The American Way: Bigger is Better

            There has been a trend in America for quite some time and, by association, it nearly defines us as a nation of people.  It’s that whole “bigger is better” attitude.  And it really is the American Way, or more accurately, the American Dream itself.  We, in America, firmly believe that anything worth having will be even better if it’s bigger.  I see this in so many ways, the most obvious being in our consumption of food. 

The portion sizes of the foods we most love to eat have increased astronomically.  Twenty years ago, an average serving of pizza was 500 calories.  Today it is 850.  A serving of coffee used to be 8 ounces and 45 calories.  Today, it’s 16 ounces and 330 calories.  A 3-inch bagel, 140 calories vs. 5-6-inch at 350 calories.  And the staple of the American diet, a hamburger:  330 calories then vs. 590 calories now.  Of course, all this has resulted in much larger waistbands, as well.  The rate of obesity is twice as high as it was twenty years ago. 

            This “bigger is better” trend shows up in many other ways across our country.  The average home has increased in size by nearly sixty percent since 1970.  The small, local stores we used to patronize have given way to big-box super-sized stores such as Wal-Mart and Target.  And when it wasn’t enough for them to just sell household goods, they started offering their patrons a full line of groceries, too.  In 2005, the average CEO's compensation compared to the pay of manufacturing production workers was 39:1.  And in 2007, CEOs in the S&P 500 averaged $10.5 million annually, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. 

One area that is laughable in its increase in scale and grandiosity of theatrics is the music video industry.  Just look at Lady Gaga and Katy Perry as examples.  They are both often compared to Madonna and Britney Spears, but when you contrast the content of even the most controversial of Madonna’s or Britney’s videos with that of either of today’s popular artists, you will be amazed at the higher levels of both vulgarity and profanity, not to mention the scope and scale of visual spectacle.  American audiences are requiring more and larger spectacle just to remain merely interested in what’s playing on the video display before them.  We are becoming so desensitized that only the most audacious performances entertain us.

And what about the movie industry?  It seems only those films with the biggest budgets, the most popular stars, the most nudity and sexual promiscuity, or the biggest explosions and car chases reach large audiences or make any profit.  When a small film makes it, we are all shocked and amazed.  Many films today are adapted from popular books, but even the books are too big for one movie.  Producers have taken to splitting up some of the most popular books into two films to get the most mileage out of the content.  Look at the final installments of both the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises.  They could not find a way to condense either novel—each of which comes in at nearly 760 pages—into one all encompassing film, at least not without running over two and a half hours, the extent, it seems, of the American attention span.  And the special effects of these films will have to be spot on perfect, not to mention huge, because the American audience is way too sophisticated for anything less. 

Even natural disasters seem to have become bigger and more dangerous, not to mention more deadly.  If you look at the data here and here, you’ll see that the incidences of natural disasters has increased, again astronomically, with the exception of the number of earthquakes though the number of people affected by earthquakes has increased exponentially.  Now, you’re all probably wondering what the hell my point is and how this relates to writing or publishing since those are the things I blog about.  Well, I’ve been thinking about this trend a great deal since my last “conversation” with the great Anne Mini, author, editor and blogger extraordinaire. 

She blogged here and here about the importance of conflict on page one of a manuscript submitted to a literary agent, citing that the agent’s assistant—whom Anne refers to as Millicent—needed such content in order for her to forward those pages to her boss for consideration.  I objected slightly, stating that it felt like pandering to simply construct our first pages primarily for Millicent’s eyes.  Of course, Anne gave me many reasons why this is so, most predominantly, it seemed, because poor Millicent has to read so many submitted first pages that she only has patience for the most boldly written.  And while I understand that poor Millie is over-worked and constantly behind in filtering queries for her boss, it still strikes me as…well…wrong to construct our novel in this way and for this singular purpose. 

I suppose Millie and her boss are only reacting to the current market, that is to say that she knows that American readers, much like their counterparts in the movie and music industries, are so over-exposed to big blockbusters that they have become desensitized to everything else.  Simply stated, they need the explosion in the first scene to get and hold their attention.  We are a nation of ADHD consumers whose need for something bigger has overwhelmed our sense of quality in such a way that bigger has become better in our eyes.  No matter my distaste for this trend, I cannot ignore it, so I added content to the first pages of my manuscript.  Instead of starting at the aftermath of the conflict, which I believed would intrigue the reader, I had to go back and start with the conflict itself.  And while I do like the two new pages of added content, it still smacks of pandering to me, that I should have to do so in order for anyone to even consider reading my novel.

            It certainly hasn’t always been so, that the reader needed all that spectacle on page one.  Several agents have blogged about the fact that many of yesterday’s classics would never be able to successfully run the gauntlet that is today’s process to publication and that writers today cannot base the likelihood of their own success on that of the authors of books written in their own genre as little as five years ago.  And they’ve also said that it’s primarily only debut authors that have to grab the reader’s attention at line one page one, that established authors do not need to submit to such tactics, even in today’s wildly competitive market. 

            I sort of take this to mean that it’s not the quality of the immediate writing or jacket blurb style query that will garner attention of first time authors, but the ability to submit to trends.  I wonder why books published today cannot be more like classical music that starts off interesting, yet often quiet, building to wave after wave of crescendo until the story crashes over you like a tidal wave before it gently rolls to a stop along a sandy beach, retreating back into the ocean.  I’d like to think that people who read are somewhat more sophisticated than the average couch potato watching music videos or the latest film release.  Reading takes much more attention to detail and dedication to a story than either of the others.  So why do we have to be whacked over the head with a story?  Why can’t the writer take their time—with the economy of words, of course—to lay out the bones and the meat to their story? 

            I get that there is a formula and in order for a writer to be considered, they must show they have done their homework and are following said formula, but it seems the current market—the publishers desperately striving to survive a volatile industry gasping its last breath, and the agents who serve them—is shortchanging both the writer and the reader by bowing and therefore humbling themselves to current trends.  By definition, it’s transitory and will never last.  And by constantly rewriting the rules, the market may eventually erase what once made outstanding and interesting novels.    

A Great Opportunity

           As many of you already know by my near-constant complaining about how demoralizing I find the road to publication to be (sorry about that, by the way), I have been on a roller coaster ride for the last few months—or more accurately, for the last year.  Last spring, I had this crazy idea to write a novel and I completed that task and rejoiced at the accomplishment because, let’s face it, not many people accomplish such a thing, at least none that I know.  Of course, that was just the beginning.  I found out that the original draft was nowhere near ready for the next step, which was querying for a literary agent.  So I worked with an assortment of critique partners—other writers in the same boat as I was—and polished my manuscript to a crisp spit shine.  Another major accomplishment, considering how much the narrative changed, and another rise on the roller coaster ride.

            I started querying in earnest—which I see as on the down slope because I hate it doing it—and received several requests for fulls and partials.  Yay!  Big ride up on that roller coaster.  Then came the ride down, for not only was I receiving near daily rejections to my query, I also received rejections for all but one of those requests, too.  I’m almost too afraid to contact the last agent to find out what he thinks.  I realize that if he liked it, he would have contacted me again to request more pages.  So down, down, down I go on the big, scary roller coaster. 

But I did have to take a break when I received a request for an exclusive read and while she ultimately turned me down, I found that break refreshing.  It was the flat part of the ride, the part where you get your bearings and take a breath in anticipation of the next hill or dip.  And while I have not been querying at all during this flat part of the ride, I have continued to read and comment on writer and agent blogs.  And, again as many of you know by past posts, one of my absolute favorite bloggers is the incomparable Anne Mini .   

            Her blog is very different from most bloggers out there.  She freely offers advice—a lot of advice—to writers pursuing their dream of becoming published authors.  As Anne admits, many find her blog posts a tad long-winded, and while she does generate an inordinate amount of words per post, I consider each one a gold nugget to be snatched away and horded with greedy pleasure.  You just cannot pass up that kind of advice and disregard it.  She is, after all, a published author with a boatload of awards and degrees and accolades, not to mention that she makes her living editing books for publication.  Why would anybody want her to be brief when sharing her hard earned information?  In fact, I find she raises questions in me that require I comment in order to alleviate my concern or confusion.  Yeah, I probably comment too much.  I often wonder if she cringes whenever she sees my name pop up at the bottom of her posts.  But if she does, she doesn’t show it and she always answers my questions or comments on my opinion.  

            Last week, she continued her series on pet peeves in material submitted to literary agencies.  She expressed how important it is for a writer who wants their story to be read in full by the agent to construct a first page with conflict while introducing the main character and telling the reader what the book is all about.  The way I read her post, I determined that she was advising us to start our novel off with a big bang, a blockbuster explosion, so to speak, to grab the attention of a tired, over-worked, bleary-eyed literary agent’s assistant—Anne refers to them as Millicents—who is the first obstacle a writer encounters on their way to the ultimate gatekeeper, the agent herself. 

This advice kind of took me aback and I commented to Anne:  “It seems like we should be tailoring our early content for the sole benefit of an over-worked, bleary-eyed, impatient Millicent so that she doesn’t hurl our beloved pages into the trash. It doesn’t seem right to fashion our stories in this manner. It feels much like pandering to me. I’d like to believe that Millicent doesn’t need the blockbuster explosions in line five of chapter one just to pull her into the story. Surely she is more sophisticated than that.” 

Anne advised me that that is just the way it is.  So I briefly explained the content of my first chapter—which actually reads more like a prologue, but prologues are out of fashion these days, so chapter one it is.  And my chapter one is only two-thirds of a page long, introduces the main character and delves into exactly what the story is about:  Can a good man who has been affected by outside forces to do an unspeakably bad thing, redeem himself and find the man he once was?  This leads into chapter two which does, in fact, have conflict, or so Anne judged by my description. 

            But a funny thing happened in our discourse over this issue.  She wrote me a personal email explaining that she was “intensely curious” about how I had structured my novel.  Since it would be difficult for her to give me further advice without actually seeing the pages, she had a proposition for me.  She wrote:  “Would you be willing to allow me to use the first two chapters as an example on the blog?  That way, I could give you specific feedback on a structure that does sound as though it might give some Millicents pause, and it might provoke some interesting discussion…It would involve a certain amount of bravery, but my gut feeling is that a professional reader might respond quite differently to these pages than a room full of writers.”

            Well, uh…hell yeah!  Of course I would love to provide my first two chapters to someone I admire and respect who, in turn, would evaluate its content, therefore making it better.  That was my first reaction.  Then I focused in on her words about it taking a certain amount of bravery on my part because, as she states, her “blog has a surprisingly large readership amongst Millicents and in publishing houses.”   Ooooh, scary!!  No really.  Scary!  But these are the exact people I want to read my pages.  These are the folks who determine what is read, what is voted on, who is contracted and what gets published in America today.  Yes, they just might ream me out, tear me a new you-know-what, embarrass me, humiliate me, ground me into the cold, hard earth, turn me into dust, a quivering mass of tears and nerves.  But they also might just make my content better which could, at some point, lead to another agent reading my material in full.  I would be insane NOT to want that. 

            Yes, I am afraid.  Very afraid.  When people have the chance to critique without being seen, they can be, and often are, fairly brutal.  They don’t hold back.  And since I have suffered a bit at the end of the rather large stick of rejection lately, I am concerned about just how hard I might take their criticism, but in the end, it’s all about making the book better, about getting read.  And Anne added that “It's never a bad idea to have those people know one's name!” 

            So here I go.  I’ve already submitted my first two chapters—about four pages total—to Anne.  She says it will be a few weeks since she is under a deadline to get a current client’s book edited for editor number three at Random House.  (God, how I envy that author who has Anne Mini editing her words!)  I don’t know what will happen.  At the very least, I pray that I receive advice that will turn my first pages into something that will eventually catch Millicent’s eye, that she will want to tell her agent boss about it, who will then be so intrigued as to request more pages.  So I consider this a big ride up on that roller coaster.  And while I do worry about the part where I come down, I know that part down can be a lot of fun if I look at it in the right way. 

My skin is getting thicker with each rejection, especially after the personal ones, the ones where the agent read my full manuscript only to turn me down without any real advice on how to make it better.  I guess I wouldn’t mind the rejections if they came with some constructive criticism.  But that’s not the way it works any more.  The agents and Millicents are simply too busy.  So this step with Anne, however big and scary, is one way in which I might actually receive some constructive criticism—constructive being the operative word here.  So, am I crazy to go through with this?  Perhaps, but I’m just telling myself to check my sanity at the door and enjoy the ride.         

      

Why I Blog: Following My Journey

           Last week, I wrote a post on blogs I love to read.  This week, I want to touch on why I blog myself.  To be honest, I never really had much interest in reading blogs or writing one either.  When I finished writing the first draft of my novel, The Mistaken, last summer, I started researching how to get published.  I found websites and blogs that shared all kinds of interesting information on writing, finding an agent and getting published.  The best blogs were those maintained by literary agents like Nathan Bransford and Query Shark’s Janet Reid, and writers like Anne Mini and Natalie Whipple.  Many of them mentioned how important it was to have an Internet presence such as a blog where agents or editors could check you out.  I thought, what the hell.  I can do that.  But I really didn’t know what in the world I should talk about.  And who would ever want to hear what I had to say anyway?    

I began checking out other writer blogs, people like me who were considered aspiring writers, yet unpublished.  (By the way, I hate that term “aspiring writer.”  I don’t aspire to write.  I do write.  I aspire to be published.  Big difference in my mind.)  A lot of them seemed to be simply daily journals, log accounts of their days, their lives, their families.  And while they might have been well written, they didn’t really interest me much.  I didn’t care about their “chipmunks,” their “rugrats” or “ninjas” or whatever they referred to as their children.  I wanted to read about their writing experience, their journey to become published authors. 

So I thought, that’s what I will focus on, detailing my trials and tribulations, my joys and heartaches, my quest to become a published writer.  And since it has been a rather emotional journey thus far, I found it easy to dig within myself and write about things that have affected me along the way.  It’s been a surreal experience, so I blogged about how I first got started on this wonderful trip and why I decided to take it in the first place, what I have discovered about myself along the way and who has influenced me.  I discovered my book’s theme, how music influenced my writing and having faith in the process.  Months later, when I was finally done with the revisions, I blogged about querying for an agent (a work in progress) and how much I missed living inside my story every day.  I even, ashamedly, blogged about my jealousy at the ease of which some celebrities find success in publishing.  (Sorry about that one!) 

I don’t know who reads my blog or if they are interested in those things, but I found when I read about similar accounts by other writers, I was buoyed by their tenacity, their unfailing faith that they would make it even though it is a painfully long and disheartening process.  Sometimes, though, just reading about how difficult it is for them makes me believe it will never happen for me, getting published, I mean.  But I won’t give up.  A part of that “not giving up” is continuing to blog every week or so.  Sometimes I just don’t know what to write.  I do keep a log on my phone when a blog idea pops into my.  I will roll the idea over in my mind, especially at night, even when I’m sleeping.  That’s a habit with me, dreaming about I should write about, be it my book, my revisions or my blog. 

A few of the writer blogs I read have a great many followers, folks who have signed up to follow their progress, read their writing and ramblings.  I think it’s cool that Natalie Whipple has 1300 followers even though she is not yet published.  1300—wow!  And Adam Heine’s Author’s Echo blog has about 150 followers.  (He’s amazing, by the way.  Very knowledgeable.)  Now, they have been blogging for five and four years respectively while I have only been doing so since last October—five months to date.  I do have four followers though, four generous people who I don’t know and, for whatever reason, have chosen to follow me—a nobody, a complete unknown.  And I am most grateful for those folks.  (I thank you from the bottom of my heart, really.)   

I don’t know how to cultivate more followers.  I am more or less a complete technical idiot and don’t know how to make my blog appear like I want it to.  I don’t know what gadgets are or how to insert photos and manipulate them.  I just picked a basic (and free since I’m a poor, struggling “aspiring” writer) template and added a bit of content—posts and pages.  I joined Networked Blogs through Facebook upon the advice of one of my followers, Laina Turner.  That has brought me quite a bit of traffic.  At least I think so, since I am a complete unknown.  And hey, I even got my first comment from someone I don’t know personally (no offense to my wonderful friend, Lisa Regan, who sometimes offers me encouraging feedback.)  That was exciting for me.  Silly, I know.  But hey, I am a complete unknown, a nobody.  I love getting comments no matter who they are from. 

I’ll keep working on this blogging thing, especially since I am now querying for a literary agent.  When I send out batches of queries—I’ve sent out about 28 so far—I tend to get a bit more traffic.  I think, wow, someone with power and influence might have just read words that I wrote!  And then I kind of panic and think, wow, someone with power and influence might have just read words that I wrote!  Oh no!  What was I thinking?

           This whole writing kick is such an unknown monster to me.  I am enjoying though.  I’m not technically proficient at it, my education was focused on architecture and design, not creative writing, but hey, I like to think of it as being intuitive for me, like playing the piano.  I’ve never taken a lesson, nor can I read music (at least not easily or well), but I can play some rather difficult pieces by Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven.  I have an ear.  I can pick a song out on the keyboard just by listening to it and sounding it out.  Hopefully, I will find an agent who feels the same way about my writing.  In the mean time, I will keep blogging and hoping that others will like what I have to say or at least get something from it.  And maybe a few more will follow me along the way.  It would be nice to have a few more companions because I think my journey will be a long one and I could really use the company! 

Blogs I Love to Read

            It has become a habit for me when I wakeup each morning to grab my iPhone off my nightstand and, before I even get out of bed, peruse my favorite blogs.  I read mostly writer, literary agent and publishing blogs.   I have my favorite blogs bookmarked to my homepage so all I have to do is click and read. 

I always start off with my favorite, Lisa L. Regan.  She doesn’t usually post more than once a week, but I check anyway, no matter the day, to see if she has written anything. Lisa is a writer, like me, and has written two books.  One of them, Finding Claire Fletcher, is now out on submission to various publishing houses and waiting to be picked up.  It is a fantastic read.  I met Lisa through former lit agent, Nathan Bransford’s blog forum.  She answered a post I made requesting a critique partner and we became fast friends.  In fact, she is one of my closest friends ever.  She has taught me a lot about writing, editing, critiquing and querying, as well as what it means to be a genuine friend.  She is the shoulder I always cry on when the process of writing and querying becomes too much or when I get bad news.  She is also the one I turn to when I have good news or just don’t know what to do next.  She blogs about all things writing, querying for an agent, good books to read, as well as her personal history.  I have come a long way because of her and cherish every word she writes.  We consider each other writing soul mates.  Check her out if you have the chance.

            The second blog I check out is Bookends, a literary agency blog.  I find Jessica Faust shares a lot of good information about querying for an agent and writing in general, as well as the life of a literary agent, all of which I find helpful and very interesting.  And her posts are generally very brief and to the point.  She has a long list of topics on her blog that any writer would find both helpful and fascinating.  And she's a no-nonsense kind of gal.  I really like that in an agent.

            After that, I tune into NatalieWhipple’s blog, Between Fact and Fiction.  She is another writer.  She writes Young Adult fiction, mostly fantasy or paranormal stuff, which is not really up my alley, but she is very personable and witty and she often writes about the trials and tribulations of writing, landing and losing an agent, being out on submission and rejection.  All the things I am most interested at this time.  Her insight is valuable and I take strength in her tenacity and fortitude.  And now she is aspiring to create a place where we writers can meet and hook up with critique partners who work in our specific genre.  I wish she had done that back in October.  Oh well, my loss.

            Next comes Dystel & Goderich’s blog.  They are a literary agency and usually have multiple daily posts about agenting and querying for an agent, as well as all things related to the publishing business.  It’s nice to have so many different perspectives to read among. 

            Others I read from time to time are The Rejectionist, who just left her position as an agent assistant to pursue her writing career.  She is hilarious and gives a lot of insight into the whole querying process.  I’m sad that I did not start following her earlier.  I also love Kristin Nelson’s  PubRants.  She is also a lit agent and she rants about all things associated with the publishing industry.  I really like her even though she rejected my query.  Her agency doesn’t really rep my kind of book, but I thought I’d give her a shot any way. 

A few others are Jennifer Hubbard (very sweet), Betsy Lerner (very tough), Adam Heine (very funny) and most especially Nathan Bransford whose blog taught me so much before I knew of anyone else or had any clue as to what I was doing.  He is the god of all agent bloggers though he quit agenting and now works for CNET.  He is very popular with 5000 followers.  (I have 4, all of whom I am eternally grateful for.)  And on weekends, I always go to literary agent Janet Reid’s Query Shark where aspiring writers send in their queries in progress for public humiliation and evaluation.  Too funny and actually very helpful.  By example, she tells you exactly what you should not do when querying for an agent.  Last weekend, she wrote an example of a perfect query, using the Bible as her work.  Both hilarious and insightful.    

            Last, but certainly not least, I read and follow Anne Mini’s Author! Author! blog.  She’s like Nathan Bransford on steroids.  A lot of steroids!  I only wish I had discovered her first.  She is a writer who grew up in the Bay Area, like me, and now lives in Seattle, also like me.   Her memoir, A Family Darkly: Love, Loss, and the Final Passions of Philip K. Dick, won the 2004 Zola Award, the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association’s highest honor for a nonfiction book. She has also won numerous writing fellowships.  Anne, also an editor, has been blogging since 2005 and has covered and recovered every topic you could ever think of regarding writing, editing, publishing, querying and agenting, as well as a myriad of other related topics.  Her blog archives are so extensive and thorough, she could publish it into a virtual encyclopedia on all things writing.  I’ve been trolling through her posts for months and I’ve barely scratched the surface on all the things she knows.  And what I love best about her is that whenever I post a comment, she always writes back.  ALWAYS!  I absolutely LOVE her!  Her posts do tend to be rather long, but I find I get sucked in every time because she is so thorough and knows exactly what my questions will be.  I can tell she’s been there and done that.  Every aspiring writer should definitely check her out.

            I do have others I read occasionally and I am always looking for other blogs related to writing, agenting and publishing.  Let me know if you have one I should follow.

My New Happy Place

            Before I get into my next post, I should say that I have spent the last four days deliberating whether or not I should remove my last post, “Jealous Much?”  That’s not to say that I don’t still hold that opinion, because I do, but I question my own wisdom at having posted such blatant animosity in such a public forum.  Not that I believe that there are too many folks reading my blog, but I’m averaging about ninety a month or 3 a day.  Not too shabby for a complete unknown.  What worries me most are the literary agents who might poke their head in to take a look after they’ve received my query.  So why don’t I remove that post?  Well, I guess that’s because that post shows a part of who I am.  Happily, that is not a part I show very often, but it is there nonetheless, so the post remains, however shameful I now find it.  Now…getting down to business…

            I have spent the last week preparing query letters to be sent off beginning February 1st.  I am selecting those prime agents I most admire for whatever reason and writing queries tailored especially for each one.  I’m happy most of them accept email queries.  A few still do it the old fashion way so I find myself visiting print shops where I have my query, synopsis and sample chapters printed then stuffing large envelopes with my treasure and a self-addressed stamped envelope for their reply, hoping and praying that they actually will reply.  Emailing queries is easier, of course.  All I have to do is make copies of the files and queue them up to copy and paste into the email.  I’ve even found a few who actually want attachments which is a big surprise as most just want everything in the body of the email.  Sometimes they want fifty pages of my manuscript in the body of the email.  Boy, let me tell you, that’s one long email! 

            And that brings me to a problem I’ve been struggling with lately:  retaining proper formatting within the body of the email.  Every writer knows how utterly important proper formatting is, including me.  So I prepared a sample query, complete with copied and pasted chapters and synopsis, and sent it to myself to see what the email looked like when I opened it.  Boy, was I surprised by how messed up the formatting appeared.  Wonky, Anne Mini called it.  (She promised me she would address this issue in a forthcoming formatting blog next week.  Thank you, Anne!)  There were huge gaps between the paragraphs and the font, which I purposely set to 12-point Times New Roman, the industry standard, reset itself back to Tahoma 10 point. 

Well, I was aghast.  I certainly do not want the agents I query to think I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.  They likely won’t even look at my query, let alone my chapters or request a partial or full manuscript to read if they believe I’m not versed in industry standards.  I tried everything I could think of, but in the end, I discovered that the problem lies within the programming at Hotmail, Microsoft’s email service.  So what’s a writer to do?  Dump Hotmail, that’s what!  So now I have a Google Gmail account that I will use to send all queries.  When I tested it and sent an email to myself at both my Hotmail and Gmail accounts, the Hotmail email was distorted while the Gmail was not.  So Gmail it is!  Problem solved.  Unless my recipient agent uses Hotmail…yikes!

But I’ve been wringing my hands for other reasons, as well this week.  For three weeks, actually.  The whole reason I’m querying is because I believe my manuscript is ready, that it is as highly polished as it can be without feedback from a professional within the publishing industry.  I sent out my first query on December 28^th.  It was a referral from an agented writer friend, the very talented Lisa Regan.  Her agent received my query and requested a full (because Lisa said she loved it and her agent trusts her), which I happily obliged her with. 

Unfortunately, when I started reading through a PDF version of my manuscript, I found a few errors.  Nothing too major, one misspelling, an errant quote mark, a missing word.  Not too big of a deal, but enough that I became worried.  What’s worse is that I was always in conflict about my Jillian chapters, those three chapters (6-8) written in Jillian’s voice.  I was never satisfied with them, but since I couldn’t figure out how to fix them, I just accepted that they were okay and I moved along.  It wasn’t until I sent off my manuscript to Lisa’s agent that my stomach started doing back flips over the issue.  How could I have sent it to her when those chapters were not ready?  I’m such an idiot, but there’s no going back now.

Since then, I’ve worked with Lisa to make those three Jillian chapters sing.  They say exactly what I want them to, exactly how I want them to say it.  For the first time since completing my manuscript, I am happy.  Totally, thoroughly, 100% satisfied.  I’ve read it through one more time and cannot find anything that I would change.  But my greatest chance at landing an agent, one to whom I’ve been referred, the most common method agents use to find talent, has been tarnished.  I’m not saying blown at this point because she said she wouldn’t get back to me until February, unless she just didn’t like it, then it would be sooner.  Well, it’s January 21^st and I still haven’t heard from her so I think that’s a good sign, at this point anyway.  That is, if she’s even started reading it.  And what if she hasn’t?  God, if I could only get my final version to her.  But it’s a moot point, I’m afraid.  It is done. 

Lisa reassures me that she should have the ability to look past all that and I hope she does, that she would at least give me the opportunity to show her my revisions, but I know, above all else, that this is a lesson learned.  Don’t ever send out your manuscript until you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is ready.  You don’t want to have those feelings of regret or lose that golden opportunity that awaits you.  This process is hard enough without sabotaging yourself.

Having said all that, I am, at the very least, happy …with my book, that is.  I’ve found another happy place, my first being behind the wheel of my sporty little convertible with the top down on a warm, sunny Puget Sound day.  This is a great place to be—my new happy place.  I am ready to start querying in earnest without worrying that I messed up. 

I love my new happy place.  

Hiho the Derrio a Querying I Will Go!

           Well, my friends, it is done.  My book, that is.  After ten months, I’ve finally arrived at the point where I can say that, where I feel I have nothing left to say, that is until someone in authority—an agent or editor perhaps—informs me otherwise.  Honestly, I could probably keep writing, editing, revising and adding until the day I die, but there has to be some point at which I tell myself, “That’s enough, honey,” and I think I’ve finally found that point.  I am satisfied, but I’m not happy about it.

I feel a great loss in my life right now.  I’ve spent nearly every minute of every day, twelve to eighteen hours a day, for the last ten months working on this story.  I have carved out lives for my characters and become intimately involved with them, and I mean intimately.  I have taken every step of their terrifying journey and experienced every emotional and physical blow they have.  I have wept at their losses and rejoiced at their victories.  And now I have stepped away from them and that hurts more than I can say.  It feels like I’ve lost a dear loved one, like they’ve moved far away and I might never see them again.  I miss them all so much.  But I want others to experience their journey, as well, and that won’t happen unless I find myself an agent and work towards getting published. So, my friends, I’m off to the land of querying.

During the last six months, I’ve educated myself on the entire process of properly formatting my manuscript, writing a kickass query and finessing remarkable synopses, both one and four page—thanks so much Nathan Bransford and Anne Mini.  While polishing my manuscript to a high-gloss, I’ve written, rewritten, edited and had my query and synopses critiqued by my wonderful friend, Lisa Regan, until they, too, sparkle and gleam like Edward Cullen on a sunny day (yes, I did read the Twilight series.)  So I am ready to march onward into that dark, terrifying abyss that is querying for an agent.  (Cue ominous music.)

 I’ve been reading all the blogs and forums where hard-working writers describe their querying experiences, and frankly, I am terrified!  It is so disheartening to hear how long—often years—and hard they have all been submitting their queries and receiving nothing but hundreds of form rejections, or even worse, no feedback at all.  Worse still is Natalie Whipple’s nerve-wracking story of being on submission for fifteen months!  FIFTEEN MONTHS!  And all that after landing the beloved Nathan Bransford as an agent only to lose him when he left the business this fall.  Alas, she did find another and seems quite content. 

But still, we writers really have no hope of publishing—traditionally, that is—unless we land ourselves an agent.  And even then, things are not guaranteed.  I read a recent blog by Betsy Lerner where she asked for her writer follower’s worst agent stories, and boy did I get an eyeful of disheartening and downright scary stories.  It’s enough to make an aspiring writer hide under the covers until the coming of the Apocalypse.  But I’ve worked way too long and way too hard to give up without even trying, no matter the bad news out there about how e-books and e-readers are ruining the traditional publishing industry.  I will prevail!

So it is with great enthusiasm and even greater hope that I now declare the opening of the Nancy Thompson Starts Querying Games!  Of course, I just had to pick the worst time of year to start the process, the dreaded holidays.  I hear most agents more or less close up shop between Thanksgiving and New Years then return to their offices positively swimming in a sea of queries received during that time.  Their advice?  Wait until after the Martin Luther King holiday to submit your query.  By then, the agent assistants will have worked their weary selves through most of the slush pile and be ever ready for more.  So that is my plan, readers.  In the meantime, I am compiling a list of appropriate agents to query, hoping somewhere in that list lies the agent of my dreams, someone who truly loves and believes in my book. 

           On a side note, and quite exciting at that, my friend, Lisa, has graciously referred me to her agent who read and accepted my query and then proceeded to request a full manuscript and synopsis!  A request for A FULL!  Can you believe that?  My very first serious query and she asked for a full!  I am humbled and happy and terrified all at once.  I couldn’t eat all day yesterday after I sent the package off to her (and some of you know how amazing that statement is.)  Now I realize this is a long shot.  I mean, come on, no one lands an agent on their first query, right?  Well, one can only hope, I guess.  She has my query and manuscript exclusively until January 17^th, after which I start querying in earnest, although I would love nothing else than to land this particular agent at any point in The Games.  So keep your fingers crossed—plus your toes and even your eyes—that I am successful at my querying endeavors.  And I could always use a few well-placed prayers if you’re into that.  I know I am!  God help me! 

And as always, I am looking for followers for my blog, so click that follow button, people and join me on my journey.  I am willing to do the same for your blog, as well.