My writing life hasn’t been so rewarding lately. I’ve sent Finding Frances queries off to five more agents, but I have very little hope. This is largely because I entered the manuscript into several RWA (Romance Writers of America) contests. While the book isn’t really a romance, there is an important romance in there (the definition of the genre is a little fuzzy in YA). But I’ve gotten feedback from one the contests and they didn’t like it. And the thing is, I understood their criticisms. Some of the weaknesses they pointed out are things I’ve since learned about the craft. Basically, I need to rewrite it from scratch again and pay attention to word choice as well as dig deeper into the main character’s emotions. I’m going to hold off on this, however. I’ve already burned through almost all the agents out there so there’s no one left to query. Instead, I’ll just revisit it once one of my other books gets picked up.

I’ve made a little more progress on Ugly recently, but not as much as I should have. I’ve also worked on the short story collection. And I’ve been working on my other manuscripts a bit, too. Plodding along. I did also enter Ugly in a grant competition. I had to supply the first 10 pages and a 250-word synopsis. Man, was that synopsis frickin’ hard to write. Easily the hardest of all my books so far. Ugly’s not really about the plot, but all the little details of life, and that’s not stuff you put in a synopsis.

I have been taking a new writing class called The Art of the Personal Essay. I thought it might be good to learn a bit more about it so I can write more than reviews and boring writing updates on this blog. It’s been interesting and fun. I’ve written a couple of short pieces that were well-received. I’ll likely start posting things like that here periodically.

I’m getting closer to starting the MFA, which I’m pretty excited about. A little over three months and I’ll be in the Oklahoma City heat for the 10-day residency. The heat part—oh, joy. The rest should be great.