Destiny Vandeput

July 19, 2016July 20, 2016

#PitchWars Mentor Bio (and Scavenger Hunt Letter!)

Well hello all you fantastic writers visiting my little corner of the internet!

I’m excited to be involved with #PitchWars this year and am beyond-belief excited that Lynnette and I get to work with one of you!

I was an alternate in 2014 (way back yonder when they had mentees and alternates) and ended up finding my incredibly amazing literary agent, Kirsten Carleton, after she requested at the agent showcase.

So, let’s get down to it…

Why should you pick me as your mentor?

Well, aside from the obvious hilarious comments in the margins of your MS (I personally think I’m super funny), I am an agented writer who knows what it’s like to write and revise a book and get it ready for editors. Another plus is I’m a professional writer in my day job, focusing mainly on digital marketing. That particular skill gives me an eye to scrape away fluff and restructure writing in a way that makes your message clear so the impact is felt. Lastly, I was an intern for two different literary agencies and so I feel I have a good handle on the YA market, what’s selling, what agents are looking for, and what type of query is going to hook agent interest.

For more about me and Lynnette, you can CLICK HERE for our Mini-Interview on Brenda’s site.

You can also read my SETTING Critique on Brenda’s site.

As far as my editing strengths, I love line editing! I’ll be working with you on a line by line level as we smooth out sentence structure, dialogue tags, tense, etc. We’ll work on making sure your POV is deep enough on a sentence level and eliminating “crutch” words. Although Lynnette is going to be working with you on the big picture revisions, I’ll be here to lend my voice and help in whatever way I can!

Finally, I’ve been in your shoes. I know what it’s like to read an edit letter for the first time and wonder how in the WORLD you’re ever going to accomplish everything. I know what it’s like to re-write a book, cut characters, shave off thousands of words, deepen characters, deepen your setting… you name it, I’ve been through it in my own personal writing.

As you’ve read on Lynnette’s blog, we’re looking for a mentee who is open to working hard and going deep. We are committed to matching you stride for stride, so you put in the work and we’ll put in the work. We’re #TeamDominate and that’s just what we’re planning to do, DOMINATE #PITCHWARS! As your mentors, we are here for you now, but also after #PitchWars because believe you me, Publishing is a crazy beast and we want to be there with you every step of the way.

Since you’ve hopped over to my blog from Lynnette’s, you already know what we’re looking for in a YA manuscript. So I’ll end this by giving you the next letter for the Scavenger Hunt!

We can’t wait to hear from you!

July 18, 2016

The Writing Journey

If you’re a writer, I’m assuming you have a goal.

Whether that goal be finishing your first draft… finishing your revision… getting agent representation… the ever elusive book deal… the NEXT book deal… getting starred reviews… hitting the “lists”… being translated…

The moment you achieve one goal in this writing journey, another hundred swim into view and the constant reaching for “the next” can become exhausting.

But there is something happening beneath the surface whether you realize it or not. You are becoming refined and the way you react to each success or failure is creating in you the strength and determination to make it through the next success or failure.

Goals are wonderful. I LOVE goals, but the journey of who you become while going after those goals is what’s the most important.

How do you react when you deal with a failure?

Do you break… or are you going to be the person that stands in the face of a storm and shouts back that you will not move?

How do you react when you encounter success?

Do you immediately assume this is the new normal and forget the path through the storm… or do you use your platform to connect and uplift those behind you on the journey?

I want to be the second version of each and I think that’s what we all want to be.

But it’s the journey we’re on RIGHT NOW that determines your reaction, not the moment of success or failure.

So pay it forward NOW. Refuse to give up NOW. Be a support NOW.

Let the journey toward your goal refine your character and strengthen your core.

July 5, 2016

July TBR!

I’ve been drafting my new book and so I haven’t been reading as quickly as I normally do, but I still have some books in my July TBR that need to be tackled!

The Raven Boys (book one) by Maggie Stiefvater
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Truthwitch (audio book) by Susan Dennard
The Manhattan Project (research book for another WIP)
A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

June 30, 2016June 29, 2016

The 5 Stages of Edit Letter Grief

It’s an exciting time in a writer’s life! You’ve taken your book as far as you can get it by yourself and you send it off to your CP/Agent/Editor and they turn around and give you an edit letter detailing the good, the bad, and the ugly about your manuscript and lots of notes on what needs work.

It’s like standing at basecamp on an enormous mountain, looking out on the beauty around and marveling at how high up you are… You take a deep breath and while you’re filling your lungs with all that delicious oxygen, your guide sneaks around and gut punches you then points to the top of the mountain and yells, KEEP CLIMBING!

Getting an edit letter—be it your first or one thousandth—you’re bound to go through at least a few of the stages below.

Denial. My editor has NO idea who my characters are, has no concept of the heart of the story and is ABSOLUTELY wrong! These are NOT the changes that need to happen in this story!
Anger. Well crap, my editor is right. The book really does need these changes, BUT THEY ARE IMPOSSIBLE! How in the world can she even ask me to do them? Her notes were too vague. She’s basically setting me up to fail!
Bargaining. Okay, I can see how to do a few of the notes, but the others? No idea! What about I change these few things, then I bet it won’t be necessary to do the rest of your suggestions… okay? Not enough? What can I give you to just lie and say it’s ready?
Depression. I’m finally vibing with all these suggested edits, my editor was totally right. Why didn’t I think of these changes in the first place? It’s because I’m a TERRIBLE writer with no imagination! My editor should just finish this manuscript because she obviously knows better than I do. I suck. I suck. I suck.
Acceptance. I just fell in love with my manuscript all over again after finishing these edits. I love writing! I love my editor! I love edit letters!

Any of this sound familiar? Oh it sure does to me because I’ve been there… many times!

A tip for working through these stages as quickly as possible? When you get your letter, let the notes sit for awhile before you start trying to make it work. If you sit down and try to start implementing before they’ve had time to marinate a bit, you’re going to get stuck in one of the first four stages and it will take you longer to move on to stage 5…

If you’re wondering how I tackle edit letters, check out these blog posts.

June 29, 2016

Check out The Darkest Lie by @PintipDunn!

I’m so excited to be part of the Release Blitz for Pintip Dunn’s THE DARKEST LIE! Check out the book’s details and teaser, and be sure to enter the giveaway below!

The Darkest Lie

Publisher: Kensington YA

Publication: June 28, 2016

“The mother I knew would never do those things.

But maybe I never knew her after all.”

Clothes, jokes, coded messages…Cecilia Brooks and her mom shared everything. At least, CeCe thought they did. Six months ago, her mom killed herself after accusations of having sex with a student, and CeCe’s been the subject of whispers and taunts ever since. Now, at the start of her high school senior year, between dealing with her grieving, distracted father, and the social nightmare that has become her life, CeCe just wants to fly under the radar. Instead, she’s volunteering at the school’s crisis hotline—the same place her mother worked.

As she counsels troubled strangers, CeCe’s lingering suspicions about her mom’s death surface. With the help of Sam, a new student and newspaper intern, she starts to piece together fragmented clues that point to a twisted secret at the heart of her community. Soon, finding the truth isn’t just a matter of restoring her mother’s reputation, it’s about saving lives—including CeCe’s own…

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Excerpt from The Darkest Lie

“I’ve been researching the story of her suicide,” Sam says. “And I came across something in my research that nobody could explain.”

“What is it?” I say dully, even though I can probably guess. I mean, there’s lots that’s inexplicable about my mom’s behavior. Tons.

Like: How could a grown woman be sexually attracted to a boy? Or more importantly: Why would she act on it? And my personal favorite: Did she have any kind of moral fiber—even a few lost threads—at all?

But Sam bypasses all the obvious questions and picks up a lock of my hair. I feel the slight tug all the way to my roots.

“Her hair.” He rubs my strands between his fingers, and I suppress a shiver. “It was chopped off, jagged. One article said it looked like it was lopped off with a butcher knife.”

I shrug, but even that simple movement is infused with the awareness of his touch. Still, he doesn’t let go.

“They said she was crazy,” I say. “Out of her mind. Maybe she was disfiguring herself as a sign of her shame. Who knows what motivated her actions?”

But even as I repeat the explanation the detectives gave for just about everything, my dad’s words echo in my mind: I knew your mother. She wasn’t capable of those things. I don’t believe she did any of it.

All of a sudden, my excuses sound exactly like what they are—easy, surface-level assumptions designed to make it easier for the detectives to close the case.

Sam frowns. “I guess I could buy that if I hadn’t seen the interview with her hair stylist in one of the local papers.”

Oh. One of those. Every newspaper in a fifty-mile radius went berserk when my mom committed suicide. Every day, there was a new article, featuring interviews with her fellow teachers, former students, even our lawn guy, for god’s sake. If there was a story on her hair salon, I must’ve missed it.

“The stylist kept saying your mom’s haircut was inconceivable, and I couldn’t understand why. So when I was scooting past Cut & Dry the other day, I stopped to talk to her.”

“Did she confirm my mom was a natural redhead?” I raise my eyebrows. “Reveal the exact color of dye she used to cover her silver sparkles?”

“Not at all,” he says, and something about his tone stops me. The chill begins at the base of my spine and crawls its way up, one long spider leg at a time. “The stylist said she’s been cutting your mom’s hair for two decades. And in all that time, your mother never let her cut more than half an inch. In fact, she came into the salon two days before she died, and they had the exact same argument. The stylist tried to talk her into a bob, and your mom adamantly refused.”

Abruptly, he lets go of my hair, and the strands swing back over my shoulder, loose, unencumbered, and very, very cold.

Sam’s eyes pierce right into me. “So what I want to know is: What could’ve happened in two days that made her change her mind? Unless . . . she didn’t.”

About Pintip Dunn

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Pintip Dunn graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, with an A.B. in English Literature and Language. She received her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the YALE LAW JOURNAL. She also published an article in the YALE LAW JOURNAL, entitled, “How Judges Overrule: Speech Act Theory and the Doctrine of Stare Decisis,”

Pintip is represented by literary agent Beth Miller of Writers House. Her debut novel, FORGET TOMORROW, is a finalist in the Best First Book category of RWA’s RITA® contest. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Washington Romance Writers, YARWA, and The Golden Network.

She lives with her husband and children in Maryland. You can learn more about Pintip and her books at www.pintipdunn.com.

Giveaway

There are 2 prizes! One winner will win a signed copy of THE DARKEST LIE (US only), and another winner will receive a $50 gift card to Amazon or Book Depository (international)!

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