Monday Querying

In the words of Garfield, look on the bright side -- Mondays only happen once a week. Really, I shouldn't complain. Overall it's been a good Monday. I sent out a full that was requested over a year ago. March 2011, way before my manuscript was ready. I apologized for the delay, explained that I had trunked it and done quite a bit of editing. Kind agent replied immediately not to worry about the wait, and she was looking forward to reading it. This reiterates what I heard many agents say at the conference I went to recently; THE 'YES' DOESN'T EXPIRE. Good news for people who query too soon, and important to remember before sending something out that isn't ready.

Now the tortorous waiting begins. The advice I see all the time is: start a new writing project and forget about it. Difficult to do, especially in an age that makes it possible to stalk literary agents via twitter. I've got vacation coming in 3 days and I can't wait--the only place I would be able to ignore my deathly quiet inbox would be somewhere without internet service.

I also sent out four other requests (3 chapters x 3, 10 pages) and have sent material to every agent who requested it at the conference. Oh happy day! They say in this business, which involves so much waiting, it's important to celebrate the small sucesses. So today I'm celebrating five more requests in the hands of agents.

Take that, Monday.

Riding the Query Go-round

So much has happened at lightning speed in my writing career in the months of July and August. In July, I went to the conference put on by Pacific Northwest Writers Association. I felt like, at last, I came out of the closet as a writer. And not only did I make a new tight knit group of writer friends, I also got eight (count them, eight!) requests for Gargoyle Moon.

I have sent out one ten page request (that garnished a very kind "I see potential but not for me, query these two other agents at my house" response) one twenty-five page request, and two fifty page requests. Now I play the waiting game. In the meantime, I'm doing some final editing with a fine-tooth comb, reading, and planning to start my next novel in November. September I am dubbing "Septnoreadmo" (errr something like that) because I plan on doing mass quantities of reading in preperation for starting my new novel. For me, nothing sparks a desire to write like reading good books.

Goals have always been very important to me in achieving most of my successes. And there's nothing so satisfying as achieving something that you set out to do, a long time ago.

1. Send out three more partial requests and one full. Next week, send to two other suggested agents
2. Mass reading in September. New Orson Scott Card, Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Books, 50 Shades (yeah, yeah), rest of the mortal instruments series
3. New Novel begun in November, first draft complete by February (Oooh, it'll be like a Valentine's Day present for moiself!)
4. GET AN AGENT IN 2012

Things I've accomplished lately:

1. Sent out four requests
2. Started using Twitter (@_octoberly)
3. Wrote a synopsis and agent bio
4. Gave life

(I'm resuscitating this blog. If you're a writer, you can say you kill people for a living. Or that you're telling lies for fun and profit, Lawrence Block style. Now I'm giving life to this blog too... :) )

Novel Completion Schedule Part Deux

Crazy G.M. editing schedule:

Chapter 11 – Thursday, January 14
Chapter 12 – Friday, January 15
Chapter 13 – Saturday, January 16

Chapter 14 – Monday/ Tuesday, January 18
Chapter 15 – Tuesday/ Wednesday, January 20
Chapter 16 – Wednesday/Thursday, January 21
Chapter 17 – Friday, January 22

Chapters 18, 19 – By Tuesday, January 26

January 27-January 31 – Edit, revise, fix, cut, update word count of my query letter. Make sure all loose ends are tied up in 18 and 19. See if I can find better, more fun phrasing for “I smiled” and boring, repetitive tidbits. See if I can repeat the magic of other lines that I love. Get all chapters as clean as 1-4.

Does Chapter 13 make you cry? How bout 19? No? They should, dammit. Revise until they do.
February 1 – Send out chapters 1-3 to interested agent. Send out query to others. Cross fingers. Repeat.

Middles

This is the worst part. Beginnings are easy, endings are easy. The devil, and drudgery, are in the details. I know what needs to happen, I've written the whole darn thing already. But cleaning it up, nothing seems to flow smoothly. Chapters 1-4 polished up really nicely. Chapters 5-8 are a hot, steaming pile. One character is bipolar about her love interest, and the love interest is bipolar about everything.

Writing is lying, and polishing the lie til it shines. To quote a truism about lying, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive." I'm hoping to turn this tangled web into a diamond. But after that tangled metaphor, I'm just hoping to make the darn thing make sense!

Beginnings

Yesterday at Barnes & Noble I picked up maybe eight YA books and just read the opening page or so. It was a learning experience because, for all the books I've read, I don't know if I could list off exactly how they started on more than a handful of them. I'm sure the openings sucked me in, and that's what got me to read the whole book, but my own idea of what an opening should be was somewhat vague.

It was quite instructive. The ones that didn't grab me in the first couple of paragraph I put back immediately. After all, I want to read writing that speaks to me. Ideally, what I learn from these openings will help me speak to other people in a way that hooks them in the navel and pulls.

Here are a handful of some great opening lines (that I didn't read last night):

"I dreamed I went to Manderly again." -Rebecca

"Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed." -The Magicians

"Therewas a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. " - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possessionof a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

So I've been chewing on my first chapter for a week or so. Maybe I will come across that really excellent, all-telling/all-concealing line for my opening. Maybe not. Either way, looking at openings has definitely been helpful. After all, other than the query letter, it's the first thing the agent reads. And, should the powers that be allow, the first thing that potential readers will look at.

Novel Completion Schedule

So Edit 1 is pretty much done, now that I've come to the realization that the ending is totally obselete.

I want to start querying in February. I'm itching to do it now, but I know full well that this is not a good time (at least for the agents I'm after) and that I have to polish/revise/groom the beast. My greatest fear is that if I don't get it all done now, I'll keep rewriting until I have a completely different--but equally incoherent--story.

On a completely different note, I think my cat is Bunnicula. He's a cat, you say? He can't be Bunnicula?

Lemme explain.

He's our new cat. We've had Panther since she was a kitten. Months after he moved in, she still hisses at him, out of the blue. I know, normal teratorial cat behavior, you say. He is not vicious at all; that's more Panther's thing. He's cuddly, sweet, completely disarming, and purrs at the drop of a dime. He never reacts when she attacks him. Except for when he did, leaving two marks in her neck and a missing chunk of hair.

The weirdest part is that I'm afraid to tell my family, like that might make it come true. I might really have a vampire cat, and some night, when he curls up next to my neck, will be my last.

His name is Cuddles, but I'm beginning to think we should have named him Cuddicula.