The Daily Rejection

Ouch. Why do people always ask that? You try to explain and they look at you like you must have written something truly dreadful if you don't have a publishing contract within a month of finishing your book.

I think from now on, I'm going to say, "I'm still considering my options." Well, that's true.

carefulwithwords said:

Oh Lord, you guys, I am gonna have a heart attack!

That partial request yesterday....they asked to see the full! This has never happened to me before. I've had agents ask for material based on my query including pages. But I've never had my first 50 turn into something more!!!

Today, I'm not a reject!


Sh*t. Now I have to send the rest :-/ Ugh. I can feel that rejection already. And it feels so much more painful that the others. I feel like I'm on a rollarcoaster climbing up the highest drop. You know that moment where you panic and you look down and it's so far and you're like OMG LET ME OFF THIS THING!!

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Woohoo!!!

Hathor said:

I suppose so. We're both consenting adults.

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Nova Odyssey said:

Reject of the day. Amusing, not in any way bruising:

Neighbor: So you're working again?
Nova: Yes, but consulting now. (pauses, considers whether to bother, cringes because she's supposed to market herself). It also allows me to work on my second novel.
Neighbor: You write? I never knew! When did your book come out?
Nova: Oh, it's not published. I'm looking for an agent for the first one while I work on the second.
Neighbor: Oh, I had four clients who were writers. I mean, real writers. Of books.
Nova: Ah yes, real writers.

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And for your neighbor --->

Nova Odyssey said:

Reject of the day. Amusing, not in any way bruising:

Neighbor: So you're working again?
Nova: Yes, but consulting now. (pauses, considers whether to bother, cringes because she's supposed to market herself). It also allows me to work on my second novel.
Neighbor: You write? I never knew! When did your book come out?
Nova: Oh, it's not published. I'm looking for an agent for the first one while I work on the second.
Neighbor: Oh, I had four clients who were writers. I mean, real writers. Of books.
Nova: Ah yes, real writers.

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what a turd. If that was my neighbor I'd flush them down the toilet. You know, figuratively.

carefulwithwords said:

what a turd. If that was my neighbor I'd flush them down the toilet. You know, figuratively.

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Well, doesn't the figuratively go without saying? You wouldn't want to back up the neighborhood sewage system.

yes, typical.

Hathor (and everybody else) You should check out this contest http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/02/announcing-liz-norris-pay-it-forward.html The Shark herself is a judge and your stuff sounds right up her alley.

carefulwithwords said:

Hathor (and everybody else) You should check out this contest http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/02/announcing-liz-norris-pay-it-forward.html The Shark herself is a judge and your stuff sounds right up her alley.

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Sounds interesting. A very long shot, but I'm energetic (mostly). You can tell. Sentence fragments. A lot. Except when, for some reason, I'll get to writing something--like now, for instance--that goes on and on, has a great many clauses (and types of punctuation), and generally leads readers to say...what?!

And voice? Well, I'm a pedantic wiseass. And I'm not afraid to say so -- or call my protagonist that, either.

The worst that can happen is that I hear nothing back.

Getting the book and query ready to send is a better use for my time than obsessing about what that editor is doing with my NF, if anything.

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I would have to change the format from docx to doc, which may make the thing get weird on me. I know it shouldn't, but computers get peculiar around me. So I should get started now to be safe.

Well, head's up, ms. shark hates fragments.


Meanwhile Hathor, another thought I had. the pedantic thing has been bugging me. And I realize it's because it's more of a characterization of the mother than the MC. Because the mother says MC is a pedantic wise-ass. So that tells me A) the mother is the type of person who uses the word pedantic, not necessarily the MC. And since the type of people who use the word "pedantic" are usually pedantic wise-asses, that leads me to believe mother is B) a pedantic wise-ass. But what have I learned about MC?


How's that for pedantic? bwhahahahahahahaha!

Actually, mother thinks MC is being a deliberate showoff. She never uses the word pedantic; it's how MC would characterize her mom's position. MC thinks she's just being precise with language and other facts. And if a guy can't deal with what she has to say, she doesn't want to be with him. Men usually bore her, she says. Then she meets Him (many things, but boring ain't one of them).

Mom is characterized as "Kali, Destroyer of Worlds." She's perfect, designs jewelry, sits on art boards, and wants an impressive son-in-law. MC isn't getting any younger.

In the query, I was trying to show MC is pedantic, rather than just applying the adjective directly. I do that to give the reader an idea of the tone of the narration. If I simply show the MC's suspicious job situation and this hunk with possible ulterior motives for chasing after her, the reader of the query would think the work is serious or even scary in tone. Serious, scary things happen, but I'm still trying for funny. (I idolize Janet Evanovich, not that I would say I'm at her level.)

My daughter, in graduate school now (same school as MC, in fact) calls herself pedantic, BTW, and is proud of it. She periodically calls me up and regales me with stories about her students who don't know proper footnote form. The horror!

Okay, all of this is off-topic to our rejection thread. But then so was the mystery of the dog cages Oh, they didn't come a third time, and I haven't heard from the company. I guess I'll never know. If I was really clever, I could turn this into at least a short story.

Okay, I got into a riff about pedantry and forgot what I meant to say. If you can think of a better way to get across MC's personality and the tone of the book, have at it. I've struggled with this for some time, as evidenced by my ever-increasing number of query drafts.

Given the length of the query now, I don't have the room to show an example of MC's approach to life. In the sentence I have in there now, I'm trying to: show a glimpse of what dear mama is like, show Beth's personality, and provide an indication why guys haven't exactly been beating down her door.

(For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about: "Beth would love to tell her mother that not everyone thinks her daughter's a pedantic wiseass, or at least, someone finds that trait endearing." All this hoo-ha is because some folks on another board thought I shouldn't use the word "pedantic" because it was showoffy or something.)

I guess, to be, uh, pedantic about it, I'm talking about rejection here, after all. My word, my lovely word, was rejected.

Uh, when revising, be sure to periodically backup. (Advice for any other dinosaur whatevers out there.) I was innocently deleting unnecessary words a half hour ago, and my computer went berserk. It started deleting line after line of my text. I couldn't make it stop. No command worked, not even control/alt/delete. I had to push the power button.

Fortunately, I had saved not too long before all this, not that I remembered that when I saw all my beautiful text disappearing at about a line a second. I was afraid the autosave feature might kick in and I would lose a lot.

I have online backup and a paper draft, but neither reflect the work I've done the last few days.

Things like this happen to me when I get around computers. They must sense my fear.

One reason I've held off on gmail, frankly. Remember when all those people suddenly lost all their archived messages and nothing could be done about it? I'm not sure if that little glitch in their system has been repaired yet. Anyone know?

So, what are the odds of getting a full request from Ms.Shark through a regular query vs. through a contest?

I just read that she was closing to queries tomorrow, so I sent mine off to her (even though my ms. STILL needs a few more days of polishing). Of course I did that before I read about the contest.

Dear Hathor,
Think about posting your query in Query Letter Hell. You'd get many more minds helping you. It is nice there and they give away candy and unicorns.
*runs away really fast*

pollymilton said:

Dear Hathor,
Think about posting your query in Query Letter Hell. You'd get many more minds helping you. It is nice there and they give away candy and unicorns.
*runs away really fast*

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Damn. I didn't get a unicorn. But the candy was nice

About the odds of query vs. contest yielding a full -- I would say, "Who knows?" I doubt the Shark has reported her stats for that.

On QLH, don't you have to have fifty posts on the Share Your Work forum first? Or do I misunderstand the rules? I don't know if I'm that great an advice giver on queries, given the track record of my own. I can say I'm confused about what's going on, it's too long, there are grammatical, etc. issues. That's about it. I read a number of queries where I would want to read the book, but an agent blogger says nope or writers pick at them as flawed.

I wouldn't make it as an agent, I guess. I would be requesting partials like mad just to see how the story develops and if the person can write. Then I would get so swamped that people on AW would complain about how slow I was.

I'm discovering the drawback of seeking advice. People offer contradictory opinions on the same sentence. I already have that on parts of my latest query attempt. I fear I may have to make an executive decision based on my gut (i.e., what I like). Then query a few agents and see how they respond -- tweak if I don't get nibbles. Repeat as necessary. The proof of what makes a good query is whether real agents ask for pages, after all.

My rationalization of the day: If an agent doesn't like the way I express myself in the query (assuming I'm pleased with said query), the agent isn't going to like the writing in my book. If use of "pedantic" or "uber" as a prefix will turn someone off, my book's going to be rejected anyway.

Oh, my daughter called me to report she'd been accepted to present a paper at a conference (her first such endeavor). I asked her if she would consider it an insult to be called a "pedantic wiseass." Her response: "Hell, no, that's a compliment."

Can I raise them or what?

Hathor said:

On QLH, don't you have to have fifty posts on the Share Your Work forum first? Or do I misunderstand the rules?

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No and yes.

You need 50 posts on Absolute Write, the forum does not matter. You don't need to feel obliged to help others out with their queries, but many have found that it's the best way to learn how to write them effectively. Hey if you can't learn from your own mistakes, why not learn from other people's mistakes instead?

OK, thanks. Now I have to decide if my fragile, little ego (well, about writing, anyway) can cope with QLH or if it would just make me more uncertain about particular lines as folks disagree with each other...

Frankly, at this point, I feel like giving what I have a go, say, 7 to 10 agents. Then reassess.

I can't decide if that makes me self-confident or a coward

Hathor said:

OK, thanks. Now I have to decide if my fragile, little ego (well, about writing, anyway) can cope with QLH or if it would just make me more uncertain about particular lines as folks disagree with each other...

Frankly, at this point, I feel like giving what I have a go, say, 7 to 10 agents. Then reassess.

I can't decide if that makes me self-confident or a coward

Click to expand...

You could also try entering authoress's March contest http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2012/02/march-secret-agent-early-info.html and see what the secret agent has to say about your query, if you make it in through the lottery.

I think that's worth a shot.

Quickbread said:

So, what are the odds of getting a full request from Ms.Shark through a regular query vs. through a contest?

I just read that she was closing to queries tomorrow, so I sent mine off to her (even though my ms. STILL needs a few more days of polishing). Of course I did that before I read about the contest.

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I don't know. I wondered the same thing. I queried her last year with my first effort Query (which was no where near as good as my current Query) but looking at the guidelines for this contest, it seems like she's gonna be looking for something pretty upbeat/dangerous. Whereas my story is "the failings of moral imperatives" and would be better described as thoughtful and spiritual. So I'm not entering. Plus I'm already entered in ABNA and the Bellwhether/PEN so it seems like that's enough contests for this year.

carefulwithwords said:

You could also try entering authoress's March contest http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2012/02/march-secret-agent-early-info.html and see what the secret agent has to say about your query, if you make it in through the lottery.

I think that's worth a shot.

Click to expand...

Heck, I might as well do that. This is for the first 250 words, though, not the query. My first 250 are pretty subtle. More wiseassish pedantry than tripping over a dead body or similar menace. The only tension is waiting for an interview for a first shot at a permanent job when MC's job prospects have been bleak and she doesn't know how the potential boss heard of her or would think her qualified for whatever the unknown job is.

The tension only builds a few pages in, when the potential boss is late for the interview and MC finds she really has to pee.

Maybe my next work will begin with shots ringing out, explosions in the background, and space aliens overhead, broadcasting their frightening message,"Attention, earthlings. Oovil Snetch. Get to it. Or else."

So, Ms. Shark's contest is for dangerous. Dangerous enough to, say, start sentences with "but?" Use sentence fragments? Oh, I'm just teasing you, hon.

Since this is an odd-numbered day, I'm thinking I should go to QLH. I decided last night that it would be far more efficient to plan how I feel about my work. So on odd-numbered days, I will believe in it. On even-numbered ones, I will think it unfunny, boring, and filled with pedestrian prose and an unlikeable MC who drinks like a fish, bitches too much, and really needs a good lay.

Hathor said:

Heck, I might as well do that. This is for the first 250 words, though, not the query. My first 250 are pretty subtle.

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Oops. I confused that one with the Literary cupid one which judges first 250 words + query. Literary Cupid is closed in March though. And i don't really like that one because whoever is running it is GRATING with the exclamation points and the "squeeeeeee" <---whenever I see an adult use that word it makes me want to join the NRA. Also Literary Cupid is a dumb name.

Yes, I am bitter. I wasted two hours last month (and turned down an invitation to a party) trying to pull the trigger on the exact second her submissions opened, only to not make it in. I think Authoress's 12 hour window and lottery system is much more reasonable. Also it annoyed me that LC let like 12 people enter both the Jan contest and the Feb contest. Like, hello, greedy people, give somebody else a chance yeesh.

Maybe she'll change the system. That was insane. (Yes, I didn't get in, either.)

Well, I was brave and posted over on QLH. Those here who've seen my latest version will see some changes. No clanging warning bells or sentences starting with "but." One sentence fragment, but not the one you're thinking of, careful. I inserted an abverb (bad girl) to show that the job offer was strange to begin with and explained more about the folks from the Mob family. They're friendly, which may be more ominous than simply meeting them.

But once a pedantic wiseass, always one. And I've kept the parenthetical comment (sorry, Carleree) because I like it. We'll see...

I am an adult who uses Squeee! *runs and hides*

What's with the running and hiding on this board recently? Squee! with pride, if that's your thing.

I think Cupid had a HUGE undertaking on her hands, and handled it well - I think it was a much bigger job than she thought.

I'm just sitting and writing today. No drama here. But I will go running (I'm up to 25 minutes on the couch to 5-K thing) even though it's SNOWING in Seattle today!