BFFF

BFFF is short for Big Fat Frickin' Failure. Old Year's Day (or New Year's Eve) morning I was wallowing in a case of BFFF. Looking back over my sum total of non-accomplishments has a way of doing that to me. I mean, if you really don't have a lot to show for twelve months of life, you really can't help but feel like you are an expert in mental masturbation. And I don't know about you, but for me that spells failure.

Anyway, I thought I was over the whole BFFF thing... that request for full got me over it. Right? If someone wanted my work, I wasn't a total failure. Right? That feeling lasted four days.

Yesterday morning as I was getting prepped to start the new year right, I got an email that pretty much took me right back to BFFF status. It was a rejection on the full I just sent.

Now, if said agent is somehow reading this post, I don't want her to think any of this was her fault. I was already most of the way there anyway. But here's how it went...

I saw the From and the Subject, and I cracked in half. Part of me was sure it was her saying she loved it and wanted to represent me. The other part was certain she was rejecting me. Half of me was excited and wanted to pop that bad boy open so I could bask in the glow of success. The other half knew better. I listened to the happy half, and the unhappy half spent the rest of the day saying "Told you so".

As rejection letters go, it wasn't a bad one. I think she said she loved my voice. I think she even pointed out a particular scene she liked, and said some other nice things. (I'd go back and check, but I'm not in a place where I can re-read the letter yet - not even to send the 'thank you' note she certainly deserves.) Regardless of how nice and helpful she was, the sum total of it was she wasn't accepting me for representation. I was so close, but I failed... yet again.

Of course, as luck would have it, I was halfway through the letter when I realized my daughter was standing behind me (and she reads over my shoulder on occasion), so no matter how I felt about what I was reading, I couldn't let myself show any reaction. She was so excited about the full, I just couldn't ruin her morning, too. (Dude, if you're reading this right now, get back to Physics or else.) So I sucked it up. I closed the mail, shifted it to my Agents folder, and went outside for a cigarette - to compose myself and get some badly needed nicotine into my system. I didn't have time to deal with it. The resumption of our routine came first.

The falling apart would have to wait until later.

Instead, I took my daughter through our new exercise routine. Nothing like a workout to distract a person. (And for which I am paying mightily today.) Then we did our morning errands. No time for worrying about being a BFFF while you're running errands. Then school started and for the next few hours I was blissfully distracted from that little piece of reality.

Except when she was working on her own. When she started Physics - which she has to do on my computer (get back to work already, junior) - I was left without distraction. I tried reading, but that only made it worse. I tried crocheting, but that activity only allows my mind to wander. When I was on my dozenth row and starting to feel weepy, I stepped outside.

I've talked before about the stages of grief and how they fit into the whole rejection thing. You really do have to go through them before you can come out a whole person on the other side. Needless to say, I'm still working on them. On the upside, I didn't set fire to my manuscripts and quit the business. (Not that it didn't cross my mind.) I'm still here. I'm not working right now, but I'm here.

I'm not over feeling like a BFFF, but the only way to really fail is to quit. I haven't quit yet. Like the poem says, the road I'm trudging feels like it's all up hill. But I haven't quit.

I just need some time to get through this.

Please understand, I'm not typing this to ellicit sympathy. What I try to do here at The Writing Spectacle is give my readers an unvarnished look into the life of a writer. Sometimes good things happen, and sometimes they don't, but whatever happens, it's all part of the game. Some of this shit hurts like hell, but writers either get over it or they really are BFFF. Maybe some writer reading this will see they aren't alone, and it will give them the courage to keep going. If that happens, at least something good will come of this.

At this point, I don't know if I'll ever be able to put 'published' in front of my writer status, but I'm still writing.

And maybe that means I'm not such a BFFF after all.

Rough Day

It's been a rough one. The above poem says it all.

I'll be back when the BFFF feelings go away.

Good Rejections

*yawn* :blink: :blink:

I feel like Rip Van Winkle this morning. Not that I spent yesterday sleeping or anything, I just feel like I did. In fact, I probably should've, but that's a whole nother story. After the weekend writing marathon, I was just bleh. To combat the blehs, I sat on the couch and watched TV, and I read most of a book. I also played some poker, but that went badly so I'm trying not to think about it.

Now about that oxymoron of a subject...

In the midst of my bleh-defeating day, I received a rejection letter from a partial of RTL I sent back in May. And yay, it found me, since it was sent before I knew I would have to move and therefore the SASE had the old address. On the rejection scale it was a really nice letter. She said she really liked my writing, but... 1) with the economy sucking like it does, she has to be extra super selective, 2) the synopsis didn't wow her, 3) from said synopsis, the bad guys all seemed one-dimensional, and 4) she was concerned the politics of the plot would overwhelm the suspense.

I'm hanging on to the 'really liked my writing' part. I'm also cursing the economy and the people who got us in this mess. As for the synopsis thing, I'm going to have to take a look at it and see where it fell apart, because it obviously wasn't doing its job.

For instance, I really don't think my villains are one-dimensional. Sure, they're all evil (because I don't do diet evil) but each of them has many layers to their personality. Perhaps that's not quite apparent in the first few chapters, and obviously not in the synopsis, but the layers are there.

There's nothing I can do about the politics. They're integral to the plot, but IMO they don't overwhelm the suspense of the book. I purposefully wrote the novel in such a way that the politics are an undercurrent, but not the main thrust of the plot. *shrug* I guess my synopsis didn't tell that tale very well.

So anyway, I'm taking that one as a positive letter. Have to take the positives where you can. I'm also calling another RTL rejection positive (I got this one back in November from a partial sent in September). In that one, the agent said she liked the premise but she thought it was more suited to the SF market, with which she wasn't familiar. *shrug* Miss Snark always said : Query Widely. Since RTL is one of those stories that crosses genre, I was trying everyone who represented any of the three genres it touches.

Anyway, as I approach the end of the year, and the end of another novel, I'm starting to think about the query process again. I'm taking the lessons learned, and working to apply them to the next round.

Oh, and speaking of rounds... Karin Tabke is getting ready to host another First Line Contest. I think I'm entering RTL this year. Here's hoping my first lines make the cut. I could really use some good news this month.

Your turn: Any thoughts on my rejections? I'm trying to stay positive about it, but I don't want to turn into Pollyanna. Have you ever gotten a good rejection, or is the oxymoron just too much?

Notes From the Battle Lines

Lesson: Always check and double-check submission guidelines before you hit send.

Lesson: AgentQuery, while awesome, isn't always the most complete source of information.

Too bad I forgot those lessons this morning.

Sure, I only did it with one query letter, but it was enough. AQ had a particular agent listed as accepting only query letters via email. As the agent in question point out in her rejection letter, her agency asks for 10 pgs and a 2-pg synopsis. D'oh!

Now, this is a big huge forehead smacking moment. Almost as bad as when I misspelled an important reference in my initial query letter for this book. (If you're an agent and reading this post, I'm not usually scatterbrained, my brain just scatters every once in a while - usually at the most inopportune times.) But that wasn't the worst of it.

You see, the agent in question somehow must've completely misunderstood** the intent of my book. This person either didn't bother to read past the subject line, or she skimmed the contents, and without the additional information, mistook what the book was about. I know agents don't have a great deal of time to read each query letter, so I don't blame anyone for skimming. The solution to that would've been in the materials, if I had been smart enough to include them. With a misconception like this person must've been laboring under, I would've sent a rejection, too.

What this person said was: "I've read too many novels that are similar and just come across as preachy."

First off, since I researched Amazon looking for similar books, and came up empty on any with this angle, I was stymied about the response. (If you know of any pro-choice speculative fiction set in America after abortion has been made a capital crime, let me know.)

Second, it's hard to be preachy when there's nothing to preach. The other side of the debate usually gets sole use of preachy. I'm just telling a story about one woman trying to make her own choices in a world that wants either her pregnant or dead, the man who falls in love with her, and their fight to make everything right again. Sure, there are ideas woven into the story, but the story is the main thing. There's action, there's romance, there's suspense, and like all my stories, a happy ending* (or if not exuberantly happy, at least positive).

*sigh*

Maybe I'll just resubmit with the appropriate materials and try to remedy the misconceptions. The worst that can happen is she rejects me again.

Your turn to chime in. Do you think any books with deeper ideas are preachy? Can books be both an entertaining read and thought provoking?

*As I've said before, books with a negative, depressing, unresolved or just plain unhappy ending irritate me to no end, so I don't write them.

**Of course, it's entirely possible that she didn't misunderstand, but instead wasn't in-line with the pro-choice philosophy. In which case, it's just as well.

Query Tips and Other Helpful Stuff

Since I haven't secured an agent myself, I'm not really the most qualified person to shell out advice on this topic. I am, however, skilled in surfing the web and finding information that may or may not be helpful to my blog visitors.

The most recent awesome query tips come from Lucienne Diver (of The Knight Agency) in her post: Query Dos and Donts. Some of her suggestions seem fairly obvious, but they're there for a reason - and you don't want to be one of the people who become an example of what NOT to do.

Another interesting discussion on a big query don't (at least for Ms. Faust) is over at BookEnds in her follow-up post: Thank You For Your Time. Apparently this whole issue has drawn a shit-storm for her, but I think what it boils down to is: 1) Research each agent and follow their preferences in addition to their guidelines, 2) Don't obsess over every little word. She doesn't like being thanked for her time (at least not upfront), but she's not going drag you out and shoot you for it either. I get her point: Don't grovel. I also get Janet Reid's point: You can look forward to hearing from someone, but telling them 'soon' puts a level of expectation you don't need in your query letter and one an agent doesn't want to deal with. They'll get to you when they get to you. My experiences with Ms. Reid show that she will get back to you soon, but don't give her the impression you're standing over her shoulder tapping your foot.

Personally, my own query letter is now the best it can be. In October (I really thought it was September but the date on the letter says otherwise), I'll be looking at the four year anniversary of my first query letter (and it's subsequent rejection). I've learned a lot since that unfortunate attempt. Now, in honor of everything I've learned, and the subject of this post, I present to you the first query letter I ever wrote. It sucks... HARD. Let's look at it as a lesson in what NOT to do.

Recently I completed work on my first novel, Spectacle, and am now looking for an agent to represent me. After careful consideration and research, of the dozen or so to whom I am considering sending submissions, yours is the agency that I chose to contact first. I was especially interested in your agency after reading the interview you gave for an article in the book Agents, Editors and You. Once you read the materials I have enclosed, I believe that you will be as interested in representing my work, as I am in having your agency represent me.

Spectacle is a literary novel about fighting for the truth against popular opinion and against deliberate ignorance in a world controlled by misinformation. It is a novel about fighting and winning.

When the human race is told it has just four months to live, only Dr. Michael Montgomery has the knowledge that will save mankind—not from impending doom but from itself. A comet is hurdling towards Earth and the scientific community has issued a death sentence to the world. Dr. Montgomery, however, knows the truth about comets and he knows that the scientific community is wrong, but when he tries to make that truth known he is thwarted at every turn. It seems that Dr. Kingsley Hall has other ideas. If the truth were known, Dr. Hall would lose his chance for prestige, his chance for notoriety, and ultimately, his chance for control. While Dr. Montgomery and his allies work to make the truth public, Dr. Hall and his lackeys work to hide it from the world—as civilization slowly decays around them all.

Mr. Maass, I began writing stories twenty years ago but until recently I had neither the time nor the drive necessary to consider writing as a career. I now have both and I am committed to the achievement of this goal. In addition to Spectacle, I am currently working on my second novel and am in the planning stages for several others.

For your consideration I have embedded a synopsis of this novel as well as the first five pages, per your submission parameters. I am prepared to submit the entirety of my novel (MS Word count: approximately 137,000 words) at your request. If you require any further information, please contact me at your earliest convenience. I look forward to hearing from you.

I was actually pretty proud of this sucker. On it's face there's nothing tragically wrong with it, but that's only if you look at it from outside the industry as a standard business letter. Obviously, the first agent I queried was Donald Maass. (Sorry, Mr. Maass.) Needless to say, I didn't even get a rejection - since Mr. Maass only replies to equeries he's interested in.

Don't worry, folks, I've completely fixed these problems (including the inclination to write 137K word novels). Spectacle is now a much shorter book, and my query letters don't suck. This is a learning process. I hope that by giving you these links, and showing you my own foibles, you can learn to make your own queries that much better. And win an agent of your own.

So, if you have an agent, what advice do you have for querying writers? If you're still searching, like me, what mistakes have you learned from along the way?

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Why Subject Yourself to the Cruelties of Publishing?

Yesterday came and went without a blog post. Sorry about that. I had a really great idea for a topic, but when I went to write the post, I couldn't remember what the topic was. C'est la vie.

This morning, I read a really great post over at BookEnds about why a writer would seek publication. I loved this line the best: "Why do you feel the need to continue to subject yourself to the cruelties of publishing?"

I commented, of course, but I wanted to expand on the idea here.

Why does a writer go through all the trauma and drama of getting published? Think about it for a second. Personally, I never really thought about NOT publishing my work. When I was fourteen and co-writing a book with my best friend, I know we had many discussion about what it would be like AFTER we got the book published. There was never a question of writing it just for us and our friends. We were going to see the book in print. Of course, we never finished it, so it sits in my storage bins, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. We were writing with the goal of publication.

Thinking about it now, I still don't know the exact answer. I know I want to have my work published. I want to hold my books in my hands--to smell them, to feel their weight, and to see the pretty covers. But that in itself is not a good reason for putting up with everything we writers do. If that was all I wanted, I could self-publish and be done with it. I even looked into getting my first book done over at Lulu (which seems like the best there is in self-publishing, btw). But it wasn't enough.

I want to see my books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. I want to go into any given library and see my books there, too. I want mountains of my books on the tables at every bookseller. It sounds like an ego-trip, I know, but follow me here.

If my books are everywhere, it means everyone has the chance to read them. If everyone has the opportunity to read my books, I have the opportunity to touch the minds of people, to maybe make a little bit of a difference in someone else's life through my writing. Ideally, I'd like to touch a few minds, change a few of them, and make the world a better place. If that doesn't happen, I'd like to at least provide people a good entertaining read--something they might like to share with their friends and family, something they might want to read again and again. Hopefully, other people will think my writing is good enough to do both.

Yesterday, while I was researching agents for query purposes, one of them said they were looking for books that teach something new without being preachy. Aha! That's what I've been trying to do--albeit in a small way--for years. (Needless to say, I queried said agent last night.)

On the other hand, a while back my own darling daughter gave me the following piece of teenage wisdom: "Mom, you're never going to get your books published... They make people think, and people don't want to think." (Don't be all shocked about her bluntness. It's how we are together. She did go on to say how great my books were, but it wasn't the point she was trying to make.) I don't agree with her statement, but it's an interesting thing to think about.

I think people want to think, and I want to be the one to start the ember burning. I think my work does that. I also think people want to be entertained, and I think my work does that, too. Nothing preachy, nothing hammered at you from all sides, but just an underlying thought woven into the story. (Sneaky, I know, but most writers do it even if it isn't a conscious thing. Pick up a book sometimes and look for the author's philosophy behind the words. It's in there somewhere, trust me.)

So, now that I've rambled and gotten off on a couple tangents, it's back to the real question here. Why are we subjecting ourselves to all this work just to get published--especially in a world where posting our work on the internet would achieve a similar goal? I think everyone has a different answer, but I think the underlying cause is the same for all of us. We want to share something of ourselves with the rest of the world, and publication is the only way for that to happen in any meaningful way.

And, of course, there's the money. (What? You mean writers aren't all living like Bill Gates? *sigh*)

What say you? Why are you doing what you do?

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Dis, Dat and De Udder Ting

My tenth days don't last nearly as long as they used to, thank goodness. At first, they lasted months. I got over this most recent one in 24 hours. Yay.

Last night I got out 1800 words again. It seems to be a pattern with me and this book. 1800 words and I'm spent. Of course, it might have to do with the fact that I start writing at 8pm and by the time I get those 1800 out, I'm ready for bed. (Yes, folks, if that means 90 minutes of writing, I'm in bed by 9:30ish. I'm a night writer, not a night owl.)

In other news, I got some lovely link-love from my blog-buddy JenWriter when she listed the best places to find agent info and listed my post Agent Sites, Blogs, Etc. (ETA 3:44pm: I just finished updating it) as one of them. I'm glad someone is finding that post useful besides me. I really did put it up so other writers could have one page of links to traipse through. Plus, when I want to visit a site, I no longer have to wade through my favorites folder. I just go there, find the alphabetical listing and I'm looking at the site.

On my own query front, I thought about putting my stats on the blog somewhere, but decided against it. Why advertise a rejection rate? It just puts up a big sign that says: My work failed with x-number of agents. Any agent researching me is just going to be turned off, no matter what those rejections ultimately meant. (And in this case, it says more about the subject matter of the book than the quality of the writing itself. I knew going in that this was going to be a touchy subject, and I'll take my chances with it.) So, while I have been submitting, I won't be sharing the results of those submissions. Let's just say, I've had two requests for partials, and leave it at that.

A vulture just flew over my house. I wonder if that has any hidden meaning. Which reminds me, for a fun look at superstitions, read Deborah LeBlanc's post over at Murder She Writes. Stop by and contribute some superstitions you've heard about.

Now for the question of the day... Notice the subject of this post is written in dialect. As a reader, how do you feel about reading dialects in novels? Do they irritate you, or do they help you get a sense of the character? Or if the author gets the dialect wrong, do you just want to throw the book against the wall?

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Check, Recheck, Double-check, Fail

To quote Robert Burns: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley." (You know the translation there, folks.)

I sent my query letter out on Monday. I admit, it was a longshot, but the agent in question says she'll look at works that aren't on her preferred genre list, if they grab her. So I took a shot.

Mine didn't grab her.

She was very nice about it. She's trying to keep her focus on her main genres right now... yada yada yada... It was a form letter, which is just fine with me. However, as a PS at the bottom of the letter, she was extremely helpful by pointing out a gaff I made in my query letter. I misspelled a name I used as a reference point. Specifically I spelled the Roe in 'Roe vs Wade' as ROWE.

ACK!

and arrgghh.

Good thing I only sent one letter out with that on it, but one was enough. I don't think that one mistake was enough to kick me to the reject pile, but it couldn't have helped. (Which sucks because I think this particular agent and I could've been awesome together.)

Truth be told, I honestly thought it was Rowe. I was absolutely positive it was Rowe, which made me absolutely positive I didn't need to verify my spelling. I had several people look the letter over, and all of them must have thought it was right because no one said anything about it. (Including my very detail-oriented husband - I don't know who feels worse about screwing that up, me or him.)

If you were one of the many people who looked it over and missed it, don't feel bad. I googled Rowe vs Wade and came up with +20K hits. A whole bunch of people are in the same boat. (And now if someone else googles the phrase, this'll make one more hit.)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is you can check and recheck and double-check. You can have a dozen eyes look at your stuff. And you can still fail to catch it. Until the one pair of eyes that matters catches it and kicks it back to you.

If that one agent is somehow reading this post, thank you. You've done me a very great service by pointing that bone-head play out. (And she didn't even point out how stupid it was. Like I said, she was very nice - even though she didn't have to be.) Now I can move forward sans misspelling, and hopefully not booby-trap myself into a rejection.

Live and learn. (And if you can learn from my mistake, that'll make two of us.) ;o)

Now, I'm off to do some agent research and see if I can get this puppy sold.

Fear and Excitement

As I approach the end of editing on RTL, I'm a mass of mixed emotions. The most prevalent of these are fear and excitement. Basically the two of them are warring for top emotion, and together they're making me a smidge queasy.

Most of the fear, I think, stems from the fact that RTL is so close to me. (Not in a 'this is my life' sort of way, but more like 'this is my favorite child'.) I love all my books, but this one is special. I read it and feel a visceral reaction to my own words. (Which is difficult in most cases because I know what's going to happen next, so even the tense parts aren't really so tense for me.) So, this causes a whole anxiety attack about what happens if the people I submit to don't feel the same way. Just the thought makes me freak out to the point where I feel like I don't want to submit it to anyone. It's also making me obsess over the submission materials, and I'm a couple weeks away from being ready to send out queries.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the excitement, of course. This is the fifth novel I've written all the way to 'The End'. Five books in four years (or thereabouts). According to my CP, this is my best book yet. (And she loved the other ones she's read, so that's saying something.) I can't wait to finish polishing it and shoot it out into the world. I have a feeling this will be the one to launch my career, and it feels like it's been so long in coming it would never get here. Like I said, I love this book. It makes me cry, it makes me laugh, it makes me worry about the characters and whether they're going to make it - and I already know they will. I believe the agents I've picked will think so, too - once they read it.

I just have to get them to read it, which goes back to the whole obsessing over submission materials again.

Don't get me wrong. At this point, I'm obsessing over every word choice and comma in the manuscript as I hardcopy edit it. My pages are splattered with red ink, and the book is beginning to shine like the top of the Chrysler Building. (Pretty night picture, but not quite what I mean. If you didn't know it, the Chrysler Building's top is metal and polished, and it shines in the sunlight. I just couldn't find a good picture of that, so this'll have to do. But I digress...)

I should be done with this puppy soon. Then I'll fix it and send it out to beta readers. (If you're interested in being a beta reader, please let me know. I can always use an extra set of eyes.) Depending on how long my beta readers take, I could be ready to submit by the end of April. That means six more weeks of the pendulum of emotions.

Do any of you experience this? How do you handle it?

PS. Happy Valentine's Day. May you get all the lovin' you can handle today and every day. =oD

Sundry Stuff

Over the weekend, I printed off the manuscript for RTL. 309 pages worth. I do it chapter by chapter, so it's not really all that difficult, but it's time-consuming. And after a while, the printer rhythm gets stuck in your head like some warped song. Bweep, bweep, zeep. After a while, even my husband was singing it.

Now some of you may wonder what in the heck I'm wasting all that paper and ink for, escpecially when it's 2008 and lord knows you can always edit on the screen. *shrug* Every once in a while, I have to see the work in print. Aside from the joy of holding a completed book in my hands, I need to step away from the screen to gain some objectivity about the story. For some reason, I catch my typos better, I'm better able to see the way the story fits together (and where it doesn't), and I gain the perspective of just another reader rather than the author.

Anyway, I promised myself I was just going to read through the book. No red pen. No jotted notes. Just read. Needless to say, I broke my promise on the first page. On the screen, it flows so well. In print, it was falling flat. I tried not to touch it, but after fighting the good fight to keep my promise, I got up and retrieved my red pen. I'm glad I did. I fixed some easy tweaks, and I can read without obsessing on the typos I'm missing.

Do you ever print your books? Why or why not?

On a completely different note, I received a rejection yesterday from the only big-name publisher I've ever submitted to. To be frank, I thought they forgot about me. Their lead-time said 4-6 months, and this was month 7. I even wondered if I put the right address on my SASE because I sent the submission right in the middle of our last move. Nope. Based on the nice note hand-written at the end of the letter, I'm guessing the delay was because they were arguing over whether to accept Caldera or not. I guess the No votes won. The note did not say anything of the sort, but it conveyed a sincere regret that they couldn't accept the book. *sigh* I'm taking the positives where I can find them (even if it's entirely possible I'm only fooling myself).

BTW, Caldera is on hold until further notice. As are every other book until I can get RTL ready to go. Like I've said before, I really have a feeling about RTL, and I think it could really launch my career. Once that's done, I fully expect my other books will be pulled into the jet stream along with it. (And if they aren't, well, that's okay, too. I still love them all.)

Now, to get started on my day. Have a great one, everybody!

Bummer Dude

I got cut from the first line contest. Needless to say, I'm bummed out.

I went through the stages of grief while playing poker. Working out my frustrations by kicking the crap out of other poker players, works wonders, lemme tell ya.

Now I'm to the point where I can graciously wish the remaining competitors "Good Luck".

After all the falderol and balleyhoo is over, there's only one thing left to do:

Get back to work!

:whipcrack:

Dumb Thing I've Done in Queries

Reading a back-post of Janet Reid's today, I was reminded of the ever-growing list of dumb things I've done in a query letter. (All of which, I'm sure, landed me in rejection hell.) Okay, so out of her list of three things you should never do, I only did one, but it only takes one thing to cause a rejection.

My recent batch of query letters went out with the blurb paragraph in... gasp... italics. In my defense, it looked better to me in italics, but my preferences don't really matter here. I really stepped in it there.

Do you hear that flushing sound? Well, that was me.

It's not the first dumb thing. It probably won't be the last. (But hey! I'm trying to make it work here.) So, here's a list of the bone-head plays I've made in writing a query. (Please understand. I'm not a lunatic. I'm just a little scatter-brained sometimes.)

- I talked about how important my topic was to the free world. (Okay, not in those exact words, but that was the gist.)

- I compared my work to Ayn Rand's and then said something along the lines of 'while I don't expect to garner her acclaim, I believe a large portion of her readers will buy my book'. Or some such nonsense.

- I sent a query letter to one agent and forgot to change the 'Dear So and So' from the previous letter. I changed the address on the letter, I adapted the letter to the specific agent, and then I forgot that one little thing. D'oh!

- I was so excited about my new query letter, I sent it out to an agent, and then while re-reading it afterwards, I found three typos. I swear I proofed the damn thing a million times, but I must've been in lala-land.

- I dropped a query packet in the mail, got home and saw the SASE laying on my desk.

- I went with the minimalist approach. One short sentence introducing my book, one short paragraph of a blurb, one sentence listing the enclosures, and a signature with my contact info. Less is more right? Ummm, not always.

- Once I threw caution and good sense to the wind, and basically told an agent (thank goodness I only did this once) that my book was awesome and if he couldn't see how awesome it was, then it was probably better if we didn't work together. If, however, he did see my awesome-osity, then I was sure we'd make millions together. In my defense, I was a wee bit frustrated and figured if people were going to reject me anyway, we might as well be up front with each other. Needless to say, I never heard back from that one.

Why am I admitting all this, you ask? Maybe coming out of the closet with my stupidity will stop another poor soul from making the same total blunders I did.

In other words: Learn from my mistakes. Lord knows, I certainly have.

If you're brave enough, or foolish enough, drop a comment and tell me about the stupidest thing you've ever done while you were querying. We can laugh and learn together.

When Rejection Takes Forever

I been a bad bad girl. I haven't sent an agent query out in months. I have sent one submission packet to a publisher, but not much on the radar with regard to agents. Call it lazy. Consider it procrastination. Rationalize that I'm taking a break from querying to work on polishing other submissions. (Lord know that's what I do.) But no matter what the theories are, the fact is that it's been a while.

Today, one of my little lost SASEs came home. (I still have about a half-dozen unaccounted for.) It was a rejection. Once again, I wonder what the delay was. Were they thinking it over? Were they so swamped, they didn't open my query until recently? They didn't say.

The reason for rejection was fairly pat - Caldera wasn't right for their list. They did take the time to personalize the letter, and it's signed personally rather than stamped with the agent's signature, or just printed as a form. So, it could mean they were really thinking about it before they made their decision that Caldera wasn't a novel that blew their skirts up. I dunno.

Sometimes agents can be so confusing. Well... No matter what the answers are, the only answer that really counts is the NO. Back to the interminable wait for the remaining lost lambs, and meanwhile, back to work.

:whipcrack:

The Rejections Are Getting Nicer

My short "Haudego" got a lovely rejection from Abyss and Apex Speculative Fiction yesterday. (Yes, those folks were working on a holiday. )

Dear :ME:

Thank you for submitting "Haudego" to ABYSS & APEX. It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication.

I hope you'll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in placing this story elsewhere.

Best Regards,
:THEM:

I'm not sure what 'well-received' actually means in lit journal speak, but I'm taking it to mean more than just a nicer way of saying No. I'm thinking perhaps the story wasn't speculative enough.

Haudego is an experimental piece for me. It's told almost entirely in the form of entries from the digital voice diary of a scholar/scientist looking for a cure to something he believes is man's worst malady, and what happens when he finds it. It's along the lines of 'be careful what you wish for' and 'things aren't always what they seem'.

I'd tell you more about it, but then what would be the point? Someday, if I discover I can't sell it, I'll post it here, but that day's far off and I can be awfully stubborn about recognizing when something won't sell.

Dang it.

Well, the one publisher I'd submitted anything to has rejected the book. It was a good rejection (if that isn't an oxymoron) and the editor seems like one of the good guys. I'm posting the rejection letter below, and in keeping with my policy, I'm redacting all the pertinent contact info so the publisher can't be identified.

Dear :my real first name::
Thank you for your patience. We have completed our review of the sample chapters from your novel :title: and I'm sorry to tell you that we do not feel it is what we are looking for at :publisher:. Our selection process requires that all three readers recommend a given work and your novel did not receive the necessary unanimous vote. I think, from what I read, that there is a market for your book and I hope you'll persevere. Target publishers who have published similar work and you'll likely find the right home for it. Thank you for thinking of :publisher: and I wish you all success with your writing.
:editor's first name:

'Not unanimous for' certainly has to be better than 'unanimous against'. Right? Better success with the next submission.

ONWARD!

Quitting

I'm going through one of those phases again. You know the one...

After polishing and tweaking my query letter and my manuscript, I'm still collecting rejections like Depression Era survivors collect bits of string. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the whole mess of trying to find an agent, trying to get published. I quit.

I'm not tired of writing, thank goodness. I'm taking a short break while I wait for a critique on one manuscript, for time to pass so I can get a fresh look at another manuscript, and for my muse to get back in the groove on my WIP. Not a big deal. I'm already itching to get back to Blink, but I am forcing myself to take that necessary time. AWJ is still there, waiting, and I still feel good about it - just off track temporarily. The first book is in the hands of my CP, and she'll get it back to me eventually. (No hurry, since I haven't heard from anyone about it, and I don't think I'm likely to at this point.) I won't quit writing. Ever again.

Nope. I quit sending things out to agents, publishers, and lit journals. Of course, some of you may be asking yourselves, if I quit why am I bothering to continue to write, let alone edit. The answer is simple. I do it for myself. I like writing, so I'll keep doing it. I like my books, so I'll continue to make them the best books they can be. I like having people read my books, and get enjoyment from them. That's why I was busting my ass trying to jump through hoops to get them published. I guess I'll just have to live with a choice few people reading and enjoying my books, and not hope to get paid for it, too.

Because, of course, I'd like to get some monetary reward for my hard work. Who wouldn't? Someone is out there right now, getting paid for substandard writing - I know they are, I've read their books. So the question becomes, why can't I get anyone to notice my well-written, above-standard books? *shrug*

Maybe it's this blog. I've never been known for having popular opinions, and I make my opinions known here.

Could be my arrogance. My books are good. I know they're good. I've had non family tell me they're good. We've all read books at one point or another and sat scratching our heads wondering how in the hell anyone could have put those words in print. It's frustrating to know those authors are out there collecting a check while I sit here collecting rejections. Is my arrogance unjustified?

On the other hand, maybe it's less arrogance than frustration. Arrogance would be comparing myself to Ayn Rand or Dumas or Hemingway. I've never done that. I might compare myself to Crichton on occasion, or even Clancy, or the wonderful Ms. Brennan, but I would never sit here and say I'm better than them in any way. Good lord no. As good, maybe, but not better.

So, anyway, I quit. If any of the agents out there who currently have a query from me are reading this, I didn't quit writing, and I sure as hell won't quit wanting to be published. I just quit sending out queries.

For now, anyway. At least until this funk passes.

Update

It's been a while since I did a formal update, so here goes...

Glimmertrain finally rejected the last piece I sent to them. I don't know if the long time span meant they liked it and they were having a tough time making a decision, or they just forgot.

Additionally, I received a rejection from Ploughshares on my poem - again not knowing if the slowness was caused by a tough decision or not.

So, I officially don't have any open submissions for any of my poetry or short pieces. Of course, it was only 4 stories and one poem, sent to 4 different journals, anyway. I'll probably start another round of submissions to another set of lit journals once I get done with Blink.

Speaking of Blink, I'm feeling good about the edits. I finally got over that snag and am cruising along. If you'll note the meter on the side, I've got over 70% of the chapters edited and I'm just under 83K words. Not bad. I don't think I'll be adding many more words after I get done with fixing the snag.

AWJ is also coming along nicely. I know where I'm going and what I'm going to do with it... I think. I'm hoping to finish the first draft by my birthday. =oD

On the downside, I got a couple more rejections for Caldera. I'm trying not to let them get me down. After all, from all indications, it seems like the ratio is 10 queries to 1 partial request, and 10 partial requests to one full. Or something like that. I've hit the right ratio for partials and I'm nowhere near the number of partials to make the ratio for fulls an issue yet. I'll just keep plugging along and hope someone somewhere likes my writing, because with the positive feedback I've gotten from people who've read the book, it seems like it's really coming down to a case of liking rather than craft.

I think it's Miss Snark who advises sending a hundred queries before giving up. I'm nowhere close to that, so I'm nowhere near giving up.

So, how are things going for you?

Using Criticism

I hate criticism. Always have. But one thing I've learned is that even when it isn't constructive, it can be useful. (Unless it's just spiteful, and then it needs to be thrown away like the garbage it is.)

I've never run across a spiteful agent. (And hopefully never will.) However, reading though my rejections, I do run across a snippet here and there that is sometimes a wee painful.

Painful or not, they can be used to improve.

Last month I had an agent tell me she couldn't get into my characters. That one wasn't too helpful. She'd only read the first three chapters, and the kinds of people my MCs are don't lend themselves to an easy friendship. I get that. I wrote them that way on purpose. You can't put your best foot forward when you've got to spend the first three chapters of your debut fighting to make yourself heard. Myke's great, but warm and fluffy she ain't. Still, if I had been writing a different story, the criticism would have been very useful. In fact, that criticism of Caldera has helped me to improve my characters in Blink and made me think more about how I'm writing the characters in AWJ. In Blink, I want Mary to be sympathetic from the get-go and grow into being tough. (I still don't have a handle on the characters in AWJ, but I know I want at least one of the main characters to come off as less-than-sympathetic.)

What really made this whole idea stand out though was a letter I received recently. An agent told me that my theory in Caldera was implausible. (I've decided thatplausible is a wonderful word, btw. It rolls around in your brain, and slinks off your tongue. But I digress.)

Anyway, it hit me like a ton of bricks tonight. He was right. And that was the point of part of the novel. It's part of the conflict. In the story, people think the theory is implausible, and that's part of the reason why the protagonist has such a tough time convincing people she's right. Criminitly! If it were easy, it wouldn't be a thriller for cripsakes. Gotta have that conflict, doncha know.

So I took that blinding flash of insight, and rewrote my blurb for the query letter. I'm still tweaking it, but I could almost kiss that agent. Too bad I sent out another few before I had this epiphany. I almost wish I could retract them all, but it's too late for that.

And it's too late for that one agent. Poor guy won't know what he missed until he sees my name on the bestseller list.

So, lesson learned here. You really can take life's little lemons and make lemonade. =oD

Get squeezing.

Take It Like a Man... Even if you aren't.

On my journeys through the blogosphere, I've heard a similar refrain in several places. Agents getting blasted for sending out a rejection.

To use an analogy: Looking for an agent is like trying to find a husband.

It takes time. It takes patience. It takes... dare I say it... WORK. If you see a nice guy on the street, in a bar, at the mall, etc., you walk over. You maybe say Hi. You either hit it off or you don't. If you don't hit it off right away, this would be a rejection letter based on a query. If you hit off the first meeting, he may ask you to meet him for drinks. Compare this to requesting a partial. Once again, either the date goes well or it doesn't. It may lead to more dates (a request for full) or it may lead nowhere (a rejection letter). If you're lucky, by this time, he's giving you a reason it didn't work him. If not, you'll get the standard "It's been real and it's been fun. But it hasn't been real fun, so see ya." At this point, you don't scream at him because of his choice. Any more than he should scream at you for yours. Life happens. If it leads to another date, and you really like the guy, you get all gussied up and put your best foot forward.

Cut to the future where he's already read your full, so to speak. At this point, if you've done your homework and he's the right one - and he's done his homework and you're the right one for him - then it's time to make it all official. In romance, you get married. In publishing, you get a contract and you have an agent.

Now, let's say for argument's sake, after the first date, the guy tells you - nicely - that he's really not into you. (Maybe he likes hip-hop and you like jazz. Or he's into tattoos and you swear you'll never get one. Whatever.) At this point, shrieking at him is counter productive. (Actually, it's always counter-productive, but I'm trying to make a point.) He's knows most of the other available guys in your area, and he's not afraid to tell them what a shrew you are - not to be snotty, but because he doesn't want his acquaintances to go through the same little piece of hell he went through. In one fell swoop, you've alienated most of the good catches, and you're left with the rejects.

It's no different in the agent world, I suspect. They know each other, and they watch each other's backs. Lord knows I would if I were them. Writer A pulls a hissy with Agent Q. Agent Q has lunch with Agents T-W, and they share stories about who to avoid and why.

(Of course, this works in the opposite direction as well, but that's a subject for another time.)

So, do yourself and the world a favor. No matter how livid you are about a rejection, keep it to yourself. Buy yourself a big huge soft dolly and kick the crap out of it instead. Take boxing lessons and work out your frustrations there. That way, no one gets hurt - especially yourself.

If nothing else... Take it like a man. Even if you aren't. (And if you are a man, flip the genders. ;oD )

The Necessity of Self-Assurance

One thing about writing that may seem pretty obvious, but which really isn't:

You need self-assurance to pull this off.

I think self-doubt is the biggest reason why so many people have half-finished manuscripts lying round their house--untouched but not forgotten. Oh, I'm sure some think it's pure laziness - or at least that's as good an excuse as any. But when you dig deeper and see what that supposed laziness is based on, you'll find a person who has no confidence in their ability to write a book.

Sometimes it's a lack of confidence based on a lack of knowledge. Sometimes, it's a lack of confidence based on a lack of drive. Both are rectifiable. I know for me, it was a bit of both. I started writing my first book (well, co-writing anyway) when I was 14. I never finished it. I started writing no less than four separate romance novels over the course of 10 years and never finished them. I knew I wanted to write, but for one reason or another, I lacked the self-assurance necessary to actually do it.

At 14, I didn't think anyone would want a book written by a kid. (Eragon proved me wrong twenty years later, but by then it was too late.)

At 25, I was laughed at and told no one would want to read a book I wrote. (This was the worst blow to my self-assurance, and it killed my books in their infancy - for over a decade.)

When I started Spectacle, I was told early on my premise wouldn't work, and I shouldn't bother writing it. Fortunately for me, the story was so strong inside me, I wrote it anyway.

Even now, the old self-doubt niggles at me. It's the old self-doubt in a different costume, but it's my nemesis nonetheless. Now instead of saying I'll never finish a book, it tells me I'll never sell a book. It tells me I'll never sell because I don't write well enough, or my premises are faulty, or my POV is passe, or I'm not trendy/exciting/important (insert adjective of choice here) enough for people to want to read my work.

It's eating at me right now, as a matter of fact - like a fly at a Sunday picnic. But as my father always used to joke - "They don't eat much." I just need to wave it away, and get back to work.

Because no matter what the self-doubt says. I can write this, I am good at this, and I won't let anyone - not even my subconscience - tell me differently.

Self-assurance, you see, doesn't mean never doubting yourself. It's the courage to keep going despite the doubts, and knowing you'll win in the end.