Either Agents are Liars or You Are Not Ready

Okay, so maybe "liar" is a strong word. Exaggerators? Maybe.

As you know, I am editing my novel which is going well, but definitely more work than I thought. (I forgot that I attempted to use Dragon Naturally Speaking to write a few chapters. They will have to be completely re-written.) And it's kind of boring. I don't like it. So, in order to keep my spirits up, I allow myself to research agents after I finish a block of editing. It's like a reward. Yes, I find the research fun. It gets my hopes up and makes me feel like I am closer to realizing my dream.

Of course, part of that research entails finding out what the agents want to see and what they don't. I get the query letter. Having some business experience, I understand the reason for it and the need for it's brevity. I am comfortable with the format. It is, simply, a business letter. I get it. What I don't get, and honestly find hard to believe, is the number of reports by agents of receiving anything other than even a semi-professional letter. Every book, blog, and interview I have read talks about agents receiving queries on colored paper, hand-written queries, printed in crazy inks and fonts, and formatted in unusual ways. Even on things such as Post-It notes. They make out like they get them all of the time. Really? All the time? I can understand the occasional oddity, but on a consistent basis?

Either agents are exaggerating the number and frequency of these, or there are a lot of people who are just not ready to be professional writers.

Yes, I said you are not ready. If you send an agent anything other than a well-written, printed query then you are just. not. ready. Like I said, nearly EVERYTHING I have read about landing an agent warns against this, so even a half-assed search should stop you from sending your query on lime green paper, printed in purple ink, and sprayed with grandma's perfume. You wouldn't send out a resume or a legal document out that way. (I hope.)

 It's just hard for me to believe that we live in a world where "Mike the Situation" is one of the highest ranked Google searches, but you didn't even bother to Google "How to get an agent?" before you sent out your query? How did you even know where to send it? You must not have put that much effort into your research. Unless, you think the rules don't apply to you. Either way, you are not ready to write professionally. And if your not in it to be a professional, then why bother with an agent in the first place?

So, which one is it? Deep down I hope the agents are telling the truth. (It would cut my competition.) I am not an agent, though,  and don't have one to ask. This is just what I think. Any agent, or writer who had a query like that work for them, is welcome and encouraged to comment.

My First Guest Post

Okay, so, you remember the website I told you about? The one with all of the cool info on landing an agent and other writerly stuff? Yes, the one I won the 2012 Guide to Literary Agents from, The Agent Challenge.  (On it's way and will probably be in my grubby paws by the time you read this!) Well, I was perusing over there this morning and what do I find? ME. (Yay!) My first guest post! Go check it out, I'll wait. The Agent Challenge: Death by Editing.

Being my first time, I was understandably nervous. I stressed and second guessed myself the whole way, which come to think of it, is not really that unusual. It turned out to be a really cool experience, and I had fun. Deidre was gentle and the process was smooth. I did, however, send her the post with a title that was way too wordy, but we (okay, she) turned it around and it is now infinitely better. Lesson learned. Put more thought into your title. And since I am trying to come up with a title for my novel, it was a lesson learned at just the right time.

Serendipity. Again. If things keep going this way, I'll start to think there might be something to this "positive thinking" thing. Now, go.  Get back to work.  I've got a lot more editing to do.

Confidence and Support

I spent several hours last night putting together my new desk and chair. (See it there in the picture? Cool, huh?) Most of the problems that I ran into were my own fault, as I misread the directions. Okay, okay, I didn't read the directions at all until I realized something was wrong. Turns out they put just enough screws in the box to build the thing and they are not interchangeable. But, I finally managed to put it together and lovingly set up all of my stuff. Finally, I have a place that is set aside strictly for writing. To anyone else, this desk is just a desk. Nothing fancy about it, but to me it is much, much more.

In the past, I would hunch over my little net book and bang away at the keys in whatever room of the house was free of children, which was not always possible to find. Now, I have a desk, a chair, and a special place just for me to write in. I'm not sure how I can explain to you how special this is, unless you are a writer, then you already know.

It's not just about comfort, although I am sure that my back will feel much better writing here instead of bent over a comp in my lap on the couch. More importantly it has built my confidence. Why, you ask? Because it let's me know that my wife supports my work. Sure, she tells me all the time what a great writer I am, but every writer's family tells them that.  By buying  me the desk and helping me carve out my "office" area, she has given me concrete evidence that lets me know just how much she supports my writing.

How can a desk do this? Simple. Her actions tell me and everyone else that what I do is important. Important enough to warrant spending money  and rearranging our home. She could have gone on telling me that I was good enough and I would have gone on believing her (until the "I'm no good, this is all shit" feeling crept back up), but she showed me in a very real way that she's not just blowing smoke. She believes in me and supports the path that I have chosen, and that is much more valuable than any words of praise.

Do you ever lack confidence in your abilities? Who is there to support you in your endeavors and build your confidence up?

I Found My Agent, They Just Don't Know It Yet

I know. It sounds a little creepy, but I promise that I am not stalking anyone (yet). Even though I haven't completely ruled out self-publishing, I am leaning pretty hard toward not. I think I may want to continue to self-pub short stories, but when the novel is complete, I want to give it the best possible chance of succeeding and I am smart enough to know that I am too dumb to trust myself with that task. With that in mind, I used most of my daily "screw around" time to research agents and found my first pick.

Before you say anything, this is not the first time I researched them, so I didn't just randomly pick an agent. I know this agent will like my work, as it is similar to at least two of their other clients, and more importantly (to me anyway) is that their clients seem to love them. Is it wrong of me to be looking for agents when the book isn't even finished yet? Is that too cocky? Maybe. I don't think so. If nothing else, the power of positive thinking may help me out a bit. (I will be represented by agent X!) Plus, it gives me motivation. In my imaginary universe, this agent is waiting anxiously for my manuscript. Okay, so maybe that is a little much, but it works for me.

In other news, the response to my short story continues to overwhelm me. Thank you, again, for all of the encouraging comments. Especially thanks to everyone who pointed out the errors. (They have been corrected.) Of all of the articles and blogs that I have been reading lately dealing with Self-publishing, almost all of them emphasise editing, editing, editing. I knew this, but I guess I was so excited to get it out there and start the whole experiment that I only edited. I forgot the other two edits. Another lesson I had to learn the hard way. Why do I sometimes feel that the rules do not apply to me? Maybe that's a character flaw we should examine some other time.

Enough about me. What about you? Do you visualise your goals with lots of details (right down to who your agent will be) or is it just a general "I hope I get published someday" goal? Something in between, maybe?

Testing the Water and a Cry for Help

As you know, I am nearing the completion of my novel. (Which I have decided to rename, but don't know to what quite yet.) I still haven't decided whether I will self-publish or go the traditional route, as there are pros and cons to each. So, as an experiment I put a short story up on Amazon's Kindle store as well as on Smashwords, mainly to see what the process would be like and how difficult it would be. I will save my evaluation of the process for another post, but it was definitely a learning experience.

For one thing, there are various rules you have to abide by for each company and different formats that they will accept. Some of it is pretty straight forward, others are a bit more complicated, but overall it's not that hard once you wade through all of the information. I put it up for .99¢. I went back and forth whether to offer it for free or not, but in the end, because of some of the rules involved, I decided to put it up for the lowest price allowed. I really don't think that it's too much for just a short story, even though some entire novels are the same price or free, but I guess we will see.

Now, while I certainly would love it if you would all go purchase it and leave me a glowing review exalting my abilities as a wordsmith, I just wouldn't feel right about that. Not for the ten of you who actually read this blog. (Something I hope to change, which we will talk about in a moment.) So, if you would like to read Just Enough, let me know and I will send you a link where you can download it for free from Smashwords (Something that I can't do with Amazon and one of their definite cons) or I will just send it to you if you don't want to sign up with Smashwords. Although, if you read ebooks, it's a pretty good site. You can download in several different formats if you don't have a Kindle.

So, send me a message (ljstep749 at gmail)or go to Amazon or Smashwords.
[EDIT: Okay, on second thought, responding to too many emails will enable me to procrastinate and not get any work done, so I will just post the coupon code for Smashwords here. At checkout enter: TU43K
Reviews are very welcome.]

Now, on to the next topic: this blog. I eventually hope for this blog to grow to have a large following of rabid fans, but I would like to see it be a little more interactive. First of all, being a writer is a lonely job and I could use the interaction. Second, I realize that in order to build the number of blog followers that I envision, I will need to take this blog in a direction that will appeal to more people. And I would like your help. I know that all of you are very talented in different areas. I won't call you out by name, but I know that several of you are writers, poets, songwriters, photographers, and painters. If you would like to showcase any of your work, (Yes, you do.) or even do a guest post, send it to me. (I will post it anonymously, if your too shy.)

Okay, now that we have all of that to think about, I will leave you to get back to work. As always, if you have any comments, criticisms, questions, complaints or ideas, I would love to hear them. Seriously.

Following the Crowd

It has been said many times that a writer should not write based on current trends. The recent zombie/vampire craze for example. Yes, novels, movies and even TV shows dealing with these types of characters are very much in fashion and the general public gobbles them up like they are the last books on the subject that will ever be written. Of course, any writer will tell you that if you write on a subject merely for it's saleability factor, then by the time your book actually gets published the fad will be long over and all of your hard work will have been for naught.

But, should we really tell new writers that popular genres or subjects should be off limits just because it has already been done to death? It seems to me that every time I think there couldn't possibly be another zombie book that is any better than the rest, a new one comes along that puts just enough of a twist on the old clichés to make it worth while to read.

Another thing to consider is this: If these new writers take our advice to heart, what happens then? Shitty books, that's what. Trust me, I know. When I set out to write my first novel, I had a billion and one story ideas floating around in my head and yes, most of them were filled with zombies and vampires. Unfortunately for me, I read or heard somewhere that writing another zombie novel would most likely end in failure, so I threw out all of the ideas I previously had and began to write a book that had nothing to do with any of that. I struggled for months to try to come up with a plot that had not been done before. Man, was that a mistake and a HUGE waste of time. I wasn't writing what truly inspired me specifically because I didn't want my novel to be "just another zombie book."

I do agree that one should not write purely for the sake of a trend, but we must also be careful not to  discourage people from writing what they like purely to move away from the trend, either. Luckily, I have a very short attention span and am notoriously bad at following good advice. So I ended up writing the story that I wanted to write and not what I thought people would or wouldn't want to read, and not only was the book better because of this realization, but I had more fun creating it, too.

Those Damn Family Car Decals

No, I don't have a problem with them, really. As a matter of fact, we recently added our own family decals to our little car, but I bet mine are cooler than yours. Don't believe me? Take a look:

Ha, ha! Yup, zombie family. When I saw these, I thought that they were hilarious and had to have them, and as far as I have seen, we are the only family in our area to sport these nifty little decals of our un-dead family members. Anyway, The purpose of this post is not really about the decals, but a conversation that they sparked with a friend of mine when she saw them. It went something like this:

Friend: Oh, my god. How did you convince your wife to let you put those on your car?

Me: Convince her? She's the one that put them on!

Friend: Really? Is she a writer too?

That's what got me. Why would she naturally assume that I had to beg my wife to display these slightly unusual, but extremely funny, stickers on the family car? And then, upon finding out that my wife had no problem with it, assumed that my wife must be just as "weird" as I am.  Then it hit me. Even though this person and I have been friends for years, she still held various beliefs about me, and writers in general, that are not necessarily true. While I have come to expect this from most non-writing people, I didn't expect it from someone who has known me for so long.

We all know the stereotypes associated with writers. They are all reclusive. They're all alcoholics or drug addicts. They all have some sort of mental or emotional problems that prevent them from obtaining "real" employment. They drink coffee by the gallon and chain smoke in dimly lit rooms, bent over keyboards banging out prose that could only emanate from a highly warped, but brilliant mind. (This seems especially true of horror/thriller writers.) What I didn't realize is that, along with the pre-conceived notions that people have about writers, there is an equal amount applied to a writer's spouse. How strong they must be to deal with all of our peculiarities. 

Author Wendy Paine Miller posted a very humorous post on her blog to suggest a "Spouses of Writers" support group (Probably a good idea by the way, and you can read it here), which got me to thinking about all of the trials and tribulations that my wife endures for my work. While I do not fit all of the stereotypes about writers (only most of them), I will admit that my wife sacrifices a lot for my art. I suppose I should express my gratitude a little more often, and THAT is the real point of this post. To thank, not only my wife, but all of the spouses of writers that stand firm and endure everything from our obsession and excitement of that first story idea, to the extreme low when we think that everything we've worked on for months is complete crap, to the elation we feel at finishing the first draft. They faithfully stand beside us, mostly silently, pulling us back from our ego-maniacal certainty that we are the most talented writer since Twain, to the maddening depression that we go through when we realise that we are not so special after all.

So, here is my public "Thank you" to my spouse, as well as yours, or whoever it is that supports you in your work. Without them, the road we walk from idea to finished product would be much harder to navigate.