scarletpeaches
Banned
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- Aug 7, 2005
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It always surprises me how many people want to write, think they can write, actually sit down for hours on end and write, and are so blind to the fact that they really, really suck. It would seem that if you read books, you should be able to tell if your writing is comparable. I know people who have received 200+ rejections from agents for books and they keep going. I mean, give up already! Not everyone can be a professional writer.
scarlet, I hear ya. My first book? And I queried it. My first query letter?
I queried my first book too. And I will lay a steak dinner and bottle of champagne on my query letter being even more cringeworthy.scarlet, I hear ya. My first book? And I queried it. My first query letter?
Fortunately, I learned from my mistakes.
don't write shite.
If you write a publishable book, your chances of selling it are extremely high, and if you write an unpublishable book, your chances of selling it are zilch.
I queried my not-up-to-par first novel with a much better query letter. I should have been clued in by the fact that my novel was ONE HUNDRED TWENTY SEVEN THOUSAND words, but not so much (Actually, you can see my query letter- which only makes me cringe a little - here). Re-reading it almost makes me want to pull that novel back out of the trunk. Almost.
I'm taking this one more slowly, and it's actually an appropriate length, so we'll see... I hope I'm not still deluded like I was the first time around.
It always surprises me how many people want to write, think they can write, actually sit down for hours on end and write, and are so blind to the fact that they really, really suck. It would seem that if you read books, you should be able to tell if your writing is comparable. I know people who have received 200+ rejections from agents for books and they keep going. I mean, give up already! Not everyone can be a professional writer.
Of the 1% that is publishable, the quality of the writing is still subjective...
I really, really try not to think like this because it leads to writing 'just enough' to get by. "This is good enough." "This will do."Makes me think of a book I read last year which was so poorly written, I wondered if it was supposed to be a joke. Based on it being from a respected horror publisher, I don't think it was. But on the plus side, I figure if such a terrible book got published, so can I.