In the thick of it

I'm trying this again, lads and lasses. My first attempt at legitimate blogging did not last for long, so here I go, here I go, here I go....*sings* here I go. Again. Yeah. So. ANY-way.

I should mention that since I started my first blog over here (the one that went the way of the Tippett*), I have actually begun a professional writing mini-career. I now have gigs writing program notes for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. I've also become quite adept at writing promotional blurbs, and I've been hired to blurb (it's a verb now, don't you know) for the SPCO and the San Francisco Symphony. I still have my blog over at the LACO website so that keeps me off the streets...sometimes. So yeah, I have a decent sideline writing musical stuff.

What I really want to do is direct. Not really. What I really want to do is write fiction and I've been writing it, but I haven't really found anyone to read it (except for my charming, beautiful, fun, smart friends who have, of course, been the best support system a gal could want). In fact, my first novel has now been rejected by about a dozen agents. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The book is a hard sell: graphic sex and drug use and it all takes place in high school. Hmm. The bright side is that some agents have actually read the thing (or so they say), so I'm glad at least that it's not hidden under the bed. It's out there, scary as that may be. And mixed in with all the rejection, there have been some lovely compliments:

"I'm deeply impressed and would invite you to submit more writing."

"You have great range in your writing."

"I found the concept to be an interesting twist on the traditional teen drama, and the narrative voice was convincing."

Of course, the lovely compliments are followed by "but" or "however." Nevertheless, I am undaunted. I am four chapters into another novel which is less of a hard sell, but at least one agent who has seen it thinks it might be too much like other stuff out there.

I think this is probably like what screenwriters go through: you have to write a movie that's enough like other successful films in order to get the green light, but it has to be unique enough to be its own thing. Maybe I went too far for the first book and not far enough on the second.

I'm in the process of revising the first book for one agent who was very encouraging. I'm trying to make the story arc a bit more traditional. We shall see. It's taking me forever to do because in addition to my mini-career as a writer, I have a maxi-career as a college professor. I'm busy, you see. But that's fine. It's what I want. I'd rather be stretched thin and working like crazy than be worried about where next month's rent is coming from. I have this pipe dream about being so successful as a writer that I get to quit my day job and do nothing but write eight hours a day, but I know that its rather unlikely. A girl can dream, can't she?

~Hero

*"Way of the Tippett" is a phrase my sister and I developed. It refers to Phil Tippett, a special effects guy whose stop-motion animation process--Go-motion!--was subsumed in the 80s by other, more efficient methods of animation. When something dies out unceremoniously, it goes the way of the Tippett. My apologies to Phil, who I've met and who is a peach. He's doing quite well in the special effects world, so don't you worry about Mr. Tippett.