megwrites

Thanks to scififanatic's encouragement, I've decided I'm going to give the Tower!Guy novel another spin on the Agent-Go-Round. So I screwed my courage to the sticking point and have begun gathering a few more names and doing yet more research.

My biggest frustrations this morning (I've been up since six researching this stuff) are as follows:

1. Urban fantasy is still classified as "fantasy" under the categories at LitMatch and AgentQuery. This is ridiculous. This means agents who accept vampire novels but don't want anything with dragons are classified exactly the same as agents who are interested in your dragons and wish to subscribe to their newsletter. Since I am querying about a straight up fantasy, this is a Big Problem. If I have to see a "OMG Give me Vampires!!111" classified as accepting fantasy one more time, I will scream. Actually, I've already screamed.

Urban fantasy/paranormal romance is big enough to merit it's own tickybox. It would be a lot easier to do this if I didn't have to keep weeding through agents who want the next Anita Blake but wouldn't touch my novel with a twenty foot pole while wearing a hazmat suit.

Everyone wants paranormal, nobody wants fantasy.

On the upside, this means when it comes time to query around for the UF!2girls novel, I'll be spoiled for choice. Or, with my luck, everyone will hate vampires by then and there will be lots of agents saying "No more vampires!" and they'll all want something else I don't have on me at the moment.

2. AgentQuery does *not* keep their stuff up to date. I've found seven different agents who have closed to submissions, aren't with that agency they're listed with, or don't appear to even be in the business anymore, yet are listed as active agents.

3. Nobody is making the distinction between YA and adult commercial genres. There are a lot of agents who will accept fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi YA but won't touch the adult stuff. Fair enough, but it's a waste of my time and resources to have an agent listed on those search engines as accepting "fantasy" when they actually just accept all genres of YA.

4. Some agents make me wonder how hip they are to the Information Age. They have exactly no web presence, making getting information about them (and more importantly, their submission guidelines) impossible. You couldn't even throw up a blog with post about your guidelines? Twitter? LJ? Nothing?

5. Some agents have impossibly vague submission guidelines. "I want anything with a unique voice" or "I want a great book I can't put down". Geez louise, people. And you wonder why you get thousands of idiotic submissions per day. EVERY WRITER thinks they have a book with a unique voice that can't be put down. So tell us, in no uncertain terms what you do and do not want. Use small words. Bullet point lists with bolded, underlined terms is even better. This is how you do it. I deeply appreciate agents who are kind enough to list, specifically, that they do not want science fiction or fantasy. Or what types they do and do not want. I want to hug those agents. A lot.

Another rejection in the ol' inbox. This one came from someone I'll call BigName!Agent. It was a very polite, personal reply. I was surprised she got back to me so soon.

In the agent's defense, she's also moving towards a more literary/urban fantasy client list and she's one of those agents who's so big in the industry that I think you'd pretty much need to have a last name like Hamilton or Rowling to get on her list.

*shrug*. You shoot the moon, and sometimes you hit it. Sometimes you don't.

The number of rejections now rounds out to a nice even four, with two agents still giving me a definite "maybe", and the jury is still out on the rest.

Dinner must be made, and new stories must be outlined even if I have to drag the outline out of my brain with steel cables and a sturdy resolve.

I got some more good news, via the agent search. Not a home run or a deal or anything (the day that happens, you won't need LJ because you will hear my shriek of joy),and it's something I kind of want to keep under my hat, for reasons I shall disclose later. But it's definitely a very good omen. It gives me the warm and fuzzies.

I talked to lagringa who runs The Swivet today for some advice. And I must say, for any human beings who have Colleen as a friend or an agent, consider yourselves very lucky duckies.

I keep telling myself that I have to stay grounded and make sure that I'm not so up in the clouds that I crash back down and can't land of my feet. After all, it's not like this is the only novel I'll ever write. I've got plenty of others in me, and if this one doesn't make it, others will.

I'm reminding myself that getting this novel to where I want it is like climbing Everest in my shorts on a windy day. Right now? I'm just auditioning for a spot on the expedition team. I haven't even put on my climbing gear and started the ascent. But I'm closer, and Everest is there, and I know in my soul that I can do this. I just have to keep my eye on the big honkin' rock formation in front of me.

Which is why I'm going to force myself not to run out and devour a celebratory tub of ice cream (I'm saving the calorie carnival for bigger news), and instead I'm going to get right back to work. I have outlining to do, plotting to take care of, exercising that still needs doing and Gilder to frame for it.

Like they say: Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

Quick!Agent just asked for my complete manuscript and a three week exclusive.

*faints*

Must remain realistic. Must remain realistic. Must not get hopes up. Must not hyperventilate. Must remember how to type and breathe.

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG.

So, um, one of the agents I emailed with a query letter? Emailed me back asking for a synopsis and 50 pages within hours of me sending that email. Not sure what that means, except that they want more materials to judge whether my novel is any good and I should continue to be patient and professional and not, you know, get any unnecessary hopes up.

Still, am I wrong to sort of be trembling with joy? Y/N?

I have now managed to wrangle my synopsis down to one page, which was an accomplishment that I will be forever proud of, because it was kind of like climbing Mt. Everest in my shorts on a windy day, except not that easy and with more pain and angst and gnashing of teeth. Sherpas were lost, people left to die on the icy heights. It wasn't pretty.

So after I have fought and struggled and have narrowed down 82,000 words into a one page summary, there is the problem of formatting. There is, apparently, no consolidated format for a synopsis. Some have things hanging out on the right margins, some in the left. Double and single spacing are both valid, and some have full headers, some just put the genre (but apparently not the title) in one of the upper corners.

The format that is suggested in Give 'Em What They Want: The Right Way to Pitch your Novel to Editors and Agents is much simpler than some of the ones I've seen online, but that book only touches on mainstream and mystery genres. Maybe there's some sort of SF/F genre type format that agents who see SF/F queries and synopses prefer. ID-fucking-K.

But there are folks out there who have done this dance before, so any help you could give would mean that I owe you big time. I'm broke, but I can move furniture and bury bodies like a champ, so if you ever need me.

Also, it would be good for my hair because it will help me to stop pulling them out and also keep me from using the ALL CAPS ITALICS OF RAGE.

The Tower Guy novel is now officially finished. The line editing is done! I have now written, edited, revised, rewritten, corrected, and spellchecked this thing all I can.

The final draft is done. Now all that's left are the queries and synopses and the long waiting and the many rejections and all the things that follow.

But it's done! I'm done! This whole stupid novel that has taken me frelling years to write is now finished and done in it's entirety.

Which means I can finally close the file and begin working on something else. Anything else.

jaylake has an oddly appropriate entry about crutch words and how they can overwhelm the prose of a piece. As always: Jay knows his stuff when it comes to the business of writing.

Given that I'm currently line editing with a vengeance, I'm very aware of how sloppy prose of a piece can get on the first few drafts. I'm not even half way through line editing and I've already managed to cut out ten pages worth of crutch words and unnecessary phrases and other linguistic detritus. I have a love affair with the word "that", apparently. I think at least half of the 5,000 deleted words so far were that's.

Ugh. This is still easier than trying to hammer out a synopsis, and that's just sad.

I still have no idea if I have anything approaching the right kind of synopsis, and I think this is the most aggravating part of the entire thing. Even more aggravating than starting from scratch on a novel that I worked four years already on. At least then I knew what to do.

I have no idea how to handle a synopsis. I've tried writing and re-writing it several times. It always sounds like crap and there's only so much hair on my head that I can pull out before I'm bald.

So, having finished the bulk of my task of making the Tower!Guy novel a book that I hold my head up high about even as I wait for the rejection letters, I've turned my hand to query letters.

And you can guess where this is going. I need help, because, well, I'm dumb. And even though I've read a lot, there's probably something stupid I'm doing. I know a lot of you out there on the f-list are smarter/more experienced/better/an agent/a published writer/better at queries/[insert reason you're more qualified than me].

So, beneath the cut ( are my query letter, which probably needs intense picking apart, and the concerns I have about it. )

The floor is open to anyone, and I mean anyone with an opinion or advice or anything that might be remotely helpful. I am wide open and willing to learn and listen.

Wouldn't you know, that just as I round the corner on my second to last chapter, with victory well in sight, thinking that if I eat my Wheaties and go for the gold, I can finish the last of my revisions today and start on line editing tomorrow - wouldn't you just know that something had to go wrong?

My glasses picked this very occasion to fall all the hell apart and announce that they were going on strike by having one of the lenses very unceremoniously drop onto the floor at my feet. Which is confusing when one half of your vision suddenly does the wacky, and for a moment I wondered if I was having a stroke or something until I realized what happened.

The screw that held the lens inside the frame is gone, and neither God nor man shall ever know where it got to or how.

So I'm now two hours behind where I want to be. But I don't really care anymore. If I have to stay up 'til midnight, I'm getting this damn thing done. By hook or by crook, it's getting done.

Besides I have to start worrying about really getting a good query letter and synopses hammered out. The synopses can be one size fits all, but the queries can't.