My Agent Told Me To Make A Blog

I gotta talk about something that I encounter on a daily basis from both writers and non-writers: not taking the industry seriously. This presents itself in many forms. Today, I need to gripe about the writers. Let's be clear, I mean writers who want to be published, not innocent hobby writers who want to have fun, share with friends, enjoy some fanfiction, and generally have no expectations for their work. I'm talking about when someone decides they have a story to tell, sit down to write it out, and then expects some publisher to fall at their feet. All of this comes from personal experience and many, many conversations with aspiring writers. Consider it an open letter to all those I've met who are stagnating in their writing careers, yet refuse to listen to the advice given by many (not just me! a dozen other people might have tried to get the same points across!). "I revised it once, I'm good to go."   - A lot of people start writing because they th...

Completing a first draft is a huge milestone. If you've never done it before, it's almost unbelievable. To look back and see a whole novel that you wrote, with all these scenes, and events, and characters and things. Then there's editing. For most people, I think this is a dreaded step. For me, the only way I was able to finish the draft was to say, "No editing allowed until the full first draft is finished." It was like an itch I was desperate to scratch, and when I finally got the chance to unleash the edit-monster, it was glorious. I plowed right into it. Oh how much I love chewing apart the prose, cutting needless paragraphs, tweaking and pruning and making each chapter shine. This part of the story is a little blurrier in my memory. I did most of it after school while looking for work, and I think I plowed through so much editing, it's hard to distinguish. I gave each chapter to alpha readers, then rewrote, then asked a writing group about it, then ...

You'd think I'd get more used to having an agent, not less. I'm sure as time goes by, my reasons for loving my agent will only pile onto the list. I've heard other authors talk about how wonderful they are when it comes to contract negotiations, fighting on your behalf with the publisher (the book cover, for example), and generally keeping your writing life in order. That stuff is all part of publishing-land, which I have yet to explore. For now, I'm a mere initiate to the Agented Authors Club. But it's an excellent place to be! I love having an agent in general, and I also love my agent. ( Caitlin McDonald of Donald Maass ) 1. She Has Superpowers Apparently she can wave a magic wand and come up with ten different ways to fix plot holes, character arcs, structural issues, and whatever other dilemmas I run into. Problems that have stumped me and my writing partners for years are like breakfast to her. Not only does she have a zillion ideas, those ideas ...

There's an old adage that "writing is rewriting," which alludes to the fact that the first time you put story to page is only a fraction of the process. For the non-writers among you, I'm sure you're aware that novels go through many, many drafts before taking their final form. What they don't tell you is that you get it as perfect as you possibly can, only to discover there's a ton of things that actually need to be fixed up and redone--over and over again. Novels are a lot like butterflies. That first draft is a little wee caterpillar, maybe a really ugly one, or maybe one that catches your eye. You set it aside so it can develop in its cocoon. Then you come back to turn it into a butterfly, with your fresh, critical eye that allows you to viciously hack that cocoon apart (my analogy may not be working as well as I hoped). That cocoon-to-butterfly process is the polishing stage: first what you can do by yourself, then with the help of alpha and beta...

My querying adventures ended with one offer of representation that led to another. You might remember from last time that it came about due to #PitMad, where I caught the attention of a very well-known, big name agent--and you might also remember me admitting that wasn't the agent I settled with. (Warning: this post may contain more boasting than usual) While I had some other nibbles, ultimately I boiled my choice down to two agents. I can't tell you how much I agonized over the decision at first, but you know what? In the end, it was easy. To recap from last time, agent #1 is the president of a very well respected agency, a NYT bestselling author herself, with a hugely impressive client list and 30 years of experience. I actually would never have queried her, because she doesn't state that she represents science fiction. She's mainly known for women's fiction and romance. But you can bet I was psyched out of my mind that she loved my writing. She called the st...

Previously , I told you about my time in query-land, which actually drummed up very little in the way of results. I never would have anticipated how I finally ended up getting an agent. Whilst investigating agents, author blogs, and lord knows what else, I somehow stumbled upon Query Kombat, hosted by Michelle 4 Laughs, a few days before submissions started. It quite explicitly stated that if you're an unagented author currently querying, this competition is for you! So heck, I had to join. I didn't expect to make the cut, but I had nothing to lose by submitting, so I queried QK just like I queried everyone else. I noticed there were lots of haps going on over at Twitter, and it occurred to me that if I was going to be entering writing contests, I should really make a Twitter account. And I guess that's kind of important and helpful for publishing and reaching an audience and all that. Turns out it was the best decision ever. To my surprise, I made it into QK. They c...

As I talked about last time , I didn't ultimately spend very long in the query trenches. It was enough to get a taste, but not enough to enter the misery spiral of being sure no one would ever like my book and I'd never get published. I spent two months querying, which at the time felt like forever, but in reality is such a short period, I hope it speaks well for my story's chances. Initially, even the thought of emailing real agents gave me butterflies. Sure, I'd gone over the manuscript dozens of times, to the point where I was satisfied (or at least too sick of editing to worry about it anymore). I had a query letter and synopsis written. I was ready, technically. But when I tentatively googled "sci fi agents" and started reading a few bios, I got so overwhelmed with nerves and excitement I closed out of the browser. These guys are serious business! After a few days, the excitement part of that overcame the nerves part, and even though I still wanted to...

I'm not the most qualified person to be talking about the misery of querying. It only took two months from the day I sent my first query to the day I accepted an offer of representation. In retrospect, I spent practically no time querying. What is querying, you may ask? It's when you beg agents to read your book send unsolicited samples of your writing to literary agents in the hope that they will offer to represent you to publishers. The query itself is a short summary/teaser, and most agents also ask for the first few pages of the story. You then hope and pray they'll request to read the whole thing--and if they do that , you hope and pray they'll fall in love and offer to represent the novel and be your best friend and teach you everything they know . The unfortunate element here is that literary agents are notoriously swamped and therefore slow to respond. Slow as in, two months, three months... six months, ten months. First they have to get around to reading y...