Writing Valkyrie--aka Asa Maria Bradley

Blog moved to new URL

2008-07-17T13:08:00.003-07:00

Hey,

I finally found the time to set up a blog on my hosting server. Please visit www.asamariabradley.com/blog for new updates. I no longer post here.

-Asa

2008-03-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

How about that? Two posts in one day!

I just had to tell ya'll about my friend Patrice Moore being interviewed at Allie's Musings. Patrice is a member of my local Romance Writers of America (RWA) chapter and such an inspiration to my writing. Go read the interview and you'll see why: http://allieboniface.blogspot.com/2008/03/writers-wednesday-interview-with.html

First Manuscript Request

2008-03-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

Haven’t been posting for a while, but that’s because I’ve been busy with new and wonderful things.

My friend Jere and I traveled to the beautiful Whidbey Island for their writers’ association’s annual conference—and what a great conference it was. The fantastic nature, the excellent volunteers, and the intimate and casual atmosphere made this my favorite conference ever.

One of the reasons I’m so partial to it is because while pitching for an agent, I got my first FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUEST ever for Paved Paradise. So, that’s what I’ve been working on. Even though the manuscript was completed and reviewed by my writers’ group (twice) I still couldn’t let it go without doing some polishing and final edits.

More about the conference later—now back to grading my students’ finals and catching up on sleep.

Snowed In!

2008-01-29T17:04:00.001-08:00

Am on my second day of no work because of too much snow. This is the first time in something like ten years that the campus has closed. I think the only times before this was when St. Helen blew and Spokane was covered in ash, and maybe when the terrible ice storm blew through town. Both of these events are before I became a Spokanite, so I don't have very good details.

Between shoveling snow--it takes about 2 hrs to clear our drive way--and staying warm, I'm actually getting quite a bit of writing done. I've done some shorts submissions to various places and also got caught up on some reviews.

Now I'm off to brave the roads for my weekly bowling night. A writer's life is so very exciting and diverse. :-)

To Blog or Not to Blog

2008-01-28T13:51:00.000-08:00

I haven’t been here for a while, mostly because I decided to set up a blog on my own web server rather than using the blogger site. Then I looked at different free blogging software and although they are all great, there’s some work involved with setup and maintenance. So, I decided to just keep this one.

Quick updates:

The Chad Little article was well received by the magazine editor. She asked me to do another profile on someone I had pitched to her a while back. The new article is almost written and the Chad Little profile will be in print next month.
I’ve applied to graduate school at EWU’s MFA program in literary non-fiction. Don’t know yet if I got in, but do know that work finally agreed to give me 50% unpaid leave for next year. I didn’t think I could participate in a writing intensive MFA program and work full time.
I joined Enchanting Reviews as a staff member and is having a blast reading and reviewing books. It isn’t paid, but I get free books. Let me repeat FREE BOOKS. What can be better than that?
Larry Hippler emailed me to say he’d been on the site and was happy to see I’d mentioned his book. I met him at the PNWA conference where one of his short stories was a finalist in the contest. Check out his book at http://cathedralstreet.net.

Ta-ta for now. I’ll start blogging more often. Not sure if anybody is reading, but I’m enjoying it and that’s what’s important. :-)

First Paying Article

2007-11-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

Actually, I did get paid for another article. It was a book review for a local bookstore's newsletter. My reward was in used book credit. I spent it right away.

This gig is for a small local magazine and it involves interviewing a former NASCAR driver who grew up in our town. I've never written a profile before, so I'm a little scared--but kind of in a good way. I've talked to the guy already, but our time was cut short due to his family obligations. We'll continue tomorrow again. I was really nervous and had tons of questions prepared, but my profile subject was as nice as he could be and it was more like having a chat with someone you're trying to get to know.

The main obstacle to this whole thing is having a full time job and finding the time to do a phone interview with someone that is in a time zone 3 hours ahead. The solution is that I have to get up super early in the morning and catch my NASCAR guy right when he arrives at work.

So far, this is a fun assignment. I'm not sure that it is healthy learning curve to have my first article comission with a very helpful and nice editor, while interviewing a cheerful easy-going guy. But hey, I'm not complaining--I'm having a blast!

First Rejections

2007-10-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

I am officially a writer! I have received no less than two rejection letters, both from agents, and both very nice.

Considering that I have submitted my manuscript--each on the receiving person’s invitation--to three agents and one editor, I think two personal responses is a pretty good result. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m of course bummed that these are rejections, but if you talk to any published writer, they’ll tell you about the massive amounts of rejections they got before publishing.

I’m very proud of my two. One is from a senior agent at a big name house in New York. It’s a hand-written note starting: “This novel certainly has potential, however, it just isn’t right for me.” Now, maybe my writing sucks and the agent is just being nice, but I don’t care. I’ll take any encouragement where I find it.

The second was received via email and is from a small north-west agency that is highly respected by both writers and other agents that I mentioned their name to. My favorite quote from it is: “Your writing is quite good, although it could still use a bit of polish. It is better than 90% of the manuscripts I receive!” The email also includes specific examples of how I should polish specific sections. How’s that for great constructive advice!? It was worth my stamp just to receive that.

Okay, back to the grinding stone. I’m polishing the manuscript and sending out more queries.

Gimp Update

2007-08-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone that has left comments and emailed me about yesterday’s blog. Most of you asked for an update, so here it is.

Sammy is still limping around, but he’s putting more and more weight on his foot. I think he’s going to be just fine. He’s on painkillers and antibiotic, which both seem to help. I notice that the leg bothers him more at the end of the day than in the morning after his medication.

Although he milks being a cripple for all it is worth, he also took off across the yard after a squirrel today, at full speed. Afterwards he limped back to me, leaned against my leg and asked for sympathy strokes by hitting my hand with his nose. I’m not sure if he needed it because his leg hurt or because he didn’t catch the squirrel. Here he is on the back patio, looking for more squirrels.

Bloody Night Adventures

2007-08-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Horrible screams echoed from the bottom of the garden as the writer’s hands were poised over the keyboard. She had spent most of the day procrastinating and now as the clock struck midnight, she was finally ready to put some words onto paper. Then, the high pitched sounds outside the house froze her blood and stilled her limber fingers. It sounded as if one of God’s living creatures were being mauled to death. Acting on pure protective instinct, she rushed through the sliding back doors and down the garden path to the source of the screams. Searching in the darkness she spotted a patch of white fur curled up in a small ball, amber eyes begged her to help take away the pain, to end the suffering…

Okay, so what I found was my shepherd-mix Sammy, once again he’d tried to play with a porcupine. To my extremely friendly dog, everything that moves on two or more legs is a potential playmate. This is the third time he’s tried to join the porcupine gang. It’s the first time however, that he’s been screaming in pain after the meeting. Usually he runs up to me, nose and chest covered in needles, a sheepish grin on his face, trying to pretend nothing unusual has happened. This time he was really in pain and since he almost never whines or whimpers, hearing him screaming out in anguish was very hard for me.

I tried to pull out the needles, but since he was at the bottom of our extremely steep hill garden, I couldn’t see very well in the dark. After I retrieved a head lamp and tweezers from the house, I managed to get a few needles out of his leg, but it hurt him so much each time I pulled that my gentle puppy nibbled at my fingers to get me to stop. At one time, it caused so much pain he clamped down fairly hard while screaming extra loud. Time to take him to the emergency vet clinic, but how would I get him up the steep hill? He’s too heavy for me to carry up the slope.

I walked in front of him, repeating cheerfully through tears: “Come on Sammy, let’s go for a ride in the car. Let’s go for a ride. You want to go in the car?” He limped on three legs up the hill, alternating between happily panting in anticipation of one of his favorite activities—second best after going for a walk—and yelping each time his damaged leg's front paw touched the ground. We finally made it to the garage and into the car. I drove extremely carefully to the vet, trying not to jolt him in the back. When we got to the clinic, they hurriedly showed us into one of the examination, rooms eventhough the waiting room had two other dogs in it. Sammy limped down the corridor, screaming on each step. This is when I discovered that I was covered in blood from pulling the needles out of his leg. The vet was visibly disappointed when I told him the case he had in front of him was nothing worse than a silly dog trying to play with a porcupine.

One hour and $237 later, I brought home a puppy that was limping groggily from pain and the anesthesia. I pulled into the garage and opened the back door of the car, expecting Sammy to exit the car with some of his usual enthusiasm. Instead, he was cowering in the back, not wanting to put any weight on his sore leg. I ended up carrying him to his bed where he laid all night, whimpering every now and then.

This morning my baby was a little more alert, but the pain killers and the penicillin he has to take makes him sleepy. The needles penetrated some major muscles in his leg and it will probably be sore for a couple of days. According to the vet, some of the needles had already migrated through the muscle, so there may be some in the leg that the clinic couldn’t get to. I have to monitor the leg daily and pull out anything that pokes out in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, Sammy is milking his suffering for all it’s worth. After taking his medicine this morning and receiving treats for being such a good boy, he scratched the milk bone box with his healthy paw to get some more. When I said no, he held up the damaged leg, hung his head low and whimpered. A performance worthy of an Oscar. I gave him another cookie.

What's the Definition of Funny?

2007-08-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to a local comedy club with some friends. I’ve always admired stand up comics, the good ones makes something really hard looks so very easy. It’s like they’re just hanging out with friends and shooting the breeze. The ones we saw tonight were not that good. Instead of delivering well written material, they relied on shock factor instead. Don’t get me wrong, I like a dirty or offensive joke as much as the next guy. But if it isn’t funny, then what’s the point?

So that got me thinking. What I find funny is of course not what other people find funny. Is it easier to tell a good joke than to write a good joke? Probably, and if you don’t get to tell your joke, if you have to rely on someone else reading it, then it is really hard. I admire humorist writers even more than comics. My favorite right now is David Sedaris.

The first time I heard him was on NPR. He was reading an essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day. I was laughing so hard, I had to pull over on the side of the road to not crash my car. After the program was over, I drove straight to a bookstore and bought the book. I don’t know if the book would have been less funny if I hadn’t heard Sedaris’ voice before reading it; his timing and delivery are always perfect. However, I’ve enjoyed all his books and always look for his essays in the New Yorker. Maybe I find him so funny because we have similar types of humor, but then a lot of people must share that with me, because he is immensely popular. I prefer to think that he’s an incredibly good writer and I think the proof of that is that he makes something really hard looks so very easy.

So tell me, who do you think is the funniest person alive today?

Here are some links to You Tube with David Sedaris reading three of my favorite of his essays.

Jesus Shaves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYi0zTRC2r0

Bend Over and Say “Ah”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JJ-tK7-gIk

Stadium Pal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdymtyXt8Y

6 to 8 Black Men
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUHTDrca4s

My First Writing Conference

2007-08-04T00:06:00.000-07:00

I went to my first writing conference ever last week, the PNWA conference. The whole writing group was supposed to go (all three of us) but my two partners chickened out. Actually, they had really good excuses for why they couldn’t go, but I had already paid my registration fee. After some mishaps about parking—the hotel wasn’t prepared for so many people driving their own cars—I settled in for my first workshop.

What I was expecting from this conference was a bunch of already established writers looking down their nose at us plebs that were trying to get an agent or editor to notice us. I also assumed that the publishing industry professionals would be snooty (they were after all, mostly from the east coast) and probably shoot most of us down before we managed to stammer out our name and the beginning of our elevator pitch. I’d read just about all of Anne Mini’s blog that had to do with preparing for a conference, but was super nervous about having to do any kind of pitching.

The conference was the complete opposite of my expectations. Every single person I met was extremely encouraging. The workshops were for the most part excellent and taught by writers that not only knew how to write, but also how to teach. Every writer I met, established or not, were chatty, interested, and interesting. The agents didn’t have any horns on their head and listened politely to any elevator and hallway pitch I attempted. Several of them gave me their cards and encouraged me to send them queries. The agents and editors I had scheduled appointments with, all (except for one who does not accept queries from unrepresented writers) asked me to send them pages.

I had a fantastic time and learned so very much. I’m definitely going back next year and would encourage everyone else that writes to attend a conference. I very much felt like I got my money’s worth. Before I was super nervous about meeting agents and editors, now I’m all nervous about sending them my stuff. I’ve already spent days rewriting and agonizing over manuscript pages and query sentences. Funny how trying to say something on only one page takes a lot longer to write than a full manuscript.

What was your first writing conference experience like? Did you meet your agent or editor at a writing conference?

My First Post

2007-08-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Hey!

Welcome to my blog.

I’m not sure how entertaining it will be, this is mostly for my own benefit and amusement. I decided it was time to enter the blogosphere and so, here I am. Mostly this will be about how I try to fit writing into my life while holding down a full time job and also about my quest to get published.

Please chime in any time by posting comments.