Cupcakes, Empanadas and the Last Full Request

Yesterday I made 26 strawberry cupcakes.
Today I am making 26 mini-empanadas. Do you see a trend? It's Eldest's eight birthday today and I brought in pink-confetti icing sugar bombs for the kiddies to enjoy. I hope their parents forgive me for the extra dose of red dye #40 I've injected into their diets. As for my kid, she comes by her wonderful kookiness naturally, no red dye required.

The empanadas are for tomorrow, International Snack day at school. Because public schools don't have enough things to do, they have to celebrate foreign snacks. I get it, I really do, it's part of cultural awareness. But I don't think a mini empanada is going to make a second grader belt out a rendition of Depeche Mode's People Are People, do you?




I'm griping. I'm kvetching. Because I'm nervous. Today I got an email from agent Barbara Poelle - a short note to say that my full ms is next in her queue and thanks for my patience. She's the nicest frigging agent on the planet, to let me know that the wait is almost over. But, of course, it means that I need to gird my loins. This is the last full request I have out on BookEnd.

Do I think I'm going to get rejected? Yes. I do, actually. Not because I don't believe in my work, not because I don't believe in myself. I think I'm a really good writer. My writerly ego has a tendency to look like a puffer fish. But still, I think I'm getting rejected, and I'm trying to get ready for that feeling.

Someone (sorry I can't remember who) commented a while back on a post of mine which was similarly not so positive that I should believe in the good outcome - even against the odds - believe in the positive as a way of projecting out positive vibes and then having them rebound back at you, like some gigantic cosmic, fuzzy-warm boomerang.

I am seriously in AWE of the person who can do that. HOW DO YOU DO IT? I can do it for other people. I can absolutely 100% believe positive things (or 6 impossible things) on behalf of someone else, but I can't do it for myself.

It feels like the worst kind of hubris to think positively of myself. It feels like I'm pinning a KICK ME sign on my own back and daring the writerly fates to have a go. Besides, if I'm wrong it's not like that will make me sad - I'll be psyched to be wrong, thank you very much. But if I'm right, I'm hoping that I'm prepared. That I've had time to get used to the idea and (when it happens) ameliorate some of the damage.

Am I wrong? Am I actually making things worse by being negative? What do you think?

Do It Yourself Critique Group

Everyone says I need a critique group. Which I guess is a passive aggressive way of saying, your work sucks, you need help. But I agree, I do need a critique group (and sometimes my work does suck. But I have awesome hair and yours is thinning out). I need someone other than my husband who believes too much in what I write and dear friends (or faithless hussies) who say they’ll read my book but never have the time – you know who you are.

So, when NaNoWriMo rolled around, I actually went to the weekly write-ins. I’d never done that before because I’m not a joiner (imagine that said with a sneer and maybe a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in the sleeve of my white t-shirt.) The write-ins were great. I wrote tons and liked the people who showed up too, all local writers.  

In the spirit of ‘Gee, we could put on a show right here, in the barn!’ I decided to start a Bucks County Writers Group. Sounds impressive, right? Especially when I capitalize each word – we don’t respect capitals as much as we should. I digress. The problem is that I don’t know anything about critiquing. I gave one person a critique once, one that I thought was really kindly and encouraging. They’ve never spoken to me again. I don’t think it was because of what I said, exactly, because I wasn’t in any way mean. But because of what I didn’t say, ie. YOU ARE AWESOME! WHY AREN’T YOU PUBLISHED ALREADY!!

That’s what we all want to hear, really and when we don’t hear it, knickers get knotted. But here’s what’s worse. Someone does tell you that. It’s happened to me. Someone intelligent and lovely told me exactly that when reading one of my ms. I kept asking her if she was yanking my chain. She proceeded to tell me that indeed, no, she was not blowing smoke up my skirt. I declaimed, ‘Are you shitting me?’ It went on like this for a while. She still stands by her statement and I think she took smack, just the one time, and hallucinated someone else’s book when she was reading mine.

So, what’s the right mix of critique? How can you be helpful and encouraging while helping the writer weed out the garbage? Are there steps? Ground rules? Any suggestions on giving and getting critique?