Here’s a variation on that advice that just occurred to me: when you’re querying your book, take notes on your mental state, particularly as you receive rejections. Make an activity out of it. Not only will it give you something productive to do while you’re doing all this waiting (besides writing your next novel, of course), but it will offer [...]]]> Take notes. This is one of the most repeated, not to mention most apt, pieces of advice that writers will hear. Carry a notebook with you, or use your laptop or cyberphone if you have it, but make sure that you put your ideas and observations down in some tangible form before they pass out of your head. A lot of it will be junk, but there are veins of gold to be mined from all those random scribblings.

Here’s a variation on that advice that just occurred to me: when you’re querying your book, take notes on your mental state, particularly as you receive rejections. Make an activity out of it. Not only will it give you something productive to do while you’re doing all this waiting (besides writing your next novel, of course), but it will offer you a wealth of emotional description to call on later. There’s something kind of magical about rejections: each one hits you in its own unique way. I’ve gotten more than 75 rejection letters by now (with many more still to come), but no two of them felt the same. Each of my responses was a special cocktail made up of varying degrees of anger, frustration, sadness, self-pity, dismissal, black humor, and even renewed self-confidence. You could get a thesaurus out of it.

Still, I can group them into loose categories. The worst are the gut-punch rejections, the ones that you either didn’t see coming or that caught you with your hopes up. Last week I got one of those, from one of my ace-in-the-hole agents who wanted to see more from me after rejecting The Northerners. Well, maybe “ace”-in-the-hole is a bit of wishful thinking; it was more like a pair of threes in the hole, but it was enough to raise my expectations. So when this agent passed on my partial, it definitely hurt, and although I probably read too much into the fact that he didn’t ask to see my next book this time around, that helped land the punch right on my liver.

More common are the ear-flick rejections. These are the ones that cause only momentary annoyance on their own (usually these are form query rejections and not partial or full rejections). But each flick makes your ear hurt a little more and sours your mood, so hopefully enough time passes between them that you can relax a bit and not take them too hard.

The best rejections, however, are the ones that fuel your fire. These rejections bring about the “I’ll show you” response and turn you into the hero of your own underdog sports movie. “I’ll revise and rewrite, I’ll keep querying, I’ll write ten more books if I have to, but I’ll get published and I’ll kick your ass, Apollo!” These responses have less to do with the rejections than with you the writer, but they’re absolutely critical. And they’ll be there when you need them. If not, play the Rudy theme or run in slow motion down a beach, and you’ll be surprised how much better you feel. Either way, take notes on how you feel, because if you’re going to go through the emotional wringer like this you should at least get some material out of it.

Then I talked to my friend Dana Kaye, a fellow novelist and professional publicist, and she pointed out something I hadn’t thought of: vacations. Lots of agents take them in August, and it isn’t until after Labor Day that things get kicked [...]]]> Last week, I was feeling pretty antsy about the two partials I’d sent out (I got a partial request from the first agent at the end of July, and in mid-August I went ahead and queried the other agent who wanted to see more of my writing. Agent 2 wanted a partial included in the query). This was premature, of course, since agents will often take two months or even more to respond to a partial, but I couldn’t help getting my hopes up whenever I opened the mailbox.  You know how it is:

Then I talked to my friend Dana Kaye, a fellow novelist and professional publicist, and she pointed out something I hadn’t thought of: vacations. Lots of agents take them in August, and it isn’t until after Labor Day that things get kicked back into gear. I learned from Dana that a huge proportion of authors get represented and/or signed between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, perhaps because everyone in publishing has come back refreshed and ready to knuckle down on their work.

So, I’m taking advantage of this and querying full-steam. I’ve now got 10 queries out, including one requested partial, and I’m going to go through all the former agents I tried and see who’s still taking on clients. We’ll see if it works. Stay tuned!

Much like when I started writing the book, this doesn’t feel all that momentous.  It’s just another query, number 62 or something like that.  The only difference is that it’s a new book I’m hawking this time.  Well, that’s not entirely true; I do feel all the optimism I felt when I was first sending out queries for The Northerners, because Hubris has yet to feel the sting of rejection.  It’s nice [...]]]> All right, it’s officially on. I just dropped my first Hubris query letter into the mailbox. Technically I still have a few revisions to do (a friend of mine recently delivered a full critique that’s been very helpful), but I probably have a good month before I hear back from this agent, so now I can keep up the rewrites with an added incentive to stay on schedule.

Much like when I started writing the book, this doesn’t feel all that momentous.  It’s just another query, number 62 or something like that.  The only difference is that it’s a new book I’m hawking this time.  Well, that’s not entirely true; I do feel all the optimism I felt when I was first sending out queries for The Northerners, because Hubris has yet to feel the sting of rejection.  It’s nice to have a clean slate, and I’m actually feeling really confident about this one, but I’m definitely not done with disappointment yet.  I’m trying to be a professional writer, after all.  Disappointment will be my lifelong courtesan.

That sounds like a more morbid thought than it actually is.  I’m just being realistic.  If I didn’t think writing was worth all the rejections and letdowns, I wouldn’t be doing it.  In a good story, characters don’t earn their highs until they endure some brutal lows.  Sometimes real life is just the same.

Charlie just wanted to reconnect with his adopted sister, Adriana. Adriana just wanted to avenge her birth mother by killing the six Gods and ending their tyrannical reign over the universe. But then things got complicated. Charlie has met the Gods, and though they’re rattled and threatened, they don’t seem much like tyrants. What’s more, they claim that if Adriana succeeds in killing all of them, she’ll wipe out the universe in the process. Adriana thinks they’re bluffing; the godishes, impish immortal beings that are not quite gods but not quite anything else, are in her corner. But even Adriana is starting to suspect that she’s being manipulated.

As Charlie races from New York to the Tian Shan mountains to [...]]]> Yesterday I did it, months before I thought I would: I actually wrote a query letter pitch for Hubris.

Charlie just wanted to reconnect with his adopted sister, Adriana. Adriana just wanted to avenge her birth mother by killing the six Gods and ending their tyrannical reign over the universe. But then things got complicated. Charlie has met the Gods, and though they’re rattled and threatened, they don’t seem much like tyrants. What’s more, they claim that if Adriana succeeds in killing all of them, she’ll wipe out the universe in the process. Adriana thinks they’re bluffing; the godishes, impish immortal beings that are not quite gods but not quite anything else, are in her corner. But even Adriana is starting to suspect that she’s being manipulated.

As Charlie races from New York to the Tian Shan mountains to the bowels of the earth to stop her, Adriana must face the anger that drives her, and decide whether she’s willing to risk everything-literally-to finish what she’s started.

And already I’m finding faults in it.  This, folks, is my least favorite kind of writing.  I’d rather churn out a dissertation on minor property disputes in 1890s Oklahoma than try to distill a 90,000 word story into a couple of paragraphs.  Or less.  While maintaining a strong sense of the characters, setting, tone, and emotional stakes.  And making it sound irresistible.  Which, considering my rejections outnumber my partial requests by about 30 to 1, I’m really not very good at.

But an author’s gotta what an author’s gotta do.  Writing a good query is a skill every writer needs, and the only way to get better is with lots of painful, demoralizing practice.  I’m glad I got a head start on this one, at least.

The manuscript is now ready (I hope) for the scrutiny of my beta readers: my girlfriend, friends, and family.  We’ll see what they have to say.  I’m quite proud of the story; it’s a lot more ambitious than my first two [...]]]> Last night I finished my first big revision of Hubris. There were only a couple of major changes: I had to do a complete rewrite of the critical first page, remove the second chapter and place its exposition much later in the story, and cut out about a third of one lengthy middle chapter.  I ended up cutting out more than I added, so this draft is about 2500 words shorter than the last.  The whole process was slow and sometimes grueling.  I don’t like revising, and I never will, but it feels great to have it finished.

The manuscript is now ready (I hope) for the scrutiny of my beta readers: my girlfriend, friends, and family.  We’ll see what they have to say.  I’m quite proud of the story; it’s a lot more ambitious than my first two novels, and I think the end result is more accessible and compelling.  But I’m way too close to the text now.  I need a few outside perspectives before I can do any more work on it.

So, now I can relax and spend the next few months on my other projects, or just on reading, watching movies and playing video games.  I feel like I’m on vacation.

In related news, I got a rejection letter from the agent who was interested in The Northerners. But!  This was a good rejection, because he called it a “near miss” and said he liked my writing, but just wasn’t interested in this particular story.  He encouraged me to send him my next novel, and I will.

So The Northerners is not likely to get published anytime soon, but all that querying was still worth it. I went from having no contacts or prospects to having two agents who explicitly asked me to send them my next book.  If my beta readers really like it, including my writing-inclined acquaintances who I can count on to be demanding*, I might be querying again as soon as this summer.  We shall see.

* Even if you have demanding friends, your best bet for unbiased criticism is to join a writing group.  One of these days I’m going to follow that advice.

But I have to say, I’m still pretty happy with my book. Yes, it needs work (often not in the places I expected), but there’s some real promise here. I really look forward [...]]]> It’s done: the dreaded first readthrough of Hubris is finished. I don’t know if other writers find it as scary as I do to take a fresh look at their work; when I finished The Northerners, I had to make myself wait a full week before going over it, but now I could set a manuscript aside for months if I let myself. I guess now I know how much work still awaits me after a first draft, and I know how many warts I’ll have to confront when I finally pick up that fat stack of paper. It’s not my favorite part of the process.

But I have to say, I’m still pretty happy with my book. Yes, it needs work (often not in the places I expected), but there’s some real promise here. I really look forward to showing it to people. In other words, the last six months were not a complete waste of time, and that’s all I ask for at this point.

Thanks to this agent, I’ve learned something new: some agents actually do reply positively via mail.  I’ve heard some authors advise you to not bother including a self-addressed stamped envelope with your query; it’s a sign of self-respect, they say, [...]]]> Just as I was about to start my first read-through of Hubris (and still am), I received another partial request from an agent interested in The Northerners. I was just about ready to give up on querying The Northerners – I was even saying so as I opened the envelope, since I was convinced it was another rejection – but once again I spoke too soon.  Of course, as I’ve learned, a partial request only means that I’ve gone from about a 99% chance of rejection to more like a 90% chance of rejection, but hey, I’ll take it.

Thanks to this agent, I’ve learned something new: some agents actually do reply positively via mail.  I’ve heard some authors advise you to not bother including a self-addressed stamped envelope with your query; it’s a sign of self-respect, they say, and if the agent is really interested they’ll call you or email you, since they only use the SASE for rejections.  Well, here’s a nice counter-example. Now this advice is not just questionable, but demonstrably wrong.

I was never really convinced by the no-SASE argument.  Even if the agent only wants the SASE for rejections, why would you want to immediately antagonize them?  When you’re just another unsolicited query in a big slush pile, you’ve got enough going against you as it is.  There’s nothing wrong with being professional and giving the agent what they asked for.

Anyway, we’ll see where this leads.  This has renewed my faith in the querying process if nothing else.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but meanwhile I’ve got Hubris to read and revise.  Let’s hope it’s worth shopping around.

Now two things await me: champagne and sleep.  Someday soon I will have to face the long agony that is revision, but for now, I get to relax while my third novel sits dormant and awaits my return.

This is the point, for me, when writing begins to feel like mild insanity. The story starts to follow me everywhere and distracts me when I’m trying to have conversations. I wake up from convoluted dreams starring my characters and plot points (once, when I was writing my first novel, I swear I had a dream in text. No joke) and I have trouble falling back [...]]]> I’ve abandoned my 1000-word-a-day goal, but that’s a good thing. Now I’m sprinting for the finish line. In the last three days I’ve written something like 5,000 words and I’m almost to the big climactic climax of the story. There’s a lot that goes on in the end of this book; it may need to be streamlined when the time comes for revision. I’m doing my best not to worry about that yet.

This is the point, for me, when writing begins to feel like mild insanity. The story starts to follow me everywhere and distracts me when I’m trying to have conversations. I wake up from convoluted dreams starring my characters and plot points (once, when I was writing my first novel, I swear I had a dream in text. No joke) and I have trouble falling back asleep afterward. I catch myself mouthing lines of dialog on the train.

Maybe I write fast because I’m so eager to return to my normal thought patterns. Or maybe it’s writing fast that makes me crazy in the first place. Either way, I don’t actually mind this period so much. Writing a novel is such a drawn-out and often boring process that it’s nice to get an exciting week out of it at the end.

Three days left, maybe even two if I’m quick. Stay tuned.