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.

Cue The Pointer Sisters!

"I'm so excited and I just can't hide it..." Yes, I have actually been singing today. (Now, aren't you glad that I'm not a video blogger? )

I have had a very exciting weekend, and the near future is looking pretty good, too. First of all, I finished my novel. Well, the first draft, anyway. Now it's on to the editing phase which I am told may take twice the time it took to write it, but that's okay. One step at a time. After editing, we can move on to submission.

Second, Nancy Allen was kind enough to review my short story, Just Enough, on her blog The Avid Reader. The story is really out of her preferred genre, but she read and reviewed it anyway. In some ways, getting such a positive review holds a little more weight when it comes from a reader who prefers a different type of story. Wouldn't you agree? So, go check out her blog and read her review of my story, as well as reviews of other good books.

Finally, I was chosen as the winner of the monthly book drawing for the month of February at Deidre Havrelock's blog, The Agent Challenge, and will be receiving the 2012 Guide to Literary Agents. Deidre has an awesome blog that is chock full of great information about finding an agent. Needless to say, I will be visiting her blog extensively over the next few months. (Additional news regarding this great blog in a future post, so stay tuned!)

So, that's all for now.  I have a lot of work to do, and I'm sure that you do, too. And if you don't, well, the least you can do is try to look busy so that the rest of us don't feel so bad.

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.

Emerging From the Cave

Okay, so I'm back out of my cave and my eyes have adjusted to the light. (Sort of.) But I got a tremendous amount of work done, for me anyway.

My loving wife, seeing that I was in need of some "cave time", graciously arranged for the children to go to grandma's for the weekend, leaving me to do absolutely nothing but write, write, write, drink coffee, and write. Okay, I did read a little bit. (Shotgun Gravy By: Chuck Wendig ,if you're curious. And, yes, I recommend it)

As soon as everyone left the house I check the e-mail one last time then turned off the internet and TV and left it off until they got home. Three and a half days of nothing but writing. Can you imagine? (Yes, the animals survived, geez!) I accomplished several chapters of the novel and a 9500 word short that I hope to have edited and available by the beginning of next week.

All in all it was a great weekend, aside from missing everyone about 2 hours in and then there was an unfortunate mishap with some of my daughter's pink hair dye. (Don't ask.) I built up quite a bit of steam on the novel, and I hope to move on to the editing phase soon. I hope everyone had a great President's day weekend, or at least a decent one. Now, get back to work!

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.