Author Archives: Peggy Jaeger

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About Peggy Jaeger

I've been many things in my life,but the most consistent is WRITER.
July 1, 2014 · 11:27 am

All it takes is one “yes.”

Recently, I was a guest blogger at NHRWA author Mary K. Stone’s blog  http://marykstoneblog.com/ I decided to upload that entry to my site as well, so check it out here and then visit her website to see what she’s up to.

I’ve loved crossword puzzles since I learned how to spell, probably because I love words so much. My favorite birthday present when I turned 8? A dictionary.

So, what’s a 9 letter word for: refusal, dismissal, forsaking?

Here’s a hint: the answer starts with an r, ends in ion and can make you cry your eyes out and eat an entire package of Milano cookies in one sitting. Make that 2 packages.

Got it yet? Yup. REJECTION.

Some other words used to define rejection include: turning down, spurning, repudiation, and, my absolute favorite: the brush-off.

As a writer I have experienced my fair – and unfair – share of rejection from everyone from editors to literary agents, to publishers. I‘ve had synopses discarded, proposals denounced, queries snubbed, and outlines slighted.

I’ve been rejected in person, in print, in emails, in snail-mail, via phone and even once in a text.

I’ve experienced rude rejections (Ms. Jaeger, please do not query us again as we do not accept what you write) and form letter rejections ( Dear Writer: Thank you for your submission. We will not be asking for any further work from you)

Being a writer is fraught with enough problems without adding rejections to it. Finding time to write, liking what your write, having other people like what you write; editing, revising, restructuring; plot arc construction, motivation, goals and conflicts for the characters; deciding on a setting, theme, names of characters. The list is as long as my ingredients list for fruitcake!

The first time I ever got a piece I ‘d written rejected by an editor, I was 25. I’d already had over a dozen fictional story stories published in literary magazines, and had been writing non-fiction articles concerning health care and nursing for several years. I’d sent an article proposal based on my master’s thesis to a well-known nursing journal that had already published me twice before. I thought the topic was very timely and felt it would make a great addition to their monthly publication. I waited three months for a reply. Just as I was about to call them – this was eons before email was available and we were ALLOWED to call editors, I received a form rejection letter. Not even addressed to me personally, just “Dear Writer…” The editor stated the topic for the article was not relevant for their publication and that they were not going to ask for the article in its entirety.

Was I crushed? You betcha. Was I pissed off? To say the least. Did I want literary revenge? Hell, yeah! Did I do anything about it? Of course I did. When I finished the gallon of Cherry Garcia that I kept hidden in my freezer for emotional emergencies, I queried another nursing journal, telling them everything I’d told the first one. I got an actual phone call (remember, no email, no texting, no cells phones in the 80’s) from the Editor-in-Chief who wanted the article for their July issue, which would be featuring my UBER-RELEVANT topic from other health professionals.

The takeaway I got from this experience? Not everyone is going to like what you write. But someone will.

Flash forward several years to when I started writing book length fiction. When I was done with my first masterpiece, I began the literary agent query route. I sent out over 75 queries to agents all over the U.S. who specialized in representing what I wrote at the time: medical thrillers. Over 95 % of the responses I got back were form rejection letters addressed to “Dear Writer…” Three agents actually addressed me by name and told my why the weren’t choosing to represent my work, and two asked me to change the book completely around to what they thought might sell, and then they would consider – maybe –representing me.

When the box of Dunkin’ Donuts was gone, I picked up one of the responses I received that actually had been positive. I still have this rejection letter in my file cabinet today. The part that stuck out so plainly to me read: “While I do not feel I can devote the time and attention to representing this work that it needs, please be assured, you are a very good writer, and it only takes one person to say “yes” for you to be published. Unfortunately, I’m not that person, but I believe she or he is out there and that you will connect with them. Good luck, and I know I will see your name on a book jacket some day.”

 This was without doubt the nicest rejection I had ever received up until that time, and, to this day. If all rejection letters could be written this way, I believe we would have a lot less depressed authors milling about.

Now, the takeaway I got from this letter? You got it; same as before: not everyone is gong to like what your write. But someone will.

It only takes that one someone – be it an agent, editor, or publisher, and all those rejections that have been lining your file cabinet drawers will seem inconsequential and irrelevant. Or they will even seem like what they really are: the dues you’ve paid for persistence and perseverance.

As a writer, rejection of your work is part of the road you will travel on your way to publication. Yes, it hurts for someone to tell you they don’t like or want your work. Yes, it blows big time to have someone in a position of literary power tell you what you’ve written is not pertinent or that they don’t know how they could market it effectively. And yes, it destroys your soul when you’re rejected flat out, with no reason why, in a dry worded form letter.

But…

It only takes one editor, or literary agent, or publisher to say “YES.”

 

 

 

 

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June 27, 2014 · 9:11 am

Effective Habit IV: Marketing wisely

If you listen to anyone under the age of say, 25, they will tell you Social Media rules the world. People meet, date one another, share info – personal and not – buy things, and generally live by their media outlets. Most of these outlets are as easy to get to as typing in a few keystrokes into a cell phone, which is, literally, at the ready and with you all the time now. Words like Retweet, Like, PinIt, Hash-tag, are all now vital parts of our vocabulary. Using social media is also a way writers can get the word out about their most recent creations.

In multi-published author Barbara Wallace‘s article Seven Habits of Effective Writers in the June 2014 RWA magazine Romance Writers Report, habit no. 4 makes the case that writers who write effectively – meaning they get a lot of writing work done – use social media tools and marketing judiciously. They don’t jump on every band wagon out there and send off daily updates on blogs, websites, Pinterest, Twitter and GoodReads, to name a few. They aren’t trolling  review sites, writer blogs or shopping on Ebay.

No. Effective writers WRITE. They use their time to put words on the page. Yes, they market what they’ve written. When the bottom line for publishing houses and even self publishers is sales, you have to get the word out about your new opus. But the point is, you don’t need to be doing this as a full time job. Your job is to write.

Some mega-published authors are lucky enough to have people who work for them who will do all this marketing/media for them. From my mouth to God’s ears this happens to me someday. Establishing some sort of presence on social media appears to be a very effective way to drive buzz about your work. Even if two or three friends “share” your news with their other hundreds of “friends” – friends you don’t necessary have – that’s a few hundred more people who know about your book then did this morning. If you send out twitter alerts on a regular basis and ask followers  to retweet to their followers, well, there’s that domino effect again.

Before cell phones ruled the world, marketing consisted of advertising in magazines, on tv, on the radio. Authors were sent on multi-city book tours to promote, talk about and sell their books. Now, you can do several web interviews in a day from the privacy of your living room, or even guest host on a blog site, which I did just last weekend. The opportunities to get the word out about your writing is so much easier than it ever was due to the advent of Social Media.

Using it in a wise and shrewd manner is another effective habit that I am going to adopt, because really, my job is to write! An I would rather be doing that.

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June 26, 2014 · 9:36 am

More effective writing habits, Part III

Knowing yourself and what you’re capable of, is a smart concept for everyone, but especially a writer.  Personally, I know two solid truths about myself: I love to write, and I am a world champion procrastinator. Those two facets of my personality have, in the past, clashed, with procrastination taking the lead  and proving to be detrimental to my writing.

Barbara Wallace’s article in the june 2014 RWA Romance Writers Report, lists 7 effective habits authors should have. Number 3 is all about knowing yourself.

I’ve mentioned before that I work at a paying job that takes me out of my home three days a week. I have two days during the regular work week off and then every saturday and sunday. This may sound like a lot of time to be able to devote to writing, but in the reality called life, it isn’t. On my days off from “work” I need to: grocery shop, clean the house, do the laundry, ironing and putting of the clean clothes away; run errands to: the bank, post office, credit union, dry cleaners, in addition to scheduling all doctor, dentist, hair dresser/manicure appointments. Thrown in are my feeble attempts to get a continuous form of exercise, not to mention paying bills, checking on  family members and throwing a little time in for eating and sleeping. I can usually accomplish most of what I need to do in one of those 4 days off.

So that leaves 3 days to write, correct?

No, it actually only leaves 1 because the weekends are sacrosanct for family time. And that one day? If I get to write for that whole day – 8 hours or more, uninterrupted – that’s a modern day miracle. I usually have to do something that has occurred that needs my immediate attention not named on the above list, and which can’t-for-any-reason-possible wait.

So, in reality, I usually get about 4- 5 uninterrupted hours per week to write. Now, that is SO not enough time to pump out a book, much less a blog.

So, knowing myself and my schedule as I do, I started planning the time to write, everyday, for at least 1-2 hours, beginning in january 2013. The time is usually split – before work and after on the days I leave the house, and when I am off, I try to do 4-5 hours, again split between everything else I need to do. I set a weekly goal of the number of pages,  scenes, or plot points I want to accomplish, and then eek out a little of it every day. I never feel overwhelmed to get everything done, because any time I can set aside for writing is, in my opinion, good time. And I usually do make my goals every week.

By doing this, I was able to complete three full length novels in 2013, plus write a blog about menopause,  find the time to do NANAWRIMO,  enter several contests, and joined my state chapter of RWA .And my personal life did not suffer one iota. In 2014 I set up this blog/website, joined the Twitter-verse, and have already finished 1 book completely, the second, halfway. Not bad.

Know thyself and to thine own self be true. Words to live by.

If you have a moment, check out my new blog page, Read All about it!

 

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June 24, 2014 · 10:04 am

Effective Habits, Part II

So the second effective habit Barbara Wallace talks about in her article in the June 2014 edition of RWA magazine is about establishing structure as a writer. Structure, when used here, doesn’t mean how you construct your stories. It refers to being consistent and regimented in how much you want to write every day.

Writing goals are wonderful yardsticks when you write. They can be anything from a daily word count, to how many scenes you want to do a day, to how many chapters you want to get on paper in a given time frame. On the days that I don’t go to my paying job, I routinely set a goal of 1000-2500 written words. They don’t have to be perfect, they just have to get written down. This translates, when I’m working on my WIP, to about 8-10 pages per day. Some days I write a great deal more, but I never write less. And if I’m not pounding it out on the novel, then I’d doing it in this blog. Most of my blog entries average between 600 and 900 words, so that’s a fair chunk of writing still, on those days the WIP isn’t going smoothly. Every November a competition called NANOWRIMO occurs. The acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write AT LEAST a 50,000 word novel in the month. I’ve done it for the past two years and both times I’ve exceeded the word count simply by setting a daily goal and sticking to it NO MATTER WHAT. This is the key to structure: doing what you’ve set out to do no matter what.

Many writers who are lucky enough to actually support themselves with their writing and do not have to have outside employment to survive, will all tell you the same thing: they treat writing as their 9-5 job. It may not occur exactly in those hours, but the reality is they work full 8 hour days or longer on their craft. Sitting down at the typewriter/laptop, and producing words-sentences-pages every day is how writers ,who are successful, write.

I’m a terrible deadline-er. This means that, 1. I hate deadlines, 2. I have never, ever, made one, and 3. I hate deadlines.I was that kid in school who always had their summer writing assignment done before july 4, who always had the term papers ready to be handed in at least a month before they were due, and I never studied the night before an exam. Never. I always had the full studying done long before that. In my adult life this hatred of deadlines shows its head in similar ways:  I amortized my mortgage so my house was paid for decades before it was supposed to be. I pay cash for most things because I do not like that monthly credit card statements that says “minimum due now,” and I am always ALWAYS early for work. How does this apply to writing? Well, if you give yourself daily goals, you will never be in that deadline crunch when you are furiously typing those last, critical pages for submission, and you can have the luxury of reading, re-reading and revising the work to make it the absolute best you can do.

Structure is a good thing. To a writer, it is essential.

 

 

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June 22, 2014 · 12:38 pm

More words of wisdom

I am a voracious reader of my monthly RWA magazine TheRomance Writers Report. The minute it arrives into my mailbox I am all over it.  An article in the June 2014 edition caught more than my eye – it spoke volumes to me as a romance writer. For the next several blogs I’m going to be dissecting the piece as it applies to me and my writing career.

Multi-published and talented writer, Barbara Wallace, in an article titled “Seven Habits of Effective Writers,” details  specific strategies writers should incorporate into their writing lives. The first is, basically, to write.

This may sound like common sense, but there are many distractions that can come along to prevent you from writing on a regular schedule.  In truth, you can’t  pen the all american great novel if you don’t sit down, get your but in the chair and type away. You can’t say “puff!” and your novel will magically appear in print. It MUST first be typed onto the page – or laptop screen. Let’s face it, if you are not employed as a writer -as I am not – finding the time to write can be difficult. Work obligations, children’s and  spouse’s needs, grocery shopping, laundry, and just dealing with the everyday stresses that being alive comes with it, can make carving some time out to write your book troublesome and problematic.

But….

If you really want to be a writer, you must write. Even if it’s for twenty minutes every night between supper and putting the kids to bed. Even if it’s on your lunch hour. I used to get up at 4 am just so I had two hours to myself before I had to get the family up to start the day. Saturday and sunday mornings were great because the members of my household liked to sleep in on those days. I recently attended a talk by famed writer Lisa Gardner, who shared with the audience that when she was beginning her career, she would write every night at eleven p.m. because that’s when she had alone, free time.

Whatever schedule you can devise that allows you to be working on your manuscript is up to you. As long as you do it consistently, regularly, and productively. It makes no sense to tell the family you’re going upstairs to the home office to write for an hour and then answer emails, check Twitter and Facebook, or be recruited into a particularly tedious game of Candy Crush. No. you are there to WRITE and that is all.

Personally, I consider everyday that I don’t write SOMETHING, a wasted day. Be it my blog, a character profile, or a scene in my current WIP. I schedule time for myself, away from everything and everyone, just so I can create. And I don’t think this is selfish, as a former friend  once told me she thought it was. Did you see the word former in that last sentence?

There’s an old saying that goes, “happy wife, happy life.” I want to change that up a little and declare, “happy writer, happy woman.”

 

 

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June 21, 2014 · 1:00 pm

Tips from the Pros

Last Saturday  I attended my monthly NHRWA meeting in Bow. The “featured speakers” that day were all members of our chapter who have had publishing success either traditionally with print publishers, or by self publishing their work. The round table discussion was a very informative one for me and the chapter.  Some of, but not all, the speakers included, Christyne Bulter, Susan A. Wall, Nora De Luc, and Maggie McGinnis.  This was a varied mixing of authors and styles, but they all had one thing in common: They were published authors, some of them many times over.

My take away knowledge from their discussion of their writing paths was that each writer has to decide for herself what she is hoping to accomplish with publication. For the self pub’ed writers, it was more of a sense of writing and marketing control that guided them towards that route. They wanted the final say in things such as distribution of their work, art design, publicity, and ultimately, the control of the monies earned from their sales. The traditional pub’ed writers were happy to give over those jobs such as worrying about cover designs, editing, publicity and distribution to the “professionals” and concentrating on what they loved doing most: writing.

I can easily see both sides of this literary coin, even though I have opted to try and fit into the traditional side of it.  I’ve opted to try and be published via the book route that arrives on shelves and flies into your hands to find its way to your home because, I’ll be honest,  I’m lazy. I enjoy writing. It is to me the oxygen that keeps me alive. I would rather be writing than doing almost anything else. Most days, anyway. If I had to worry about  the formatting font and type needed to upload a book on Amazon, or tracking my sales ( assuming I had any!) , or the licensing and regulations necessary for this to happen, and even the cover design, book jacket blurb, complete self editing, line copy and content-wise, and them having to promote the work myself, I think I wouldn’t like writing as much as I do. I don’t mind having other people who know what they are doing, well, do that, for me.

Having said that, the women I know who have self published their work are dynamos at all of this and I am eternally envious of that. They are organized, focused, determined and talented women who have opted to be in total control of their careers, and my hat is off to them. I  know myself too well to know that I could never be as dedicated, methodical,  structured and regulated as they are. Not to mention, they are a talented bunch of writers.

So, whether we are self published, traditionally published, or not published at all, it is good to know we have options as far as the routes we want to take our careers through. The New Hampshire arm of the RWA is a wonderful mix of talented, spirited, informative writers who make it a joy for me to come to every meeting. You can check out their website at:  NHRWA and maybe catch us at the next meeting. This is a very welcoming, supportive, and encouraging group of romance writers, and women, in general.

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June 14, 2014 · 12:42 pm

E-D-I-T is a four letter word

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
― Dr. Seuss

I love me some Theodore Geisel!

Truly though, as a writer, I feel my words are my babies. I impregnate the page with them, nurture them through sentence structure and thought processes, expell them into a full story and then foster their development and maturation into a finished manuscript. Then I sit back and revel in their brilliance. And no one had better say a disparaging or unkind word about them or they will suffer my mamma lion wrath.

And then, reality sets in… and I edit.

Editing is a lot like trying to lose weight. You have all this extra weight ( the words) that is making you feel heavy and lugubrious (telling, not showing, non-action words, fragmented sentences). You need to go on a weight reduction plan ( edit) to loose those unwanted pounds. Along the way you struggle, cheat, become discouraged, plateau, feel deprived, and then – if you are lucky – shed that unwanted and not-needed poundage. Now, you hopefully have a beach body. Or, in other words, at this point you have a manuscript that is cohesive, thought provoking and tightly written.

I have been sequestered for days, foregoing all pleasurable aspects of life such a watching Housewives of NYC and Major Crimes,  eating, and exercising, in order to edit a piece that has a very good shot at publication.  I am determined to “get the weight off” this piece and make it the best thing I can write.

My hair is suffering from all the pulling I am doing and my fingers are beginning to go numb from typing. But, I am pressing on and killing my babies – as Stephen King says – and whittling down the words, the fat, the bloated sentences.

I will be beach body ready soon!

My words, though they flow, are more tell than show. So I’ll  cut them and prune them, and hope I don’t ruin them.

Dr. Seuss has nothing to worry about!

 

 

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June 13, 2014 · 9:08 am

Words of wisdom

A few blogs ago I shared a devastating rejection that made me question everything I’ve been doing to enhance my writing career, and that I’ve written, for the past year. I was so emotionally low that I didn’t even want to touch my laptop. It sat, closed and loosing charge, lonely and still, in my writing loft.  I couldn’t even tell the people I loved the most about the rejection because I was so depressed and embarrassed.

When I finally did share the news with my husband and then my daughter, just saying the words out loud made me feel like an even bigger loser. All I felt like doing was wallowing. I admitted to my daughter that I thought the entire year had been wasted, that I was back to square one with no foreseeable chance of moving forward again.  At 54 I felt like I was basically done and didn’t know if I had the energy or the desire to start over. Again.

Here’s the difference between a 54 year old and a 24 year old: perspective.

My daughter, in that clear and educated voice she uses on me when she likes to throw the stupid things I say back in my face, said, “So, the website you constructed, all the connections both personally and via the internet that you’ve made,  the conferences you’ve gone to, the Twitter followers, your new Facebook friends, and the writing group you joined, have all been for nothing? None of that has been worthwhile or made a difference to you this year?”

“Well, no,” I admitted, sheepishly.  “All those things have been wonderful.”

“So, tell me, again, exactly, how you’re back to square one?”

See? Perspective.

I’m so glad I had a daughter who loves me enough to tell me when I’m being an idiot. Who has the confidence to throw my own dumb words back in my face just to make me see them for what they really are. And for respecting me so much that she’s willing to show me the error of my ways.

I’d like to think when I was 24 I had the same kind of perspective, but I know I didn’t. At least at 54 I’m beginning to learn it. Let’s all hope by the time I’m published – and I will be! – it’ll be ingrained my my psyche.

Thanks, kid, for showing me the way.

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June 12, 2014 · 11:31 am

A little luck and a lot of hard work

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it. ― Estee Lauder

Icons are icons, whether writers or uber-business moguls like the lady quoted today. You don’t get where you want to get in life without a lot of hard work. Hard, finger-splitting, muscle making, soul growing work.

I’ve been asked to edit a piece I submitted for publication with the hope  that once I do, it will be good enough to warrant publication. So, I’ve been arduously typing away these past few days, rewriting, editing, editing some more, and trying to live my normal every day  life as best as I can. Because, you see, I don’t just want this to be good enough for publication. I want it to be the best I can make it. I want to feel, once the last word is typed, that this was truly the best  job I could do, that I gave it everything I could, and that I made it better than good enough.

A difficult task, to be sure.

My words, my thoughts, my ideas all have one thing in common: they are MINE.  My babies. I gave birth to them, nurtured them, then when they were ready, let them go. When I let them go out into the world to be read, I can’t help feeling trepidatious that they will be judged harshly. No parent wants to hear anything “bad” about their child. You always feel as if you failed in some way when someone makes a harsh comment about your baby.

I feel exactly the same way with my written words.  Like a wild mamma lion protects their young -sometimes to the death- is the way I feel about my words. My hard work, my soul growing work!

But, as with children, sometimes you have to let them feel a little pain, face a little judgement, in order for them to grow to be bigger, stronger, better.

So, today I struggle with the edits, hating to change or delete one word, one thought, one scene, in order to make the work good enough.

No, scratch that. Not good enough. The best it can be.

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June 3, 2014 · 9:33 am

Rejection, Part 2

“After rejection – misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally,oh well, another try elsewhere.” Mason Cooley.

The misery part of the above quote I totally agree with. After my most recent rejection I did the following, not necessarily in this order: cried, ate a package of Milano cookies, cried, cursed the person rejecting me, cried some more but now howled, too, ate two chocolate donuts then two more, cried, cursed the air and then fumed.  After fuming I moved into seething, then cried again, not because I was upset about the rejection, but because I had now moved into embarrassment over it. I was ashamed that I had told people about my potential good news – based on what I was told by the person reviewing my work – and now I had to tell these same people that I had – gulp! – been rejected.

Red faced, trembling lip, crimson eared, embarrassed.

I wasn’t able to tell anyone for a week. Seven days I held all that emotion in, stuffing it with bad food and mentally castigating myself. Life I said in my  previous post, I had to talk myself off a proverbial ledge.

And then, the final part of the above quote filtered through all the hurt and the rage and the humiliation of failing. I woke up one day and decided that this wasn’t going to dissuade me from writing, that it wasn’t the end of the world or of my writing career, and that today was a new day.

A little Scarlett Ohara-ish, but true.

If we were to quit every time we failed at something, new inventions would never be discovered.

If we were to give up on love every time our heart was broken, we would never know the joy of rebirth that new love brings.

If I quit every time something I’d written was rejected for publication – no matter how much it hurt or how wrong the rejector was about it – I wouldn’t be at my laptop right this second typing this.

So, tomorrow is another day ( Thanks, Scarlett for making me realize that!) and there are more places to submit to and different people to read what I’ve written.

Rejection hurts. This is true. But it’s not the end of the world.

I have to go exercise those damn donuts and Milanos off now.

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