Words About Writing

The more I edit this second book, the more I realize my first book is not ready for publication.  So I'm backing off from the query process. I threw a question (to query or not) into the cybernet and a response caught my mind: "Perfect your work. Don't burn bridges."  Am I to understand that by querying early, the fact that my name has been submitted and rejected before is a "burned bridge" for an agent or agency? That's a scary thought! So my earlier goal to step up the writing has been underlined. Double underlined. Write, write, write. Edit. Perfect the writing. Get this one actually ready for querying, and THEN query. Yay! That makes me happy because writing and editing is a lot more fun than querying.

Rejections are still slowly coming. I've had 5 official rejections, and one query that exceeded the "I'll respond to you by" date. Today I sent out another one, so that puts eight queries still in the rotation. My goal is to get out two more this week. I've been spending more time editing and writing a new story for Nanowrimo. Both. It's crazy. I'm crazy. I started the month mostly editing, but there aren't a lot of words there and my Nano was flailing. Now I'm writing more than editing, in a story that was started with a premise instead of with characters. Usually I have a character first, then work out a plot and start piecing it together. This is a little more random than that. I did have two initial characters, but in my initial writing I was thinking of one character for the lead, and now I've switched to another. It's all over the place. I'm not thrilled with the way the story is going, but I'm making decent word count progres...

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...

Whew. All feedback is compiled and the consensus is: I need to curate a better list of readers. Two got back to me a week early. One had very general, gushy comments. (One of the friends that they say never to use as readers.) The other early finisher had more complete notes, and valuable ideas. Which is good, because the last two never finished the book. I managed to pull a few detailed notes from them, but will never use them as beta-readers again. The good news is, I have good ideas for fixing the beginning, which I knew was a problem for querying. So I'm into the final reading and edit. All the simple changes are done, and I started working on the troublesome beginning, but need a little more work there. Then I'll just do a final reading and fix tiny things I notice as I go. As far as querying, I finished the list I was working on, then went to one of the other websites I'd found. I made a new page on my spreadsheet (to track which website I'm getting names from) an...

I've decided querying is the most boring part of writing. I'm so glad it will only (hopefully) happen once.  When I last wrote I was in the heady exhilaration of trying something new. It's not new now. It's repetitious. It was easy to begin compiling a list of potential agents, but I have less than 50 in my spreadsheet, and everyone talks about "hundreds", so I figured I'd find more to add later. Next step was to fill in details about the agents and decide which were the best fit. I expect to query all of them, but I'm adding an element of prayer and instinct to my list: As I read bios and company information, who do I think is likely a good fit for me, and vice versa? This is the long part. The research part. The "opening websites to find an agent, only to find that the website is inactive or that the agent is no longer there" part. It's tedious. I never was a fan of research. I'm giving myself until the 14th to finish polishing this...

Yesterday was exhilarating. After a day or two focused on tracking down readers (two noes, two yesses, one ghosting, and finally a third yes) I started looking into querying. I re-watched an old Nanowrimo video about the process, then started on my own process. So far I have: 1. Created a spreadsheet to track agents, letters sent, responses received. 2. Composed a draft of a generic query letter. This will be vastly changed: personalized to each agent, as well as updated after I receive reader feedback.  I've asked my readers for feedback "by October" so I have a little over a month to research agents and work on my elevator pitch to go in the query letter itself.   I'm also debating about a possible 4th reader. Three readers is my minimum, and I'd like to be over my minimum, but not if it's the wrong reader. So there's something to think about there. I honestly can't believe I'm here. And I'm actually doing it! Doing the legwork to get it don...