Strategery

Why do you blog? Some people have goals about how many blogs they will visit and comment on, how many link backs they will make every week, and how many how many how many.

I tried that. For about a month.

It was stressing me out, and making it hard for me to want to write here.

At the University of Florida (and I suspect it is similar in most colleges), there were two main plazas that most everyone walked through on their treks from the dorms/parking lots to their classes. The Hari Krishnas would serve yummy vegetarian glop for a dollar donation on Fridays. The "Redcoats" would stand up on buckets in their maroon suit coats and yell at the girls in short shorts that they were the whores of all the earth, and the boys were informed their fornication would lead to their everlasting damnation, etc. And usually Yoga Guy was out there on his mat, too.

It was a rare day where I wouldn't see someone that I knew as I walked through. The plazas were a place to hang out and relax, a place to listen to people argue, a place to lay under the trees and look at the clouds or just lean up against a tree and read.

Blogs are that same type of thing for me. I'm on my way to email, or renew my seriously overdue library books, but I take a few minutes to hang out with you guys on my way there.

That's what I'm going for on my blog. I haven't checked my new visitors vs. returning visits, duration of visit, how the person got here. I understand that such stats would be useful if this were a business. But it's not. This is where I hangout. Stay as long as you like. Come back when you can. I'm not worried about it.

I comment when I'm interested in the topic and have something to say. When I follow someone, it's not part of my master plan to have X number of followers by X date. I follow someone because they intrigue me in some way.

I understand the usefulness of branding and online presence. I think it's great for people who can think like that, but it freezes me up. The blog is fun. That's my motivation.

Why do you blog?

Thanks for reading and commenting. Getting your take on things is the best part! 
Glutton for Punishment?

What keeps you up at night?

I'm ready to admit that I'm terrified of messing up my search for an agent.

It's the way that the timing is out of my control that kills me. Let's say, for instance, that I have a partial out to an agent that takes a full 6 weeks to read 50 pages. And then let's say that a new agent comes on the market, someone with decades of experience in the industry, and I fire off a query letter, thinking basically that New, Experienced Agent wouldn't want me, but I'll give it a shot. And then she requests a full, and she's got superfast turnaround.

Then say that a non-query email with a likewise New But Extremely Talented Agent leads to that agent asking what I write, and I tell her, and she says to send her a partial, too.

This would all be really awesome, right? Except I don't know how to handle this. I know it's silly to worry about it, because reading is not offering representation, not at all, but what if New Experienced Agent or New But Extremely Talented Agent offer representation? Do I wait for Super Yet Slow Agent to get back to me? Do I send them an email and hope they will get back to me soon enough that I don't look like a total butthead to N.E.A. or N.B.E.T.A.?

That is what I worry about. Looking like a jerk. That and not having an amazing relationship with my agent. I want to know that their input helped me to take it up a notch. I want an agent that gets who I am and what I'm about. I want someone who will know that if they aren't sure if I'm joking, that I am. I want somebody who shoots me an email out of know where, telling me they were thinking about my book, and wouldn't it be cool if....

I want someone who loves my book as much as I do.

Excuse me. I have to go read some agent blogs and make sure I get all this etiquette right. And go check out my friend Teresa's blog post on her editing letter. Very informative, and she always manages to throw in some good lines. Really, go find out why you need to get an ulcer, pronto!

And Kathryn Magendie has a brilliant post on the relationship betwen chipmunks and procrastinating. And M&Ms. You need to know this stuff, I promise!
Glutton for Punishment?

I thought I Made This Up.

I found a story about a woman, Jill Price, whose memories don't fade. She's been tested by various researchers and they've concluded she has accurate recall of daily events back from the time she was 12. (She kept a daily journal all those years.)

She describes the memories as a split screen, and says that a dozen or so times a day, a memory will be triggered by a smell, a song, a sight, and she reexperiences that memory.

From the USA Today Article-

The constant onslaught of memories is both a curse and a blessing, Price says. Especially under stress, the good memories give her great comfort. "I have this warm, safe feeling, and I can get through anything." The dark side is that she recalls every bad decision, every insult and excruciating embarrassment. "Over the years, it has eaten me up."

Peaceful sleep is rare because memories assault her, she says. "It has kind of paralyzed my life."

My MC, Lara, deals with the good and the bad of having a perfect memory. Can you imagine living this way? I thought I was making this stuff up.
Glutton for Punishment?

"Hunger" by Jackie Kessler

A girl with anorexia attempts suicide, but Death gives her a second chance by appointing her as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse: Famine.

Lisa is tired of being fat. She still has a muffin top, for goodness sake! How could her friend suggest that she has anorexia? When her boyfriend agrees that he's worried, she can't take it anymore. Enter: Mom's antidepressants. Lisa swallows one pill, then another. Then another. And then a delivery man rings the doorbell and hands her a package that contains scales, and tells her, "Thou art Famine: Go thee out into the world."

I'm not particularily interested in eating disorders, but the connection to Famine and Lisa's ultimate twist to her duties was intriguing. This book did not read as a self-help book, not at all, but I found the thought patterns a bit disturbing. Anyone who has fought themselves against grabbing an ice cream sandwich by how many calories it contains will recognize the thinking, and maybe even wonder if it would be so hard to lose track of "normal".

In my psych classes, I learned that when asked to select what images match their body types, anorexics will select body types that are more ample than their real body. There's a fundamental shift in perception, and that came across very clearly, as did the way that food becomes the most important relationship in Lisa's life.

"Hunger" comes out in October, and I thought it was worth reading, whether or not you are interested in eating disorders. And for those of you who are looking for books for your own teens, be aware that there are references to Lisa fooling around with her boyfriend. It doesn't get into any details, but from the character's perspective, it is a given that a girl with a boyfriend will be sexually active. I found it interesting that Lisa's self-perception changed when she and James went from being best friends to dating.

Thanks to Around the World Blog Tours for the opportunity to read this ARC. Now I'm off to the post office to send it to the next person! And for anybody that noticed I didn't get this review up yesterday, my apologies. I've come down with a cold.
Glutton for Punishment?

Time, Time Time, Is On My Side. Err, Not Really.

I started writing this post as a list of all the ways I'm overwhelmed right now, but it sounded a little pathetic so I erased it and started again. The point was that a lot of things are in flux right now for me, and none of it is bad, just changes. Some of it is even exciting- like we're going to be closing on a house any day now!

The hard thing is that while I get used to the increased pace, I'm not getting a lot of writing done. The good thing is that if I can make it through the adjustment period, I'll be much more involved in my kids' activities and time with them is never misspent.

Organization has never been one of my strengths, but I'm trying. I'd like to be able to be a cub scout leader, homeroom mom, writing workshop member, blogger, chaffeur, child care expert (my own kids plus two extra), new home owner/amazing designer/renovator and not go crazy, but it is feeling pretty crazy. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm laughing as I think about my overly generous estimates on how much time I would have to write every week. Can you hear me? Because it's pretty loud, and a teensy bit on edge. 25 hours a week, I thought. Too funny.

I try not to get annoyed when life happens, like this morning. Two yearly checkups for the kids plus a snafu with the appointment scheduler (not a mistake on my end, amazingly) means I spent all three of today's precious free hours today at the doctor's office. Grrr. At least we had a whole bag of library books and Eli is well on his way to becoming a member of the celebrated Hundred Book Club. Three hours is a long time to read picture books.

But, an exciting thing- I signed up a while ago at Around the World Blog Tours- it's an ARC (an advance copy) sharing site, and I got the first book today, Hunger by Jackie Kessler. I will let you know how I liked it on Thursday. Around the World Blog Tours is pretty cool- you join the site, pick which books you would like to review, and you get a book in the mail. It's a pretty cool system and an easy way to get ARCs for those of us who can't make it to Book Expo or wherever else it is that people get them. 

Another good thing- the dream that I had where I got my book published by a vanity press, only to have an agent contact me the day the boxes of books arrived (and the covers were AWFUL!) ended up not being real. Whew! I was really really relieved that I wasn't going to have to hand sell them all. It was almost as bad as those dreams where one of my kids is drowning or about to fall off a cliff and I can't stop it. *shivers* Okay, it's not in that league at all, but it was really upsetting.

I've got one partial out right now to an Ms. Agent, someone that Mr. Agent referred me to, and have started a new edit, which I hope to finish up within two weeks. That will be well within the 4-6 weeks Ms. Agent said she would need to respond, so hopefully this won't backfire. I keep thinking it's perfect (enough) and I'm done, but it's not and I'm not.

Have a great day and write a little for me. I have to go finish my child protection training for cub scouts.
Glutton for Punishment?

Blurt

Twitter paralyzes my brain. I can't handle the limits of 140 characters to express something awesome. I would retweet and get all linky, but the things I would retweet are from my friends, who are already on Twitter, and they're all friends with each other, so there's no point.

I'm overthinking Twitter, I know. I basically lurk, following the agents I'm interested in and some friends and publishing people. You should definately follow me. "Kelly_Bryson" Because I will not be bothering you much, but when I do, it will be scintillating.

Facebook is a little better, but I wonder did I say too much, was I too bland, too many updates, not enough updates to feel connected?

The blog is a lot more comfortable to me, though. Have I mentioned lately how much I adore your comments?

The kids are back in school, and with that comes the infamous parent-child notebook. I try to make it fun and interesting for the kids, but I hold back a little. You know, the teacher might read it and think I'm a nutball, or something. She might not want me to volunteer for field trips anymore.

I didn't hold back last week. I wrote all kinds of craziness to my Lou-lou about what privileges the special student should have, like getting to go to the moon, getting a baby monkey that she can teach sign language to, whatever popped in my head.

My Lou-lou wrote back to me yesterday and told me I was funny. We're going to get some vocab flash cards, and I'm going to keep trying until she tells me I'm scintillating. Maybe I can do this.

How do you feel about the social media part of being a writer? Where are you comfortable?
Glutton for Punishment?

Fiction, really?

Here's my recent experience that makes the Hunger Games trilogy a lot more poignant. My husband works in the tire industry and this past weekend we went to the MotoGP races in Indianapolis. I've never been to a car/motorcycle race before, so I looked at the experience as a research opportunity. We were able to meet two of the racers at a company dinner and also go inside one of the garages on pit row and learn some cool stuff- for instance, the bikes cost in the neighborhood of 1.5 million dollars, and the riders (not drivers, they're particular about that) can make anything from a decent living to 35 million Euros. Holy. Crap.

So we went to the race, were amazed by the unbelievable, eye-blurring speed that these 800 horsepower bikes can reach (over 200 mph) and saw some very skilled people doing what they love.

This morning, Nathan called me to let me know what we hadn't heard at the race: in one of the exhibition races for up-and-coming stars, a 13 year old boy, Peter Lenz, crashed and was run over by another rider. He was pronounced dead a few hours later.

Peter Lenz in a race two years ago. These bikes are much smaller than

the MotoGP bikes, 125 HP instead of 800. AP photo from OregonLive.com

He was a skilled rider and was leading his circuit in points, according to the NYT. His father expressed that Peter had died doing something he loved. No one stuck a gun to his head and forced him to pull out on that track, but he's dead and I am left wondering how different we are than the spectators in ancient Rome. How different is the audience on race day than the spectators in the Hunger Games? Is attraction to risk just human nature? 

People die all the time. A child at my kids' school died a few days before school started as a result of a short illness. Death happens. I understand that. But I can't help feeling a bit responsible. I don't think the riders look at it that way, though.

Collin Edwards, whom I met briefly at a dinner on the Friday before the race, said this about the death of his young friend, "It's a normal racetrack and racing incidents happen. From what I understand, it was a pure racing accident.

"The fact is, it's going to happen again at some point to somebody and we hate it, but we know what's going on when we put a helmet on. We know what can happen." (Quote taken from Sky Sports)

My thoughts and prayers are with Peter's family and those who are grieving in our community.

What do you think? Can things change or are we human, always have been, always will be?

Glutton for Punishment?