Monday, December 12, 2011

The First Thing at Christmas That's Such a Pain to Me...

.... is finding a Christmas Tree

I hope you've all heard this song, otherwise my title makes no sense and I just sound like a huge Grinch.

I'll be honest. Last year I did not have any Christmas spirit. I had a miscarriage on December 17th, in the middle of Christmas shopping no less, and it ruined the holiday for me. This year I'm trying very hard to recapture the all-out fanatical zeal I once had for the holiday, but so far, between overpriced gifts, crowded stores, and shopping with The Gift Nazi my husband, all I've managed are a few brief flickers of enthusiasm.

It doesn't help that my query stats grow more and more abysmal by the day:
Queries Sent: 47
Requests for Material: 2 partials, 1 full - all rejected
Unanswered: 17
The rest? All big, fat R's

So, in actuality, I couldn't wait to go pick out a Christmas tree. Every year we go to beautiful Maple Row Tree Farm in Easton, CT, and to me it's like getting lost in a fairy tale. There are acres and acres of hills and ponds and trees of every variety, and the fresh air clears my head of all Grinchly thoughts. At least for a while.

I mean, look at it!




So what if we walked around for over an hour and I'm so badly out of shape that it left me sore?

So what if my socks were falling down inside my boots the entire time?

So what if no one wants the book I poured my heart and soul into? I'm writing another one!

For the hour we were there, that was honestly how I felt. And then we get the sucker home, and reality hits.


The stupid needles everywhere! My pain in the ass, Type A husband repositioning the tree thirty thousand times until it's perfectly straight and centered (and insisting I'm a terrible judge of both)! Those stupid, STUPID needles!

And exactly why did I kill a tree and drag into our living room when I could've been writing my neglected WiP instead?

Oh wait. This is why:


I suppose it's all worth it in the end. But yeah, my Christmas spirit still needs a few minor adjustments.

How about you? Are you full of Holiday Cheer, or could you use a jump start? (Or a trip to the tree farm?)

10 comments:

  1. FIRST COMMENTER!!! *happy dance*

    Ahem.

    G! You are MAKING THE MAGIC. If that Christmas tree isn't magical, I don't know what is. I think that the one thing we don't realize when we're readers, before we start writing, it's that magic is messy. And uncomfortable. And sometimes painful. And the damn needles hang out in corners forever and ever and ever (like how I had typed "Davis" instead of "Elias" once in chapter 7. Yeah.)

    But it's SO worth it all. Because at the end we'll have a beautiful edition of LYM to oooh and ahhh over. Just like that freaking gorgeous Christmas tree.

    Merry Christmas, G. (((HUGS))))

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  2. I need a bit of a jump start on my holiday spirit, too. A tree farm visit isn't going to help me out; Christmas trees give me hives.

    So, it's artificial for us all the way, and my daughters decorated this weekend while I was holed up in a corner writing. Looking at it now does cheer me, though.

    As for the querying, that is a life-sucking operation. The one thing that carried me through mine was that I kept revising my manuscript after every rejection and scrap of feedback I got. The problem was voice, pacing, the query didn't attract anyone? I kept working on all those things throughout the whole querying process. It made me feel optimistic that I was doing something.

    Good luck and Merry Christmas!

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  3. gorgeous tree! I so miss the connecticut tree farms and that smell of pine. Here, they're already cut and mounted on wooden planks. Poo. And just keep chuggin Gina! This industry is HARD hard hard and we gotta be harder to break into it.

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  4. Beautiful tree! I think it's amazing that you guys went out to cut down a tree. *is all admiration*

    And querying: I haven't gone through that, but I'm rooting for you! You will definitely find that one agent who just gets your book. <3

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  5. I with you on query sucking the big one, but hang in there. You never know if someone will say yes. At least that's the hope keeping me writing.
    Your Christmas tree is lovely. It was worth all the hard work, right? : )

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  6. Pretty tree!

    It's easy to get sucked into the holiday-gotta-do vortex which will suck the spirit right out of you! It helps to keep it simple ( at least for me!)

    On the query R's...yuck. No fun, but part of the process (the sucky part). Hang in there and if you want a pair of new eyes on your query, I enjoy tearing them apart and putting them together again :)

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  7. We do the same thing every year--and yeah, those stinkin' needles!! LOL, but I'm happy with the result every time!

    Hang in there lady, the same offer applies to this one too (if you need a fresh set of eyes)!

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  8. Don't give up on your book!
    Hope you find your holiday cheer soon.
    And thanks for reminding me why we have an artificial tree. Not that it doesn't have to be perfectly straight as well.

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  9. I haven't had a Christmas tree in years, so I'm going to stare at yours and pretend it's mine ;)

    don't let the Rs get you down. have you taken another look at your query and first pages? I'd love to give you another opinion if you'd like :) sometimes it's not the book or the story at all, so don't despair just yet <3

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  10. Keep your chin up about the Rs. They come but they do not define you as a writer.

    You have the "write" thought: Write another one that's just as great while those silly heads are out there trying to decide if they're going to hop on the good book you sent out first.

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