querying process

Contest Woes: I Feel Your Pain

Tomorrow morning, the PAPfest entries will go live on my blog as well as Mindy McGinnis’s and MarcyKate Connolly’s.

If any of the entrants are reading this post, I imagine some of you are old hands at such contests, while others may be contest newbies. Either way, I want you to keep my own contest experiences in mind.

Some blog readers may remember that last spring’s Writer’s Voice contest was a big part of the big, crazy frenzy that resulted in me signing with my agent less than two weeks later. I had several requests from participating agents, lurking agents, and through a handful of queries I’d sent just before the contest went live.

Super-awesome, right? Dream come true, right?

Yes.

But.

I almost didn’t enter.

I’d tried another similar contest for two years straight (different manuscripts) and nary a peep from an agent either time. Not so much as a request for five measly pages. There’d been a “preliminary” round beforehand, and I’d gotten through that both times. Someone had at least sort of liked my work.

Hard to remind myself of that with the silence surrounding me.

The silence hurt more than any number of query rejections. Mindy can tell you about talking me off the ledge those days.

But I did come down off that ledge. I kept writing, kept learning, kept working, and eventually it all came together. (Now I have the same old insecurities in whole new ways, but that’s another story.)

I’d love it if every entry tomorrow gets requests. I hope that happens. But if it doesn’t, those of you who receive the silence, I understand. It’s okay to be bummed and let it hurt … for a little while. A good critique partner will let you wallow in it just long enough, and then they’ll remind you it’s not the end. You’re still awesome. That awesomeness can only come out if you keep putting it out there, one way or another.

Send some queries.

Revise some pages.

Work on a new project.

Just keep going.

Speak up:

10 comments

Never Say "Never Give Up"

First, let’s be clear about the title of this post. By no means am I saying anyone should ever tell anyone else, “Quit writing. You suck. You’re wasting your time.” Sure, only a small number of us will ever have financial success as novelists. But even if we could know with certainty that someone will not be among that number, there are other reasons and rewards for writing, for persevering.

So here’s what I am saying.

I frequently see writers pondering whether to set one manuscript aside and focus on another, usually because they’ve queried upwards of eighty, ninety, one hundred agents and aren’t getting anywhere.

I see other well-meaning writers say, “No, don’t give up! Keep at it, believe in yourself …” etc.

My response is different. My response is “Find the right course for you, and shelving this manuscript is a valid choice.”

Why? Because I’ve been there. I took two manuscripts to the point of being queried out. I made some progress with each, but not quite enough.

I didn’t give up on those novels. The only “giving up” was on querying them. I’ve always viewed those manuscripts as being in my pocket, waiting for their time.

Moving ahead to other projects was the best thing I could have done.

I did lots of revisions on those earlier novels, making them a bit better each time, but that can’t compare to what writing brand-new stories did for me. They made me stronger.

Lingering on any one project longer than I did would have been a mistake, and wasted time. I’m glad I “gave up” on those. I still love them—my first manuscript is in many ways my favorite. The story is, anyway. The writing … I can do better now. So I will.

Every writer has to make that decision, figuring out when it’s time to put one novel on the shelf and focus on another. A dozen queries isn’t enough to throw in the towel. When you get into triple-digits … well, even then, it depends. Have you had near-misses on fulls? Were the first half of those queries before you really knew how to handle the querying game?

Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe not.

But it’s your decision, and no one should think less of you if you “give up.”

Speak up:

4 comments

Being Simple Doesn’t Mean It’s Easy

Someone recently asked what it was that made my agent pluck me out of the slush and offer to represent me (beyond the obvious awesomeness—his words, not mine). I ventured that it was my high-concept hook that grabbed her attention, and then having a manuscript that lived up to the promise of the query. All it takes is an awesome, agent-baiting query and a manuscript that backs it up.

My agent happened to be present (thus the question), and while she agreed, she also laughed and said, “OH IS THAT ALL?”

Yes, if only it were as easily done as said. I certainly went through plenty of “Nope, not quite the right formulation” with prior novels.

But then I thought about it. Getting an agent obviously isn’t easy. But it is simple.

Do you see the distinction?

It’s like the game Operation. The directions aren’t complicated. Get the tweezers in the opening, grab the little plastic piece, and pull it out without touching the edge of the hole. It’s simple.

Does that make it easy? Not if you have unsteady hands like I do. It takes deftness and just the right touch. It’s hard—some pieces harder than others, and some people struggle with it more than their friends.

Some may develop the skills quickly. Others may never be able to grab some of the pieces. The difficulty varies, but the simplicity of the process is the same for all.

I think sometimes we get frustrated in the query trenches by trying to unravel a magic formula, some secret complexity that only agented writers know about. Start with the title, genre and word count. No, those go at the end. Never use this phrase. Always close with that one.

Certain “rules” are handy for not giving agents headaches, but really, we don’t need to expend energy worrying about that kind of stuff. It’s simpler than that. Get the agent’s attention so they’re dying to read more. Once they start reading, make them fall in love.

It’s also really hard. It takes work and research and even some luck.

If something’s worth doing, it’s worth working for.

What else in life have you found is simple, but not easy? How do you keep yourself motivated when the “hard” makes you feel like it’s more complicated than it is?

ETA: It seems some felt this post was condescending, with me talking from my high post of now being agented and deigning to tell you all “how it’s done.”

I am truly sorry if it came across that way. It was not my intention. Those of you who are regulars on AQC know that I get asked for advice on querying all the time. Even before I was agented, but especially now. I am NOT AN EXPERT. Never have been. Yet I get asked. So I do my best to come up with advice that’s universal enough, that’s encouraging while still being realistic about how FREAKING HARD it is.

My only point in this post was to say, don’t focus on the wrong stuff. Don’t freak out over the minutiae. Remember the goal—the simple, but not easy goal—of getting the agent to read more, and then having the super-shiniest manuscript you’re capable of to hand over.

Will the best you’re capable always be enough? No. That’s realistic. My best didn’t get it done for years. I learned, I grew, I kept at it, I got lucky with some timing, and it happened. It can for you, too. I can’t say it WILL happen for all of you. I won’t lie.

But it certainly won’t if you quit trying.

Speak up:

9 comments

Gauging the Awesome

I’ve been hearing it for a while. Want to get an agent? The most important piece of the puzzle is to be awesome. Write an awesome query to get an agent’s attention, and make sure you’re ready to back it up with an awesome manuscript.

Okay, but how do you know when you’ve arrived at “awesome”?

It’s not easy. The first thing I had to accept was that I might be wrong. I wouldn’t really know. The best I could do was have a really strong belief. I also tried to keep my mind open to a need to increase the awesome.

There’s a line between “If I don’t believe in my work, why should anyone else?” and “I’ve written the most amazing novel ever and how dare anyone say I change a single thing?” It’s a thin line, and crossing to the wrong side isn’t pretty. Keeping my self-assessments honest can be a battle between my perfectionism and occasional surges of ego.

It doesn’t help when there are plenty of outside-our-control reasons for agents not to nibble. Our timing may be off trend-wise. Maybe we’re hitting agents who just signed something too similar.

Maybe the work just isn’t awesome enough (yet).

That doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome at all. Maybe it’s pretty-darn awesome, just not holy-whoa awesome.

I thought my earlier manuscripts were awesome enough. In fact, I still think there’s a lot of awesome in them. At the same time, there’s something great about retrospect. When I look back over my querying experiences, there was something different this last round—the round that resulted in signing with my agent. A different gut-feeling when I said to myself, “This bird is ready to fly.”

Thing is, I can only recognize that from here. At the time, all I could do was hope.

And keep working.

Because no amount of awesome is ever really enough, right?

Speak up:

4 comments