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Fight for a Cause Friday: Reclaim the Block

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Several years ago, I lived in the Twin Cities. Every time I went to the grocery store, I drove past the site where Philando Castile was murdered by police officer Jeronimo Yanez. And yet, I did little to confront police brutality or to cast light on the injustices that Black and POC citizens face on a daily basis. By hosting these posts about groups that work to address social justice issues - whether that's through moving city budgets away from policing and toward violence prevention, or through providing better funding for affordable housing, or any of a number of other noble and noteworthy goals - I hope that my one small voice can steer others toward these causes. [Image: Reclaim the Block logo] Reclaim the Block  is an organization founded in 2018. At its core, the organization pressures the City of Minneapolis to divest from the police force in favor of investing in the community. Take a look at this screenshot from the  2020 City of Minneapolis budget  (keeping in min
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Just Writer-Brain Things: I Know This Plot Already

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What's up fronds! [GIF: T-rex watering potted plants] Last night, I was watching Star Trek: Enterprise with Qiren (don't hate, we're trying to watch all of the Star Trek  media in chronological order by star date), and I immediately knew where the episode was going. I was kind of annoyed, tbh. I wanted a surprise, but clearly I wasn't going to get it. It wasn't that I had seen the episode before - I remember watching Enterprise when it was on the air, but I never finished the Augments storyline for some reason - it was just that the show had gotten predictable. I could see the twist in the episode coming from miles away. [GIF: T'Pol from Star Trek: Enterprise saying "I suppose so"] And at first I thought, well, I've seen a lot of this show already. We were on the final season, so it wasn't like I was watching episode one and figured it all out in the first five minutes. Not to mention, a lot of sci-fi shows like this ( Firef
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The 5 Best Choices I Made (So Far)

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Hi fronds! How's it goin'? [GIF: Monstera plant swaying over a pink background] Since I got my biggest mistakes out of the way last time, now it's time for the good stuff: the best choices I made in my Draft Zero to Writing Hero process! 1) Keeping diligent notes when querying.  I love a good spreadsheet. I've spreadsheeted things that really should not have been spreadsheeted. (And I've now verbed the word "spreadsheet.") And when it came to querying, it was incredibly helpful to have all of my querying data in one place: the agent's name, what agency they work for, when I queried them, when I expected to hear back, when I actually heard back (if I heard back at all), and any further notes on that agent or query package. Keeping extensive records like this took some of the stress out of querying. Yes, it was still a difficult and stressful process, but at least I knew things like "I should hear back from Agent A within the next week.&qu
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The 5 Worst Mistakes I Made (So Far)

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Hi fronds! How y'all doin? [GIF: Bertie from "Tuca & Bertie" watering a sad cactus with water, coffee, and soda, asking "You thirsty? Is this helping?"] Now that you've got all the deets of my Draft Zero to Writing Hero Journey, I thought I'd summarize my biggest mistakes. Because I'M an ADULT and I can LEARN from my MISTAKES. Or, you know, at least you can. I already made the mistakes and it's kinda too late for me. 1) Thinking I was ready to query before I was actually ready. This one is the big one. I figured as soon as I was done writing, it was Time. (Narrator: "It was not time.") Yeah, I was very, very wrong about this one. I mean, look at how many times I had to revise GIRLS BREAK THINGS - at least seven! Writing a perfect first draft is a fallacy. If I had spent more time revising my YA fantasy before I began querying, I might have had some success with it. Instead, I wasted a lot of time trying to query someth
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Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter IX: Back to the Revision Board

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[Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"] Hi fronds! Welcome to the grand tale about my writing journey! I wanted to write about this in all its roller-coaster ups and downs because I had a lot of trouble finding this information when I was getting started in 2016. This is definitely going to span several posts, but I hope my story will help someone else with their own path to publishing. If you'd like to know how this all began, please start with  Chapter I . Chapter IX: Back to the Revision Board As it turns out, once you sign with an agent, it's time for more - you guessed it - revisions.  Christa and Daniele had already sent me a long, detailed email with their notes on GIRLS BREAK THINGS. They included several paragraphs about what they loved (which absolutely gave me LIFE at a time I really needed it), as well as several more on broader items that they thought needed work. I talked it all through with Qiren, we decided
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Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter VIII: The Calls

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[Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"] Hi fronds! Welcome to the grand tale about my writing journey! I wanted to write about this in all its roller-coaster ups and downs because I had a lot of trouble finding this information when I was getting started in 2016. This is definitely going to span several posts, but I hope my story will help someone else with their own path to publishing. If you'd like to know how this all began, please start with  Chapter I . Chapter VIII: The Calls Okay I think I've kept you hanging long enough. One of the agents I queried from a Twitter pitch, who had spent about three weeks with my full,  got in touch to set up a call!  [GIF: Excited Lottie from "The Princess and the Frog"] I'd never gotten that far in the query process before, so my reaction was something like *happy scream* mixed with *terrified stressed scream.* I was so excited, and yet -  I had no idea what to do
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Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter VII: Querying and Revising - Again

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[Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"] Hi fronds! Welcome to the grand tale about my writing journey! I wanted to write about this in all its roller-coaster ups and downs because I had a lot of trouble finding this information when I was getting started in 2016. This is definitely going to span several posts, but I hope my story will help someone else with their own path to publishing. If you'd like to know how this all began, please start with  Chapter I . Chapter VII: Querying and Revising - Again With NaNoWriMo over and done, I was t i r e d . The process of writing this manuscript had been extremely intense, and I was more worn out than I had expected. I decided to let the manuscript rest for a month or so, and when January 2019 came around, I decided it was time for everybody's favorite step in the writing process: revisions. Yaaay.  [ G IF: Person in a flower costume dancing with text "Aww Y
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