Ann Lee Miller

Trying to be Gracious About My YA Moniker

2007-05-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

Wow! In the six months since I last blogged two of my kids got driver’s licenses, one lost his driver’s license, one graduated from high school, one got her first job, one lost his job, one changed jobs, four enrolled in college, and one moved out. And I’ve been labeled YA. Duh. Or, it should have been a “duh” to me.

I can’t say YA is exactly good news since a major CBA publisher and two excellent agents turned me down because of it. While their compliments on the writing were gratifying, I believe God means for me to be published. May it be before cell phones and Facebook go the way of pink hair curlers in church (you have to have grown up Catholic for that one)! There are readers out there with messy lives who will be grabbed by God’s passion for them through my stories.

So I continue to query. And write--though obviously not on my blog. I’m sprinting through Book Three, Kicking Eternity, thanks to the Snowflake Method of plotting. Thank you, Randy Ingermanson! I bend at the waist, panting hard, with my hands on my knees--winded, not from the writing, but from trying to trust God.

Hope, The Tonic That Energizes

2006-11-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

I came home from Glorietta Christian Writers' Conference with requests from two agents and two publishers who wanted to see my book proposals. Reality so far outpaced my hopes for the conference that I'm still stuck in the middle of that first quick breath of surprise.

I sent three proposals out on November 1, and haven't heard a word back yet. In my experience, quick responses are almost always negative, so I am content to wait. Meanwhile, I'm hard at work applying the things I learned at Glorietta--specifically honing my chapter endings and making the books one character's story--for the publisher who requested complete manuscripts.

I feel like the wild bull stuck in the pen till the rodeo starts. Once my first two novels are pushed out of the way, I will barrell full speed into the third book.

The Preacher's Wife is almost writing itself in my head, longhand notes jammed into a folder, and scenes scratched out in spiral notebooks. I have plot points mapped out with a third of the scenes penciled in--somewhere. And, several scenes are actually written and nestled in the innards of my computer. Regardless of my negligible orgizational skills, this book has moved into the birth canal, and it will demand oxygen soon.

Mom Gets Hip With Blogging

2006-11-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

My twenty-three-year-old insisted I have a blog on my web site. Who was I to argue with cheap labor? But what's wrong with the old-fashioned blog? It's called a journal. Case in point: at this juncture of my career, the reading audience for my blog and my cloth-bound journal are identical.
But if my friend and contemporary, Roxy, is hip enough to blog religiously, maybe I can too. And I love the slice of life she dishes every week. Visit roxannehenke.com and see for yourself.
Another friend keeps tabs on her teenagers through their blogs. Now there's a pratical use for blogging--reading blogs anyway. And I've picked up a couple of writing tips from reading an editor's blog. I did a gleeful two-step when I told my son that I figured out how to leave a comment without his help!
So, I'm making friends with blogging. But, for obvious reasons, I think I'll ease my way into it, thank you very much.

Arse to Chair

2006-09-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

I can only go a couple of weeks without writing. And that's not even cold turkey--I don't count writing in my journal (nothing in life has actually happened unless it's been fully analyzed in my journal). It's how I'm made. I get crabby. When I'm not writing, I just exist. When I write, I really live.

Then, why is it so hard to keep the "arse to the chair" as my writing buddy, Laura, says? When you solve that one, let me know.

Dialoging With An Agent

2006-09-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

For ten months a literary agent dialogued with me about Avra's God. My query was the best he'd ever read. He couldn't believe another agent hadn't scooped me up while he was on vacation. Right. I was delirious, incredulous. The only other agents that showed any interest at all were scammers.

My characters were high schoolers. He had me do a rewrite and graduate them into college, then another to move them into their masters.' Finally, he said they were just too YA for his network, could I get them out of school all together? No, I couldn't.

I was disappointed when a formal rejection came in the mail, but how could I not be grateful for ten months of an agent telling me I really can write. From the amount of books flooding the marketplace and the abysmal quality of some that make it into print, believing you're a writer doesn't make it so.

The agent said I had great pacing. I had to go look "pacing" up in Sol Stein to find out what it was! He was wowed that I'm a Stein devotee. Go figure. It's not like you're born knowing how to construct a novel. Even though I majored in creative writing, there were no classes in novel writing.

The agent even paid a New York editor to critique my work. She said once I get over myself (evidently my synopsis overkilled on colorful similies--I promise I've laundered it since), I can write. Way cool.

I'm headed to Glorietta Christian Writers' Conference in October to hawk Avra's God, and I may go the Writers' Edge route. I prefer them because they won't advertise your book if they determine it's sub-par in quality. My philosophy is that I need to do everything I can to sell the book, but it's God who will get it into print if and when He chooses.