R.I.P. (wRite In Peace)

          

            You may be wondering what in the world that picture is of. Short answer is a tote full of notebooks. Long answer is this is a tomb for lost stories. Does anyone else have their own version of this? A place where your ideas, thoughts, and characters go to rest in peace? Please tell me I’m not the only one! *Sigh* I take it from the deafening silence I may well be…or maybe the silence is because this is a computer screen and not an audience. Hmmmm, anyway.

            See? That’s the problem right there. You get going on one thought, then bam! Another thought makes its way in your head. Then that thought takes over the next one until the next thought comes along to replace that thought, so on and so on. Ugh! There I go again. Another idea totally derailed and off in the ditch. Okay, now to get on track. Let me say a few words for the dearly departed. Ahem. Heads bowed in silence please.

To the stories left behind, the ones started and put away before their lives were done, to you I say I'm sorry. It wasn't you're fault. I blame my scatterbrain on that. It comes and goes, sticks and unsticks from many things before finally starting to settle on one thing. Perhaps I will come back you. Okay I will come back to you...someday.

To the ideas thought up in the midnight hour. Wow, I look back at you and *phew* many of you are so out of the box they seem like a Seuss/ H.G. Wells child threw up an imagination rainbow. And then some you...wow...you are so far out of the box that I can't imagined where I would go with you. Does that mean I don't want to try? Of course not, but will it be worth my time? Of course not. I'm barely making it through the stories I do have a grasp on. You're wackiness is much appreciated and keeps me pressing on to create new things.

To those first drafts. We had a great run, didn't we? Some of you were actually finished. It was nerves, my silly and terrible nerves, that kept you from becoming more. All I had to do was push through on some edits and boom you would have been something. But I'm still dealing with those demons, but believe me when I say I will come back to you.

To the dumb ideas, you know who you are. Maybe it's better you stay in there. Nobody needs to know about...wow that idea was dumb. Moving on!!

To the random murmurs, I love and miss you the most. Looking back on you I can picture where I was when I wrote you, what mood, what time of day, heck some of you I can tell what I was eating as the remnants of those meals are on you. LOL

The point I'm trying to make is you make me who I am. Each failure, almost success, each try, and stop defines me. I am scatterbrained. I am a little unfocused. I am an imaginative. I am a writer. And for that I am eternally grateful for you. I will come back to you one day.

Amen.

            Okay, you can raise your heads now. Oh and say a little pray for your own lost tales. Tell them you’ll be back for them. J

Joys of Querying

I finished querying my second novel last month. Conventional wisdom is not to talk about your querying. You don’t want to sound like you’re complaining or give the impression your work stinks. I know my work is good, and I found the querying process educational. You may have a great story that is just not marketable at the moment. Maybe my results will help someone else and be a reminder of how difficult and fickle an agent search can be. Writing what you love may not be what anyone else loves.

My genre is adult fantasy so I picked agents accordingly. I used both Query Tracker and Agent Query to locate lists of agents that accept my genre. When going down the list, I visited each agent’s website or blog to determine exactly they wanted included with the query letter. I submitted to all agents that take electronic submissions and sent out no snail mail letters. I went through the list in order, sending letters in batches of eight to ten at a time, then waiting for a week or two before sending out more.

(I should probably note that I sent to all agents that accept fantasy. But as fantasy fits into several categories and agents may only be looking for certain categories, it might make my rejection numbers higher. For example: I write epic and the agent might only want urban fantasy or paranormal. I got a lot of rejections saying it wasn’t a right fit which seems to confirm this.)

I finished writing the manuscript in May and used the next four months to edit and revise. Before starting the query process, I posted my query letter on blogs that provide feedback. I sent it to my beta readers for their thoughts. I used the query forum on AQ connect for even more feedback. In total there were twenty-three versions of my letter before I felt it was strong enough to start sending out. I also got comments on the first several chapters of my manuscript from at least twenty beta readers before attempting to query. Thus well prepared, I sent the first letter in August and finished all the agents in December. (Who knows? I may still get more responses.)

I keep detailed track of when I sent the query, what information (chapters and/or synopsis) went with the letter, and the type of response.

Agents queried: 98

Form rejections: 41

No reply: 48

Closed to queries: 1

Personalize rejections (had a personal note that they liked something, but the project wasn’t right for them): 5

Requests: 3

It took anywhere from one minute to never to get a response to a query. The average was about a month. As I started out slow with my queries (only five at a time), I didn’t see clear results until September. The query seemed to be doing pretty well. At first, I got a ten percent request rate. Not bad for fantasy during a recession. It encouraged me to send more.

Then we entered later October and requests and responses dried up. I’m not sure whether it was the holidays or just all the uncertainty in publishing right now, but I got almost nothing back in November or December. You’ll notice the number of no response at all is larger than the number of form rejections. Almost all of those were sent in the later batches of queries. Those are the frustrating ones because you can’t be sure they were received or maybe got lost. Does no reply mean no, or I never saw it.

On the plus side: I got two full requests and one partial. The partial request came back after two weeks with where she thought the story fell short. I sent her a follow up and she allowed me to revise and resubmit. Her final rejection was very nice and personalized.

The first full came back promptly after a month, and the agent liked the story but it wasn’t for her. That agency deals mostly with YA so perhaps it wasn’t what she expected from the query letter. She was one of the agents that only take the query letter and no sample chapters.

The last full was out for four months. The agent sent me a form rejection to the full.

So that’s how it went. It was a regular roller coaster of highs and lows. I was as prepared as possible and tried to do everything right. With the odds and numbers against you, luck and timing seems to be a big part of getting an agent. I didn’t find that perfect connection. I’m still sending the manuscript to publishers that accept submissions. (Most of them dig straight into the pages without a query letter needed.)

In the meantime, I’m working on new material and keeping busy revising another novel. They say it takes several manuscripts and a number of years to break into publishing. There’s one sure way to fail and that’s to give up.

Lit To Film: The Wizard of OZ

               

            It’s that time again for Lit To Film!! To be honest this particular one I debated even trying to do as the movie is a classic in my mind. How dare I think of even allowing a BOOK to taint my feelings for the film? And that movie is *drumroll please, although you can tell from the title and the picture, ugh, just play along* THE WIZARD OF OZ!!  Yes the film that brought you dazzling Technicolor is about to get the Lit to Film treatment J

****SPOILER ALERT!!! ****

                Okay now that that’s out of the way let’s get down to business. When I was growing up I didn’t have a great library thus many children’s classics were unavailable to me. Classic TV and movies however, well, that is a different story. I LOVE the 1939 movie with a passion. Who doesn’t?  Yeah, the Amish, you got me there. But when you hear “Over The Rainbow” tell me you don’t stop what you’re doing and belt out the song line by line in off key glory. So over time I honestly forgot to look up the book…until recently.

                Yes, I finally read Frank L. Baum’s classic novel, thanks to Kindle and their free books. Although I did enjoy the book, I don’t think it’s a classic, and the differences between the movie and book are so astounding they can barely be compared.

                The movie was as bright and cheery as the vibrant as the yellow brick road. Everything led to a chipper song and meeting with adorable people. The book however is…darker. The scarecrow, the tin man, and the cowardly lion all tell their own origin stories. My favorite would have to be the tin man who self-mutilated himself because of a spell placed on him by a witch who wished to have the woman he loved all to herself. Well, maybe not that homoerotic but you get the point, nothing like that would have appeared in the movie. If you were frightened of the flying monkeys then my lord the kalidahs, tiger faced and bear- bodied creatures with a taste for our adventurers. There were more attacks and peril abounded in the short read. Certainly if the Dorothy of the book had the opportunity to take a route that included more singing and dancing I’m sure she would have chosen that one.

                So while the imagination is high in the book. The movie is rich with life and fun. Still to judge between the two…I don’t know.  They have the same characters but the way of telling the story is too different. If I had to choose between them I’d have to choose the movie J Sorry Mr. Baum, the film did it better I think.

                If you want something to compare the book to, may I suggest the Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shownar with art by Skottie Young. Wow. The book loses again. The art captures innocence from that time period while the story is spot on with the story. I also suggest you continue on with their captivating series. Weeeeeeeellllllllllll worth it. LOL I hope you enjoyed! Sorry for any Baum lovers out there but come on…you know those are better.

SEE YA NEXT TIME!!!