Words About Writing

That horror of horrors: querying. I'm doing it. I sent out 3 queries yesterday, three today, and intend to do three tomorrow. Everyone says "5-10 at a time", so I thought 3 a day would make a nice NINE queries out before Nano, and then I can do an additional one as rejections come back, or turnaround times pass. Tonight, I got my first rejection! I'm so excited! Looking at the email the agent responded to, I noticed that this is one of the queries that did not include any part of the manuscript. Most ask for a few pages or chapters. So that tells me that my pitch needs work. It's good feedback. Three queries a day may not seem like much, but for each letter I'm consulting the agent's website, their preferences, my own spreadsheet, and for some, the draft query letter I'd already written. So it takes about an hour for each one. It's a mentally and emotionally taxing job. Anyway, I'm excited to be sending out the letters. I hope I can remain posi...

I got my first feedback from a reader! Basically, after the first 100 pages, she sent me some general notes. It was very useful. I'll have to rename some characters to prevent confusion, and I might have to "kill my darling" as one scene that I love and find a cute interlude in the story put my reader to sleep. Haha! So... the work is going. I haven't officially sat back down to write, but I have done a few word-sprint writing exercises, all of which seem to help illuminate a WIP that I had set aside thinking it's too big for right now. I might keep doing these sprints to help illuminate that story, but I really want to get to plot-work soon, too. I figure September will be editing the manuscript that is currently with readers. We'll see how long that actually takes.

Those several runs through the manuscript I talked about last week? Yeah, no. First off, as I started reading I realized I was BORED within three pages, so I stalled for a day, until I remembered another bit of writerly advice: "Delete the first scene." I went back in, starting at the second scene as if it was the beginning of the entire book, and it worked! I made some notes of places to drop in information provided in the previous "first" scene, and was much more interested in the story. Second, I'm a multi-tasker. They say that's not always a good thing, but it works for me in this case. I'm an editor. I see the details and the word-changes and the "needs to be expanded" all at once. I simply CAN'T with the "go through it once with a focus on X, then again to focus on Y..." I can't. It's too slow. That's probably very good advice for people who aren't trained to notice errors in writing, but in my previous...