megwrites

After looking at the current query score card, I've made a few decisions regarding the fate of the Tower!Guy novel.

If there's no result by the end of the year, I'm going to either trash the Tower!Guy novel and forget it exists or podcast it in 2010 - but I'm not going to spend the next five years of my life grinding my teeth out of nervousness and checking my email obsessively every hour for a novel that, so far, nobody wants.

Maybe it's a good novel and the market sucks. Maybe it's not that good a novel. Either way, the result is the same.

If I seem a little angry about that, I am. Not at the agents for not recognizing my genius, because if the novel were any good, they wouldn't turn it down. Agents are not the problem.

I'm angry at myself and the story. I feel cheated. I poured my heart and soul into it. I really believed in it. I thought it was a damn good book. Apparently, it wasn't. I think I'm angry at myself for getting my hopes up, for being naive, for not realizing the story apparently sucked. I'm angry at myself for wasting precious time on a story that I can't convince anyone to read.

Frustrated Meg is frustrated, if you can't tell. And I knew this was going to be part of the process. So don't think I'm complaining or blaming anyone else. It's all on me.

Fortunately, I have other stories to tell. This was by no means my only shot. And I love writing. Even if I knew I wouldn't ever get published in my life time, I would still write. I love it. I need it. It's who I am. It's who I've always been. As sure as I'm a woman, I'm a writer.

But if I knew for certain that I'd never be professionally published in my lifetime, I'd just stick my stories up on a webpage, put out a paypal button, and have done with it. But it's the hope (delusion?) that I might be able to make a career out of it that keeps me from doing just that.

Hope is not always the warm fuzzy thing people think it is. Sometimes it's a ball and chain that keeps you tethered to something because you just can't let go. There's reason it was the monster in Pandora's Box.

But eternal hope is just eternal foolishness, so come the end of the year either I'll have some kind of result or I'll start fresh with new stories. Maybe I'll get luckier, maybe I'll be better, and maybe the market will be better.

But I can't keep hoping (as far as this novel goes) and I can't keep being angry at myself.

Woke up to a rejection in my inbox this morning - nothing like seeing a polite form letter while you're still trying to get the grime out of your eyes.

Which makes the new Query Score Card status:

Rejections - 3

Requests - 0

Still Pending - 14

Timed Out - 0


In a fit of optimism, I'm taking a flash drive with the full manuscript on it plus some other stuff to Florida with me (I leave in about an hour for the airport) in case I get good news while I'm there. That would be really nice.

So, I'm off. I'll have intermittent internet access while I soak up the Florida humidity sunshine and make final wedding plans (A month and two days until I'm a married woman, woohoo!)

Delacourte editor Wendy Loggia talking about why manuscripts get rejected has me greatly worried.

Well, most of them I nodded my head to. But then I got to this and I felt like a record has screeched to a stop the way it does in movies:

4. The writer seems like a difficult person to work with. Wendy always Googles an author’s name before offering a contract. She says she may be prompted to change her mind about signing up an author if they share too much information in their blog, if they tend to blog a lot about how hard writing is, if they blog about being rejected many times, if they publicly bash a book she’s worked on, or if they bash a colleague in the business who is her friend.

I can't begin to say how much this bothers me. Because I realize that I am quite vocal about many things on this blog from racism to reviews to how I feel about certain parts of the industry. I try to be fair minded where I can, and I do try to keep a level of professionalism going.

I also try not to whine too much about how hard writing is because every job is hard in it's own way. But writing is the job I love. I love it even when it hurts. And I want to to do this job well. I want to do it professionally. I want to work well with other professionals.

But it worries me that doing that may include turning off parts of myself in ways that I'm not comfortable with.

Is blogging about the Query Score Card, or talking about rejections or ranking CoC/GLBT/Gender scores on books causing me to shoot myself in the foot? Am I hurting my chances of landing a deal somewhere just by mentioning these things?

I'm also a little worried that my chances may be hurt if I'm perceived to be "bashing" someone's book. Should I just not review books (or not review the ones I find I don't like very much) for fear that the editor or agent who worked on that book may find my review to be a reason to reject me?

I'm worried that someone will find me too difficult to work with because I blogged about getting a rude rejection - but at the same time? Is it necessarily fair or professional for an editor at a major house to say that they will pass on a manuscript based on their non-literary feelings about an author?

Like I said, the article does bother me greatly. Because it carries uncomfortable implications for what I should be doing from here on out and for what the publishing landscape is like.

I've found three more agents to submit to, so I fired off queries to them. I refuse to fail this time without having exhausted every option. Unfortunately, that means sending of queries and playing the Waiting Game - which may be the worst part of this entire writing thing.

Actually, I amend that. Rejections are the worst part. Of course, saying that is like saying having a hot poker jabbed into your eye is worse than being stung by 100,000 angry bees. It's all exceedingly unpleasant, but at least it's worth it whether I succeed or fail.

If I succeed, yay for me. I've climbed one insurmountable mountain and can now begin to contemplate how in the sweet lovely hell I'm going to surmount (mount?) the next one.

If I fail, well, I've learned something about either the market, the agents, my query letters, or the story itself and maybe all of the above. Which will serve me well next time.

On a side note, can I just say thank goodness my current project is urban fantasy? I swear there's a 20:1 ratio of agents for urban fantasy to agents for straight-up fantasy. It's really frustrating, let me tell you, internets. I'm wondering if that's a sign that the adult fantasy market is failing or if agents don't think it's the cool new thing anymore or what.

Right now I'm bracing for rejections and deciding what my next move should be. I don't think I can do any more with this novel as it is, and maybe it's served its purpose. Maybe it was just supposed to be a teaching tool for me. I can say I learned an amazing amount about editing and querying from it, so there's that.

I guess right now I'm asking myself if I can let this story go and move on to the next one, if I still have confidence in it. And honestly? I don't know the answer.

So, the revised Query Score Card stands at:

Rejections - 1

Requests - 0

Still Pending - 10


ETA: My math is severely borked. This is why I'm a writer, not an accountant.

Rethinking the Publisher/Author Relationship by Robert Miller which is a response to M.J. Rose's "Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid".

I can't add much commentary as an unpublished aspirant, except that these two links both scare the heck out of me. It makes me wonder what you do when you really don't have the financial resources to devote to marketing for a book.

I mean, what happens to you as a writer if you need to take that advance and use it on rent and medicine and food? Even with a day job, many writers are in dire financial straits. If they can't devote financial resources to advertising and marketing, are they just doomed to failure?

Like I said - scary.

ETA: Fixed borked HTML

An open letter to agents with a modest proposal from Cheryl Klein, the senior editor at Levine/Scholastic Books.

I found this a fascinating post, and a really interesting inside look at what happens after you clear the first huge hurdle in publishing and get to the second. Not to mention it's useful to have this little tidbit in mind should I ever be lucky enough to find myself with a manuscript that is being considered by editors.

Her suggestion makes a lot of sense to me. I'm a pretty slow reader on the best of days, so I can't imagine having to plow through manuscript after manuscript on a rushed basis, much less having to hand that same thing off to a committee or a boss. It seems like some really deserving projects might get tossed in the bin that way.

I know I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating. I really, really, really wish some agents would be more specific about what they want or do not want, especially if they don't accept e-queries.

Before anyone thinks I'm ranting about how terrible agents are (they aren't!), this is a problem with some agents, not all. Most agents have submissions guidelines that are easily found and very specific. I appreciate those agents. A lot.

Some agents, however...

I wish agents would make sure their AgentQuery, PublishersMarketplace, and LitMatch listings are specific and accurate. So many have several (or every) fiction genre listed, but very demonstrably - and by demonstrably, I mean looking at their client lists and recent sales - only represent one or two types of books. A literary book about angsty ghosts is not the same as fantasy or horror or mystery. They're not even on the same side of the bookstore! Why in the world does your page list every conceivable genre when your client list is telling me that you've probably never picked up an SF/F book in your life? Why?

I don't know whether this is because of the way that AQ, PM, and LM list agents or how the form is filled out, but it's problematic.

Especially when that agent doesn't have a website, blog, or other place where I can see their guidelines. Or the ones who like to add a little Vague Sauce. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones where the agent says something like, "I'm looking for a book that stands out from the rest and sweeps the reader away! I want something with a unique voice and an interesting perspective!"

Which makes me say, "Yeah, that's real cute. So, do you represent SF/F or not?"

I used to get mad every time I saw submissions guidelines saying, "Absolutely no SF/F! No vampires or werewolves!" Now? I want to thank those for being straightforward and specific. Once I know that they don't want to pick up what I'm throwing down? I can hit the back button and save us both some very precious time.

I'm still gathering research, and building my spreadsheet o' doom for this time around on the Merry-Go-Agent.

I think I might be ready to go, after another run through of my query letter, synopsis, and the manuscript by the end of this week. I'm trying to build up my confidence so I can do this without devolving into a nervous wreck.

I got a lot of progress done on the UF!2girls novel, but I realize that editing this thing is going to be hell on wheels, because there's so much stuff that I need to cut out, other stuff I know now I need to add, and yet other things that just need to be plain old rewritten.

The wordcount is getting heavy because I'm at 80k and little more than halfway through, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to cut out at least 40k. After all, I took a 123k draft down to 82k with the Tower!Guy novel, and I'm sure I can do at least that much for this novel.

Lately, I've been metaphorizing my writing by thinking of clay sculptures we used to do in art class at school. My teacher told us that the first stages were about sticking everything on, and then you shave things down and smooth them out, but first you have to get the basic form. That seems reasonable right now. I'm letting myself stick lumps of text here and there, knowing I'll go back with the refining tools to make it all come together attractively and it'll be an editing problem later on.

Also, it helps to make editing notes and stick them somewhere for later use.

I finally figured out what has been under my skin about this particular blog post by agent Jessica Faust over at Bookends Literary Agency, and indeed about a lot of "advice" coming from agents these days.

I like hearing about the agent side of the equation, and I certainly believe that most agents are consummate professionals, wonderful people, and sorely underappreciated for the hard work they do. I want to make that clear. Even the agents that rejected me were professional as they did so (well, all but one, but every group's got it's bad apples) and I would welcome the chance to work with them in the future. There were a few who I almost wanted to send a "thank you" to for being so quick on the turn around and their kind words of "keep submitting elsewhere".

But in all this talk of "good enough", with people like Michelle Sagara (msgara) weighing in, I've just felt this sense of aggravation and frustration, but especially when I read what Ms. Faust wrote.

And now I've figured out why, and there are two major reasons.

Reason the First - Writers cannot exist without a sense of "good enough". There comes a point when every writer has to say "I've done all I can do" and hand the project off. Otherwise we'd all only ever write one thing in our lives and that makes for a lousy career. Especially if you have rent and bills to pay. I don't know the specifics of the writer that Ms. Faust talked about in her blog post, but I do know that writers usually don't need telling about revising. Most of us, left to our own devices, would spend decades revising and redrafting the same work. One of the hardest decisions a writer makes is when to put the pen (or the keyboard) down and let it go. I'm sorry that she encountered someone who didn't seem to take pride in her work, but I'm not sure Ms. Faust can be an accurate judge of what kind of work that particular writer put into her manuscript. Yes, she said "rough draft", but maybe for her, a draft that's only been revised five times is still "rough". Maybe she considers it rough, even though she did her level best on it.

Like I said, I don't know.

But that brings me to Reason the Second - If that writer is the kind who hands in sloppy work, then she's not the kind of writer who is reading agent blogs anyway. The advice a lot of agents are handing out these days is not advice that anyone who actually needs it would be listening to in the first place. Advice like, "Don't tell me how great a movie your book would be" or "don't write back to bitch about being rejected by me" or "please bother to get my name right" isn't helpful. The writers who do these things are not the ones who even read submission guidelines to begin with, much less agent blogs and Tweets.

Agents seem to believe, in very good faith, that they are being helpful. Sadly, they're not. I think this is part of what made #AgentFail so vicious. A lot of writers who were doing their level best felt like they were getting lectured at for things they weren't doing, and felt like their hard work and professionalism were being ignored. A lot of agents believed they were helping out aspiring writers by letting them know What Not To Do.

The writers who are reading these blogs and feeds are not, by and large, the people who are causing agents such headaches. The ones who send the "I'm the next Stephanie Meyer!" queries with your name misspelled and give you a surprise sex change, ignoring that you don't even represent YA or urban fantasy/paranormal romance are the ones who don't bother doing any research. They are not listening to you.

I'd like for agents to stop talking about the writers who do the deeply silly, obviously stupid things and start talking about something besides Query 101. I'd like to hear an agent talk about the queries they passed up for reasons other than beginner mistakes.

I'd like someone to show me a perfectly correct query that they rejected and show me why, even when the writer checked all the boxes and got everything right. Did the description of the plot make it sound too boring? Did they not emphasize the characters enough? Did they not make it clear what the story was about? What specific sentence, in an otherwise great query, turned you off or made you say "pass"?

I'd even like for an agent to show me a perfectly serviceable manuscript or partial they turned down and describe why. Did the author take too long in getting to the plot? Was the hook not good enough? Was it too much like every other manuscript you'd seen that day - and what makes a manuscript stand out. And don't just tell me generalizations like "great characters" and "a unique voice". Tell me specifics.

Tell me that when you see a mystery you can solve before you get to the second chapter you turn away, and what it is, specifically in that manuscript, that made you figure it out so quickly.

Tell me that a character comes off as too artificial, and point to the lines of dialogue or narration that gave you that impression.

It comes down to this, dear agents: bumbling idiots are an eternally renewing resource. If snarky advice was going to stem the tide of bad queries, it would have done so a very long time ago. You can swing the clue-by-four as wide and hard as you like. It won't help. You run a business where you open your door to public submissions. You're going to get a lot of losers. I know, it sucks, but thems the breaks. Ask anyone who works in a business where they deal directly with the public. Service industries, tech support, anyone. They'll tell you. Stupid people are just part and parcel. You have to deal and focus on the good people that you can help. I know, I've done everything from working in a coffee shop to tech support to janitorial. You just have to let the stupid roll off your back.

Focusing on the writers who are willing to take advice will help them turn good queries and manuscripts into great ones - ones that have a better chance of selling and making more money that can go in your pocket Wouldn't seeing an increase in great queries and great manuscripts make your day brighter, not to mention make you richer?

So let the losers go, okay? I appreciate the urge to snark, and some folks really do deserve it, but it's not helping the impression that the agent-writer relationship is antagonistic, and I'd hate to see anything make your lives harder.

Oh, and just a side note to you advice giving agents who are otherwise awesome: be careful about giving advice on Twitter. I know it's tempting, but honestly? Twitter is not given to thorough communication. Some things you wish for writers to know really do take more than 140 characters to convey.

Amazon.com takes back e-Books that customers paid for because Amazon.com screwed the copyright pooch. Or: why I am never, ever buying a Kindle and am going to start thinking about getting books online from another source.

What's even sadder? Amazon.com took back a book that's available for free online in several sources. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the state of eBooks and eBook readers.

Let XKCD.com do some explaining for you on how being heavy handed about copyrights only strengthens and enhances piracy. Because like the strip says: Remember, if you pirate something, it's yours for life. You can take it anywhere and it will always work.

Or in this case if you'd downloaded a free or pirated copy, you'd still have it.

So, I say again to you folks who are authors, editors, or otherwise working in the publishing industry, if you want to stop book piracy, don't go after the pirates. Go after the publishing companies (and their conglomerate owners), the eBook reader companies, sellers, and all the other supposed businesspeople who are making piracy easier than just legally and easily paying a fair price to download a book. Demand that they get their acts together, because it's the authors, editors, and other folks on the ground that feel the hit when it comes to piracy.

I can promise you if someone took this eBook stuff by the scruff of the neck and came out with an affordable reader that can read a wide variety of formats and deals reasonably with copyrights and makes finding and downloading books easy and fairly priced, you'd see piracy take a nosedive and you'd see authors benefitting as well.