TALES FROM THE LEDGE TUESDAYS~ The "B" List Blues

Well, it's that time of week again. Time to rant.
I could rant about hearing NOTHING on the 28 queries I have still out there with no response.

I could rant about how I am still not sure if my current WIP will be the first in my series.

I could rant about how much more time I have spent blogging, chatting on forums, and on FB than actually writing.

But, I won't.

What I will rant about is my VOICE. You hear it, loud, irreverent, in your face, the obnoxious chick from Philly. This is the VOICE you hear oh blogosphering buddies. But what VOICE I am talking about is the one I write my stories with.

Is it different? I hope so. My characters are nuts, loud, but they have their soft sides. I mean, I hope when my crit partners said I made them cry reading my first MS it was from the heart tugging emotion and not because I sucked.

I hope they didn't lie to me.

Legbreakers don't like liars.

Any who, I started wondering about my literary voice and wondered, what the hell is so literary about it? What is LITERARY anyways? (A few peeps told me I was on the border of literary. Twas confusing.)

Literary is like that club  hipsters and edgy people belonged to in highschool. Like Winona Ryder types. All quirky, cool, and too smart for the world. I was more of the cutting class where is the next party type. I did ok in school but I was that kid the teachers always said had "potential". Yup, that was me, the eternal slacker, McFly, but with friends.

In College I had a T-shirt that said, "Transcend Mediocrity". I thought, sounds smart. Sounds like something Winona would wear. The irony that  a McFly sported it I thought downright funny. Years later, as a teacher, the same phrase ran across my bulletin board. Made some kids think. The slackers never bothered and everything came full circle.

Any who, I have a FB buddy, BB you know who you are, who has a blog. Her voice, well, I told her it left me breathless.  She uses big $2 words.

Then I think, damn, I shouldn't have cut English class to make out with my boyfriend. I should've been the smart girl who got smarter. Not the smart girl with potential. But if I did all those things I would sound different, right? Is that good or bad?????(Mental note, find a word of the day program. I need to feed my brain.)

Jaws reads the newspaper every morning. An old collegaue of mine reads the New York Times everyday! I used to read and watch news, once upon a time while working in local politics. I got jaded, cynical, and I didn't like it the BLAHS it gave me.

Now news to me is TMZ. Linsday Lohan is a matter of national crisis people, and don't get me started on the state of Mel Gibson. The UN should be notified and hold all kinds of meetings of these two.

I don't like feeling like the "B" student. Not B as in grades but B as in B-list. And I don't want to be a "B" list author either. I don't want an agent who has sold things I wouldn't read. I don't want to be the fine Gouda of a cheesy publishing house, or even its Velveeta.

So where am I with this rant? Not sure. All in know is that I've been told my writing VOICE is distinct I have made people laugh and cry. So I should be happy right? I am at times. But then these ledge moments pop up and I'm not so sure. What if my voice isn't DISTINCT enough?

I'm on two forums where peeps are looking at my query, synopsis, and first five pages of my MS. They too are aspiring writers. Some of the feedback is conflicting, confusing, and has me scratching my head on what to do with all of this.

And now I am talking to myself, asking my "writing" voice in my "Philly" voice, "Yo, bitch. WTF? No agent yet? Dig deep, find your balls and get'er done already."

41 queries, 11 rejections, 2 partials, and still going...