Category: querying

Another Year’s Goals

I don’t do “resolutions” per se, but I do set goals at the beginning of every year. I don’t always reach them, but I strive to do my best to get there. This year, I didn’t set a lot of goals. I know it’s going to be a busy year, what with finding a new job and continuing my back-to-school journey, so I didn’t want to over-reach myself and get distracted. That being said, here are my goals for the year:

1) Revise Chasing Shadows
2) Revise Witches
3) Complete the 2YN2 story (probably about 40k left to write)
4) Completely re-do and finish the sequel to Werewolves for Dummies
5) Do NaNo

As far as non-writing-related goals, I only have two:

6) Complete a half marathon (“complete” meaning some walking is okay)
7) Carry a 4.0 in school

Of course, “revise the zombie story” will hopefully be added in sometime this year. And I should mention that the NaNo story will probably be something new and completely different…NOT a sequel to anything else. I have some ideas percolating…I can feel them. I’m currently querying Werewolves for Dummies, and I’ll start querying Chasing Shadows when I’m done revising it, as well.

So, yeah, those are all my goals for the years. Anyone else setting any for the year?

Update Stuff

Well, midterms are behind me now, thank goodness! I’ve been so busy with school stuff I haven’t had time to do much of anything else. No blogging. No writing. Not as much gym time as there should have been, and definitely not enough sleeping! I don’t know if that will get better or worse before the end of the semester…

For various reasons that I can’t currently get into, I don’t expect to be very prolific on this blog for at least the next couple of months. Possibly in December, if everything goes well.

I’ve been thinking about doing NaNo. Toying with the idea. I really WANT to…I’ve done it four straight years, and it’s something I enjoy, I’m just not sure if I’ll have time this year, what with the four classes and all. Plus, my best friend is coming in for a visit the first weekend of the month, so there goes three writing days (Because I’d MUCH rather hang out with her than stare blankly at a computer screen!) But…I think I’ll probably end up doing it again this year, although probably only with the 50k goal, unlike the 100k I’ve shot for (and hit) the last two years. We’ll see. (Now if I only knew which story I was going to write…)

I’m subbing the Werewolf story right now. Have had some partial requests, but nothing else so far. I love this story a lot, so I hope it finds a home.

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.

Gone

I did actually accomplish my goal of getting Through Shadowed Stone ready to go out the door. And…I sent queries to five agents last week. Not a lot, mind you, but it’s a start. I was terrified, of course, but it was time to push the baby out of the nest. So the agent search has begun. Hopefully I will have some luck, but if not, at least I know that I finally reached the point in my writing where I’m confident enough in my work to send it out into the world.