5 Things a Woman Should Always Carry...

An article on Twitter this morning inspired this post.

"10 Things a woman should always carry in her purse."

Wow, I thought. 

This should be interesting to read since women come in all flavors of every culture on planet Earth.

Someone must have really put a lot of thought into this. 
Read that in sarcasm font. 

Since not all women even carry a purse. 

My sister-in-law, for example, hates purses. 

She was the first person I thought of being left out. 

And uh, she's very much a woman. 

But I clicked on it, anyway. 

Maybe it would have some kind of symbolic meaning and surprise me. 

Optimism gets the best of me sometimes.

Aaaaaaaaaaand, as I feared, it irritated me worse than a broken underwire.

All 10 things were--you guessed it!--shallow as a kiddie pool. 

Loads of name brand cosmetics, perfumes, and grooming tools filled the list, with snappy captions about how they'd help the women who carried them 

look and smell pretty enough to find husbands. 

After all, what else should a woman aspire to do besides find a man 

to navigate her delicate ass through this dangerous world?

It does give me hope that time travel is possible, though. 

Because the woman who wrote it must have found the Outlander stones at Craigh na Dun, left her job at the Repressed Woman Press 
and traveled here from 1952. 

I wish I could invite this writer into a circle of friends who aren't a bunch of vapid doofs, clutching desperately to a man's coattails.

While I do carry a purse, and it does usually contain a brush and tube of lipstick, you know what else is in there? 
A mini-notebook and pen for brainstorming. 
Because, you know, women can think if they choose to do so. 

Snacks for my kids. 

Eye drops for my hubby. 

Because sometimes other people depend on us, too. 

Rather than linking the article (and giving it traffic), I've written a list of my own. 

But with only 5 things, because who needs to be weighed down with a bunch of shit? 

Keep it simple.

Five things a woman should carry at all times, even if she doesn't own a purse:

1. Self-respect

You, my dear, are a strong and beautiful creature 
with or without makeup. 

Not wearing any doesn't make you less of a woman. 

So tilt that chin up and straighten those shoulders. 

You can do anything.

2. Self-awareness

We all possess the invaluable ability to recognize ourselves as individuals, 

while appreciating the differences of others. 

The contents of our purses or pockets shouldn't match.

3. Kindness

To everyone. From every walk of life. 
Even the assholes who write articles that set us back 50 years. That's why I'm not sharing her name/post. 

Or leaving her a scathing comment. 

If I knew her personally, I'd invite her to my next girls' night  

and shock her with my awesome friends.

4. Assertiveness

Stand up for yourself. 

Being a woman doesn't mean shrinking into the shadow of men. 

I have a good friend who works in the construction field. 
She manages a bunch of guys, some (not all) of whom are a bunch of cat-calling ball-scratchers. They learned real quick-like that she wouldn't be taking their garbage. I wish she'd teach a class on how to be a badass.
I'd take it every semester just for fun.

5. Discretion

Number 3 and number 4 might seem contradictory. 

That's where discretion comes in. 

While it's important to be kind, 
it's also important to avoid doormat status. 

You have to know where to draw the line. 

Tap your intuition: it's there and you'll know when to say when.

Can we all, as women, agree to stop pigeonholing each other?

Kthanks. I'll step off my soap box now.

Go kick some tail, ladies. Coiffed or not.

Pitch Wars #PimpMyBio

Hey, y'all!

For starters, I want to thank Dannie Morin for organizing these posts! 
You can check out her original post and all the other mentee bios here.

Pitch Wars is an annual writing contest hosted by the amazing Brenda Drake. 
To learn more about the contest, go here.

I entered my very first manuscript in last year's Pitch Wars.  At the time, I knew nothing about contests and I'd only recently finished my manuscript (an adult speculative fiction with an astronomical word count). Obviously, I did not get picked by a mentor because it was not ready to submit. But I don't regret making that mistake because the contest helped me tap into an incredibly supportive writing community that I didn't even know existed. I got 10 critique partners from last year's contest! TEN! And I've learned so much from all of them since then. I'd introduce them here, but don't want to seem douchey like I'm name-dropping. 
(Yes, they're *that* awesome.)

Meanwhile, I wrote a second manuscript. This one's YA. Think Friday Night Lights meets Practical Magic. Football and magic potions in small town Texas with a little bit of interracial romance, oh yes. :) 
So at the urging of my CPs, I entered it into Pitch Wars this year. 

So here I am. 

With my eldest child. He's actually the calm one, believe it or not.

Here are 10 awesome things about me.

1. I make really cute humans. (Hubby helped.)

2. Speaking of hubby, I hit the jackpot when I married this guy. He's funny, adorable, and he saves children's lives for a living. No, really. He's a clinical affairs specialist for Berlin Heart. Search for Berlin Heart on YouTube for a better idea of what they do. Take tissues.

Also, he folds laundry.

3. I started writing when I was in the 3rd grade and haven't stopped since. But for some reason, I went to college and became a nurse. I did it for 3 years and, for the most part, it sucked. Because of hubby's job, I'm able to stay home with the kids and write full-time now. I keep my license active, though. Just in case I start missing the joys of phlegm, 12-hour-shifts, and cleaning diarrhea off really old balls.

My thoughts in this moment: "What have I done?"

4. I write a little of everything. Fiction, non-fiction, short stories, and really bad poetry. (We won't talk about the poetry.) I have two completed manuscripts now, and about six others are still in-progress. One of my short stories was recently accepted for publication! Yay! I'll do another post when it comes out at the end of this month.

5. Taylor Kitsch seduced brainwashed me during Friday Night Lights. He really wants to be my love slave the love interest in all my stories. I have to really fight his power over me to keep from letting him win. (Notice the Friday Night Lights comp above? Yeah. It's the best television series ever made. EVER.) 
Because LOOK...

But note: He wasn't the love interest in my Pitch Wars submission. I resisted the temptation!

6. Here are some of my favorite books. They've all influenced my writing in some way.

7. There's always at least one Led Zeppelin song on my WIP playlist. Usually this one, because Almost Famous is my favorite movie. 
Besides Taylor Kitsch movies, of course.

8. I have a giant dog named Annabelle. She's a Great Dane  and the epitome of what a good dog should be. Kind, gentle, obedient...but with a bark that tells anyone who comes near our house, "Don't even dream of effing with my people."

9.  I love football. More specifically, college football. Even more specifically, CLEMSON FOOTBALL. I grew up in South Carolina not far from the university, so I've been cheering for the Tigers since I was old enough to talk. I fit right in here in Texas, y'all. They just wear the wrong shade of orange 'round these parts. ;)

10. And last but not least, I have the same amount of nipples as a cat. 

HAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding. I just ran out of fun things to share. But don't even lie, you're wondering if I look like this under my shirt now.

Don't forget to check out the other mentor #PimpMyBio posts at Dannie's blog!

Good luck to all of my fellow #PitchWars mentees! 

xoxo,
Jenn

In the words of Ice Cube...

Yes, a very good day.

Why, you ask?

Because my manuscript, THROUGH THE WOOD, was chosen by Aussie darling Sharon Johnston for #TeamEpic in #NestPitch.

You can find out more about #NestPitch here. 

The short version: Writers submit a 35-word pitch and the first 300 words of his/her manuscript. The submission then goes through several rounds of slush readers and industry professionals.  Finally, the 9 host bloggers each choose 8 entries to post on their blogs. 72 entries are displayed for a panel of top-notch literary agents.

My manuscript is 1 of 8 on Sharon’s blog. Here is her blog. And here is my entry.

So yes, it was a good day. I can’t imagine what could’ve made it better. 

Except maybe this:

Fun fact: Tim Riggins, aka Taylor Kitsch, was my inspiration for Nik.

It is so hard to put your work in a stranger’s hands and ask them to love it. So hard. 

Especially after giving it to beta readers who champion it from day one. 

I finished the rough draft of this manuscript a year ago, and I was completely clueless about how to get an agent to care about it. I made a lot of rookie mistakes, like querying it before it was ready. 

What do you mean 180k words is too much?! 

Surely the agent wants me to include information in the query about stories I wrote when I was in third grade, which my teacher said were extremely promising! 

Right?

I re-read some of those bomb queries the other day and considered legally changing my name. 

With no positive responses, I decided it was time to revise. I ordered Writer’s Market, I renewed my Writer’s Digest subscription, and I started reading literary agent blogs. 
I cut 50,000 words.
FIFTY. THOUSAND.
Which meant choosing between editing and showering most days.

I entered #PitchWars in December, another great writer’s competition hosted by the lovely Brenda Drake.  
I felt confident. 
With that 50k word cut, I would surely make it in!

Insert whammy noise here.

Then I got an email from real-life ninja Tina Moss, one of the mentors I queried for the competition. 
(She co-wrote a sizzling book called A TOUCH OF DARKNESS. Run, don't walk, to buy it!) 
Her feedback was that my word count was still too high, and my query stakes weren’t clearly defined. 
Finally! I knew what to work on!

Even though I didn’t make it in, that was a turning point for me. I started networking with other writers via Twitter and Facebook. I gained 10- yes, TEN!- critique partners.

For three months, those CPs helped me revise and revise again. My fabulous CP Sonia Hartl said to me, 
“You’re starting this at the wrong place.” 
Then Janet Wrenn said the same thing. 
That suggestion kept playing on repeat from the others.

So I started in the thick of the action, removed an unnecessary character, and cut another 30k words. 
Which hurt. Cutting those precious words are like trying to decide which toes you want to keep.

Then Janet forced me, at gunpoint, to write a synopsis.

It sucked.
But amazingly, I figured out what was wrong with my query after I wrote it. 
Have I mentioned how valuable CPs are? Seriously, mine are the shizz. I'm not even sure what I bring to the relationship except dirty jokes and great memes.

Then…

I started getting positive responses to queries! Requests, even! Feeling good about things, I entered #PitchMadness back in March. 
I started seeing the blog hosts tweet hints that sounded like my story. 

I was convinced that I was IN!

And then…. 
NOPE. 
I later found out I was a close call, but no dice.  
So what did I do?

“I suuuuuuuck! Nobody wants to read what I write! It’s time to just go back to my job as a nurse, where I can do something more pleasant than write!” 

Like insert suppositories into a fanny so big it has its own orbit. Or chart for hours on end. Or never get a break because the unit is short-staffed. Again.

Then I remembered. 

Wait a minute, you beautiful words!

I can’t stop writing. It’s who I am. It’s who I’ve been since I wrote my first short story in third grade (which I’m told showed incredible promise). 

Stories swirl in my head and my characters won’t leave me alone.

So I sucked it up and started preparing for #NestPitch. 

And you know the rest. 
When the picks were posted this morning I was all…

So for all of the writers who didn’t get into #NestPitch this time, take heart.
DO. NOT. QUIT. 
Your critique partners are your best asset! There's no way I could've ever figured things out without them. 
I've learned so much in the past year. 

I haven’t found my agent yet, but I will. 

Because I refuse to give up.

Keeping with the theme of this too-many-gifs blog post, I'll leave you with my favorite one.

Because duh, Taylor Kitch.

Happy Easter weekend, y'all! 

I'm Walkin' on Sunshine

Here's a song for y'all. Because this is how I feel today. More details to come.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

I scored a Friday Night Lights original pilot script on Ebay. Insert fangirl squee here.

Reading it, I've noticed things changed quite a bit from the original concept to the finished product.

For example, Billy Riggins was originally written as Tim's dad.

Can you even imagine if they'd left it that way? We would've never seen the brotherly banter. Or them fighting over the woman next door, which yielded Tim's famous "Riggins trifecta" line to her when he realized she was sleeping with his brother, too.  There would've been no Riggins Riggs. Tim would've never had to go to prison for Billy.

Hmmmm, on second thought… I could've done without that part. I HATED Billy Riggins. So much that if I saw him out somewhere in Texas, I would probably punch him in the face for being such a shitty human. (Then I'd profusely apologize and ask him not to call the cops.)  That loathing I felt for Billy means the writer did his job. He made me FEEL something.  If Tim had a dad at home who cared about him instead of his idiot brother who constantly screwed him over, he wouldn't have been as interesting. 

Still smokin' hot, but not as interesting.

Also, Smash Williams's original nickname was Bomber. Huh? I laughed when I saw it because, uh- no. He's SMASH. It just fit him. 

Matt Saracen originally lived at home with his mother, not Grandma Saracen. That would've been a big ole yawner. I love Grandma Saracen's senile ass! Matt would've definitely been less interesting.

Coach Taylor's name was originally Coach Long. 

Nope, he's Coach Taylor. Definitely.

The big plot points are the same. Jason Street sustains an injury that paralyzes him and puts the team in a tailspin. Tim is a playboy. Tyra is awesome. Lyla is a bitchface. Landry gets on everyone's nerves.

But SO MANY crucial points got changed.  For the better!  I can say this because Friday Night Lights is my favorite television series of all time. It was perfection.

And since I've been an editing fool for the past couple of months, it gives me hope about the changes I've made. Changes are good. Editing is magic.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.