Submitted

Writing and Waiting

/ Caroline Lord / Leave a comment

After spending two years writing my middle school novel, I thought I was finished, but it turns out, I wasn’t.

I was trying to send it out before its time. Or at least, that’s my rationale for the five literary agent rejections I received (smiley-face inserted here).

After those five rejections, I decided to pause and have an editor, Kate Juniper, read it.

The Waiting  — After a few weeks, she sent the novel back to me with great ideas and directions. She saw much that was good, but also ways to make the novel even better.

Writing Again  — At first, I didn’t want to touch it. I was attached to the way it was originally written. In a fit of nostalgia, I saved the original novel and created a copy for editing the novel.

I’m now following Kate’s excellent directions one at a time so that I don’t become overwhelmed.

Once I got into rereading, the parts that weren’t needed became obvious. Certain scenes didn’t serve the story or they weren’t propelling the plot forward. Now that I have a finished product, I can play with it, move sections around, add sensory details….it feels easier.

I’m working on the novel until the end of February. Then I’ll send it back to Kate in early March.

The Next Waiting — Her second full content editing round may take a month to six weeks.

Then it’s back to reaching out to agents. And lots more waiting!

And even if my novel is lucky enough to enter the publishing system, it still takes a long time, because the traditional book publishing world moves slowly.

Sometimes, the agent wants revisions before he or she will submit to editors. This can be 1-4 months or longer.

Pitching the novel to publishing houses can take 2 months to 2 years. It’s anyone’s guess.

If a person gets a book contract, the time between receiving the contract until your book is published can take 9 months to 2 years because of revisions back and forth between editor and writer.

I need to accept the fact that it’s just going to take a long time. Patience is a virtue. I better start gathering some up!

 

 

Query Letter and Synopsis

/ Caroline Lord / Leave a comment

In a few weeks, I want to contact literary agents with my young adult novel. I wrote this post to wrap my mind around how to go about it, and maybe, help other people in the process.

Literary agents help navigate the business side of publishing a novel.

They will negotiate a stronger contract with the publisher than you could manage by yourself.  Agents usually take around a 15% commission on the sale of your book.

Start with five or so agents who might be a good fit. Make sure they’ve represented authors with books similar to yours.

Each agent has specific submissions guidelines. So it’s important to follow his or her instructions on how to submit.

A few things to consider before reaching out.

First, finish your book before contacting agents. Because if they happen to like it, they may ask for a partial or complete manuscript, and it would be a bummer if you had to tell them it’s not ready or do a sloppy job rushing to complete it.

Next, it’s time to write the query letter and synopsis. Some agents just want a query letter from you. Others want a query and a synopsis.

They’ll also ask for some portion of your novel. Some want to see the first chapter, others, the first few paragraphs. Every agent is different.

For the query letter, keep it professional and brie­­f. One page should suffice.

The query should include:

– Why you are reaching out to the agent in particular. Make it specific. Agents want to know you’ve done some homework about who they are. That you’re not simply randomly sending out queries.

– The genre, word count, title.

– The hook -100-200 words of enticing description about your novel – make it a short encapsulation. Think of what the book jacket on your novel would say.

– Here is one way to breakdown the hook:

The protagonist and his/her conflict.

The choices the protagonist has to make.

And what Jane Friedman calls the sizzle.

– End with a short sentence about you and a thank you and closing.

Now for the synopsis. From my reading, people seem to dread writing this, and I can understand why. You have to boil your novel down to 1-2 pages.

The synopsis is designed to introduce the main characters and the story’s three acts. Basically, a summary of what happens in your book, but don’t explain every single detail of the plot because it will seem plodding and mechanical. A synopsis should also include the character’s feelings and emotions to make it more engaging.

Write it in present tense. If the novel is in first person, still use third person. And you should include the ending for the agents so that they have a complete overview of the novel’s arc.

This blog post breaks down a synopsis outline similar to the hero’s journey.

I read that many agents look at the query letter, then the chapters you send and then the synopsis.

If an agent is interested in your work, I was told by someone in the publishing world to ask for 48 hours to think about it. That way, you’re not rushing into this important agreement, because this partnership could potentially be long-term and deserves some thought.

If you get no bites from the first five agents, it might be a sign you need to take a pause and reevaluate your novel. But don’t give up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is it a numbers game?

/ jm / Leave a comment

IMG_5980

This wasn’t hard to take…so why isn’t my submission volume going up?

As a former television station marketing director and a former magazine editor, I’ve certainly had to consider how much effort it takes to capture one viewer, one reader….and I’ve been in plenty of meetings with sales teams. If submitting your work is a form of selling, why should it be any different?

Here we are at the mid-point of our Year of Submission, and I’ve been thinking about that. Part of our goal was to increase the volume of our submissions, yet I know I’m still tinkering with making things perfect–and not submitting frequently enough.

This article from Kim Liao came to my inbox at the just the right time last week, when endless editing was getting in the way of getting things out.

In “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year,” she begins:

Last year, I got rejected 43 times by literary magazines, residencies, and fellowships—my best record since I started shooting for getting 100 rejections per year. It’s harder than it sounds, but also more gratifying.

Those 43 rejections, she later says, came in alongside five acceptances AND six encouraging rejections.

Her article did turn my thoughts to the lessons I’ve learned in my other work:

  1. It can take a lot of exposure to win audience for a new TV program. Doesn’t mean the program isn’t great, just means the audience has yet to “find” it.
  2. Volume does matter in sales. I know account reps have to call on many clients to find the select few who have the need, the budget, and the belief that advertising with you is the right choice.
  3. When casting for a show or commercial, I see a lot of great actors–but that doesn’t always make them the right actors–and often for reasons that don’t have anything to do with acting. For example, I might have to cast a group that looks like a family, so I have to take the plausibility of that into account.

Liao writes:

Since I’ve started aiming for rejections, not acceptances, I no longer dread submitting. I don’t flinch (much) when I receive inevitable form rejection emails. Instead of tucking my story or essay apologetically into a bottle and desperately casting it out to sea, I launch determined air raids of submission grenades, five or ten at a time. I wait for the rejections, line up my next tier of journals, and submit again.

I wasn’t aiming for rejection earlier this year when I submitted to Jenny magazine, but I didn’t tie myself up in a knot over it either. Likewise, I submitted to Barrelhouse, was rejected, and it was no big deal.

It’s getting easier, but I still have a long way to go. I forced myself last week to submit a middle grade novel I’ve been working on to an agent who seems the right choice. I didn’t talk myself out of hitting send, even though I had plenty of doubts about whether I had gotten my query email right. Then, back to endless tinkering with the manuscript and I cringed: Despite all my editing, I’d still used the same word twice in the first page of that book.

Sigh. Of course, I tell students in my writing classes things like, “No one loves a novel for its perfect punctuation.” But the fear of making mistakes is hard to shake. So maybe the solution is to a) up the volume and also b) give myself another day to get it all wrong.

It’s May Already

/ jm / 2 Comments

IMG_4923

Better than zero, but sometimes it feels like our Year of Submission progress is much too slow. (And yes, Jenny could be writing while her plane is parked on the runway, but she’s goofing around on Snapchat instead.)

Caroline and I sat down with our lattes in the back room at Drip in Five Points last week, ready to push each other along. What have we done lately? Maybe more important, what haven’t we done?

Where are we, anyway? Week 18?

I can say I’ve sent more work out than I would have without our year of submission. I still haven’t done as much as I feel I should’ve. I think Caroline feels the same. We’re making progress. How do we make more of it faster?

These things have helped me:

  • Writing a weekly list of three to four specific things to be done
  • Having someone to discuss projects with who can suggest ways to unstick them
  • This little blog that somehow makes us accountable
  • Deciding that submitting trumps (whoops, can we still use that word) getting things perfect. Send the danged stuff out! Reckless abandon! Think yooge!
  • And, of course, Caroline. I highly recommend her as a partner in crime. She’s darned near perfect.

Caroline is making progress by working on her novel with an editor. I’ll let her post an update on that experience.

And I’ll wrap this up with a couple of links:

First, a blog post by someone I follow on Twitter: I feel like a fraud most of the time. Scroll down to the story of writers being encouraged by editors to submit and not following through. I’ve done exactly that! I was fortunate enough to be selected for the Rutgers One-on-One conference, was encouraged to submit my manuscript and….thanks to my pursuit of perfection, it still hasn’t been sent anywhere. Wondering how many other people have done the same.

Second, a link to Jenny magazine. They were the recipient of my first Year of Submission submission, they published one of my poems, and I so appreciate it.

A day to get it all wrong

/ jm / Leave a comment

IMG_5167

Two wrongs make a right? Caroline reporting to Jenny on her plan to get it all wrong today.

Caroline and I were sitting on my porch Sunday, talking about what we needed to do. I have a manuscript I want to submit. She has a short story she can send out. But once again, I found myself bogged down–paralyzed, really: Was my query letter/email perfect? What comparison could I draw to books already out there? What was my snappy one-line summation of my work?

We were back at that same place….trying to get everything right…so getting nothing submitted at all.

Then somehow it hit us. We would make Tuesday–today–a day to get it all wrong.

We’d send what we have, making our best yet imperfect effort to submit. Heck, maybe we’d do something wrong ON PURPOSE. Whatever. Just get the thing out the door.

I don’t know why we haven’t done this before. As a big-time women’s basketball fan, I thought of basketball as an analogy this morning when I was lacking courage to be a flop.

Would a young girl–say a Tiffany Mitchell–play basketball secretly in her driveway day after day, working to be WNBA calibre and never try out for rec league or a high school team? Would she wait until she was the best of the best to even try to get in the game?

Of course not. It’s important to try out, to get feedback, to play at the level you’re ready to play at today if you’re going to ever play at a higher lever tomorrow. Isn’t it?

I decided to answer yes and use it as another way to psych myself up to write that no-doubt-flawed email to a literary agent who may or may not be the right person to contact.

This day to get it all wrong has been a success. It’s 1:34 p.m. and we’ve sent our work out there.  No matter what happens next, I’m counting it as a breakthrough in our Year of Submission.

Update, 9:45pmIMG_5175
An email from Caroline, showing just how hard it is to get past that quest for perfection:

 

March Madness? Score!

/ jm / Leave a comment

IMG_4853

“Face it, Aunt Jenny. No one’s going to knock on your door and say ‘hey, you got any novels in there we can publish.'”

This is what my niece Coral had to say to me a few summers ago. She was 10 at the time. She’s an avid reader, and I’d hired her to read a novel I was working on and give me some notes. She did and also suggested that I send it to a publisher. A fan of the Warriors books, she’d said, “I think HarperCollins would like this.” I explained it isn’t that easy.

That’s when she gave me her brilliant little response. I’ve been repeating it to myself ever since.

“No one’s going to knock on your door….”

I thought about it when I hit the submit button on Super Bowl Sunday, sending off my poems without a bit of expectation that one would be accepted.

And what do you know?

March opened with one of my poems being selected for the April issue of Jenny.

I’m so appreciative. What a great way to get the Year of Submission going. Not rejected but accepted. What a sweet little confidence boost.

One I’ll need, because I’ve been researching where to send a book manuscript. Just reading the submission guidelines makes my heart rate go up and my hands shake, despite trying to adopt a “looking for the help I need” attitude.

To which my niece, now 14, would probably say “Oh, get over it” or text me the emoji equivalent. Because, of course, no one is going to knock on your door…

Super Bowl Gamble

/ jm / Leave a comment

Super Bowl Sunday seemed like the perfect time to make my first submission of the year. I (Jenny) saw on Twitter that a magazine (also called Jenny) was accepting work through midnight. I could use Submittable to get mine in. And I had three poems I’d pulled out last week to review and consider.

poemsontable

Just what the world needs–a poem about Terminix

So while the usually cheerful Cam Newton was taking a pounding on TV (poor guy), I was hitting the send button–not in the least worried about rejection. Expecting it. Don’t mind if I get it.  But feeling great about submitting something.

IMG_4250

In the light of day, I dare to look. Yes, I really did submit something.

So there.  Maybe I sound more like a loser at the Academy Awards than the QB for the Panthers.

The magazine I sent my poems to uses Submittable, which does make it awfully easy to send your work out.  (Too easy, some editors may think. I believe Caroline used it for the journal she published, so we’ll ask her about that.)