Jenny Martin is the first of our librarian and booksellers guest blogs. Shonna, Kitty and I thought it would be break from the routine to hear from some non-writers aka readers (our target market, right?). Who better than those who help people find and enjoy the many books available? I first learned about Jenny Martin when Shonna sent me to Jenn’s blog, Book Binge. I hope this post whets your appetite for more from Book Binge and Jenny Martin.

          As a writer and a librarian, I read a lot. Seriously, I’ve picked up a ridiculous number of books.

          And unfortunately, I’ve thrown too many across the room because they failed to enchant me within the first five pages.

          Five pages!? I hear you groan. You may think that’s harsh, but there are too many vibrant, spectacular novels in the world to waste time on stories with lackluster beginnings.

          Each time I read opening pages, the author and I strike a bargain. The writer promises a string of the wondrous, fearsome words and in return, I agree to stick around. I want to keep that promise, I really do. I want to fall in love with the story. But sometimes, I can’t.

          To read on, I must:

1. Understand the nature and conflict of the novel.
2. Care about the protagonist.

          That’s it. That’s all I’m asking. An easy request to fulfill, right? Wrong. Making a grand first impression on the reader requires great skill. Sadly, many writers don’t make a memorable impression at all.

          Their first pages fall flat because:

1. The prose meanders, burying tension and conflict.
2. The characters are stiff, unreal.
3. There is no voice; the point of view character does not interpret the action.
4. The story is devoid of life, a meaningless string of “… first this happened, then this happened, and then…”

          Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about having a dead body on page one. It’s not about thrusting the protagonist into a battle in the first paragraph. It’s about making the reader care. It’s about the implicit promise of a good story.

          And it is possible to hook a reader in half a page. For example, look at the opening lines of “Prom Dates from Hell” by Rosemary Clement Moore:

          As an interactive horror experience, with beasts from Hell, mayhem, gore, and dismemberment, it was an impressive event. As a high school prom, however, the evening was marginally less successful.

         I should start at the beginning, but I’m not entirely certain when that is, so I’ll start with the day I realized that despite my most determined efforts, I was not going to be able to ignore the prom entirely.

          Rosemary is a skilled storyteller, to say the least. See how her voice shines in the first few lines? In less than one hundred words, I know that:

         
1. The protagonist is a teenager.
2. The protagonist is witty and whip-smart.
3. The protagonist is uncomfortable with high school norms.
4. There will be blood. And hellish beasts. At prom.

          Wow. Three sentences and I can relate to the protagonist. Three sentences and I’m clued in to both the internal and external conflicts. Three sentences and I want to read more.

          I did read more. And then I bought every book the author has published.

          Perhaps I’ll buy your book someday, too. I hope your first five pages make a grand first impression.

          Jenn Martin writes YA about weird, trippy stuff. (She’s so not kidding about the Evil Elvii who spring from volcanoes.) She is represented by Mary Kole at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc.

          Find out more about Jenny Martin by visiting her blog and twitter pages (@jmartinlibrary).

It’s crazy to think we’ve been team-blogging for two years now! We are so thankful to all of our readers (glad it’s not just our families reading anymore). You all inspire us to stick with our writing routines and we hope we do the same for you.

The best way we could think of to celebrate two years of “helping writers write more,” is to have a followers contest.

THE PRIZE

One follower will win a three-way critique of 25 pages. That means one manuscript critiqued by all three of us here at Routines for Writers!

FYI—it’s always good to know your critiquers (certainly sets expectations) and we all have our favorite kind of books: Stephanie is our Sci-Fi/Fantasy gal who enjoys writing book reviews; Kitty is all about romance and women’s fiction, working towards her MA; Shonna is our resident middle-grade/YA fan and she comes from a technical writing background.

*Helpful note* A little spice or scariness is all right, but if you are going to make us blush, faint, or want to poke our eyes out, just know that we will skim over that part. In other words, you super-spicy or horror writers may want to let someone else win this one.

THE RULES

1. You must be a follower—either on our RSS feed (click on the link in the right-hand column, or on the coffee cup for some browsers) or on Twitter: www.twitter.com/routineswriters
2. Leave a comment IN THIS POST giving us your best writing routine. You don’t have to be fancy, a simple “write every day” will suffice. We’re always looking for a good tip or a timely reminder.
3. Bonus point: If you blog or tweet about our contest, we’ll give you another entry. Leave a SEPARATE comment IN THIS POST to let us know about your bonus point.

*If we’ve been helpful to you on your writer’s quest, please spread the word about our site. Thanks!*

Contest Ends: Friday, Sept 11, 2010 at midnight Pacific time. Winning writer has one week to submit his or her work. The critiques will be kept private; not published on the blog, so you shy folks go ahead and enter.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!

<balloons> <cheering> <confetti>

Today marks the 2-year anniversary of Routines for Writers! Yay! Sometimes it seems like we’ve been doing this forever, while other times it seems we’ve barely begun to figure out who we are and what we’re really about.

That’s how it is with writing and lots of other creative pursuits. You play around a lot. You make goals and try to make them happen. You run into obstacles and you ask yourself, “why am I doing this?” Then you renew your commitment to your goals or you tweak them to work better. You encounter more obstacles, get ahead, fall behind, start again.

I just described Goal-Motivation-Conflict (see Debra Dixon’s web site and her GMC book). We create our pretend people and give them goals; we figure out how and why they would be motivated to pursue those goals; we throw all kinds of obstacles in their way. At the end of the story, they are supposed to come out better people.

It’s the same for us real people. If obstacles to writing come your way, don’t despair. Fighting through the conflicts – all kinds of conflicts in your life – is a constant opportunity to become a better person. And in our case, better writers. Every day is a new beginning, a new chance to start over, try again. Rejoice in the gift of a new day!

Summer is pretty much over in the U.S. Kids are going back to school, parents are getting back into “normal” routines, even the childless are getting out of the vacation mindset. It’s time to get back to our writing routines as well.

Here in Sydney, today is the first day of spring! Another analogy for renewal, restarting, new life. What can you do today to breathe new life into your writing? Is there a tried and true routine you got out of during the last few months? Do you need to look at trying something different? Every day brings you closer to achieving your goals – so celebrate! Celebrating your achievements – even if the achievement is that you haven’t given up – will give new life to your writing. Remember the joy you have in creating.

I’ve noticed that with every year that goes by, if I spent time thinking about why I write, I get better at expressing the stories I’m telling. I heard Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy and Firefly) speak last weekend at the Sydney Opera House. He told us that when he sat down and tried to vocalize why he writes what he does, the whole picture made more sense to him. I decided to sit down with my journal and vocalize why I choose the stories I do. That way, I’ll be better able to focus on telling the stories only I can tell in the way only I can tell them. I’m excited to see what I find out about myself!

On the flip side, I spent two years slaving after an unchanging goal. I never considered changing it. I didn’t think about why I wasn’t achieving it. I never tried to analyze why I wanted it. And the pursuit didn’t bring me joy anymore. Since entering my master’s program in creative writing, I’ve found myself getting closer to voicing the deepest why in my writing. Perhaps that is how breakout novels are written.

Am I making any sense or am I rambling? Is this line of thinking the by-product of too much cold medicine in my system?    I think – for me, at least – I’ve found another rung in the ladder, something to get me a little closer to my goal of publishing novel-length fiction. John and I make our new year resolutions on our anniversary instead of in January. The date is more significant for us. I feel that way about our Routines for Writers web site. Today is a good day to think about why I’m here. Am I really helping you? Am I becoming a better person and a better writer? Does a web presence really have any effect on your career before you’re published? Is wanting to share the journey with others enough?

I think it is. 

So go write something! Sit down with your journal and ask yourself why you’re writing specifically what you’re writing. Does it represent the real you? Is it something that could entertain, encourage, uplift other people? Today is a new day! Rejoice and be glad in it! And bring that joy into your writing!

Notes: Here is another great post on getting back into your routines at Write It Sideways. Also, I’ll be teaching an online class on goal setting and time management for the writer in January. I’ll let you know when and where you can sign up. Remember we’ll have guests every Tuesday this month – librarians and booksellers encouraging you to keep writing because there are people out there waiting to read your book! And check out Shonna’s blog on Friday telling you about our first ever contest – the winner will receive a critique from each of us on a piece of their work!

First up I’d just like to say a big (and very jolly) happy second anniversary to Routines for Writers. As a writer who has a very bad routine, I’m a big fan of anything that can help motivate writers to…well write!!! However, today I thought I would take my author hat off and tell you about my other job running the teen/children’s desk every weekend at my local library. I’m not a librarian by trade but I do have an English degree and a love of all things books.

However, it wasn’t until I started the job that I discovered the only thing I love more than reading books is to see other people reading books, and so working in the library is a bit like a dream come true (though, if my bosses are looking, if you really wanted to make it the perfect job, a chocolate fountain wouldn’t go astray).

Anyway, the most important thing that I’ve learnt since I’ve been at the library is that while every reader is after a different book – ‘I love vampires’, ‘I hate vampires’, ‘I want horses’, ‘don’t you dare show me a horse book’ – the one thing that they all have in common is that they have NO INTEREST AT ALL in how the book is written.

I know.

It’s horrifying. Scandalous even. But I can assure you that I have never yet met a customer who has asked me for a grammatically correct book that has nice margins and a good font. They don’t care about dangling participles or if you’ve written the book in first person or third. As for tenses, I doubt they’d know one if they fell over it, but the thing that they all agree on is that they want a GOOD STORY.

I think as writers we get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of the craft – trying to please potential editors, beta readers and contest judges – that we can lose track of the fact that we’re not writers, we’re story tellers and quite frankly, a reader won’t care if you break every rule in the book as long as you tell them a story that they want to read. To them these books are their friends. I constantly have customers explaining book plots to me – but not like an author would, where they mention GMC or character arcs or foreshadowing, but rather, they talk about the stories as if it was something that had happened to their friends. It’s personal.

Oh and here’s another completely encouraging fact. They don’t all want to read the same story. Like I said before, some want vampires, some wants horses. Some want vampire horses (okay, not really, but hmmmmm, a future trend perhaps?????). The thing is that it’s so easy to get swayed by trends or trying to write for the market. But never forget that publishing is one of those odd industries that doesn’t know what it wants until it sees it. So try and find the story that you truly want to tell and then have faith that there is someone out there who is looking for that exact story.

Don’t settle for less. Publishing can be a hard business so if you’re going to crack it, it might as well be with the sort of story that you really want to tell! So my challenge to everyone who has stalled with their writing and who is trying to get restarted: find your story and tell it the best way you can. Learn your craft, but not because it’s ‘the rules’ but because it’s going to help you tell a better yarn. You’re not writing to get published, you’re writing so that when a reader comes up to me at the library and asks me to recommend the perfect book to them, I can recommend yours!

Oh and seriously, if my bosses are looking at this, I wasn’t joking about that chocolate fountain…

Amanda Ashby was born in Australia, has spent eight years in England and currently lives in New Zealand. When she’s not moving country, she also likes to write books. (Okay, she also likes to eat chocolate, watch television and sit around doing not much, but let’s just keep that amongst ourselves, shall we?)

She has a degree in English and Journalism from the University of Queensland and is married with two children. As well as writing, she works part-time at the children/teen desk of her local library, which basically means that someone pays her to talk about books. Her debut book, You Had Me at Halo was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice award, and her current book Zombie Queen of Newbury High was listed by the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2010 as well as being nominated for the YALSA popular paperback 2011. You can also follow her blog.

Happy Anniversary to us! On Wednesday, September 1 we will have been on the ‘Net for 2 years. To celebrate, we’ll be hosting a follower’s contest beginning Friday. Shonna will explain the rules in her Friday post. We will also have a guest blogger every week this month. So make sure you come to visit us often this month. You don’t want to miss a thing.

          My post today might seem a bit odd for a writing blog. I want to sing the praises of Logitech, makers of computer peripherals (mouse, keyboards, etc). Why in the world would I do that here? What could Logitech possibly be doing that is helping me write more (the theme of our blog)?

          Well stick around and I will tell you!

          I hate mouses. (Yes, that is correct terminology. Back a couple of decades ago computer geeks had an argument about it. The determination was that they’d named the mouse and it was not a rodent, so they could declare the correct word for the plural. Hence, mouses. Or at least that’s what many computer geeks claim.) Whatever they are called, I don’t like using them. They make my wrist and arm hurt. Years ago I saw a trackball and fell in love. I have had one ever since. (As far as I know, Logitech is the only company that makes trackballs.) For Christmas 2008, my family bought me a wireless trackball. (I use it at my desk and take the corded one with my laptop “on the road.”)

          About two weeks ago the right button on my wireless trackball stopped working. I messed with it and tried to get it to work. (My corded one does something similar, but if I make sure I press it a certain way, it works.) No matter what I did, though, that button would not work. So I looked for my warranty card. I didn’t find anything so I went online. On Logitech’s site, I discovered my model of trackball had a five-year warranty. I contacted customer support via email late on the evening of 8/18/10. (Remember that date. )

          The next day I heard from a support technician. He asked me to test my mouse by plugging it into a different USB port and a different computer. I did so. It actually did improve the mouse. The button began working every 4th or 5th time I pressed it. I reported that back to the technician. He asked for a bunch of numbers (model, serial, pid) and a copy of the receipt. I couldn’t find my receipt. Over a few more back and forth emails, I told him when it had been purchased, who most likely had paid for it and that I was fairly certain I’d registered it. (THAT is one routine I’m pretty good at maintaining.)

          His reply? “It appears your device is defective. I have submitted a replacement request. You will be contacted when it is shipped” After several days, I began to think I should follow up and ask him about the status of the replacement request. Until I went to check our mailbox. Along with the junk mail I always get was a box from Logitech! That was on 8/26/10! A week. It took a week to get my defective trackball replaced. A week and no hassle. Just legitimate questions to ascertain I actually had the trackball and it was defective.

          Now THAT is what I call customer service!

So how does this relate to writing routines and productivity?

1. Register those products with warranties you’ll actually use if needed. It could save you a lot of hassle if, like me, you have trouble hanging onto receipts. That means you won’t have to use writing time and emotional energy to argue with customer support. You can spend it wrestling with your characters instead.
2. Buy from companies that honor their warranties. (Logitech has my business for life!) When you do, you are assured of useful, working tools that help you accomplish your goals. Your characters will thank you.
3. Tell others about your experiences, both good and bad, but most especially the good. That will ensure those good companies stay in business and you’ll have access to all those useful tools you need to move your characters from imagination to well-drafted plot.

          Anyone else have an experience that made them want to tell everyone, “Buy anything and everything from this company!”?

Lately, I keep telling my children to “Just do the thing in front of you.” We started homeschooling again and have been in that transition from summer-I-can-do-whatever-I-want back to school-and-mom-has-a-busy-schedule-planned. My TV-deprived kids are constantly coming up with new ideas for what we can do after school before we’ve even opened a book. So I repeatedly have to re-direct them to what is in front of them.

This year I’ve added a lot more hands-on activities so we can combine much of our lessons and my youngest can still have fun. Only, I’ve become a more frustrated teacher rather than a fun teacher. I’ve noticed that these projects really derail our schedule. Our learning time.

I can hear Stephanie yelling in my ear right now that the projects ARE learning time. The more projects the better! I know, I know. But when they take their little explorer fact cards we are making and start turning them into Pokemon-like trading cards with health points based on the difficulties of their voyages, etc. I look at the spelling and the math books and begin to twitch.

My goal is to get to the end of the day and get through everything.

My kids’ goal is to have fun.

Having thought about this a lot, I finally realized where the tension lies and what to do about it. I am trying to harness in my children’s creativity so we can get finished—stop thinking of new things and let’s just do what is in front of us already!!!! But this is the exact opposite of what makes homeschooling so great. We are supposed to take the time to explore ideas. Play with new information. Allow creativity to flourish instead of being squashed into the proverbial box. So, what to do? I need to relax and explore with my kids. Teaching opportunities will naturally arise on these extended projects, and they will likely learn more—having fun while they do.

As all thoughts eventually lead to writing, I began to wonder. Am I doing this to my writing? Am I too concerned with getting to the end that I don’t explore enough? Be creative enough? I’ve written a lot of blogs about staying focused and on track. You know, keeping up the writing routine.

My goal as a writer is to get to the end of the book by my deadline.

My readers’ goal is to have fun.

There has to be a balance. No one will ever read my books if I don’t get them finished. On the other hand, no one will want to read them if I haven’t taken the time to infuse them with my own creativity. Ah, once again, the students teach the teacher.

What are you learning lately?

http://twitter.com/shonnaslayton

I’ve always wondered if Paul in the Bible knew a lot of runners. Oh! Maybe Greek Olympians! Wouldn’t that be cool?! He used a lot of running analogies in his writing. Lately, I’ve started thinking about writing in terms of running.

Kitty's Runner's Journal

You might have heard me talk about running here. I talk about it on Facebook a lot because we (John and I) just completed a 14k race (about 8 ½ miles). The City 2 Surf race, with 80,000 entrants, is the third largest foot race in the world! Not only was it fun, but we both came in under our goal times! In 3 ½ weeks we’ll be running the Sydney Running Festival’s half marathon (21km, 13 miles), both for fun and to raise money for a charity, CHUM Therapeutic Riding.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about running and writing over the last year or three…

• You may not finish the race if you don’t train long enough beforehand. I thought I was going to die the first time I ran a 5k race. I’d only been in training for 9 weeks. I finished, but thank goodness the race wasn’t longer.
• If you don’t train properly, you might hurt yourself and not be able to run the race at all. I bought the wrong shoes and hurt my foot so badly I had to drop out of a race two weeks before it started, no money back, months of training wasted.
• Training sucks – unless you decide it doesn’t. Attitude is at least 75% of how I keep going. John and I used to sleep in when it rained. But we got further and further behind in our training. One day we just had to decide – do we want to run that race in five months or not?
• The more you know about the course, the better prepared you can be and the more likely you’ll finish well. The City 2 Surf course is very hilly. One hill is even called “Heartbreak Hill.” When our friend Steven drove us from beginning to end, we could see and mentally prepare for what we’d need to do on race day. We also added a lot more hill training to our prep work because we could see we wouldn’t be prepared if we didn’t. We both ran, not walked, up Heartbreak Hill.
• “I’m running for distance, not for speed.” Sometimes I get up before dawn and haven’t slept well and can barely get out the door and sooo don’t want to run. I can feel I’m running slower and I have to focus on my posture because I’m slouching from being tired. Then instead of letting the negatives get me down, I repeat that mantra in my head. Amazingly, I’ve never quit before the assigned distance for the day has been run, and I often finish with a far better time than I expected (i.e., slower, but not nearly as slow as it felt! LOL!).
• A runner’s journal will help you find your strengths and weaknesses over time. I know I run better in the cold than in the heat or humidity. I’m better in the morning before breakfast than in the afternoon. I’m good at pacing, but need to work on speed. I know what sports supplements give me more energy and which ones give me a stomachache. Because I write it all in the journal.
• Even though I’ve never considered myself athletic, and have been a couch potato most of my life, I have to run 1-2 miles just to get into the groove. MILES, people!! I couldn’t run one mile when I was 18!
• I can’t compare myself to other runners, but I can compare myself today to my runs yesterday, last week, last month. I’m running significantly longer (our short runs 3x a week right now are 10k each (!) plus a “long” run on the weekend) and I’m getting faster all the time. Sure, practically everybody passes me. But maybe she’s been running since she was 10. Maybe he’s only running one lap and I’m pacing myself for three.
• I can’t run hard and fast all the time to run my best race. Neither can I let my training slide. I have to run uphill, downhill, long slow runs, short fast runs, and I have to include strength training and adequate stretching as well. I learned this by reading books and magazines on running, and by asking other runners.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to explain the connections to writing. Whatever our chosen “training” is, we need to keep it consistent. If it’s every day, do it. But if it’s only Saturday morning, don’t compare yourself to other writers. You need to write every Saturday morning. Period.

And we need to keep track of what we’re thinking and feeling and listen to our subconscious guiding us. It’s the same way a runner listens to her body. If my knee hurts, it might be because my foot is striking the ground incorrectly. If my shoulders hurt, it’s because I’m tensing up as I get tired. When I pay attention, I can correct the problem and the symptom fades. It’s the same with writing.

Kitty's new Writer's Journal!

And yet as I write this, I think, why am I comparing my routines to other writers’ (write every day, write 100 words a day, write 10 pages a day, etc.) instead of checking my routines against my own past? Are both quality and quantity improving compared to this time last year? Two years ago? (Yes!) And why don’t I have a writer’s journal? I’m starting one today! (See the picture!)

I’ll close with some of my favorite running quotes from Paul and other Biblical writers. See if you can find a correlation between running races in the quotes and in your own writing life. Godspeed!

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training… Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly… (1 Corinthians 9:25-26)

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Hebrews 12:1)

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:30-31)

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7)

          I think I know why I have such a hard time finishing anything. I either pick projects that are huge or I take on activities that don’t have a clear end. If there is no finish, how can I ever say I finished? Take parenting, for example. It’s a decades-long job. With every new milestone, there comes yet another area in which to grow. Even when the children are grown, the still need mentoring and sometimes hands-on help (although that should be given rarely!).

          While I’ve never considered my children a project, something for me to get out of the way or to complete, my life as a parent has been full of open-ended activities. Given my natural tendency to always be open to new ideas and experimentation, I’ve had a hard time bringing many activities to an end. The time(s) we spent longer on a homeschool unit because of all the fascinating material we were discovering; the elaborate homemade Christmas presents planned, of which only a fraction were actually made; the list of places to visit that grew faster than we could plan vacations.

          Sometimes, as in the case of the Christmas presents or a vacation, a non-negotiable deadline put parameters on my projects. I had to choose to not make certain things or to make the less elaborate version. Or I had to pick a place and plan the trip.

          In the same way, deadlines, like this blog, force me to choose what to write, when to write and how much to write. That’s why, with the rare exception, I’ve been able to write an entry for every Monday since this blog went live. It’s also why I struggle to finish many of my other projects. Even when I could stop and call it good, I don’t. I think of better ways of saying this or that, I decide a character needs more work or even that I need to add or delete a character from the story. With no one expecting a story from me, I can putter with these characters and their lives longer and longer. (That’s exactly what I’ve done with one project and have turned it into a mangled mess!)

          I need an intervention! LOL

          Okay. Maybe that’s a little extreme. Maybe.I have decided, however, that I do need to force myself to meet some deadlines. To do that, I need help. As always, my wonderful friends and blog mates are nearby to lend me support, encouragement and seat-of-the-pants kicking. We’ve set up my next deadline and I’d better have something to “hand in”. Or else.

          I’m organizing my projects, determining which ones can be finished quickest (probaby the Time Tracker manual) and developing a plan. I’ll be talking more on that process next month, but for now I have my plan in place. What about you?

          This addresses the issue of a deadline. Now if I could just figure out the ending of this one story . . .

You’ve spent weeks, months, years writing your novel. You’ve listened to your characters. Told their stories. Described their hometowns, their friends, their troubles.

Then you took a close look at your words to make sure they were the exact ones you wanted. Made sure the verbs were active and descriptive. You took out your highlighters and systematically analyzed your descriptions, emotions, and internal thoughts. You happily discovered a token of symbolism and rewrote a scene to make the meaning more poignant.

You traded critiques with your writing partners. They gave you hours of their time to help you see the good things in your work and point out the areas that needed a little something.

Now what do you do? Hide the manuscript in a drawer?

Or maybe, you make a few tentative submissions and after weeks of waiting, hoping, dreaming, you get one—or several—of those “it’s not for me” letters.

Then do you put your characters in a drawer, silencing their voices?

I know it is tempting. I have my fair share of half-written stories or first drafts that are buried somewhere in my desk. But if you’ve gone to all the trouble to take a real shot at getting published, you have to keep going.

So, how much rejection should you prepare for? Here are some numbers I saw floating around this week:

• Brodiashton: I credit my finding an agent to my sis-in-law’s challenge to me to “reach 100 rejections”. Probably wouldn’t inspire everyone. August 17th #kidlitchat

• Jake Bell’s blog entry The View from the Rejection Pile: “There is an old writers’ adage that if you haven’t gotten one hundred rejections–or maybe it’s two hundred–you haven’t tried hard enough.…If you send out only one query letter to one agent, you only have to deal with the blow of getting one rejection letter. However, while the writer who sends out 237 queries to get one acceptance may have to endure 236 rejections, the final scoreboard between the two would read 1-0.”

• And, on Monday you can join the WriteOnCon live chat (August 23 at 9 PM EDT.) and ask Elana Johnson about her 189 (!) queries.

The book is written. You think it’s pretty good. May as well follow it through until the end. And if you do, come back and tell us. We’d love to celebrate with you!

http://twitter.com/shonnaslayton

I just returned from the Romance Writers of Australia National Conference. (It was held at a hotel within walking distance of my home, so I use the word “returned” loosely!) What a great weekend! If there is one thing that will get your creativity flowing and your motivation recharged, it’s hanging out with lots of like-minded people!

I was trying to decide the best way to share all the wonderful information and inspiration from the conference and I decided I’d let other people tell you about it, too. I think you might find some of their blogs have not only fun and interesting posts, but truly helpful thoughts on helping you finish your own manuscript.

Caitlyn Nicholas has several posts about topics covered on Published Author Day (A-Day as she puts it). Anne Whitfield also talks about it on her blog. Paula Roe shares some of what she learned at the conference, including great stuff from Deb Dixon, author of Goal, Motivation, Conflict, and our all-day Friday speaker.

One fun fact: there were about 250 attendees – 249 women and 1 man! Daniel got his own write-up in the Sydney Morning Herald: “Daniel Puts the Man in Romance”.

My personal highlight was pitching my superhero book to an editor and getting a request for a full manuscript! Hurray! Now to re-read it, polish it and get it out!

I want to get my routine machine kicked into a higher gear because I also want to take advantage of Harlequin/Mills & Boon’s New Voices contest. It begins September 6, and the first round(s) are judged by readers – the end-users of our industry. The winner will be published by Mills & Boon, have a M&B editor for a year, and receive an iPad! Have you ever thought that if only you could get your work in the hands of readers, you’d be able to prove you had what it takes? Well, if you write category romance, this is your chance! (Let us know if you enter so our readers can check out your entry!)

If contests get you excited to finish your work and submit it, the Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Short Story Competition is now open. Send in your romance, mystery/crime, science fiction/fantasy, thriller/suspense, or horror by November 1. There is also the A Piece of the Sky first line contest – and it’s free to enter!

Not interested in contests? Just trying to get your work out? Here is a blog on the Writer’s Digest site about how to get agents to request your material.

Or maybe you’re tired of the agent hunt and want to find ways to get your work straight to an editor. Penguin UK is opening up their submissions policy to unagented, unsolicited manuscripts from now until the end of October. Hurry to the web site and check out the details!

Too tired/busy/<insert your reason here> to write today? Then check out this blog on 23 (More) Websites That Make Your Writing Stronger and keep feeding your brain writing-related information. Or go to Booklist Online and sign up for a free webinar on writing, or watch one of the past webinars at their site. They’ve got great topics like romance fiction, crime fiction, comics in schools, non-fiction, teen literature, inspirational fiction and much more.

That’s all the information I remembered as I was trolling through emails from various writing loops this past week. I have to go now – I have a manuscript to polish and submit!