Today's accomplishments

After starting in a funk, we slogged our way through writersmarket and zeroed in on all the agents up to 'K' that

1. have good websites
2. take email queries
3. confessed to even a passing interest in literary fiction.

Then we slammed together a ridiculously short query message with our first two chapters and sent it to all of them.

Now we're thinking we should have written a better letter and had a full synopsis.

Now we're hoping doing something is better than doing nothing.

Now we're wondering. Does the writing really matter?

Now we're getting paranoid. Time to write some more.

Liz, I know when you're nearing the finish line the temptation is to do some, er...slamming, but that's really when you need to slow down.

Seducing an agent takes planning. One wants to carefully craft a cunning query. (Why am I starting to write like you? Must...resist....)

Anyhow. You don't want to spends months or years on a novel and then shotgun out a cookie-cutter query to every agent from Alphonse to Kenny. It's better to research for weeks, not hours, then test-drive a query on a select few agents and wait for feedback.

As a result of that feedback you might change your query or some other aspect of your approach and it would be nice to have more than half the alphabet left to work with.

I hope you strike gold though and that you get to say "nyah-nyah."

Great idea. We'll take that approach with the back half of the alphabet. Plus we still have those 'no email queries' agents to deal with for all 26 letters. Some of them honestly seem more interesting.

Good advice. Already shaken to heart.

L