Four, Three, Two, One, Now

Why hello there, Wednesday. I haven't blogged on you for quite a while. It's a great day to blog. Today we're going to be taking a wild and crazy ride inside the last four years (since I started writing). I'm doing this because I think sometimes writers get discouraged at how long things take in publishing.

When I started writing (December 2007), I scoffed at advice I saw on forums. Things like "Take a year off and read."

I was like, "NO WAY ON THIS PLANET IT IS GOING TO TAKE ME A YEAR TO GET PUBLISHED."

Oh, the naivety. (Yes, I had to look up that word to make sure it was the one I wanted to use.) See, I was new. I didn't really get the publishing industry. And most importantly, I hadn't been rejected yet.

Rejection plays a whole new part of the game that maybe we'll talk about later.

So there I was, four years ago in January 2008, with my first novel. And it was not going to take a year to get published. I spent January editing and preparing to query. I started querying, and quickly realized that hey, it might take a year.

After querying for 8 months, I definitely knew it would take a year -- and a heckuva lot longer than that.

What changed my perspective was a tiny conversation with my mother-in-law that I'm sure she doesn't remember. She said she was watching Oprah or something and heard an author say that you have to give everything you do five years.

Give yourself five years to make it as [insert what you want to be].

I seized on that and thought, "I can do this for five years." And then at that point, the plan was to re-evaluate and decide at that time if I should continue pursuing publication or not.

So I continued writing.

January 2009, three years ago: I was frantically preparing my manuscript for submission into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I successfully entered that competition, and I often cite this as the confidence booster I needed to keep writing/querying. (My first novel tanked. Confidence had to come from somewhere!)

January 2010, two years ago: I'd queried for most of 2009 and had signed with my agent in November*. This January found me revising in preparation for submission to editors.**

(See a theme here?)

January 2011***, one year ago: Finally 2011! I'd spent a year waiting for this year. (No, really.) And it found me once again preparing a manuscript for submission. This time it was my second book, SURRENDER.

And here it is, January 2012, and I'll bet you can guess what I'm doing this month.

It really seems like I work in cycles. I write/draft the most in the fall. I edit and revise the most in the winter. I promote and speak and do book launch parties in the spring/summer.

Do you have a time frame for how long you'll stick with this before you re-evaluate your writing career?****

*And yes, it took me less than five years to get published, but longer than one.

**This does not mean that if it takes you longer than five years to publish that you're somehow inferior. That's ridiculous.

***This does not mean that if it takes you less time to publish than it took me that you're somehow superior. That's ridiculous too.

****We all have our own journey.

Main Character Names, Take Two

As promised, here are the results of last week's male main character survey. At the time, I really didn't think it would turn into a survey, but it so did. And I added my male MC names, and that totally skewed the results. Yeah, the J's just skyrocketed. Ahem. Obviously, that post should have been entitled, "What's With the Letter J?" instead of "What's With the Letter K?" (Click on that title if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Cuz it was great fun.)

So this first chart is the names with my MC names. (Jon, Jared, Jess, Jesse, Jarvis, Jake, Jag and Josh included. Holy crap. Just looking at that makes my eyes cross. Why do I write so many J names? Because my last name is Johnson? J's are made of kewl? They're funner to write by hand? Which of these are working for you??) Some of you left female names, which was great and all, but I only included the boys.


And the second chart is without my main characters. Hey, I had a Hunter, an Adam and Ames, a Gordon (the only G in the above chart. Ha), a Zenn, a Miller, a Cal, a Ty and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. But here's the one without the barrage of J-names from yours truly.

Either way, the results are interesting. Quite a large clumping in the J-N range, just as I predicted. Hey, maybe I missed my calling in life as a statistician. I did complete a brief secretarial stint in the Stats Department in college. Anyway, after the middle letters, it seems a lot of us go for names that begin with letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Z had a nice showing, as did the popular Wheel of Fortune letters R, S and T.

So that leaves me wondering why. Kat asked this question on her blog last week. But it's a good one, so here goes. How do you choose the names for your characters?

I left her a comment, but I'll repeat it here. Most of the time I choose a name because it just fits, or I want to use a nickname. In my NaNo novel I chose Gabby (I know, I know, it's a girl's name, chillax) because I wanted to use the male name Gabe. And Gabby has to pretend to be a guy...so yeah. Her real name is Gabriella. She goes by Gabby when she's a girl (well, she's always a girl) and Gabe when she's pretending to be a boy. Are you confused yet? Yeah, me too, maybe that's why I haven't finished this novel yet.

In Control Issues, a futuristic science fiction novel, I wanted a funky male name. Heck, I wanted funky names for everyone. I named a girl Tyson, my male MC Jag, his brother Pace and the "other boyfriend" Zenn. In the sequel to that novel, which I tinkered with last summer, I watched American Gladiators to find kewl names. I had to look since it's been so long, but I found Gill, Nash, Fret, Van, Viggo and Xan.

And Jet.

Holey Swiss cheese.

Another J-name.

Smack me. Smack me hard.

ABNA Quarter Finalist - That's Me!

Holy. Brown. Cows. I'm totally stunned, shocked and blown away.

I made the quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. My excerpt of CONTROL ISSUES can be read here. You can click on the button that says, "Download for Free" and read it. You can leave a review, too, which I would LOVE it if everyone would. (It helps me in the next round. )


Let me say it again: Holy. Brown. Cows.