"2004: From Frustration to Publicaton" with Kristi Holl

Mel: is Mel Boring, moderator of this chat with Kristi Holl, and editor of the ICL Web site.

Green shows the usernames of the people who asked questions of Kristi Holl.

*** There proved to be many more questions than time allowed this evening, so I have added extra questions at the end, which Kristi graciously took the time to answer for us.

Mel: A good warm welcome to you to the ICL Chat Room, we're really glad you came! This evening is pure recreation for this moderator, because our chat guest is the former moderator of this chat room, Kristi Holl. Kristi began with ICL as a student 24 years ago, selling her writing to children's magazines right away. Then she became a valued graduate as she began publishing books. There are at least twenty-five of them, including her latest, for adults, Writer's First Aid: Getting Organized, Getting Inspired, and Sticking to it. Kristi does ALL of the things in her book's title for children's writers, helping us get organized, inspiring us, and encouraging us to stick to it. We have Kristi here in person tonight, to help YOU go from writing frustration to publication in 2004. Kristi, a WARM welcome back to our chat room, I'm so pleased you're back for what could become your annual New Year’s children’s writing pep talk!

Kristi: It's terrific being back, Mel. I always love being with you all.

Mel: Kristi, last winter at this time we talked about setting goals. How have you done with your own goals this year?

Kristi: Much better the second half of the year than the first half. I did the final editing on two middle grade novels and got them submitted recently. Have had a couple nibbles, but nothing to report so far. I met my goal of meeting with critique partners, one group in person and one group on-line. That was extremely helpful in moving past the editing to the submitting stage, as I hate to do marketing and it helped to have people nagging me to get it done and to critique my query letters. After four weeks straight of someone asking me, "Where did you send your manuscript?", I finally got busy and submitted it. The first half of the year wasn't productive though, and I had some things to overcome before I could move forward.

blondepsycho: Welcome Kristi!

Kristi: Thank you!

Mel: What kinds of things did you need to overcome this year, if you don't mind saying?

Kristi: I don't mind at all. I took a look at some reasons why I had not met many of my writing goals, not just lately, but over the years. I was disappointed that having been a published writer for so many years hadn't made me immune to discouragement and writer's blocks. Also I needed to handle some writing frustrations and setbacks (such as when a six-book series fell through at the last minute when my editor moved to another publishing house). Besides that, after years of setting limits, I was frustrated at having to relearn how to set boundaries yet again as my life changed and I had more free time and realized that I still said "yes" to too many things out of guilt or pressure. I was irritated at dealing with issues that should have (in my opinion) been dealt with once and for all a long time ago. I have even resorted to sometimes picking up my own Writer’s First Aid book when I realized that I was revisiting a particular problem.

I finally challenged a few expectations that I had always held about the writing life--ones that were making me miserable and making me wonder if I should quit. I think the thing that had the most profound impact on me was a book given to me by my daughter called The Writer’s Book of Hope by Ralph Keyes, a prolific writer and speaker who was so very honest in this book about his own frustration and discouragement. Buy this book! Ralph Keyes is also the author of The Courage to Write, which is very good, but The Writer’s Book of Hope (published in 2003 by Henry Holt) should be at the top of every writer's reading list in 2004. It's a different kind of book, and it really turned my attitude around so I could get writing again.

Mel: You've taught writing for 16 years and have seen hundreds of your students graduate, Kristi. Think about the ones you've had who overcame their own frustrations to go on to publish. What differentiated them from the students who didn't publish?

Kristi: Those who went on to publish were those who persevered and had realistic expectations. That's why I have learned not to prejudge students anymore or think I can "pick" which students are likely to publish. When students ask "Do you think I have what it takes to be published?", all I can say is whether I see innate talent and a basic way with words. What I can't tell early on is their level of commitment, their ability to keep going when rewards are slow in coming, their gutsy stick-to-it-iveness--which will be both the deciding factor in whether they ever publish in the first place and continue to publish for years to come. Other teachers have reported the same phenomenon. Students they initially said had no chance of publication beat other, more talented students to publication. The former students I heard from most often about their recent publications were seldom the ones I would have chosen as the most talented. TALENT IS COMMON. DETERMINATION IS RARE (a Ralph Keyes quote.) And that's good news. You may not be able to increase your inborn talent, but you are solely responsible for choosing to grow in determination. No one (no matter who s/he is) can make you quit. I try to encourage each student not to give up and quit too soon because early work and inborn talent are NOT the best indicators whether this student will be published.

Mel: At what point should a writer expect to start selling her work regularly?

Kristi: I have no idea! The more I talk to published authors and ask about their beginnings, the less I believe there is a "standard" answer. Some of them were overnight successes (who later had long dry periods), some of them didn't publish until after years (ten or more!) of rejections. Some, like me, were rejected a lot at first, sold for a while, then experienced a second slump before selling again. I did sell three of my course assignments, but I had thirty rejection slips first. You asked about the point where we should expect to sell regularly. I don't know that "expect" is a good word here. We can hope and work and plan and work some more, but the selling is somewhat out of our control even after all that. Rejection is part of writing--and you have to develop patience to wait through the bad months or years and keep going.

It's like the patience needed by farmers waiting for a crop that depends on so many things you can't control, like the weather and markets. Writers must beat it into their heads that rejection is part of the writing game--not just initially either--but throughout their career. That isn't such bad news--it's just a fact of life. Farmers know they will get occasional crop failures for a variety of reasons, but they do their best each year anyway, showing up to do the work, learning their job better and better, applying remedies they learn about, but still knowing that the end results can vary widely from year to year through no fault of their own. Writers have to understand that too. It's not personal to newer writers--it's true of us all. I just think published writers don't talk about it nearly as much, and we can leave the impression that we don't get rejected too, when we certainly do. And we get form rejections too and editors lose our manuscripts and SASEs too.

blubug: So, did you say your children are some of your best support and critics?

Kristi: Yes, they were when they were younger--the critics, I mean. But as they got older they were mostly just supportive because I didn't write for their older ages, but (no brag, just fact) I do have some of the sweetest kids I know and I've been grateful for their support.

mbvoelker: Recently, as I've started selling non-fiction articles regularly and have begun getting handwritten rejections (including a "send me something else in the same fantasy world" one), I have begun to feel paralyzed by the fear of possible success. If I do it once I'm going to be expected to do it again. Have you ever suffered this? Recommendations on overcoming this rather ridiculous, but real fear?
Kristi: It's not at all ridiculous, and frankly, if you don't have a fear that "I'll never be able to repeat a success," then someone in your environment will say it to you. A very close relative of mine took one look at my first book, pronounced it a "fluke" and said I wouldn't be able to do it again. That actually hadn't occurred to me yet! But it sure did afterwards. I'd like to tell you that if your second book or subsequent work doesn't measure up to your first success that no one will notice because they will, but few will comment on it, except for an occasional unkind reviewer. I had a review once that said basically "Don't buy this book--it's not up to Holl's usual standards" or something similar.

Generally speaking, your subsequent work WILL be better and improve each time but the good news is that when that isn't the case, and even if some reviewer says so in print, you'll survive. Mostly that's what writers need to know--it won't kill you, it happens to us ALL (a couple of my well published friends got burned in reviews this year) and we moan to our friends and lick our wounds and are comforted by our friends offering to shoot the editor or reviewer, and then we get back to work. Each stage of writing has its own fears to deal with, and the one you mentioned just means you're moving further along in your career. See the book Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path for more about this. You're not alone!

Mel: Now that "fluke" of being published has happened to you about 25 times, hasn't it, Kristi!

Kristi: Yes. 8-) And I wasn't above smirking at this person!

Mel: At what point should a writer expect not to have so many rejections, even if you still get an occasional one?

Kristi: After you've paid your dues (taken the writing courses, studied published books, studied markets, improved your craft with critique groups, gotten into the habit of writing daily), then you can expect to have fewer rejections than when you started out. But FEWER doesn't necessarily mean FEW. It just means less than when you were a beginner. After reading Keyes' book The Writer’s Book of Hope, I started asking around to see if he was right. Sure enough, friends of mine whom I had assumed rarely, if ever, got rejected--their answers surprised me. These are award-winning authors too. Most of them fully expected to send out a dozen queries in order to get a few positive responses, and they only expected a small portion of the positive responses to result in having the whole manuscript read, and even a smaller portion of those might result in a sale. So please hear me: whether it's the markets that have changed in recent years, or published authors are just being more honest now, it's the truth. Rejection comes to every writer, and comes fairly often. That's just the way things are now. It's not personal to me or to you. It should not discourage you to the point of wanting to quit.

imhopeful: I'm starting to sell articles somewhat regularly but few family members support me. No acknowledgement when I tell them of publishing and no one ever asks how my writing is going. Have you dealt with this with adult family?

Kristi: I really hear you. I published my first 15 books when married the first time, and my husband then (who is a good, good friend now) would not acknowledge it at all. We would stand at church and someone else would remark that they saw in the paper that I had a new book out, and he would not even say "nice job" or anything. Occasionally an extended family member would ask me, "are you still writing?" and I wanted to say back, "Are you still doctoring?" or "Are you still real estating?". I learned to stop expecting support from people who couldn't or wouldn't give it to me and developed instead a close little group of writing friends who UNDERSTOOD me, and somewhere along the line, people changed and got more supportive. But it wasn't until I didn't need them anymore, to be honest. I wish I could tell you that you and I are rare occurrences, but we're not. It happens a lot more often than you would guess. Just shrug mentally and give yourself a hug when you need one. In time, your family members may well come around. Mine finally did.

grandy1983: Hi, Kristi. I sometimes feel discouraged as a writer and find that I am trying too hard to write a good story. Do you have any advice that would motivate me to start writing again?

Kristi: Trying too hard is a good writer's middle name, I sometimes think. Give yourself permission, instead, to write a really BAD story. We put so much pressure on ourselves to do things well, and do them well even in rough drafts! If you haven't read Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird, buy a used copy online and give yourself a treat with her chapter on (pardon her language) "Writing Shitty First Drafts." When I sit down to write a new story or article, I remind myself of the words my own ICL instructor told me 24 years ago. I was paralyzed like that then, and she said, "Kristi, nothing you write is so bad it can't be rewritten." So I still tell myself that--and I plan to write pretty bad rough drafts--and I never disappoint myself. Take the pressure off yourself--remind yourself that NO ONE needs to see anything you've written, so let it rip.

Mel: In your opinion what are the main reasons writers give up writing (published writers and unpublished writers)?

Kristi: Writers fear they are wasting their time, that they are chasing after a dream that will never happen. I think they lose hope. It rings true with my own experience, that of my friends and students, and the Keyes book I referred to. He says, "The one thing we can't write without is hope. Hope is to writers as oxygen is to scuba divers. No writer can survive without it."

Mel: Talk about expectations, Kristi--what IS realistic then?

Kristi: I set writing goals, and I encourage my students to set goals, both short- and long-term. But the danger comes when we make our GOALS into EXPECTATIONS. A goal is something you have total control over, like "I will write two hours per day" or "I will write ten new pages per week" or "I will submit a new article to a children's magazine every Friday." I get nervous, though, when students turn their goals into expectations where they are NOT in total control. They expect to achieve goals that are in part dependent on something else, like "I will sell three short stories in 2004" or "I will sell my first novel in six months" or (the scariest) "I will finish the course, quit my day job, and write full-time for a living in a year." Set realistic GOALS, but drop (to the best of your ability) your expectations. You can certainly increase your chances of selling if you write more, study more, rewrite more, study markets more, and submit more. As the numbers increase, so do your chances. But you may well increase your numbers of rejection slips as well.

Gradually, over time, your percentages of sales VS rejections will probably increase, but don't have specific expectations in this regard. Hope for good reviews, but don't always expect them (or you'll be devastated by a bad or lukewarm review.) I am NOT saying be negative. I'm not negative, and my hope is high. But my expectations are low. I do my best according to my skill level, pray for favor, and hope for the best outcome. And I wait. That's one expectation you CAN have. You can expect to wait--on agents, on editors, on publishers, on sales people, on reviewers. Get really good at waiting!

barb: How many different manuscripts/genres do you work on simultaneously?

Kristi: Two at the most, one fiction (a novel) and one nonfiction (nearly always an article of some kind). I can work on two articles at once, but not two pieces of fiction. I get too confused if I write two different fiction pieces at once. I'd like to say it's because I so wholly identify with my heroines but mostly it's because my memory has too many senior moments these days. 8-)

grandy1983: Kristi, it seems like I have an easier time developing my adult characters than I do the child characters. Why do you think this is?

Kristi: I'm not being flip, but it's because you're an adult, and I mean "emotionally" an adult, not just physically. It's a phenomenon I realized as I was working through childhood issues years ago and emotionally "growing up," that it became harder to create child characters and easier to create adult ones. For most of my life, I think I was emotionally about 12, and for years that made writing middle-grade fiction pretty easy! I "became" my heroines much more easily then. Of course, this is just my nickel's worth of pop psych--it's just a guess based on my own experience.

ladyblf2001: Got any good suggestions to help prevent being paralyzed and not able to write?

Kristi: That has happened to me twice in my writing life and this is what worked for me, and might work for you. There had been both physical and emotional ongoing traumas and I felt paralyzed, as you said, so I went back to the basics. I did the 12-week recovery course for writers in Julia Cameron's The Artist’s Way (the biggest help) and I journaled daily to get my feelings out of the deep freeze, and I did writing exercises that I never showed to anyone--they were just horrible. I re-read a few writing texts to remind myself what I had "forgotten" for a while and I read inspirational articles in writing magazines, that type of thing. But the 12-week recovery course/book was the biggest help.

cheryl s: Where can I get your book, Writer’s First Aid?

lizr: When you say you work on two manuscripts at most at the same time--do you include editing/revising with that or will you spend time on a third manuscript that you're editing?

Kristi: That includes editing a manuscript that might come back from an editor. When an editor asks for a novel revision there is usually plenty of time before getting the actual revisions for me to finish a revision on my current novel. And then I can set that one aside, if necessary, to revise the one from the editor. Things move so slowly in the business, though, that I have only had to stop work on a book to revise another one twice in my whole career, unless my memory is wrong.

blondepsycho: How do you keep up hope when the bills are getting higher?

Kristi: At the very beginning, I didn't have to work, but when we lost our farm during the farm crisis, I started teaching full-time and I didn't quit my day job while the bills were still there to pay. In the beginning, you need to have either a supportive spouse, be living with your parents, or have a day job till you have enough income from your writing, and oddly enough, you may well find that you get more writing done then. I always got more writing done when I had a day job and had to squeeze out two precious hours per day for the writing, but if you put pressure on yourself to sell your writing by quitting your day job too soon, you could end up with a huge self-induced writer's block.

t green: Do you find outlining helpful, or can you just have the idea and write the story to see where the characters go? Is this a good writing practice?

Kristi: It depends on your personality. I used to tell all my students to OUTLINE, OUTLINE, OUTLINE because that's the way I do it. But I've since learned that a lot of my successful writer friends don't outline and that an outline stifles their creativity. I think it's a case of experimenting and finding what works best for you. My personality rebels at the thought of just starting to write and see where the spirit leads, but I know many writers who totally rebel about doing outlines. Try both ways several times and see how you produce your best writing, and that will be the right way FOR YOU.

barb: How many years did you write magazine stories before you switched to writing novels?

Kristi: Almost three, then I found out I was expecting another baby, and we needed much more money, and it was either make more money writing, or go back to public school teaching and put my kids in day care. It was the push I needed to write the books.

grandy1983: I would like to write a middle-grade novel about a grandparent with a sad disease, but I am not sure if this would make a good topic or not. Do you think kids ages 8-12 would be interested in reading a story about this sort of topic or situation?

Kristi: Yes, my own book The Rose Beyond the Wall for middle graders had a grandmother who died from cancer, and she died at home where the granddaughter lived, and I got lots of good letters from kids about the book, and it got on recommended lists, etc. If you can find a way to write it that is encouraging and hopeful, even when the character dies, it helps kids deal with a tough subject.

cup: Kristi, can you please tell us how things are going with Laurie, your daughter in the military?

Kristi: Thank you so much for asking! She is still just north of Baghdad, where she has been for 8 months or so. Her stay got extended, as so many soldiers’ did, and she is supposed to be coming home in March, and we should get to see her in April. Christmas was hard, but she is a tough cookie. It went from 140 degrees there in August to under 40 there now.

blubug: Kristi I am new to all this. Where do you get most of your inspirations?

Kristi: Well, I have come full circle now. When I started writing and took the ICL course, I had small kids and a newborn, and my inspiration came a lot from being a mom and things they went through and things I had gone through as a child. My writing got older as they got older, and I did four young teen books. But now I babysit a lot for my 18-month-old granddaughter, Abby, and read a zillion board books, so suddenly I get all these baby book ideas. So I get a lot from my surroundings. School teachers often report that they get their ideas from their young students.

chitty: How do you get to the recovery course by Julia Cameron?

mamalee: I have loads of ideas but struggle in developing conflict. What can I do?

Kristi: I don't know, off the top of my head. My own problem with writing was having too MUCH conflict for kids to deal with. One way is to think about issues you feel passionate about, whether it's people taking care of pets or recycling or verbal abuse or whatever, something that really, really chaps your hide. These things always suggest conflict with characters in a story on both sides of the conflict. If I need a story conflict, I will think of things that really bug me or have hurt someone I love and I will use that as a conflict, making the villain the abuser or animal hater or whatever. The added benefit of using your passions for conflicts is that it fuels your best writing. You write your best when you're writing about something that really matters to you, ficiton or nonfiction.

g.j.: I also have a problem writing for young children, which is my chosen genre, although not my best genre. I'd like to suggest Creating Characters Kids Will Love by Elaine Marie Alphin, and Children’s Writers Word Book, by Alijandra Mogilner.

Kristi: Elaine's book is truly excellent! And I've heard good things about the Mogilner book as well.

lizr: About Creating Characters Kids Will Love, did you read many of the books she mentions as examples - in the Read The Pros sections?

Kristi: No, I didn't. Quite a few of them I had already read.

olyviarose: I have a children's book written and what to do next?

Kristi: It depends somewhat on the type of book. A fiction picture book would most likely be submitted (the entire manuscript) to an editor, but a longer work (fiction or nonfiction) would likely require a query letter. Get a good market book, like the 2004 Children's Book Market, and look in the subject guide at the back for the type of book you have written. Then look up the individual publishers in the book and see what their requirements are, then submit accordingly.

momof3: Can you give us your best piece of advice for beginners?

Kristi: Hang in there. Truly.

ben: Kristi, should I market my first novel myself, or look for an agent to handle it?

Kristi: I think you will most likely want to market it yourself. If it's a first novel, you would find it almost impossible to find a good, reputable agent. You can find a BAD agent without book credits, but a bad agent is worse than no agent at all. By a good agent, I mean one who has experience, knows the editors, has a good track record of sales, etc. Most reputable agents won't look at a first children's novel. You can market it yourself, though. I've never had an agent myself.

kay kay: Kristi, did you sell the first fictional children's book that you wrote? And how long before The Rose Beyond the Wall came along?

Kristi: Yes, I did sell the first one, although it was rejected before it sold. I think the Rose was my fourth or fifth book.

grandy1983: I read The Rose Beyond the Wall! I loved it, Kristi! I find it to be a great source of inspiration.

Kristi: Thank you. I wrote it after my dad died.

cynde: You mentioned that you are an outliner. Do you ever stray from your outline?

Kristi: Yes, I do stray from the outline more and more, especially during revisions when something I had planned doesn't work as well as I'd hoped. My outlines and rough drafts are NOT set in stone, though, they're just a guideline for me.

kay kay: I finished the first draft of a novel, but since have had no desire to revise or rewrite. Have you ever lost passion for a project and put it away? Does the passion for it come back?

Kristi: I don't recall that ever happening just like you described, unless something personal happened in the interim. But circumstances have intervened after I've written two rough drafts and even revised a bit and the two books I got submitted finally this fall were books that had been put away over a year or more. And actually, when I had the time to re-read them, it DID spark interest in them again and the revisions I did were much better than they would have been a couple years ago. On the other hand, a third book went to the garbage--it stunk and did not revive!

Mel: Ha, glad to hear that happens to other writers, too, Kristi!

kay kay: Your answer to my question was very encouraging, Kristi. Thank you!

Kristi: You're welcome.

blondepsycho: How do I set an age group on a novel that starts out when the MC is a child and grows up to be an adult? Half would be suited for children and half suited for adults.

Kristi: A novel that covers that many years will be really, really hard to sell, partly for the very reason you mentioned--how to pinpoint an audience. Even really long books like Little Women that cover a number of years don't usually go from child to adulthood because you have to condense events too much or leave out years of the MC's life. I'm sorry I can't help you more with that. I honestly don't know the answer.

punkin: How do you overcome writer's block? Do you keep writing?

Kristi: I have used different tricks over the years, but I can't say I get writer's block anymore. Thankfully, it's one of those things that goes by the wayside. I think letting up on the pressure on myself helped the most, knowing that I didn't have to sell anything ever again if it came to that, and I concentrated instead on writing things I really enjoyed. I just sit down and write at a regular time, regardless of how I feel, and the blocked feeling goes away. It's like praying with me. I don't often feel like doing it till I do it, and about ten minutes into it, it's enjoyable.

cynde: I've written mainly short stories, but now I'm working on a novel. How do I know I have enough "story" for a novel?

Kristi: Short stories have one main story line usually, while a novel has a main plot and a subplot or two; that's one way to tell. Another is by the number of characters and the length of time covered in the story. Sometimes you don't know you don't have enough story for a novel till you start to plot it out and break it up into chapters. Each chapter needs two or three complete scenes, and a novel needs a problem that can't be easily overcome, that will take time and serious effort to resolve, and in such a way that the main character shows honest character growth (which takes time).

mbvoelker: I finished a story the other day and felt like I'd been run over by a speeding train. Left me even more hopelessly in love with my own words than usual. Anything, other than just letting it sit, to help me regain my objectiveness faster? It’s got a very likely market waiting so I don't want to take too long getting to the serious editing.

Kristi: How nice to be in love with your own writing! When I need to get to the editing soon for market reasons, I take enough time to read several things first. One is a book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, plus several articles on revision that I have clipped over the years. This gets me in the mindset for editing by reminding me of what I am looking for. And it keeps me from turning a blind eye to the faults in my writing just because I happen to like certain phrases or whatever. Do something for several days that gets you to change from your creative writer's hat to your tough editorial hat.

lizr: Do you still find that you are learning more and more about your/the writing craft, even after all your successes?

Kristi: Yes, mostly you find out how much you don't know after a while and that you need to keep learning. I have a stack of a dozen writing books now that I want to read.

homebodymom1: Why am I stressing so much over outlines? Any suggestions?

Kristi: If you mean outlines for your course assignments, it's probably because you want to "do it right," for your assignment, but if it's for your own personal use, try writing without an outline, or just a sketchy one, and see if that helps. You may just be one of the writers who hates outlines. There's nothing wrong with that--I wish I were like that actually!

corinth: As someone still awaiting ICL's Aptitude Test results, what texts/activities, etc., do you recommend in the meanwhile?

Kristi: Do a lot of reading in the genre you're most interested in, if you know what it is. Otherwise, just read widely--ask your children's librarian for some of the most popular books and magazines for kids today and start reading. Also, journal daily, about your feelings, especially, and things that move you or make you mad or evoke an emotional response. And try to get into a daily habit of writing, even just a little bit. It will help you a lot once you pass the test.

corinth: Thanks for your advice, it will be applied.

dreamwanderer: My biggest problem is knowing what vocabulary to use for what age group. My kids are grown and I’m not fully versed in what language barriers each age group has.

Kristi: If you need an actual vocabulary list for controlled readers or hi-lo books, your word processing program probaby has one listed under the "tools" drop down bar. If you run the grammar check there, after you put your story through the grammar check, a reading level will pop up and tell you the grade level your story is at, the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, it's called on Microsoft Word. But if you're talking more about the popular words of the times, you can learn that "lingo" by hanging out and eavesdropping in McDonalds, at the mall, by going early to a kids’ movie and sitting down front, by watching shows for that age group, or renting movies, or reading magazines aimed at that age group. All of those ways will get you back in touch with the vocabulary of today's kids.

susanwrites: How many times have you been rejected on one project before you gave it up?

Kristi: This is just a guess, based on memory, but early on I gave up very easily. I retired short stories when they'd only been rejected a couple times--a big mistake! I do have a project or two that I gave up on after half a dozen rejections, but mostly because by that time I could see that they had serious flaws that I just didn't want to spend the time fixing. I had fallen out of love with the stories by then and they were best left in a box under the bed. But the other projects I believed in and kept submitting. I have one book that has been revised half a dozen times and submitted about ten times and is still "out there," and I know it's a good book, and I'm still hopeful it will find a good home.

mbvoelker: Have you any advice for expanding your range beyond your main writing interests? I find that in writing what I love most I have a very limited set of possible markets. I'd love to expand my range and become more marketable, but without being untrue to the themes, genres, and styles that I love. I expect there is a compromise but don't know how to find it.

Kristi: Personally, I write fiction in two genres, mainstream family-type stories and mysteries, but that only came about because that's the type of books I love to read. I didn't consciously decide to expand into mysteries--it just happened because I have always loved to read them. If I remember correctly, you like to write sci-fi/fantasy. Is that the only genre you read, too? If not, check out the other types of books you like to read, whether fiction or nonfiction, and see if perhaps you might expand in that direction. Also keep an eye on the things you NEVER read because chances are you can't write them well either. For example, I almost never read romances of any kind, and I'm quite sure I couldn't write one well either.

Mel: What hope can you offer writers today in this shrinking market when it is so tough to break in, get noticed, find a publisher, or get an agent?

Kristi: Personally, I think it's always been tough to break in, find an agent, and find a publisher. (Good ones, anyway.) I found an old writer's magazine from the early 50s not long ago, and I read a few articles in there, and you'd swear they were written today. They said the same things about how competitive it was, how editors didn't know a good idea when it was presented to them, how bad the pay was, how you couldn't get attention if you didn't "know someone" high up in the business. I'm not so sure things are all that different today. It has never been easy to be a professional writer. It never will be. It has always taken guts and perseverance, and it always will. It has always been a lonely business, and it still is sometimes. If you have to have a career that's easy, then don't write. Do something else. 8-) But if you love to write, keep at it. It has never been easy, but that didn't stop thousands of published writers in the past. It doesn't have to stop anyone now.

cynde: When you write at your regular time, is it the same time everyday? For the same amount of time?

Kristi: I try hard to write from 8-10 a.m. daily, if at all possible. If I know something is going to conflict, I try to get up earlier and skip my walk and write from 6-8. Then, even if the rest of the day falls apart, I will have gotten my writing done. I found out early on, that no matter how good my intentions were later in the day, if I didn't write first, chances were good that I wouldn't write at all. But when the kids were babies, in the very beginning, I wrote only at naptimes or in tiny, tiny 10-minute segments throughout the day. The two- hour stretches didn't start till my "baby" went to kindergarten.

trukinhuny: Have you ever thought about self-publishing?

Kristi: Yes, I did it once. My Writer's First Aid was first called First Aid for Writers, and I tried it on booklocker.com as an e-book. I had heard a lot about e-books and it didn't cost me anything to try it. But then ICL decided they wanted to published a trade paperback of it and changed the title. I have never wanted to self-publish actual "hold in my hand" books, though. I never had the money to do it in the first place (I needed publishers to pay ME), and I hate the idea of having to be a salesman. That is my very least favorite part of writing anyway and I didn't want to have to be writer, editor, art director, salesman, publicist, shipper and all the rest--it was too daunting.

blondepsycho: iUniverse is a good place, I hear, for first-time publishing. What is your opinion?

Kristi: I only know two people who have tried it, and they both sounded pleased with their experience. But I don't have any first-hand experience with them myself.

Mel: Why is "being realistic" hopeful instead of discouraging?

Kristi: I think it stops you from being so surprised and dejected when setbacks occur. It's like anything in life really. If you're a firefighter and expect to have some sleepless nights and occasional burns, you won't be discouraged and want to quit your job when you are awakened for calls or get burned sometimes. It won't have been a surprise. In the same way, writers who are more realistic are less likely to be discouraged by how long things take, how many rejections they get, how much time they have to spend marketing and submitting, and the need to educate themselves on craft and the publishing business. They will know from the outset that it's just part of the writing business.

Mel: Do you find encouragement from other writers' experience?

Kristi: Yes, especially modern writers dealing with the modern publishing problems. I never got as much encouragement from reading about how many times GONE WITH THE WIND was rejected, or other books by famous writers of an earlier era. My mind would immediately argue that "times have changed" and "it's harder now" and "editors don't have time to edit now" and "books are bought by committees now," etc. What encourages me the most are stories about modern writers that are selling in today's markets. For example, a dozen agents turned down representing J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.

John Grisham started out writing his first novel while working at a job he didn't like. He wrote at night on a typewriter wedged between the washer and dryer in the laundry room of the small house he shared with his wife and infant son. He submitted his first book to dozens of agents who returned it, until finally someone took him on and sold the book to a small publisher in Connecticut. That publisher sold very few of the 5,000 copies printed. His agent was having trouble selling his second novel, and John nearly quit. He ended up buying 1,000 copies of his book (A Time to Kill) that weren't selling, and sold them from the trunk of his Volvo at book signings he arranged for himself at libraries and little bookstores in Mississippi and Arkansas. Stories like these, where authors had dismal beginnings but didn't quit, are very inspiring to me. Grisham's sales through his own efforts eventually caught a publisher's eye, and shortly after that his career took off. But discouragement could just have easily made him quit--it has made many others quit.

Mel: What is the first thing writers will have to overcome in order to write?

Kristi: You can call it any number of things: doubt, anxiety, lack of self-confidence. All writers get anxious. Even Danielle Steele is quoted as saying, "I never start a book without being terrified I won't finish it. And I never finish a book without being terrified I won't start another." If you don't overcome this anxious feeling, or learn to live with it and ignore it, you won't ever write much.

Mel: Are you always conscious of the fact that you're anxious about your writing?

Kristi: I used to be, especially in the beginning of my career. I could barely sit in my chair for ten minutes. I was up pacing and grazing in the refrigerator and eating antacids. But anxiety can show up in a variety of ways. You might think you're lazy and a procrastinator, when in fact you're anxious about your writing project and avoiding it that way. You might develop a writer's block and think, "Oh no! I'm blocked!", when really you're just anxious. Another thing that can masquerade as anxiety is arrogance about how good you are as a writer. It can be a mask you (or others) wear to cover up how truly anxious you are about your writing.

Mel: How can anxiety be a good sign?

Kristi: According to Keyes, "If our writing doesn't make us anxious, there could be something seriously wrong." If you think about it, he has a good point. If you're anxious about your writing, you're likely pushing yourself, stretching and reaching higher, and that's a good thing. I mean, no one gets anxious writing a grocery list, so it's not the act of writing itself that makes you nervous or anxious. If your writing never makes you anxious or stirs you up, I'd question whether you were stretching yourself to do your best. I know I've written things on contract for flat fees before, ideas thought up by others that I had to flesh out. I "cranked out" those stories with little or no anxiety, and they are some of my worst, flattest work. Anxiety comes when you're stretching yourself.

Mel: What makes you think that most authors have to deal with this anxiety about their writing?

Kristi: First of all, personal experience. Second, from asking friends over the years, people I would never have guessed still struggled with this. And third, by reading about famous writers like Gail Godwin and Norman Mailer, who are honest in telling about how much they dread getting to work each day and how hard it is. Even Stephen King is quoted as saying that his prolific book each year is partly trying to "outrun the self-doubt that's always waiting to settle in." We are not alone! Be encouraged by these stories. I am. It means that nothing is wrong with me that the anxiety has stayed with me over the years (to the point where it barely bothers me--but it's still there). Trust me, everyone is anxious about their writing--young and old, unpublished, published and award-winners. That's just the way it is. The goal is to learn to work with the anxiety or tune it out, much like when you're writing with a teen's stereo blaring in the next room or your back aching. You can stop wasting time and energy railing against fate and wishing life were different, and just get down to concentrating on the writing and ignoring what you can't change.

Mel: You mean you're actually STUCK with the frustration?

Kristi: Well, yes, more often than not, if you're going to try to keep growing and learning as a writer. About the only way around that is to lower your personal goals so much that they are no challenge to you at all, and then you'll always meet your goals. For most of us, our expectations and hopes and dreams always outstrip what we can do at the moment, but that keeps us pushing ahead. You must find ways to tolerate frustration. And sometimes it's not all that complicated. It's simply coming to an understanding that you're not odd, that what you're feeling is NORMAL, and that it comes with the territory. It's like being a doctor or some professional that requires long and sometimes irregular hours. If you spend your time moaning and groaning about the interruptions and the hours you're called to the hospital, you're not going to last as a practicing doctor. It simply goes with the territory as long as you care about your calling, and you'd need to accept that. In the same way, accept the fact that ALL writers, new and old, are daily finding ways to cope with frustration and keep writing. You can too.

cynde: How long do you spend on an outline for a novel?

Kristi: I don't give myself more than a week of my planning time. I take about a month to plan out a novel, but the first three weeks go into character developement, thinking about themes and settings, problems and subplots, stuff like that. Then in the fourth week, I type up all my pieces of plot problems, cut apart the pieces, spread them on the floor, and rearrange them in chronological order. Then I divide the pieces up into chapters--as I said, that step takes about a week of my writing time.

imhopeful: How do you find your writer's voice without all your main characters in different books sounding the same?

Kristi: For a long time, they DID sound the same, although no one ever pointed it out to me because they were all ME, at the age of 11 or 12. But now that I'm branching out better, I find myself reading books about it like Finding Your Voice (how to put personality into your writing) by Les Edgerton, and to get the voices of the characters to be distinctive. I do more work on dialogue (tags, favorite expressions, etc.) so they stand out as different. But mostly they will only sound distinctive if they truly ARE distinctive. So the real work is in creating very different characters with very different personalities and experiences and mindsets, and getting inside their heads and "living" in there for a while so you get a feel for how they would express themselves, both inwardly and vocally. It's time consuming to do, but well worth the effort.

artist: Do you ever illustrate your books?

Kristi: No, I've never illustrated anything. If you saw how bad my stick figures looked, you'd know why.

artist: I am an artist but I don't much about book illustration. Any advice for me?

Mel: Kristi, we've just gotten started on our new year of writing for children, and you have just gotten started with all your good suggestions for organizing our writing, your inspiration for us to succeed, and the stick-to-it-iveness you always help us to find. Will you come back again someday, perhaps for our annual encouragement?

Kristi: You bet! Where did the two hours go anyway?!

kay kay: Thanks for your help Kristi, Mel.

chitty: Thanks, Kristi, for your answer on anxiety--I thought I was lazy.

Kristi: You're all very welcome.

Mel: Two weeks from tonight, on January 22, our guest will be Jane Yolen, a children's writer and poet and teacher. Jane has sold so many books that I lost count at 200. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America (by Newsweek Magazine) and the Aesop of the twentieth century. Jane Yolen's books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award. During all her award-winning years of publishing children's books, Jane has continually and heartfully supported other children's writers at conferences-including this writer. Please return on January 22, "early to get a good seat," and talk with Jane Yolen!

Mel: Thanks again, Kristi, for encouraging us tonight! Good night, everyone, and a CONTINUING WRITING-PRODUCING-AND-SELLINGLY HAPPY 2004!

blondepsycho: Thank you Kristi—I have enjoyed your wisdom!

imhopeful: Thank you both, Mel and Kristi. You've been a big help. I wish both you and your families the best.

cynde: Thank you very much. What a gift!

ben: Thanks to Kristi and the peanut gallery for great questions.

corinth: Thanks for your advice!

writermom: Thanks, Mel and Kristi, it was very helpful.

Kristi: You're all so welcome!

Mel: Twenty-four years ago, Kristi, when you took the ICL course, did you think that writing for you would be like it is today?

Kristi: NO. Not at all. I thought the anxiety and frustration would only last until I got published. I thought the rejection slips would then dwindle to almost nothing, I would look at my published work and be infused with confidence that I was now a "real writer," that I would feel this "serenity" when I sat down to write that I imagined my favorite writers felt all the time, that I would breathe deeply and "write in flow," etc. Occasionally--like maybe 5% of my writing time--I would feel that way. For more than ten years I feared that there was something terribly wrong with me that I still struggled daily with procrastination and anxiety, that I hated marketing, that I was petrified at book signings, that I feared I was "washed up" as a writer because surely no one else who had supposedly "made it" was getting rejection slips. How I WISH I had known then what I know today about the writing life. I would have accepted most of these things as normal instead of a sign that something was wrong with me, or that I should get out of writing or that I was never going really "make it." But finding out that current writers who are famous and a lot richer and bigger names than I’ll ever be feel the same way on a daily basis was such a help! It meant I was normal. And it showed me beyond a doubt that having those feelings and rejection experiences had no real bearing on my career--because it had no influence on theirs either. It was all just part of the writing business.

Mel: How do these anxious or frustrated or dejected moods affect the quality of your writing?

Kristi: Very little, oddly enough. Those moods affect the ENJOYMENT of the writing day, but later, when rereading my work, I honestly can’t tell the good days from the bad ones. The quality of the writing is much the same, so I’m careful to save everything. It’s tempting to delete huge amounts of your writing on the sluggish days, but don’t! When you come back to it the next day or next week, you’ll find (with surprise) that it is often just as good as anything else you’ve written. And if you’re writing when going through a trying time--a divorce or death or serious illness--you may produce your best work. My books that won awards or ended up on recommended lists were the ones written after a death or divorce. So your actual enjoyment of the writing at any given time is NOT a good barometer of your results. I’m not alone in this finding either. Even J. K. Rowling talked about the depression she had to fight when she was writing her first Harry Potter book--and no one can argue with the success of her efforts there.

Mel: At what point (after how many years or how many rejections) do writers give up and accept the fact that they’re wasting their time?

Kristi: That is one question that I can’t answer at all. It is very individual, and it has to do with a person’s desire to write, no matter what, and how persevering they are. I wasn’t close to giving up after my first 30 rejections and no sale, but I can’t say for sure how long I would have lasted before quitting. I have more endurance now and more faith in the whole writing game than I did then, so I would probably last longer now. But I find my enjoyment now is in the actual daily writing, not in the publication or sales part of it. That means the enjoyment is under my own control much more, and so I’d be less likely to give up too soon now. I have known too many friends who wrote and wrote and wrote, never selling till their fifth or sixth book, who went on to win awards with their writing. If they had decided they were "wasting their time" after the fourth rejected novel, they would never have been published or enjoy the careers they now have. There simply is no predicting, except that if you quit, you have a 100% chance of never publishing.

Mel: It’s hard enough dealing with your own inner discouragement. How about the discouragement of others?

Kristi: Early in my career, except for my ICL instructor, no one thought I could make it as a writer or get a book published. Some told me to do something productive like plant more zucchini and paint my kitchen ceiling. I didn’t know other writers then, and I somehow thought my personal discouragers were unique. They weren’t! Every writer has at least one, and usually there are several in your life. Again, hearing about other writers’ experiences in this area is so helpful. For example, Sue Grafton (who writes the Kinsey Milhone mystery series) was told by Hollywood producers that she couldn’t plot (and mysteries are plot driven). She proved them wrong with her best-selling series. And screenwriter Kevin Williamson was told that he "had a voice that shouldn’t be heard." That crack kept him from writing for ten years, until he went back to writing and produced, among other things, "Dawson’s Creek." You have to decide to prove these discouragers wrong--you can NOT listen to them.

Mel: What other kinds of frustrations do writers have to overcome?

Kristi: There are some frustrations that happen to most writers everywhere, both inner struggles and problems in their environment. I deal with a lot of this kind of thing in Writer’s First Aid. You have to get over the "I don’t have enough time" excuse and determine to make time or steal it from something else. We all have to deal with interruptions by family members or friends who are jealous or just want to control our time. Most of us would love to start our writing days feeling inspired, but few do. The inspirational excited feelings come for most writers, if they come at all, only after you’ve primed the pump and have written for about fifteen or twenty minutes. You may have to deal with frustration over a part of the writing process you simply dislike, like market study or writing queries or revision. We ALL have parts of the process we don’t like very well--or actively hate--but it’s part of the writing life. Fear of failing is always there for some writers, especially if they have set totally unrealistic goals. All of these can be dealt with, though.

Mel: Let’s take those one at a time. What about the frustration of not having enough time?

Mel: What about those outside discouragers, whether it’s a spouse, an in-law or a friend?

Kristi: Learn who your friends and supporters are, and only share your writing and writing dreams with them. It’s a shame when your spouse or parent is the person you have to hide your dreams from, but it happens more frequently than you think, even in otherwise decent families. As your writing progresses, this might change as your family sees that you are still going to be part of their lives and be available, even if it’s in a different way. But find supportive writers in your area or online--both are very good choices--and just plan to get your encouragement and support there. If chronic discouragers ask you how your writing is going, just say "fine" and change the subject. You’re under no obligation to answer the questions of those who put you down or discourage you.

Mel: Should writers expect to feel "inspired" to write most of the time?

Kristi: Definitely not. It’s fun when it happens, when you’re eager to get to the keyboard, when you lose track of time because the writing is just flowing from your fingertips with very little effort. But don’t think that this is the norm or even at all necessary to being a good writer. To be honest, inspiration usually comes AFTER you’ve gotten into your writing day, after you’ve been typing half an hour or so. It’s better to set up and stick to a definite daily routine than rely on inspiration striking to make you write. If you’re a writer, you write, whether you feel inspired or not. It’s a bit like being a parent or a spouse. You are, or you aren’t. Feelings have very little to do with it.

Mel: Do you get frustrated at the amount of time you have to take for marketing or the business/learning side of writing?

Kristi: Sometimes I do. In a January 2004 article in Writer’s Digest, "The Best-Laid Plans," the writer says that your writing time should be split like this: writing (50%), business (10%), education (10%), marketing (15%), and submitting (15%). I had never seen it laid out quite that way, but apparently I’m not the only one who thinks the non-writing part of writing takes a big chunk of time. There’s no point in getting frustrated by it. I plan for it, I dislike it, I grit my teeth, and I do it anyway. Since I dislike marketing, I have to write down a long, detailed to-do list for each marketing project, and tackle one tiny bit at a time. Like one step may be "write a sample hook for the query with an anecdote," another step might be "write a sample hook using a quote," another step might be "print five SASE’s for multiple query letters." I break things that I dislike doing into tiny, tiny steps so I only have to get up enough gumption to tackle a small piece. I never put something like "write query letters" on my To Do list. A job like that might sit ignored for weeks because I find it too daunting, too unrewarding, and very frustrating because I feel like I should be writing instead of messing with markets.

Mel: Some writers are frustrated by their ages. What about being too old or too young to start writing?

Kristi: There are good things (and not so good things) about whatever age you decide to start writing. If you’re young, you have many decades ahead of you to write and improve and sell and become rich. Unfortunately, you may have more trouble finding things to write about because you haven’t lived long or through much. Experience and insight, by and large, come with age. If you’re older when you start writing, you have a wealth of riches to share, you can write historical fiction without having to do any research because you lived through it, and you don’t give up easily because you’ve already learned that anything worthwhile doesn’t come quickly or easily. On the other hand, if you’re older, you tire more easily or have health problems, or you’re not tuned into what today’s kids are reading or dealing with because your own kids are grown and long gone. Each age has its drawbacks, and each age has its assets. There is no right or wrong age to begin writing--or to begin again if you quit some time in the past. Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first novel at sixty-five and her best ones in her seventies. Tons of other famous writers began writing very late in life.

Mel: I didn’t start writing until I was 30 myself, Kristi. What can you do about a fear of failure that keeps you from writing or keeps you from submitting what you write--or gives you such a writer’s block that you can’t even get started?

Kristi: Well, first of all, most writers feel like failures simply because their finished products hardly ever match the wonderful idea they had in mind when they started. Nothing you write will ever be quite as good as you envisioned when it was just an idea in your head. It’s that way for every writer. So just accept that part and don’t feel like a failure over it. Most writers are afraid of failure, and they write anyway. Writers write. It’s where you have to straighten your shoulders and call into play that Nike slogan: "Just do it!" No one says you can’t do it afraid. Just do it.

Mel: Let’s talk about rejection slips now. What’s realistic to expect? What was your own experience getting rejections slips?

Kristi: I think I was about average. I got rejected 30 times before my first sale. I tried to submit a new short article or story every Friday. In a year, three were accepted. Three out of about fifty submissions, and those three were assignments. So even my sales made me uneasy because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sell anything on my own after graduation, without my instructor’s input. But the percentages went up. Even so, I never reached close to 50% on my articles or short stories. It’s times like those when others’ stories of rejection can be encouraging. For example, Stephen King’s first four novels and sixty stories were rejected. So many of our favorite books were rejected many, many times: Love Story, A Wrinkle in Time, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and many more.

Mel: How can you handle the rejections in order to keep them from discouraging you to the point of giving up?

Kristi: Adjust your attitude about them. Do not be surprised by them or think you are failing or being singled out. Rejection is not something that stops with publication for anyone these days. Understand and accept that rejections come after you’ve been published too! It’s not personal or a reflection on your writing ability or your probable future career. One way I do NOT recommend dealing with rejection is to self-publish your rejected work or put it out there in cyberspace on your personal web site. You will undoubtedly be embarrassed in years to come, after your writing has progressed, and wish you had never done it. And even when you take down the web page, it’s archived and floating in space forever. I have found my own articles archived in many, many places on the web without my permission. Resist the "instant gratification publication" as an alternative to dealing with early rejections. It can come back to haunt you. (There ARE notable exceptions. Sometimes a self-published book will be very good, and the author travels the country selling enough copies out of his trunk to attract a big publisher and a contract. This is much more the exception than the rule, though, and you have to love being a traveling salesman.)

Mel: How do you encourage yourself when what you consider to be your best work gets rejected repeatedly?

Kristi: I suppose misery loves company, but I get encouraged by stories of modern writers in the same boat who were repeatedly rejected, but whose books and stories went on to be million-dollar books or award winners. Did you know an agent told Danielle Steele her first book and her writing would never sell and to go home and have more children? Or that Michener’s agent dumped him because of low sales and said there were "no prospects for him" in the marketplace--just before his South Pacific book won the Pulitzer Prize? If you read about the lives of famous authors, you’ll find these stories abound. Most famous writers that you read today started out like this--and had to make the decision to ignore this negativity and keep believing in themselves and keep writing. I know I sound like a broken record here, but let me repeat: IT’S JUST A FACT OF THE WRITING BUSINESS. IT’S NO PREDICTOR OF YOUR WRITING FUTURE.

Mel: In order to keep hope alive, do you do anything besides reading about other authors with similar experiences?

Kristi: Yes I do, Mel, but I don’t want to minimize the value of understanding that all writers--even the famous, rich, much-published ones--deal with rejection and setbacks all the time. I think until this year, when I made kind of a study of it, I still didn’t believe deep down that it was the norm to deal with this stuff all through your career. I took it personally, as a bad sign, a sign of being a has-been or mediocre writer. So read some books like Rotten Rejections: The Letters that Publishers Wish They’d Never Sent, by Andre Bernard. You’ll be encouraged--I guarantee it.

In Keyes’ book, he also recommended doing things like reading the acknowledgments in the fronts of books and seeing how much these published writers were helped and encouraged by others in order to make it to the publishing finishing line. If they hadn’t been discouraged, these authors wouldn’t bubble over with thanks for any little encouragement they received. (In the Mary Higgins Clark novel I’m reading now, she acknowledges about thirty people by name--friends, editors, critique partners.)

Keyes also suggests that you take courses and attend conferences, where you can find encouraging teachers. I know that my ICL instructor, the late Dorothy Van Woerkom, was a key reason I wrote and published my first book. Of all the people in my life at the time, she was the only one saying to me, "I think you have what it takes to write a book." Everyone else wanted me to get "a real job" or grow a bigger garden. I loved my family dearly, but I dedicated that first published novel to Dorothy because her encouraging letter or two after I graduated made the difference in whether I stuck to my dream of writing a book. The best teachers and conference leaders offer hope--realistic hope--to writers. BEWARE of those leaders or critique persons who delight in ripping apart your work or have nothing constructive to say about it or (the worst) suggest you get into another line of work ASAP. Do NOT listen! Number One: they don’t know if you have what it takes to make it or not. Number Two: they may be giving that advice from mixed or nasty motives.

Mel: Any other ways you found this past year to overcome frustration and keep writing?

Kristi: Finding a group (on-line or in person) is a great antidote to the loneliness and feeling that "no one else feels as frustrated or despairing as I do." As with the conferences and classes, you need to be careful that you find supportive groups and critiquers. You need mentors, not TORmentors. Stay away from competitive people if you can, the ones who only feel good if they can make you feel inadequate about your work.

Also, learn about the publishing business by reading about it. Get familiar with Publisher’s Weekly, and read books like The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner and The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. Knowing how publishers operate today--not ten years ago--is a big help toward beating discouragement. Simply knowing that today it is often a committee decision to purchase a book (not a single editor’s decision anymore) helps you understand the time delays, keeps you from getting your hopes up unduly when a particular editor likes your work but hasn’t yet presented it to the other editors or marketing/salespeople. Again, it goes back to expectations. Find out what’s average or normal in publishing houses these days, and adjust your expectations accordingly. You’ll get fewer nasty surprises, and consequently have less discouragement to deal with.

Mel: Most writers feel that once they are published--especially that once they have published a book--that most of this angst should be behind them. Is that true?

Kristi: Well, it’s true that it SHOULD BE behind them, but 90% of the time it isn’t. You just may have different angst to deal with. For example, stories abound of writers who finally got over all the hurdles and got books published, only to have them disappear without a trace. No publicity, very low sales. Much author angst. If that happens to you, you may need to continue to battle discouragement and frustration with publishers and take matters into your own hands. If you have to follow in Grisham’s footsteps and sell your first book from the trunk of your car to stir up interest, so be it.

Mel: Do you have a final bit of advice for writers?

Kristi: I think it would be this: Don’t be so hard on yourselves. Stop expecting perfection. Yes, work on your writing skills and craft. Just as much, work to stay encouraged. The battlefield is the mind. Pay attention to what you’re thinking, and don’t let these common, garden-variety writing frustrations and discouragement make you feel alone or make you quit. You’re NOT alone. We’re all in this together. So make 2004 your break-out year!

Mel: Thanks again, Kristi!

Kristi: You’re welcome, Mel!