A month ago, my completed YA novel was selected for the annual Sun versus Snow writing contest, and I got the chance to work with a published author to polish my pitch materials and have them read by 21 agents.
Four days after the winners were announced, the police in my state went on strike.
On the day of the agent round, we boarded a plane on an emergency trip to find working law enforcement.
It was not the first-contest-win experience I’d imagined. I had envisioned sitting in front of my computer during the agent round, compulsively eating Kit Kat and obsessively refreshing the website to see if I got requests. Instead we booked an afternoon flight to a state with police, threw clothes in suitcases, stuffed passports in shoes, and took a taxi to the airport.
While I might not have been able to follow #sunversussnow as frequently as I would have liked, I was able to learn some valuable lesson about how to get the most out of a writing contest while law and order breaks down around you. Here are 5 tips for writing during a security emergency.
1. Don’t procrastinate. When you find out your manuscript was selected to participate, you will be thrilled and checking your email every two minutes for that first contact from your mentor. An actual published author is sending you an email! Keep that enthusiasm. You’re going to need it in order to get everything done ahead of time. From the time the police go on strike until a significant surge in assaults, you have about 48 hours. You’re going to want to send off final revisions before the shit really hits the fan.
2. Take the opportunity to work on mental discipline. This is really for parent writers. With schools being closed due to security concerns, you’re going to have to write between pouring grape juice and explaining (again) why there are not second helpings of dessert. Think of it as an afternoon of ten minute writing sprints. Interval training for your creative muscles. How much can you get in before the next “Mommy!”?
3. Use it as a distraction. While your fellow participants are wearing out their fingers refreshing the website hoping to see agent requests, you can use the last minute decision to fly to Rio as a reason to step away from the computer. As you puzzle over how much to pack considering you bought an open ended ticket, you might even briefly forget it is the agent round. When you do remember, it’s going to be at a super inconvenient time like in the middle of airport security, and you’ll be forced to practice patience.
4. Back up everything! You will be faced with a choice when packing for your last minute trip: bring your computer or don’t bring your computer. Your husband will advise against it given the 400% rise in carjackings. But what if you get an agent request? How will send off pages without your computer? You have to send them while the contest is fresh in the agent’s mind. Obviously you can’t wait three whole days!!! But what if your computer is stolen?!! Don’t stress. The answer is to put everything in iCloud, Google drive, a flash drive which you hide in the pencil jar, and in emails to yourself. You should be covered in the event of a carjacking.
5. Embrace the idea: Done and sent is better than “Almost perfect, just fifteen more minutes. For real this time.” Look, having to frantically reread your first fifty pages (because you actually got your first agent request for pages! Ahh!) while your family is crammed together in the hotel with the sound of PJ Masks in the background is not an ideal writing environment. You’re not going to turn out ideal work. It’s ok. Do what you can. Remember you’ve already read through those pages fifteen times. Acknowledge your mentor was awesome and helped you write a hell of a query letter that works! Then send the pages. There will be more requests in the future.
It was an honor to be selected for Snow versus Snow! Thanks to the judges and contest coordinators Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood. I do wish I’d been able to focus on the contest, interact more with fellow participants on Twitter, and celebrate the agent requests I did get, but these are minor complaints. My mentor Max Wirestone gave spot on feedback. His book The Unfortunate Decision of Dahlia Moss came out in February, but he still volunteered to be a mentor for the contest! Thanks to him, I have hugely improved pitch materials.
The contest also inspired me not to give up on Pangea. After no requests for pages from agents last year, I was ready to set it aside and focus exclusively on my new historical fiction, but now I’m tweaking the manuscript and sending it back out there.
As my daughter’s favorite book, Rosie Revere Engineer says “Life might have its failures, but this was not it. The only true failure can come if you quit.”
I recently confessed to planning an entire trip to New York City around a preschooler. Housing, excursions, food…It was all for her. With the exception of Tuesday night. Because while our daily itinerary was planned around her, she was not the reason for the trip. Hamilton was the reason for trip. Ok, fine. My obsession with Hamilton was the reason for the trip.
I’ve never been one to fangirl. I have loved movies and cheered in the stands for a favorite team. But I’ve never painted my entire face and worn a giant foam hat chanting in unison in below freezing temperatures. I’ve never spent six months salary on replica Storm Troopers costume and blaster. I’ve never loved anything enough to wait in line for more than one hour.
A week later my husband said “Let’s do it. Let’s go to New York.”
At the same time as Hamilton was debuting off-Broadway in early 2015, I quit my job as a teacher to devote myself to writing and publishing my first novel. I was anxious. I was antsy. I’d given myself two years to get an agent. I announced this to family and friends not realizing that two years is a laughably short time in the publishing world. Congressional cycles come faster than novel debuts. But I was ignorant of the alternate reality publishing exists in and worried that at 32 years old I was running out of time to build a career.
Those years paid off. Hamilton was the most amazing theater experience of my life. I was in tears before the opening number was over. It was epic because every detail was right. I remember the way the lights changed at a stomp of King George’s foot to fabulous comedic effect. I remember Jefferson’s truly spectacular purple ensemble for his grand entrance in Act II. The intensity with which Leslie Odom Jr. delivered every line. Miranda’s complete breakdown after Hamilton’s forgiven by his wife. The banjo in “Room Where it Happens”. God, I love that banjo. The ensemble member who traces the trajectory of that fatal bullet in slow motion. It was all perfect.
And that level of perfection takes patience. You can’t nail every detail at the same time. You have to tweak them one by one over the course of weeks, months, and years with constant feedback and help. I’m trying to keep that in mind when I grit my teeth at the prospect of reworking my first chapter for the tenth time. When I get feedback from an editor saying this is great just rework these parts, and I’m so very tempted to interpret this is “this is great” as “this is good enough” and be done with it. Patience is a challenge for me. Accepting that “life is long” and I do have years to get it right is very difficult for me.
