Author: Bekki

“Precious Things”

On By BekkiIn Pinned Posts, This is Feminism4 Comments

Yesterday, Amanda Palmer posted an amazing blog on internet hatred and bullying.  You should go read it.  Spend some time in the comments.  It will probably break your heart.  It broke mine.

When I was a kid, I was drawn to the kids who were different.  The ones who were fragile and fantastical and generally quite fucked up.  I didn’t hang out with the cool kids, partly because there was never money for whatever the latest craze in toys was – slap bracelets, troll dolls, sticker collecting – but mostly because the cool kids were boring.  My friends were never boring, but the flipside was that they would turn on me in an instant.  I had frenemies long before the term was popular.  Girls who loved me one day and said vicious things about me the next.  Or kicked me as we went down the stairs to recess, so that one year my shins were black and blue from September to June.  Or poured chocolate milk all over me during lunch.  Or took the confidences I had whispered during sleepovers and spread them among all the other girls to get a leg up the popularity ladder.

Seventh grade was the worst.  It was the year of the bar mitzvah’s.  I grew up in a mostly Jewish town, went to a mostly Jewish school.  There was a bar mitzvah almost every weekend, sometimes two.  The rich kids had their parties at the country club, where there would be a magician or face-painter or a DJ, or sometimes all three.  The popular girls collected photo albums of invitations.  Even the unpopular girls like me got invited to their share – someone who invited all of their homeroom, or all of their Hebrew school class, or whose parents made them invite the kids who’d been in carpool.

I don’t remember which one of them thought up the game.  I don’t even know why it was so funny to them, or so hurtful to me.  It went like this.  I would be sitting alone, staring at all the kids out on the dance floor and wishing someone would come over to talk to me.  A group of the popular boys would be hanging out at the other end of the table, whispering with each other.  Suddenly, one of them would run over to me, get down on one knee, and ask, “Will you marry me?”  I would sit there in shock and confusion, without a clue as to how to send him away so that I came off as the cool one.  Then, laughing hysterically, he would run back to his friends and they would all exchange high-fives.  I was convinced, utterly and absolutely, that what they were really telling me was that I was hideous, and ugly, and that nobody would ever, ever want to marry me.

By the time we hit high school, it was mostly over.  I hung out with the freaks, took the honors and AP classes, played lacrosse, dated a guy who thought I was gorgeous, and pretty much tried to ignore everyone who had caused me so much misery a few years back.  It worked so well that by the time senior year came around, I was a certain kind of cool.  At senior prom, one of the hottest guys in my class told my boyfriend he’d never realized how hot I was.  The popular boys wanted to pose for pictures with me on the last day of school.  I told them all to fuck off.

Which should be the end of it, except for one last thing.

About five years ago, one of the boys who’d played the marriage game found me on Facebook and sent a friend request.  I’ll admit, my response was not as graceful as it could have been.

facebook

I never wrote back, because I didn’t know what to say.  In truth, he wasn’t even the worst of them.  In high school, he was actually pretty friendly to me.  I still hated him, even more than I hated the ones who had bullied me for so long.  The way I saw it, they were idiots.  They couldn’t help themselves.  He was smarter, more popular, better than all of that.  He could have stopped them, if he’d wanted to.  He never did.

***

So.  To all those kids who made my life a living hell.  To the kids who lived through it from the other end.  To the ones who bullied, and were bullied, and watched the bullies and did nothing.  If you want to talk, I’m here.  I’m listening.  Hit me up in the comments.

And to all those kids who are going home after school and crying, and cutting, and wishing they could die:

IT.

GETS.

BETTER.

“Shine on You Crazy Diamond”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings1 Comment

Good morning kittens, and welcome to 2013. Here is my New Year’s wish for you:

Hold on to the people that you love, and love the people you can’t hold onto.  So often the things we take for granted are the ones we will miss the most when they’re gone.  Take time to cry if you need it, and time to laugh as well.  Do something kind for a complete stranger.  Do something kind for yourself.  Cherish the small things –  the first shoots of green in the spring, an unexpected smile, a sentence that leave you awestruck and trembling.

 

And above all, shine.

“Plans”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

It’s been a hell of a year.   I found two critique partners, both of whom I’m incredibly lucky to have.  I’ve found a writing mentor whose life seems to be on a track strangely similar to my own.  And while I finished the first draft of a new novel, the one I thought was finished for sure is back in revision-land.  Oh, and did I mention that my husband and I moved four times in four months?

I’m finally starting to feel like a working writer rather than a dabbler.  In that vein, here’s what I’d like to get done over the next year:

  • Revise Pomegranate Seeds by Jan 25, in time for PitchWars.  I’m still not convinced that this is possible, but Suzanne has assured me that it is.  Since she had the wisdom to pick my novel out of the slush, I’m going to go ahead and believe her on this one.
  • Apply to Clarion West.  Because Neil Gaiman is teaching this year.  And because, Clarion.  Plus, it will force me to put together a pitch and synopsis for Railroad.
  • Speaking of which, revise Railroad and start submitting it to agents.  I figure it’s got one major revision and one round of line edits before it’s ready.  Realistically, that means it probably won’t go out until fall of next year, or perhaps as a Baker’s Dozen debut.
  • I’d also like to write and submit a few short pieces.  I’m not entirely sure where the time for this is going to come from, but one of the things I really like about short fiction is the ability to try out something different.  Of course, submitting short fiction will mean needing to read short fiction will mean even more short story magazines on my Kindle that I keep meaning to read when I have a few minutes…

And that’s it.  I’m not going to worry about getting an agent, or selling a novel, or getting published.  Instead I’m going to write, and keep writing, and talk to writers, and critique other people’s work, and listen to what other people have to say about my work, and write, and keep writing.

“Brace Yourself”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings3 Comments

I’ve been slowly coming to the inevitable conclusion that I’m going to have to revise Pomegranate Seeds (again!) if I want it to sell.

Here are the cold, hard stats:

  • 8 form rejections
  • 1 closed query (no response after a follow up email and 5 months)
  • 1 rejection with feedback that opening was too quiet
  • 2 contests “wins” with ultimate rejections (one cited voice; the other said it was a little “flat”)
  • 1 request for a full with a pass (too many fairy tale retellings on the market)
  • 1 open request for a full
  • 2 open queries
  • 1 pending contest (PitchWars)

Counting the PitchWars agents who haven’t seen this yet, that’s about 20 agents.  Now, we’ve all heard the stories about writers who went through numerous rejections before hearing yes on the 21st, or 51st, or 99th query.  We’ve also heard the stories about writers who self published after being rejected by the publishing world and went on to sell over a million copies on Amazon.

This isn’t that book.

Kids, when I wrote this, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  I’d written a handful of short stories in college, and a NaNo project the previous year (it’s since been locked in a drawer for its own protection).  Now that I’ve finished a draft of a novel that was plotted and outlined and beat-sheeted (hat tip to Authoress), I understand so much more about how a novel works.  Enough to know that while Pomegranate Seeds isn’t irreparably broken, it could definitely use an overhaul.

All of which is leading me to the point where I need to make a pretty difficult decision.  Do I put Pomegranate Seeds back in the drawer? Or do I take a deep breath, get out my notebook and pen, and begin to quietly murder my darling?

War is Hell

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings2 Comments

About two or three weeks ago, I came across something called #PitchWars, a multi-part writing contest.  First, you submit your query letter and the first 5 pages of your novel to a “mentor” (generally a newly published or aspiring to be published writer).  Second, the mentors each pick one person and work on polishing that person’s 3 sentence pitch and the first 250 words of their novel.  Finally, toward the end of January, the pitches go live on Brenda Drake’s blog for a bunch of agents to request fight over.

I entered Pomegranate Seeds but wasn’t sure what to expect.  A huge chunk of the mentors were looking for kid lit; the ones that were looking for Adult didn’t seem as interested in women’s fic.  I was cautiously ecstatic when one of the mentors asked me to send her the first fifty pages.  I was floored to see my name on the page announcing the teams.

The mentor who picked me is Suzanne Palmieri, a new writer whose first books will come out next year.  We emailed back and forth a bit, I checked out her blog and twitter feed, she probably checked out mine, and I agreed to work with her.  From what she wrote yesterday,  it sounds like she’s already got some ideas for revisions.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.  On the one hand, I could really use some good, honest feedback on what does and doesn’t work in the story.  On the other… this is my baby!  The novel I spent six years writing.  The first novel I finished.  And while I want people to like my baby as she is, the writer in me wants this to be the best book possible.

The next few weeks are going to be very, very interesting.