House of Prince

A Month of Reading – Day Three, Query

By Kim Tracy Prince on December 4th, 2012

This is the third post in “A Month of Reading“

December third. This being Monday, it was time to get back to business. I had writerly business, homemaking business, school business, and monkey business to take care of today.

Once I got the kids to school, I tackled the writerly business first. I wrote a blog post the other day that, when I read it back to myself, seemed more like a stand alone personal essay than anything else I’ve written lately, so I decided to try and sell it to a magazine. I know one must pitch the story to the magazine before the magazine will buy it, but I don’t have editorial contacts at print magazines that cover this topic, so I did some Googling.

And then I chickened out. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. What I did was turn to the familiar: online outlets. Online magazines and websites that I admire and read, and whose staffers seem somehow more accessible to me than those of the print world, probably because I already work for people like that. Still, I had to pitch, and I wanted to follow an acceptable format, so I looked it up. I love the internet. Even if it’s wrong, it gives me a place to start, at least.

This post – An Example of a Successful Query Letter - gave me a real-world format to follow, and the first thing I did today was pitch the essay to an editor I know. I happily checked this item off today’s to-do list.

Some other posts that I read were:

Rules For Success From Freelance Writers

The Query Letter Format

How To Write a Query Letter

I joined reddit over the weekend to see if this would be a good social media site for both sharing my own posts and posts that I like, and also learning about new stuff to read. It’s fairly stark in terms of design, and not necessarily intuitive to use, so I spent a few minutes reading up on how the site works. I’ve known about it for a while, but it wasn’t until some writers in one of my Facebook groups have shared their fondness for it that I tried it, because look. It’s so…not pretty. And I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong, because I’ve only gotten one point in 48 hours.

And because I had a ton of blog posts go live today, in which “a ton” means “four,” I spent some time reading my own stuff. Sometimes I like to re-read it after it goes live, to make sure I wrote something I would read myself. That’s the best way for me to tell that I am producing work that makes me proud.

How LASIK Is Just Like Childbirth on MomsLA.com. “A human does not come out of a vagina, but the squeamishness factor is similarly high for me.”

Calabasas Can’t Hide New Restaurant Salt on CBSLA.com. “The Salt banana is still a mystery because it didn’t make it all the way around the table – instead, it was devoured along the way.”

Then there was the post I wrote last night that went live this morning, and there was an ill-fated post on my hyperlocal site that I had to take down because it needed a lot of editing, but I ran out of time and went to yoga, and then I came home and read airline websites because it’s time to fly my mother-in-law here to visit, and then it was time to get the kids.

And one more link tonight. My friend Charlene gave me one of those friendly blogger awards. I’ll address this in a future post, but you ought to check her out if you’re looking for new blogs to read, because Charlene is a great writer, and I helped her set up her blog.

Finally, just before I sat down to write this, I spent a few minutes reading through last year’s Christmas cards. I finally pulled out our Christmas decorations, and the first box I always open is the one with Christmas cards, CD’s, books, and DVD’s. It was nice to flip through the old cards, but also bittersweet. In the pile were the last two Christmas cards signed by both my Nana and my Grampa together. This year there will be simply, “Love, Nana.”

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A Month of Reading – Day Two, Still

By Kim Tracy Prince on December 3rd, 2012

This is the second post in “A Month of Reading“

December second. Today was the second Sunday we received an actual printed copy of the Los Angeles Times, delivered to our driveway, cloaked in 3 layers of plastic to protect it from the rain. It’s been more of a constant drizzle here, but the skies have been gloomy and there’s a clingy chill in the air. A perfect morning to linger in your PJ’s and work your way through the thick Sunday paper and several cups of coffee.

Not exactly, not in my house, anyway. The kids were up before 7AM excited about the chocolate in their Advent calendars. They fought and whined and watched the nails-on-chalkboard show “Fairly Oddparents” at a volume that I kept insisting be turned down. All the while, I struggled to read more than one sentence in a row of different articles in the Times that caught my eye.

The first thing I picked up was a delicious supplement titled simply “BOOKS.” It is a special holiday gift guide. A few little articles about books and e-reading here and there, but the rest was a list of titles and I drank it in, dismayed at how many there were and how little time there is to actually read. But at least I’ll never run out of things to read, right?

The rest of the LA Times sat fanned out on the kitchen table for most of the day, while our family engaged in its regular Sunday activities – church, two football practices despite the drizzle, and me doing housework and never-ending laundry. Along the way I stopped and read some things on the computer, and this article on the New York Times website caught my eye, shared by a fellow creative type on Facebook: The Art of Being Still by Silas House.

The title alone grabbed me because it’s Sunday, and we went to church, and when we are in church a voice whispers in my head throughout the hour (sometimes plus) of sitting, standing, kneeling, shuffling, and shushing the boys. It says “Be still.” Over and over again. It is as if Sunday morning mass is the one time in my life during which I am meant to quiet my mind. I don’t think it on purpose. It started last year around this time, when we returned to regular churchgoing as a family after a years-long absence.

The article is an essay by House about quieting the writer part of your mind so that you can, in fact, write.

We are a people who are forever moving, who do not have enough hours in the day, but while we are trying our best to be parents and partners, employees and caregivers, we must also remain writers.

He says that many writers he knows spend more time talking about writing than actually writing. I think I’ve been doing that for a while. And though it may seem to some people like I’ve been writing a lot, and in many places, well, to you I say that’s true, but it’s not the writing I imagine I would do if I was given the chance to do any kind of writing I desire.

A favorite quote of mine is from the writer Natalie Goldberg, who says “Shut up and write.”

Yes. Exactly.

Photo by Svein Halvor Halvorsen

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A Month of Reading – Day One, Wild

By Kim Tracy Prince on December 2nd, 2012

December first. I finished “wild” by Cheryl Strayed, and when I closed the book after reading the last line, my children were cavorting about the room, having finally become so saturated with Spongebob Squarepants that they were bored by television. “I’m bored,” wailed the younger. “I want my dinner NOW.”

Oblivious to his rude demands, too sidelined by emotion from what I had read, I got up from the couch and marched up to my computer and sent a tweet to Strayed. I don’t often contact the creators of the Old World media that I love so much, because why would they stop to read a message from me? I’ve been a fan of Indigo Girls for decades, and apart from that one time that I met them in person, and that other time that I put a link to my blog on their Facebook wall, I don’t send them fan mail or email or any other communications. I simply listen and love. In that same way I devour books. I read and love. Or read and disdain, commenting in my own little circles, commiserating with others who feel the same.

But now the Old World and the New are colliding more and more. When Stewart gave me a copy of one of Neil Gaiman’s books for my birthday, I sent a message of delight to Gaiman himself and he replied “I hope you like it!” That certainly wasn’t necessary, even though we’ve met and had communication via Twitter in the past, but it was nice of him to reply.

Can you imagine being 14 in the 1980′s and getting a letter from Stephen King? My young, obnoxious head would have exploded. These kids today. They have no idea.

My point is that Strayed’s book so overwhelmed me that I could not keep it to myself, and I went even beyond sharing my feeling with the Internet – I went straight to her. I don’t need her to respond. It was enough for me to tell her how her writing knocked my socks off.

I have been reading a lot of words during the last several weeks. Books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, online magazines, tweets, Facebook updates, and everything else I can get my eyes on. Devouring them, really. I can’t get enough. I was like this when I was younger, too, never resting my brain for a second. My thirst for words is part of a larger life shift, I know. It’s a pause in my output. A refilling of a mostly empty well. For about two months now I’ve relaxed any strategy I ever employed for my writing, and just let things come when they come. All this time I’ve watched more TV and movies, listened to more music, and read more than I have in years.

And quietly, slowly, the well has been filling back up. The very last line of “wild” was the pebble that made it overflow, finally, and I didn’t pause to tell myself it was a silly fangirl thing to do to tweet to the author. I don’t even care – I loved it that much and I wanted her to know.

And I want you to know, about this and the other things I read, because they move me so, and maybe they’ll will move you or teach you or at least give me inspiration to work out the things that I’m thinking, the things about me that need work or attention. I read so much everyday and I forget much of it as soon as it’s done, so I’m going to start cataloguing what I read. Here. Come back tomorrow to see what I read today, and so on through the month of December. I’m going to write it after the children go to bed. Every day.

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