Helena Mary Cole

Okay, so I’ve been neglecting this blog for a very long time. 

But I’ve been busy. 

This past winter, I wrote another novel, the sequel to the novel I’m still trying to find representation for. In the New Year, I consecrated my writing to Our Lady, and around the same time the consecration was done, I sat down out of the blue and started plugging away at the sequel. And I couldn’t stop. It was great; except I wasn’t sending out query letters during that whole time. 

Sometimes, when I get writing, I get into hyperfocus and EVERYTHING else I have to do becomes an annoying distraction. I’ll force myself to do other things but grumble about them the whole time because all I want to do is get back to writing. It’s like the words are a sort of itch on my brain and I feel like I can’t rest until I get them OUT and onto paper. Well, digital paper. 

Something feels unhealthy about hyperfocus. Sometimes, I feel trapped inside it. I’m not sure if it’s more closely related to my autism or my ADHD… But in any case, the writing process works best, I find, when it’s part of a loop where you write until your creative well starts to run dry, and then you stop and fill up the well, and then go back to writing, and repeat. 

How do you fill up the well? I’m sure I’ve said this before because I say it time and again, “Creative endeavors feed off each other.” It’s a good idea, when you reach the end of your creativity rope, to look and see what other people have been doing creatively. Read a good book. Go to the art museum. Watch a good movie. Once, I watched a ballet dancer dancing for about ten minutes and suddenly knew how to write myself out of a corner I’d backed myself into. 

Recently, I picked up a copy of Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset because the title showed up on Trent Horn’s list of the “Top Ten Works of Classical Literature Every Catholic Should Read,” right along such titles as Jane Eyre and The Lord of the Rings and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Goodness, I read Dracula every fall. Anyway, I had never heard of Kristin Lavransdatter and I wanted to know why it was listed with a bunch of other books I’ve already loved for years. It is a hefty read. Which makes it great for filling up the old well. Word to the wise: buy the three volumes of Kristin separately if you enjoy reading in bed because the single volume is a monster that you have to leave open on a tabletop because it’s exhausting to balance it in your hands. It’s huge all right. I’ll be lucky if I’m done by the end of the summer. 

So, it was hard at times to get out of hyperfocus and get back into that healthier loop where I’m refueling once in a while. 

Back to the subject at hand, I’m happy to have finished writing the sequel to my award-nominated manuscript. For some reason, I’m imagining that, when I finally do get an offer of representation from an agent, it’ll look good if I can say, “I’ve already written the sequel.” I left a few loose ends open at the end of the first book. 

I think I’m looking at having to write a trilogy (at least). When I wrote to the end of the sequel, I began to see I’d just made a third book inevitable. Blast. At this point, I have absolutely no idea what the third book is going to be about. 

I don’t know much about the publishing industry at this point, so I don’t know if having a sequel completed is a boon for me or not. But of course, the thing is to get an agent first, and then to get a publishing deal, and then sell a lot of copies of the first book. And then we can think about book two. 

The other good news is, after I finished writing, I started getting a lot of queries sent out again, and the rejections are rolling in. Again. In recent months, the rejections were so discouraging that I stopped querying for a few weeks. I realized that I had lost confidence in the title that I landed on, after rejecting three previous titles. <sigh> I still feel like I haven’t found the right title yet. But finally, I realized that working on the title plus tightening up my first ten pages somewhat was going to be the key to getting back on the query train. And it worked: my confidence got a healthy boost. On we merrily go. 

If anyone’s reading this who read my manuscript, the story of Jordan and Alex, and you’d like to give feedback on titles, these are the ones I’ve tried over the past few weeks: 

Don’t Fade Away 

Me, Not Just My Features 

Reappearing Somewhere 

When the Rest of the World Walks Out 

Walking Alone in the Light 

Walking Alone in the Light was derived from a quotation from Helen Keller: “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” The title touches on the isolation that one feels as an autistic teenager (which I certainly experienced), but despite what the quotation says, “light” sounds hopeful. It could be open to interpretation here. The title mentions “walking,” which is something that the physically disabled love interest in the story (Alex) does not do, so, you know, Jordan is “walking alone” but then again, Alex could be rolling along beside her. My “cheesy detector” is faulty – I’m not sure about that title. But it’s the one I’ve picked for the moment because I have to call the novel something in my query letters. 

Inspired by John Green finding his title The Fault in Our Stars in Shakespeare’s poetry, I spent a few long days mining Shakespeare for a title, but everything I found there didn’t sit right. And then some of those cool Shakespeare lines were already taken by someone in the music industry. You have to be careful when your readership might strongly associate your title with a popular song or something else like that. 

So, that’s my update. Things are going as well as they can be. I’m (more or less) happy with the sequel novel I wrote, and it’s expected for rejections to still be pouring in after only having sent out forty query letters. I’ll keep you posted!