(log)line, please!

I did a lot of theatre in high school. (Actually, I LETTERED in theatre.) Whenever we were practicing a play without our scripts, we would have to say, “Line, please!” when we couldn’t remember what line came next. This logline thing, it makes me think about that. I wish I could just say, “Line, please!” and someone would magically say a logline for WORLD’S EDGE for me. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Except…I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Backing up.

New to Twitter, I’m just as new to writing contests. I first came across #nightmarequery about a week or two ago. I still don’t know exactly how it worked, but I do know that literary agents were reading queries and it was FUN. I have honestly never thought of querying as fun. I like it…but fun it isn’t. I was jealous, reading all those #nightmarequery tweets. And then I came across #bakersdozen2013 and a link to a blog.

Basically, Authoress Anon runs a contest where (unagented) writers submit the first 250 words of their completed manuscript and a logline of 75 words or less. Authoress Anon and a few others then read these entries and select the best ones. These best entries are then placed before 14 literary agents, who can bid on the entries. The bids? Number of pages they want of the entrant’s manuscript. Wow.

(Click http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-2013-bakers-dozen-submission.html for more information…unless I’ve done this wrong. Then Google Miss Snark’s First Victim or Authoress Anon. I’m still not so social media savvy, you know.)

Now, I know there will be a lot of writers entering and I know that doesn’t make my chances great of being chosen for the contest’s agent round, but it sounds like FUN. I need some fun.

I have until Tuesday to prep my logline and double check the first 250 words of WORLD’S EDGE. (Why WORLD’S EDGE and not FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE? Well, I’ve sent FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE queries to many of the contest’s agents. Plus, WORLD’S EDGE isn’t out there anywhere except for my blog.) I’ve got the first 250 words of the manuscript covered, but I’d love some help with the logline thing.

So…what’s a logline? According to the contest’s rules, the logline has to be 75 words or less. Okay, got it. According to my online (Twitter and Google) research, a logline is a (super) short synopsis. Uh…don’t got it? Here’s where I could use the help. I’ve been writing some loglines and would love some feedback. Loglines I’ve prepped:

1. A sixteen year old girl must stop seeing, hearing, feeling a parallel world before she ends up like a fellow student—dead on the other side.

2. Hazel wants to believe she isn’t going crazy. She isn’t losing track of time, seeing mountains beyond the Indiana fields, or hearing the black beasts stalking her speak. Then, she sees a fellow student on the other side—dead—and convinces her boyfriend Cory that they must stop what’s happening to her before she ends up like Ethan.

3. A sixteen year old girl must stop seeing mountains beyond the Indiana fields and hearing the black beasts stalking her speak. Because her boyfriend’s roommate was experiencing the same parallel world before he disappeared and now she’s seeing him—dead on the other side.

What would I love to have from you? Constructive criticism on any/all of these possible loglines, please! Let me know which one you love or which one you hate. Let me know what’s not clear, what I can do to improve either the grammar or the content, what you like and what you don’t like. You can leave your comments here or send messages to my Twitter (@tracygoeke). And if you’re prepping your own logline for #bakersdozen2013 and would also like help, please let me know. (Give and take, yeah? I miss my college writing courses and group critiques.) Thanks, all!

Writing Isn't My Problem

I’ve been reading a lot of tweets and receiving a lot of emails lately that are all about writing advice. HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL or 10 STEPS TO CURING WRITER’S BLOCK, for example. It makes me want to laugh. Sometimes I do laugh. Most of the time, I don’t.

I don’t have trouble writing a novel. I’ve written four. Yes, the first one was in high school and (as I said in a previous post) is terrible. Yes, the second one could use an overhaul before I’d think about putting it out there. The third, I’m querying. The fourth, I’m saving for if the third fails.

I write in my head all the time. It’s the main thing I do when sitting in traffic for an hour and a half every weekday on my way to and from my flavor job. It’s what I do when I see something out of the ordinary or something very ordinary. I’m always writing. I have a file on my computer of ideas for more books, ones I might write after I finish the sequels to novel four.

What I have trouble with, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is hooking a literary agent. Why don’t these emails tell me exactly how to do that? Because the thing is, I write long. I have a hard time expressing what I want in very few words, which is what makes a query so hard. How do I craftily cram the most important, best parts of my novel into 100 or so words? How do I get an agent’s attention?

My current query stats:

1 partial request

1 full request

13 rejections

about 50 total queries sent

(which all makes me wonder...is this good? am I doing well? or is this horrible?)

My newest version of my query is the best, but that still doesn’t guarantee me an agent. I’ve written reasons why I might be getting rejected, but who knows. Twitter has helped with my inability to express myself well in so few words. With only 140 characters per tweet, I’m learning word economy and precision. I’ll continue to use what Twitter teaches me for the queries, I’ll continue writing, and I’ll keep hoping for query success.

No Greater Hope

A few friends have asked me what this whole query thing is. I’ve been aware of this process since college and have been trying it on and off for years, so I forget that most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say I’m querying. So, for all of you, here it is:

Once you’ve written a book, you can’t just take it to a publisher and get it published. Well, actually, I suppose you CAN take it to a publisher, but chances are they won’t publish it and, for a myriad of other reasons, you really just DON’T want to go to them directly. What you need is a liaison between you and the publisher. Publishing a book is complicated. I don’t know all the details because it hasn’t happened for me (YET!), but I know that even if it were an option to go liaison-less, I wouldn’t. This leads to the whole literary agent and query thing. The literary agent is the liaison between you and the publisher. The query is how you get the literary agent.

So what’s a query? A very short letter in which you tell the literary agent:

the name, genre, length, and basic gist of your book

why the literary agent might want your book (It’s like THESE OTHER AWESOME BOOKS!)

a little bit about yourself (including publishing experience, if you have it, which I don’t)

Now, since I’ve had minimal success with this whole query thing, if you’re someone with experience and you know what’s wrong with my little list, please send me a comment! If you don’t want to comment here, please visit me on Twitter (@tracygoeke) or send me an email (tracy.goeke@gmail.com).

After you’ve written your query, you research literary agents. You find literary agents who want what you’ve got. And you send your query, send your query, send your query. Some literary agents also ask for a synopsis or the first few pages of the book. They read your query, they read your materials, and IF they like what they’ve read, they ask for more. You send them your MS (manuscript, writing, book, you get the idea). If they like it after they’ve read the whole thing, then they ask to represent you and your book. You say HELL YES! or, more politely, yes please.

After you sign with an agent, they then send out their version of a query for your book to publishers. Once a publisher decides to buy your book, then—before it appears on shelves in bookstores and libraries and internet sites—there are edits and…well, I can’t finish that sentence properly. I haven’t been there yet. But I’ll get there. I WILL GET THERE.

Of course, literary agents can also send you a polite rejection that usually begins with a dreaded Dear Author. This happens WAY more than the acceptance. Many agents don’t respond at all unless they’re interested in your work. Numbers vary from agent to agent, but they get A LOT of queries. A LOT. They may only ask for more material from 1/100 queries. Of those requests…well, here again I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t know how many MS they read and accept. All I know is, so far, none of them have asked for my full book.

It’s gonna happen, though. I can feel it. Or, I can hope it. There’s no greater hope than that moment I send an email to an agent. Every time, I think this might be the agent who wants what I’ve got. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Sperm Whale Vomit

When I’m not playing writer, I work for a flavor company. We make flavors…and sometimes things get a little weird. Wednesday, one of my coworkers was given an assignment that led me to post this on Facebook (my personal page) and Twitter:

What do flavorists debate? Today: whether this chemical is from whale sperm or whale stomach. Turns out, it's from sperm whales (which doesn't make it any less gross).

Twitter responses: absolutely none. I think I terrified anyone following me. In fact, I think I lost followers that day. Followers are finicky people. Of course, it sounds pretty disgusting and if I were them, I might have stopped following me, too.

Facebook responses: the discussion is ongoing. These people know me and aren’t afraid to say WTF?! I feel like I owe them a few more details. They’re practically begging for them. So this morning as I sat in traffic on my way to flavor work, I decided I’d blog about three not-so-pleasant chemicals. I’m saving sperm whale vomit for last.

First up, there’s civet. The name of a chemical, civet is also a cat. I think there may be one running around the Cincinnati zoo. (I think I may be wrong about this.) Basically, the civet has these perineal glands that secrete a musky chemical that’s used in perfumes and flavors. If you want to read about how they get to this chemical from the civet’s glands, feel free to Google it. There’s a bottle of this in the hood in my lab and, though I’ve used it only once that I remember, it looks pretty revolting. It’s this yellow pasty stuff. I don’t think it smells that great, either. Then again, I’ve been to the Cincinnati zoo’s cat house, smelled that smell, and understand why I’m not a fan of civet. (By which I mean the chemical. I have no particular feelings about the cat, although its Wikipedia picture isn’t very attractive.)

Castoreum is another chemical in my lab’s hood. It’s black and hard as rock and stinks like crazy. I’ve used this once (in a vanilla flavor, if you’re curious) and made sure when I did that I wore two sets of gloves, just to be safe. Castoreum comes from the castor sacs of beavers. I don’t really want to tell you about castor sacs, so you’ll also have to Google this if you want more information. For a better idea of what it is before you go to Google: we flavor people, our nickname for castoreum is beaver balls. Oh, yeah.

So enough about cats and beavers, you’re saying. Write about sperm whale vomit. Sure thing.

When my coworker received an assignment to work with ambergris, someone did some Google research and she interpreted the results to mean that ambergris is derived from whale sperm. Another flavorist was determined that it came from a whale’s stomach. The truth? Somewhere in the middle. We did the Google thing again and came up with this: ambergris is produced in a sperm whale’s digestive tract and can come out either end of the whale. (I’m calling it vomit because this somehow seems less gross.) It’s found floating on the ocean’s surface or on the beach and then somehow (I don’t want to know how) makes its way into perfumes and flavors. According to my coworker who had the ambergris assignment, it smells like perfume or shampoo. If you want more information, go to Google. I’m finished here.

This shouldn’t give you the impression that all the chemicals we use in all our flavors are gross. This isn’t true. These are the three exceptions to the rule. If I discover more exceptions, I’ll let you know. For tonight, though, I think I’m grossed out enough. I think I’ll go write some civet-less, castoreum-less, ambergris-less fiction.

Shh! I'm writing....

I’ve always been quiet about my writing. It started in high school, when I spent a lot of class time writing instead of taking notes. The great thing is, writing and taking notes look pretty much the same to teachers. If asked, of course I was taking notes! and of course my teachers believed me. I was a good student. I got good grades. But sometimes, whatever the teacher was teaching was too easy or too boring.

So I wrote a novel in high school.

Yep. I did. It’s horrible, but it’s a novel. It’s so horrible, in fact, that I haven’t read it in years. I’ve thought many times about shredding it—the computer I wrote it on originally is long gone, as is the floppy disk on which it was saved—but can’t really force myself to get rid of that last, physical copy. There’s something comforting about those blue pages. They were my major high school secret.

See, I was one of those rule followers. I wasn’t terribly popular and I didn’t have a boyfriend. There were two things I most liked to do: read and write. I couldn’t read in class (because, as much as movies/TV shows would have us believe otherwise, you can’t hide a fun book inside a text book). Instead, I wrote.

The thing about writing a novel during class while in high school? I couldn’t tell anyone. While teachers encouraged us to explore and learn, I doubt they meant writing instead of paying attention. I told my close friends, of course, but not my teachers. Not even my English teachers.  I wrote on spiral notebook pages, took those pages home, and typed them onto my computer. I then printed them on blue pages that I still have tucked away somewhere here. Why blue? I think I thought it was less obvious than white. I think my logic was flawed.

Because I was so secretive about writing in high school, I’ve always had trouble telling people that I’m a writer. Even in college, when I wrote another novel for a senior seminar and spent many Friday nights keeping the library company, I didn’t tell many people. The first year after college, I revised that novel. I then bought a Writer’s Market and got to work on my first round of queries. I had no success, but then I didn’t know what I was doing. Part of why I didn’t know what I was doing? I told NO ONE. No wonder I had no success.

I know now. Or at least I know more. FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE definitely fits in a genre (unlike that college novel). I’ve got a pretty good idea what a query letter should look like (more than half the length of that college novel query). I’m doing good literary agent research using the internet and social media. And I’m telling everyone I know: I wrote a novel! I’m trying for an agent! I want it published! I’m doing whatever it takes to get what I want, including tell EVERYONE.

Hey, EVERYONE! I wrote a novel! In fact, I’ve written four! Help me get FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE published! I’ll write more, lots more, and I’ll tell you all about them!

Reject

Rejections are awful.

Oh, if you see me and we chat about it, I’ll play it off like it’s nothing. I have other queries out there, I’ll say, so it’s okay. More than okay. It’s great. One of those other agents will be the right agent. They’ll pick it up, I’ll say, and want to represent me.

But really, the more rejections I get, the more dejected I feel.

These agents could be rejecting me because I’m no one with few social media ties. I get that, but I’M WORKING ON IT. I’m getting out there, I swear. You should have seen how social media and I got along this summer (which was not at all) and compare that to how we’re doing now. Just imagine how we could be doing if I could shout, I’VE GOT AN AGENT!!!

Not that I think social media is why I’m getting rejections. Agents on Twitter (because, you know, it all comes back to Twitter) say that they don’t base a rejection on the writer’s social media presence. There are other possibilities. One could be that they really just don’t think my story would sell. Why represent a book if there’s no chance of making money on it? I totally get that. I wouldn’t want to waste my time, either.

Another possibility could be that my writing is horrible. If that’s it and if you’re an agent reading this who has/is/will be rejected/rejecting me, PLEASE tell me. That would be a relief, actually. I’d know to stop torturing myself with these queries. I’d know to keep on writing (because I can’t stop), but not to keep bugging these poor literary agents. I mean, think of things from their side. Either they hate awful writing or they can’t help but laugh. Oh, God. Please don’t let them be laughing at my writing.

Option C? My query lacks luster (or flair, as the Writer’s Digest one-on-one agent put it) and therefore doesn’t stand out enough to be that one in one hundred that the agent notices and requests. (If it’s less than 1/100…please don’t tell me. I couldn’t take the knowing.) I’ve been working on that. I’ve made a few changes to the query over the past seven weeks or so. I’m worried too many changes will screw with my query karma, but then again, I haven’t had much good query karma. My latest version is better, I hope.

As with all good (or cruel) multiple choice questions, it could be that the answer to all my rejection problems is none of the above. That’s disheartening. Can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong, can I? Don’t know if it’s one of my other answers or this last one. So those rejections will just keep coming and I’ll just keep querying. There’ll be a breaking point, like whenever I can’t find any agencies I haven’t already queried.

Then, I’ll move on.

WORLD’S EDGE is just waiting for a shot at this game.

Hence the Awkward

You might be wondering why this social media thing isn’t easy for me. It’s because it doesn’t come naturally. Naturally, I’d rather hide my nose in my book or duck behind my (internet disabled) computer. I’m not very outgoing. I’d even go so far as to call myself a little socially awkward. I’m better about it now, I hope, but when in school, I was much happier on my own with stacks of paperbacks.

This shyness is part of why I struggle to find friends, followers, etc. on all these social media sites. I’m not quick to seek out others, although Twitter has helped with this. Why has Twitter helped? Well, the awesome thing about Twitter is that you don’t have to actually know anyone. Twitter doesn’t require any face-to-face contact, which is excellent for me. You can follow someone without them feeling obligated to follow back. They also let you follow them even if they don’t know you. It’s kinda the point.

However, others aren’t quick to seek me out, either. That’s partly because they’ve never heard of me. I don’t have publishing experience to draw any of them in. I have no credentials (aside from a short story published in my university’s literary magazine and a BA in English). Honestly, if I were them, I wouldn’t seek me out. Don’t worry, though. I’ve got this. Well, sort of. I’m working on getting my name out there. (Hence this blog thing.)

Outside of the whole writing/publishing community, people don’t seek me out, either. I prefer to blend into a crowd as opposed to stand out. I’ve always had a few close friends, but never a large group of acquaintances. Parties and bar scenes make me nervous. When I get nervous, I tend to use bigger/more formal words that I learned from a childhood of reading classics and adult fiction. (Which isn’t to imply I don’t use such words in my everyday conversation, because I do.) For example, see the hence in the previous paragraph. I use hence often. I like hence.

My social awkwardness is probably partly why I’ve always liked to read and write. Minimal contact with others was pretty much a given with reading and writing…up until I decided I wanted to be published. Really, really wanted to be published. I’ve been writing for so long and I’d like to share. So I’m doing things like writing this blog. I’ve joined Twitter. Most importantly, I’m sending out queries. And more queries. And more queries. The socially awkward me would give up quickly, what with these rejections that just keep coming in, but I’m determined. I’ll make a fool of myself, if that’s what it takes. (Although, please, don’t let that be what it takes.) I will stick with this, awkward or not.

Not So Social Media Savvy

Have I mentioned before that I’m not so social media savvy?

I blame it on Facebook. I was in college back when Facebook first started. My senior year, Facebook came to Valpo. I didn’t get the hype. I was trying to be a serious student, writing a novel for a senior creative writing seminar, and every time I went to the library, most computers were taken by people on Facebook. Not only that, but every person on Facebook had at least two or three Facebook buddies standing behind their chair, watching their computer, and ignoring the (I though universal) library quiet rule.

I did join Facebook, eventually, but not until several years later. I still have only 137 friends because I’m pretty picky about who I friend. My page is super private, one of those you have to dig to find, and even then you usually have to know someone I’m friends with. I don’t have a Facebook page for my writing career yet. I’m kind of waiting for that writing career to officially start. And, actually, I hadn’t even considered making such a page until I took that class through Writer’s Digest.

The Writer’s Digest agent one-on-one class was probably the biggest step I’ve ever taken toward getting this whole query thing figured out. It was beyond helpful for making me realize what was specifically wrong with my query that had prevented me from getting any agent attention. One huge flaw, the agents who taught this class pointed out, was that agents like to Google writers who have no publishing history and they expect to find results. Oops.

For starters, I got married four and a half months ago. My name was out there NOWHERE. (I’d decided to use my married name for my writing career since I had–still don’t, really–no writing career.) So I took the class agents’ advice. I designed a website for myself (with the help of Yahoo), joined Twitter, and added my searchable last name to Goodreads. (It’s pronounced go + key, btw.)

The next step in this social media adventure? I realized I needed to get my blog off my website and onto a blog website. I think. Again, I don’t really know what I’m doing. So here it is, the first blog entry for my not-my-website blog. If there are any kind of faults with these first few postings, I’m sorry. Come back soon, after I’ve done this a few times, and things might (hopefully will!) be better.