Being Ready

I should be writing at this very moment—I'm under ten horrid deadlines today—but I just finished one project and I'm moving to another, so I needed a break from writing ... by writing. Go figure.

I want to talk about being ready. I'm not sure I understood what it meant to "be ready" until fairly recently. I'm an impatient guy—I've been known to query novels that aren't even close to finished yet. So in all this hustling and bustling, I never really stopped to ask myself if I was ready to go out into the world, just me and my little books, and go find a publisher. It seemed like a stupid question. Duh. Of course I was ready ...

But being ready as a person—impatient, driven, anxious, hopeful—is a very different thing than being ready as a writer. And I'm afraid somewhere along the way, I confused the two. I was awful close, perhaps, but if I'm being super-honest (which is easier said than done sometimes), I think I started to know about a year ago, maybe two, that I was almost there, but not quite. There were still things needing attention in my books.

This is a hard thing to accept, and I totally respect those writers who say, "I'm working at it, but I'm not ready to send out this book yet." Or, "I'm not going to send out this book at all. It's my practice book."

So I'm working on a book now—and this is a struggle—but every time I start to think about whether or not I can sell this book, I snip that thought like an evil little weed. Every time I start to wonder if it's pitched at the right age group, at the right length, if it's funny enough or deep enough, or whatever, I stop. Those are the thoughts of a writer who is distracted by the market, by the dream, not the thoughts of a writer who is only focused on the book.

Howdy ... and Morning

Monday was the first Monday of the month ... the date I normally post a prompt for the Storytellers. Lately, I'll admit it: life has taken over my blogging. My "free" time is very limited, and every time I open a file to write a blog entry, I think, "I'd rather be working on my book," so I switch over. My plan is to be done with this manuscript by Spring, so I better get moving.

In any event, I've got some pretty funny Christmas pictures for possible prompts (thanks, E. Flanigan). What do you think? Is anyone in this month, or should we reconvene after the holidays?

Query Update ...

I'm querying a novel again, and you know, it's actually kind of fun. Well, except for the rejection part. That's not very fun. But it's not that bad. Here it is, by the numbers, so far:

52 queries sent

14 rejections based on the query alone

8 requests for partials or fulls

4 rejections of partials or fulls

I can only assume that some agents have already rejected the query, but just didn't respond. I hear that's a thing now, so the number of query rejections is most likely higher than that.

What do I make of all this?

First off, my query letter must be pretty good. Eight requests for partials or fulls is pretty good. And these are some very successful and large agencies in my genre. So I have no complaints there.

Second, this is a numbers game. I think it helps to keep that in perspective. There's no sense in getting tied up emotionally (if you can help it). Just send out as many as you can, and try to forget it. The Internet is an amazing resource for finding dozens of agents who represent any kind of book. I used www.agentquery.com, blasted out my queries in a three-day period, and that was it.

Finally, the rejections of the partials and fulls have been interesting. This book was originally rejected by a major publisher for lack of character development. The agent rejections have ranged from a simple "Thanks for letting me read it, but I'm passing" to more involved letters. I've heard "I just didn't connect with the character;" "The plot line doesn't feel fresh and contemporary;" and "I didn't find the writing very compelling." Ultimately, they all included some line about publishing being a subjective business and they hope I find representation elsewhere. Two have explicitly invited me to send my next project.

Which brings me to my point. I don't really have a feel for whether this book will sell or not. But I'm already deeply involved in the next project, so I'm not as emotionally invested in young Murph and his search for the toy maker. If he goes onto greater things, wonderful. If he doesn't, well, I have high hopes for Flynn ...

So speaking as someone who's deep in the query process, here's my single best of advice: ignore the process as much as possible and start on your next project ... I think the best thing you can do to make querying easier is to try to forget it's even happening.