My friend Sonja wrote an excellent post yesterday about query letters and offers up one of her own for analysis. She also has links to a couple more like that.
I think need to work on my own query letter some more.
Well, the agent said no, but that’s okay. I still got some positive feedback and really one of the nicest rejection letters I could have hoped to get. Now just need to move on and send out more. Oh and finish my next First Line story, next deadline is August 1.
Remember how last week I said a friend basically forced me to send out a query last week? Remember how i’ve sort of been whining about getting frustrated? Yeah. That one query letter I did send got a postive response. I was asked for a few pages, which I sent. No garuntees anything wil come of it, but it’s nice to get something positive!
I got two quick returns on the novel queries I sent out Monday. One said they only really dealt with reprints, the other was a form letter.
That leaves 11 queries still out there for The Unthinkable. Plus I have two short stories still out there I haven’t heard back from yet. Oh and I have yet to find another market to send Pisces Luger out to, or decided what exactly to do with it.
I’m working on my next First Line submission. This one is even better then the last, or it has the potential to be. Which is good, as the last one got rejected. I think starting this next week I’ll begin the first edit of Grace, now that it’s had a little bit of time to rest. Game plan is to do it the same way I did on the Unthinkable; go through the whole thing on the computer first, then print out one chapter at a time.
So, at least it sounds like I’m really working on this writing thing.
Yesterday was really productive. I spent most of the day putting together query letters for The Unthinkable. That was a very time consuming task! I probably made it harder on myself with the number of queries I was sending out at once. See, first I was going to send 5, then 10, then I realized my labels come in sheets of 30, so I decided to do 15 (15 labels for agents, 15 for the SASE). Least I have mail merge figured out now, for the most part. I’ve got 10 queries in the mailbox, 3 I need to take to the post office and 2 more that want an outline with the query and I have to figure out how to do that.
The other good thing is I finished the first draft of Grace yesterday. I’m not 100% happy with the last couple of chapters, but thats pretty normal for me. At least this ending is better then the debacle I had at first for The Unthinkable. I also finished it at one a.m. because I could feel how close I was to the end and I just wanted to get there. So it’ll probably be amusing to go back and read my punchy tired writing there at the end. But, it’s an ending.
So, game plan: Put the first draft down and walk away for at least a week or two so it can settle. Go write my next short story for The First Line. Maybe poke around for another project or short story after that. Then I’ll start working on Grace again and begin the rewrite. I suppose I could go back to Sean as well, but I think I’m going to let that sleeping dog lie for a bit.
Got an email last night rejecting my story for the First Line. I was a bit upset, especially as I thought it was a good one, but I’m better this morning. After all, I know I have to walk through miles of rejection before I get to the other side. Overnight success is generally a myth. Besides, that story has a good strong main character, maybe I can give him a longer story.
I actually spent most of yesterday writing. I finished one chapter of Grace, wrote a short one that I know will need work come editing/rewrite time, and started on a third. So overall it was a productive weekend. I need to find time to write in the evenings too. I know I write better when I make sure I write every day.
So, I got a rejection letter the other day, my first one from a magazine. Before I go any further, allow me to lay out Heinlein’s rules for writing:
Great article about it here. But the rules, despite being written in 1947, are still as applicable today as they were then. So, I put the manuscript back in the mail today to a different publisher and sent another story to the publisher that rejected the first. Rule 5 is the rule that keeps you from going crazy.
I’ve got some other things floating around in my head like a bunch of half-formed nebula, cradles for stars that might one day soon flare to life in spectacular fashion. One of these stories I sent out was an idea I first had maybe 13 years ago, only now committed to paper and making its way in the world with the hopes that someone will decide its good enough to hang up so the universe can see it shine.
One thing I’ve definitely found so far on this writing journey is that submitting things gives me anxiety like nothing doing. But, I do it anyway. Yesterday morning I sent off the Pisces story to The First Line. But I find myself agonizing far more over making sure my cover letter is good and my formatting is perfect then I ever do over the actual words on the page. Which isn’t to say I don’t worry about them too, but I am usually fairly confident in my stories, otherwise I wouldn’t be sending them off in the first place.
On the other hand, I’m sure that it’s much better to obsess over your formatting then to send it off all thrown together with nary a thought of how it looks. And I’m equally sure that nerves are par for the course when it comes to putting something you create out there.
The doing it anyway, despite nerves or anxiety, thats the important bit.