POV Margot

I enjoy this blog-- a cyber space where we can unfurl some of the wounded up ideas all of us writers have in our heads about our craft. In our day to day lives we assume other personas and for most of us we can't go around waving a flag that says "writer" because
Most people will wave back a flag that says "so what?"
But here blogging all those writer thoughts can freely flap in the wind.
And then amazingly I log on and other writers' thoughts are flapping alongside the ones I ran up the flagpost.
A very pleasant sight.

This from Margot:
I have many thoughts about writing, but then, I'm not published as a fiction writer (yet). I'm not sure I could ever collaborate on a novel, because my mind works in strange ways and I'm a control freak. But I've certainly spun a tale with other people, and it's great fun. My sister and I collaborate on her cable access show and occasionally on her blog (I can't figure out links, but it's deadbeatdirt on Blogger). She does all the heavy lifting (ie, video editing), and we come up with ideas and partial scripts together. It reminds me of the March sisters in Little Women who would put on plays-- that was always my ideal!

But back to writing. Right now I'm thinking a lot about the process of selling my novel. Yes, selling it. It sounds crass, but I don't think there's a way around it. My dad is an avant-garde composer who makes his living teaching at a university, so I always thought it was enough to be an "artist" and you'd make money somehow. I found out the hard way this doesn't work, or only for the lucky few!

Not that I think I can make money from my writing; I'd be happy just to see it in print, in a store. So I'm polishing my query and practicing writing a "hook" Every day I visit Miss Snark the literary agent's blog, where she savages the hooks of unpublished writers like me. (I didn't submit mine--not brave enough yet!) Miss Snark and I don't really see eye to eye in our literary tastes (except for loving Thomas Pynchon), but she's taught me a lot via the blog about how agents work and think. I no longer see them as distant or scary, but as bored, capricious, biased people like me. Now, the question is, how can I hit the right one on the right day?

Mel's comments on revision were great. The only tip I know is this: Put it in a drawer for a few months. Don't let yourself read your ms. until you can see it with a fresh eye. When I do this, I find myself making changes that actually work.

2:53 PM