writing – Cannons to Cruising

SLC+AWP=OMG

The last two weeks have turned me inside out. They revealed the version of myself that is usually too preoccupied with an internal ‘to-do’ list to make an appearance. Between the SLC retreat that left me both raw and comforted, and the AWP conference that pushed me out of my comfort zone, I can’t remember the last time I dedicated so much time to my own development.

SLC stands for ‘Smart Ladies Club’, a name that started as a placeholder with our founder but has stuck due to accuracy. Believe me when I say that the women in this group are truly awe-inspiring bad asses who embrace the ups and downs of life with open arms and a ‘nothing will break me’ attitude. We are a support group, each other’s biggest cheerleaders, listening ears, and strong arms to collapse into when one of us needs rest.

Last year our retreat was in California, and this year we all journeyed to Annapolis. Everyone moved heaven and earth to make it happen—organizing kids, childcare, jobs, spouses. I flew from Seattle, the others traveled from San Diego, Hawaii, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and DC. It sounds crazy for just the weekend, but it is incredibly special to show up for ourselves and each other in such a meaningful way. After an intense three days of courageous connection, I flew home exhausted, but my proverbial ‘cup’ was filled, just in time for my first writer’s conference later that week!

AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, held their conference in Seattle this year. The first one since COVID, over 10,000 writers attended at the Seattle Convention Center for three full days of developmental seminars. I had a hard time narrowing down my schedule to just one panel per timeslot, but my nerdy, note-taking heart was so happy to go back to ‘school’. Here is a full list of all the seminars I attended:

From Poetry Hotlines to Kate Bush: Writers on Creative Book Promotion
Crafting Voice in YA Fiction
Out of the Boneyard: Keeping Dead Manuscripts Alive
From Slush to Sale: Literary Agents Explain It All
Reading, Writing, and Revising for Style and Sound
Defying the Data: Literary Impostors
Stealing Time: On Purpose, Permission, and Putting Writing First
The Small Press Author’s Guide to Cultivating Community and Publicity
Neither the Madonna nor Mommy Dearest: Why and How to Write Real Mothers
Nevertheless, They Persisted: The Writer and the Long Game
Show Me the Money: New and Creative Ways to Fund Your Writing Life
Impossible Balance: Re-Examining the Narrative about Writing and Parenting

It ended up totaling around 18 hours of seminar, and I greedily gobbled up every bit of this food for my soul. I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately while pitching my 6^th book, and I had no idea how much I needed the reminder that although writing is solitary day-to-day, there is also a rich community that has experienced everything I am going through. My biggest takeaways were that writing is a LONG road, and I’m not running anyone else’s marathon but my own. I’ve been focused on getting an agent and getting frustrated with the process. I have neglected to celebrate all that I have accomplished because it isn’t my version of “complete success”. I’ve also failed to acknowledge that I am in a very tough season right now with two kids who aren’t in elementary school yet. I am needed intensely—physically and emotionally—all day, every day, and I do not have the capacity to give everything to the craft like some writers can.

I had two books published by a small press before I was 30, while raising two kids. I should be proud of that, damnit. I am also still growing, still learning, and writing brings me great joy. I got turned inside out this month, but also forced out of my own head. Que será, será. I’m not going to whine about the 12 rejections I’ve received for book #6 so far. Time to get to work on my short story submission for a $2,000 grant for parent writers.

Love,

Taylor (and all the supportive people in my life who picked up the slack while I was away. You rock)

The Baby on the Fire Escape

I believe that books come into our lives at the exact right time, and The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Philips is proof of that. How fitting that I just finished reading one of the best books on creativity, motherhood, and identity just as the door is cracking open to show me what the future looks like after five years of being a stay-at-home mom and struggling writer. R is headed to preschool on Tuesday. It’s just one day per week, a mere three hours, but the symbolism of it staggers me. The infant and toddler years are filled with so much joy and wonder, but, as Louise Erdich explains, “In the face of mother love, one’s fat ambitions, desperations, private icons, and urges fall away into a dreamlike before that haunts and forces itself into the present with tough persistence.” I still tried to claw out writing time, but I didn’t want to admit that my brain had changed.

The women in this book explain what I’ve been struggling to define the last few years more eloquently than I ever could. I truly connected with the author when she said, “Early motherhood asked more of me emotionally than any experience ever has, sometimes insisting on my capacity for bliss and tenderness, sometimes leaving me despairing at my limitations. Motherhood challenged me and revealed me to myself; in that sense it was like writing, only more so, but it also, for long stretches, made my work nearly impossible I felt more myself in one way, lost to myself in another. To regain my footing, I had to learn about this new place; I had to undergo a psychic transformation.”

Moving back to the PNW and restructuring our lives has been hugely beneficial to my creative side. One of the points in this book is that the second thing a creative mother must have (along with time) is self. “She requires boundaries and the conviction that she has the right to make her art. She needs not to give away too many pieces of her being.” This, however, is almost laughable with very young children. The mother and child are one and the same for the longest, shortest time. “One day as I am holding baby and feeding her,” Louise Erdich writes, “I realize that this is exactly the state of mind and heart that so many male writers from Thomas Mann to James Joyce describe with yearning—the mystery of an epiphany, the sense of oceanic oneness, the great YES, the wholeness. There is also the sense of a self-merged and at least temporarily erased—it is deathlike…Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.”

I am under no illusion that I should be comparing myself to such incredible artists. The biggest factor I struggle with, as Clarie Dederer explains, is that “Creative work is a series of small selfishness. The selfishness of shutting the door against your family…The selfishness of forgetting the real world to create a new one… The selfishness of saving the best of yourself for that blank-faced anonymous paramour, the reader. The selfishness that comes from simply saying what you have to say.” I have trouble giving myself this permission, especially because it is the selflessness of my husband and family members picking up the slack that allows me to do it.

My New Years goal this year is to be deliberate in where I place my energies and thrive in a space where motherhood and creativity converge. It will be a place of constant interruption, but also deep reflection. For now, it might only be three hours per week, but this is just one chapter in a long life story. My kids are only little once.

Love,

Taylor (and Conor, W,& R)

NaNoWriMo

PSA: National Novel Writing Month starts on Tuesday! If you’ve ever tried to write a novel or promised yourself, “One day I’ll do it!”, now is your chance. NaNoWriMo sets a goal for contestants to write 1,667 words per day for 30 days. The minimum word count for a book to be considered a novel (instead of a novella or novelette) is 50,000 words. So, by the end of the month, you’ll have a novel-length project!

Granted, most of the popular fiction for YA and adults hovers around 80-85,000 words (depending on genre) so you might end up with over half your book drafted in just one month, which is still pretty good. I signed up at nanowrimo.org to try and meet other writers in the area and participate in some write-in events.

I’m not sticking to the ‘true’ spirit of NaNo and starting from page one, because…I already hit 50k on my current draft this past week! As I type this, I’m at 53,152 words, and I have no idea how I’m going to fit the rest of the story into the next 30,000 words. However, my NaNo goals will be to FINISH my draft this month and get a jump start on editing. December will be for polishing and writing query letter/synopsis, and I’ll start to pitch in January if all goes to plan. Maybe by voicing this to all you people I’ll be able to stick to it!

This may be the fastest I’ve ever written a book—from concept/prewriting at the end of July, to a completed project by December. Title reveal and details once this thing is done, but here’s a little hint with this mood board 😉

Love,

Taylor (and Conor, W, and R, who support my writing every day)

1 in 6,000

What if someone told you that your chances of winning the lottery were 1 in 6,000? You don’t even have to pay cash to play! The cost of entry is simply two years of your time, part of your sanity, and oh yeah, a piece of your soul. How do you feel about the odds now?

The chances of landing a literary agent are estimated to be 1 in 6,000. The best book agents get upwards of 1,500 queries per MONTH. They will only sign a handful of clients per year. Other writers say you’re getting close when you’ve had a handful of full manuscript requests. “It just needs to get in front of the right eyes!” and “You just have to keep going!”

Agents that request are first wowed by your query letter. Then they have to love the sample pages. Then they spend the time and energy to read through the projects that they think have potential, and if you’re lucky, they give you feedback along with their pass. That is the best an author can hope for until they get the fateful email that offers representation.

I’ve had full requests on manuscripts since 2015. Does trying for 7 years still mean I’m close? Yet I still get my hopes up every time I send one off. “This is it! I’m going to be let into the promised land of publishing!” What is the deal with this ever-loving HOPE that keeps me doing this? Rationally, I know the odds. What amount of writer’s hubris do I possess that makes me think I deserve to be the one?

I shelved Hedge Dancer this week. The full manuscript was rejected (with very kind and thoughtful feedback) by a lovely agent and I’m feeling rather down about it, if you can’t tell by the previous four paragraphs in this post. I will no longer be pitching that project and it will reside in my metaphorical desk drawer until when and if I ever decide to revisit it.

I’m pouring all my energy into this next project. Word count update: I am 31,000 words in. Around 50k left to go. Then I’ll edit. And write a query letter. Then I’ll research agents. Send it out. And hope.

Damnit.

Love,

Taylor

Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice

I’ve been hit hard by August melancholy this week and the singular beauty that briefly encompasses the end of summer and the beginning of fall. It’s such a small window of transition where we all hold our breath and wait, suddenly realizing that those endless summer nights have subtly gotten shorter, and the mornings need a sweatshirt.

Over the past five years, September has marked the start of hurricane season. Fall meant checking the hurricane update every day and knowing in our guts an evacuation was coming. The heat held on as long as possible, remaining well into the 80’s through Halloween some years. Even back before we had the boat, California also liked to skip autumn.

But this window reminds me to pause, instead of pushing forward through each change like I usually do. It isn’t just suspension, however, I am actually being brought back in time. I don’t know if it is because I’m writing my first YA novel, or the temperature drop over Labor Day weekend always meant back to school, but I don’t feel like a 32-year-old mother of two.

Instead of sending my own four-year-old off to school this week, I half-expect to walk out the front door and find my little gold 1995 Honda parked in the driveway, pom poms in the back window. I am forever sixteen in September, spending my Friday nights under the bright lights of a stadium. My nose is numb but my body is warm, cheering on a team everyone knows is not very good but we do it anyway.

I have no desire to relive these years. Once was enough! But this time of year seems to have brought back the memories with a poignancy I had not expected. I choose to think of it as a little visit from my former self, and maybe I’ll get to see her every September from now on. Maybe she’ll be proud to see what changes each year brings me, and I’ll greet her memory as a reminder of how far I’ve come.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go season everything in my life with pumpkin spice.

Love,

Taylor (Conor, W, and R, too!)

Book #6

I started a new book project this week. If anyone else is keeping track, this is will be my 6^th book. Every time I finish a novel, I think that will be the last one, convinced that there are no more stories inside me. Then, inevitably, an idea starts to take hold. With Cloaked, it was the opening scene. With Sonder Village, it was the setting. With Hedge Dancer (the book I’m pitching now), it was an effervescent main character who had to be shared with the world.

I was very afraid this past year that I really was out of stories. Usually, my brain needs a 6 month break before notes, bullet points, and quotes start finding their way to scrap paper. I finished Hedge Dancer in September, and come February, there were still crickets. All spring I waited, amid the moving chaos, for something real to take hold. My mind and my body were still whispering ‘rest’, and for once, instead of trying to do it all, I listened.

So much of writer advice is “Butt in chair!” “Those words won’t write themselves!” “Habit over waiting for inspiration to strike!” A lot of times it is true, and this advice pushed me to complete five novels. But I had drifted too far from myself, and I needed to get back to me before I could create imaginary people with the love and depth they deserve. I’m finally reading more, devouring books like I used to when I was a teenager. I’m falling into more frequent posting on here without it feeling like a chore. My consistent workouts are helping me so much mentally. I feel surrounded and supported by family and loved ones.

The craving to put pen to paper started two weeks ago, but I forced myself to wait. My wonderful, fabulous sister got married last week and I needed to focus all my energy on her special day. Emotions from that day left me on such a high that I just had to start right after.

I usually write adult fiction, so this urge to write a YA novel took me by surprise. I will update on the drafting process in the coming months. I hope I can pull this off.

Love,

Taylor