submitting – Page 4 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Got a bite!

Just yesterday, I got a response to a query for Genesis Earth that I emailed to an agent at Nelson Literary Agency, LLC. Apparently, my query piqued their interest and they wanted to see the first 30 pages of my manuscript!

It’s not a huge development, of course–they haven’t requested the full, just a partial–but it’s comforting to know that my query letter is decent. Enough, at least, to lead to the next step, and that’s all that matters.

Writing query letters is hard. There are so many ways to screw them up. I queried another agent over the weekend with a similar (but different) letter, and I got a standard rejection…within the hour. Ouch. I was kind of worried something was wrong with the pitch, but with the other agency’s response, I’m not quite so worried.

Submitting is something that I have to get better at doing. I’ve started putting together a personal database of agents and editors, but still, it takes guts to put your stuff out there. I still get chills whenever I slip that envelope into the mail slot, or hit send on the computer. It’s hard to say exactly what that thrill is–fear of rejection? Fear of failure? I think it’s more complex than that, but I’m not sure exactly what it is, or how to put it. I’ll let you know when/if I figure it out.

I read an interesting post on agent Nathan Bransford’s blog about sending out queries. He suggested the best strategy is to submit in little spurts, rather than all at once–that way, if you only get form rejections, you can figure out what’s wrong and fix it while still having places to send it.

That sounds like a good strategy, but to really make it work, I should probably set a goal to send out a certain number of queries a month. Not sure how many that is, but since my main goal is to have a publishing deal by 2015 (and making a full-time living at this by 2020), it should probably not be a small number. Maybe eight or ten.

I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. In the meantime…here’s to hoping!

Trading old hangups for new ones

So I started my internship with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last week, and it’s been quite interesting. Trying to figure out the new routine while starting a new novel has been quite challenging, but somehow, I’ve written at least something every day (except Sunday–I try not to write Sundays now).

I can tell, though, that it’s going to be just as difficult to juggle writing and work as it’s been to juggle writing and school. There is NO room for procrastination–when I succumb to other things on my to do list instead of forcing myself to pound out the next scene, the day goes by and nothing gets written.

There is one thing I’ve been putting off for almost a month, though, and that’s the query letter for Genesis Earth. I recently received a very encouraging rejection letter from Eddie Schneider, where he basically said “this is good, but I’m not the right agent for it because it doesn’t excite me enough.”

I’ve written the book, polished it, made the writing solid–now, all I have to do is find an agent who’s passionate enough about it to take the project on. That’s the last hurdle–most of the difficult work is already finished! All I have to do is write a solid query letter and send it to the dozen or so agents I’ve researched…but yeah, I’ve been putting it off. Query letters are…difficult.

For that reason, I’ve decided to set a new goal: submit Genesis Earth to at least 12 agents/editors by February 1st.

The only way that’s ever going to happen is if I write a query letter in the near future–as in, sometime this weekend. When I do, I’ll post it up here and ask what you think. Queries are very tricky–they are extremely different from novels, and otherwise good writers often botch them up. We’ll see how this one goes.

So look out for an “I need your help!” post here in the near future! Thanks!

Bringing Stella Home 2.0 is finished!

Just in time for the new year, too! I finished it at approximately 11:25 pm on New Year’s eve 2010. Here’s the breakdown:

ms pages: 491
words: 136,095
file size: 1,869 KB
chapters: 30
start date: 14 July 2009
end date: 31 December 2009

And the wordle image:

I’m glad to have it finished. It’s got tons of issues with it–way too many for me to show it to an agent/editor–but I think this draft is significantly better than the first one. In particular, I’ve worked on improving the chapter structure: making sure that each chapter has consistent rising action, a central focus, a climax that develops the main story in some way, and compelling transitions that propel the reader into the next chapter. I don’t do any of that very well in first drafts.

So now that the second draft is finished, time to lay it aside for a while and work on something else. After a few months, I’ll be in a better position to pick it up and fix the major issues.

In the meantime, on to something new–in more ways than one!

Happy new year!

Genesis Earth 4.0 is complete!

And it’s about time. I started this back in September, thinking I could easily get it done before World Fantasy 2009. More than a month after the convention, and five days after the last self-imposed deadline, it’s done!

Alright, here are the stats:

ms pages: 270
words: 73,009
file size: 492 KB
chapters: 16, prologue & epilogue
start date: 28 September 2009
end date: 4 December 2009

When I finished, I was listening to “To far away times” from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack. It fit the mood perfectly–absolutely perfectly. The epilogue might be a little cheesy (if you were one of my alpha/beta readers, you’ll know why–thanks, Gini!), but in a good way, I think. Anyways, here’s the track:

It took me forever to finish this draft, but that’s what happens when you’re swamped with school, I guess. If this were the summer and I had nothing else on my plate, I probably could have finished it in 17 days (or less) like the 3.0 draft.

For a more detailed breakdown, here is a graph of my daily wordcount for the project:

Overall, though, I’m very satisfied with my work. I’m sure that if/when it gets picked up by a publisher, they will have a multitude of editorial critiques and suggestions, but I can honestly say this draft is as neat and polished as I can make it.

It’s time to send it out!

First personalized rejection!

Okay, I’m taking a quick break from the Final Fantasy 6 Werewolf tribute posts to mention some exciting news.

This might sound counterintuitive, but I got an encouraging rejection letter a couple of days ago from Krista Marino, one of the editors at the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference! This is what she said:

Thanks for giving me a look at Genesis Earth. You’ve got a great concept and storyline worked out. Unfortunately this just doesn’t feel like a book for teen readers. All best, Krista.

In publishing, from what I understand, personalized rejections are a significant step above the standard form rejections. Once you start getting personalized rejections, your writing is generally at or near publishable, and you’re not too far from breaking in.

What’s more, it seems that her reasons for rejecting the ms had more to do with audience, genre, and her personal tastes as an editor than problems with the story or my writing. That’s very encouraging–it tells me that when I find an editor/agent who’s a good fit for this kind of story, I have a decent chance.

Or I could be wrong and it’s generally standard for editors/agents to give personalized rejections to conference attendees; I’m not sure.

Regardless, it’s a step up from a form rejection. I should probably send a thank you postcard to her in the near future.

I also need to start looking for other places to submit Genesis Earth. So far, I’ve only got three partials out right now. I’ve been putting more effort into finishing the 4th draft, but I plan to finish that this week (one way or another, inshallah), so at some point in the near future I need to crack open Writer’s Market and just find a bunch of places to submit.

Also, just tonight I got a peek at the artwork for my story coming out in this month’s issue of Leading Edge. It looks REALLY good! I lucked out with some awesome art! I don’t yet know who did it, but I’ll be sure to post a link to the artist when I find out.

Also, once the issue goes to press, I’ll be sure to post a link where you can buy it. Currently, the only way to buy copies of Leading Edge is through a mail-in form that you print out (lame, I know), but they just got a new volunteer webmaster so that’s probably going to change in the near future.

(Man, somebody read my story and illustrated it! Drew pictures of it! And they’re good! I can’t get over that!)

🙂 🙂 🙂

WOTF rejection

So a couple days ago, I got a phone call from my Mom. A piece of mail had come in from the Writers of the Future contest.

Yeah, it was a standard form rejection.

Well, everyone puts in their time. I guess this counts toward that. A modified version of this story did well in the Mayhew contest, so I know it’s not utterly bad. But I can see, in retrospect, how it wouldn’t do well with WOTF.

The main body of the piece was a scene I took from the middle of my novel–really, it was more of a scene than a coherent, unified story. I threw on a beginning and an end, to try to fix that problem, but it probably didn’t mesh well with the real meat of it. Which is fine, because it was originally meant as a scene, not a short story.

The thing is, I’m just not much good at short stories. I don’t usually read them, and I don’t generally write them. Novel writing is my craft–every time I try to write a short story, I end up writing a novel. Once and a while, something clicks and a short story pops out (kind of like a Polaroid), but it’s not the usual thing.

So I’m not discouraged by this rejection from submitting to WOTF again, it’s just that it’s going to be kind of sporadic. I have one more short piece that I could submit to the contest right now, but I don’t expect it to go far. Still, it’s better than letting it sit in my hard drive.

In the meantime, I should probably submit that WOTF piece elsewhere, see what happens. That’s probably what I’ll do.

What I really need to do, though, is work on my novel. World Fantasy is coming up!

Final polish

I mapped out all the major assignments for my capstone class for the next month on my calendar. Turns out I’ve got a lot more work than I thought I did. Because of that, I decided to start work on Genesis Earth 4.0 today.

This is the final polish before World Fantasy convention. Of all the stuff I’ve written, Genesis Earth is the only ms that I feel is ready for me to send to editors/agents. With this draft, I hope to smooth out the writing, make the text more readable–basically, make this book really shine. We’ll see if it succeeds.

It’s kind of nerve-wracking, in some ways, doing this final edit (inasmuch as any edit is “final”). Previously, whenever I did a revision, I knew that I had time to come back later and fix anything that I just couldn’t get to. Now, this is where it counts. The writing has to be perfect.

Imagine how horrible it was to find a grammatical mistake on page one. I’d forgotten to capitalize the first word of a sentence in the third or fourth paragraph. Thankfully, it was the only mistake I saw on that page, but it’s enough to make me nervous about those chapters I sent out to the editors from BYU’s Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers. I know how to write–really, I do! Please believe me!

So today, every hour of the day was jam packed with classes, work, homework, and obligatory social activities. I only had two hours to write, and in that time, I only wrote about 500 words for Genesis Earth (though, to be fair, I’m measuring it by comparing documents and only counting the words that changed). Ouch. Not sustainable, if I want to finish Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home (I need to change that title) before World Fantasy. I made up for it by writing for half an hour just now in Stella, but still…

And this is where I hope I don’t mess things up. Every time I’ve tried to juggle two projects at once, I’ve found it very hard to do so. It’s something I’ll probably have to learn, if I want to write professionally, but it’s still very hard. I hope my writing quality doesn’t suffer because of it.

If worst comes to worst, I’ll focus on Genesis Earth until it’s done to my satisfaction. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, even with school. But I’m still keeping my goal to finish Stella before World Fantasy.

In unrelated news, in my political philosophy class today, Professor Hancock mentioned Huntington and I said, under my breath, “that guy was so full of crap.” Well, it turns out that Professor Hancock is quite the admirer of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations theory. This is going to make class…interesting, to say the least. After studying this stuff my entire college career, I really do believe that Huntington’s theories are utterly full of crap.

Oh, and I had a great idea for a comic: Plato’s Republic, as a cartoon! Okay, maybe I’m just a geek, but seriously, if it were done well, it could be really, REALLY cool. Really cool.

Six weeks to World Fantasy

Holy cow! How is September halfway over? It seems like school started just a week ago. Only six and a half weeks before World Fantasy convention in San Jose, and I think I’m going to have to readjust some of my goals.

I’d wanted to finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0 by the 11th of October, but the way school and work is looking, I probably won’t be able to write 2k words every day in order to meet that goal. Besides, the story has several major issues that can only be fixed with a major overhaul, so there’s no way this novel is going to be ready for submission in time for the convention.

However, Genesis Earth is looking pretty good. So far as story issues go, I was very satisfied with the third draft–I think I fixed all the major issues and wrote something that’s pretty close to salable. Before the convention, I want to go through and make one final revision, one where I polish up the prose and fix the readability issues. That shouldn’t be too hard–I can probably do that in two to three weeks.

So here’s what I’m going to do in the next six weeks. I’m going to check out all of Robert Charles Wilson’s books and immerse myself in his prose–not to copy it, but to hopefully boost the quality of my own prose. The quality of his writing is fantastic, a beautiful mesh of literary prose and thriller pacing and rhythm. While I’m doing that, I’ll start the 4.0 draft of Genesis Earth and work hard at it, until I’ve polished that work as much as I can. That’s the work that I’ll try to sell when I’m at World Fantasy.

I’m a little worried, because I submitted the full manuscript to Krista Marino back in June and haven’t heard back. At the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference, she said she had a response time of 4 months, but I’m worried I won’t hear back from her before World Fantasy. Is it appropriate to send a polite note asking her to get back to me before the convention? I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by sending out simultaneous submissions, and if an editor asks to see my ms, I want to be able to send it to them ASAP. Then again, I suppose I could just tell them that the full is currently with someone else, and that would demonstrate some professionalism…but I want to be able to send it if/when they ask for it.

Which reminds me: I need to do some HEAVY agent/editor research before this convention. I want to go to World Fantasy with a list of people to look for, so I know where to go to network, which panels to attend, who to look out for in the hallways and parties. I want to be very professional about this, and get the most out of those two/three days that I can.

As for Bringing Stella Home, my current WIP, I’m going to do my best to finish it before World Fantasy so that I can start November with something new. I need to finish that book before I can set it aside and let it percolate in my mind for the next revision. Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve worked on something completely new. After October, I’ll need to take a break from all these revisions.

So that’s the plan: Finish Genesis Earth 4.0 and Bringing Stella Home 3.0 before World Fantasy. Research all the editors and agents to look out for at the convention. Oh, and hold down 14 credit hours and 2 on-campus jobs at the same time, with some time left over for a dating/social life (INSHALLAH).

Hehe…these next six weeks are going to be packed!

Slush puppy feedback

A few weeks ago, I read a submission for The Leading Edge (I volunteer read slush for the magazine) from a lady from Germany. The story was about a dwindling race of indigenous natives being driven from their lands by a corporate, high-technology society. This one girl gets lost in the wilderness and everyone thinks she’s dead, but she’s really taken by this magical demigod woman who the natives worship. One of the natives basically sells his soul to integrate with the invaders, while the main character fights them up to the end.

It was an interesting story with some poignant moments, but way too much for 15,000 words. I wrote in my comments that this lady was really writing a novel and that she should try her hand at it, because if she pulled it off with some skill the story was good enough that I’d be willing to buy it.

Well, today we got a postcard in the mail from the same lady, thanking us for our kind comments! Here’s what she said:

Dear Director,

I want to apologize for sending you “Kith and Kin” which contained some inappropriate content*…it was kind of you to permit reviewers “RJ” and “JV” to comment nonetheless, and I found their comments detailed, thoughtful, and helpful! The piece has now placed elsewhere. Thank you for your time.

Very truly yours,

Suzanne Sykorn in Germany

That was kind of her to send a note! Good to know, also, that people find my comments helpful. The editors gave me the postcard, so it will be a nice writerly keepsake to add to my collection of rejection letters (and acceptance letter!!).

For my own career, I think I’ll do like this lady and send out postcards whenever I get a personalized rejection. It’s definitely a kind, thoughtful gesture.

*The inappropriate content mostly had to with sex and drug use. It didn’t bother me, as callous and profane as I am, but I think some of the other slush readers had issues. Since Leading Edge is a BYU publication, we have to follow BYU standards in what we publish.

Fistful of words

I’ve recently developed a taste for Ennio Morricone’s music. My writing process these days consists of me sitting down and watching this youtube clip:

After that, I’m all gunned up and ready to work!

Holy crap, today I sent out the first three chapters of Genesis Earth to the other two editors from the BYU Writers for Young Readers conference. What a rush! I spent a couple hours writing a chapter by chapter synopsis, rushed out a couple cover letters, bought $4.81 in wood pulp for both copies of the work, headed on over to the BYU Bookstore for the envelopes and all, and voila! Sent ’em off!

We’ll see what comes of them–probably more form rejections. It’s funny how when you print something off to send it out, it seems ten times worse than you remembered.

Well, I sent it out anyway. With writing, good things never happen to those who wait.

The question in my mind is now: does that synopsis count towards my daily word count goal? Because I only wrote 1,072 words in Genesis Earth 3.0 today (nothing in Ashes, sadly), but that synopsis was upwards of 2,800 words and took up a good chunk of my normal writing time. Eh, I’m counting it.

In unrelated news, I saw Star Trek the other day. Found it entertaining, but wasn’t very impressed. Too many holes that stretched the believability.

<spoilers>

For example, in the beginning, Kirk’s wife goes into labor during the evacuation and the child pops out…like, five minutes later? Or the red, fleshy monster on the ice world: no visible fat, no fur…how does that thing stay insulated in such a hostile environment? Or the Romulans drilling to the core of the world to create the black hole: why don’t they just create a black hole on the surface? Gets the job done a lot easier. Better yet, when Nero realizes that he’s gone back in time and his home world hasn’t yet been destroyed, why doesn’t he save his people instead of avenging himself on the Vulcans? Or…you get the point.

</spoilers>

I was never a big Star Trek fan growing up, though (except for Star Trek Voyager–I loved Voyager!). I can understand how the nostalgia would make a lot of people enjoy the movie. And really, it was very pretty–the graphics were great. Lots of action. It was entertaining, just…not as good as everyone makes it out to be, IMO.

I could say more, but that’s enough for tonight. Have a wonderful Sabbath!