Dude.

I'd write more. If I had something to write about. I'm in transit. A lady in waiting. On the sidelines. Insert your own cliche here. More queries are out, and I'm just plugging away. The agent who requested my partial is at a huge book fair in London, along with the hundreds of other US agents who decided to peruse the European market, so there's quite a lull going on in the aspiring writer world. So I'm going to continue tapping my fingers, eating the leftover chocolate bunny from my daughter's Easter basket, and looking up other agents in the hopes to annoy the hell out of them with my query. Which, after 6 rewrites of what I thought was the master copy, is pretty darn good...finally.

A Little Fishy

So I guess the query worked-a fish has nibbled. An agent has requested a partial. Now- note-for the record- I am not bouncing off of walls, not super-excited and losing control. Yes, my heart is a-flutter with visions of acceptance, proposals, contracts, book deals, etc.; however, this time, I'm playing it cool. I'm going to look over my partial another time, make sure it's perfect (again), and then take another day to carefully craft a good cover letter and prevent any stupid mistakes.

My first knee-jerk reaction to my "Cool Hand Luke" front was that I'm setting myself up for rejection again. You know, trying to ease the pain by not getting my hopes up. But it's not that at all. I know my manuscript is good. I know I write well. I know there is an agent out there who will love my characters as much as I love them. So I quickly pushed that familiar nagging in me aside and realized that my best bet is to be confident. I have nothing to lose. So I'm going in with this head high.

Wish me luck. This is a frickin' big agent. Like, HUGE. Like EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS PERSON. oh god...my heart is starting to pound. I gotta go before I start hyperventilating.

My latest query

So I wrote this query that I finally liked. Trust me, writing queries is like having a hot sauce enema. It's just not something anybody looks forward to. And now that I've had 4 hot sauce enem-er, I mean, written 5 different query templates, I'm just looking forward to the cooling off period. Of course, almost every query is personalized to each agent, meaning that I've either mentioned a book that they have represented that I have either read or think my manuscript is similar in theme, or I have sucked up to them in such a way that they know I've done my homework. I think that's the most important thing here. It's doing the homework. I've spent hours just looking up agent names, backgrounds, companies, recent sales to publishing houses- it's enough to make me vomit. I can tell you which agent recently left one company because they were seduced by another lit agency. I can tell you which agent recently got married. I can tell you which agent seems to spend more time "tweeting" than physically possible. Do I try to convey in my query that I've been researching [stalking] them? No, but I write my letter with as much wit and professionalism as possible that it obvious to them that I'm not some shmuck who's writing on a wing and prayer and just sending off random queries at her leisure.

Anyway, we'll see what happens with my most recent queries that went out last week. I'm taking time off today for cooking for Passover dinner tonight with the in-laws, and taking a moment to dance to Mickey Mouse's "Hot Dog" dance with my kid.

Sorry......

In the middle of writing more queries, I got caught up in the 2009 NHL Playoff Challenge Pool. My bad. I've been spending the last hour scouring NHL.com, gettin' giddy and wide-eyed at the possible playoff contenders. I'll write tomorrow with something more substantial than my hockey fantasies. :)

Let the games BEGI---er...CONTINUE!

So I'm rewriting my query. AGAIN. Looking back, my other queries were too detailed, too long, then too short, too boring, and too vague. I've never had so many issues writing a letter before in my life. I feel like I'm advertising not my manuscript, but myself. And I know that that's partly true. I'm pitching my voice, my fluency, my ease of grammar and sentence structure...yeah. You get the point. Then it's on to selling my characters, but all the while not mentioning more than two characters' names (or else it's way too confusing for the agent). Then it's showing off my unique story line, my interesting plot twist, and a hook to keep an agent asking for more. Oh yeah, and this all has to be done in just a few sentences.

So, I'm off to work on the query again before I bring my kid to get some fresh air for her cold to forget about said query. But just before I go, I'll mention that I've become a huge fan off all the blogs I've been following, and their followers, too. I have been talking [corresponding] with many new authors, some published, some unpublished, that just want the same thing I have wanted all my life. And that's just for someone to enjoy the words I have on paper. Not for the money-I figured out VERY quickly in the game that if you're doing this for the money, you're a)out of your mind and b) need to find another job FAST, but really, just to have someone say, "Damn! I'm glad I read that! That was a good story!" Because isn't that what we all need right now? Just a good story? Mine even has a happy ending. (Okay, kind of.....not without some sacrifice, of course....) Anyway, I'm just thankful to have met some very cool people in the past few months.

I should say to Rosemary Harris and to Meredith Cole that I am extremely bummed I missed you at the New Canaan Library yesterday. I went and purchased an autographed copy of Harris' Pushing Up Daisies book to make up for it (I still need to get The Big Dirt Nap, but I need to get Cole's book still. I meant to get it yesterday before I met her, but my daughter was a handful. I try to catch Cole before she settles down to work on her next book after her Posed for Murder.

That's it for now. I'll be writing more next week because I've decided that my experience with rejections and queries now will be something to blog about. Not in a complaining way, though. (Although there certainly might be a leakage of it...) I'm just going to post what to do and what not to do. It'll serve as a reminder for not only myself when I look back on this crazy ride, but to anybody who just needs a blatant list of the shit you cannot pull with literary agents. They are a wild bunch. Very picky.

Finally A Reason!!!!!!!!!

See? An answer to one question that my mother keeps asking me: Do you have to curse so much? Well, ma, yeah. I do. And: This is my excuse.

The Best Remedy

Wanna know what the best remedy to rejection is? Dancing with your kid. And not some little hop-hop-hopping around the room to some Raffi. I'm talking The Asteroids Galaxy Tour blasting off the biggest speakers in the house and screaming and twirling and spinning around while your kid jumps to the beat, squealing with delight, thinking it's the coolest new game that mommy is playing, all the while you try to fight back tears when an agent says you're not good enough.

So I'm gonna get back to dancing with my kid who think I'm good enough for her. Later.