ABNA Cadabra

So I entered ABNA last week.  I did within a few hours of the contest opening, so I’m pretty confident I made the cut off.  I been reading other people’s posts about prepping their novel and grinding their query into game shape, and I realized something. 

I really didn’t do anything.

I could tweak, revise, and line edit my MS for the next twenty years and never be completely satisfied with it.  Not only that, but I think I hit the point of diminishing returns, where it’s about as good as it’s ever going to get, and the more work I put in will generate a smaller and smaller result.  So basically they got what I gave them, and if they don’t like it, so be it.

I wouldn’t have entered the contest if I didn’t think I had some kind of chance, but realistically, I’m going up against 4,999 other novels, many of them literary fiction.  I’m rooting for myself, and since anything else is now out of my control, I won’t gnash my teeth or rend my clothing if I don’t win.

A publishing contract and a trip to New York would be sweet, but what I know I’ll get from this no matter what happens, is a definite assessment of my query.  I really think my story is appealing enough to make through the first round, which is judged solely on the pitch, which is essentially my query.  So if I don’t make through, I’ll know for sure that my query isn’t going cut it no matter who I send it to.  If it passes, I’ll know I’m on the right track, and I’ll just widen my agent net a little more.

Here’s the pitch that I sent.  The main problem is that it feels long, even though it’s less than 250 words.

Seventeen-year-old Theadne Adir dreams of using her gift of speed to escape her bleak future on Qalon and to build a better life for her family. She’d even escape being Qalonian if she could. Her little brother is dying, her mom works two jobs just to provide scraps, and her entire universe is a sixteen block nightmare called the Pit. For decades, Qalon has cowered under the grip of the Sarall Supremacy, and through the aliens’ occupation, she’s learned to believe what the Supremacy teaches: Qalonians are the most wretched and pitiful life forms in the solar system.

When the Supremacy’s war with the planet Muer reaches Qalon, Thea’s way out seems shut until a midnight swim brings her face to face with an enemy not at all what they seem. Mistaken for a Muer collaborator, Thea finds herself running not for ribbons but for her life in a desperate trek through the darkest reaches of Qalon and into the arms of Talus of Raal, the captivating son of a Muer noble.

Thea and Talus’s obvious affection runs afoul of the Muerlings’ xenophobic sensibilities even as the Muerling Army launches a desperate assault on the full might of the Supremacy Military. Forced into a covert mission as a native guide on the streets of her home, Thea finds herself caught between enemies on both sides of the battle lines and suddenly torn between self preservation and the survival of a planet, and a race, she’s slowly learning to love.

So basically, I’m hoping on the first round; anything else is cake.

Mmm…cake…

That’s the Best You’ve Got?

So I got my first rejection Tuesday morning.  It came at around midnight Chicago time, for some reason.  Despite knowing the odds and understanding the nature of the business and the overwhelming depth of competition, and knowing that I’d probably be rejected at first, I was still mildly surprised at my reaction to the form rejection email:

Meh.

Seriously.  I was almost glad I got it; it beats the limbo of not hearing anything, of wondering if you screwed up so royally it was all they could do to hit the delete button before any more damage was done, like Captain Kirk struggling to pull the warp drive lever before the ship explodes  (“Must…delete…query!”).  Or something like that.  Logically, every rejection is a setback, one more magnetically sealed security door keeping me separated from my goals.  Logically, I should try to glean any drops of info from the form rejection that help me understand what went wrong.

But really, I didn’t feel anywhere near the emotional reaction I thought I might.  I didn’t drop to the ground in my Nancy Kerrigan impersonation (Why?!  WWhhhyyy!?).  I’ll probably get two more in the next week or two I can add to the collection, though I’m not dreading it.  Which of course begs Nancy’s question.

Why?

Not “Why did I get rejected?” but “Why don’t I seem to care?”  I can’t really answer that.  It’s not because I have time, that’s for sure.  I’m not ancient, but I am a month from forty.  I don’t have the luxury to query a project for two or three years, give up, and move on to the next, and hope I can be published “by the time I’m thirty”.  Thirty was ten years ago.  I don’t want to just publish a book, I want to build a career, a body of work that I can leave behind as marker of my time here. 

Maybe it’s because I’m no stranger to rejection.  Don’t worry, I won’t hop on the psychiatrist’s couch here, but the realty is, I’ve had a lot worse.  Using a 300-word cold-call to convince an overworked agent that my MS out of thousands is the one she should commit her time and reputation to?  We’re set up for failure.  Rejection is expected.  We don’t cry when our lottery ticket’s a bust; we don’t rend our clothing when we’re not the thirtieth caller for concert ticket giveaways.  For every lucky (and deserving) duck who gets his book published, there are probably dozens of great novelists whose work will never be known. 

From a career standpoint, every rejection sucks.  From a personal standpoint, it really doesn’t bother me.  Maybe that’ll change after a hundred rejections, or even ten.  But for now, I’m rolling with it.  This is what we chose to do.  And we chose it because we love to write.

And no one can ever take that from us.

Should Auld Rejections be Forgot…

I was going to write a retrospective of 2010 today, the highs and lows, the accomplishments and setbacks, the losses and the discoveries.  It was a year unlike any other, although there were no major tragedies or triumphs.  It was a very workmanlike year, each up and down a small cog in the machinery of my days.  But put them together and…I don’t know.  It was significant.  I was going to share all that, as I’ve had no hesitation sharing things on here, but I’ve decided to keep it to myself, just this once.  I’m not sure why.  Just because, I guess.

It’s been a while – too long – since I wrote a piece about my writing escapades.  Christmas is over, 2010 is breathing its last, and the publishing world will once again spring to life, exploring strange new queries, seeking out new authors and new manuscripts, boldly going. . .

Never mind, thinking of something else.  My point is, vacation is over; it’s time to get back to work.

And I will have my query ready. 

I had a mini-epiphany while twisting, pulling, and spindling(?) my query to mold it into the shape of that most mythical of creatures – the Perfect Query Letter.  What’s perfect?  To hear some tell, it’s as much detail as possible; others want little more than a logline. 

The trick, I think (but it’s not a trick really), to a good query is not in the writing but in the research.  Research the agents that fit your work and craft a query to fit each one of them individually.  It may take a lot of searching, especially the agents who don’t blog.  Find out what type of query a particular agent likes to read and write that query.  Then write a different query for the next.  I can’t speak to the mindset of an agent, but I know I’d be more inclined to linger over a query written in the style I prefer.  If you get a box of candy, you may eat them all, but you’re going after the kinds you like first. 

Instead of trying to force your writing to be perfect for everyone, accept the fact that it’s not and narrow the audience down those who will like it (and maybe even request pages as a result), then keeping the core of your pitch, write another in a totally different style if you have to.  Maybe this agent focuses on plot, and that one is more interested in finding a fresh voice.  And keep doing it.  It sounds hard, but really, writing isn’t the hard part, is it?  It’s forcing your writing to please everyone that’s hard. 

Anyway, that’s my theory.  Those of you ahead me, who’ve done the querying already, can tell me I’m nuts, or “duh” as the case may be.  I’ll find out soon enough.  

Would You Like Some Cheese with That?

There’s one distinct (and lonely) advantage to not having anyone in my real life that can relate to the struggles of an aspiring writer: it precludes my urge to whine. If no one has any idea of just what’s so important about a query letter, then whining about not wanting to do it isn’t going to get me a lot of traction.

“So don’t do it, then.” 
“But I have to.” 
“So do it.”
“But I don’t wanna…”
“So don’t..."
“Aarrgh!! You not helping!”

So like a garage full of old paint cans and greasy rags, I lack ventilation, in the sense I can’t vent properly. So that usually leaves me no choice but to suck it up and just do it.  But like that garage, if I can’t vent sooner or later, eventually I'll become toxic.  I love my wife, and she is the most supportive person I’ve ever known, but she doesn’t know the intricacies of the publishing world.  She can’t point out the importance of the query letter or observe that I’m not procrastinating out of laziness or inconvenience, but because I know this is my shot – if I screw up the query, it doesn’t matter how good my book is.  Three years of my soul in the hands of 300 words (there’s a Thermopylae reference in there somewhere).  And my coworkers will never have the insight to point out to me that maybe I’m putting off querying because I know I can’t be rejected if I don’t put myself out there.

As a result, I know that no matter how cutesy/sympathetic/alright-enough-already annoying I am, I can’t whine at home; I can’t whine at work; I can’t even whine on Facebook.

So guess what that leaves?

I don’t want to write my query letter.  I’ve spent three years agonizing over this damn book; haven’t I bled enough?  I want to catch up on some reading.  I want go outside and make snow angels.*  I want to watch bad television.  Why do I have to write a letter anyway?  Can’t I just send them my MS along with a hundred or so cover ideas, my non-negotiable terms, and a list of who I think should play the characters in the movie?  Come on!


Hey, that actually worked; I feel so much better now.  Alright, enough whining.  I’ve got work to do.

---

* I really, really don’t want to make snow angels.

NaNo NoMore

This past Halloween, otherwise known as the day before NaNo, not only did I bury my dead cat, but we were also on Puppy Bowel Movement Watch, because all three of the dogs had devoured a plate of bone-in buffalo wings while no one was watching.  It’s a funny story now, but for the last day of October and the first of November, we were certain at least one of them was going to have a blocked colon or ruptured intestines.  As if that weren’t enough, I spent the first six hours of November in the emergency room with my wife.  Oh, and I got stopped by a cop on the way there.  With expired plates (me, not the cop).  He let me off with a warning, but took his sweet time doing it, or so it seemed at the time.  Fortunately, my wife is doing fine now, and so are the dogs.  November, however, did not get off to a very fun start, although it did better.

Sadly, December has arrived and I did not reach 50K, nor did I finish the novel.  I’m disappointed but not really upset about it.  I knew going in that after spending three years on my first first draft, NaNo would be like going from climbing Mt. Baldy (a sand dune on the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan) to climbing Mt. Everest.  I made it more than 80% up before the lack of oxygen started making me loopy.  Despite my rough start, I actually recovered pretty well and got into several nice strides.  By the middle of last week, however, NaNo, work, more work, home, and everything else just piled up and I crashed.  I made a pretty good rebound, writing nearly 10K in two days, but my heart just wasn’t in it.  And my brain was fried.  I really didn’t want to just type out a bunch of train-of-thought nonsense just to win a virtual sticker.

It was definitely a worthwhile experience, though.  My goal, of course, was to finish, but my intent was to learn from this, to pick up some tools and habits that will make me a more efficient writer without sacrificing quality, to learn how to persevere, to write when I need to, not just when I want to and still hold on to the truth and heart that makes any book worth reading.  Writing a novel on a month may be unrealistic; writing one in six isn’t.  I can do that now.  So yes, I won NaNo.

As far as the book itself, I’m going to keep plugging away, at my own (now quicker) pace.   I’m going to unshackle my inner editor and let him out of the cellar where he’s been eating Baby Ruths and watching pirate movies with Sloth for the past month.  I hope to have it done in a week or so.  After that, the book gets to sit in a (virtual) drawer for awhile.  Next up, polishing The Wind Maiden just a little more, rewriting my query letter until my fingertips bleed, and of course, working extra to pay for Christmas and the writer’s conference I want to go to in January.

Oh, yeah, and I want to start on the sequel this month, too.

November’s gone, but December’s just getting started.  Wish me luck.

So what are you post-NaNo (or didn’t-do-NaNo-in-the-first-place) December plans?

The Investment

My wife works as a waitress at a local restaurant.  She is better at her job than I’ve ever been at any job I’ve had.  And I’ve had a lot.  She works the day shift and still manages to bring home a ton of money.  Unfortunately, the owners recently eliminated breakfast from their menu, cutting into my wife’s tips.  Without her regular breakfast customers, business has been a trickle and her tips have suffered.  I feel bad for her because she enjoys her job, and she works her butt off.  She doesn’t work as many hours as I do, but she does a lot more when she’s there.*

The point is, we don’t have a lot of money coming in (through no fault of hers), and as I plunge deeper into the haunted forest that is the road to Publication, only now do I see what a financial commitment it’s going to take.  I knew about the time commitment: writing, revising, research, marketing, but I never realized how damn expensive the whole thing is.  It cost seventy bucks to have five copies of my book printed – single spaced (!) for my beta-readers because I couldn’t afford to double space it.  Aren’t we supposed to be starving artists?  Aren’t organizations like Writer’s Digest supposed to know that? 

I just spent ninety bucks on a writing webinar.  It was worth it; the advice I got took me from not having a clue about querying to potentially writing a killer pitch.  But my point is, I really couldn’t afford it, I definitely can’t afford that next one that rolls around, whether or not that one also could prove invaluable.  I was looking at writers’ workshops online today; so many caught my eye.  Then I noticed the price tag.  What good are workshops if the people who really need them can’t afford them?  Some may say if it’s important to you, then you have to spend the money.  True, but eating is also important to me (and my family).

Anyway, before this turns into Broke Writer’s Lament, I found an online writer’s conference in New York this January.  I can’t afford to go, but in this case, I think I can’t afford not to.  In addition to the seminars, guest speakers, and networking opportunities,** they have what they call a “pitch slam,” where they lock you in a room with fifty agents who slam your pitch.  No, not really.  It’s an opportunity to essentially do what I did with the pitch critique fifty times over (actually thirty-four if you consider three minutes per agent plus “shuffle” time over two hours).  I’ll get a chance to verbally pitch my novel to as many agents as I can, and they’ll tell me what works and what doesn’t.  Theoretically, I could even get an offer for pages, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I told my wife about it and what it costs; not only is she okay with it, but I think she’s making me go.  I can’t believe how lucky I am to have the support and patience she gives me, and yes, I do appreciate how rare that is.  Maybe that’s my secret weapon.  I can’t afford writing workshops or fancy software or a ton of accessories.  But what she gives me is worth all that and a universe more.  I just hope I’m worth it.  

*I once heard being a paramedic described as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.  It’s not unusual for us to go for hours on end without a call, then get that one really bad call, where nothing goes right, and the stakes are literally someone’s life.

**Yeah, I don’t ‘network’ well; you should see me at the few parties I attend (“Dan, this is the hydrangea in the corner; hydrangea, Dan.”)

Here we go...

Well, I’ve finished the pitch proposal.  Actually, I finished a few days ago, but I’ve been staring holes into it ever since.  And I’m still not convinced it can’t be better.  I’ve showed it to as many people as I can (which, sadly, is about seven or eight), and for the most part have gotten the standard “Oh, I’d read it,” response.  That’s good of course, but I lack the discerning eye of the industry professional.  Although my wife has given me surprisingly insightful feedback (surprising because she praises everything I write – not necessarily because it’s any good, but because she is wonderfully supportive).  She pointed out some repetition as well as part that don’t quite flow.  I’ve taken her opinion to heart and made some changes; hopefully it’ll be enough to generate some interest.

After that, it’s all up to the book.

Short but Hard

No, I’m talking about my pitch paragraph.  Our ‘homework’ for the previously mentioned webinar was to revise our query pitch paragraph, and e-mail it to the agent who presented the webinar (I can’t stop saying ‘webinar’) for a personalized critique.  The query pitch can get your foot in the door, or it can kill your chances before anyone’s read a page of your book.  Naturally, I want to do my best.  I’ve been working on it for over a week now, and it’s proven harder in its own way than the book itself.  Eight to twelve sentences to convince an agent your novel is better than 99% of the thousands of queries they get a week. 

No pressure.

The webinar (heh) proved worth the admission fee and more, as I went from describing my novel in endless circles that either drove people away or into deep bouts of I-don’t-give-a-crap, to being able to not only present my story in a tight, coherent fashion, but also to generate actual interest in the book itself.  Until it gets read by industry professionals, I’ll have no idea how good it is – the query or the novel – but on both counts, I know I’ve done my very best.

Well, maybe one more touchup.

First Contact

Yesterday, after six months revising and nearly three years writing my novel and over a decade before that of failed attempts, aborted story ideas, and general foot-dragging, I finally took my first baby steps into the business end of the book world.  No I’m not published yet not by a mile, but for the first time, I interacted (sort of) with an honest-to-goodness literary agent and a tiny piece of the literary world.  It may not seem like anything to those actively immersed in the world.  To me, however, Publication* is now no longer a mythical city on a hill, but an obtainable, albeit challenging, reality. 

I’ve spent the last ten years working on an ambulance.  Wonderful people, but not exactly the literati.  It’s been difficult just finding people to read my manuscript, finding like-minded souls to muse about the peculiar life of a writer, particularly an unpublished one.  I work a crazy amount of hours, and of course there are no writing groups in my immediate area.  My friends are all paramedics, EMTs, and firefighters; it would be tough starting a reading group, much less one for writers.  Therefore, like the solitary witch, I write without a coven; I edit with only an inkling of feedback.  And as I put the finishing touches on my manuscript and prepare with trembling hand to send that first query letter into the world, I do it alone.

Which was why this seminar was so important.  To hear from an agent in her own words exactly what she’s looking for, to have her address my questions and even look at my pitch proposal gave everything weight; it made it all real.  I can get Published; it’s hard work and could take years, but I know it’s possible.  There are people like me, no experience, no background in publishing, that every day are selling  their manuscript, or finding that perfect agent who’s passionate about their work.  I’m in the game now.  It’s the fourth quarter, I’m down by three touchdowns, and my offensive line has snuck off to Applebee’s, but I’m in the game.

As I get older, so much about life seems to involve endings.  This, however, is a beginning, and a big one.  And beginnings are so much better.

*I've decided to capitalize Published and Publication until I am Published.  Or until I get tired of it.