I Aim for Pitch Wars

I’m a multitasker. I also believe in Plan B.

Last fall as I queried one manuscript, I entered another into contests. I had some success, but didn’t get an agent. So I stopped querying the one MS in early winter and started querying the other this spring. I also wrote another MS this spring, which I just recently finished. While I query that second MS, I’m revising my most recent one.  See, multitasking.

As for the Plan B part, before I’d even finished my newest MS, I’d already been planning to enter it into contests this fall (assuming I don’t get an agent with my second MS queries). I know Michelle Hauck, Authoress, and Brenda Drake host fall/winter contests…and my Plan B goal was to have my newest MS ready by then. I assumed late September/early October was a good goal, giving me and my critique partners ample time.

Well, I was a little wrong.

Yesterday, Brenda Drake posted on her blog that she’s moving her Pitch Wars contest to August. Submissions are on August 18. So. That’s 80 days from now. Not nearly as much time as I thought, but here’s my theory:

I wrote this MS in 53 days. I can totally finish revisions for it in 80 days…right? RIGHT.

I’ll need to write a query letter, which I’ve basically been doing in my head since before I even wrote the MS. It shouldn’t take much time to get that query down on paper and then I’ll have weeks to perfect it. I’ll also need to perfect the first few pages of the MS, which is doable. Of course, I’ll need to ready the rest of the MS by September 3—if I happen to get a Pitch Wars mentor this time—but that falls not too far off from my previous late September/early October goal. Definitely possible. I can do this.

Because see, the thing is, I want an agent. I want to publish a book. I’ve read a lot of success stories and many of them mention that the first MS they query isn’t the one that gets them an agent—it’s the second or third or fourth. This would be my third and they say three is a lucky number, right? Right.

So I’m aiming to finish my newest MS’s revisions in time for Pitch Wars.

With Your Head, Not Your Heart

I first saw the movie Finding Forrester when I was in high school. At that time, I was already pretty serious about writing—I may have even been in the middle writing that first, super bad novel—so I connected with the movie far more than any of my friends. I still watch it sometimes and I’ll never forget some of the things it taught me about writing. One of those is Sean Connery’s character’s advice that you write the first draft with your heart and the second draft with your head…which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Since finishing my latest manuscript on May 17, I’d been putting off working on the first round of revisions. I felt like I needed space and time to let the thing sit, sort of like how a new house tends to settle over the years as it moans and groans, shifts and finally finds its place. Of course, I wasn’t planning to wait years to do revisions. Just a few weeks or so.

Well, between the fact that I was missing writing and that one of my critique partners was asking for pages, I didn’t wait weeks. Monday, I started working on revisions, keeping Sean Connery’s character’s advice in mind. First draft, heart…check. Second draft, head…umm….

In theory, I know many things to look for in revisions. A brief list of the big ones:

·       Telling, not showing—This damn concept is so elusive that I really can’t think of an example right now. I recognize it (most of the time) when I read it. Basically, you can’t just say it…you’ve gotta explain it, let the reader learn it.

·       Plot holes—I made a short list of these not long after I finished my first draft. Yeah, I’ll mention way back that there’s something going on with that character…but I’ll totally forget to explain later what it is. And vice versa. Sometimes I’ll have things happen later that I’ll need to explain or foreshadow earlier in the story. And then sometimes, I just miss things completely and jump from A to C.

·       Passive voice—Pretty much anything like she was hit by the ball is bad and has to be changed to the ball hit her. Oh, hey, that was passive. Nice.

·       Adverbs—These things used to run rampant in my writing until one of my CPs went through a whole chapter highlighting every one of them in yellow…which made the page GLOW. Quickly, inadvertently, breathlessly, etc. can be in there, just not in large numbers, just not where they aren’t necessary.

·       Sentences that just don’t make sense—This is something only I do…at least as far as I know. I get so wrapped up in what I’m writing that sentences run on, twist around each other, and come out at the end of the paragraph with no logic, no connection to the story, and no reason to be there.

·       Anything and everything else that jumps out at me.

I say I know these things in theory because I’ve been struggling with the whole second draft, head part—my heart just keeps getting in the way. It may be that I’m revising too close to finishing that first draft. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what this is. I need more time, a lot more time, because only then will I be able to look at this thing objectively.

So I’m going to push through to the end of this not-so-effective round of revisions. I’ll finish up the list of things I need to fix that I made in the short time between completing the first draft and now. After that, I’ll send this thing off to my critique partners. Once they have it, I’ll feel better about leaving it alone. They’re busy writing and querying and whatnot, so it’ll be awhile before they get back to me…which is good. Maybe then it’ll be long enough that I’ll be more objective in my revisions.

WIP Withdrawal

My hands are all twitchy and my mind keeps insisting that I’m forgetting to do something. It’s only been four days since I finished writing my latest novel, but I feel so lost without it. I mean, I spent 53 straight days (minus three random ones) writing at least an hour—if not two or three—per day and now that I’m not, I’m wandering around aimlessly, wondering what to do with myself.

Of course, I have plenty of books to read. With so much of my time spent on writing, I didn’t read like I normally do. Plus, on average I buy more books per week than I can read, so the stacks of books I haven’t read yet have been growing rapidly in the last 53 days. And I am reading—since Saturday, I’ve finished Mandy Hubbard’s RIPPLE and Elizabeth Scott’s BETWEEN HERE AND FOREVER and I’ve started Richelle Mead’s VAMPIRE ACADEMY—but it’s just not the same.

I love creating a story and writing the words to go with it. I love that when I’m writing a WIP, I think about it in every spare moment. I love to write the next scene in my head, play with the characters and their actions, let them surprise me with something amazing that changes part of the story’s outcome. I love to turn on my playlist and settle into my library chair and get those 1K+ words written on my laptop. Did I mention that I miss all that?

Not that being done with the first draft means I’m finished with the manuscript. I have plenty of revisions to do, but I was planning to wait a few weeks to let my mind settle, my hands relax, and the MS chill. I don’t think I’ll make it a few weeks. I’ve already got a list of things big and small to fix that I either forgot to tie up or that didn’t occur to me before.

Plus, I’m eager to get this MS to my critique partners. I want to know what they think…by which I mean I REALLY WANT TO KNOW. And I want them to catch all the loose ends I’ve missed. And I want them to help me find other things that I probably overlooked. Oh, I love reading their comments, good and bad. I want to make this MS as good as possible…

…so that I can start entering it into contests. Yep, that’s right. I may not have had much success with my last MS in contests, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t have any. I feel like this one is more accessible than the last. Also, I see contests more as an opportunity to hone my pitch so that it’ll someday be ready to query than as an opportunity to find an agent. (Okay, not that I’d be complaining or anything to get an agent through a contest. I’D LOVE THAT.)

But I’m getting months ahead of myself. For now, I have to sit here with my twitchy fingers and nagging mind and wait just a little bit longer before I start revisions. And I’ve got that other MS that I’m currently querying, so there’s always more query letters to write. And there are these stacks of books I want to read. Yeah, maybe I’ll go do that.

53 Days, 76K Words

I joined Twitter late last summer. Around October, writers started talking about this thing they hashtagged as #NaNoWriMo. It took me a little while, but I figured out that NaNoWriMo was a project/contest/writing thing where people spent the month of November writing a novel. At the time, I was amazed. Writing a novel in one month? No. Way. I followed writers’ progress, shocked at how fast some people were getting those words down.

Because I definitely didn’t have the fastest writing record:

The novel I wrote in high school took me many months, mostly because it was more for fun than actual, goal-oriented writing. Also, it was total crap…though I had to start somewhere.

The novel I wrote in college took me all of the fall semester and most of the spring one. Of course, at the time I was taking a full course load, including Quantitative Chemical Analysis and the accompanying interminable lab, which still makes me want to run as far and fast as I can in the opposite direction. This novel wasn’t complete crap, but definitely wasn’t good enough to query. (Though I tried that anyway because I didn’t know what I was doing.)

The Paris novel I wrote a few years ago (during the only span of my life—other than my Parisian semester of college—where I lived alone) took me about five months, plus revisions.  It was the first novel where I had some idea what I was doing. It also was the first novel I seriously queried. It was like a trial run for the whole process.

After my Paris novel, I wrote WORLD’S EDGE, the YA sci-fi novel I’m currently querying. I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t really keeping track, but I’d say that one took me somewhere between four to six months. Oh, plus the three months I spent on serious revisions after I met my critique partners.

I also wrote a sequel to WORLD’S EDGE. This one took me over a year. No joke. Of course, I’d just bought a house with my (then) fiancé, then I was planning my wedding, then getting married, then querying the Paris novel like there’d be no tomorrow, then submitting WORLD’S EDGE to contests. So, no surprise it took me a year. As I was putting the finishing few thousand words on it, I was watching those NaNoWriMo people write their novels in just thirty days.

I was so impressed by NaNoWriMo people, wondering where they found all their writing time—because, like me, most of them had full-time jobs, families, friends, non-writing lives. By December, I was too busy with all my writing stuff to give #NaNoWriMo and the demanding goals much thought.

But then in March, just two months ago, I started thinking about writing again. I’d gotten to a point where I wasn’t spending four or five hours a day working with my critique partners’ novels or on WORLD’S EDGE revisions. Also, I was reading more. I was gathering ideas, plot points that had seen so disparate before but were connecting in fascinating ways the more I thought about them. I was outlining a new novel.

On March 26, I started writing that novel. I had a less lofty goal than NaNoWriMo writers—I planned to write 1,000 words per day, which would mean I’d need about 65-75 days—but as I wrote, I thought about them. Some days were so busy that I had to squeeze a few words out in a few short minutes. There were only three days where I didn’t write at all. (Because I think strep throat and a weekend with my parents count as good excuses for not writing.)

Still, it didn’t take me 65-75 days. About an hour ago, I finished that novel. It took me 53 days to write 76,000 words. Not NaNoWriMo speed, but I’m still shocked I wrote it that fast. Like any first draft, it needs some revisions…but I feel good about this one. In fact, I love it. I can’t wait until it’s ready to send to my critique partners.

Excellent! But No.

When you query your manuscript, asking agents to read your work and decide to represent you and what you’ve written, more than half the time you never hear back from agents. Most say on their websites that after four to eight weeks—give or take a month or two…because, you know—if you haven’t heard anything, then you can consider your MS rejected. It’s rough, not knowing, always wondering.

Sometimes it’s rougher to hear back from agents. You like to know that they’ve rejected you so you can have some closure and move on, but when the rejection’s a form letter and first line reads Dear Author, it hurts. You’ve put all this time and effort into that query—EVERY query—and you wish the agents would at least paste in your name. Only some do.

Some of those not only paste your name into the email, but they also send you a personalized rejection. It’s hard to say if these hurt the worst or the least. They’ve taken the time to look at your stuff—you KNOW they have because they’ve taken the time to write you back—but they don’t want you and your MS anyway. On the other hand, some of these agents will give you helpful hints. They might tell you to try querying some other agent who might be a good fit. They might tell you what exactly led them to reject you, which sometimes is as easy as it’s not for me. (And you get that because when you go to a bookstore, you don’t pick up every book. Of the books you do pick up, you only buy a select few. You’ve read the inside cover or the back and you’ve decided in a few short words if the book interests you or not. More often, it doesn’t interest you. You move on to the next one.) They might tell you something you’ve never heard before, something you’ve never expected, something that makes you love the agent even more.

All three of these have happened to me. One agent told me to query another…but it was the day AFTER I’d gotten a rejection from that other agent. Several agents have said they liked my writing, but the concept wasn’t right for them. Another agent told me my writing was great, the concept wasn’t right, and I could query again sometime with another MS.

And then there was the agent who told me that my pitch (aka query) was excellent, my writing was excellent, the concept was excellent…all great signs that the agent was going to ask me for a partial or full manuscript. Then came the rejection. Basically, I love it, but….

Seriously?

No, seriously???

So close! So very, very, very close. And still a no.

I won’t put the part that came after the but here—it’s not really relevant. Honestly, it sucked to be so close and yet miss completely. But there was also the part of me that was so excited, so happy, because the agent had told me what none of the others had. The agent loved not just my writing, but also the CONCEPT of my story. That meant there was hope, huge hope, that some other agent would feel the same way and not have that but to put after all the good things. That meant I had a great reason to keep querying.

So I’m querying.

Bad Writer Days...and Good Ones

Trying to find an agent and get published is the hardest long-term thing I’ve ever done. Some days are really bad, and others are really good. Lately, I’ve had my share of both.

BAD DAY: I realize that one of my critique partners isn’t, at least momentarily, on my side. We’re supposed to support each other—which we totally do and I wouldn’t be where I am today without this one and the rest—but when we query the same agent, things get rough. Things get rougher when that agent asks my CP for the full manuscript…and I hear nothing. Silence from that agent doesn’t mean I’m out, but after a couple of months of nothing, I start to think it’s a bad sign for me and my query.

GOOD DAY: Any day I get to read is a good day. I LOVE TO READ. I wish I had more time for books because I have so many I haven’t read and there are so many more I want to buy.  I read a book or two a week, but this is NEVER ENOUGH. Still, every borrowed reading moment is a good one.

BAD DAY: I get so wrapped up in writing my newest novel that I kise track of everything else. I get all excited, thinking that this WIP will someday soon be THE ONE—the one that gets me an agent and a publisher and a book on a bookshelf in a bookstore. Then, something jars me out of my writing fog and I remember that I’ve done the whole query thing before and it wasn’t successful. I’ve done the whole contest thing and it wasn’t successful, either. I’ve thought that novel was THE ONE when it really wasn’t. I start to wonder if any novel will be the one, if my words will never meet the right agent at the right time.

GOOD DAY: I come home to find mail from Lorie Langdon, which turns out to be a bit of Doon swag including a personal note welcoming me to the Doon street team and the Dooniverse. I have to smile because it reminds me why I’m in this even on the bad days.

BAD DAY: I send out three queries. I put significant time into researching the agents and the other books they represent. I stalk the agents on Twitter and on their blogs and find personal touches to add to the query to (theoretically) help me stand out. I send out the queries. The next day, I receive rejections from two of those agents. I’m disappointed, but I hold out hope for the third. I really think the third agent will be a good match for me and my manuscript. The next day, I receive a rejection from that third agent.

GOOD DAY: I come home from work, sit down to my computer to write my WIP, and the words just pour out of me. I get so wrapped up in a scene that I’m writing that I go way over my goal of one thousand words. I can’t stop writing and it feels so good. This is the part of my quest that I love the most. Days like these are the reason I started doing this and the reason I’ll keep on doing it. Days like these are the reason the bad days won’t stop me.

When Pigs Fly

It may be Star Wars day, but today here in Cincinnati, pigs fly. No, I’m not joking. Pigs, right now, are flying.

Every year Cincinnati has the Flying Pig Marathon, the pig part coming from the city’s history of pig farming and the flying part coming from…well, I don’t know. The marathon starts and ends in downtown Cincinnati. At this point the big event is probably nearing its finish, though I can’t say for certain because I’m not a runner and during the years I lived downtown, I avoided the massive crowd that came with the Pig. I’m a writer, not a crowd-lover.

But as thousands of people run the Pig today, I’m deep in my own marathon. Yesterday, I topped 60,000 words in my work in progress. I can’t seem to stop writing. I’m writing this post fast so I can get back to my WIP and get my heroine out of her current sticky situation.

Writing is my favorite part of every day. My days are built around sleep, work, and writing (oh, and Reds baseball, which is an ideal thing to watch while writing because it requires very little of my attention). I’m writing like I’ll forget the plot if I don’t get it on paper soon, as soon as possible. It’s like I can see the finish line and I’m sprinting toward it, trying to reach it before all these other non-existent people get there.

Already, it’s getting to the point where I’m wondering what I’ll do with myself when I’m finished with my WIP. Read more? Let’s be honest—I already read A LOT. I average a book or two a week, which is pretty good considering that I’m obsessed with my own novel. I finished A.G. Howard’s SPLINTERED (an Alice in Wonderland retelling) yesterday and went straight for another book, Jennifer Echols' DIRTY LITTLE SECRET.

So maybe I’ll work more with my critique partners? Problem therein is that three of them are also deep in their own marathons, their own new WIPs. They’re also querying the manuscripts I’ve read, which is what my fourth CP has been up to lately. We talk less than we used to, probably because they’re just as obsessed with their writing as I am. We’ve all shared at least the concepts of our new stories and, in one case, I’ve read a first chapter that made me so excited to read more. Of course, at that point, there was no more.

So what else is there for me to do? Take up running? Unlikely. I’m not a marathoner. If anything, I’m a speed walker. I grab my iPhone, plug in my earbuds, and click on my current WIP playlist as I set out to conquer the hills of my neighborhood. Of course, the whole time I’m walking, I’m working through the next 1-2K of my WIP. See, I’m obsessed.

I may not be a runner, but I have a lot of friends who are. Several of them are running the Pig today and many of those that aren’t are out there cheering for someone else who is. I know when runners are done with one marathon, they get started on training for the next one. So maybe that’s what I need to do. Once I’ve finished writing this WIP, I’ll get to planning another one. Because I’m in this to get (at least) a book published and I’m going to keep running until I make that finish line. You have my word on that.