Friday Feedback: Already So Long, My Usual Parting "Gift" and Some Other Cool Stuff...

This is me. Here in my swim cap and bathing suit poised on the edge of the pool.

(Why YES this is an excellent way to ruin your iPhone if you're not careful. Thanks for asking...)

At any rate.)

I'm here, hanging on to summer because:

WAAAAAAH.

I mean, BIG OL' WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Only bigger than that.

As usual, I don't want summer to end.

I don't want Teachers Write to be over.

I don't want you or my own kids to go back to school.

I'm on the end-of-summer precipice for realz over here.

It isn't pretty, and it gets worse every year.

*breathes*

Alas, here we are at the end of these things, and, this, the final FINAL unofficial Friday Feedback of the 2015 Summer. I can't tell you all how much it means to me that so many of you stop here week in-week out, chime in, and dig down to do the real nitty gritty brave of sharing your writing. I'm proud of you, even if I really have no right to be.

And my guest authors were pretty darn impressed by you too!

As such, I want to offer a few parting gifts (and other cool stuff):

First: for those of you who participated here on Friday Feedback regularly this summer and plan to continue on with your writing toward a goal of publication, I make you this standing offer: When you are ready, you may ask me for help with your agent query letters. Trust me, they're a stress-inducing beast, and I'm fairly decent at them, so when you're ready, find me here: g.polisner@gmail.com.

BUT before you send me any query, please do read THIS POST on some dos and don'ts of query letters FIRST (fyi, you can skip all the dog stuff and scroll down!), and THIS awesome POST by agent John Cusick too!

Second: Remember the talented Amy Fellner Dominy who did the fabulous exercise on character mapping? Author of OyMG (just chosen as a PJ our Way Reading Program selection!) and her new pulse-pounding young adult novel, A MATTER OF HEART?

Well, Amy has a few author copies left of "HEART" and has offered to give away some classroom copies here! So IF your classroom is ages 12+ and you're interested, please say so in the comments with what grades you work with. We'll draw a few random names and hook you up!



And, third: frantic about heading out into the wild west of novel writing on your own?!?!? Have no fear, a new awesome resource for you is here!




Remember the lovely Martha Brockenbrough who was here in July with her extraordinary post on The Art of Persistence?! Author of the beautifully woven THE GAME OF LIFE AND DEATH?

She asked me to tell you about her new novel coaching program, Nothing to Novel, that she's started with a few other talented author friends. Martha invites you to explore the website and sign on for some services when you are ready! Is there anyone better to seek advice from? I can answer that for you: There is not!!!

And that's that, my lovely, shiny campers, like it or not, TW Summer 2015 is in the books.

But since we're here and it's Friday, why not a little Friday Feedback as a send off?

You know the rules. Feel free to share an excerpt in the comments one last unofficial summer of 2015 time.

No excerpt from me today. This is all about you.


For those of you still wringing out more summer like I am, ENJOY!

For those returned or returning to classrooms imminently, I wish you a joyful school year. And if any of you use my books in the classroom or library, etc. please reach out to me about making a Skype visit to your school!

-gae

Friday Feedback: The Game of Writing and a Parting Gift

parting is such sweet sorrow,
so I decided to be goofy instead.

This writing game thing? It is hard. I aint gonna try to fool you. Hard to put yourself out there - to craft your best words, your best story, pour your heart and soul into it -- lay it out there for agents to pass on, editors to turn down, and when you get past those hurdles, out there for all the world to critique.

Or, I guess, in some of our cases *coughs*, a large handful of people to critique.

There are five star reviews, and one star reviews, there are writers who outsell and outpace you by vast strides, and readers who will never even hear of your book.

We must write, ultimately, for none of that. We must write because the images pop into our heads, beg to be considered, dissected, turned into meaningful prose. We write because we're compelled to, and because connecting with even one reader who feels your story in their soul is the most amazing thing in the world.

It is hard, but, oh, is it rewarding.

My personal journey has been filled with way more rejection than success. One of my favorite blog posts I ever wrote, was one when THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO (then, Frankie Sky) was just going out on submission. I compared my writing life, on those hard, unknowing days, to a game of Chutes & Ladders. (Later, I compared a great writing day as a game of Candy Land, too.)

As I started out the summer saying, the hardest part is often that so many of us write in a vacuum. We're alone in most of it, until we reach out to a trusted friend or mentor to read. And then, in our pages, they hold our heart in their hands.

So, to my dear Teachers Write campers, on this last official Friday Feedback of the 2013 Summer, I wanted to thank you all for sharing your heart here, putting your words out, asking for connection and allowing for critique. If you'd like to do it one more time today, I'm ready to read and type!

But I wanted to offer you a parting gift, too - though it will probably be more useful to the writers in the bunch who hope to be published one day vs. those who participated in TW solely for the altruistic reason of believing that to teach writing better, we must do writing better first.

So here is my offer (shhh, it's secret, don't tell the others...): to any of you who have been regular participants on Friday Feedback (defined as posting here at least twice this summer, or more), when you are ready to submit your manuscripts out into the world, I will be happy to either a) review your query for you (I let you in on the fact that I have been called the "Query Queen" by some...) or b) have a brief phone or Skype chat with you and try to answer your querying/publishing questions. That is my Friday Feedback parting gift to those who have shared their words here.

If you wish to take me up on this now, or at any time in the future, you may email me at g.polisner@gmail.com. If you have used a "screen name" here throughout the weeks, and I'm not well-versed in your real name, remind me of both, and tell me a bit of what your manuscript excerpts you posted were about. Those are the pieces I remember most easily. The details of the lovely bits you shared.

So, with that said, I'm ready to read and give feedback. Post away, and remember the RULES.

One last note: If you think you'll miss participating in Friday Feedbacks during the school year and would like me to continue the feature once per month, please let me know in your comments. If there are enough of you, I will. If not, I will see many of you at NCTE! or next summer!

Good work! Keep going!

- gae

p.s. my second novel, THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO is now available for pre-order! The hardcover price is good. . . less than the current hardcover price for THE PULL OF GRAVITY up on Amazon, go figure.