Slow and Steady Wins the Race...Eventually

I've been driving myself insane. A few weeks ago I finished the edits on my first manuscript and started the query letter process only to find out I'd missed a memo somewhere along the way. My 157,000 word behemoth of a debut novel should be have instead been in the 80,000 word neighborhood. Oops.

Torn between cutting, carving really, my titanic of a manuscript down to something an agent would be interested in or breaking it up into two reasonable length books, I doubled my efforts and got to work kinda doing both at the same time.

For whatever reason I felt like I should be able to make a few changes and have it submittable within a few weeks. I had already spent 18 months writing and editing, isn't that enough after all? Haven't I paid my dues? Well, to be frank, no.

Writing a book is like flying coach. No two people on a given flight pay the same amount for their seat to make the exact same journey. Google plane tickets from Portland to New York and see prices that range from $594 to $1,227. Yowza! The same is true of writing: some need months for their debut others take years and years.

Your point is?

My point is that it takes or costs as much as it costs. You can't rush the process. So, I'm breaking my book up into two and loving every minute of it...now. I was so focused on trying to take the shortest path to the "goal" I lost sight of why I do this in the first place. My writing process is slow. My muse puts together the basics of the story, then I edit edit edit until it's just right. No quick paths. No shortcuts. But I was killing myself trying to speed up the process.

There were days I fantasized about how fast I could get it done if I didn't work 40 hours a week, with an almost 2 hours daily commute. In these romantic notions, my schedule looks something like this:
   7:00 Wake Up
   7:30 Wake Up
   7:45 Wake Up
   8:00 Coffee while Tweeting about the Polish plane that crashed into a cemetery (11,000 bodies were recovered)
   8:15 Writing in hammock
   9:30 Personal chef brings breakfast
 10:00 Masseuse rubs shoulders while telling me how excited they are to read my book
 10:15 Checking retweets of airline crash. Continue writing in hammock
 11:30 Work out
 12:30 Update friends over lunch about ongoing airline crash investigation
   1:00 Camp out in Starbucks, editing manuscript
   3:00 Home to pick up kids, share bad news about plane crash
   4:00 Bike ride/roller blade with friends and/or kids before dinner
   6:30 Dinner made by said personal chef
   7:30 Reading and blogging with glass of wine
   9:00 Review massive number of book sales on Amazon and B&N, respond to emails
   9:30 In bed, reading a couple more chapters

This is just during the week. The weekend is much more strenuous and includes mornings of writing, then trips to the climbing gym, bike rides, hiking, camping, so on.

Kidding aside, I'm the single source of income and I have to pay the mortgage, car payments, and insurance. There is zero chance at this time in my life I can spend all my time writing. I squeeze in what I can, about 8 hours during the week and 8-10 hours on the weekend. But there are so many more experiences that make my life rich.

In the end writing is just a job, granted one were I get to make shit up, but in a few years I'll have a lot more time and maybe I can entertain the notion of quitting that 8-5 that sometimes feels like such an albatross. Italy. I could write from a small Italian village on the Mediterranean while Skyping with my friends as they are partaking on their own grand adventures.

So, take a deep breath, and just keep going. I'm the tortoise and that's okay. Slow and steady WILL win the race....eventually.

Carry on.

Do What You Love - Don't Let Inhibitions Stop You

This week's blog is short and sweet. I'm tired and have been wrangling with the decision of rather to cut 50,000 words from my debut novel or break it up into two book. You can read the dramatic-gasp!-details in my post The Path to Getting Published Part 4: Query Letter and Debut Novel Length.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

What has kept me going in this is my love of writing. Not just the initial idea to epaper, but the revising, beta readers, figuring out how to say more with less, all of it.

Bottom line: making shit up is fun.

What I've also discovered is that it's easy to get focused on the end goal, that of getting published. What can I do to make it so an agent and following that a publisher and following that readers will love my writing? Yes, in the end it's about the reader, but during the process it's about the writer.

Depending on the speed of the reader and the length of the book, a novel can be dishearteningly consumed in less than a day. I'm a little slower and will take a couple weeks, sometimes longer, part of it is I want to give the writer their full due, they worked hard so I'll put some effort too. But no matter how long the reader takes the writer is in the thick of the story for years. In that time it's easy to let inhibitions, both externally and the crap going through your head, prevent you from really stretching your creative legs and doing everything you want to do.

Nothing kills the creative process like inhibitions.

In last week's Jay and Silent Bob podcast, Kevin Smith, and Jason Mewes were screening their new cartoon movie. For those that don't know, Kevin Smith is an indie film maker, whose credits include Clerks 1 & 2, Mallrats, and more, he started Smodcast Internet Radio, on and on. Jason Mewes is an actor, recovering drug addict, and most recently a director. Google them if you want to know more, this isn't a memoir.

During the Q&A portion of the podcast, a film student asked for advice on making it in the movie business. What followed was the most touching and inspiring monologue about creativity I've ever heard. Kevin's take on it is from the movie-making perspective, but it's applicable to writing or any creative endeavor.  I've listened to it a dozen times and each time I've come away feeling re-energized and ready to lay it all out there.

I clipped out that 20 minute section of the podcast. You can listen to it online or download it to your MP3 player. NOTE: In this venue there is a lot of swearing, so if that sort of thing turns you off you may want to skip it. But for the rest of us, prepare to have your inhibitions blown away.

Of course I'm going to try and get published, we writers are an introverted but egotistical bunch. However, I'm going to remember to focus on the process I love and not so much on the end goal. As Kevin says, do what you love, and the money will follow. And if it doesn't, who cares? At least you got to do what you love.

Carry on

Download here or listen on line

Path to Getting Published Part 4: Query Letter and Debut Novel Length

A Lesson in Query Letters and Debut Novel Length

I started my second novel two years ago, the first one being a learning experience and is collecting dust in some digital folder someplace. The content for the new book, perhaps my very first true muse experience, started with a flash of a scene that was so clear and vivid, I had to write it down. No laptop and my handwriting is crap, so I typed it in an email on my phone. Wish still had that email, but it's long lost in a cyber trashcan someplace. After that the story just kind of started writing itself.

It felt like someone was handing me the content. That somehow I was cheating and at any time someone, someone with actual talent, was going to call me on my bluff and my story would be done. But that didn't happen.

On the journey I only did the smallest amount of research and almost never talked about my writing. This was mostly because I was worried I would jinx whatever voodoo, disrupt the energy, kill the mojo, or whatever it was that was making things work.

I remember reading an acknowledgement section where the author said he was giving his book away because he ran out of content before he reached the minimum 100,000 words his publisher required. I was about 50,000 words into my own book by then, so I that's where I threw down the flag. 100,000 came and I remember internally doing back flips in celebration.


Cue ominous book too long music

Then I kept going. Right. Cue book-too-long ominous music. A few months later I finished my first manuscript at just over 170,000 words.

I was ecstatic! That was awesome! Booyah!

Editing took nine months and when I finished I had an 180,000 word behemoth. See I'm a put-'er-inner not a take-'er-outer. Still thinking I'm doing okay, I went through and "killed my darlings" taking out excessive adjectives and even pulling an entire story line, creating a novella from that content. Still, even after all that it was still 157,000 words long. Sweet! If 100,000 was good, 157,000 was even better, right?

Those of you in the know are shaking your heads. Right. I know I missed a memo somewhere.

Someone missed a memo

The moment of reckoning came when I posted my query letter on Agent Query for critiquing. I found the link to the site on Dee Ann Waite's blog entry Are You Really Ready to Publish?. Guess what the number one thing they said? WAY too long. The actual comment was, "No agent in their right mind would sign a 160k word debut novel." You have to appreciate Yuffie's candor.

What? No way! Google will justify my indignation! Only it didn't. Nor did an email to Dee. Both confirmed the absolute maximum for a debut novel is 120,000 words, but more in the 85-95k range is preferred. It's too expensive to print such ginormous tombs for a new authors. Plus, does your novel need to be that long? Really? No, probably not.

Cutting

Google to the rescue!

So the last couple of days I have been figuring out what to cut. NOTHING! Screams part of my mind. But the more I've worked on the query letter, the more I've realized what the core focus of the book is and just how far I tend wander off the path from The Phone Rang... to the The End.

Another revision of the query letter, a printout of the MS, and a sharp #2. No more put-'er-inning, only take-'er-outing with some reworked content.

This has been a roller coaster, dipping into the disheartening and stressful with short peaks of optimism. Needless to say not much else is on my mind as of late. It doesn't mean the end of my writing career, it's just a milestone. A smack-along-side-the-head learning experience. Plus, writing a query letter, summarizing your book in a few short sentences is a bitch.

I have challenged myself to see how much I could take out and still have a great story. With that in mind I'm grinding my pencil and checking my ego.

Take-aways for debut novelists:
  1) Novel word length goal: 80,000 to 95,000
  2) Query letter word length: 250-300
  3) Visit QueryShark.BlogSpot.com for query samples. Agent Janet will critique your letter for you
  4) Writing a query letter is hard work. No two ways about it. No shortcuts.
  5) Visit Agent Query for more help on your query letter.
  6) Your letter is more than just to get an agent. Use it to help you focus on the core of your novel. The two actually go hand-in-hand.
  7) After you are done editing, spend a few bucks and print your book. Then get a pencil and start marking things off that need to be cut.
Stephen King says it's about story and it's only about story. Thank you again, Mr. King. Right as always.

Carry on.

Path to Getting Published - Part 3: Project: Agent Research

Project: Agent Research

The cool thing about owning a blog is I can blather on and on about something inconsequential, like researching literary agents for instance, and you can either choose to continue reading and maybe even participate in the conversation by way of comments. Or close my page, never to return to my babbling again.
In either case I don't have to face a friend where I feel obligated to give a 30 second summary or depressingly watch their eyes go glassy as they wonder when I am going to shut up.

If you haven't read Part 2 of the Path to Getting Published series, you may wish to do so before continuing, but I've tried to write them so they can stand on their own.

I have begun the process of searching for an agent. Living vicariously through other people's blogs, but there is nothing quite like trudging through the process firsthand. A friend of mine I met on Twitter, Dee Ann Waite has two great blog entries on the subject:
  The Horrifying Journey of Querying
  and Are You Really Ready to Publish?
These have served as an excellent platform to jump from.

The second entry had a link to a Research Agents article which had great advice on finding an agent. The second recommendation in this article, Acknowledgments, in the list is where I am starting my search. Here is what they say:
Find out who represents authors you admire, either through the acknowledgments in their books, where agents are often thanked, or simply by Googling their names and words like "agent" or "represented by." If they're open to what your literary heroes are doing, they'll probably be open to your work, too.
Ahhh, sweet! Something to Google! I started with my literary hero: Stephen King. If you're going in, may as well go all in, right?

Google: Stephen King Literary Agent

There are a gazillion hits. Okay, searching....

Doh! Just got sidetracked by an article Ten Tips for Nabbing Yourself a Literary Agent, by Jay Clark. His [first] name is awesome and his article great. It's on setting your frame of mind when you do query, remember you are not a humble villager wishing to appease the great and powerful volcano god literary agent who can squash your dreams with a click of the mouse. You are a professional, by god. Act like you have something they need!

In addition, like in real estate, he points out another important quality in an agent: location, location, location. The presses are in NYC and so should your agent. Someone in Akron, Ohio will not be having a daily lunch date with their connection at Simon and Schuster, because S&S is in New York and your agent is in Ohio.

Jay's article led me to sign up for Agent Query. Create a profile? Check. Validate email? Check. Follow JayPatrickClark on Twitter? Check.

Oy. Google can be such a rabbit hole. Focus. Focus. Back to Stephen. Oh, crap, his literary agent, Ralph Vicinanza died last year. Twenty different sites, lots of clicks and I am getting good information but am no closer to figuring out who his agent(s) is/are.

OCD and years of attention deficit kicking in, time to switch gears. Trying another of my heroes, Dean Koontz.

Google: Dean Koontz Literary Agent

Bam! First link and I have my answer: Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. Shazam! On a roll now! Researching Robert. Okay, so according to his bio, Robert is founder and chairman of Trident. Doesn't look like he is accepting new clients, but Trident has a eleven active agents. They are representing hugely successful authors like Mr. Koontz, but still do a quick check on their location as per Jay Clark's article...Snap! They are in New York. Check.

Looking at their submissions page, you can submit one query to one agent. Time to start my contact spreadsheet. Name, address, phone, company, blah blah blah. Starting with the first agent on their list, Don Fehr and working my way down, looking for what feels like the best fit.

It seems like there are two parts to finding an agent: leg work and instinct. This blog article is mostly about the research part of it. Finding the people. Checking their bonafides. Seeing if they are accepting submissions and if so, what genre and in what format. On and on. But like in writing, there is the other side, the gut reaction to the person. Do they resonate with you? Based on their description of how they work and their philosophy, do you think the two of you will gel? Sure all of this is coming from an unpub, who is just starting the querying process. But I trust my instincts, they almost never lead me wrong. Well, okay except for that time when I was 17 and Ruth and I got locked in the park after hours. But I think that was more hormones than instinct, but I digress.

So that being said, I weeded the list down to four after reading their bios:
Melissa Flashman - What resonated: I am always on the lookout for the novel that makes you want to call in sick," says Melissa. "I'm genre agnostic—it's the story and writing that have to click. I LOVE the phrase "genre agnostic." Even after Googling it not entirely sure what it means, but I love it still.

Alex Glass - What resonated: I enjoyed working with writers even more as a literary agent, helping them through the creative process and making their vision a reality with the publication of their books. I have a passion for the business aspects of publishing.

Ellen Levine - What resonated besides her MASSIVE list of clients: I love to guide my established authors' careers, but I also love discovering fresh talent and new voices, taking authors to the next levels of success.  And of course, I get great pleasure in making the best possible deals for all my clients.

Erica Spellman-Silverman - What resonated: First her energy. It's weird, but I could feel this wave of energy coming out of her bio. Read it and tell me I'm wrong. Then there was this: I love great storytelling, and the talented writers who create the books," says Erica. I like being involved at the beginning of the process with the book, or even the idea and helping the writer to bring the work to fruition. Great storytelling is near and dear to my heart.

Okay, so I have four, now what? Now I am going through their list of clients to see whose work is closest to my own.

So first up: Melissa Flashman. In her bio she says categories include pop culture, memoir, wellness, popular science, business and economics, and technology, and based on the first dozen clients, none of whom were in my genre, I'd say this is a very accurate assessment of what she targets. Tons of good stuff, but doesn't seem like the two of us are on the same page.

Before I go on, I feel compelled to point out that about a third of the links to her clients' pages took me to someplace that I really had to dig to get any content. Sometimes it was a blog, sometimes Twitter, other times a random page I couldn't figure out why it was linked to. I don't mind working, but my ADD only gives me a minute or so per link to find useful content read before I move on.

Mental note: make a web page that gives the low down on who and what I'm about as well as links to my work.

Here is a superb example of what to do: http://www.eveadamson.com/. Really, this is awesome. Right off the top I see who she is, what work she's done, contact information, etc. It's simple and to the point.

Next, Alex Glass. I love his links to his clients, including the first one by Eve Adamson I mentioned. Of the first dozen, I got a ton of great information right away, though none quite as good as Eve's. Found several authors who write similarly to myself. Yay! Definitely keeping for round 3!

Going through Ellen Levine's massive list of clients is like pursuing a library and randomly pulling books off the shelf. The first few links for her clients didn't work, but after that so much. Memoirs. Documentaries. How-to. Including several in my genre. Yay!

Oops! Sorry, Alex and Ellen, but we have a winner: Erica Spellman-Silverman. Why? Well, first as I mentioned her bio radiates energy and I am like a moth to the flame for energy. If that's the way she comes across in her written word, what would she be like if I ever actually got to talk to her? Dude. Second, even though a lot of her client links didn't work, I felt compelled to keep going down her list. The reason was simple: at least half the authors had books I wanted to read. They resonated with me.

Three hours later I have the first literary agent on my spreadsheet and an item on my to-do list: create a compelling web site with all my information and links.

Until next time, carry on!

Just Let It Go

My daughter is 15 and has been my partner in writing crime. For the last couple of years she and I have been writing books at the same time and it has been marvelous fun. Then school kicked in and she has not had as much time and of course she has a ton of other interests: dancing (5-6 days a week!), maintains a 4.0 in school, can draw like a demon--I can sketch but compared to her I'm a complete fraud--has a set of YouTubers she follows religiously (YouTube is her version of TV), she has her friends, she has a whole slew of "hot guys" she is constantly mooning over, so on, the list is longer than as this run-on sentence. Plus, she's my "yes" girl.
   "Want to go skiing?"
   "Yes"
   "Want to go on a bike ride?"
   "Yes"
   "Want to go to Word Stock? Go to coffee? Go rollerblading?"

   "Yes. Yes. Yes."

You get the idea.

During our hours of riding, coffee, rollerblading, we talk about our stories amongst other things--one of her favorite subjects is always the latest "hot guy" she is admiring--share ideas and experiences. Work through story lines and plot twists. Figure out how to smooth out dialog and create tension.

But with all she has going on, her writing has fallen by the wayside. Plus, at her age, she is figuring out who she is, trying new things, constantly pushing her own boundaries. Did I mention the girl can draw? Damn! Big Ben. Tower of London. Lots of portraits. Yeah, yeah parental pride and all, but still pretty damn good.

So yesterday, she came with me to Bring Your Kid To Work Day, and on the drive over she told me that she was thinking she might not be an author--this has been her stated profession for a couple of years now. It didn't come as a surprise to me, she spends a ton of her time drawing which is where I think the love in her heart really lies and she wants to try her hand at vlogging like her favorite YouTubers. But it still hurt a little.

My heart is like, "wait! When we go on the Amazing Race together we could have been father/daughter [best-selling] authors. That was going to be our shtick! I was going to help you put together query letters and a list of agents I researched." Blah blah blah.

But instead I said, "yeah, kinda been thinking that. So what do you think you might do?" and we launched into another entertaining conversation.

I've seen parents try and cram an idea onto their kid, and sometimes that's a good thing. You will stay in school. You are brilliant you can get a bit better grades. You aren't going to watch TV all day. You aren't going to eat doughnuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But your dreams are your dreams, and watching your kids figure out theirs is even better, more exciting, more exhilarating than watching them try and fulfill yours.

Just let it go.

That's a metaphor for life, really. Most of the crap we try and control isn't worth the effort. Think about some of the stupid things we waste effort on and get spun up about and ask yourself if it is really worth it? What happens if you just let it go? Sometimes the result of letting something go, letting it unfold on its own, is even better than if you had controlled it. That's what I do in my stories, I let my muse take control and that seems to work. So I am.

My daughter is super good on social media and has an artist's eye, so she helped choose the color theme for my blog and has made recommendations on getting more followers on Twitter. Plus, she spent two years going down the writing-a-book-road, so she's my biggest supporter and we still get to talk about it. Who knows?, maybe she'll pick it up again later and if not that's okay. Then I'll get to live vicariously through her as she goes some off on some other fabulous adventure.

And when she turns 21 and we get on to be on the Amazing Race together, we'll have an even better byline.

Until next time, carry on!

Path to Getting Published - Part 2

Adventures in Social Media

This is part 2 of my series, Path to Getting Published. If you haven't already, take a moment and read Part 1.

When I started this process I didn't have a clue. Really, those that know me would argue that is still the case, but I digress. After I pulled my head out of the pages I was writing I started looking around for the next step and it turns out that step is "marketing."

If you aren't Steven King, Jack Nicholson, Ellen, or are, for whatever reason already famous or infamous, you probably don't have a huge entourage, thus it is up to you to drum up excitement for your upcoming book. It doesn't matter if you are going the traditional publishing route, like me, or indie, you need to employ liberal doses of social media.

Twitter. Facebook. Google+. Blogging. Yahoo. Blah blah blah. On and on. There is SO much it's easy to get bogged down and spend all your time working on socializing you don't leave any time to actually work on your next manuscript. I made that mistake when I first started. I tried to do Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and blogging. What I realized is you can't. It's too much.

Let me say that again for emphasis: You can't do it all.

Choose one or two and focus. I have a FB fan page I post to occasionally, and have a defunct G+ page, but my focus is blogging and Twitter.

If you don't have a blog yet, you can use www.blogger.com by Google, WordPress, or a plethora of others. Blogger.com was super easy to set up, except for the email subscription--I have outlined how to do that here-- and within 30 minutes I was posting.

Yay, right? Well, yes and no. You have to know the rules. Rules? What rules? I can post whatever I want!
Again, yes and no. There is no reason for me to go into all the do's and don'ts about blogging because it has been done ad nauseum.

So where to find The Rules?
Well, one of my absolute favorite bloggers is Molly Greene. She has posted a article titled My Ten Biggest Blog Blunders. Read this article then peruse her site and mimic. The girl is classy and a pro.

Another with great content is Write With Warnimont. Yet another is Jay Squires, who is both witty and informative. Very entertaining.

That's really the ticket to a great blog, give everything away and be a little entertaining while you do it. Your blog is not just for self-promotion!

Now you have to drive traffic to your site. That means, for me at least, Twitter.

I had a defunct account, that had like three followers. I picked it up and started following other authors. It's not hard and once you learn the rules--what? more rules?!--it becomes fun and an excellent place to network.

My number one rule that will get you bumped from my follower list every time is: don't spam self-promotion! This drives me crazy. You can check out my rantings on the subject Dealing with Twitter Megaposters if you feel so inclined.

Okay, so you need to drive traffic to your blog, socialize with other like-minded individuals, and gain a following. How do you do that exactly? Well, again, this has been written up by the experts. Below I have included four links of the best-of-what-I-have-read-so-far. You would do well to follow the advice of these pros.

Molly Greene wrote this fantastic article on Twitter Tips for Newbies. Classy, informative, and entertaining.

Jonathon Gunson wrote an article on promoting your book: The Most Effecitve book Marketing Strategy. It's simple and to the point.

Jay Squires wrote this article on the Bitter and the Sweet of Twitter and the Tweet. Informative and entertaining.

Claude Bouchard wrote this most excellent article on gaining followers: How I Really Got 1/4 Million Followers

Questions? Please, send them!
Carry on!

Setting Up Email Subscriptions in Blogger.com

For those that are using Blogger.com by Google, follow this guide to add an email subscription option, which apparently is not part of the default gadgets in the blog template.

I set my blog up last month and thought I had email subscriptions set up. There were two links on the right-hand side under "Subscribe To", one for comments and one for posts.

Awesome! With so much that I was thinking about when setting up the new blog, not the least of which as "what the heck am I going to write about?" it was great not to have to worry about that.

So I'm going along, posting and my stats are slowly climbing, good good good! But wait? WTH? Only one subscriber? Is no one interested in getting updates or seeing comments? So I started poking around and actually clicked on my Subscribe To links:

Netvibes, Newsgater, My Yahoo and Atom? (Oh my!) What is this, Google? Where is the email subscription? I'm in Information Technology by day, author by night--yes, I have a cape--and other than My Yahoo, I have no clue what the other links are for, plus, I've used Yahoo for years but never go beyond it's email functionality.

Okay, enough griping about my lack of keeping up with modern social media technologies. How do we add an email subscription option?

When you signed up for your Blogger.com account you automatically got a FeedBurner account. This is the technology that is used to send out email alerts. So open a browser and go to www.feedburner.com and enter your Gmail credentials, these will be the same ones you use to log on to Blogger.com.

So you open it up and it lists your blog. Since I'm using mine as an example here is what I get:

First thing to note, I have 2 subscribers yet the number is listed as 0. Whaaat??? It's low but not that low! Well, my friend Google search told me there is a known bug, and this value almost always says 0. Okay, I can deal with that. So, continuing, click on your blog link, see the sloppy circle in the image above.

Since my blog is new, the first couple of tab are all useless giving me the notice about the people at FeedBurner playing with bubble wrap. Click the Publicize link, this is where the meat of what you need lives.

Here is the menu you get. Click the Email Subscriptions link--almost there, I swear!

Here is what you need. Highlight everything in the scroll box and copy (control-c or right-click and choose copy).
So close now!

Okay, go back to your blog and open it in template view, and add a new HTML/Java script gadget, putting it where ever you want it. Edit the new gadget and paste this in the script box and save it.

Here I am assuming you know how to add a gadget and if you don't, check out their help page. If you really really really are having trouble ping me and I can write up instructions for that too.

That's it! You're done!!!

Your new subscription should look like this:

Yay!!! Update your blog and you are good to go!

Now, here is a really great idea. Sign up for your own blog. Yes, I said that. "But I KNOW what I wrote and I read my own blog! I'm its biggest fan!" Yes, that is true, however knowing what your potential subscribers are getting can be very helpful. If the format is botched, or the graphics are mucked, or if the emails don't come out at all, you should know about it.

Okay, what about that pesky 0 subscribers? How do you know how many you've got?

So a little further down on that same FeedBurner page where you got the HTML for the gadget, scroll down. Not only does it list the number of subscribers, but it gives you their emails, allows you to export a file of the addresses, so on.

Once you know where to look, it's not hard, but like anything, you have to know what rocks to turn over.

Cheers!