Month: August 2009

Query Hell

You know, honestly, writing query letters is hard. Really hard. You want to capture the reader’s (agent’s) interest immediately, and keep it in your grasp for the rest of that one simple, short page. It doesn’t sound hard. I mean, really, how difficult could it be to keep someone interested for 200 words? As it turns out, pretty dang hard.

I’ve spent most of the week working on my query letter for the 2YN story. And I have the bruises on my forehead to prove it, from banging my head on my desk in frustration. I thought I had a decent query letter. Then I started working on Lesson 11 of HTTS, which just so happens to focus on query letters. (Perfect timing, yes?) And I promptly started second-guessing myself. Holly Lisle’s example starts off with THE SENTENCE as the first paragraph. The second paragraph has about two sentences on story, then delves into theme. That’s sort of where I ran into trouble. I mean, I hadn’t consciously thought about theme for this story, except WAY back in the beginning stages, roughly 2 ½ years ago. So, revisiting that was a bit of a challenge to me. As was cutting down the story details to a bare minimum. Most of the sample queries I’ve seen lately have that one initial hook paragraph, then another paragraph focusing on story. Not two sentences focusing on story. So yeah, little bit of trouble there.

And then there’s the bio paragraph. I don’t actually have a bio or credits, and I’ve seen conflicting opinions on how to play that out. So far, I’m going with a simple statement of the story’s stats and the fact that it’s my first novel (It’s not, actually, but the first one I’m subbing.), for lack of anything else. I’m planning to post it on Forward Motion for feedback, but if anyone has any suggestions for the bio information, it would be greatly appreciated.

Done!

With this draft of Witches. Finally. It comes in at 188k. Which, considering the original draft was 297k, doesn’t sound so bad. I know I need to cut quite a bit more, but right now, I’m letting it sit and breathe. I’m hoping to do a novel swap with it, but I’m not in any great hurry. It’s also going through my crit group, and I have no intentions of subbing it anytime soon.

Now that this draft of Witches is done, I can work on some other things. Like finishing the sequel, which is probably about 2/3rds done. And considering I haven’t written anything new in over a month, that should be interesting, getting back into the swing of things.

I’m also working on my query letter for the 2YN story. I hate writing queries, but I’m determined to come up with a good one for this story. I also plan on going through the MS one more time to make sure everything’s cleaned up and pretty, then I’m going to start subbing it. Nervous about that, but it’s time that story left the nest.

But for now, let me just say again: I’m DONE!

Standing On The Edge

I’ve been editing Witches like mad for the past two months. Mad, I tell you. Until some days I just wanted to strangle my characters, or merely use some transparent act of God to kill them all off at once so they wouldn’t make my head hurt anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I love this story. Love it. However, it’s been running around in my brain, in some form or another, for almost ten years. That hurts just to type those words. Ten. Years. So, I think I can be forgiven for getting a little tired of the story. Only occasionally, mind you, as I haven’t been working on it continuously for ten years. Far from it. The original first draft ended at around 297,000 words. Yes. Far too long. The second draft was about 50k shorter. I’ve mostly finished the current editing pass, and it’s sitting at 197k. So, all in all, I’ve cut 100k from the story. Yeah. I’ve cut, in essence, an entire book from this story, and I know I still need to cut at least 50k. I have about eight more chapters to re-visit, all of which I marked in my notes as possible cuts. When I finish that, I’m going to put this story aside for a while and let it breath.

But you know what? I still love these characters. They don’t bore me. They pop into my head at unexpected moments. I still can’t wait to see what happens to them. I think that’s a good sign. Heck, a lot of the real people I know have more than started to bore me after I knew them for ten years. But not my characters. So up next, when I finish the little bit of clean-up I have left on this draft, I’m going to finish writing the sequel to Witches. And I know, the draft of that story won’t be anywhere near as long as the first draft of Witches.

All in all, I’ll be happy to put Witches aside. For now.