Tomorrow's the day I'm supposed to give a workshop at the Sticky Notes poetry festival at Clarkstown High School North, my old workplace. I've got my class notes and workshop poems all printed up and ready to go in my snazzy zip-closed portfolio. Polished up my funky reading glasses. I'm looking forward to plugging into some wild teenaged enthusiasm tomorrow--if it doesn't snow too hard. Yeah, there's the "S" word and on the first day of spring! Talk about throwback Thursday! It'll be Throwback Friday tomorrow if the flakes are flying and I'm online sussing out delays and such. Here's hoping things are definitely a go (Gad, high school starts early in the day!) come the pre-dawn gloaming tomorrow. Or is "gloaming" a word you only use for evening dusk? It's the internet. I'm sure someone will tell me!
Was excited to hear from a poet friend who passed my novel in MS on to a YA-aged human being of the female variety. Said young lady seemed interested in my book, and mentioned the relationship between the main character and her mom, which was the thing I was the most concerned about spending as much ink on as I do. That was heartening news. I love that book, love the characters, and love thinking about time travel.
Time Runs Away With Her is out to three indie presses right now, by the way. There's one other place I have my eye upon that doesn't do simultaneous submissions, and as I am possibly the only writer on the planet who actually respects those rules, I'm waiting upon yeses or nos before I proceed. I have to say that it feels vastly better dealing directly with a small publisher than it does flinging a query over the transom of an NYC agent whose blog you've been combing through for hints about her taste. I look at the agent pics: so many of them have that bravely-smiling-through-mountains-of-college debt expression on their faces, and I get it. They have to pay the rent. They NEED their jobs, and they have to play it safe. My book is not boilerplate, and I do believe heartily in what Madeleine L'Engle said about pushing the boundaries. But as I used to tell my writing students all the time: rejection just means you're doing your job.
Onward and Upward with the arts!