Carie Juettner

10 Writing Tips in 5 Days: Day 1 – Start Small, But Dream Big

Tip #1: The Benefit of Baby Steps

There is a reason why most of us* crawl before we walk. It’s simply because we’re not ready yet, not strong enough to take our first steps. Crawling gives us a chance to try out our muscles, a safe way to make forward motion without risking too much.

The first prose piece I ever submitted was to The Sun. On January 1, 2012, I mailed a second-draft, Christmas-themed creative nonfiction piece about my family to a magazine with over fifty thousand readers. On February 14, I received their kind, poetic rejection letter . And rightly so. I had tried to shoot the moon (er… The Sun) with a crudely made sling shot. Or, to go back to my original metaphor, I’d leaped from my crib expecting to dance and instead landed smack on my bottom.

I wasn’t ready for The Sun. Even after I learned to take time with my work and get feedback from peers, even after I’d figured out how to craft a proper cover letter and research a journal before submitting to it, my writing still wasn’t ready for the level of The Sun. It probably still isn’t.

A lot of new writers start out thinking they’ll get published right away in Glimmer Train or Tin House or Narrative, and I’m sure a few of them do. But most of us aren’t ready for powerhouse journals like that when we’re first starting out. For me, it wasn’t overconfidence in my writing ability that made me submit to The Sun, it was complete and utter ignorance. In January of 2012, I didn’t even know who Glimmer Train, Tin House, and Narrative were, and I had no idea that so many publication opportunities existed. Every genre, every level, every niche, every region, everywhere. No clue. Someone gave me a few copies of The Sun, and I naively thought, Hey, I think I’ll send them a story.

By 2013, I had learned to slow down, to research my options, and to aim… (not lower, I wasn’t going to say lower) …more appropriately. I set my sights on some more achievable goals, and I saw some success. Last year, I found homes for five short stories (four of which are horror) and even won first place in Writers Weekly’s 24-Hour Short Story Contest.

Some people may look at my list of credentials and shrug. Some, when they learn that (except for the contest win) my publications didn’t earn me any money, may scoff. Some may say that, for them, it’s go big or go home. They’re going to keep trying for Glimmer Train until they get in, gosh darn it! That’s fine.

But here’s the thing. Those little baby steps felt really good. Each time I got that acceptance email, I jumped out of my chair and did a happy dance. My arms felt tingly for hours. My goofy smile didn’t fade for days. And success, even minor success, breeds creativity. As soon as you feel that thrill of excitement, you want to feel it again. So you keep writing. (Not to mention that it’s a lot more affordable to submit to the smaller publications. Those big journals have big payouts, but a lot of them have pretty big submission fees too.)

It’s not like I quit shooting for the stars altogether. I still submit to the big journals now and then, and (so far) I still get rejected. But I’m also still learning, still improving my craft, still researching, still writing.

I still believe that one day I’ll make it in. And I’ll be proud of the baby steps that got me there.

* I say “most of us” crawl before we walk because a couple of years ago I read Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Small Assassin,” about an infant who is so bound and determined to do away with his parents that he learns to move about the house at just a few weeks old. It’s a great story, one that really stuck with me, but it’s not something new moms should read. (Trust me on this.) I couldn’t find an online version of the text, but you can watch the Ray Bradbury Theater version on YouTube.

Believe it or not, this is not really food. Click on the image to see what it actually is and to check out the cool Etsy site where it came from.

Tip #2: Pack Your Cart With Rainbows and Chocolate

I’m standing on the staircase that leads to the third floor at Book People. In front of me is a curtain, and on the other side of the curtain is the young bookseller talking to a crowd of people—teenagers and adults alike, most sitting, some forced to stand, many clutching a hardback book with my name on the spine. The bookseller finishes his enthusiastic introduction with, “So help me give a warm welcome to… Carie Juettner!” I step around the curtain to eager applause.

This is a scene that I visualize often. Me, at my favorite local bookstore, doing a reading and book signing for my popular new young adult novel. I can see it. I can feel it. I can taste it. Anytime I go hear an author read, I picture myself up there. I think about what I would say. I brainstorm various ice-breakers to help me interact with the crowd and (hopefully) calm my nerves because I know I’ll be a wreck. (A happy wreck, but a wreck nonetheless.) In one scenario, I bring my Magic 8 Ball and let audience members ask a few questions before we begin. Then, later, when the book-signing line stretches all the way down the staircase, people entertain themselves with the 8 Ball while they wait. (Authors—if you steal this idea from me, the least you can do is tape my blog link to the 8 Ball.)

I also picture myself doing panel discussions and interviews about where my ideas come from. (I don’t really know—they just appear—so that’s an answer I’ll need to work on.) Recently, I discovered a whole new joy—locating the spot on the library or book store shelves where my novel would be if it existed. (And let me tell you, it’s pretty exciting to imagine it there.)

You see, with each small success in my career, I envision larger, more grandiose rewards in the future. It’s like, One small step for the writer, one giant leap for the writer in my head.

If your hand is over your heart right now and if you’re thinking, Oh, poor thing, then STOP IT! I do not visualize these things in a woe-is-me-for-I-am-just-a-lowly-peasant sort of way. That stereotype of the lonely, depressed, self-loathing writer persona does not fit me. I’m one of the happiest people I know. I bounce around my house (yes, literally bounce, often bumping into things) chattering to my husband about my latest ideas and sharing status updates on all of my projects. When he won’t listen to me anymore, I talk to the dog. I am thrilled with every contest opportunity that comes my way, ecstatic about every new story I start, and annoyingly content with my life in general. And while I toil away at my drafts and revisions and query letters, I keep my eyes focused on those prizes at the end. They keep me headed in the right direction.

Some would say this is putting the cart before the horse, but I don’t care. Maybe I just haven’t hit the hard part yet. Maybe someday I’ll sink into the gloom that is supposed to envelope me. But right now, I’m enjoying the writing life, in all its elusive glory. If I’m putting the cart before the horse, then at least I’m stocking it full of rainbows and chocolate first. I suggest you do the same. Stand on your tiptoes and look down the road a bit. See what prizes await you at the end of your hard work. Even when things are difficult (especially when things are difficult) imagine the good stuff. The publishing contract. The first sale. The day you see somebody in a coffee shop reading your book and you sit near them and try to act nonchalant while waiting for them to realize that you look just like the person on the back cover. Toss these things in your cart and carry them around with you. Enjoy them. Then get back to work.

(Note: If I do ever hit depressed-writer-rock-bottom, I’ll try my best to blog while I’m down there and, if I remember, I’ll link to my tormented ramblings here. <– Until a hyperlink appears, you can assume I’m still doing all right.)

Bonus Tips:

Are you looking to aim more appropriately? Check out these links to various markets.

* Horror: http://darkmarkets.com/category/markets/magazines/

* Literary: http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazines/

(Note: These lists are not always kept up to date. Always go to the journal’s website for current information.)

Are you looking to fill your cart with rainbows and chocolate? Nothing says happiness like a good success story.

* Interviews with debut authors about how they got their starts:

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/author-interviews

* Lynette Noni’s adorably excited blog post about signing with Pantera Press:

http://lynettenoni.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/its-official-im-going-to-be-published/

Coming Soon: 10 Writing Tips in 5 Days

This week on my blog I’ll be sharing with you almost everything I know about writing. I’m holding out on a couple of things because I like to pretend to be mysterious and it’s fun having a secret. But I’m not actually very good at keeping secrets and I’m much too clumsy to be mysterious (because mystery, in my mind, involves long flowing cloaks and shadows and silence, not untied shoelaces and elbows whacking doorframes and shrieks of pain) so I’m sure I’ll cough up the last few useful tidbits soon. For now, though, I’m offering you ten writing tips over the course of five days which, in my opinion, is a pretty good deal.

You may be asking yourself, What makes her an expert? It’s okay, go ahead and ask it out loud. It’s a good question. The answer is nothing. Nothing makes me an expert. I’m not an expert; I’m just a writer. But I’ve been doing this writing thing for two years now, and in that time I’ve had a little success and I’ve learned a whole heck of a lot. And one of the things I’ve learned is that I have to learn things over and over again.

It’s not that I’m a poor student. In fact, I’ve always been a very good student. But real learning takes time and retention takes repetition. If I’d truly absorbed everything I’ve learned over the past two years about the writing life, I’d probably be fiendishly typing 20,000 words a day and cranking out a bestseller a month by now* but I’m not, so the learning continues.

Another thing I’ve learned (you’re getting a couple of pre-tips here) is that a writer who’s stuck can be very skilled at forgetting the very things that would get her unstuck. It’s amazing how stubborn my brain can be. It will deliberately choose to ignore the simple, effective tools it has stored away in its grotesque** little folds when it’s determined to be stuck. I often have to be reminded to do things that I’ve been doing for years, things that I taught others to do for years, like…free writes. And timed writing. And quick character sketches. Every time someone recommends one of these things to me, I say, Oh yeah. Duh! Then I push my brain out of the way and get back to work.

My point is that none of the tips you’re going to see this week are earth-shattering ideas or light-bulb-over-the-head epiphanies. They’re just things that I’ve learned that I want to share. You’ve probably heard them before, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded once in a while. Just distract your brain with a logic puzzle or one of those images of a snake eating itself so that you can read at your leisure.

Oh, and since I’m really not an expert***, I’ll throw in a few links to some people who actually know what they’re talking about as a bonus.

* I’m kidding. That is not actually what success looks like and it doesn’t sound healthy at all.

** Your brain may not be grotesque, but I’m pretty sure mine is.

*** Really, truly, not an expert.

Coming Up This Week: 10 Writing Tips in 5 Days

Day 1 – Start Small, But Dream Big

Day 2 – Join the Club

Day 3 – Get Yourselves Organized!

Day 4 – The Reluctant Reviser

Day 5 – No More Excuses

Confessions of a Former Teacher: I am Insidious

Seventh graders are impressionable little things. That’s why you have to be careful how you handle them.

2010 was the year I got married. It was the year of WikiLeaks and royal engagements and the Chilean miners’ miraculous survival. It was the year Lost finally ended.

It was also the year the PG-13 horror movie Insidious hit the big screen.

I taught a really good group of students during the 2010-2011 school year. That was back when my district still had blocked classes for Language Arts, which meant I saw all of my kids for ninety minutes every day. There were only sixty of them that year, divided into ideal class sizes of twenty each, so I was able to really get to know them. They were good kids and a lot of fun.

My after-lunch class had a lot of personality. They were a very talkative, very friendly bunch, and many of them possessed that rare ability to get their work done while socializing. You can only fight that superpower for so long—eventually you have to admit that yes, they are really working while talking, make peace with it, and save your “I’m serious” speeches for test days and principal visits.

Socks — My after-lunch class’s feet on crazy sock day. Their personalities were just as unique.

During the second semester, the sidebar conversations meandered more and more to the subject of this new horror movie that just came out—Insidious. The talk was all about who’d seen it and who hadn’t and who had to cover his eyes and how scary it was. One popular boy, who we’ll call Patrick, just went on and on about it. The movie terrified him, but he kept going back to see it again. Patrick had watched the thing at least three times when he and his friend “Mike” started trying to talk me into seeing it. Patrick had a cute/exasperating inability to form a complete sentence when he was excited, so his persuasive techniques resulted in arguments like, “Ms. Juettner, seriously, I mean, oh my God, it’s just so, so, AAAAA!, and in this one part, oh man, oh man, Ms. Juettner, you’ve GOT to see it!”

Eventually I decided I’d better see it, so I made my husband go with me.

Now, before you start rolling your eyes and saying Insidious wasn’t scary, you need to realize something. These were thirteen-year-olds, and a lot of them were very sheltered thirteen-year-olds. I’m sure some of my students had been watching zombie movies with their older siblings since they were in the third grade, but some of these kids parents’ took the PG-13 rule seriously. The kids in my after-lunch class that year were a young group and for many of them, Insidious was the first horror movie they’d ever seen. Coming from that perspective, I’m sure it was truly horrifying.

I wasn’t horrified by Insidious. (Then again, I saw Poltergeist when I was much younger than they were, and it’s a much more scarring experience.) But I was entertained by it, and it did make me jump a few times.

One of the creepy parts of Insidious has to do with this old woman who stalks one of the characters in photographs. In every photo taken of him, ever since he was a little boy, the woman in black is visible, and in each picture she is getting closer and closer to him. Patrick and Mike were especially freaked out by this part of the movie. Patrick’s incoherent rants included a lot of, “Oh, and the old woman, oh my God oh my God, she… AAAAA!”

When you’ve had a good year, when you’ve taught kids who you genuinely care about, not just as students but as people, when you’ve developed real bonds with them, the last days of school can be bittersweet. Yes, it’s a time of excitement and looking forward to summer vacation, but it’s also a time of sadness and loss. A time of growing up and letting go. And, if you’re pretty sure their parents aren’t the litigious types, a time to have a little fun with them.

During the last week of the 2010-2011 school year, my kids were working in groups creating infomercials for the random and ridiculous products they were selling. (A few weeks earlier, I’d asked my classes to write down three objects they would never want to own and said, “Be creative.” I did not tell them why. Then I collected the slips of paper and put them in a bucket. Now the kids had been forced to draw a random paper out of the bucket and attempt to sell the items listed using the persuasive techniques we’d been studying. My students were advertising everything from a purse made out of earwax to a dead body. By the time all was said and done, there was very little educational value in the project, but the iMovies they created were hilarious.) While they worked on their commercials, I took photos of all of them for a class iMovie we were making as an end-of-the-year souvenir. Since some of the kids were shy about having their picture taken, I let them pose with a friend or two. Naturally, Patrick and Mike paired up.

Now comes the confession part.

I just couldn’t help myself. I mean, it was too easy, too perfect.

The kids all wanted to see each other’s pictures and the pictures from the other classes, so I told them I’d show them all the next day on the overhead projector IF they got all of their work done. That sent them scurrying back to their group projects. These kids were self-sufficient. They were on task. They really didn’t need me.

So… I spent about an hour and forty-five minutes of my contract time downloading pictures, creating a Sumo Paint account, and learning how to Photoshop an image. Two hours later, my masterpiece was complete.

The next day, the little darlings in my after-lunch class got all of their work done early, so, as promised, I started showing them the pictures. They oohed, they ahhed, they giggled, they teased each other about the faces they’d made. So innocent.

Then I got to Patrick and Mike’s photo and, before showing it, I paused. I looked at them.

“Patrick,” I said, “you and Mike’s picture came out a little… weird.” I raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” Patrick asked.

“What happened to it?” Mike asked.

“I’m hoping YOU can tell ME,” I said and stared at them pointedly, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I went to click the button to show the picture but paused one more time, my hand poised over the mouse. “I really don’t know how you guys did it,” I said, “but you better not have used my computer without my permission.” One more pause. One more glare. The class was quiet. I clicked the button.

And there, on the screen was Patrick and Mike’s photo, with the old woman from Insidious peering out right between them.

There was one second of silence before an enormous GASP erupted from Patrick, who stood up and launched into the most incoherent of all of his ramblings. Soon though, his babbling died down into a single continuous stream of “No no no no no no no no no no no no no no.”

Mike’s reaction was more subdued. He smiled a little. Then he frowned a little. Then he said quietly, “You did that.” And when I didn’t answer, he squeaked, “Did you do that?”

I didn’t make them suffer long. The rest of the class was going crazy and I didn’t want the noise to bring any concerned principals into the room. I wasn’t itching to explain the image on my screen. The prank had worked beautifully though. In my opinion, those were hours well spent.

Seventh graders are impressionable little things. That’s why you have to be careful how you handle them. I guess Patrick and Mike would be in tenth grade now. Maybe I should look them up, see how they’re doing. I’m 70% sure I didn’t do any permanent damage to them. Regardless, I have no regrets.

[To read more stories from my teaching career, check out my Teaching Stories page.]