Really Stupid Things to Do

I don't remember if I've done this before and I'm too lazy to go back and look.  If I have, it's worth repeating, though, so here goes...

These are some really stupid things you can do when you're trying to get your book published (and most of them will get the door slammed in your face and possibly get you blacklisted*):

- Act like yours is the most important book anyone is ever going to read and query accordingly.

- Tell an agent that in order to read your query, they need to go to your website.

- Trash other writers.

- Send things with your query that no one asked for (like your entire manuscript, glitter in the envelope*, prezzies...)

- Call the agency out of the blue.

Okay, those are pretty obvious, but how about...

- Blubbering in your query letter about how you know they won't like your book, but it'd be nice if they looked at it anyways.

- Not checking ahead of time whether the Chris or Pat or Terry you're sending to is a Mr. or a Ms.

- Not bothering to do all the other kinds of research you can on an agent, agency, etc.  If they say they never ever represent fantasy, what the hell are you doing sending them the next Shannara series?

- Whining on your website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, Myspace, Livejournal... or any of combination thereof... about the submission process.**

- Send your submissions or any other writing business correspondence from a cutesy ass email address.  FluffyBunny4U or IHeartKitties or SmexyDude812 or NYourPointIsWhat does not engender confidence or professionalism.

- Ambush any agent or editor or publishing professional in an elevator, bathroom, parking ramp, clothing store, farmhouse, outhouse or doghouse.  Just don't.  It makes you look like a stalker, and who wants to work with a stalker?

And the most important thing of all...

- Letting any of this process get to you to the point where you stop writing.  That would not only be stupid, it would be tragic.

How about you?  Anything I missed?  Any thoughts on the stupid things you can do during this process?  Feel free to share stories of stupid things you've done, but if you share stories about stupid things others have done, change the names to protect the embarrassed.  No one needs to get hurt here.

*  Okay, I don't know for sure if there really is a blacklist, but sometimes it feels like there's one, doesn't it?

**  Whining is actually part of the process.  Rejection hurts.  Just don't whine too publicly or too much.  No one likes a whiner.

That's the Question

This morning as I was making my way through my blog list, seeing which posts might interest me, I saw the following post title: "Are you a serious author?  Do you want to be successful?" (The link goes to a post about two spots left in a class or a conference or something in Denver...)

But that's not important.  What's important is that the questions posed there in the title got me thinking. 

Ya know, if someone had asked me those questions in 2004, I would've been adamant about YES for both.  I was very serious about being a successful, published, wildly acclaimed author. 

If someone had asked me those same questions a few years later, I would've looked at them like they were stupid and said "Well, duh.  You think I'm doing all this for my health?"

Now?

Well, let's face it folks, I'm tired.  It's damn hard to continue to maintain that level of seriousness and commitment after 9.5 years of this.  Unmet expectations wear a gal down.  Hell, even my husband has stopped talking in terms of 'when you get published'.  When I finished rewriting that last book, we were both like 'well, that's nice, when's dinner'. 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still committed to writing.  I still want to be published.  But after beating my head on a wall umpteen times, it doesn't feel as crucial as it used to. 

And also don't get me wrong, if I ever saw any glimmer of a chance that I could be published, I would become as serious as I used to be and the drive would come back.  I know that for certain.  Whether that ever becomes a reality is what isn't so certain. 

How about you?  Are you a serious author?  Do you want to be successful?  How crucial is it for you now?

Survival Tip #12 - Get It Right and Sleep at Night

When you're querying, you will be anxious.  You will go over that damn query a hundred... errr... a thousand times, and you will think you have it right. 

Unfortunately, in your anxiety and haste, you will inevitably get something wrong.  And for days... errr... months afterwards you will lie awake at night remembering that one little thing that jumped out at you AFTER you sent the query.

For instance, you will hit send and notice that for some reason you forgot to put your name in the signature.  (I choose to believe that at least some of the people Janet Reid references in that post simply forgot to put their name at the end of their query.) 

Maybe you sent the query out thinking that you had everything right - until some agent responds telling you that you got something wrong.  In my case, I misspelled a culturally significant name and a certain agent let me know it in the rejection she sent.  (I still mull that one over every time I see her name.  D'oh!)

Perhaps you hit send and realized you forgot to change the salutation from 'Dear Mr. Jones' to 'Dear Ms. Murgatroid'.  Which is particularly irritating considering you did remember to change the personalization part of the query.  But in your haste to get it right, grit your teeth and send your query out into the world, you missed that one key part.

Now I've heard agents say they won't let one little thing like that kill a perfectly good query.  You know, if everything else is perfect...  But those little errors sure can't help.

So... and yeah, you've all heard this before... check and recheck those little things before you hit send.  In my experience, the best way to do this is to slow down.  Let yourself relax.  Take a day.  Sleep on it before you hit send. 

Trust me on this.  You'll sleep better the other 364 days knowing you didn't make those niggling little mistakes.

And if you do make them, let them go.  Easier said than done, I know - especially considering I'm still wringing my hands over mistakes I made in 2004.

What mistakes have you made that keep you up at night?  Or are you someone who can let those things go?  Any suggestions on making sure you have it all correct before you hit send?

Check This Out

Here's an awesome post from Meagan Spooner over at The League of Extraordinary Writers - Query Advice: Always be Ready to Move On!

Survival Tip #8: Getting Personal

I know I said in the first Survival Tip not to take any of this personally... unless you already made it personal by writing about your life in some kind of vaguely fictionalized way.

Case in point:  The Query Shark's latest chum.  (My apologies.  Apparently, he asked to have his query removed right after it went up - and after I wrote this post - so the 'case in point' will have to fly without your actually being able to look at query #237.)

Anyway...

This poor guy wrote a book about his life and added some fictional elements to snazz up the place.  And what he got was a poor treatment of his life and a poorer treatment of his query.  (Not that Ms. Reid wasn't justified.  He asked for it; he got it.  Toyota.)

If you feel like you MUST write about your life in some kind of fictionalized way, you're going to end up taking the rejections personally.  Who wouldn't?  See, this is why my college English professor told us all that we needed distance from any story before we could do the story justice.  Distance, my friends, is the getting personal without letting all the rejections get personal.

I feel bad for the guy who offered himself up as bait for the Shark.  He thought his life was pretty interesting.  It probably was.  Hell, my life has had its share of interesting bits.  I've even thought about writing some of them down in what would have to be a fictionalized memoir (because I can't remember all the details of the events - not because I want to pull a Mr. Frey.)  I haven't written it because I was too close.  I may always be too close.  Hell, I'm living this life, so it's kind of hard to divorce myself from it.

On the other hand, they do tell you to write what you know.  And as Ms. Reid pointed out in her critique, the gentleman did do that - perhaps to extremes.  I think the idea, though, is to weave bits of yourself into your work.  It is not to have yourself and that work be intertwined.

There's nothing wrong with getting personal, folks.  But like Aristotle said 'everything in moderation'.  Take bits of yourself to weave the tapestry, but don't give all of yourself.

Because, let's face it, folks - no matter how interesting we think the entirety of our story is, it just won't sell as is.

What about you?  Have you ever thought of writing a memoir?  Do you use bits of yourself into your fiction?  How much is too much?

This Just In

FYI: Jill Corcoran just announced she's re-opened to submissions.

http://jillcorcoran.blogspot.com/2013/02/re-opened-to-submissions-what-i-am.html

The post includes what she's looking for.  Sadly, it's not anything I write, but that means there's more room for those of you who do write what she needs.

Good luck!

Also, if you have a NaNo 2012 novel and you think you're ready to pitch it, check this out:

http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2013/02/pitch-your-nanonovel.html 

Let us know if you make the leap!  =o)

This Just In

If you have a book ready to be submitted, there's some kind of event on Twitter today.  Learn more about it HERE.  (I don't know the blogger.  I just kyped the link from Alexia Chamberlynn.)

Anyway, it's a Twitter pitch party using the hashtag #pitmad and it runs today from 8am to 8pm EST - so there's plenty of time.

I'll be getting something together later - like after the thought of throwing a pitch out there stops making me feel like I want to hurl.

GOOD LUCK!

Update 1:31pm MST: Two different pitches for Djinnocide out there in the Twitterverse.  Wish me luck.  And if you're participating, chime in.  Or friend me and we'll see what each other are up to.

Check This Out

If you've ever been in the submission process, or if you're getting ready to jump in, then you probably should be visiting Matthew MacNish's blog: The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment.  In his words, it's "A clumsy attempt at making some sense of the sinister submission process..."

Personally, I don't think it's clumsy at all.  Matthew's critiques are seriously helpful and thoughtful.  So, go forth and check it out.

Guest Post: "This Book Will Never Sell" by JB Lynn

“This Book Will Never Sell”

Now I don’t know about you, but I have that exact thought every time I write a book. (I think it multiple times every single day.)

Then again, if you’re like me, you must believe in a corner of your heart, that it WILL sell, because why else would you put yourself through the torture that is Pursuit of Publication?

When you query an agent, it feels like “not a fit for my list” really means “this book will never sell”. But that’s not what it means because an agent would never say that, right?  Right??

Wrong.

A number of years ago, I had that very thing happen to me.

Now I don’t know about you, but the idea of doing a face-to-face pitch with a literary agent is wayyyyy worse than sending an anonymous query letter. I panic. I get tongue-tied. I babble like a stream during a Spring thaw.

Still, I’m a believer in putting yourself out there in pursuit of your dreams. (If you ask me, it’s a pretty stupid belief.) Following this belief had led me to pitching to agents at conferences. (Yes, it has always been just about as miserable as I imagine it will be.)

Now for the most part, agents are nice people. They love books. They try not to let their eyes glaze over as they listen to poorly-delivered pitch after poorly-delivered pitch. They scribble notes (which may very well be their shopping lists). They drink caffeinated beverages. They suck on lozenges. They use a lot of hand sanitizer.

They smile. They’re polite. They tend to be encouraging, even while they’re rejecting you.

Or, like the agent I pitched to, they look you dead in the eye and say, “This book will never sell.”

She didn’t say she couldn’t sell it. She said it would never sell. To my face.

Once I got over my shock/outrage/depression, I mentally thanked her because she did the best possible thing possible for me. She pissed me off.

I landed another agent (who I later left) with that book and I rewrote it for two different publishing companies before I got that “yes” I’d been pursuing.  Every time I thought I couldn’t take another “no” I remembered how much I wanted to prove that agent wrong and I pushed a little further. THE FIRST VICTIM was published by Carina Press….and no, I didn’t thank the “This book will never sell” agent in my acknowledgments, but I was tempted.

What’s the worst thing you’ve heard as you pursue publication?

AUTHOR BIO – JB Lynn

JB Lynn is the author of THE FIRST VICTIM, CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN and FURTHER CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN. She is a compulsive reader, a runner (of sorts), an enthusiastic cook (who doesn't get the appeal of the Food Network), and someone who has an irresistible urge to eavesdrop at all times. JB has a great love of her husband, dogs, coffee, purple ink, spiral notebooks, running gear, hot showers, and '80s music. Given enough time, all of these things will eventually show up in her books.

Website: www.jblynn.com

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/jb_lynn_author

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/jb.lynn.14

KILLER CHICKS:  http://www.killerchicks.org/

Edited to Add:  We didn't plan this but just for kicks this morning, I got a wild idea.  Comment and be entered to win either a hardcopy of Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman - the first book in JB's series - or any one of her Kindle ebooks.  (U.S. only on the ebooks, I think.  They don't let you send those things to other countries - damn them.  And U.S. or Canada only on the hardcopy.  I'm not made of money. :wink:)  Any comment before next Monday's post goes up - one comment per person. 

This Just In

This just in from QueryTracker.net:

Weronika Janczuk left agenting.  It seems like cold-turkey.

Without permission, I can't reprint the letter some writers received as a response to their submissions, so if you're interested in the exact verbiage, you need to go here*.  Suffice it to say, her former agency (Lynn C. Franklin Associates) basically told writers who were under submission that they were out of luck and to seek representation elsewhere.  Weronika's twitter page seems to reflect this news as she's changed her profile to 'Former Literary Agent'.

I don't have any more information.  My heart goes out to anyone who had a requested submission with her and to all of her clients.  Good luck in your search.

*You might not be able to see it without signing up for the site, but a basic membership is free, so why not join?  It's a great resource.