Belief

Okay, sweet readers. I'm not usually a sap. At least, I like to think I'm not.
So, apologies in advance for this post.

I've been having kind of a weird experience with my querying novel, ONE, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what it is.

I'm having trouble letting it go. Like, really, really feeling okay with whatever happens to it.

I don't know if it has something to do with my rising number of (form) rejections - 38 to date - or the dwindling number of agents remaining on my "to-query" list.
I don't know if it's because I somehow keep navigating back to the playlist for the MS on Spotify - like, once, twice a week. (I know. It's BAD.)

With my first MS, The Travelers, I remember adjusting pretty quickly to the idea that it'd get put in the drawer. It took me a couple weeks, yeah, but even I could pick out some things that people might not like about the poor sweet thing. Plus, it was my first. Everyone knows firsts don't get published.

I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and started writing again. And, in six sweet months, out came a shined-up version of ONE.

I followed (most of) the YA "rules" - I wrote it in first person (first person present even!), I didn't include any love triangles, or main characters with red hair, there's no sex, not a whole lot of swearing, no preaching (of course,) no snark for snark's sake. There's no insta-love (after the second revision,) or insta-friends, or unflawed heroine. There are no absent parents, dead or otherwise, and no crushes from the best friend. It's not too long, it's not too short, it's in a genre that all the agents seem to be asking for.

Also, it's a good story. I think.

I revised and re-revised and re-re-revised and re-re-RE-revised the query.

The only thing left to think I did wrong is the writing itself.

Now, normally I'm pretty good at self-deprecation. For real. Ask my CPs.  I'll tell you any day I'm unattractive, or a bad friend, or a lazy mother. Definitely I assume myself dense a lot of times, and quite easily too.

I'll even tell you that what I wrote sucks.

Except, this time when I try to tell myself that?
That it must be the book, the whole darn thing, that's wrong?
I can't make myself believe it.
Well, I can. But only, like, 70%.
And that's not enough.


See, sweet readers,

- and if it was possible to think this thought in a whisper, I would - 

I think I believe in this MS.

I don't know why I think it should be pulled out of the slush over all the, well, SLUSH.
(In fact, I feel like a jerk even saying that.)

But....I do.

I don't know what this means. Right now, I don't think it means that I'll self publish the thing. But I also don't think I'll give up. In fact, even though I know it makes absolutely zero sense, I kind of feel like starting on TWO (yes, that's what the sequel would be called, no, I'm not kidding) after my current WiP starts querying.

 Is this normal? Am I not humble enough, or does this weird, unshakable belief in my work mean that I'm finally becoming A Real Writer?

Do you guys feel this way about some MS of yours, drawered, or querying, or in progress?


What do I do?
Do I try to get over it?
 Do I keep believing, but keep the belief tucked in the corner of my mind, where it occasionally floods me with longing, or sadness, or regret, even though there's nothing I think I could have done differently?
Or do I say, "Screw It, I'll do anything to pub this story," even after of 100% rejections, even with the voice in my ear saying, "Self publishing is for people who could get an agent, not people who couldn't?"

Your input greatly appreciated - right now, I'm vacillating between feeling silly and convicted, and it's an odd place to be.

An Invincible Spring

So. I'm not what you might call the most cheerful person.

I'm a pragmatist. An acute one, even. Which means that this whole crazy publishing business can make me kind of...well...crazy.

There's no right way to write, or get critique, or revise. (No. There isn't.)
There's no one perfect path to being published.
There's no way to know whether the steps you're taking are moving you one step forward or two steps back.

It's true. Frustrating, maddening, terrifying. And true.

If you're used to figuring out how well you're doing by grades, or employer evaluations, or getting a raise...
Dear writer friend, you're going to have to find a different way to gauge your progress, and your worth.
More than that, and especially if you're a pragmatist like me, and you watch this whole writing-and-querying thing go down for awhile, and realize the true subjectivity at work behind everything -
you're going to have to find a way to keep yourself afloat.

I'm still not sure whether I have.
But I do know that I've stopped caring so much about whether and when I get published.

I know. That sounds stupid. Because of course I care, right? I mean, I'm still querying, still working my butt off, still plowing through that new WiP's first draft (one third of the way done as of this weekend, thankyouverymuch.)


Yeah. I care. But I kind of...don't anymore. I want my writing to make me happy. I want it to make other people happy, too, of course. But the reason I started wasn't to hold a shiny hardback or to snag a three-book deal or to have featured advertising on Goodreads or to be a guest on a talk show.

Anyway. Though this might sound depressing to you, and though it has no solid conclusion...somehow, over the last week, I feel better. That's not to say I won't feel worse in a week, or randomly shed a tear over my MS's playlist. That story's still a part of me - always will be, I think. (Seasoned writers, am I right?) But there's something in me saying that even if this book, and the next one, and the seven after that end up in a drawer....it's not the end.

(Not that I know where the end is.)

Thanks for bearing with me in this moment of introspection. I don't know what I'm really saying. And I don't think I have to. Just...I'm surprised, is all. Surprised that, in the midst of the query trenches, I feel okay.

And besides, Spring is just around the corner. Right? 

It has to be.

Friday Obsessions: Yo-Yo Ma, Blogging Ahead, and Peeta's Bread

Happy Friday, sweet readers!  

It's actually been a pretty decent week! I mean, I'm still in the query trenches, but I didn't have to eat any trench rats this week (translation: nothing made me cry) so we're calling that a WIN.

In less pleasant news, my ankles are the size of my head.

The upshot is that I pretty much have to sit on the couch with my feet up at the end of the day. Which means my WiP did not suffer for word-count this week.  Another WIN.

Anyway. Enough about me. Let's get on with talking about my obsessions.
(I know, I know. Self-centered, etc. But it's my blog, you see?)


Everything I was obsessed with this week. 
Because I know you want to know. 

1. Yo-Yo Ma. Very little makes me emotional, music-wise. The things that most get to me are my MS's playlists (duh) and then artists like Yo-Yo Ma, who is an unquestionable MASTER in his field, and plays so beautifully.

His treatment of Bach's cello suites is absolutely astounding, and definitely the music I listen to when I need that weird mix of neutral, calming, and energizing, all at the same time.

But, you guys. There's MORE. Watch this video of him playing. He's an expert, yeah, but check out how HARD he works to nail a piece that he's played a kajillion times - a piece that he's famous for. You can just tell that he is trying so hard to get better - AS IF HE COULD GET BETTER - each and every time.

This is inspirational, y'all. I only hope that I work this hard at everything I write.


2. Blogging-in-Advance. Probably about a month from now I'll need to take a short hiatus (a few weeks at least) from blogging. I'd like to continue to post at least twice a week. Lord knows I have a pile of drafts sitting on my dashboard, but they need to be finished and shined up before I can post them.

Also: I'm looking for guest posts. Especially from those of you who are my favorites. You know who you are. Or even IDEAS for posts I should write. No, seriously. I'm obsessed with getting a backlog done so I can just hit "publish."

Thanks. *kiss kiss*

3. Peeta's bread.
So....my Wisconsin baking bestie Amanda Stein, who runs The Challah Blog, is just as in love with The Hunger Games as I am. (Not just as in love with PEETA, mind. No one loves Peeta as much as I do. Seriously. You may think you do, but you don't. Step off.) 

Anyway. She invented a recipe for Peeta's bread - you know - the kind he burned on purpose to give to Katniss so that he could save her life and then....*sigh*

Anyway. I made some. A couple batches, actually. Want a loaf? I will trade one for a guest blog.
 (*kiss kiss*)



And last but not least, Chrome. Chessie shamed me in a word war on Wednesday - like, cleaned the internet's floor with me, and it's DIRTY down there - so I figure might as well show something for it.

Here's a part of a scene from when Havah visits the Iver, who live underneath Chrome City.

An Iver answered the door. Her clothing looked like a sack - brown and loose and tied with a sort of makeshift belt. Her hair, wiry and dark, was cropped short, like all the peoples’ seemed to be down here. Men and women, the same. 

She peered out the door, and a sheen of sweat coated her brow. Havah grimaced. There was an odd, unclean sort of smell coming from inside the little room. Sweat, and something else. Something warm, something heavy.

“Here for a routine transgression check,” the bionGuard barked at the woman.

Havah swore the woman’s lower lip trembled. “Yes,” she said softly, “of course,” and stepped backward inside.

She stared down at the ground as she gestured toward the tiny, dimly-lit room. There was a single table, three chairs, and a wide white mat on a slightly elevated surface in the corner.

“Do you…live here?” Havah asked.

The woman gave her a strange look, then a curt nod. It seemed to Havah that she didn’t breathe. That she was holding a space open with her silence. Like she was waiting for something.

Just as a bionGuard looked at the woman and said, “Thank you, Iver 3476,” A strange, high sound pierced the air.

The bionguard stopped in its tracks, and the Iver woman clapped a hand over her mouth. Her body heaved with a silent sob.

The high sound crested through the air, again, longer. Coming from nowhere.

The bionguard looked at the Iver woman, then strode straight to her cupboard, snapped the lock off, and flung open the door.

Inside stood a wide-eyed child, the space under its nose glistening with something wet. Its eyes bugged wide, as it stared at the bionguard. The child reached up a chubby hand, strangely stuck to a spindly arm, as if to touch the bion’s sleek silver face.

The bionGuard crouched down to the child’s eye level. A blue light emanated from its eyes, sweeping down over the child’s body. A scan.

“Female,” the bion announced. The Iver woman let out a keening wail and fell to her knees on the concrete floor beside Havah.

Yikkkkkes. I'll tell you right now - this isn't going to end well for anyone.  (Thanks for reading!)

Okay, sweet readers. Your turn - What were YOU obsessed with this week?

Giving It the Best Chance

If you're a regular reader, you witnessed my epic whining-about-whining-about-querying post from last week. (And if you're not a regular reader, just count your lucky stars you missed it.)


The conclusion of said post was this: I have to stop being so invested in whether ONE, or any of my stuff, for that matter, gets published. I have to forget how much I love it, so that every rejection doesn't break my heart.

My ruthless sweet and brilliant CPs were quick to call me out in the comments - I can't deny how much I love the goshdarn thing. Heck - even the playlist makes me cry sometimes.

Yep. Sure does.

So. While I do still need to stop being quite so invested in whether any of my stuff gets pubbed, I now realize that the only other option is NOT to let the query flurries run out, shrug my shoulders, and say, "eh."
I've got to give it the best chance I can.


That means writing a kick-butt query.
Then re-writing it.
Then re-re-writing it.
*eye twitch*


I had a pretty pared-down, simple query, which wasn't doing anything stellar for the MS. (a sprinkle of requests, under 10%)
Marieke got out her literary syringe and injected the whole darn thing with voice and filled it out a little (still under 250 words, don't worry.)
Then my saintly friend Helene stripped it back down to something more simplistic.


I've had feedback from CPs, agenteds, and Real Live Agents that the voicey query looks good.


(And, as we were so helpfully reminded last week, if the problem isn't my query, it's my MS - duh - and I'm just really not mentally prepared for that possibility just yet.)

So. Should I keep querying with it? My req. rate on it is....well, it's only been out 11 days, and I've only heard back from four or five of those. All form Rs, though. But I do LOVE this query.

Or should I pare it down a'la Helene? Which is also a solid query but way less voicey?


What do you think?*
(Thanks in advance. You all are angels. *kiss kiss*)
*Also! I'm in good company. Please run over to Gina's and Jenny's blogs, where they're asking for query advice today, too.

Sixteen-year-old Merrin Grey can’t fly to save her life, but she is a freaking amazing floater. Too bad, because in a world where almost everyone else is a Super, with at least two powers, or a Normal, with none, being a One is the worst kind of in-between.

When Merrin is shipped off to Normal High—excuse her, Nelson High—all she wants is to land an internship at the Biotech Hub.  If she can get close enough to their research on the manifestations of superpowers, she might finally figure out how to fix herself.

But then she meets Elias VanDyne, another One, and all her carefully crafted plans fly out the window. Literally. When the two of them touch, their Ones combine to make them fly, and when they’re not soaring over the Nebraska cornfields, they’re busy falling for each other.

Merrin’s over the moon. She’s unraveling the secrets of Ones—way beyond AP Chemistry—Elias is a seriously good kisser, and her mad skills in chem class even land her a spot on the Hub’s internship short list. But when Elias disappears, along with her bratty water-walking brothers, the Hub’s interest turns lethal. The thought of crashing has never been scarier, because if Merrin fights back, she has to abandon her dreams of ever flying solo—of ever being more than a One.

ONE is a work of YA Science Fiction complete at 76,000 words. Thank you for your consideration.

It's Not a Science. It's Not Even an Art.

I've been doing a lot of whining lately.

It all  boils down to reading/thinking about, and obsessing too much over, How to Get Published.

See, there are so many helpful blogs and tweeters with advice about How to Succeed at Publishing.

But then, with every rejection, comes the repetition of the word "subjective" and fellow writers' suggestions to revise the pitch, query, or MS according to feedback.

Except...I don't have any feedback. I know that one reason for this is that no agent has time to give me any. And I get that, I really do. (Although, Saints Alive, it does happen - check out my CP Gina's post from today if you're looking for inspiration in that regard.) So I kind of flounder trying to figure out where the weaknesses in my writing are, what I can do to make a book Marketable.

(And when I do get feedback from every lovely person on things like my query, it seems to vary widely, even to conflict fundamentally. Because it's all...you guessed it....SUBJECTIVE.)



See, when you move from being a writer to a writer with a goal of Getting Published, it's easy to start the planning, and the far-thinking, and the "research" that'll help you get there. And, at least for me, there's the sense that we're doing something wrong or right. We get the sense that there are rules to follow, things we can do to get our foot in the door or make the door slam in our faces.

But, after a certain point, (the point at which you're a decent writer and act relatively professionally) I don't really believe in those things anymore.

• Never write a query letter in character voice? Tell that to Miranda Kenneally. 
• Think you have to write in first person to get a really relatable character voice? Tell that to Kristin Cashore.
• Vampire novels are dead? Tell that to Gina Maxwell.

And how do you know if you're the exception to the rule?
Well, you don't. You can't.
So, as my CPs keep bucking up and reminding me on my endless whining email chains, I might as well keep trying. Keep writing each new book, without worrying about whether the concept is saleable or whether first or third person is more Marketable For YA or the word count is too high for the genre, or the trillions of other things that have been getting under my skin lately. And query my little heart out, the best I can, but don't take it too much to heart. Do my best, of course, but don't let it destroy my love of writing.

Besides, what else am I going to do? Watch TV? Knit? Cook? Clean?!?!?!
No effing way.

The Problem with Being A Far Thinker (as a writer)

Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved to know What Was Going to Happen. I would plan my future career and spend hours finding the best colleges to attend and all the classes I would sign up for. I had a strategy mapped out for grad schools, internships, and meeting Mr. Right. I knew how many kids I wanted to have, how far apart they'd be born, where our family would live, and what my work-life balance would look like.



Guess how many of those careful plans actually panned out in the way I imagined?

Yeah. None of them.

Still. Guess what old habit is dying hard in my adult writing life?

Like most of you writers out there, I dream of getting published. I know full well that's never gonna happen unless I work my tush off to get there. Yes, that requires a lot of work and careful planning. I've had self-imposed deadlines for drafting, strategies for sending to CPs, a carefully structured method and schedule for when I would send my queries, and to whom.

Now that the queries for ONE are out, I've started on the next WiP. And, as you may have guessed, I have a plan for when I'll start querying that one.

That's right. I'm planning my query process for a new novel before my currently querying novel is in the drawer.

In some corner of my twisted mind, this all makes sense. I'm allowing One to query  widely, unfettered by any clinginess or obsession from yours truly. More importantly, I'm building an iron, spiky, barbed-wire fence around my heart to protect it in the case that One DOES go in a drawer.  Sounds good, right?

Yeah. Except...not. Why?

My writing life could turn around AT ANY MOMENT.

Between the time I'm typing this blog post and the time it posts, I could get an email from an agent requesting The Call. (Highly unlikely, yeah, but it COULD happen.) It could happen any minute.

And here I am planning query flurries that I might never have to send.

Here's my worry: that being a far thinker keeps me from taking risks, because I'm always driving toward that self-set goal, sometimes without evaluating whether it's the best course. For example, I'm trying to barrel through this draft of Chrome, when maybe I should be overhauling One to make it into a more marketable genre.

(Like, I could make Elias a vampire, and Merrin a vampire hunter.
JUST KIDDING.)

That's the sane worry, anyway. The insane one is...well...that I'm just insane. I have thoughts (that I frequently share with my CPs, sorry ladies) like, "At what point will I quit writing? MS #5? #7?" and "When should I self-publish?" and "How do I feel about small pubishers?" and "Who's buying the drinks if we all go to SCBWI this year? Will I go only if I'm agented, or only if I'm not agented?"

Are you guys ready to throw me across the room yet? (no hard feelings. Seriously.)

I don't really have a point for this blog post. I just know that sometimes my far-thinking-ness seems totally rational and reasonable, and other times I think, "Wow, I'm a certifiable nutcase." And then I kind of wonder if this far-thinking obsession will ever get me into legit trouble, or just leave me shaking my head at Past Me as per usual.

Sweet readers - Are any of you far-thinkers? How does it affect your writing? Do you do anything to curb it?

Accessing the Love

Thanks to the goodness and brilliance of my CP, Marieke, (and the subsequent input of a handful of other CPs, love you ladies) I have a gorgeous new query for ONE, so I spent this morning sending a third query flurry. So. This post will be short.


(That's supposed to be me, sending off a query flurry.
Yep. I look just like that. Right now.)

So. When I was smack-dab in the middle of drafting ONE, I blogged about it. The feeling. That surge of affection you get for your work-in-progress that drives you to stay up late, wake up early, and keep your butt glued to your desk chair during your lunch break just to get in a couple hundred more words.

Sometimes, it just happens. Yesterday, I thought of a particularly awesome line from the original Bible story I'm retelling in my WiP, that takes on a completely new meaning and yet means EXACTLY THE SAME THING in Chrome, and OMG you guys. Seriously. I wanted to write for hours. (Of course, I was elbow-deep in dishes and laundry, but what can you do?)


Other times, though, you have to push The Feeling. I know that when I'm in need of a writing boost, there are a few things that help me. One is listening to the soundtrack. The other is taking a moment to revisit the themes, characters, and lines I most love about the WiP. Almost always, taking a look at photos of my characters helps.

I mean, seriously. Look at these beautiful people and just TELL ME you don't want to write something about them.

So, sweet readers, please tell me - in your writing and/or reading universe, what brings on The Feeling? Tell me, so I can maybe add it to my bag of tricks! 

Contested

The internet is an amazing place for writers.
It's where we can find incredible critique partners, more writing forums than we have time for, the best agent-finding resources, and a ton of information on improving our craft. Heck, it's basically a DIY MFA playground, if you're willing to use it.

And then, there are the contests.

Every once in awhile, some kind-hearted, self-sacrificing individual will step up and run a contest on her blog. Writing is posted for critique and, if we're very lucky, agents flock to fight over the chance to review that work more in depth, in a (mostly) civilized and (entirely) exciting manner.

(ONE is playing in one such contest, the brand-new Cupid's Literary Connection, today. I'm so excited.)

Here are the reasons that I think contests can be a great opportunity for the querying writer.

1. It elevates my work above the slushpile.
Even if there are fifty or even one hundred entries on display for agents' perusal, that still amounts to two, ten, or a dozen agents looking at one hundred queries as opposed to one lone, hard-working, exhausted agent wading through slush to hopefully pull my manuscript out.

Plus, whether or not the contest is selective (meaning: the person running the contest somehow narrows entries down to what she has determined to be the "best" ones) the dirtiest of the slush has already been cast aside. No crazy queries, no YouTube videos of shirtless men. So when the agent gets to my query, hopefully she's not so slush-weary that she can't read it with a happy heart.

2. I've had success with contests.
Well, what I'm calling "success," anyway. Three of the full requests on my last manuscript were the result of one blog contest or another. Even though I drawered that manuscript, I did get a sense of which agents I would LOVE to query in the future, and their feedback was, in some cases, invaluable.

3. It helps me get to know agents in what I call a "soft query" environment. 
Agent Fabulous might say that she wants Young Adult Romance, for example, and then completely ignore every entry that seems to be a solid one of those. If I'm querying a Young Adult romance, I can then take that information and decide whether it's worth querying that agent. Or, more optimistically, I can see what about YA romances that agent loves, and highlight those aspects of my MS in the query I'll send to her later.

In past contests, even when I haven't gotten a request out of it, I have had agents point out their concerns about or approval of my query and first page, which let me either tweak it or leave it alone, and go forth formally querying with confidence.

4. Contests are how I found a bunch of my CPs.
Checking out the work of my fellow entrants gives me a chance to see whose work I'm absolutely head-over-heels in love with/excited about, which I think is essential to a great CP relationship.

5. I'm really not afraid of anyone stealing my work, or ideas, or whatever.
If anyone can take my query and first pages and use the ideas and voice in there to fully reconstruct my 76,000 word manuscript, I'll probably hand them a cookie and congratulate them. Not only would that be crazy freakish, but it would also free up a lot of my time and stress.

But seriously. I can give a crowd of twenty writers the idea of "half-superpowered teens" and they will write 20 completely different novels. Which would actually be kind of awesome.

Bottom line: It's ridiculously difficult to get an agent as it is. Anything that helps improve my chances can't hurt that badly, and the cheerleading and community-building possibilities are some seriously thick icing on the cake.

***********

Now. Just like anything else, contests *do* have cons. Just some things to consider before you let my above points get you all gung-ho excited for the next contest.

***********

1. Anonymity is tough to preserve
These contests are supposed to remain anonymous, so that they don't become a popularity contest. Obviously, though, the internet is one big web of hyperlinks, and it's pretty easy to connect most of the projects on display to an individual if you really want to. I try to stay anonymous, just because I think it's way classier, but I'm not sacrificing the information I have posted about my MS on my blog or any tweets about it for the sake of staying under the radar while I'm contesting for two weeks.


2. It's tough to keep up self-confidence while watching your work be rejected in real time. 
The point of every contest is for an agent or agents to pick their favorite entries. Sometimes, this occurs in real time, meaning that during a given period of one or several days, agents can leave comments saying, "not for me," "yes, this is good," or "YES PLEASE PUT IT IN MY INBOX NOW." It can be nervewracking and insane, but the worst is when every other entry seems to be getting comments but yours. Yes, it happens. No, it doesn't mean your MS sucks - it just means it doesn't appeal to those agents. But, again - it takes a darn chipper and mature person to remember that. (Spoiler - I'm not always that chipper or mature. I know, you're shocked.)

3. Feedback is not always positive.
One of the stated purposes for all these contests is to receive feedback from peers, but I've never really bought it. Mostly because one of the rules is usually "only submit completed and ready-to-query manuscripts." Now, I don't know about everyone else? But to me, "completed and ready-to-query" means that the MS has run the gauntlet of multiple critiques, revisions, and line edits. Not to mention much agonizing. Usually I'll contest an MS while I'm also querying it.
Now. If I'm confident enough in the MS to query the darn thing, I'm pretty much only looking for cheerleading from my peers, and maybe some gentle suggestions for minor improvement. But every once in awhile, some uppity writer will roll in and leave PARAGRAPHS of feedback, often quite critical, on everything everyone is doing wrong with their entry. This can be annoying at best and crushing at worst. Most of the time I can ignore these jerks, but if you're ultra-sensitive about the soundness of your submission, this might be a big deal.
Note: Some contests are SOLELY for the purpose of feedback, and don't involve agents, in which case the above obviously doesn't apply.


Just some things to remember about contesting:

• It can be a great opportunity to shove your work directly in front of agents.
• It can be an awesome community-builder and confidence booster.
• Subjectivity is a b*tch. Let this be your contesting mantra. Not everyone loves everything. It's okay.
• It only takes one agent to love your work and get you a book deal. There's always another contest or another query. If this contest doesn't work out, don't let it ruin future contests for you.

What about you, sweet readers? Have you participated in blogged writing contests? Do you plan to in the future? Why or why not?

The Between-Projects Slump.

I've written about the inital-query freefall before. What happens when you've been querying for nine days, and the form rejections start to roll in? Well, at least for me, my self confidence does this:



Yep. BIG nosedive. 

I thought my MS was good.
My CPs thought it was good (didn't they?)

But agents don't want it.

What was I thinking?
How could I have thought this MS would EVER work?
Will I ever be published?
Can I even call myself a writer anymore???

Yes, I am fully aware of how irrational this all is. Which is why I normally have a backup plan:


The Work In Progress.

Even though working on something new can't give an immediate rush to counter the initial crash of queries denied (and those awful red frowny faces Query Tracker gives you when you record them, what's UP with that?) a new project at least gives us a handlebar to clutch onto as our self confidence slowly inches back up.


You write some snappy dialogue - Wooo!
Anchored down some more plot points - You are a GENIUS.
That scenery description? - NAILED IT.
Wow, that kiss was incredible - *happy dance*




The rewards of working on that WiP are small, but they come at regular intervals.
Best of all, if it's a second, third, or tenth MS that you're working on, you've had the first draft high before. You can see the top of that goshdarn rollercoaster, and you know gazing out from the peak feels absolutely amazing. Your motivation to get there is HIGH.

This time around I know what the rollercoaster looks like. I have a super-shiny idea for my newest project, and I even know most of the plot points and a bit about the characters.

So, what's the problem?

For some reason, I can't make myself get in the seat. Can't write a word.

Anyone ever been in this position? How did you kick yourself in the bottom to tackle that blinking cursor?
My CPs are telling me to write something fun. (In case you need a translation, that means "a kissing scene.")
That sounds mildly appealing...I guess. *sigh*

HELP!!!!

How I Query

So....ONE has been querying for a week! Yaaaay!

Just wanted to do a little post on how I query, since I know a good portion of my critique team thinks it's crazy. This is mostly an attempt to convince them - and myself - that it actually makes sense. In some universe.

So, before I do this, I'm just going to make the blanket statement that this is MY querying practice, because I think it's the right way FOR ME to query AT THIS TIME in my career. If you do something different, and you like it, and you're happy, well, that's all that matters, my love.

Now that that's out of the way.....here we go.

First of all, I work on my query until I'm sure it's good and clear and voicey and hook-y. I don't post it on forums, because I don't know the folks over there, and I don't have the emotional or physical energy to deal with people who tear things up just for the sake of tearing them up. I send it to some people I "know" or have "met" via Twitter, critique groups (CPs of CPs) and then my actual CPs for this. Just like when they're critiquing my novel, they're not afraid to tear it up, tell me something doesn't make sense, and I know it's all with the intention of making my novel succeed.

Second, I set up an initial list of agents I'd like to query - somewhere between 60 and 80. I spend a good week on Query Tracker, scoping out agents listed as representing YA, making sure that they'll look at Science Fiction, and noting what projects they've sold to see what kind of styles and voices they like. (I don't stress too much about the styles-and-voices thing, because I know that for an agent, it's all about finding a book she loves. How many of us have fallen in love with a book completely different from all the other ones we've ever loved?) I make notes about what materials they're asking for, so setting up queries later is easy-peasy. (Yes, obviously, this is not as easy as it seems. Hm.)

I query my Dream Agent first. This is for a few reasons.

• One, she's the agent I'm most nervous about querying, and so if I get over my terror of clicking "send" on her query, it's all downhill from there. I mean, sending every other query is relaxing in comparison to that experience.
• Two, if she sends me a form rejection, then I'm not stuck wondering "what if" for the rest of my queries. I know she doesn't want it, so I can set my sights on other agents and move on.
• Three, if she IS interested in the material, she gets first crack at it and I have no qualms about (please please pretty please) signing with her.

Then, I begin a series of what I like to call Query Flurries.

I send an initial query batch of 20-30 (I think this time, contests and web forms included, it was something like 26)

I like to throw in a couple of agents I'd LOVE to work with, some that I know are awesome but I have no special attachment to, and some that I haven't really heard of, but seem to have great clients and sales.

Now, I know you're saying, "Hold on. 20 agents is a whole heckuva lot at one time." 

But here's the thing. A good request rate - like, a really good one - is about 20%. So, let's say you and your query and your writing sample totally kick butt. You send out 20 queries, and get four requests. You are ON FIRE. If one of those agents reading your manuscript is totally in love, and wants to sign you, that means that you still have three others considering your work at the same time. This puts you at a great advantage.

(Personally, I'm not really believing that a 20% req rate is very possible these days. I'm thinking more like 10% would be admirable. But that's neither here nor there.)

After I send the first query flurry, I wait until I get a decent number of responses.

This past week, I got two requests and eight rejections.

So, today, I'll send out eight more queries, to make up for the eight rejections I got last week.

In this way, I always have about 25-30 queries out in the universe.

(I'll also be contesting my MS, which I consider a "soft query." It'll tell me which agents aren't interested, without me sending an actual formal query to them.)

"But, Leigh Ann," you might say. "How do you know that all those rejections aren't because your query SUCKS?"

Well, I don't. But I don't stress that much about it (unless I'm getting 100% rejections for awhile) for a few reasons:

•  First of all, I've done the research and worked really hard on my query, remember***? I've had a lot of feedback on it. I'm super-confident in its ability to do its job.
• Rejections come for lots of reasons other than a query sucking. It could be that the agent likes science fiction about cyborgs, but not superheroes. Rejection. It could be that the agent just signed a superhero novel, or for whatever other reason is not confident in her ability to sell it. It could be that the agent is really only looking for multi-ethnic fiction. It could be that she hates first person present, or she had a rough commute, or her kid is obsessed with X-men and she just can't bring herself to deal with anything else regarding superheroes. All reasons that might make me, personally, not want to read a book, let alone try to sell it. REJECTION.
• 
  
• Lastly, form rejections almost never come with any helpful feedback on the query itself. Agents don't have the time to tell you WHY SPECIFICALLY they don't think that they can sell your book. So, I could try to change the query purely based on the fact that I'm getting a lot of rejections, but without agent feedback, how do I know WHAT to change?

(***If you are worried about your query, GET MORE FEEDBACK. Run it by people who you know are supportive but haven't read your book and don't know you - i.e. don't really care about upsetting you that much. Make sure they're people who know what grammar looks like, and who understand query basics. Read QueryShark. Read From the Query to the Call. Do your homework.)

As I get more rejections, I send more queries.

Along the way, I might tinker with my first page or query to see if it gets more bites. But overall, again, I don't sweat it.

I do this until I run out of agents to query.

When I've run out of agents to query, I put the book in a drawer and gear up to query the next one....

And I'll blog about that on Wednesday.

If you feel comfortable sharing, my loves, what are your tried-and-true-and-loved querying practices? Have you changed anything since you first started querying? What are some resources you love?

Friday Obsessions - Names, Men with Swords, and Marshmallow Cereal

Well, friends? It's been a bang-up writing week over here.  The first official queries for ONE went out on Monday and I've been delighted to send out some requests by Friday. So, rule. I'm convinced this good fortune is due to your good vibes, so keep 'em coming.  (Thank you!) 

Up next week on the blog, I'm planning posts on how I query, since I know some of you think my method is insane, and also how to stay sane while querying.
(Not that I'm a paragon of success in that endeavor. But I try.)

Ahem.

Alright. Here we go.
Everything I was obsessed with this week.
Because I know you want to know.

1. Names
I've always been sort of obsessed with names. Their meanings, the stories behind them, etc. And being a Lady Who Knows Her Bible (part of the day job description, you see) I took great joy in naming my children in the same way the matriarchs did - with stories and deep, personal meanings behind them.  Now that the fetus has a name, I'm pretty much done with that bit of fun.

Luckily, I write. Making up new characters allows me to name things without going through labor or wiping any additional bottoms, which, now that I think of it, may be one of the top ten reasons I write. Huh.

The characters in my first two books were not named like that at ALL. I just...named them things I liked. For Nik, I wanted a girl with a boy's nickname, because...I liked it. I wanted Davis to have the kind of last name that could serve as the first. "Merrin," I just liked, and "Elias" just sounds sexy-but-geeky to me. (Did it work, CPs?) I named Leni after my grandmother, who is even more kickass in real life.

But CHROME, the alleged WiP, demands a bit more thought and care in this regard. Each of the names I use for this one has to pack a punch of meaning as well as have some seriously awesome linguistic roots. It took me for-freaking-ever to come up with Havah's name, and I'm still not sure I'm keeping it.

So...yeah. Obsessed with names these days.

2. Men with Swords

I've obsessed over Prince Charming from Once Upon a Time, and I promised myself I would shut up about this particular obsession, but I'll be darned if I haven't picked up two CPs this year who have Men with Swords in their manuscripts.

I'm reading one now. It's really distracting. You know, in the best way possible.

Marieke! Our man Nathan looks like this, right?


Or maybe this?


(ignore my girl Mia, she's just there as a prop in this case)

But preferably - HOPEFULLY - like this?  Yes??? Okay. Good.



3. Marshmallow Cereal
Some obsessions are just unhealthy and bad for you, and there's no way around it. I know I should be eating raisin bran or Greek yogurt or oatmeal. I know.

But I CANNOT STOP THINKING about marshmallow cereal. It's talking to me, you guys.
I might have eaten a (couple) bowls this week. Oops.

Let's blame it on Merrin. She loves junky food.




What about you, sweet readers? What were your obsessions this week?

Making Stupid Mistakes

Well, you guys?

This is my second tour through the query trenches. I know better than to make stupid mistakes.

(Here are some examples of stupid mistakes:

• Writing a bad query letter (one that doesn't talk about the book, disparages published books, etc.)
• Addressing your query to "Dear Sir or Madam"
• Sending a query to an editor
• Sending an attachment with a query
• Not following submission guidelines)

So, when I sent out my first batch of queries Monday, you'd think I wouldn't make any of those mistakes, right?


Yeah. You'd think.




Here's the story in all its brief, harrowing detail:

I've been watching my query inbox just in case I get a request, so I can send it out quickly.
I ran over to the agency website for one of the queries I'd sent and been on especial watch for a response to, to see if I should even EXPECT a reply. (Some agencies are "no reply means no," so this would be normal.)

While on the site's submission page, I skimmed over the part that said I should send a query letter, first chapter, and synopsis.

Right, okay.

Wait. WHAT? Because I know - I KNOW - I only sent a query letter and synopsis.
Knew it down to my bones. Knew it without even having to scramble through my "sent" box to desperately re-check.



How did I know that, so clearly and certainly?

 Because. The one and only query I messed up?

WAS THE ONE I SENT TO DREAM AGENT.




I drafted that query for A WEEK. (I personalized it because she read a full of my last MS.)
 I knew (thought I knew) her sub guidelines inside and out.
I wrote a synopsis JUST FOR HER. (A lot of agencies don't require one.)


I know my chances of getting a request from her were low anyway, just like with any other agent.
I know, from reading some of her stats, that she only requests 1-2% in the first place.
I'm sure my query would have fallen in the 98%, so it's no big difference - or loss, I guess - if she decides to just chuck it outright.
I know that, at this point, getting a rejection from her would be her doing something REALLY nice.



I'm not going to blog about how things happen for a reason, or how everything works out for the best.

(Incidentally, I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, or that everything works out for the best.)

I have nobody to blame for a stupid mistake but myself.
And this one? Was pretty epically stupid.

Hold me.

Please regale me with stories of stupid querying mistakes (or really any stupid mistakes in general) you've made, so I don't feel like quite so much of an idiot.

Why Do We Do It?

(before I start - You all HAVE seen the new covers for Elana Johnson's POSSESSION and SURRENDER, right? Because they are awesome. Just making sure.)

I'm about to send out the very first round of queries for ONE.

I know the manuscript is ready for professional eyes.
I know the writing is as polished as I can make it.
I know, after two revisions, that I'm happy with the pacing, the voice, the plot, the characters.

And yet, as I queue up the queries in my inbox - one to my Dream Agent - my hands tremble and my heart drops into my stomach.

I know that this book may not sell. Ever.
I know that today is the beginning of setting out on that road, that might end in ONE's living in a drawer.

I've written before about the split personality of a writer - the audacity that enables us to send our work to critique partners' and agents' inboxes and internet contests, paired with the self-doubt that can be, at times, crushing.


We all have those moments when we bury our heads in our hands and think,
"Why do I even bother with this anyway?"


Maybe it's frustration finding ideas, or adding word count to a draft when we have one. Maybe it's a scene we just can't get right, a relationship we can't seem to communicate fully, or a plot hole we can't seem to adequately fill. Maybe it's teasing from a family member or some especially stinging crit.


Maybe it's staring at the draft of an email about to go to your Dream Agent and only being able to think, "Who do I think I am to be sending this to her?"

The drafting, the editing, the critique, the revisions.
The query-writing, the synopsis-composing, the pitch-crafting, the contest-entering.
The rejection, the rejection, the rejection.
 Altogether, it's enough to make you think you're crazy for doing this in the first place.

Right?


So, why do we do it?

For most of us, the reason we write is some subcategory of this -
Because we can't NOT write.
Maybe it's because it gives us a sense of self we can't find anywhere else.
Maybe it's because stories live in our heads and we can't rest until we get them into beautiful words.
Maybe it's because writing gives us something to dream about when nothing else does.

Just like anyone else, I have my own answers. Just like anyone else, those change all the time.

This weekend,  when I was having kind of a tough time with some stinging critique I'd gotten, a different critique partner asked me, "What do you love about ONE?"

And so, through streaming tears, I told her. 
I told her about the characters - and their story - that just won't let me go.
I told her about how superhero stories have always absolutely captivated me.
I told her about how I knew, first hand, about dreams lost, ambitions changed, and things turning out different - but better - than we ever envisioned them.
I told her about how much I LOVED telling a story of empowerment, hope and comfort, despite things not turning out the way we dreamed they would.

At that moment, I knew why I did it - why I poured myself into this whole project. Why it's okay if it never sells, why I'm glad I did it anyway.


Somehow, thinking about that stills my shaking query hand just a little.


So, now it's your turn. Please tell me - Why do you write? 

The Itchy Query Finger

It happened with my first manuscript, and it's starting to creep up on me again.

The itchy query finger. (Oh, July me. You were so cute.)

I know exactly what to blame. It's the first draft high, which I got a second dose of, laced with extra uppers, in the form of the first revision high I experienced yesterday when Gina, Alexa, and Marieke read ONE. (Shoot, Marieke's crit was pretty much, "You need to work pretty hard on fixing some things in the first half of this book," and I was still clapping my hands and squealing like a schoolgirl.)


Yeah. Clearly it's just a high. But still.



I have a pretty decent query that could be dolled up with a couple weeks of hard work, and yeah, writing a synopsis and the endless list of pitches one has to write is no tea party, but I could still do it.

But I'm no idiot. (No, really. I'm not. Bear with me.)

I read advice from query luminaries all over the internet:
Wait a few months to query.
Work as long on your query letter as you did on your revisions.
If you send too early, you'll find glaring mistakes in your MS and wish you hadn't.

I know. I know. And I agree. But still. My itchy query finger is CRAZY with shpilkes. 

I thought about why this is while I was procrastinating on starting to eliminate one of the ten kajillion times the word "just" appears in ONE (thanks G) and I think I realized why. You guys ready for this? It's kind of, you know, deep. Which we don't see a lot over here.

I'm afraid that if I don't query it now I'll realize how much it sucks, and I never will send that first letter.
Even though I know it doesn't suck.
Even though I know most books get waaaay better with revision.
Even though everything in my brain tells me that's wrong wrong wrong.....

The first draft/first revision high leaves me thinking...is this the most confident I'll ever be about ONE? The most excited?

(Wow. I am a nutcase. Analyze away.
Oh. And in case you were concerned? I set up a querying date for myself, to avoid any stupid moves.)

What about you guys? Have you ever had the itchy query finger? Why do you think it got so itchy? Did you send or wait? 

A Tale of Two Queries (Drafting Your Query While Drafting Your MS)

As much as I hate it, I know. All writers seeking traditional publication must write a query. I know. 

I'm not about to ignore the advice of sage individuals like Peggy Eddleman who instruct us to work on our query letters for almost as long as we work on our manuscripts - seriously, months and months. (Listen, a few months ago I would have conveniently ignored her but considering that this was one of the things that helped get her her rockstar agent and all....well...yeah. I'd better listen to Peggy.)

Anyway. Yesterday I was all whining about how, now that the first draft was done and I'm hoping to query in April, I should probably get to work writing that first query draft. It was making my stomach twist and drop and my heart race and my head feel light for all the reasons I've already told you. ONE is my baby! She's the only thing that helped me get over my first MS! How can I just condense her into a couple of paragraphs and send her out into the world? People might misunderstand her! People might most certainly will (God forbid) REJECT her! It's all too much.

But then, Jessica shook some sense into me, all the way from the West Coast.

Not to mention she was seriously enthusiastic about critiquing whatever hot mess of a query draft I managed to put together. By some strange miracle.

So, after I'd finished weeping over Chessie's NaNo novel a second time (read: finished my in-line crits, and now I can finally start to emotionally recover until the next time I pick up the wonderful heartwrenching blasted thing) I sat down and got to work.

First move - head over to query-writing guru Elana Johnson's website and her collection of blog posts on the topic. 

 Hook. 
Setup. 
Conflict. 
Consequence. 
Got it. No problem.


I mean, I KNOW all these things about ONE. I should be able to write a goshdarn 250-word letter summing them up, right?  So, I spent a good two hours breaking my head over the letter. Here's what I came up with for the first couple lines:

All Merrin Grey has ever wanted is to be able to fly like a real Super. At sixteen years old, the entire Super world is conviced that she'll always be a sad floating freak.

Merrin’s betting on a transfer to Nelson “Normal” High to let her fly under the radar while she gets good enough at Organic Chemistry to wrangle a job at the Supers’ Biotech Hub. 

*YAWN* In case you couldn't tell, this freaking sucks. This makes EVEN ME want to chuck ONE in the trash. And it just got worse and worse.

But if I'm anything, you guys, I'm a trooper. So I kept at it and got together about 250 words with the Hook, Setup, Conflict, and Consequences. Knowing it was full of too many details and emdashes, among other things, I sighed a heavy sigh as I prepared to send the whole horrid thing to Jess and watch her tear it limb from limb.  All I needed was the wording for the last line, and since my brain was fried, I figured I'd just lift it from my last query letter for drafting purposes.

I punched "query" into the search field of Evernote and guess what popped up, like an oasis in the middle of a freaking writer's desert?
A query I wrote for ONE back in August. Two weeks after I started drafting.
See, at one point, I had been a righteous follower of Guru Elana Johnson, who gently advises us to write the query before we write the manuscript.
But August-me got frustrated, reasoned that, since I'm a pantser, this advice didn't apply to me, and abandoned the query to concentrate on drafting.

Anyway. Here were the first few lines I found in that blessed File from the Past:

Sixteen-year-old Merrin Gray can float, but she can't make herself fly. When almost everyone else is a Super, with at least two powers, or a Normal, with none, being a One is the worst kind of in-between.

The rest of that letter was equally hook-y and voice-y and simple, and made my heart jump. "Yep! THAT's what ONE is about," I said to myself. After a few tweaks, it was off to Jess's inbox, and here's what she said:

Then, yeah, she sent me detailed crit in my inbox. But I'll be darned - she hardly hated it at all. 

Lessons: Query Guru Elana Johnson is always right. You know more about the bones and basic themes about your book when you first start drafting. You're probably also way less tired of it, emotionally attached to it, and mired in its details then. So just spend a bit of time drafting one up. Stick in in your files or notes. Who knows? It might do you a LOT of good later.

Also, no matter what stage your MS is in, buck up and write your damn query.

And in case you're wondering, I did send Jess the last deleted (kissing plus) scene from ONE in thanks. Because that kick in the bottom was exactly what I needed.

Wishing for a Writer's Deus Ex Machina

I don't know when to quit. With this book, anyway.

I wish there was some mechanism, a whooping alarm or a decisive trap door or something, that would sound off when I've sent my last query on THE TRAVELERS. You know, the last one I should reasonably send. Before I go into delusional writer's territory, querying a book that will Just Never Make It.

I know all the inspirational stories. Everyone rejected J.K. Rowling. Brodi Ashton queried a hundred agents. Elana Johnson queried 188 (one hundred and eighty-eight!) before she found her agent.

But maybe (probably) I'm not Brodi Ashton or Elana Johnson. Maybe I'm not talented enough. Or my first novel is too first-novelish. Or people don't care if the main character gets fed through a woodchipper.

I went through all the things listed in this post for how to tell if it's time to put your novel away, and I thought they maybe applied to TT. But I didn't know if I really felt that way, or if it was rejection-based disappointment flapping its jaw.

So when do I give up? When does this novel get lovingly wrapped in paper and stuffed in a drawer?

How did Beth Revis, who has NINE drawer-novels, know when to put each of them away?

In the lowest of the query trenches (form rejections on my subs!) the answer felt like, "Right now, you idiot, how could you have even thought you should query this piece of garbage?"

This sign would have helped. Maybe a good business to market to writers?

So, I tried to declare my own Deus Ex Machina (yes, I'm aware that's the opposite of how it works. Shut up.) And I said that if my project wasn't pulled for the next round of the Miss Snark's First Victim Baker's Dozen Auction, I'd put it on the shelf, forget about it for now, and pour myself fully into ONE. It had a 10% chance of being pulled from contest slush, so I thought it would at least be a definitive "yes" or "no." (I want to say very clearly for the record that all my CPs thought that this idea was completely moronic.)


And then a crazy thing happened. The ladies doing the choosing pulled TT from the slush and decided to put it on the auction block. There went my big plan for knowing for sure when to quit. The auction goes live to crit on Friday and to agents on Tuesday, and it just might be the big opportunity for me that it was for these ladies last year.

It's a funny thing, writing these projects we love. The littlest thing can get us down, make us want to host a manuscript-based bonfire party. But then something else can bring us right back to loving our manuscript, and save it from a future in the drawer for another week, or another month.

And the only thing we know for certain is that nothing about this business is easy - not even knowing when to quit.


Have you ever drawered a project? How did you know when it was time? Were you as much of a drama queen about it as I've been?

Deliberately building self-confidence

I've written before about the split personality of a writer. We have to be simultaneously the most confident and the most humble people we know. It's a tough balance to strike, at some places on the road to publication more than others.

I realized I haven't felt self-confident about a single thing I've written since I've started querying THE TRAVELERS. Even my favorite favorite most beloved ever scene from ONE (the WiP)) - I look at it and think, "Eh, this is cliched." or "Urgh, what was I thinking with that WORD CHOICE GOD I AM THE STUPIDEST WRITER EVER."

You know. That kind of thing.

See, it's easy to get down. We can read posts by published authors telling us that no matter how ready we think we are to submit and publish - WE'RE NOT (awesome, thanks. SUPER helpful - ) and we can read twitter feeds of agents making fun of queriers all the live long day.

Um...does that include publishing? We're screwed, aren't we?

 Even if we delete our rejections like we're supposed to (I do! I swear! All, like, ten bajillion of them.) it's hard not to keep at least a rough tally living in your head. Soon, we can spot a rejection email in less than two seconds. Literally. (The tip-off: It has the word "subjective" in it.)

You'd think by now I might've turned around...YOU'D BE WRONG.

The thing is - the aspiring agented/published may come to believe these things so deeply - that we're never good enough to query, that first novels don't publish, that regular people can't be writers - that trying to build self confidence- yes, on purpose - might seem silly, indulgent, pointless.

That's what I thought, too.

But then, in a random email kvetch to my writing buddy Peggy, she told me to do something completely ridiculous - go back and read THE TRAVELERS. Fall in love with it again.

Now, Peggy one of the most humble writers I know. If she's telling me to purposefully hype myself up on my own writing, I sit up and listen.

I recently decided to do a last-ditch query flurry for THE TRAVELERS. My incredible, generous, genius CPs spent days reworking my query with me, and eventually everyone gave it a thumbs up. There was just one problem - I couldn't put together the emails. Couldn't click send. I realized after a few days that it was a problem of me losing faith in TT, even before I had officially given up on it.  It was then that I decided I owed it to TT to gather every strategy that I know of for building self confidence into one great big basket and throw every one straight at the query process.

Here are some things that help me build self-confidence and/or rekindle my love for my work:

• Listen to the soundtrack
• Read your book again. Especially the steamy scenes.
• Talk to the CPs that you know will give you hugs, love, and support.
• Before you whine to them any more, find a drill-sergeant CP who will force you to query through threats and shame.
• 
• Remember what you're awesome at (Peggy's post about that here and mine here)
• Send out one of Those Scenes just for the fun of it. You know which kinds I'm talking about. Your CPs will squeal because of what happens in the Scene, but you'll feel like they're in love with your writing.
• Seek out inspiration. My favorites here,  here and here. (You might cry.)

Your turn! Do you deliberately build self-confidence to gear up for some part of the writing process? How?

Querying Lessons - Finding the Balance

One of the most-repeated pieces of querying advice is to do your homework. Research, research, research. Read interviews with the agents - all of them you can find. Troll their list of clients to discover what kind of writing draws them in. If you haven't read any of their clients' works, read them - all of them, preferably. Find out exactly what that agent loves - and hates - to see in a query letter. Then edit your query letter accordingly. Check out their tweets to see if there's a font they hate (okay, this is a little extreme, I'll admit. But I do remember one agent tweeting about which fonts she hated...)

If you're like me, when you started out querying, you did all this. It took at least an hour or so - more if you actually read their clients' work (I did) -  to get each query together, but it was okay, because you were Doing What You Were Supposed to Do. Playing by the rules. You invested your time, hours that could be spent writing or critiquing or sleeping for God's sake, but it's fine! Really! Because you put a lot of work, careful thought and consideration into this query, and determined that you and this agent would be a perfect match. After all, you were Doing Everything Right. You were only querying the agents you were sure would be a perfect fit for you. You sent your query off, smiling, optimistic, and slightly smug.

Thirty minutes later, your email pinged. You nearly jumped out of your seat. You rushed to check it, fidgeting while the page loaded. You looked at your inbox and...

It was a form rejection. "We're sorry, but we don't think your work is a good fit for us."

Oh! NO! This can't be! You Did Everything Right, right?

Wrong. You did one thing wrong.

You fell in love.

When you were doing what you were supposed to do, researching agents looking for the Perfect Match, you let your love for your character and your novel and your hopes and dreams get all mixed up into imagining how you and this agent would work together. And you fell in love with the agent. And now that agent has sent you the message, loud and clear - "Never. Gonna. Happen." You mixed up "business partner" with "New BFFE."

How do I know this? I fell for an agent. And when I got my rejection from her last week, it was not pretty. I might have cried the ugly cry. (I definitely cried the ugly cry.)

How am I preventing this from happening again? I'm implementing strategies to strike a balance between love and business.

(I liked how the trays on this balance look like nooses. Because that's kind of how this whole thing feels.)

My pre-query research consists of reading the agent's bio and wishlist to make sure she's looking for the type of material I have to offer. I'll search for an interview if there is any confusion. Of course, I'll check out her agency's submission guidelines and make sure that my query conforms to those. If I already know some of her authors' work, I'll squeal a little and squirm in my seat while clicking send. (It's exciting to query famous peoples' agents!) But if I've never heard of any of her authors, I'll send anyway.

I have my documents all ready to go so I can just add them into the body of an email, no nail-biting or worrying. Sometimes I'll alter a query slightly if I think it'll draw the agent more from what I read in an interview. Usually I don't end up altering it.  Of course, I always make sure to type the agents' name at the top, and spell it correctly.

That's it! No one query takes up much more than ten or fifteen minutes, tops. If I get form rejection, I've lost the time it takes to eat an ice cream cone, not the time it takes to write half a chapter in my WiP.

Now, here are my suggestions for finding balance AFTER sending the query:

Once you query, consider un-following the agent on Twitter, and maybe even un-following her blog, until you hear back from her. Nothing will change the more you stalk her, and every time she mentions she's reading slush or that a certain character type (yours!) annoys her or that she hates the use of a certain phrase, you will go nuts. (Why yes, I do know this from personal experience.)

Once an agent requests something from you, CONTINUE TO QUERY AS NORMAL. That agent with your chapters, or your full? She might never respond. Odds are, she will eventually reject your MS despite having asked to see more. She might even send you a form rejection.  On a full. This is how agents do their jobs. It is nothing against you. Don't put your whole querying life on hold because that agent maybe, might, fall in love with your ms on her Kindle amidst the hustle and bustle of a New York cafe.

One last thing - every time I click "send" on a query, I expect it to come back as a rejection. This may seem fatalistic to you, but I'd rather be very surprised by a request than very crushed when I get a form rejection. It's just part of how I'm finding the golden balance between agent love and agent apathy while querying.

How do you find the querying balance between love and business? I'd love some more tips to keep me even less crazy...

Just When You Think You've Detached...

Now that THE TRAVELERS is querying (best of luck, my book baby!), I've been spending my time almost exclusively on ONE.

The day I hit "send" on a query, almost a month ago now, I checked my email about 20 times an hour. 

I'd read lots of advice about how, when your query letter and hopefully partials and fulls of your first book has been attached to emails and sent into the vast unknown of agents' inboxes, you should do one thing, and one thing only:

Start a new book.

I was reluctant, but I'd had this idea running around my head anyway, and within a few days, ONE was my new baby. THE TRAVELERS is out of my hands, at least for now. As deeply as I love it, I mean love love love it - the characters, the story, the relationships, all of it - I knew I had to put it away. I knew I had to detach, so that the waiting and the wondering of querying wouldn't wrap its fingers around my heart and squeeze it to death every time I heard an email ping.

I did it. I detached. Or so I thought.

But then? Then? My spit-polishing star of a critique partner, Chessie, emailed me this:

*Sigh.* There he is. 

Davis, the male MC from THE TRAVELERS. She did it. She went and drew him, read the manuscript and drew a picture of exactly what he looks like, and I just...just....WOW.

I opened the email, gasped, put my hand to my chest. I cried a little buckets.

I don't know exactly why. After all, Davis has been imprisoned in  my  hard drive for the past month, and waiting in some other folks' inboxes. But my new leading man is Elias. Elias, right? From ONE?

But I do know what it means. I love THE TRAVELERS just as much as ever. I suppose I always will love it. And I think when someone takes precious free time to draw a character from my book, it means she believes in it. Believes it's good, at least, worth reading and working on, and maybe even believes it'll go somewhere. 

So, fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not detached. I'm still so, so attached that a (beautifully, perfectly drawn) picture of one of my characters sends me into a heart-twisting spin of affection for it.

But maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

Have you ever been able to detach from your work? Do you even want to?

Querier's Hypochondria

So. Here are a couple of exciting truths that actually make life (read: my head) more complicated.

1. THE TRAVELERS is querying (fly, little bird, fly!)
and
2. Twitter (and the internet) exists. And agents are on it.

You know how you knew that guy in pre-med in college, and then he was always poring over all his medical textbooks, and then every time he had a cough or an itchy elbow he was sure he was dying of cancer?

It's actually kind of like that with writers, except substitute "medical textbooks" with "agent blogs," and "cancer" with "complete and total failure as a novelist ever in the universe."

Examples? Obviously. ***

*Combs through query to see if any part of it might be construed as "aggressive."*

(Okay. I think we're good.)

(Uh oh. I'm kinda screwed. Yeah, in both my books.)

Oh my stars, I'm seriously screwed, aren't I?

O_o Is there any "hip dialogue" in my manuscript? Worse, is there any dialogue that I think is "hip" but is, in fact, not? (Don't answer that, Gina.)

Okay, but I have a really, really good explanation for that. Like, really.

OMG OMG OMG. Have I ever tweeted any agent? With anything about my book? Is that considered a "pitch?" It must be. OMG OMG OMG

My manuscript? Has lots of eyes. And I'm pretty sure a big bunch of 'em sparkle, and maybe they dance once or twice too. GAAAAAAAAH.

And then I collapse into a weeping heap on the floor, ready to start a bonfire with my manuscript. Yeah, another one. I have lots of copies. (Actually, I don't have any copies, but it works for the drama of it all. See?)

***I actually have not submitted to a single one of these agents/editors, so I know 100% for certain that what they are saying is in no way directly related to THE TRAVELERS. Which makes this all that much more neurotic.

Do you have querier's hypochondria? What form does yours take? Or am I alone, so all alone in this sad, sad condition?