The hardest thing about getting published so far for me has been hooking an agent. Now there is a common belief among the Un-Published that you don't need an agent, that you just write your book and submit it to a publisher and yadda-yadda-yadda a big fat check shows up at your door.
Sure that might happen on occasion, but you have a better chance of winning the lottery. I don't have that kind of luck. So I've been going the agent route. It took me a year of sending query letters to agents for THE SWEET SIXTEENTH to learn anything about querying. No matter how much I read about the subject, I was still making mistakes.
Since I started to send out queries for HUMBLE WALKER, I was pretty confident that I had gotten it right. But sadly I was still making the same mistakes. I had a great query (or so I thought) that conveyed the tone of the book and the overall story. A few agents passed right off the hop which I expected. But then something hit me while reading The Query Shark's blog. The "voice" of the query was all wrong, it was too dark. It was as if an announcer was reading the query, and not the voice of any character from the novel. Lucky for me I only burned about five agents with this query.
Once I got the voice right (I hope) I sent the query to two agents. Shockingly, I got two rejections, on the same day they were sent. That was a strange thing, and it made me think there was something wrong with the query right off the bat. So I started doing more research, and it hit me. In an effort to show some color in the character's personality, I used the word "bitch" to describe another character. Dumb move. I could not believe I did it. It was something I read before and must have forgotten.
We will see how the new query works. I've sent it out to five more agents but have not heard back from any yet. Meanwhile I've continued to refine it for the next five agent burst.
Friday, February 25, 2011
New Year Sleeve
As of 2011, I am going to start documenting some of my adventures in publishing, or rather, un-publishing... I thought it might serve someone else well. Maybe I could pass an experience along that could help someone else even farther below me on the ladder. Because usually when I tell someone I've written books, they tell me they always wanted to write a book. I always say, you should. The only thing stopping you, is you. As mobile as laptops are these days you can write anywhere. People have written books in the slips of time we used to waste in passing, because now they have a medium in their hands.
The hard thing is not writing the book, the hard thing is writing the book, knowing it might never see the world. You're basically telling stories to yourself. This is fine; because that's the way it should be. If you go to your computer and assume you're writing a book for the masses, saying that you're going to write a masterwork of commercial fiction that will be a movie in three years… well… frankly your book is going to suck.
You need to write what you would want to read. I will not write about vampires because I don't read about them. I would have no idea how to appeal to people who want to live in that world of the bloodless neck chewers, and sensual lips peeling back to reveal dangerous fangs... If you want that stuff you go to a professional like Maggie Shayne. Because you would spot me as a fraud right away.
What I like are impossible stories, things that could happen to anyone but might be just slightly askew. I like action and fast-paced danger where life and death are struggling against each other. I like books that twist and threaten to take an unexpected turn. I like endearing characters that you'd want to hang out with, and characters that you want to feed to a hungry wood chipper. I don't like books that bog down in detail. I write books that I would like to read. Not everyone is going to like them, but I like them. And you should do the same thing. If you like paranormal, write that. Don't write something that is "in demand" or hot just to try and get in on a trend. That is a sure fire path to a bad novel. If you would not buy it yourself, don't write it.
Write for yourself, because at some point you're going to have to "keep writing" … That was something that published authors always said to me, and it took me a long time to fully understand. What they said was keep writing, but that sounds obvious to anyone who want to write. But what they were really saying was keep writing after you've been rejected. Keep writing more stories, new stories, just keep writing and cultivating ideas.
I'm currently writing my seventh full length novel between 60,000 and 111,000 words. The first four were practice and they will never see the light of day, nor should they, because they suck. I don't even want to read them so I don't expect anyone else would. But when number five was shopped to agents and rejected across the board, it was a slap to the face. It took me a while to admit the story was just too "run of the mill" on the surface. Although it has some unexpected twists and great characters, that is hard to sell in a query. So I've moved on to the query stage of the next novel, and I've moved on to writing another story. I've kept writing and cultivating ideas, I will keep writing because that is the only way I can get better, and maybe get lucky.
After you've written the book, that's when the work starts. That will be your next lesson. You will read thousands of words telling you how to write that great query. All over the Internet, you will find tons of pages covering this topic. You will even get bad advice from people. My only advice here is to read, read...and read some more. Read what agents are looking for in their submission process, and read everything you can. The query is no easy task and for me (and most other writers I've talked to) it does not come natural like writing the story. It is a learning process in and of itself.
Imagine trying to catch a fish. You put some bait on the hook and your toss out your line. But now imagine that the fish are so over fed that they cannot eat any more food. Even if they really like the bait, the fish are just too damn full to take another bite. Your food will have to be so good that the fish will be willing to risk vomit after eating your bait. And even if you find a hungry fish, your query had better be good. What makes the query so hard, is drilling down into your novel to find that hook.You have to find the hook before you can bait the hook. That is not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to crunch 80,000 words into a 250 word description that really captures what it is you're trying to say in the story.
The hard thing is not writing the book, the hard thing is writing the book, knowing it might never see the world. You're basically telling stories to yourself. This is fine; because that's the way it should be. If you go to your computer and assume you're writing a book for the masses, saying that you're going to write a masterwork of commercial fiction that will be a movie in three years… well… frankly your book is going to suck.
You need to write what you would want to read. I will not write about vampires because I don't read about them. I would have no idea how to appeal to people who want to live in that world of the bloodless neck chewers, and sensual lips peeling back to reveal dangerous fangs... If you want that stuff you go to a professional like Maggie Shayne. Because you would spot me as a fraud right away.
What I like are impossible stories, things that could happen to anyone but might be just slightly askew. I like action and fast-paced danger where life and death are struggling against each other. I like books that twist and threaten to take an unexpected turn. I like endearing characters that you'd want to hang out with, and characters that you want to feed to a hungry wood chipper. I don't like books that bog down in detail. I write books that I would like to read. Not everyone is going to like them, but I like them. And you should do the same thing. If you like paranormal, write that. Don't write something that is "in demand" or hot just to try and get in on a trend. That is a sure fire path to a bad novel. If you would not buy it yourself, don't write it.
Write for yourself, because at some point you're going to have to "keep writing" … That was something that published authors always said to me, and it took me a long time to fully understand. What they said was keep writing, but that sounds obvious to anyone who want to write. But what they were really saying was keep writing after you've been rejected. Keep writing more stories, new stories, just keep writing and cultivating ideas.
I'm currently writing my seventh full length novel between 60,000 and 111,000 words. The first four were practice and they will never see the light of day, nor should they, because they suck. I don't even want to read them so I don't expect anyone else would. But when number five was shopped to agents and rejected across the board, it was a slap to the face. It took me a while to admit the story was just too "run of the mill" on the surface. Although it has some unexpected twists and great characters, that is hard to sell in a query. So I've moved on to the query stage of the next novel, and I've moved on to writing another story. I've kept writing and cultivating ideas, I will keep writing because that is the only way I can get better, and maybe get lucky.
After you've written the book, that's when the work starts. That will be your next lesson. You will read thousands of words telling you how to write that great query. All over the Internet, you will find tons of pages covering this topic. You will even get bad advice from people. My only advice here is to read, read...and read some more. Read what agents are looking for in their submission process, and read everything you can. The query is no easy task and for me (and most other writers I've talked to) it does not come natural like writing the story. It is a learning process in and of itself.
Imagine trying to catch a fish. You put some bait on the hook and your toss out your line. But now imagine that the fish are so over fed that they cannot eat any more food. Even if they really like the bait, the fish are just too damn full to take another bite. Your food will have to be so good that the fish will be willing to risk vomit after eating your bait. And even if you find a hungry fish, your query had better be good. What makes the query so hard, is drilling down into your novel to find that hook.You have to find the hook before you can bait the hook. That is not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to crunch 80,000 words into a 250 word description that really captures what it is you're trying to say in the story.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)