Once Again

Sorry I skipped yesterday, but it was a full working day for me. I sent out some queries for Whose Hearts are Mountains yesterday, and I will send some out today. And again.

It’s not the first time I’ve sent queries out. I’ve never received a good response on queries, but I keep improving and I keep sending queries out.

I believe in my work. Maybe I believed in it too much when I sent the first queries, before I discovered dev editors and harsh re-edits. Maybe I believed in my queries too much before I learned to write queries (and I hope I’m doing them right now).

I hope this time around is the time I get an agent.

#SFFpit and the Concept of the Pitch Contest (Social Media, Writer Development)

I found another pitch contest on Twitter, which reminds me of why #WritingCommunity Twitter is so valuable. This one is called #SFFPit, and is specific to science fiction and fantasy books.

What’s a Pitch Contest?
In a pitch contest, a writer of a completed and unpublished work distills the essence of their book into a Twitter-sized pitch. The author has the opportunity to pitch their book (using a different pitch each hour to get past Twitter algorithms) once an hour for a set number of hours. The purpose of this is to attract potential agents and publishers, who will ask for a query to further judge your work.

Pitches should illuminate the character, their desires, obstacles to their desire, and the consequences of failure. Be specific of the consequences! Also, all pitches need to have #SFFpit in their body and use other designated hashtags for genre and audience. (Koboldt, 2020).

See more details here!

Koboldt, D. (2020). #SFFpit. Available: http://dankoboldt.com/sffpit/#sffpit-rule-changes [January 20 2020)

Working on Optimism

I got another rejection today; that makes four out of 25 on Apocalypse. I might have to accept the fact that I get through this querying cycle without any offers, or even nibbles, again.

I’m not sure what to do. I suppose I can wait and query my novels again, to see if the climate has improved. Or I can self-publish, and I’m still very opposed to doing that. I don’t know if there’s an editor that can help at this point.

I’m going to try to stay optimistic, mostly because it feels better that way. I am going to let this adversity strip me down to gold, and I don’t know what that version of me will look like, but I’m willing to go there.

What if everyone rejects me?

So I have twenty-six queries out right now. No, twenty-five, because I got a same-day rejection yesterday — same day service! I’m going to stop querying for a while (I have close to 45 left to send) to see what happens with this.

I have to remind myself that there are several reasons why queries get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality of my book:

The topic of my book isn’t “hot” right now
The agent only has one slot left in their list and they know exactly what they want to put in it and it’s not my book
My query didn’t “speak” to them or they didn’t “feel” it (literal rejections I’ve gotten)
The agent had a bad day (I’m not kidding)
There’s a lot, a LOT more queries coming in than there are books being sold in traditional publishing

So I’m left with that question, always: What do I do if I get 25 more rejections?

I send the rest.

And if I don’t get an agent then, I tweak things and try again. And remind myself that the agents are rejecting my query, not me.

Revving the treadmill engine

I guess I got tired of that idyllic end of summer crap, because I’ve sent twenty queries over the past couple of days.

That’s twenty chances for rejection, I know. That’s also twenty chances for requests for manuscripts. That’s twenty chances for someone to share my query with another agent in the agency. Twenty more agents who know my name.

No, I’m not always as optimistic as I sound. It’s just that my hedonic treadmill, the constant state of moving up and down from our hedonic set point , really gets revving up when presented with possibilities.

So I have to get more queries out there to rev my treadmill engine, and so I’ll be writing those up until I work New York Hope as moulage crew and then start my semester.

In the meantime, I dream of someday having a book release party. Locally, where I’m with the people I know. Cake and coffee and punch. What quirky things do you think should happen at a book party? Humor me.

Making things happen

Yesterday, I sent a few queries out for Archetype. I was going to wait, but I felt like it was time. I like having queries out, because it makes me feel like something good could happen.

The strange thing is that I’m not feeling that burning feeling to get something published lately. Maybe because I have gotten published (or will be anyhow) — my short essay in A3. Or because I’m feeling the season slip into autumn and classes. Or because I’m used to getting rejections. Or because my feelings have nothing to do with how well-received my letter is if I wrote my letter well.

I am really motivated to send out queries these last couple days. I’m trying to pace myself, though, because I’m always afraid I will become manic.

About Waiting

Sometimes, all you can do is wait for something to happen.

You’ve put out resumes, or queries, or submissions to a literary magazine. You put yourself out there, and then you wait.

While waiting the interminable wait, how do you look at your venture? Do you assume the worst hoping that you’ll be pleasantly surprised? Do you bask in a glow of possibility, entertaining the fantasy of success? Are you one of the few who can go on as if you haven’t handed your heart and soul out to strangers?

I myself wait impatiently to hear results, giddily checking Submittable and Query Tracker and email too many times. This is how I know that it was exactly 113 days (or 9763200 seconds) since I submitted Prodigies to DAW.

I have three other submissions out (two short stories and a poem) and one query out (Prodigies again). I know from the conference that rejections may not mean one’s work is not good, but that it doesn’t match current consumer demands. The odds are high given the number of competitors that I will get rejected all the way around. But I remain optimistic, because I need that vision of a change, of the possibility of bursting out of a cocoon having remade myself into an author, to season my days with sweet cinnamon and success.

Every which way

I’m sitting on my couch, before the day’s meetings and errands and editing (and no gardening as we’re on a flood warning with rain expected. My mind is going every which way:

So much to do these next couple days — meet students, prep for conference, plant stuff, write, prep for conference …

I am in a holding pattern for Making Things Happen. I don’t want to requery Prodigies until my dev editor has another shot at it (in June), I don’t know if I want to requery (this is now a word) Voyageurs at all (don’t know if it’s viable), can’t get re-written Apocalypse to the dev editor till June … when I send queries out, I get out of my funk because of this concept of possibility. I’m not really looking at any possibilities right now except for one big long shot.

I think I’m going to be rejected by TSA precheck. I don’t know why, unless it was those anti-war protests I participated in during the Gulf War or the guy I dated, equally long ago, whose father was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Or the fact that I’m a Quaker, or that I have a metal bar in my left leg that guarantees I’ll be patted down like a terrorist. The website says “Eligibility Determined” but does not give me a code number.

I’m pretty sure my last query out is going to be rejected. As I said, I shot big with that one.

I’m not feeling good about my writing lately. I hear this happens.

It’s just feeling like an unlucky day. My mood needs to be kicked in the butt, I’m sure, but not sure how to do that. The problem with feeling down is that feelings are so vivid that they take on the weight of truth.

Querying progress: Not a lot to report

I haven’t reported my writing/query progress for a while, so here it is:

My Prodigies query got rejected by Tor/Forge and a lot of agents over the past few months.

My query is now out to three publishers — one big, the others small and independent.

One of the small presses asked for my whole manuscript, which is progress. We shall see.

The other two presses — it’s early days yet.

Please keep me in your thoughts and even prayers if you think this unabashedly liberal and universalist Quaker deserves them.

Beyond the Naivete

When I first started writing, I felt the world needed to hear my story. Now I recognize the many thousands of stories out there and know not all will be heard.

I mistakenly believed my technical skills precluded the need for thorough editing; despite my considerable score on the SAT many, many years ago, I found that I not only needed to edit, but I needed an editor to point out the many places I made errors.

I believed my writing would rise above the other queries out there; however, I like so many others have not found an agent yet.

Optimism or arrogance, I do not know. Naivete? Certainly. I do know what remains is that writing is a lot of hard work with no guarantee of return other than the satisfaction of creating.

I still have my dreams of being published, hopefully with a traditional publisher because I feel ill-equipped for self-promotion. I have my dreams of being read by others and being well-regarded, and I admit that I would love to sign books for readers. But those are dreams, and the reality is that I need to keep trying, keep improving, keep losing my arrogance if I’m to get published.