I have to apologize for the lack of caps, have just had hand surgery.
I'm beginning to wonder if there's not something about this to make mid-level or almost-there writers feel better about themselves; it's that feeling of, at least I'm smart enough to know that, it's not completely hopeless. as you say, it's not actually useful information.
But i'm not sure it's possible for agents to quantify the difference between the almost good enough query and the good enough query. How to quantify excitement, how to quantify curiosity, how to quantify the feeling I got upon reading the pitch for 'Dust of 100 Dogs' or Octavian Nothing? The impression i get is that it's not so much a matter of doing something wrong as a matter of not generating that spark. which is, inevitably, as intensely subjective as my own preference for demons over vampires, or 12th Night among shakespeare's plays.
Sorry, I keep drive-by commenting and I know how annoying that can be -- I'm a librarian and a ya author, but i queried four or five novels before i managed to secure representation. i'm not sure that either me or my agent could definitively pinpoint what was wrong with the queries that didn't work and the one that did.
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Date: 2009-07-23 01:13 am (UTC)I'm beginning to wonder if there's not something about this to make mid-level or almost-there writers feel better about themselves; it's that feeling of, at least I'm smart enough to know that, it's not completely hopeless. as you say, it's not actually useful information.
But i'm not sure it's possible for agents to quantify the difference between the almost good enough query and the good enough query. How to quantify excitement, how to quantify curiosity, how to quantify the feeling I got upon reading the pitch for 'Dust of 100 Dogs' or Octavian Nothing? The impression i get is that it's not so much a matter of doing something wrong as a matter of not generating that spark. which is, inevitably, as intensely subjective as my own preference for demons over vampires, or 12th Night among shakespeare's plays.
Sorry, I keep drive-by commenting and I know how annoying that can be -- I'm a librarian and a ya author, but i queried four or five novels before i managed to secure representation. i'm not sure that either me or my agent could definitively pinpoint what was wrong with the queries that didn't work and the one that did.