What I'm Listening To: The Fray - Little House (Interesting note; this song inspired a really important plot point in Eden.)
What I'm Doing: Dying. TAT *headache* and getting ready to go to bed.
I randomly wandered over to blogger while wasting time (haven't written a thing today! DD8 I'm slipping!) and started reading through my watchlist, to see if anything interesting had been posted, and through a series of "So and so posted a fantastic article on such and such over at this blog today!" I found Alexander Field's blog. Two entries in, and I knew I had to follow him; he's very insightful and well spoken.
In the first post I found, he listed ten things NOT to do in your query letter, and while I was commenting on them, I said that when I first saw his list, I was afraid that I had/would commit most of them, but upon actually reading it, I realised that they were mostly common sense.
That's where the title of this post comes from; have you ever really looked around and noticed that these days? Common sense. Good ideas or thoughts or actions that are supposed to be common knowledge, such as looking both ways before crossing a street.
Yet I continually see the kids out front simply run back and forth with no regard to oncoming vehicles.
I'm sorry, I weigh less than three hundred pounds (by quite a large margin; you'll never get my true weight out me, however.) Those cars are upwards of one or two tons or more. They outweigh me by several thousand pounds and while the human body can take quite a lot of trauma, I'm rather inclined to keep it the way it is, thank you very much. I can also maneuver a little bit quicker than they can; if we don't see each other until they're almost on top of me, then it's quite a lot easier for me to fling myself backwards than it is for the car to fling itself backwards. But this may be just the way I was raised, which includes taking your hat off when you enter a building, and holding doors for people, which, while not common sense, belong to the equally rare and endangered category of common decency.
But I see a lot of the same axioms, maxims, and proverbs in my research for writing, as well as a hell of a lot of good advice. Three people tell me that a query letter isn't a post-it to your best friend on the fridge, it is a business letter. I think of it this way; if you won't go to a job interview in ripped jeans and a bikini top, don't be rude to the people you're trying to do business with. Their first impression of you is the query letter, and while there's pressure to make it good, it doesn't have to be a work of literary genius in and of itself. Tell them about your book. That's it. Make it interesting. That's it. Remain formal, and you're cool. The very idea that someone would write a lazy query (as in, "Sup dawg, so I wanchu to check out this piece of shit that I wrote last night when I was high.") is abhorrent to me. As is the fact that these people often send angry letters when they're rejected.
Dear agent,
I would like to submit for your perusing joy my novel A GIRL AND HER DOG.
It's about Little Lucy Lemon and her dog Snoopy.
And of course, any self respecting agent stops there and sends a form rejection, to which Little Lucy Lemon replies
"OMFG YOU SUCK YOU HOR WTF THIS IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT GRATE AMERICAN NOVLE."
ACK. GASP. SLDKGJ. That's like calling up the place you just interviewed with and telling them that you're going to blow the place up because they don't know what sort of fantastic worker they just turned down in favour of someone a little more sane.
Most people wouldn't do that. They wouldn't walk away from an interview in which they were rejected, then call them up and scream profanities at them. So it's completely beyond me why people would do that to agents. I think agents should have BOLOs for these sorts of people. Like, a whole interconnecting agent-link to which they can post "DO NOT ACCEPT A GIRL AND HER DOG FROM LUCY LEMON." and save themselves a whole lot of stress and trouble and angry tweeting.
Wow, I'm off-topic. XD I'm (in)famous for that on certain websites, in which 'off topic chatter' is unaccepted in the forums. This was originally meant to be a post about notable blogs I've found useful.
And this is in my head, so I can't possibly not say anything about it. I don't know who said this (I want to say Janet Reid at the Query Shark, but I don't know for sure.) about agents wanting something a touch personal in their queries and not To Whom It May Concern. They'll even take "Dear Reptilian Agent Standing Between Me And Fame" which just tickles me pink. And horrifies me at the same time.
What sort of maniacs out there saw that, and then promptly rewrote their query letter to say Dear Reptilian Agent...?
Anywho, onto the links!
Alexandra Sokoloff - I know I linked to her in my last post, but now you're honour-bound to check out her blog. She's the author of The Unseen, The Harrowing, and The Price, three horror/suspense novels, one of which won the Bram Stoker Award. I don't even have to know what they're about to be interested in them, just on the covers alone, but what really interests me are her posts on screenwriting tips for authors. Very, extraordinarily helpful collection of information there.
Editorial Anonymous - Editors seem to be more reclusive than agents, or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. Anyway, the anonymous editor here generally posts helpful questions submitted to her as well as their answers, which can be a great help.
Editorial Ass - That's 'ass-istant', and she goes by the pseudonym Moonrat. Hysterically funny at times, she also posts words of wisdom as well as gems she finds in her inbox, and stories from her homelife. The most astonishing thing about Moonrat is that she's not much older than me; twenty four, twenty five at most. I had assumed she was at least in her thirties, possibly fourties. Very good reads in here, and she's very relatable-to. ... (hush, that's a word because I say it is.)
Miss Snark's First Victim - I'll be frank; she really intimidated me when I first found her blog. I'd heard rumours of Miss Snark, but I came onto the writing scene a couple of years after she stopped blogging, so I was never subjected to her full furious wrath. Not to mention she was posting contest-like things, Drop the Needle and the Secret Agent submissions. But Twitter and Facebook helped me out a lot, and now I recognise her blog for what it really is; a truly helpful tool, whose 'contests' (I realise they're not really, but I have a pounding headache in addition to it being one thirty in the morning, so excuse my lack of brain power for now.) are extraordinarily useful. Okay, so she tells funny stories, too. I may have a blogger-'type'.
The Query Shark - Is there anything more horrifying than the thought of someone ripping your query to pieces? Maybe someone ripping your novel to pieces. But also think about this from the agent's POV; she's got to sit and read through this crap every day. This is a fabulous, brave woman, who clearly has the patience of a saint to not be stark raving mad by now, dealing with the things she does. Some of the comments are amusing, and of course, the whole thing is geared towards helping you to write a better query.
The Blood-Red Pencil - This is one of the blogs I check religiously. I deliberately seek them out in my list, rather than just skimming the whole 'all blogs' thing. Absolutely amazing hints, tips, and tricks, with a healthy smattering of funny stories.
The Literary Lab - Another one I check religiously, for much of the same reasons as the Blood-Red Pencil. They're also full of really cool guest bloggers, who offer insights and insider's knowledge and general opinions not found anywhere else. Absolutely love this blog.
The Mystery and the Magic - Just found this one tonight; he's the one who prompted this whole blog post. I haven't read very far into his archives, but what I've seen so far, he promises to be just as inspiring and helpful as the others that I've listed here.
Okay. Now, I'm going to take seven or eight more aspirin and go to bed. TAT I have a small mouth anyway, and all my normal teeth plus four wisdom teeth (two on each side.) Since I don't have any sort of dental insurance, I have no way of taking care of this problem, and frequently, my teeth start shifting around as the wisdom teeth come in further, or move around, and this causes extreme pain that nothing but aspirin will take care of. Earlier, it hurt in three places; the bottom, near the front, the top near the front, and the top near the back. This meant that not only did my mouth hurt, but my chin, cheek, temple, and forehead hurt as well. Some unknown amount of aspirin later (I take them, they work, the pain comes back, I take more...) and I've got a pounding headache.
Also. We have three bearded dragons. (Really cute little lizards.) We feed them crickets at times.
They do not always eat all of the crickets at once.
There is one. ONE. cricket remaining, and it is silent all day. As soon as everyone else goes to bed, this fscker starts cricking as LOUDLY AS IS FREAKIN' POSSIBLE, and is NOT HELPING MY HEADACHE.
In a funnier story, we always assumed that we had two boys and a girl. They're all in separate terrariums, because the two boys would fight, and obviously, the girl couldn't be kept in with either of the boys because they would mate, and the girl came from the same clutch as one of the boys (making them essentially siblings. Inbred dragons. Can you imagine? XD)
Today, I noticed something strange in one of their cages (they are, in order from biggest to smallest, Draco, a boy, Gizmo, and Saphira, the girl.) It was in Gizmo's cage, and I happened to be walking past to do laundry.
There were several little white things littering the floor of the terrarium, so I waited until my stepmother came out of her room, and asked, "What's in Gizmo's cage?" and proceeded on my duty of laundry-switching.
I came out of the garage (where our dryer is) and she pointed at Gizmo's cage and shouted, "WE THOUGHT YOU WERE A BOY."
Gizmo laid eggs.
They're unfertilized, so we're not having baby dragons (but I still get to say we've got dragon eggs in our house. XD) but still. Our supposedly male dragon laid eggs. She/he acts like a male in all other respects; same mannerisms as Draco, although more mild, less inclined to asshattery (Draco is a pain in the BUTT. If anyone ever tells me 'lizards have no personality' I'm going to laugh in their faces. Our three have more personality than our dogs.)
Okay, anywho. Aspirin. Bed. Good night, all. ♥
Showing posts with label agents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agents. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Query Letters
What I'm listening to: Anberlin - A Whisper and a Clamor
What I'm doing: Reading blogs and articles.
I'm still reading through Robert Gregory Browne's articles, and one in particular seemed extraordinarily relevant.
He claims to be talking about how to get an agent, but what he's really aiming at is writing a good query letter.
But Amy, I hear you saying plaintively. You're only on chapter two. Why are you worrying about a query letter right now?
That's because I'm a slacker and a wanderer, and I'm not able to focus JUST on writing if I don't have something else to shift the focus to every so often. And by shifting the focus to something that will eventually help me in my quest to publish my books, I'm both slacking off on the writing process itself while still doing something useful and book-related. I am, at the very least, aware of my faults, even if I'm unwilling/unable to do anything about them, which is more than I can say for quite a few people of my acquaintance.
Back to query letters. I know the importance of them. I read Query Shark, and I've gone over the query letter sections of several agent's blogs to find out what works for them, and what doesn't, and I've read some of the Secret Agent entries. I'm fully aware of how much rests on your query letter, but that doesn't make them any easier to write. To date, my query letter for Eversong is in it's third incarnation, and is about to move into it's fourth, because of this very simple formula Mr. Browne was so kind as to supply us with.
Who, What, and How. Who is it? What are their circumstances. How do they resolve them? This is for creating the 'logline' (his words, not mine) of your query, the 'hook' that will reel in your readers. Following this for Eversong, I came up with the following:
Who: An average girl.
What: Gets thrown into a world full of magic.
How: She goes on a quest to save the world, the conclusion of which will allow her to return home.
And end up with my baited hook line:
When Vicky Crawford is thrown into a world full of magic and mythology, she's got to find a way to save everything before she can get back home.
This sums it up perfectly. Vicky's in a strange world (I keep going to write 'magical world' but the world itself isn't magic, just the creatures who inhabit it.) and it's in danger. She wants to get home, but before she can do so, she's got to save the world.
It's got everything; it's short and to the point, it covers the basics, and it tells you a great deal about the story without telling you everything. Using this as the basis, I'll be able to write a much better query letter.
And now as an exercise, I'm going to write it for the next book, too.
Who: A girl who's already saved the world once.
What: Her friends are in danger from a deranged king who wants to destroy the world.
How: She uses the love and help of her friends in order to send him back where he came from.
And from it is born the premise of Return to Eversong:
Vicky's already saved the world once, and brought home the tee shirt to prove it, but when the Dragon-Lord Draevn unleashes his thousand-year wrath on the world that rejected him, she returns to fight beside her friends and win back everything she loves from the clutches of a madman.
It does the same thing; sums up the story, the conflict, and the strength of character that Vicky has in order to protect the people and places she loves. Now, granted, I don't know as much about Return to Eversong as I do about the first novel, because I haven't done more than the preliminaries on it, and the hook for the second one could probably be better, but it's a start, and it's a way to interest people in the next novel.
What I'm doing: Reading blogs and articles.
I'm still reading through Robert Gregory Browne's articles, and one in particular seemed extraordinarily relevant.
He claims to be talking about how to get an agent, but what he's really aiming at is writing a good query letter.
But Amy, I hear you saying plaintively. You're only on chapter two. Why are you worrying about a query letter right now?
That's because I'm a slacker and a wanderer, and I'm not able to focus JUST on writing if I don't have something else to shift the focus to every so often. And by shifting the focus to something that will eventually help me in my quest to publish my books, I'm both slacking off on the writing process itself while still doing something useful and book-related. I am, at the very least, aware of my faults, even if I'm unwilling/unable to do anything about them, which is more than I can say for quite a few people of my acquaintance.
Back to query letters. I know the importance of them. I read Query Shark, and I've gone over the query letter sections of several agent's blogs to find out what works for them, and what doesn't, and I've read some of the Secret Agent entries. I'm fully aware of how much rests on your query letter, but that doesn't make them any easier to write. To date, my query letter for Eversong is in it's third incarnation, and is about to move into it's fourth, because of this very simple formula Mr. Browne was so kind as to supply us with.
Who, What, and How. Who is it? What are their circumstances. How do they resolve them? This is for creating the 'logline' (his words, not mine) of your query, the 'hook' that will reel in your readers. Following this for Eversong, I came up with the following:
Who: An average girl.
What: Gets thrown into a world full of magic.
How: She goes on a quest to save the world, the conclusion of which will allow her to return home.
And end up with my baited hook line:
When Vicky Crawford is thrown into a world full of magic and mythology, she's got to find a way to save everything before she can get back home.
This sums it up perfectly. Vicky's in a strange world (I keep going to write 'magical world' but the world itself isn't magic, just the creatures who inhabit it.) and it's in danger. She wants to get home, but before she can do so, she's got to save the world.
It's got everything; it's short and to the point, it covers the basics, and it tells you a great deal about the story without telling you everything. Using this as the basis, I'll be able to write a much better query letter.
And now as an exercise, I'm going to write it for the next book, too.
Who: A girl who's already saved the world once.
What: Her friends are in danger from a deranged king who wants to destroy the world.
How: She uses the love and help of her friends in order to send him back where he came from.
And from it is born the premise of Return to Eversong:
Vicky's already saved the world once, and brought home the tee shirt to prove it, but when the Dragon-Lord Draevn unleashes his thousand-year wrath on the world that rejected him, she returns to fight beside her friends and win back everything she loves from the clutches of a madman.
It does the same thing; sums up the story, the conflict, and the strength of character that Vicky has in order to protect the people and places she loves. Now, granted, I don't know as much about Return to Eversong as I do about the first novel, because I haven't done more than the preliminaries on it, and the hook for the second one could probably be better, but it's a start, and it's a way to interest people in the next novel.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Things to Remember
What I'm listening to: Nothing. :/ My itunes is on the fritz. It should be Going Through Changes by Army of Me.
What I'm reading: The Dragonbone Chair, by Tad Williams
I've got something Ally Carter said posted on my wall. (Not facebook. My literal bedroom wall, right above my computer.) "Don't get it right - get it written." The day I put it up, everyone in my house passed through my room* and asked me about it. Basically means it doesn't have to be perfect the first time, as long as it's done. Editing can come later.
But that doesn't stop me from thinking about my current word-count versus chapters, and despairing. Especially when I happened to catch a glimpse of the first few paragraphs when I restarted my computer, and re-opened Eversong (if it's right in front of me, I'm less likely to forget that I need to be writing every day) and those paragraphs ... really kinda sucked. XDD Not ... oh, what am I trying to say here? *bashes head into desk at specially marked 'Bang Head Here' on mouse pad* Not that it's bad. I believe it's really well written. As a long-time fanfiction author, I continually tell myself "This sucks, it's terrible, no one's going to like it, why am I even posting this crap!?" as I'm writing, post it, receive good reviews, forget about it for several months (or years, in some cases) go back, reread it, and utterly amaze myself at how wonderful it is. Not to toot my own horn or anything, although I'm firmly of the belief that a certain amount of ego is required for artistry - even if no one else in the world likes your work, you'll always know that you did a good job of it.
No, the problem is not that what I've written is written badly (though it can definitely be better, which will come later, and therein lies the problem) it's that they're short. They can be better. They can be more engaging. I'm starting into chapter two, and I only have four thousand words. Granted, it's only the beginning of chapter two, and I know for a fact that there's no 'set word count', specifically, but my goal is at least 75,ooo words, and the first novel is only 25 chapters long. (Give or take one or two. The original outline was set for 26, but the first chapter proved so reclusive that I combined what had been chapters one and two on the outline into chapter one, so that it would have some depth to it, and so that the story wouldn't take nine chapters to get started.)
It's like the devilish NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated) you have thirty days to write 50k in words. And not just "THIS SUCKS" over and over again, but an actual, coherent novel. The following instructions are then to shunt it to one side for at least three months and not even think about it until that three month time period is up, at which point you go back and edit, and revise, and polish, and generally drag it out of the slush pile before it has a chance to make it into said pile. I'm pretty sure there's an actual NaNoEdMo, or something similar (National Novel EDITING Month, in which those 50k word drafts get taken out of the milk crate, and get prettied up.)
Do not. Ever. Ever. Submit your unpolished manuscript from Nano to an agent or editor. I found an article about that (somewhere) and was absolutely horrified. It was talking about the massive increase in queries and MSS during December, particularly the first week, and that the majority of those queries and MSS were not only unpublishable, but almost unreadable. There were comments about said submissions that included things like "There were exactly fifty thousand words. EXACTLY. It stopped in the middle of a sentence." and "After every 1700 words or so there was a note reading "Done for the day."
I nearly cried reading that. Who in their right mind would submit something to professionals without proofreading it at the least? I left a comment on the post that said I was utterly ashamed to be among the Nano Writers, if they behaved like that after completion of their 'novel.'
Another thing that makes me weep. Miss Snark's First Victim holds a Secret Agent contest, in which people submit the first 250 words of their completed novel, and a real agent looks over, and comments as to whether they'd be hooked on the story or not. Other people comment, too, but it's a good way to get an agent to look at your work, as well as to get some constructive feedback on your story. It's a good excercise for the other aspiring writers out there too, when you're in a bookstore. Wander through, pick up random books, and read through the first page, and then think about whether you'd actually read the rest, and why, what worked for you, what was it about that first page that really caught your attention, and how the author made that work, and how you can apply it to your own writing.
But now on to the weepy part.
I could only get through five or six of the entries, and they were all horrible. I wouldn't read any of those books if you paid me to do it. Now I grant you, there were likely some gems hidden among the garbage, but wading through all that crap just to get to one good story seemed about as easy as dodging raindrops. It certainly gave me new respect for my future queried agents, and a new resolve to not allow my story to end up in the slush pile. There's a new Secret Agent contest starting soon, and I'm going to do my best to keep up with it, rather than have to read through fourty or fifty entries all at once. (250 words isn't a lot, but two hundred and fifty words in an unconvincing and uninteresting story makes it feel about as engaging as reading through the dictionary.)
*Note from above: My room isn't a bedroom in the normal sense. It's more of the downstairs den that happens to have a bed in it. My house is awesome, by the way. It's got three floors. The middle floor is where the front door is, and it opens into the living room, and directly off the living room is the kitchen. Upstairs is a bathroom, and three bedrooms, where my aunt, cousin, and brother sleep. Downstairs is the garage, back yard, another bathroom, and my step-parents room. Between my SP's room and the garage is an open space with a futon, computer, and television, and since I've moved back in with them, it's been filled to the brim with books. The garage is where the dryer, two chest freezers, and another stand up fridge/freezer are, so anyone needing anything out there passes through my room, hence the reason that everyone saw the sign.
What I'm reading: The Dragonbone Chair, by Tad Williams
I've got something Ally Carter said posted on my wall. (Not facebook. My literal bedroom wall, right above my computer.) "Don't get it right - get it written." The day I put it up, everyone in my house passed through my room* and asked me about it. Basically means it doesn't have to be perfect the first time, as long as it's done. Editing can come later.
But that doesn't stop me from thinking about my current word-count versus chapters, and despairing. Especially when I happened to catch a glimpse of the first few paragraphs when I restarted my computer, and re-opened Eversong (if it's right in front of me, I'm less likely to forget that I need to be writing every day) and those paragraphs ... really kinda sucked. XDD Not ... oh, what am I trying to say here? *bashes head into desk at specially marked 'Bang Head Here' on mouse pad* Not that it's bad. I believe it's really well written. As a long-time fanfiction author, I continually tell myself "This sucks, it's terrible, no one's going to like it, why am I even posting this crap!?" as I'm writing, post it, receive good reviews, forget about it for several months (or years, in some cases) go back, reread it, and utterly amaze myself at how wonderful it is. Not to toot my own horn or anything, although I'm firmly of the belief that a certain amount of ego is required for artistry - even if no one else in the world likes your work, you'll always know that you did a good job of it.
No, the problem is not that what I've written is written badly (though it can definitely be better, which will come later, and therein lies the problem) it's that they're short. They can be better. They can be more engaging. I'm starting into chapter two, and I only have four thousand words. Granted, it's only the beginning of chapter two, and I know for a fact that there's no 'set word count', specifically, but my goal is at least 75,ooo words, and the first novel is only 25 chapters long. (Give or take one or two. The original outline was set for 26, but the first chapter proved so reclusive that I combined what had been chapters one and two on the outline into chapter one, so that it would have some depth to it, and so that the story wouldn't take nine chapters to get started.)
It's like the devilish NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated) you have thirty days to write 50k in words. And not just "THIS SUCKS" over and over again, but an actual, coherent novel. The following instructions are then to shunt it to one side for at least three months and not even think about it until that three month time period is up, at which point you go back and edit, and revise, and polish, and generally drag it out of the slush pile before it has a chance to make it into said pile. I'm pretty sure there's an actual NaNoEdMo, or something similar (National Novel EDITING Month, in which those 50k word drafts get taken out of the milk crate, and get prettied up.)
Do not. Ever. Ever. Submit your unpolished manuscript from Nano to an agent or editor. I found an article about that (somewhere) and was absolutely horrified. It was talking about the massive increase in queries and MSS during December, particularly the first week, and that the majority of those queries and MSS were not only unpublishable, but almost unreadable. There were comments about said submissions that included things like "There were exactly fifty thousand words. EXACTLY. It stopped in the middle of a sentence." and "After every 1700 words or so there was a note reading "Done for the day."
I nearly cried reading that. Who in their right mind would submit something to professionals without proofreading it at the least? I left a comment on the post that said I was utterly ashamed to be among the Nano Writers, if they behaved like that after completion of their 'novel.'
Another thing that makes me weep. Miss Snark's First Victim holds a Secret Agent contest, in which people submit the first 250 words of their completed novel, and a real agent looks over, and comments as to whether they'd be hooked on the story or not. Other people comment, too, but it's a good way to get an agent to look at your work, as well as to get some constructive feedback on your story. It's a good excercise for the other aspiring writers out there too, when you're in a bookstore. Wander through, pick up random books, and read through the first page, and then think about whether you'd actually read the rest, and why, what worked for you, what was it about that first page that really caught your attention, and how the author made that work, and how you can apply it to your own writing.
But now on to the weepy part.
I could only get through five or six of the entries, and they were all horrible. I wouldn't read any of those books if you paid me to do it. Now I grant you, there were likely some gems hidden among the garbage, but wading through all that crap just to get to one good story seemed about as easy as dodging raindrops. It certainly gave me new respect for my future queried agents, and a new resolve to not allow my story to end up in the slush pile. There's a new Secret Agent contest starting soon, and I'm going to do my best to keep up with it, rather than have to read through fourty or fifty entries all at once. (250 words isn't a lot, but two hundred and fifty words in an unconvincing and uninteresting story makes it feel about as engaging as reading through the dictionary.)
*Note from above: My room isn't a bedroom in the normal sense. It's more of the downstairs den that happens to have a bed in it. My house is awesome, by the way. It's got three floors. The middle floor is where the front door is, and it opens into the living room, and directly off the living room is the kitchen. Upstairs is a bathroom, and three bedrooms, where my aunt, cousin, and brother sleep. Downstairs is the garage, back yard, another bathroom, and my step-parents room. Between my SP's room and the garage is an open space with a futon, computer, and television, and since I've moved back in with them, it's been filled to the brim with books. The garage is where the dryer, two chest freezers, and another stand up fridge/freezer are, so anyone needing anything out there passes through my room, hence the reason that everyone saw the sign.
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