Query Update--Let the Games Begin

I haven't tried publishing commercially in close to 15 years, with my last novel, MEDICUS. Over the last couple of weeks I started sending out my submission package to literary agents for COME THE HARPIES, and it's bringing back painful reminders of how enervating the process can be.

So far, I've sent out 22 queries and have received 9 rejections. For you foolhardy writers out there who have taken on the publishing industry in the past, you know quite well that those numbers are hardly significant. Still, the absolute worst part of writing is rejection. Like all writers, I take my work seriously, and having it dismissed out of hand by a busy agent who has skimmed maybe a page or two of a 300-page manuscript, is depressing as hell. And even at my advanced stage in life, rejection stings almost as bad as when I was a fuzzy-faced 27-year-old trying to get my first opus published.

Of course, everyone's heard the stories of famous authors with slam-dunk books being repeatedly rejected. Publishers rejected CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL 144 times, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE 121 times, Gevova's STILL ALICE got 100 rejections. And the list goes on.

That of course doesn't mean that my latest book is destined to be a classic if it starts racking up three-figure rejections. Maybe it'll never get a green light from a publisher. Maybe the world isn't ready for my genius. Maybe the publishing gate-keepers will all agree that the book simply sucks. But all a writer can do is keep sending it out and refining his submission package. Only time will tell if there's a home for my book. Rejection became so unpalatable for me that I gave up prematurely on my last two books, sending each out only a few dozen times.

What I will do differently this time is to invest in a professional opinion of my submission package if I reach a dozen or so rejections without a manuscript request. More details on this in a future post.

What NOT to Read When You're Writing

I made a terrible mistake recently, which resulted in a psychic setback in the marketing of my novel, COME THE HARPIES. Over my long career as a writer, I learned that it’s best not to read fiction while writing a novel. It’s even more important that if I violate that rule, it’s best that I not read great fiction, because it can totally compromise the self-confidence factor.

I recently broke that rule. I just finished reading a great writer. Though technically I’m at a stage where I’m now marketing my book to agents, it should’ve been okay to return to great books. However, I’m also reviewing my draft again and tweaking and tweaking, a process that could go on for a while. Thus, I should’ve stuck with non-fiction until I sign an agent contract or give up the ghost.

The great writer in question is Zadie Smith, and the book was her smash debut novel called WHITE TEETH. OMG! WHITE TEETH is a tour-de-force. It overflows with humor and wisdom, incredibly well-drawn characters representing a wide gamut of ages, races and cultures. She demonstrates a total mastery of setting, dialect, and emotional range. She covers religious fanaticism ranging from Islamism to the Jehovah Witnesses. Her scope as a writer seems without limit, covering a period from the 19th century to 1992. Her breadth takes you from London street culture to the rarified world of science and technology. Her talent seems infinite. And…she was 25 when she published this book!

Needless to say, Zadie Smith and I are not on the same planet talent-wise. But if she’s five times better than me, then she’s probably five times better than most other professional writers. But that realization doesn’t help much when you’re trying to write and market a book, which requires a maximum of enthusiasm and confidence on the part of the author. I shouldn’t have read that book and I’m paying the emotional toll of unworthiness for it now! 

If it’s any consolation, not all critics were enamored of WHITE TEETH, and it has a below 4 rating on Goodreads. It was criticized for being overwritten, too many main characters, a seeming disdain for most of the characters on the part of the author, tedious and plodding plotting and way too much detail and storylines. Yeah, I can see that. But I also see that books like INFINITE JEST, J.R., GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and FINNEGAN’S WAKE could be similarly criticized. These books are demanding and certainly not page-turners, but they brilliantly display the otherworldly gifts of their authors, including the great Zadie Smith. 

I suppose as writers we should be satisfied and try to appreciate our more earthly gifts, and accept the fact that the greats don’t come along that often. I think what I need to get me out of the dumps is a nice factual history of the Korean War or maybe a sloppy detective story. 

Writing a Plot Summary

Some, but not all, agents will ask for a plot summary, or synopsis, which is the same thing. Based on my research, agents requiring a plot summary usually do so because they want to see how your story develops beyond the few sample pages in your submission, and whether it’s the type of book that suits their fancy. Most importantly, in my opinion, a strong plot summary is indicative of a writer’s style and skill at condensing and writing persuasively.

That said, I hate doing plot summaries! I find them as difficult to write as the novel itself and even more challenging than writing query letters. With COME THE HARPIES, I had 670 words to describe a 97,000-word novel! That’s right, you get two double-spaced pages to describe your story, including spoilers and the ending of the book. Your plot summary has to introduce your most important character, describe what he/she wants, the personal and external barriers to achieving his/her desires, how he/she is changed by the experience, and how everything in the book ties together in the end. 

In 670 words…or less!

Notice the emphasis on character in the summary. It seems that, while agents are interested in unique and clever plots, what they really crave are fascinating and realistic characters, which is why the personalities in my book are the central focus of my summary. However, it is up to you to figure out the main thrust of your narrative and which subplots and side-stories to leave out to stay within the word count. So hard!

I toiled for weeks on mine and when it was reviewed by an agent at a workshop that I attended, it came back with a bunch of comments that would require further expansion of the summary. I’m still trying to figure out how to implement those changes within the word count restriction.  But this is the type of challenges that we writers frequently have to overcome. 

To help guide you in writing a plot summary, again go back to the back-cover copy of books in your genre to see how the pros capsulize their plots. But unlike your query letter pitch, whose only role is to entice agents to sample your book and leave them hanging, your plot summary should lay out your primary story, including how it ends. But your writing personality and style should shine through in your summary, because it’s another opportunity to demonstrate your brilliance and professionalism.

As with my query, I’m not going to pass along my plot summary in this blog until it has helped garnered the interest of an agent. Until then, here are some very fine plot summaries from Wiki Summaries of several Harry Potter books.  

Writing My Query Letter

The first point of contact with an agent or publisher is your query letter. A good query letter should be one that causes an agent who fields dozens of such letters every day to stand up and take notice of yours.

As noted by the authors Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, “Your query letter should be information-packed yet concise, complimentary without being obsequious, powerful without being overpowering. Be professional, but make sure the letter reflects the best of your personality and style.”

A query letter has essentially three parts: 1) the Opening, which explains why you’re contacting the agent, 2) your Book Pitch, 3) a brief Bio.

The Opening. Here’s where you make a connection between your book and the types of books the agent represents. If you’ve done your research, you know the types of writers the agent represents and what he or she is looking for. You can find this information on the agency’s website; Guide to Literary Agents; Writers Digest; Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents; as well as agent blogs, and Twitter feeds. Refer specifically to the books the agent has represented and what they mean to you and how your book fits their specific client criteria. Obviously, each query must be personalized since agents instantly discard mass query mailings. The key is to make a warm, human contact in the opening paragraph.

Your Pitch. Here’s where you describe your book and make it sound as tantalizing as possible. You should be able to describe your story in a couple of paragraphs, using as models the back covers and dust covers of books similar to yours. The idea of the pitch is to make the reader want to see more of your work. Your pitch is not a book report. It’s pure marketing. As Eckstut and Sterry say, “Your pitch is our audition to show us what a brilliant or romantic or authoritative writer you are.” You will use your pitch over and over again, not just in your query letter, but also whenever anyone asks you, “What is your book about?”

Your bio. This is a list of your accomplishments, awards (if any), other books you’ve written, or anything else that might interest a particular agent. If this is your first novel, maybe something about your education or background that’s salient to the themes in your book. Even something that you may share in common with the agent you’re soliciting, such as a love of cooking, playing a musical instrument, or any quirks that present you as an interesting personality.

So that’s it. Your query letter is super critical and super difficult to write. Every word in it is important. I’ve lost count of the number of drafts my query has gone through. But you must totally commit to writing a perfect query letter or you just won’t gain any traction in the publishing world. I would like to share my query letter, but I’ve only just started sending it out and I don’t want to present it here until I’ve snared some agent interest in it. Until then, I’ll share some successful queries collected by NY Book Editors that eventually resulted in a book contracts.  

Preparing the Submission Package

Once your manuscript is as perfect as you can make it and has gone through a developmental and copy edit, it’s time to seek an agent. You need an agent if you want your book published by one of the major publishers and for the myriad other services an agent can offer to help make your book a success.

The goal with my book, Come the Harpies, is commercial publication. I don’t intend to self-publish this one and I do not want to work with a book packaging firm that you pay to publish and market your book, or any combination of those latter two approaches. There is nothing wrong with those alternatives, but I want to see if I have the stuff to make an agent and editor fall in love with my work enough to offer a publishing contract. So this blog will only focus on the steps I’m taking to achieve that goal. 

I’ve tried to take a structured and disciplined approach to my “journey.” I’ve attended a writer’s workshop that covered publishing fundamentals and have read the "bible" on how to get a book published. 

Most recently, I participated in an on-line “Boot Camp” run by a major New York City literary agency that focused on preparing my submission package. Following a two-hour webinar, I was given three days to perfect my submission package and submit it to the agency for a professional critique. With any luck, they’ll like my package enough to request more pages…and maybe take me on as a client. 

Submission packages vary from agency to agency, but my research indicates some commonalities that exist among agencies. A submission package usually includes a:

·     Query letter. A one-page introduction indicating why you’re contacting the agent, a brief pitch describing your book, and some biographical notes.

·     Synopsis. A brief (no more than two pages double-spaced) plot summary, including spoilers and how your story ends. I found this the most difficult document to write!

·      Sample. Actual pages from the book. It seems an agency will request anywhere from the first 5 to first 50 manuscript pages. Always submit the beginning pages, because most people decide whether to buy a book based on the first couple of pages, so that’s what most agents look at.

My next three posts will cover each of those elements in more detail, including samples of a successful query letter and synopsis. Please note, the submission package I’ve described is only for fiction. Submissions for nonfiction are different and involve writing a proposal and chapter outlines. Those elements are outside the scope of this blog because I really haven’t studied them.

Coming up later this week: What goes into a Query Letter? 

The First Step: Write a Great Story. Part 2

As mentioned in my previous post, a key part of preparing your novel for publication is to go through an in-depth developmental edit with a professional editor. If you’re like me, you will receive pages of notes back from your editor with suggestions on how to strengthen your story, as well as specific annotations in your manuscript. It’s a tedious and unnerving process going through a developmental edit, but it’s well worth it when it yields a better, more publishable product. 

Here are some of the comments/suggestions from my developmental editor on my manuscript:

·     Character voices. Some character voices are too similar to tell who is speaking without dialogue tags. This can be confusing to the reader, but also a lost opportunity to portray more character and depth. To fix: do individual passes of the novel, picking out the dialogue of one main character at time and really immerse yourself in how they articulate and view the world. It builds personality and helps them come alive.

·     Use telling detail. Putting in more detail means saying more than the actual words are saying to add insight about characters, setting, situation, mood, subtext or theme. Provides more depth to the story.

·     Avoid passive tense. Replace as many “is”, “was”, and “feels” as possible with more dynamic verbs.

·     Cut down on longer sentences or break them in two. It’s usually better to cut down to essential elements in a sentence than cutting a sentence in two. Also, keep paragraphs short to help the maintain reader momentum.

·     After the first 50 pages in a book, you should hardly ever have to explain the world to the reader. Make a spreadsheet of all explained elements, read through the entire manuscript and mark every page where those things are explained. The explanation should only come once, usually on the first mention. Choose details of explanations wisely to create mood, tension, and reader emotional connection. Overall: watch out for over-explaining!

·     Add sensory data. Emotional connection to characters comes through the character’s sensory data: what does she hear, smell, feel, or taste in the situation and how do they feel about it? Smell and taste seldom described enough.

·     Make powerful setting descriptions and how characters move through and react to their settings.

·     Less telling, more showing. 

·     Add interest techniques to scenes, such as suspense, a twist, a surprise, interesting settings, misleads and reveals, dramatic irony (the reader knowing something the character doesn’t), uncertainty, hope, fear, intrigue, cliffhangers, dilemmas. Dialogue techniques includes a hook (someone says something strange, unusual, or compelling), predictions, foreseeing potential consequences, anticipatory dialogue like threats, warnings, etc.

·      Avoid cliches. Seemed to be a problem with my book towards the end. Specifically, my editor counseled, “Have your characters try things you haven’t seen done in movies or books before. Usually your first idea in having a character solve a problem isa cliché because we pick the idea that’s easiest—which is the thing we’ve seen other characters do in similar situations in other books or movies. But if you don’t stop at thinking of one or two solutions to a problem a character may face, and keep going until you have five or ten, then you’re getting into unique territory. This was the toughest note for me to address, and one I don’t think I was totally successful in implementing, though in a couple of cases I did.

There were many, many specific comments in the manuscript itself, making for a rather uncomfortable few weeks of massive editing. But the result of a lot of hard work is a manuscript that I feel is ready for the world. Or at least ready for submission to agents and editors. And that’s a process that I’ll move on to in my next post.

The First Step: Write a Great Story. Part 1

That sounds obvious, but obvious things tend to be true. I’ve learned that you don’t stand a ghost of a chance of being commercially published if your novel doesn’t have tight plotting, fascinating characters, and impeccable execution. The competition out there is ridiculous. Agents and publishers receive thousands of queries every year by eager authors, so our only chance to break through is to offer something brilliant. Something bulletproof. Something impossible to turn down.

But people don’t seem to get it. Many writers think if they have a great idea, all they have to do is dash off a draft or two and then send it out in a half-baked condition. They're hoping that a publisher will recognize their genius and then work with them to develop and polish their baby to a lustrous, publishable shine.

It doesn’t work that way. There are too many great writers out there with wonderful stories to tell and who have gone through the trouble of countless rewrites and editorial input until their submissions are shimmering gems. Those are the books that get picked up by agents and publishers because they stand out from the typical dross.

I have some experience in that respect. I’ve participated in groups that review drafts of each other’s books, most of which are destined to be self-published. I’d say about 80 percent of the books I’ve reviewed are essentially unpublishable due to faulty plotting, clichéd characters, poor grammar and syntax, and other amateur shortcomings. Some offer fine stories but are poorly executed, a sure sign that the writer hasn’t done enough self-editing. I sympathize with agents who have to sort through such dross before landing on the occasional manuscript gem that deserves representation.

How do you know when your manuscript is ready?

I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to that question. Here’s what I go by. I won’t show my manuscript to anyone until I’ve done at least seven drafts. That may seem like a lot, but I recently went to a writer’s conference in which Amy Tan was the key note speaker. She said that she goes through her manuscripts at least 100 times! Well, works for her. Then there’s guys like Jonathan Franzen who does a single draft, but he’s a freak.

Once I’m happy with the draft, I try to round up people I respect to read it. I haven’t been very successful in joining/starting a reading group, but I’ve picked up some good advice in the past by vetting my work with review groups on Goodreads. 

When my book is in very good shape, I then send it out to a professional editor for a “developmental edit.” According to the website Reedsy, a developmental edit is a “thorough and in-depth edit of your entire manuscript. It is an examination of all the elements of your writing, from single words and the phrasing of individual sentences, to overall structure and style. It can address plot holes or gaps, problematic characterization and all other existing material.”

I went through a very intense professional developmental edit with my book, COME THE HARPIES, which substantially improved my manuscript and I hope made it more marketable. I paid a little more than $600 for the services of my very talented editor, and she earned every cent!

Once you’ve incorporated the changes suggested by the editor, which can be an extremely difficult process, you’re ready for your next series of rewrites, which I’ll cover in my next post. Once you think you’re all done with your content edit, enlist the services of a professional copy editor, who will comb through your manuscript and point out grammar, spelling, and inconsistencies that pop up. That will run you another $600 or so. You can find developmental and copy editors on the Reedsy website.

At that point, you should let your manuscript rest for a few weeks, after which you can go back and make sure that it’s as polished and professional as you can make it. Then maybe, just maybe, you’re ready to submit. After three years and following the process I’ve describe, that is the stage that COME THE HARPIES has finally reached, I think! I'm probably on draft 11, but I’ve lost count. 

Since writing a brilliant manuscript is so ridiculously important to seeking representation, my next post will address that topic again with some valuable guidance that my editor gave me as I journeyed through my last three rewrites.

A HOUSEHOLD MATTER: I WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG. HOWEVER, I’VE BEEN UNABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET THE REPLY FUNCTION TO WORK WITH THE COMMENTS. ANY SUGGESTIONS? UNTIL I GET IT WORKING, I WILL REPLY TO COMMENTS ON FOLLOW-UP POSTS.