard.

All the kids did. We didn’t know what else to do. I remember crying, though, and not quite understanding what had happened. Those were the days when children did not go to funerals, so it wasn’t final to me, wasn’t quite real.

At forty six, I’ve read a number of articles about “aging gracefully,” and “getting older,” and “the dreaded middle age,” which I suppose I am. I read about women who desperately want to look younger and go to great lengths to do so. Botox, surgery, laser peels, etc. I’m not criticizing, I’m just noting it.

Though it’s hard to believe I’m four years from fifty, and though I thought I would be smarter and wiser by now, the truth is that aging doesn’t bother me. I’m simply glad that I’ve been given the gift of aging.

I think it has something to do with the impact of death so early in my life with Joni and Danielle and with deaths following theirs. As a teenager, I watched my Grandpa die month by month of cancer. I lost my beloved Nana before him. My parents were both dead of cancer by the time I was forty, same with my parents in law.

A close friend’s husband died at 33. His daughter was three. Linda, my best friend’s mother, who I loved, died in her early fifties of ovarian cancer. I lost two friends to lung cancer.  One of those friends, four days before she died, in bed, too weak to open her eyes told me, “I like soup.”

I will never forget that. Louise was dying way too young, I knew it, she knew it, but she could find something she still liked: Soup.

My other friend, Margie, who at one point studied to become a nun, patted her heart when I sat with her one afternoon a few weeks before her death and told me, “Cathy, God is right here. He’s right here.”

Perhaps I have learned one thing from these deaths: People should be more concerned with living life with love and compassion and understanding, with having adventures and new experiences, with travel and learning and reading, than their appearance.

I will never be a size six again. I may be a size eight if I’m lucky, but I doubt it. Today I’m hoping, mildly, for a 10. Those two lines between my brows ain’t goin’ nowhere. My eyelids look heavier to me and the poison oak on one of them is not helping.

I always want to look my best, for me. I like my kick ass boots. I like my heels. I like my bracelets and earrings. But I can’t possibly get caught up in the “don’t look your age” movement, with this vanity and self absorption.  As if aging is a curse, something to hide. As if it makes you less important.

Who cares? Looks are external. They’re not your soul, they’re not who you are inside. They’re not your character or how you hug your family and friends and how you make other people’s lives a little easier.

I think of Joni and Danielle now and again. All they lost, all that their families lost.

Joni and Danielle’s families would have given anything, even their own lives, to have them around, aging gracefully or aging horribly.

I wasn’t with them that day in the cave. But they’ve been with me my whole life. I can still see them, and their smiles, like it was yesterday, as we played hide and seek in our yard by the jacaranda and magnolia trees.

I will, hopefully, grow old and wrinkly, my sight dimming, my hearing not so good. I might get cranky, my bones might creak, my knees might wobble.

They never will.

Quite honestly, I am simply grateful to be here still. Wrinkles, extra pounds, and all.

Every day, I am grateful.

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Fabulous writer, Anita Hughes

Now and then I am asked to review books, either by my publishing house or by other authors. To be quite honest, sometimes I will read the book and then decline to write a review.

The truth is that I don’t like the book and I don’t want to recommend that someone else go out and spend money on a book that I don’t think they’ll like.  Also, it’s my reputation. I recommend a poor book, that reflects poorly on me.

I was asked to review Anita Hughes’ book, Market Street, by an editor at St. Martin’s and this is what I wrote:

MARKET STREET is the captivating story of a reluctant heiress meeting her own dream and running with it…Loved it. Read it in one sitting, coffee and chocolate in hand.

And now I’m lucky enough to be able to interview Anita and again I’m drinking coffee…

1) Anita, thanks for being here.  One day I’m coming down to California to run on the beach with you but for now…can you summarize Market Street for us?

MARKET STREET is about the young wife of a philandering UC Berkeley Ethics Professor who must choose between her crumbling marriage and opening a food emporium in Fenton’s, her mother’s exclusive Union Square department store.

2) That was so ironic. The husband is an ethics professor. What a jerk. I hated him.  I enjoyed hating him. Good job on creating a character that is so fun to hate. I will say I loved all the food images, as I do so love to eat. 

Can you tell us where you got the idea for your book? For example, with my book, Julia’s Chocolates, I had a vision of a wedding dress being thrown into a dead street on a deserted street in North Dakota. Any weird visions like that?

No visions, but a clear picture of San Francisco in my mind. I write very visually – I can see the places and people and I wanted to write a book set in San Francisco, filled with delicious local foods and fashion. I lived in the Bay Area for years and was a big fan of GUMPS – the historic department store just off Union Square. Fenton’s is a cross between GUMPS and Neiman Marcus and I thought it would be a great setting for a novel.

3) It was an excellent setting. I could almost feel the San Francisco fog when I read it and I pictured myself on the wharf reading your book many times. I loved visiting SF in my mind…especially the bakeries.

Which character do you most relate to?

I love both Cassie, the main character, and Alexis, her best friend. Cassie, like many of us, is used to putting others before herself. Alexis is more unconventional – wealthy, beautiful but quite insecure. I love how they support each other and would do anything for each other.

4) I loved how different they are from one another. Sometimes I think people like that make the best friendships. You learn and grow from the other person – even if they say and do things that you would never say or do. It makes the friendship lively and intriguing.

Are there different parts of your personality in each of the main characters?

I think I definitely have parts of Cassie in me – I would imagine most mothers do. I love Alexis’s sense of humor and I’ve been told I can be funny but she is much wittier than I am.

5) Have you gone through anything your characters go through?

You get to a certain age and have weathered disappointments and times when life changes course unexpectedly. I think I blended a variety of things that have happened in my life and the lives of my friends and put them in the story.

6) There were so many, many elements in your story that I thought women could connect with from their heart and soul. I certainly did.

What would you say is the theme of Market Street and why did you choose that theme?

The main theme of Market Street is the value of female friendship. I still have great friends from high school that I call on a weekly basis, and we help each other get through life’s challenges. In every stage in life I think a great best friend is so important – if you have one you can get through anything.

7) You’re right. I love all my girlfriends.

Tell us about your writing schedule. Do you write a certain amount of words or pages a day?

I try to write 1,000 words a day – I find that keeps the story humming along and the characters breathing. I write mainly in the morning and then revise at night.

8) What do you like best about writing and what part of it is not, as I shall say, quite as pleasant?

I really enjoy the actual writing – especially dialogue. I also enjoy revising, it is very satisfying to work on a sentence or paragraph and make it as good as can be. I don’t think there is a part of the writing process that I don’t enjoy.

9) That’s good. When I’m on my eighth edit I want to pound my head through the keyboard.

Always wanted to be a writer or were there other career choices? What did you want to be when you were a kid?

When I was eight I won a national writing award in THE AUSTRALIAN, Australia’s national newspaper. I definitely wanted to be a writer and even sent off a novel at the age of fourteen to a senior editor at Harper & Row. She sent me back a revision letter but I became a cheerleader instead!

10) Cheerleading over writing? You must be kidding. I can’t make fun of you, though. I was a cheerleader, too. I was a terrible cheerleader. Couldn’t remember the cheers or kick right. I bet you knew how to kick right, you’re that kind of gal. 

Rumor has it you live in a hotel. What’s that like? I’m going to move in with you. 

My family lives in a villa on the grounds of The St. Regis, Monarch Beach. It’s pretty fabulous. What I love most is that I am surrounded by beauty – both natural beauty (the beach, the gardens) and the architecture and interior design of the hotel. I also love the people – the employees have been there for ever and they are like family.

11) Where do you see yourself in ten years? Twenty years?

Hopefully sitting right here, watching the rabbits in my garden and writing!

12) I’ll come watch the rabbits with you. I’m good at sitting down. We’ll name them together.

What are some of your personal goals? Professional goals?

My personal goals are to have happy, well-rounded children who grow into confident adults. Professionally, I would like to just continue to write my books – I have a few more already written and a stack of ideas and characters waiting to be transcribed. I love to write and I love hearing readers’ feedback on my stories.

13) Three places you most want to travel to and why.

Obviously Lake Como, which is where my next book is set. I went as a child and it is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I also have a soft spot for Capri – I love a place where there are no cars. It’s a gorgeous island with history, great food and shops.

I love Switzerland, especially Montreux, and would love to go there in the summer and take a paddle boat on Lake Geneva.

I’ve been to Montreaux, as you mentioned above, and loved it. I remember the boardwalk vividly. I was a broke college student so I didn’t shop, but my sister and I did manage to find money for coffee, of course, and it was delicious.  I just looked up Lake Como and I definitely have to go there, too, and have lunch with George Clooney. I am sure he’d invite me over if he knew I was there….

Thank you for hosting me on your wonderful blog, Cathy! And thank you for being an inspiration to women writers!

Aw….you’re welcome, Anita. Thanks for your time and the best of luck with all your new books.

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I am asked all the time how one should go about getting published.

Here is my answer.

Tulips have nothing to do with publishing unless you are writing a tulip book.

You need to write something good. Really good.  You need to write something that a publishing house believes will sell.

So work, work, work on that story of yours. Study writing. Go to writing classes. Study your favorite books and ask yourself why you like them.

Read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. On Writing by Stephen King. Writing Out The Storm by Jessica Morrell.  And read Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg’s books. See my other articles titled, “For Writers” in this blog.

Study more. Write more. Read more. Begin again. Edit, edit, edit.

When you’re ready to submit your work, you need to get  yourself an agent. 

Should you finish writing your book before you try to get an agent?

Probably anyone else, in any other writing forum, in any magazine article or in any speech about how – to – publish, here or on Jupiter, will tell you to write a full manuscript before sending the first chapter off to an agent for his review.

Always write from a new perspective.

This is enormously good advice in many ways. Writing a full book before sending it to an agent makes you nail down those characters. It forces you into the writing process.

You learn about pacing, character arcs, character development, climaxes, word choice, descriptions, dialogue, narration, voice, and a hundred other things, including whether or not you are capable of sitting your butt down and finishing a book. All excellent points.

I, however, will not tell you to write a full book before sending the first chapter off to an agent to review.

Why? Because of my own personal and miserable history which involved piles of rejection slips. After months spending time writing full manuscripts, they would be rejected. Repeatedly.

I wanted to bash my head through a wall. All those months of work…trashed. For nothing.

Looking back, the writing was bad. The idea was bad. The characters were bad.  The organization and dialogue and narration were bad. Bad, bad, bad. I’m surprised I got as far as I did in my first go – round of trying to publish with Mills and Boon/Silhouette.

Write with color

On my LAST attempt at writing a book, and I completely changed genres to women’s fiction, I wrote the first 40 -ish pages of my book, Julia’s Chocolates, no more. I sent it to four agents and a famous editor. The famous editor never responded. All the agents, based on those first forty pages, requested the full manuscript.

I waited until my favorite agent – the one I have now – asked for the full manuscript, told him I needed to do “a little editing,” and worked my butt off for about four months, writing from ten o’clock at night until two in the morning, while taking care of three young kids, a house, and working a freelance writing job.

I used to edit Julia’s Chocolates while my kids were playing at Chuck E Cheese and McDonalds.

I sent the full manuscript to my favorite agent, blurry eyed and exhausted. He loved it and I signed with him in a couple of weeks. A few weeks after that he sold Julia’s Chocolates  as part of a two – book deal to the publishing house I’m with now.  I was ecstatic and I still love both my agent and my editor.

My advice is to write a bang up 20 pages. Yes, I did say 20. Twenty.

Get outside. It’ll help you write.

Write a short cover letter describing the plot in the first two paragraphs, the ending paragraph should be about you. Get a book on how to write query letters. Loosely follow it. You can send a short synopsis of the book attached at the end of the first twenty pages.

So your packet out to agents, online or by snail mail, looks like this: Cover letter, one page. Twenty pages of your story. Synopsis, one page.

An agent will read the first paragraph, MAYBE the first page, of your book, before he tosses it if his attention is not grabbed. If he likes the first paragraph, he reads the first page, then the second page, then the third.

He knows QUICKLY if your book is something he can sell to a publishing house. They’re experienced, they’re smart, they’re efficient. Never forget: They are BURIED in manuscripts.

Why only 20 pages? Because then you won’t waste your time. If the subject matter/characters of your book are not appealing, if it is not going to sell, you have not wasted a year of your life writing a book that no publishing house wants. With twenty pages you have limited your loss of time and effort.

The brutal truth is – and here I will say something that will be offensive so put on your tough alligator skin – what you’re writing may not be anything anyone wants. It could be the topic. Could be the market. Could be the wildly insane competition out there.

It could be the writing. It’s just not good/intriguing/gripping/fun enough. Yet. It may never be for that particular idea.

Spend a lot of time daydreaming if you want to be a writer.

If  no agent wants to represent your work after repeated rejections move on to the next story in your head. You may have to eventually change genres, like I did, which worked splendidly.

You may have to edit that sucker four or ten times. I edit all my books eight times before I send it the first time to my agent and editor and I have been writing for years. Address the stuff I mentioned above about character arcs, word choice, description and PACING.  Pacing is key. Too slow and you’ll put people to sleep.

Many people will say that this approach, where only 20 – ish pages are actually done when you first send it to an agent,  will result in a rushed, poor manuscript if it’s requested by an agent.

Here’s the key:  Don’t send in a rushed, poor manuscript. Duh. Send in an excellent manuscript. The very best you can do.

Yes, your manuscript arrives later than the agent wanted but, trust me on this one: If it’s a heckuva manuscript, he won’t give a rip. He’ll lean back in his chair, throw up his arms, look to the ceiling as if in “Hallelujah,” and try to sell your manuscript for as much as he can get.

See how these rows are nice and neat? Writing is not like that.

Your cover letter when you are finished with the requested manuscript is simple: Dear so and so, thank you for requesting my full manuscript I LOVE VAMPIRES AND GOBLINS AND CHOCOLATE. The manuscript is enclosed. I will look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, YOUR NAME.

His letter, where he requested the manuscript, goes below this to remind him that, yes, he did ask for your work.

Once your send in your full manuscript to the agent, if he likes it and thinks he can sell it, he will call or email  you. It is unlikely that he will send a smoke signal.

If you still like that agent after that conversation, you will sign a contract with that agent.  This means he will represent your book to the publishing houses, which basically means he will contact the editors he knows, either at lunch or a cocktail party or a meeting or a bar, and talk your book up. He will contact editors in houses who sell your type of genre.

Hopefully an editor is interested. If he is, the agent will send the editor your manuscript. If the editor believes his house can sell it and make money off it, he will then buy the book. This involves more contracts. All the contracts are in legalese and are quite long and detailed. They will bore you silly.  Get an attorney to review it.

The contracts from the editor/publishing house will go through your agent. You will sign the contracts if you agree to the upfront money the publishing house is offering, and the royalties they offer after the book sells and your upfront money is paid off.

Please people. The number of writers who get upfront six figures – plus is tiny. Miniscule. Do not expect anywhere near this, especially for your first book.  I know writers who get all the money they can upfront, because they know they will earn no royalties.  Be aware that the vast majority of writers cannot make a living writing, that’s why they keep their day jobs.

Don’t forget to create a compelling setting in your story.

Remember, you will also give a portion of your earnings to your agent once you are under contract with a publishing house. All monies go from the publishing house, to the agent, then to you. Royalties are paid twice a year.

Once the contract is signed, you’ve sold your book. Hopefully there will be more contracts to come and you’ll be on your merry way. I wish that for you, I truly do.

 Do you need an agent?   Unless you are writing category romance, like Silhouette or Harlequin, or you’re self – publishing, more on that later, you need an agent. An agent acts as a screener. If you cannot get an agent to represent you, the general rule is that the publishing house won’t look at your work. In other words, if an agent didn’t like it, they won’t either.

How do you contact an agent in the first place? If you’re in writers’ groups, agents’ names will start floating around. Pay attention to those names.   You might also meet agents at writing conferences or workshops.  Your best friend’s brother’s half sister may be an agent.

Or, pick up this book, “http://www.amazon.com/2013-Writers-Market-Robert-Brewer/dp/1599635933/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368413571&sr=1-1&keywords=2013+writer%27s+market  and find an agent in there under your genre. If you’re writing romance, look for romance book agents, writing thrillers, go for agents representing thriller writers.

Weather can enhance tension and drama in your story so use it.

Everything you read/hear will tell you to send your partial manuscript to one agent at a time. Don’t follow that rule either. As you can see, I don’t really like rules. Too confining.

Many agents will never, ever respond to you or your pages. Other agents will take months to read it. With others, the rejection slips will come back so fast, you will think the agent didn’t even read your book. And, he may not have. He may not be taking on clients. Or, he may have read the first page and thought it sucked.

People worry about mass mailing their partial manuscripts to agents.

I will be honest with you, if you get ONE reputable agent who is interested in your work, you should click your heels together in joy. I have heard unpublished authors say,  hands wringing, all uptight, “What would I do if I send it to more than one agent at a time and they all  want it?”

This happens so rarely, stop fretting.

If you are very fortunate and two agents ask for the full manuscript, send it to your favorite agent first, wait a month, send an email to see if they’re interested, and if they don’t respond in a timely manner, send the full to the second agent.

So, out with ten copies of your first twenty pages to ten agents. Wait a few weeks, send it out to another ten agents. Make sure you are sending your work to good, honest agents. Go to this website http://pred-ed.com/ to check.

You must have at least one character that the reader can root for, care about, and like.

You will probably be surprised at how fast the rejections come back. It is disheartening, I know it. I lived it. Bang my brain against the keyboard, this part is not fun.

But buck up on the rejections or get out of writing. Rejections are a part of being a writer. Cry. Throw a fit. Take thirty minutes then get over yourself and your pride and your belief that your book should be Number One on the NY Times bestseller list by Tuesday.

If your book keeps getting rejected, analyze it without emotion and figure out what’s wrong with it. You must put your ego aside. Do not give it to your mother or wife to analyze it, they are too close to you and probably won’t be honest.

Consider paying an editor, like I paid Jessica Morrell, a fab editor, to tell you the truth about your work. http://jessicamorrell.com/

(Side note: Do not hire Jessica if you want her to flatter you and tell you that your book is perfect. She is blunt and honest and knows her stuff. Most of the time she is polite, but not always.   Only hire her if you want to hear the truth, you won’t get defensive, you want her criticisms, you’re okay with her shredding your prose, and you are mature enough and smart enough to turn around and use the criticisms to write a better book.)

A Few More Thoughts:

Reputable agents NEVER ask for up front money or reader’s fees. If yours does, drop him and move on.

Don’t pay someone to print your books in traditional book form, please, unless you like losing money. In almost all cases, this will not work out for you financially. Don’t write to me and tell me about someone who printed their own books and made piles of money. There are a million people behind him who LOST money. Thousands of dollars. The ones who make money are just shouted out louder by the self publishing industry in the hopes of convincing you that you will be that lucky guy who will also make piles of money.

Word choice is critical. Make every word count, every word MUST have a reason for being in your book.

I have heard some interesting success stories about people who self published their work with Amazon.  It’s intriguing. Remember, though, you have to have a reader base to make money on this. There has to be people out there who want to read what you wrote. Be prepared to market and do PR work. For every one person who makes a lot of money on Amazon self publishing, there are thousands who don’t make twenty bucks.

You must keep writing if you want to publish. 

You must keep reading excellent books, and learning from them, if you want to publish. I am still learning. Still studying. Still critically analyzing my work, every word of it.

If you want to make a living at this, you almost always need to be with a big publishing house, not a small printing press who will pop off 3000 copies and hope you sell 1000.

If the same manuscript repeatedly gets rejected, it probably is not going to sell. Do not write to me and tell me about Harry Potter and Gone With The Wind and how often they were rejected before becoming best sellers. Once again, a huge hit getting rejected fifty times initially happens about the same amount of times that the moon turns pink.

Use a lot of dialogue. It moves the story along and shows the reader who the character is.

If your manuscript has been rejected forty times, even thirty times, you have to face the harsh truth that it may never publish. There may be something inherently wrong with your work. Never fear! Start a new book. Change genres. Learn from it. Get back out there.

I recently listened to a woman, who I will call Dixie, read her book aloud at a book fair.  I have known this woman for at least ten years. Ten – plus years ago she wrote her book. It has never sold. She is still hung up on it, still believes it will sell. It will never sell. She should have dropped it and moved on years ago. Do not be a Dixie.

Understand that this is an incredibly competitive industry. There are so many freakishly talented authors out there it makes me nauseous. You are competing against them. Never forget it. Bring your best to the table.

You must live a full life if you want to publish. Love. Laugh. Be with family and friends. Dance. Sing. Go have adventures. For heaven’s sakes, travel. Listen to people. Think new thoughts. Open your brain up to new ideas.  Read the newspaper. Take an art class. Try photography. Go to the mountains. Play in the waves. Make new friends. Be interested in others. Be interesting yourself. Be compassionate and kind. All this will fuel the writer in you.

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The other day I gardened.

This is not my favorite thing to do, primarily because I always have to yank up miles of weeds, and declare war every spring on this annoying, clinging morning glory that seems to grow fifty feet a day. If I were to leave my home right now that morning glory would cover our house by the end of summer.

My mother's gray ceramic pot, and her mint. I added a geranium and petunia.

You’d drive down the street and all you would see is a mass of morning glory.  It’s not the pretty morning glory, either, that you imagine wrapped around a white picket fence with blue flowers.

No, this has, maybe, one white flower, as if to mock me. The rest of it is a living, sticky, green plant criminal.

After my fight with the morning glory, I headed over to a gray, ceramic pot my mother used to own. After she died, in 2002, and my dad died, in 2007, both of them from cancer, I took it home with me. I love that pot. Inside the pot, every year, my mother’s mint grows, tall and wide.

In the pot, a small maple tree had the audacity to start growing. Also in the pot was another greenish plant that, like the morning glory, seems to grow everywhere in my yard. It’s like a spreading green monster. I’m surprised I don’t have any coming out of my ears.

With my pink gloved hand I tried to yank the maple tree out again and again. No go. It was in there tight. I had dirt and dust on my face from my fruitless fight with the maple tree when I decided to turn my attention to the green monster.  Again, no go. The soil was dry and rock hard, the roots deep and stronger than me. I could hear them both laughing at me.  I will win this battle, I told myself.

My mothers pins, her cross from when she was a girl, her mother's thimble, her baby bracelet, and her Blue Bird pin.

I tipped the heavy pot over my recycling bucket and tried to shake the tree and the green monster out while holding on to my mother’s mint. More dirt and dust flew into my face, my hair, and all over my shirt. I started to swear, a usual activity I embark upon while gardening.

I have saved so many of my mother’s precious things. Her old books from her mother.  Her blue dancing shoes. Her china. A clematis vine in my backyard. A black purse. Her baby bracelet. Her blue bird pin. Her favorite chair.

And yet, there I was, covered in dirt and dust, almost in tears, fighting to keep her mint. A plant.

My mother's favorite chair

I shook that damn pot again over the recycling bin. I said one more bad word. The mint, maple tree, and pesky green monster finally fell out, a plume of more dirt covering my face.

I won, I thought. You can stop laughing at me now, you stupid plants.

I balanced myself on the recycling bin, tipped over, head first, butt up, and grabbed the mint, which had broken free.

I felt rather victorious.

I added fresh soil to the gray pot. I dug a hole for a purple petunia next to the mint and a pink geranium. I cleaned the pot off.

With dirt everywhere I stood back, the tears burning, and thought, will it ever end, this wanting to hold on to her things? Will it?

Then I thought: Should it?

If so, why? My life is full, I’m not held back by grief. I know I’ll see her again. But I just can’t let go of anything I have of hers. Nothing. I treasure it all. And every year when that mint pops up, in her gray ceramic pot, I think of her.  And I smile. She loved gardening.

My mother's china, given to her by her parents when she married my father.

Bette Jean was a lovely lady.

She would understand how I feel.

And she would have laughed, seeing my butt in the air, head down in a dusty recycling bin, swearing at the green monster, scrambling for her mint. A plant.

I’m glad I saved it.

My head down, butt up, as I retrieved my mother's mint. She would have laughed at me...in a nice way.

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June’s Lace

Ten Things I’m Worried About:

1. Too many wedding dresses
2. Not enough wedding dresses
3. Grayson
4. Going broke
5. Losing my home
6. Never finding an unbroken, black butterfly shell
7. The upcoming interview with the fashion writer.
8. Not having peppermint sticks in my life
9. Turning back into the person I used to be
10. Always being worried

Need a summer read?

Chapter Two

“No. Absolutely not.” I gripped the phone with white knuckles as I paced around my yellow studio. “I will never agree to that.”

“Ha. I knew you wouldn’t accept those unacceptable terms, June,” Cherie Poitras, my divorce attorney, cackled.  “Your soon to be ex-husband has a monstrous addiction to being a jerk but don’t worry, we’re not quitting. Quitting causes my hot flashes to flare.”

“I don’t want your hot flashes to flare, Cherie. And I’m not quitting, either. I can’t.”  I yanked opened the French doors to my second story deck as lightning zigged and zagged across the night sky through the bubbling, black clouds, the waves of the Pacific ocean crashing down the hill from my blue home. “If I could catch a lightning strike, I’d pitch it at him.”

“It would be thrilling to see that,” Cherie declared. “So vengefully Mother Nature – ish.”

“What a rat.” I shut the doors with a bang, then thought of my other life, the life before this one, and shuddered. I could not go back to it, and I was working as hard as I could to ensure that that wouldn’t happen.  There wasn’t enough silk and satin in that other life. There wasn’t any kindness, either. Or softness. “I so want this to end.”

“He’s sadistically stubborn. I have been buried in motions, requests for mediation, time for him to recover from his fake illness, his counseling appointments, attempts to reconcile…he’s tried everything. The paperwork alone could reach from Oregon to Arkansas and flip over two bulls and a tractor.”

June's view from her blue cottage on the cliff of the Oregon Coast

“That’s what we’re dealing with, Cherie, bull.” I ran a hand through my long, blonde, messy hair. It got stuck in a tangle.

“Sure are, sweets.”

“He’s doing this so I’ll come back to him.”

“That’s true. He’s a tenacious, rabid bull dog.”

“I don’t ever want anything to do with the rabid bull dog again.” I was so mad, even my bones seemed to ache. Cherie wished me a, “Happy wedding dress sewing evening,” and I wished her the best of luck being a ferocious attorney who scares the pants off all the male attorneys in Portland and went back to stomping around my studio.

My studio is filled with odd and found things. I need the color and creativity for inspiration for the non – traditional wedding dresses I sew. Weathered, light blue shutters from a demolished house are nailed to a wall.  Two foot tall pink letters spell out my name, June.  On a huge canvas, I painted six foot tall purple tulips with eyes, smiles and pink tutus. I propped that painting against a wall next to a collection of mailboxes in the shapes of a pig, elephant, dragon, dog, and monkey.  The monkey mailbox scares me.

June gets ideas for her "non - traditional" wedding dresses sitting on the sand, watching the waves.

I dipped a strawberry into melted chocolate and kept stomping about.  I eat when I get upset or stressed, and this had not proved to be good for the size of my bottom. Fifteen extra pounds in two years. After only four more strawberries, okay seven, and more pacing, I took a deep breath and tried to wrestle myself away from my past and back into who I am now, who I am trying most desperately to become.

“Remember, June,” I said aloud  as my anger and worry surged, like the waves of the Oregon coast below me. “You are in your sky lighted studio. Not a cold, beige home in the city. You are living amidst stacks of colorful and slinky fabrics, buttons, flowers, faux pearls and gems, and lace. You are not living amidst legal briefs and crammed courtrooms working as an attorney with other stressed out, maniac attorneys hyped up on their massive egos.”

My tired eyes rested, as they so often did, on my Scottish tartan, our ancestor’s tartan, which I’d hung vertically on my wall.  When I’d hung it in our modern home in Portland, he’d ripped it down and hid it from me for a month. “Tacky June, it’s tacky. We’re not kilt wearing heathens.”

I am a wedding dress designer in the middle of a soul-crushing divorce. I am a wedding dress designer who will never again marry.  I am a wedding dress designer who has about as much faith in marriage as I do that the Oregon coast will never see another drop of rain.

The "hearts" that June is always looking for.

A blast of wind, then a hail of rain pummeled my French doors.

I ate yet another chocolate strawberry. I have been told my eyes are the color of dark chocolate. Not a bad analogy.  I washed the strawberry down with lemonade, then a carrot.

No, I have no faith in marriage.

None.

It was a bad day. It became worse after the next phone call.

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