Tag Archives: Query

And the beat goes on…

Where was I? Ah, yes. updates. I haven’t done much since the last post. I’ll cop to it: I could not muster any enthusiasm for queries the last couple of weeks. But today, I forced myself back to the task and found myself surprisingly energized. I’ll blame the Bloomington Writers’ Festival I attended last weekend for that–a great event, and very motivating.

So where are we today? According to my submission spreadsheet, I’m up to 8 total queries, 3 of them completed today. It’s such a time-consuming endeavor, these queries, and I’m not even talking about the wait to hear back from anyone. I would feel guilty complaining about that after listening to one literary agent speak at the festival this weekend about receiving 3,000 queries a month. I understand why it can take a very long time to hear back about a submission with that kind of work load.

No, the time-consuming part for me is, and always has been, that each agency is so different in what they require. Take 2 of the 3 I completed today (hopefully someone will). One was very old-school: snail-mail only, absolutely nothing by e-mail, and roughly 60 pages–query letter, synopsis, and 3-chapter sample–to print out and send. Just the printing took half an hour! And of course, then I opened my address book only to find I had used my last stamp yesterday. Grumble, grumble…Add in a trip to buy stamps.

The other agency could not have been more different: e-mail only, no attachments, don’t send us any paper or we’ll hunt you down and horse-whip you and make sure you’re never represented by anyone. (I added that last part, though it was clearly implied in the submissions FAQ.) Sigh. Why can’t they all be like that? Minus the horse-whipping, of course.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed trying to follow each agency’s specific directions, which is probably why I took a couple of weeks off. But then I started trying to think of the steps as a sort of quest, a test of my endurance and my determination. Maybe, just maybe, if I jump through all these hoops they lay out, this’ll be the one that bites. Not in a pejorative sense (though this process definitely does)–I mean like the big fish biting at the hook I’ve so painstakingly buried within those reams of paper.

Here, fishy, fishy, fishy…stay tuned.

 

The 877th Time is the Charm

Surely it hasn’t been that many, has it? 

Queries, that is. Well, it can certainly feel that way. But once again, I am embarking on that same old journey to publication, but this time, I’m riding a brand-new wagon!

C. and I finished our edits, and I think the manuscript is worlds better than it was when we started, so I am much more optimistic about finding an agent or a publisher this time around, more so than I have been since I wrote my very first query letter.

Now the real work begins. (I bet you thought the hard part was writing the novel, didn’t you?)

Submission-tracking spreadsheet? Check.

2012 Writer’s Market? Check.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Book Proposals & Query Letters? Um. No. I skipped that one. I already feel enough like an idiot without broadcasting it to the world by buying a book titled to confirm it. Uncheck.

Here we go. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, let’s review the steps:

1.) Research the market.

2.) Research the specific agent/publisher to whom you wish to submit.

3.) Craft the best damned query letter you can (after, of course, having written the best damned book you can write)–if you don’t know what that looks like, see The Complete Idiot‘s reference book mentioned above.

4.) Research the agent/publisher’s guidelines and follow them to the letter.

5.) Wait.

6.) Wait.

7.) Wait.

8.) Wait.

9.) Wait.

10.) Repeat steps 1-9 as needed with new agents/publishers until a.) published; b.) definitively rejected; c.) death.

Nah, I’m just yanking your chain. It’s not that bad–it can just feel that way sometimes. Let’s face it, it’s a competitive endeavor, and some agents receive hundreds of queries–perhaps thousands–every month. This is not an endeavor for the faint of heart.

But wait–this is the new optimistic me, so let me turn over a new leaf: I’ll say step 10 this time around will be “open celebratory bottle of champagne when offer is made by agent of choice.”

After all, tomorrow is another day, right? Stay tuned.