Rena Olsen

I know I’m not the first person to look at the road towards getting an agent and adventures in dating and see creepy similarities between the two. It really makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In both instances, you are trying to begin what is sure to be an extremely intimate relationship, based on mutual trust and respect, and both parties must be equally invested in order to make it work. Have secured neither a life partner nor an agent, I get a lot of advice and comments from others about both processes. Mostly they are trying to be helpful, but usually I just find them amusing. Some examples, you say? But of course!

When talking about finding the right person/agent:
“It’ll happen when the time is right!”
“It only takes one!”
“I knew this person who was 59 before they found their soul mate and they couldn’t be happier!” or “I read this article about a person who was rejected 400 times and now they have 5971 bestsellers!”
“Everyone has different tastes, it’s very subjective.”
“What’s right for you might not be what’s right for them.”

With the exception of the third one up there, most of those could be used interchangeably to talk about dating or querying.

And when it comes to responses, mostly form rejections from agents, the phrases that are used could be taken out of a “how to break up” handbook.
“I don’t feel that I am the right person for this.”
“You deserve someone who is just as passionate as you are.”
“You have many positive qualities, keep going and you’ll find the right person.”
“It seemed interesting at first, but I just didn’t fall in love.”
“I was looking for something unique that just wasn’t there.”
“It’s not you, it’s me. Another person may feel differently.”

Sometimes it helps to laugh about it. I told a friend I can only handle one type of rejection at a time, otherwise I get confused, so writing it is!

And remember, you WILL find that special someone. You just have to keep looking.

Special props to Stephanie Funk (@SV_Funk) whose vlog comparing querying to dating continues to make me laugh every time I watch it. (Click it. You know you want to. Okay, don’t, I will just put it right below here to make it easy on you…)

I know. I have posted it before. But it’s gold. Maybe I’ll post it again tomorrow. Only time will tell.

I have been sitting here, trying to come up with a clever title for this post, and wanting desperately to mention bras somewhere in the title. Why? Because that’s what I think about what I think about being lifted up and supported. You know what else I think about? Other writers.

(How’s that for a segue??)

There’s another contest going on right now, called Pitch Madness. During the first round of the contest, slush readers are trudging through the entries, narrowing the field down for slush round number two. While they are doing so, many of them are tweeting about their experience, pointing out general trends, giving tips for entries and opening paragraphs. This would be great in itself, because those are the sorts of quick tips that are helpful.

But here’s what really strikes me every time I sneak over to the #PitchMadness feed. Writers supporting writers. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed it, but it still astonishes me every time. Maybe it shouldn’t. Writers tweeting out supportive messages, retweeting each other, wishing complete strangers good luck. I always gain new followers and receive messages of support during contests and Twitter pitch parties. And the thing is, these people really really genuinely want success for each other.

I think this is a phenomenon unique to the writing community. I can’t think of another community that is so supportive of its members. In every other area there is a sense of competition, of “I am better than you, but not as good as him.” Constantly comparing. (Not that this doesn’t happen in writing, but there’s a different quality to it.) It doesn’t matter if you write for adults or teens, if you write horror or romance, we relate to each other in very real ways. We are headed for the same goal, and want as many others to succeed in that goal as possible.

Even those who play on the same sports teams don’t always have this camaraderie. Coworkers who are doing the same job are often trying to one-up each other. Even in religions, people tend to try to be “more holy” or judge others for not doing things the “right” way, even as they are headed toward the same goal.

I don’t know why we are so judgy and critical of each other, why we have this constant need to be better than everyone else. Maybe it’s simply a side effect of being human. But it is so refreshing to be part of a community of writers who understand that there are many different ways to the same goal, and that each individual headed toward that goal has worth, and deserves success. After all, if we all did things the same way, life would be much more boring.

The differences keep things interesting.

On Saturday I went and saw the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Sea of Monsters. And I enjoyed it. It had good action, a fast moving plot, likable characters, and plenty of humor.

But it was nothing like the book. Lots of stuff was left out, lots of things were changed.

I used to feel like that. Like, if they are going to just screw up the book, why even bother? Why leave out important plot points? Why erase characters? HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME??? I was so upset with the fourth Harry Potter movie, all because of the extended dragon scene and the disappearance of Winky. (Sorry for those who have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m over it. Mostly.)

But the reality is, it’s not exactly practical to leave in every bit of plot, every character, every nuance of a book. That’s why books and movies are different. Why watching a movie is never the same as reading the book. It doesn’t make the movie bad, it just makes it different.

I approach movies based on books with the expectation that I will enjoy the general story, but that it will be different from what I picture in my mind. I separate the two as much as possible. I refuse to let someone else’s vision ruin my own imagining of the book and characters. I still go to the movies, because they entertain me. My first love will always be books, and the movie is never going to be as good as the book, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fantastic medium to share the story, especially for those who are not big readers. (I know, that are actually people like that out there! ;))

As always, Twitter is a great inspiration for these entries. I saw this Tweet from Cassandra Clare, whose book, City of Bones, comes out in movie form this week.

She is so wise. And I totally agree.

Although…I do have this beef…

Seriously. Just…don’t…

I was scrolling through Twitter today and nodding along with all the sage advice from writers and agents, as you do, when I came across this quote:

At first I was like, Okay, yeah, totally. Because, of course, I doubt my abilities a lot, as my very patient (some might say saint-like) friends and family can tell you. But then I was like, wait a minute. If only bad writers think they’re good, then how do we get good books? If good writers think they’re bad, then why would they bother trying to become published?

Of course, there is always room for improvement. I get that, to a point, you have to be able to look at your work and think, yes, this needs some work. But if you look at it and think it’s complete rubbish, with no redeeming qualities, then why on earth even bother?

Being willing to make changes is important in writing, but so is confidence. Confidence that you have a gift for writing, that that talent can be and is translated in your work. What agent is going to look twice if they receive a query that reads, “I hope you enjoy my book. It’s not that great, but I thought I’d give it a go and send it out anyway?” When you’re sending out a project, you have to be passionate about it, and to be passionate about something, you have to have belief in its fabulosity. You have to know that it is good. I have gotten several rejections that say the agent simply cannot be passionate about my project, and that passion is so important. Have you ever been passionate about something you didn’t believe was good?

I know my writing isn’t perfect. I know there is room for improvement. But I also know that my writing is good. In some cases, really good. And that’s not bad.

Or maybe, as the quote says, I am just a bad writer 😉

I have mentioned it before, and it is almost certain that I will mention it many more times, but I have one of the most awesome support systems around. People who will listen to me, will cheer me on, will cheer me up, or even just smile and nod as I go on about where I am in the query process or my latest and greatest new book idea.

What I have noticed, however, is there is a difference in types of support I get. There are the supporters, who do the things I mentioned above, and then there are the believers.

I seriously just typed in “sparkles” to a Google image search because I didn’t know how else to convey the magical quality I was going for.

Now, supporters are fabulous. I love my supporters. But they differ from believers in many ways. Supporters want to, well, support your dreams, but they don’t necessarily believe that you can achieve them. They will smile and nod as you wax poetic over a particular passage you’ve just written, but internally they are composing their grocery list. They will cheer you on and celebrate, but in their heart of hearts, they see it all as a pipe dream. (What is a “pipe dream” anyway? I mean, is it like in Super Mario Bros when Mario goes down a pipe? Sometimes he finds coins down there, so it can’t be all bad!)

The best example of supporters I can come up with is American Idol. Not the contestants, but the family members, waiting behind the doors, as their loved one goes in and embarrasses themselves in front of the nation, because, well, they just simply can’t sing. (I should do a disclaimer here. Anyone can sing. And should sing. But not everyone is cut out for American Idol. I have always loved to sing, and I am fairly decent at it, but I would never think to try out on national television. That’s all.) It was their dream to sing, so they were very supported in it, but in the end, most of those people were not true believers. They wanted to be supportive, so they didn’t say anything negative or hand out any sort of criticism. That sort of support is dangerous.

The more innocuous supporters are those who really have little interest in what you’re doing. Say you, I don’t know, wrote a book or something. Perhaps they vaguely know that you’ve done it, that you’re proud of it, but they refuse to read it or even really mention it. They support you because they feel obligated, not necessarily because they have any real feelings about it one way or the other.

On the other hand…BELIEVERS.

Sparkle sparkle sparkle

Believers want your dream to come true as passionately as you do. They are interested and invested in every step of the process. They cheer you on from deep within, because they know, oftentimes more than you know yourself, that your dream will come true. They have less doubts than you, because we are often our own worst critics. They sleep sound in their unfailing belief that you are destined for the greatness you deserve. Even if it takes 40 years.

We all need believers. They are our fuel. They pick us up when all we want to do is curl up in a ball and figure out how to wriggle under the couch to hide from the computer for a while. They are at the front lines in the battle against doubt and self-loathing. They are essential.

There is nothing wrong with having a lot of supporters, as long as they’re not feeding the self-doubt. Mine sometimes do. When they brush off my excitement, or refuse to ask anything about this journey I’m on. When they roll their eyes or talk with that tone that says, “Aww, aren’t you sweet? I’m patting you on the head right now, snookums.”

But for sure surround yourself with believers. Your biggest believer, should, of course, be yourself, but it’s important to have backup, especially when the rejections are rolling in, and the words are stuck someplace between the brain and the fingers (perhaps caught on the clavicle?). They’ll keep you going until you’re strong enough to forge ahead again.

So thanks, believers. Don’t stop believin’… (oh, you so knew that was coming!)

I love Twitter. I love reading agents’ and authors’ thoughts and quips, and seeing their interactions with each other. I remarked once in a tweet that sometimes Twitter feels like middle school. You watch these people and feel like they could be your friends…as long as you don’t approach them. The writing world is a tight-knit community, and I am still on the fringes, still outside looking in. It’s not that they are deliberately exclusive…it’s the nature of the world. Tonight I found myself humming “Part of your World” from The Little Mermaid and I made up some lyrics relating to myself. It’s all in fun 😉

Look at this book
Isn’t it neat?
Wouldn’t it make
Your collection complete?
Wouldn’t you think I’m the girl
The girl who writes…all the things!

Look at this tweet
It’s funny and neat
Agents and authors and pubs do compete
Sharing their thoughts with the world
Their words are so very sweet

They get queries and novels aplenty
They see previews and sneak peeks galore
Go to conferences?
How ’bout twenty?

We all care
About book deals
And I want moooooore

I wanna be where the agents are
I wanna see, wanna see em reading
Gasping in awe as the flip and say
What’s the word?
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeer(fect)

Getting rejected won’t get me far
I wanna see
A request for pages
Waiting around for that
Very special
Caaaaaalll

Out where they read
Out where they laugh
Out where they help you on with your path

Watch and you’ll see
Someday I’ll be be
Part of that world….

Most of the major editing work I’ve done in my life has been of my own work or educational work. Neither of those types of editing is particularly fun, but both have been necessary.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to help a friend with some editing work on her book. Now, this was not even close to typical editing. You see, my friend is an artist (an amazing one!), and she is working on a how-to draw book. I can’t say anything beyond that for now, but believe me when I say there is no one better suited for this particular book.

Going into it, I thought, wow, this will be fun, a little tweak here and there and it’ll be good. I was right and wrong. It WAS a lot of fun, but it was nothing like I expected. We worked all evening, past midnight, and didn’t even get through all the spreads.

This was such a completely different experience than anything I have done before. My friend is an artist, not a writer, so she looks at things in different ways. And she’s not a bad writer. Not in the least. She has this amazing quality to her writing, almost an ethereal tone, that really sets it apart from what could be a dry, uninspiring step-by-step instructional book. The trick was working the words to keep that special voice intact, while painting a word picture worthy of her work. It was incredibly rewarding to take those beautiful strings she had already created and weave them together into a rich tapestry.

As we were working, I realized that drawing and writing, while different ways of expressing creativity, are similar in many ways. While my friend talked about creating balance in her art, I talked about creating a balance in words, a symmetry in sentences. There is beauty in taking words, ideas, phrases, and crafting them, molding them into the perfect order so that they flow and evoke the expected emotions. Long, flowery sentences will create a different feeling than short, choppy ones, just as long, light brush strokes display a different atmosphere than quick, slashing ones.

We also discussed our subjects, and how in many cases they control us more than we control them. I have mentioned this before, but it was so interesting to talk about it with someone whose medium is visual art instead of words. Before having the discussion, I would have (naively) assumed that an artist can create whatever they want, that while they may put their emotion on the canvas, they are still the creator. Isn’t that funny, considering my insistence that I have very little to do with the choices my own characters make? But it makes total sense. To me, anyway. My friend said that she may have an idea, as I do when I am creating a character, but there is a moment where the subject takes over, actually becomes to the point that they are moving the artist, instead of the other way around. And, as with me and writing, if she attempts to force her art to be what it isn’t, it comes across as stiff and forced.

It was an intense night, a fun night, and an eye-opening night. I am honored to be given the chance to work on something so amazing, and it makes me excited for time when I will be working on official edits for my own book. Until then, I will continue to open my eyes and my mind to all the other ways that seemingly “different” worlds are intertwined. Turns out, we’re not so different after all.

During a session today (at my day job as a therapist), I was challenging a kid by telling her that it is a choice to be bored. I told her there is no reason to ever be bored, as long as she had her brain and her ***IMAGINATION***. (Picture me doing little spirit fingers in the shape of a rainbow. We’ll call them “rainbow fingers.”) Though we were at the end of session and I couldn’t work any more with her today, I vowed that next time I will bring a stick to session and ask her to come up with ten games/things she could use the stick for. Sometimes I’m amazed at the lack of imagination in the kids I work with.

To me, imagination has always been such an integral part of who I am. Clearly it’s impossible to write well if you don’t have an active imagination. When I was bullied in middle school, I would escape to the worlds in my imagination and live there. I can remember sitting in school and counting the hours until I could go home and daydream. (I would never daydream in school, I was an excellent student.)

I also acted out my stories with my dolls and Barbies. I LOVED my Barbies. Of course, my stories couldn’t be normal stories that normal little girls have, where Barbie gets dressed and drives with Ken in his convertible and then changes clothes and then goes to the mall and then changes clothes and then walks around her house and then changes clothes. No. Mine were always stories where Barbie gets herself into some sticky situation for some nefarious reason and has to figure out a way to get out. When I was probably four or five I melted Barbie’s hair on a lightbulb because I think she was being tortured for information. I tried to cover it up, but there’s no mistaking that smell of burnt plastic…

I’m pretty sure my whole family thought there was something seriously wrong with me, especially as I got older. They would walk into my room to find Barbies tied to the ceiling fan (carnival, anyone?), hiding in the plants (jungle safari!), or tied up in my mini-fridge (there was nothing else to keep in there, and they needed a place to cool their heels until they were rescued {get it? COOL THEIR HEELS!}).

One time, when I was doing home-based therapy, a little girl wandered in carrying a Barbie tied up and completely submerged in a jar of water. The mother leaned in and confided that she was concerned about her daughter when she did things like that, and asked what she should do. Flashing back to the Barbies in my freezer, I was like, “She’s FINE. She’s using her ***IMAGINATION***. LEAVE HER ALONE.” Except I said it much nicer, and more along the lines of, “Oh yes, that is normal.” (I’m not actually sure it is.)

In fact, now that I think about it, it’s a wonder I didn’t land in therapy myself as a child… Clearly my parents sensed genius. And all that ended when I discovered that I could write my stories down and KEEP THEM. Amazing.

But…I definitely still daydream. After all, there really is no excuse to be bored.

Refreshed…renewed…rejuvenated…relaxed…

Rejected.

Well, folks, I’m in the midst of a querying storm, and you know what that means. Lots of rejections. It’s really difficult sometimes not to feel defeated when that “Dear Author” email shows up in the ol’ inbox. When I see I have a new email, I seriously cringe, and peek through one eye as I click to open it. The new gmail setup makes it worse, because it only says I have a new email if it’s a *real* email, not something from Facebook or one of my millions of promotional emails (who signed me up for all that crap, seriously?).

I do my best to maintain a positive attitude. I remember Sylvia Plath’s words, “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” Sometimes it takes a lot of reminders from my support system. Reminders that rejection is part of it, that I have an amazing book to sell, and that it will happen for me someday. I like reading about authors who were rejected many times before finding the right agent/publisher for their work, and I remind myself of that a lot.

Sometimes I have to chant to myself, “JK Rowling was rejected 12 times…JK Rowling was rejected 12 times…”

Perhaps I just need to make the rejections more fun. I considered printing them out and rolling around on them, but, you know, paper cuts. So instead I found this little gem:

If only getting “BINGO” meant a publishing deal.

Hang in there with me, friends. It’s all a part of the process, right? Now please excuse me while I go buy some more chocolate…

Yesterday I did something I had hesitated to do for a while. I started a Facebook fan page for my writing. I had hesitated because it seems really…what’s the word…presumptuous? I mean, I’m not published. I have two completed novels, but so do a lot of people. I don’t even have an agent yet.

But there’s that word. Yet. I have to believe that it will happen, and when it does, I want to be prepared with a social media presence. For practical purposes as well, it’s nice to have a separate place to talk about writing and my projects more, since I do have people asking me what’s going on.

I already have a respectable number of “fans,” since my friends and family are awesome, but I have definitely already gotten the response that I anticipated, and which kept me from doing this for a long time. I was making conversation with a friend and mentioned it, and she laughed and said, “Yeah, I saw that,” and kind of rolled her eyes. What? Really? I’m not asking people to be my fans because of my pure awesomeness (although perhaps I should start a page for that too). I’m asking for support in my pursuit of a dream. And that’s nothing to roll an eye at.

In general, the response has been positive, and people are excited for me. That is what I’m focusing on. That is what I will remember when my dreams come true. I am so incredibly blessed in my life. I refuse to let the doubters, those who be condescending towards me, to dampen my spirits and my optimism about the future.

So thanks to all my wonderful friends and family who are faithfully following me, and to those who may not even know me personally, but have stumbled upon my words. Thanks for letting me be optimistic and confident and, yes, maybe even a little presumptuous at times. And for loving me and following me through it all 🙂

Oh yeah! And if you haven’t visited yet, you can find me on Facebook HERE.