What To Do Now That Your Query Is Out?

Now that you’ve sent out your query letter to agents, what do you do? Don’t just sit around twiddling your thumbs while you watch for the mailman and watch your inbox. Go take that trip you’ve waited for, go work in your garden or kitchen. Clean the house or watch that week long marathon you’ve been dreaming of. Do whatever it is you’ve been putting off while you perfect your novel. It may even do you good to start a new book. Those characters that kept bothering you but didn’t fit in your current novel have their own story to tell. Let it out and get immersed in a new story. Whatever you do, don’t keep rereading and rereading the same story trying to perfect it. Live a little and learn something new. Get your mind out of the story and relax. After a month, or at least a week, you can go back to your story and look at it again with new eyes. You need a new perspective and a less stressed mood to see things as a reader and not the writer. Start the process over again if you want or wait until your first round of replies comes. Some replies will probably come within days, others may never be replied to while others may take months to get through their pile of suggestions.



Just relax and remember that any rejections you get are at your writing, not you personally. Writing is a craft you learn, a technique you perfect. Most authors have gone years before they got published but they kept at it because they loved to write and they knew that one day someone would treasure their story as much as they did. Here is a good article on other famous authors who got rejected and how they dealt with rejection.



As a side note, don’t expect every agent or editor you send your query letter to will give you a reason why they don’t want it. Some will give you a critique if they have the time but many agents and editors (speaking for freelancers) won’t be willing to open themselves up to arguments from authors who think their work is the best the world has ever seen. If you want examples, read this article from an editor’s perspective. Once you’ve gotten the rejection letters, and you will probably get a few your first time out at least, read them and decide what next. You can send the editor/agent a thank-you for their time, which may get you a few brownie points in the future but probably won’t matter, you can throw the story away and start fresh in a fit of despair, you can relax, breath deep, and just accept that you aren’t a perfect fit for the person at that time, or any number of other responses. Arguing with an agent or editor is a sure way to be ignored in the future, at least by that person, but sending a professional thank you to someone who sent a critique is a must. Get known for being nice and professional and you may start getting more critiques, or you may still be treated like everyone else. It’s up to you to decide how you react, their words are merely their opinions and not the global opinion. Keep that in mind and you may become a published author yet.

Best of 2011 Writer's Journey

The new year has come and the old year has gone. Before we say adieu to 2011, let's have a look at the things I talked about this year.

2011 I focused a lot of creating the right setting for your story.
Creating a Space Ship
Creating a Space Station
What to think about when setting your story in the real world and the partially real or alternate Earth

Next I wrote some writing techniques to help you actually write your story.

Now you have everything you need to write your story. Sit down and write it so you can make 2012 the year you write your best work so far.

Why You Should Take A Query Letter Seriously

Once you’ve found some agents or publishing houses that you think would be interested in your novel, you can use your synopsis to write an engaging query letter. I’d recommend writing one great query letter you save as the template but read about each agent’s specifications and adjusting to each agent before sending out the letters. This article gives a good template and awesome examples on how to write the standard query letter and why it’s foolish to “try something new” when writing query letters. This next blog post is by Nathan Bransford, a man who was a literary agent for a number of years as well as having had a child’s book published so he knows the business. He also gives a lot of resources on agents and practical ideas for taking a lot of stress out of the process. Here is a great blog post by Nathan on what to know about your rights as an author before sign anything. (Sorry, this doesn’t quite go here, but it is something you should know if an agent gets back to you about your novel.) Query Shark is an interesting blog where you can send in a query letter to be critiqued in public or can read other letters be honestly critiqued by an actual agent.

Is a Literary Agent Right for You?

Now that you’ve written your synopsis, you need to decide if you want an agent or not. There are a number of pros and cons for choosing an agent or not. The agent is a good thing because knowing the publishing business and who would likely buy what is their business, it’s how they get paid so they are usually good at it. There are also a number of large publishing houses that will no longer take submissions by authors that aren’t represented by literary agents. However, there are a number of dishonest agents who will sign you to a deal that will be much more beneficial to them than the author or that agree to represent a book for a fee but never plan to send that book to publishers. There are a lot of horror stories about agents but literary agents are often very good helps and can open a lot of doors unrepresented authors can’t touch.

Once you’ve decided you want an agent, you need to research which agents will most likely enjoy your book (genre, previous books…) Each agent wants specific things and possibly different formats. If you’ve decided that you don’t want an agent, you have to do the same research on publishing companies.

As an unpublished author, I can’t give you proven advice on how to pick an agent but I found a number of sites that can give proven advice and help finding good literary agents for science fiction writers.

As an ex-agent, Nathan Bransford has an interesting perspective on the publishing community and what literary agents are looking for in a query letter and a book.

Chuck Sambuchino’s blog is a guide to literary agents and their blogs or articles with a focus on new agents with less on their plates who are more open to new writers than some of the ones in the business that already have a lot of clients to keep up with.

SFWA is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website and an excellent resource for and science fiction or fantasy writer. This is an article on the pros and cons of literary agents as well as how to choose a good one that will actually do the work needed to make your novel a success.

WEBook is a writing community and this article is a list of a few agents looking for science fiction and fantasy writers.

Why a Synopsis?

Once your story is perfect, or at least awesome, you need to write a synopsis of your book. More than a summary, your synopsis is the entire story in a few pages. (I originally read that a page in the synopsis for every twenty-five pages in your book. Although that is a good way to narrow down the plot points, the two articles I like about writing a synopsis recommend fewer pages so the reader doesn’t get bored. Remember that publishers, editors, and agents read hundreds of letters and synopsis a month and yours needs to be just right to get a second look.) It needs to grab the readers attention and enthrall them in just a few pages. That’s tough and here are two articles (here and here) to help you figure out how to make your synopsis exactly what publishers are looking for.

How To Prepare To Publish Your Novel

You’ve written your novel and you think it’s ready for the publisher. Now what?

You could just print off a lot of copies, put the full novel in envelopes, and send them to publishing houses, hoping the publishers will love the novel as much as you do. However, if you do it that way, every single one of your copies will be thrown in the trash unopened. As with any business, there is the proper way to do things and the sloppy way to do things. Sending the full novel straight to publishers is the sloppy way The proper way to do things is in small bits. First you make sure your story is perfect, which includes letting others read and critique it. (One great site for hopeful authors to be read by other writers who know about technique and style, and tone that publishers will look for is Writing.com.)

One thing to remember before you start sending out letters is that publishers and agents often ask for a few sample chapters before they agree to publish your novel or represent you. With that in mind, be sure that your first three chapters are great, even if you continue to tweak the later chapters.

Writing Techniques

As much fun as it is to sit down and write your story, to just let the words flow and watch your story come to life before your eyes, you need to remember that isn’t all it takes to get a story published. You need to remember to craft your writing and think about using the best wording every time you write. At the beginning it’s okay to write and then focus on technique and craft in the revisions. Soon you’ll be so used to thinking about craft and technique that you’ll be wording things naturally while you write your first draft. That will make it much simpler when it comes time for the revisions.

Although there are a lot of techniques involved in writing well, here are a few we covered.

Point of View
Writer's Voice
Use Your Vocabulary
Cut Your Project into Manageable Parts
Avoid Rambling
Know the Details
How to Create a Setting
How to Create a Character
A Tip for Making Realistic Characters
A Final Thought on Characters
Plan Your Writing
Stop Thinking and Write Your Story!

Time to Revise Your story

Foreshadowing
Are You Writing a Report or a Story?
Avoid Cliches
Think About How You Tell Your Story
Pacing
Watch the Grammar
Imagine the Movie
Be Careful with Technical Terms
Watch the Details