Deadlines are a Gift:

Every month I write a post on Instagram where I promise to send the Harbinger out by the end of the month. I’m convinced that if I ever stopped announcing my deadline goal, this newsletter would cease to exist. Not because I don’t like writing it, but because I work best under pressure. I ask my agent to give me a deadline for when she’d like my edits back. I put off preparing for a meeting or interview until the last possible minute. Panic does wonders for focusing and clarifying my work.

What I’m Working On:

February was a wild ride (perhaps they all are). I wrapped up edits on the Welsh fairytale and caught the flu to celebrate.

My agent got back to me about the massive revisions I did on Thief and she loved it (the relief! I was feverish with joy. Or perhaps just feverish). She suggested one more round of quick edits which I knocked out in a week (mostly while in bed with a box of Kleenex and a moody cat on my lap).

My agent and I decided not to send the Welsh fairytale out to a publisher just yet, as she’s busy prepping to send Thief out on submission. So, that one’s on the back burner, but that’s alright because we are so close to shopping Thief around!

I’ve been in the editorial submission trenches before (with The Winter King) and it is… tough. Generally, an agent picks a first round of editors to send the manuscript to. She’ll often chat with the editors ahead of time to make sure they’re interested in the project. She sends the manuscript out, and then we sit and wait….

and this is the part of the process that’s wildly unpredictable. You might get an offer in three days! You might get an offer in three months! You might never get an offer, and then your agent might decide to send the manuscript out to a second batch of editors. Or you might decide to incorporate any feedback the editors who passed gave you. You have to brace yourself for rejections and sifting through feedback, but more on that in a minute…

What I’m Reading:

Every so often I pick up a nonfiction read, and this time it was Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple (a book I purchased for my husband for Christmas which he then asked that I read so we could chat about it). I want to preface this with a content warning because there are stories of child abuse that are very hard to read. Dalrymple makes some very astute observations, although he doesn’t offer solutions. Plenty to ponder in that book.

I reread Rebecca since I’m using it as an excellent example of infusing your story with tension through metaphor and descriptions. It’s a fantastic and unsettling story. I also read The Inheritance Games for something lighthearted and quick before diving into The Lincoln Highway. While I preferred A Gentleman in Moscow, Towles does a fantastic job of bringing distinct characters to life and distinguishing them from each other so that each character grows richer and more complex by comparison. This is a meandering, Odyssean tale that (I’m told) is fantastic as an audiobook.

I also reread Till We Have Faces since I’m delivering a series of lectures on it at the Raggant Fiction Festival. There are still a few days left to buy tickets! Go do that now, I’ll wait.

Writing Tip:

My tip this month is simple: don’t be afraid of rejection.

New writers often struggle to receive critical feedback well; but in reality, rejection (and criticism of your work) is an integral part of the writing life. And, it’s a really, really good thing!

Writing starts out very solitary: we have an idea in our minds and we struggle and fight to get it out. Then, other people look at those black squiggles on a page and translate them into images and rebuild our story in their own minds. It may or may not look like we intended, but you won’t know if you succeeded until they give you feedback.

I might think I made my main character extremely likable and engaging, but if my beta readers unanimously tell me that they hated her, it means I failed. And if I refuse to listen to feedback, I’m ignoring the very person I’m supposed to be serving: the reader.

This doesn’t mean you have to take all feedback equally, but if someone you trust tells you your story isn’t working, don’t get defensive or sad. You are not your art, and they’re not saying you as a person aren’t likable. They’re pointing out a problem, and you now have the opportunity to fix it before it’s forever immortalized on the printed page.

So, take the feedback from editors and agents and beta readers with gratitude, because they are wanting to help you make your story better. And that’s a gift.

That’s all for now! Until next month…

Christine