Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Way short edition of Fierce and Nerdy today, b/c it’s the end of August, and a ton of our bloggers are on vacation, recovering from vacation, moving, gearing up for the Fall, etc, etc. So bear with us, b/c we’ll be right as rain in September. Speaking of Fall, I’ve been thinking of doing something a little new with my hair. Maybe braiding it at the side for a fauxish mohawk and I’ve also been thinking of putting some funky colors in it. I think I might be going through a bit of a hair crisis actually– What’s that you say? You don’t care about my hair? Get to the frickin’ announcement already? Oh well, if you insist — though I had about two more paragraphs worth of hair stuff that I could have discussed. Maybe some other day. Today I’ll just say that Miramax optioned the rights to 32 Candles. Here’s the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement: Ernessa T. Carter’s 32 CANDLES, […] to Miramax Films, in a nice deal, by Steve Fisher at APA on behalf of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency. And go here to see the “Miramax hot for 32 Candles” announcement that’s running in Variety right now. It should be noted that we’ve asked them to make a correction about the last bit. Of course, “Molly Ringwald Ending” is not the name of this novel or any novel that I intend to write in the future. But other than that, I’m all sorts of thrilled about the deal and keeping my fingers crossed that the big-screen version actually does get made. Oh, and if you’re new to the blog go here for the novel’s back story. Meanwhile, I’ve received suggested...

Photo by Kalimba Bennett So as you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been talking about the writing process much lately. Many of you might have thought this was because I got sick of navel-gazing. But c’mon, I’m a neurotic writer — which means that I will never, ever stop obsessively picking at my own belly lint. I mean ever. So get that thought out of your pretty little heads. Alas, I haven’t been writing about writing lately b/c the saga of my first novel has been changing too fast to keep you up to speed til now. Here’s the recap, if you haven’t been with us up to this point — oh, and if you don’t want to go through the whole chronicle, just skip down to #4. That’s when it really gets good. 1) Around Christmas 2007 I finished the rough draft of a novel about an ugly duckling named Davie Jones who becomes obsessed with getting a Molly Ringwald Ending (a beyond perfect 80’s movie ending), even though she’s completely unpopular, the daughter of the town hooker, and extremely poor. She eventually escapes her small Mississippi town, reinvents herself as a lounge singer in Los Angeles, only to re-meet her high school crush 15 years later. I dubbed the book Molly Ringwald Ending, and I worried on my then-one-person blog that no one would like the novel that I had spent almost two years cobbling together. 2)  After months of rewriting, I emailed the book to my sister. She declared it good, so I sent it off to a fabulous book and screenplay editor named Karin Gutman, who I had met after my story was chosen for the Spark! Six-Year Anniversary Storytelling Event and inaugural CD. I approached choosing...

So I’m on what should be the last week of my 2nd novel rough draft. I started the Tri-Weekly habit in January. And a little more than 3 months later, I am nearing the first finish line, so I should be estatic, right? Wrong. As you’ve probably discovered in your own lives by now, finishing is the absolute hardest part of any long-haul endeavor. One of my favorite bits in The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield is when he talks about how the demons go buckwild whenever you’re nearing the end of a project. If you thought the naysaying voices in your head were bad before, look at how they become downright vicious when it looks like you might actually finish something. And this is especially troublesome for writers, because when they say 90% of writing is rewriting, what they really mean is 90% of writing is Finishing. When I finish this rough draft, I’ll put it in down for a month and work on something else. Then I’ll bring it back out in May and do a 2nd draft, which at 5 pages worth of rewrites a day, will take another 90 days, because I’ll have to pop out a baby in late June. I will show the 2nd draft to exactly four people: my writing exchange partner, my husband, my best friend, and my book editor. It’ll take between 6 to 8 weeks to get all of those notes back. Then I’ll do a 3rd draft, which I’ll then send off to my copy editor — another month. Then I’ll make her changes, which at 10 pages a day will take add another month and half to the process. And finally this book will be finished sometime in February 2010, not...

So the tale so far for new readers: I wrote a book, named it A Molly Ringwald Ending, got an agent. My new agent thought the title, though awesome, might be a problem with the actress Molly Ringwald, the lawyer we consulted with confirmed that the name wasn’t fair-use in the title.  I sent Molly Ringwald a beseeching letter, asking if I could keep the title with her permission; her team of lawyers sent my agent a letter back basically saying “Hell No!” in legalese.  So as any good blogger would do, I crowd-sourced the problem and put the new title up for a vote. The title choices were a. The Perfect Ending b. Sixteen Years Later c. How it Ends d. 32 Candles e. Come up with your own title First of all, thank you all so much for weighing in. Just to let you know how much influence you wielded over the process, I was leaning way heavily towards How it Ends. My husband, CH, came up with 32 Candles, and I couldn’t think of a fourth alternative title, so I threw it in, though I didn’t think it would gain much traction. But guess what, 32 won by a landslide!and when I sent my agent the FaN-approved title along with a few of the suggested titles I had gotten, she flipped for 32 Candles, saying that she liked it even better than the original title — though I don’t know how much that statement was colored by not having to receive any more letters from Molly Ringwald’s lawyers over this title. Noboby digs getting letters from lawyers. Now that we’re over this hurdle, the next step is to send excerpts of the book out to publishers, who will hopefully bite, since...

So if you’re new to Fierce and Nerdy, and haven’t been keeping up with the saga, which is trying to get my novel published, here’s the short version of the story so far: I wrote a novel and titled it A Molly Ringwald Ending. Then I got an agent, who wondered if the title was legal copyright wise. Talked to a lawyer, turns out names — even the really iconic ones — aren’t fair-use in titles, so I wrote Molly Ringwald a heartfelt letter about how much the title meant to the plot line of the book. That’s where we left off. And yesterday, Molly Ringwald wrote back — or at least her lawyers did. They said absolutely not. I’ve no idea if they even showed Molly Ringwald my letter, before shooting down the title. Of course I am bummed about this. However, there is a lot of brightside to this story: 1) I don’t have to keep on waiting to find out if Molly Ringwald is going to let me use her name in the title. That was not fun, as I’m not the kind of person who likes having to get permission for stuff. 2) If the novel does get picked up by a publisher, I have a great author interview story. As it is, I’ll probably mention it in the acknowledgments and thank yous. Thank you, Molly Ringwald, for at least turning me down quickly. I was afraid this situation would drag on for months, and I had my answer in under three weeks. I’m seriously grateful for that. 3) Guess who gets to crowd-source a new title for my book. You do! So here are the options that I’m looking at: a. The Perfect Ending [this was my original alt...

So I’ve some really good news and some potentially terrible news re: my novel, A Molly Ringwald Ending. First the potentially terrible news: As many of you know, I’m a particularly bang-up title-chooser, but I must say that of all the titles I’ve ever made up, I liked this one the best. It evokes exactly what I want it to evoke, and almost guarantees a pick-up in the store if you’re a fan of her movies from the 80’s. Here’s how Davie, the book’s main character describes a Molly Ringwald ending. “It’s a perfect ending. It’s when somehow, against all odds, people manage to surmount all issues of class, status, and personality to get together at the end of a story. It’s basically impossible. I’ve never seen that kind of ending happen in real life. I mean not ever.” So great, we’ve got a title that’s both evocative and bittersweet, since the book happens to be about an extremely poor black girl from Mississippi. One problem: after consulting with a lawyer, we were told that the name Molly Ringwald isn’t fair use, so I definitely can’t use it in the title without the actual Molly Ringwald’s permission. So now, I have two alternatives: 1) Find Molly Ringwald and get her permission. If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this, I would be incredibly grateful. UPDATE: I should have said this before. We have her agent and manager info, but we’re seeking an alternative to cold calling them. OR 2) Come up with a new title as good or better than the original. Unfortunately, this is where my title muse abandons me. It’s been pouting b/c it prefers the first title it gave me and doesn’t see why it should have to come...

So for the first time in weeks, I actually went through with a Weekly Habit and both exercised and re-started work on my new novel yesterday. Walking for 30 minutes was both fun and invigorating and I’ve scheduled flossing into my morning routine — finally just admitting that I was too tired to attempt it at night. But the writing bit was a lot more horrible than expected. When I think about starting a huge new project, I always imagine myself in a sunny room, writing away with a chipper tap-tap-tap to my typing rhythm. I don’t know how, but I always manage to forget about the writing demons, which go especially big at the beginning of any project. Working on Molly Ringwald Ending for so long I had gotten used to the wheedling demons. These guys were my buds. They wanted me to watch TV with them. Go to the movies. Read a book. Hangout with friends — anything but finish MRE. They made a lot of convincing arguments about how the quality of my life was actually going down, because I spent too much time writing. And they’re undermining was subtle. They’d ask questions like, “What if you spend all of this time writing a novel, and it doesn’t sell? It’s a terrible, terrible market right now. Think about all the time you wasted on writing when you could have been enjoying your life.” That’s the nice version of the demons. When I start something new they get downright brutal. Yesterday they informed me that 1) I am a shit writer in a shitty market 2) No one wants to read an adventure novel with morally ambiguous women as the main characters — that’s why they’re aren’t any novels like that out...

Man, whatta week, whatta week. We had the biggest day on record so far, which means more and more people are finding their way to Fierce and Nerdy. We’ll make the world a fierce nerd yet. So, the big goal over the next two weeks is to get back to my first (publishable) novel, the 2nd draft of which is thisclose to being done. And then it’s off to a copy editor, and then I’ll wave good-bye and send it off into the world of publishing, and wait to see if it sinks or swims. I’m having all sorts of opposing feelings about this. I don’t hold my plays close or dear. In fact, I don’t consider them to be worthy things unless they’ve been presented to audience. However, with this novel it feels like I’m dealing with a child. I feel almost guilty for exposing it to rejection. And I also feel that I will miss it terribly. “Remember, when it was just you and me, Davie?” I might say to my main character. But at the same time, I want to give it a chance to thrive and be something to people other than me. Like I said, it really does feel like letting go of a child. I’m just having to trust that it will be okay on its own, out in the real world. And that I will, too. I wonder if that’s why this last bit has been the hardest part. When I started the 2nd draft, I had thought that some of the major changes that I would have to make would be the hardest bit. But those have come and gone, and I only have 50 more pages to go. 50 easy pages at that. Yet I...