rocking horse publishing « Robin Writes

The worst part of this little experiment of mine was the fact that I was the only test subject. That’s two whammies: I was, what seemed at the time, deathly ill, and I had no one to practice on besides myself.

Quite frankly, I was too sick to even give two tiny whoops.

It started last Sunday. We were packing up for our weekly trip to the farm, and I didn’t feel well. Not horrible, just not good. Took my temp and it was around 99. No big; I don’t even treat a fever until it hits 100—fever is there for a reason. In a nutshell, it burns off whatever you’ve got.

We decided to postpone the trip until the next day. I mean, I never get sick—the last time it was this bad was 12 years ago, and it was a lot worse then—so we figured a good night’s sleep would take care of it.

Problem was, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in forever…

Monday morning, my temp shot up to 101 and I was reaching for the Advil. Still, I was hanging in there and told my husband to go ahead and leave, I’d be fine, the kid was home, no big deal. I went back to bed and watched old TV reruns and dozed a little; the kid brought me food and water, lots of water, and honey, and a wet washcloth. When I got tired of being in bed—which, to me, says “sick” more than anything else—I’d move to the recliner or couch and the other TV.

By the time my husband got home around 10:00 p.m., having wisely decided he should probably be at home with me, that silly thermometer was reading just a tad over 102.

Good grief. And here’s the kicker: I literally had no other symptoms. None. Well, okay, my butt hurt from sitting on it, and I had a slight headache that turned out to be forgetting my Claritin AND beta blockers for two days.

Let me tell you, though, at 102-point-whatever, you are SICK. And you feel it.

Tuesday was much the same: recliner, couch, bed, Advil, a little food, a lot of water and Gatorade, wet washcloths, and honey.

Yes, a spoonful of honey, now and again, really, really made me feel better. Nothing fancy, just eat it. I did, once, mix it with lemon juice; only once because I was too miserable to squeeze another lemon. And I can tell you this: I intend to keep a lot of honey around!

Advil too—I call it my wonder drug. Now, purists will tell you to use other things, but dammit, this was misery. I do always take two; I used to mess around with one first, but the heck with that. Take two and be done. At least for a while. This fever would go down to normal, or close, but it would take 2 hours and then start going back up again.

By Wednesday, tired of everyone telling me that this was “too long,” I went to my doc’s clinic. I peed in a cup; I had blood drawn. I talked to the NP and felt sorta human for a bit. Still running about 100 degrees. She gave me a Z-pack, just in case, and because I had started coughing. Just a bit, once in a while, no big deal. Not even like, you know, a real cough.

She also upped the Advil to three at a pop. That was the best thing ever! I’d wait until I hit 100—the heck with 101 at this point—eat those suckers, and BAM. Fever-be-gone, in like 30 minutes. Slept great Thursday night, but the damn thing went up again Friday morning.

And that was that.

Oh, the cough? Yeah, it got a little worse. The cross-your-legs-and-pray kind of worse, you know? Still have it, but it’s almost gone. It’s been 8 days of crap. Well, 6 days anyway. I managed to go see a friend who was in town for her two-year visit, since I was fever-free by Friday morning, and on Sunday we drove down to the farm—yay!

Yes, I’m taking it easy. Staying out of the sun. No hard labor. Etc., etc.

What did I learn, as far as prepping?

Buy and stock lots of Advil—I should get a stipend for plugging them so much. Ditto with honey, local and unprocessed, the darker the better; eat a spoonful every few hours, or mix it with whatever you like. Drink lots of water—that’s a duh—but change it up with Gatorade or 7UP or whatever tickles your fancy.

Rest, even if you don’t feel like it. I suspect I had a flu, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been because I don’t mess around anymore with processed food and junk, and I get regular exercise. Anyway, during days 2-4, I couldn’t have done anything if I’d tried. Not weak, just sick. Too sick to be online or talk on the phone or even text. THAT is sick! I neglected everything, and you know what? It turned out okay. Well, I have a few people who are a little annoyed with me, but they’ll get over it…

The difficult part is resting when you start to feel better. You want to handle everything, you want it done, but here’s the thing: don’t. Delegate, or let it go. Or even half-ass it. It really doesn’t matter to anyone but you…

Stock up on antibiotics if you can. I don’t know HOW you can, but it would sure be a help. Can’t say if they helped me or not, because when the blood work came back, it showed nothing in the way of an infection, so yeah, probably viral. On the plus side, I rarely take antibiotics, so if there was anything bacterial lurking around on the inside, it’s surely gone now.

Take your vitamins and eat. I barely had any food all week; nothing sounded or looked or tasted good, although I had no nausea or digestive issues. It helps if there’s someone around to make the food, because cooking or even making a sandwich was completely beyond my ability last week. Losing a few pounds can be good, sure, but it’s not worth feeling sicker and weak from lack of food.

Best advice I’ve got is to get healthy and stay that way. The latter is much easier if you start with the former.

Should you enter your book (or poem or short story) in a contest? Like everything else in the book industry, “It depends.” Some questions to ask yourself:

Is the contest well known? Would readers recognize this contest and be more likely to buy my book?
What is the cost? What is the prize?
Does it involve publishing and rights?
Is it a scam?

Take the Newbery Medal, for instance, or the Caldecott Medal; we all remember those from childhood book fairs and libraries. Or the Children’s Choice Book Awards.

The Jane Addams Peace Awards have no entry fee; neither do those mentioned above. This is your first clue on how to avoid a bad contest.

Now, some writers think that winning any contest at all is better than winning nothing. Readers may not know the difference, but fellow authors and others in the book business do know, and they aren’t going to be impressed. That’s not to say you didn’t write a very nice book, maybe it COULD have won a prestigious award.

But just because you were “invited,” it doesn’t mean you should drop everything and enter—and often pay money. It’s been said that you could buy a package of gold stickers for much less, and it would mean as much.

Some contests offer a cash prize, which is always nice, but those generally involve paying an entry fee. Is the cost worth it? Is it a gamble? Should you buy a lottery ticket instead?

Other contests award a publishing contract or inclusion in an anthology. Be very careful of these, and know your rights. Read that contract over and over, or have an attorney look at it. Often, this is nothing but a vanity press, particularly those given out by new or small presses or known offenders in the industry.

And finally, the scam:

When you submit to some contests, that simple entry can sign away your rights and hand them over to the publisher—for how long and what you’re paid are probably two unanswerable questions.

And Lord knows, I gripe enough about vanity presses, but contests don’t always fall into their realm. However, many contests are ostensibly run by third parties, but under the surface, you’ll see they are not. Some contests are run by a publishing house that only includes that house’s books—how much meaning, really, is there in that?

Contest scams in general are noted for high entry fees, a large number of categories, convoluted ownership issues, short timeframe for judging, lack of information about judges, and spam.

What’s a high entry fee? $75.00 or more. Maybe even less, depending. Large number of categories? Again, subjective, but when every possible genre and sub-genre are included, you might be wary. Ownership issues? When a contest is run by one organization, but is connected by ownership to, say, a book review site and/or some type of publisher, that’s suspect.

Some of these will have a deadline of, for example, April 15th, and say they’ll announce winners May 15th. That’s not much time for panel of judges to read all those entries. Besides, who are those judges? Are they readers? Publishers? Agents? Someone in a back room surrounded by books who looks at the covers and tosses them aside?

And finally, spam.

Good grief.

When a company constantly emails, telling me to ENTER NOW! and reminds me of the due date umpteen times, I smell a rat. And most particularly, when I respond, politely, and request they remove me from their mailing list because I’m not interested, I get back things like “obviously [you] know nothing about the publishing industry, because [our] company is very famous and prestigious, blah, blah, blah,” and “we are not scam, we good company.”

Things along those lines. Sometimes, they’re downright rude and insulting and accuse me of all manner of things. But the spam never stops.

Just like vanity presses, if a contest is going to contact you out of the blue, they’re probably also going to take your money for no reason at all. Do your homework. Make sure you enter only legit contests with proven records, and don’t be distracted by their names or claims—but for heaven’s sake, don’t take the word of the contest promoter. And please don’t tout your “accomplishment” all over the Internet.

It’s embarrassing. Go buy some stickers.