The Daily Rejection

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WendyN

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WKlein (short enough, but I wanted use WK) -- That's what comes of reading an editing book while you're still churning out the first draft ;) I suppose it depends on your psychology. Me, if I had specific edits in mind I wouldn't be able to do anything else until I did them. You know, the sort that wake you up in the middle of the night and you lay there thinking of wording. Everything else I'd wait. You may have changes to make in the first 50 from what you decide to do in the part of the book you've yet to write.

I'm somewhat of a pantser, so I will go back and change things that are inconsistent with how I've decided to go. If something jumps out at me as I reread an earlier passage, I'll go ahead and correct it, though.

My advice is to do as little as you can in the way of editing until you finish. I've heard of too many people who never finish their book because they keep polishing what they have already.

How do you like that book BTW? Does it contain the usual sort of advice or unique ideas? Maybe I should read it. My goal in book one of my trilogy was to start out with a vague sense of unease (perhaps protag is reading too much into the situation), then ramp up the tension with discoveries, incidents, etc. until she's in a fight for her life at the end. I worry that pacing like this isn't something an agent would go for with an unpublished author -- he or she would never get sucked into reading more.

WK is fine ;) and I think I might not have made myself clear enough in my question... I was reading the book to improve the fantasy novel which I'm revising (currently in the third draft, not first), and I've found it very useful for that...
BUT it also made me freak out about the sci-fi manuscript I'm currently querying (which has been DONE since April -- so far has 6 rejections and 1 partial out) and wonder if making some changes to the first 50 pages before sending out the next round of queries might improve its chances, or if I'm just being obsessive and paranoid and just need to leave it alone already.

So, I guess that's the question: do you ever go back and revise/rework anything from a manuscript that's already out for queries, or do I just need to stop second-guessing myself and see how it's received as-is?


Oh, and as far as the book goes, I have really liked it. Most of the stuff is info you can find if you dig deep enough on sites like this or agent/editor interviews, etc, but it's presented very clearly and concisely, in a way that makes it easy to apply to your work.
 

Hathor

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My mistake.

I'd revise if I was confident I was improving the book by doing so. If I wasn't sure that the changes were improvements, I'd hold off until I got a sense of how agents were reacting to the version I'd queried to begin with.
 

WendyN

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I'd revise if I was confident I was improving the book by doing so. If I wasn't sure that the changes were improvements, I'd hold off until I got a sense of how agents were reacting to the version I'd queried to begin with.
Good call. After talking with my husband about the specific issue and how I would specifically change it, he agrees I should leave it. It might make the story fit the "rules" better, but I don't think it would actually make the story better.

PUT DOWN THE MANUSCRIPT AND STEP AWAY!
 

RevanWright

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I have 12 responses to the 13 queries I sent in just a few weeks. All forms. I can't believe they got back to me so quickly. It kind of reaffirms my suspicion that they're looking at the 118k and just tossing it.

Picked up a pretty good read in the beta swap. I'm rooting for this one to make it. The layout and organization of the ms in word makes me feel like a slob, though. I have a table of contents in mine, but not with links and plot breakdown annotations on the sidebar.
 

amschilling

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The layout and organization of the ms in word make s me feel like a slob, though. I have a table of contents in mine, but not with links and plot breakdown annotations on the sidebar.

Um. Is that a thing? I've never put a ToC in an MS I was subbing, let alone anything else, lol. Too busy making sure I don't abuse commas.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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I finally did get one form rejection today, but it was from a query I sent just a few days ago. Most of them remain outstanding. I'd forgotten how unbelievably slow this can be. I'm going to have my next novel ready to query before the agents get around to reading the queries on this one. *sigh*
 

triceretops

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Well, it looks like BB pulled out of our little mini-auction. I don't think I've ever received a more complimentary rejection before, which included "send us anything you have--even your story ideas--we're simply in love with your writing."

I just can't get it out of my head that they couldn't meet or exceed the advance in this case. They've never been known to pay such an amount, even as small/medium at is was. This was a nail-biter that came to the end in dramatic fashion. Now, I'm just hoping we didn't piss off the original offering publisher by extending the time frame and we're still good to go.

And that, folks, is the way it is in publishing--weeks and months of quiet solitude punctuated by hours or days of sheer terror and chaos.

tri
 

WendyN

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I finally did get one form rejection today, but it was from a query I sent just a few days ago. Most of them remain outstanding. I'd forgotten how unbelievably slow this can be. I'm going to have my next novel ready to query before the agents get around to reading the queries on this one. *sigh*

Yup... today marks two weeks since my last response... and I still have 13 queries out.
 

Drachen Jager

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Probably a big book fair or convention going on. This is the right season for it.

There's always a lag before and during those things as agents get their clients material ready for presentation, go to the fair and try to sell it. When they get back they usually do a blitz of query responses. If they did well selling at the fair they'll usually request a lot, if they did badly they usually won't request as much.

This is all personal experience and speculation, but it certainly seems that reality has proven consistent with my theory over time.
 

mayqueen

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I'm either getting very quick form Rs on my queries or silence. I have so many queries outstanding, many of them from non-responders. So I'm like, Should I count this as a pass or keep waiting? Got two form Rs in the past hour from queries I sent yesterday. At least those were fast rejections.
 

Drachen Jager

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Count 'em as a pass, unless you're waiting to query other agents at the same agency, then you should wait three months at least to be sure.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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I checked, but couldn't find anything. The sausage fest was a couple of months back and BFA ended at the beginning of the month. :Shrug:
Huh. Well, it's only been 2 weeks (at the most). I guess I just keep waiting.

I do have a question, though. Some agents say to format the writing samples in MS format (double-spaced), but then say to paste them into the email body. I've always been taught that you don't do fancy formatting like that in email because it might not show up on the receiving end, and have been sending all pasted material in standard email format (single-spaced, hard returns instead of tabs). Am I doing it wrong?
 

Drachen Jager

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I have no idea. I suspect that those agents who ask for writing snippets pasted into the body of the e-mail must be used to a variety of configurations.

If it were me, I'd read the first half page-page to see if there's anything to it, then if I liked it, I'd just highlight the text, copy/paste it into Word and quickly format it to be more readable. That's really not a lot of extra work.

I really don't understand the number of agents who bar all attachments. Unless the agent is really non-technical, it's basically impossible to sneak a virus in that way.

In the past I've de-formatted the text with extra lines between paragraphs, but I never really did a comparison to see if I got fewer requests from those than I got from attached pages.
 

WendyN

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I really don't understand the number of agents who bar all attachments. Unless the agent is really non-technical, it's basically impossible to sneak a virus in that way.

Maybe it's not necessarily a virus thing, but just the fact that it's easier to just scroll down and skim an email than it is to have to open an attachment to see more?
 

mayqueen

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I wonder if it might be a "don't clutter up my hard drive" kind of thing.

For formatting, I'm not sure. I usually do the same thing where I copy and paste it through NotePad and then use hard returns instead of tabs.
 

Drachen Jager

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Torpedo away!

I sent off a dozen queries this week. We'll see if any of them penetrate enemy armor over the next days and weeks.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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I have no idea. I suspect that those agents who ask for writing snippets pasted into the body of the e-mail must be used to a variety of configurations.
Okay, I'll keep sending the way I have been, then. I don't think the typical email/internet format is hard to read at all. Since we use the internet so much, I think we're all used to hard returns and single-spacing.

And good luck on your torpedo of queries!
 

triceretops

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Torpedo away!

I sent off a dozen queries this week. We'll see if any of them penetrate enemy armor over the next days and weeks.

That's a great salvo. May your grapeshot tear the hell out of their sails and may your solid balls (whoops) hit them square below the waterline. Good luck!

Just received another offer on the second YA title, Screamcatcher (makes four or five now). This is going better than I thought. Agent and I have minimum advance thresholds, though. If they can't meet the price, they're history. Plain and simple.

tri

tri
 

Drachen Jager

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Thanks. I'm saving a couple more rounds for the capital ships in case my torpedoes need some modification, failing that I may have to switch to escorts.

I will avoid the slow-moving freighters I shot at in the past. They're easier targets, but it's hard to win a war that way.
 

Moonchild

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Another form rejection, another agent unfollowed on Twitter. (They may not care, they may not even notice, but unfollowing the rejectors always makes me feel just that little bit better... Petty? Perhaps, but whatever)
 
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