The Daily Rejection

Hathor said:

Oh, what we do to be beautiful, huh?

What is the color for the Canucks? Maybe you could go for that.

I wish I could make it better. The only thing I can say is that, someday, this will make a funny story. Maybe you'll use it in a book or short story. Right now it sucks, I know.

As for our waits...

We should tell ourselves that delay is good. If our books were just craptastic, they would be rejected in short order. (Don't know if this is true, but I'm the self-proclaimed goddess of rationalization. And it's an odd-numbered day, so I still believe in myself.)

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Pretty sure husband would be upset if I dyed my hair blue or green. But I am so using this in the third book of my series. I might write a blog about it, too.

I've decided the agent is going to offer very soon. I'm going to get busy on my sequel so the first draft will be done when she calls. I only have 18 more chapters to write. That won't take long. *head desk*

There you go. I'm tightening up my sequel, which makes no sense since I haven't sold the first. I haven't gotten representation on the first. I haven't even queried the first. (Of course not. I'm too busy generating different query letter versions. I've officially lost track of how many drafts I have. Latest problem -- readers at QLH didn't understand my book was set in the US. Some assumed it was in Scotland. Oops.)

Keeps me busy I guess. I'm telling myself this is an excellent exercise for improving my writing skills. Only use progressive tenses when you need them, Hathor.

Hathor said:

I wish I could write erotica. My attempts at straight sex scenes were dreadful. Now I go for humor.

Can't do literary, either.

Sigh. I guess I'm stuck with the pedantic wiseass approach.

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I'm hopeless at it! Tried once, way back, and wow was that ever a disaster, had the whole story written out and just needed the light erotica parts. Even enlisted a friend to help me write the damn thing. Well, first I had to put what she said down on paper (or rather into my PC) and then I had to translate everything from Hungarian into English. So that wasn't getting us anywhere. I talked the scene through with her, and it took me one hour just to get the MC through the door of the apartment, because we kept getting stuck on tiny details, such as should there be flowers, how many flights of stairs, etc. My mom's advice, "try and get inspired by Bitter Moon, you liked the movie" wasn't getting me anywhere either.

I like the pedantic wiseass approach! That sounds like such a great read.

I actually do mainly literary. Or sardonic YA. I'm a Gemini, always blame the split personality thing on that (and I'm sure that would really stand up in court, not).

Carleree said:

I've been too busy destroying my good looks to worry about the not-so-speedy agent. I attempted to dye my hair blond. Instead, after three boxes of dye and four hours of torture, I am stuck with grey and reddish sort of hair.

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Gah! Me, too. Can't make it to the salon, and my friend who usually dyes my hair is working too many hours. Why is it that gray hair looks so distinguished on men but on women . . . well, I describe my current look as "that alcoholic you hope never lives next to you" in allusion to some people my friends and I know. I did consider going all gray, but one of my very-stylish friends laughed in my face when I mentioned that. So, no way I can pull that one off. I love the all-silver / gray look, but I also trust my friend. So if she says no way, that's how it is.

And yes, no news is good news. So I will make a prediction, by the end of this week, we will each have at least one positive response. Okay, make that by the end of next week!

latourdumoine said:

Gah! Me, too. Can't make it to the salon, and my friend who usually dyes my hair is working too many hours. Why is it that gray hair looks so distinguished on men but on women . . . well, I describe my current look as "that alcoholic you hope never lives next to you" in allusion to some people my friends and I know. I did consider going all gray, but one of my very-stylish friends laughed in my face when I mentioned that. So, no way I can pull that one off. I love the all-silver / gray look, but I also trust my friend. So if she says no way, that's how it is.

And yes, no news is good news. So I will make a prediction, by the end of this week, we will each have at least one positive response. Okay, make that by the end of next week!

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Interesting. I don't look like I'm drunk now, but I'm sure people will think I was hitting the sauce while I dyed it.

Fun fact: Daughter said she liked my pretty hair. Especially the pink parts.

Wait. What? There's still some pink in there?

Anyhoo, I have not sold my first book. I do not have representation for my first book. But the sequel is already 52,000 words long. Because it is an odd-numbered day, I'm going to believe an offer is imminent.

Carleree said:

Because it is an odd-numbered day, I'm going to believe an offer is imminent.

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What a brilliant idea

Unfortunately, this is the beginning of an even-numbered day for me. My new beta said my word count seemed high. Guess she didn't know how hard it was for me to get from 116,000 to 104,000! At least she already read the first three chapters and wants the entire book.

I told her that no one has told me that the book seems long.

And, no, that isn't because I'm terrifying, Ms. Carleree. They've had no problems telling me my MC drinks too much and seems so angry. I did not report to them what I thought: that if I were caught in a dangerous situation that was spiraling out of control, and meanwhile there's this hot guy trying to get into my pants and I don't know what to do about that, either -- well, I'd be drinking and sniping at people, too.

Maybe I should have her experience a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad hair day. Then my readers would understand.

And now for something completely different -- a straight, non-wiseass question. Carleree, are you finding in writing your sequel that you want to go back and change things in your first book? I know they say not to write sequels until you sell the first. But I ended up changing or adding stuff in book one to reflect what happens in books two and three. I'm very much a "write a rough outline, then start writing and the characters change things on me" sort. (I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before or not. That hot guy in my book? He was originally the villain. Then he turned into Mr. Fricking Darcy on me.)

I also think my writing improved the more I did it. So then I went back and tweaked book one.

I was curious if someone else had the same experience.

Not exactly the same thing but I finished a first draft, and when I went back for my first round of rewrites I thought it would be cool to add a memory. I was writing it and suddenly had a Oh-my-gosh-moment. Something that did not exist before, existed at that moment, and it makes soooo much sense.

For those of you who have looked at my query, a new version is up on QLH. It is considerably shorter, and uses a couple wonderful lines suggested by polly. And I actually...wait for it...eliminated the pedantic wiseass comment, and the "Bad Boy" one as well.

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have posted anything on an even-numbered day

Hathor, I'm a pantser, so I definitely get later stuff making me want to change/expand earlier stuff.

Hathor said:

Maybe you should rent An Officer and a Gentleman and naval gaze? I suppose I'm dating myself. Richard Gere somehow got older. Sigh.

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I remember this movie. Someone even told me I looked like Debra Winger once. I was in college at the time and was mortified.

Congrats on the beta reader!

So, all the horses have left the barn. I stayed up till 3 a.m. to finish my revisions and to send all the queries that have been queued in my outbox for the past two months, all 30ish of them. Racked up one rejection already. Looked in my outbox, and some of the letters have a couple of weird premature line breaks, even though I sent them as plain text, not formatted text. And even though I manually deleted all line breaks that occurred from cutting and pasting the query/sample pages from email to email.

Are agents used to these little formatting glitches? Urgh!

And double urgh, as I was fiddling around on AW at midnight last night during a "break," I realized a bunch of you kind people have been sending me little side messages, and I had no freaking idea until I accidentally clicked on the User CP button. Wow, what a surprise! I'm so sorry. I really haven't ignoring you guys. I'm still just a noob!

Well, at least there's a good lesson in there on how productive procrastination can actually be.

I believe agents are used to formatting glitches.

I recently read how it's a good idea to put your text into notepad and then from there to your email program. I was having some weird formatting issue, and this was the only way I could solve it. Plain text didn't work for me, either, but the notepad approach did.

Also emailing stuff to yourself first can sometimes disclose problems before it is too late.

Given my luck with computers, I'm thinking of doing mostly snail mail queries this time. I've also heard there are some advantages to doing it -- takes longer to read than emailed ones, more likely to get a response, etc. I don't know, but my mostly emailed queries with the NF had a disturbingly rate of nonresponses. I was left wondering if they went through at all, if their responses to me were lost, if the email was so garbled they deleted, etc.

Now, all I have to do is stay alert when I send them out. No putting letter to A in envelope addressed to B or putting C's name but D's address. I've managed to do that before.

Look at it this way, Quickbread. You probably didn't misspell the word "foreword" in your query. To every single agent. I'm still aghast at that one. Maybe that's the reason for the nonresponses, huh?

Hathor said:

Now, all I have to do is stay alert when I send them out. No putting letter to A in envelope addressed to B or putting C's name but D's address. I've managed to do that before.

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Ah, yes. One day, I got a call on my cell phone from New York, and I answered. It was an agent, one of the ones I'd queried with a partial as part of the original submission package. My heart about flipped. The agent was calling to inform me that I'd sent her a package intended for another agent. Oof!

I'm going to have to try that Notepad trick. Thanks. Well, foreword and upward!

Quickbread said:

Well, foreword and upward!

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Ouch. At least, I didn't also explain how gud I homeskooled my dotter.

Hehehe. Actually, that reminds me of a true story about two teens, an unrelated boy and girl, who were being "homeschooled" together by a nearly illiterate guy. Well, the girl ended up pregnant by her "classmate."

So, in the last five minutes, I've gotten a really kindly rejection from one of my favorite agents out there, and ... I got a FULL request from another awesome agent who read it last fall and rejected it. If I was an AW pro, I'd insert some dancing bananas here.

That rules the world, QB!

Wow, congrats! I'd give you some dancing bananas, but it's better for you to learn. Hit the little smilie face above the message box. In the pop-up box, go down to the bottom and click on "Show All Smilies." The dancing banana and other fun ones are there.

You can find smilies elsewhere on the internet. But after what happened to mine the last time I tried that, I've sworn off. (BTW did anyone see "nak'd" pics, or just an indication that such existed? I only ever saw a cute little smilie on my screen.)

Edit: Homeschooling doesn't lead to pregnancy. That's caused by something else altogether.

Woo hoo Quickbread! (Your name always makes me hungry for banana bread). Way to go!

Woohoo Quickbread I'm so excited for you!

Hathor-I only needed to change two lines in the first book to make my sequel work. But I had a very detailed outline before I started. If I had pantsed it, I would've needed to make a lot of changes.

Nothing in my inbox. Nadda. And the moms at my son's school laughed at me this morning.

What? Why?

Carleree said:

Nothing in my inbox. Nadda. And the moms at my son's school laughed at me this morning.

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Look on the bright side, you won't have to see them for almost a whole week now.

pollymilton said:

What? Why?

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Read back about her unfortunate adventure in hair coloring. Someday, Carleree, you will find this funny.

Drachen Jager said:

Look on the bright side, you won't have to see them for almost a whole week now.

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I couldn't agree more. This strike is a real blessing. Hahahaha.

the humor on this board makes you forget we're writing on here because we are query rejects... It's nice!

I'm afraid I never forget that. At least not on even-numbered days.

Nova Odyssey said:

the humor on this board makes you forget we're writing on here because we are query rejects... It's nice!

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I totally agree. This place is like a spoonful of sugar.

So, this afternoon, I was sitting at a navel-gazing conference listening to a panel of debut writers wax poetic about their navels. Luckily, I had a smart phone, so I could check my email obsessively. And I got another full request, and a partial request. It was a pretty productive hour!



Hathor, thanks for the tutoring lesson.