On Not Being On Submission

I started publishing fiction in 2008. For fifteen years before that, I published academic books and articles.

During that entire twenty-year span, I've always had something or other on submission. Whether it was a monograph, an essay, a story, a memoir, or a novel, someone somewhere was reading something I'd written and weighing whether or not to publish the thing.

But now, for the first time in a very long time, I'm not on submission. My debut novel, Survival Colony Nine, is beginning to work its way through the production process. (I just got an email today asking for my author bio.) I've got a couple creative nonfiction essays coming out in the fall and winter, but nothing new making the rounds of literary journals. I'm working on a new novel, but it's nowhere near ready to show my agent or editor.

So here I am, not on submission. No anxieties, no watching the inbox, no middle-of-the-night questions for my agent, no drama. Just peace and quiet.

It's weird.

For anyone who finds her/himself in the same position, I offer twenty suggestions on how to fill the time (not in any particular order):

1. Read.

2. Write.

3. Review books.

4. Tweet.

5. Spend time with your significant other.

6. Spend time with your children/parents/extended family/neighbors/friends.

7. Take walks.

8. Work out.

9. Meditate on the wonders of creation.

10. Volunteer.

11. Fight racism, poverty, and environmental degradation.

12. Watch old movies.

13. Write your author bio.

14. Play with non-human animals.

15. Play with human animals.

16. Support writer-friends (or complete strangers) who are currently on submission.

17. Sleep.

18. Careen down water-slides.

19. Watch the stars at night.

20. Take a deep breath, center yourself, and thank whatever entity you feel deserves it for this moment's respite.

In short, LIVE! You'll be back on submission before you know it, and some of those mundane things will be swallowed in a sea of waiting and worry.

The Reader Is Always Right

I received my editor's notes on SURVIVAL COLONY NINE yesterday.

She suggested a number of major changes concerning chronology, world-building, character relationships, narrative arc, plot developments, and more. My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

But the thing is, she's right about everything.

Which leads to the point of this post: the reader is always right.

I tell my students this when we're peer editing. I would say the same to any writer who's received a comment they didn't like from a critique partner or beta reader. I'd say the same to any writer, anywhere, any time.

The reader is always right.

Now, let's be clear about this. I'm not saying readers are always smarter than writers, or writers always have to listen to their readers. You're the writer, so you should, hopefully, be pretty smart and know your book pretty well. And if you don't like your reader's suggestions, don't follow them. The fact that the reader is always right does not obligate the writer always to follow the reader's advice.

In my case, of course, I'm going to follow the reader's advice. She's my editor. I'm trying to get a book published. I have one question for her concerning her comments, but once she clarifies that one point, I'm going to do as she says.

The way I'm going to do as she says is, of course, my own business. No one's telling me exactly how to make the changes I need to make.

She's just telling me I have to make them. And I will.

I think this is important advice for writers to learn. Many writers--students and otherwise--get all hot under the collar when anyone dares suggest there's something that could be improved about their brilliant prose. They storm, they pout, they sulk. And then they retaliate by not doing what their reader tells them to do. Or, worse, they refuse to show their work to readers at all, and they go ahead and self-publish something that's nowhere near ready. So there!

Yeah, that'll really show 'em.

As writers, I think we'd do ourselves a great service if we just remembered that the reader is always right. If we'd remember that, then we could focus on what we're supposed to do as writers. Not storm, pout, sulk, or retaliate. Not lash out at our readers. Not curl up into a little ball and hide from the reality of the writing life.

But listen to our readers.

And then write.

Fourth Time's the Charm

I read a really interesting blog post yesterday about why it's so important to write multiple novels, even if the first two or three (or four, or five, or whatever) don't get published.

Personally, I couldn't agree more.  But my reasons for believing this are a bit different.

In my case, I wrote three novels before the one that sold, Survival Colony Nine.

Now, granted, the first was written when I was sixteen, the second when I was twenty-two, and the third, after an unbelievably long hiatus during which I pursued other writing projects, when I was forty-five.  If you're interested in the full story behind that, check out my post "The Things That Take a While."

But my point is this: sometimes, maybe most of the time, the first novel doesn't take.

When that happens, you're left with three options.

1. Keep working on that same novel, revising it, sending out queries, and (in all likelihood) getting rejections, until the day you die.

2. Decide that you're a pathetic hack because your first novel didn't get published, give up, and sell car insurance until the day you die.

3. Write another novel.  And another.  And another.  Until the day you... get published!

Look, there are no guarantees.  Novel #27 might not be any more publishable than Novel #1.  I've written two novels after Survival Colony Nine (one a sequel, one something entirely different), and I have no assurance that either or both will be published.

But that's not stopping me from beginning the next novel.

To me, in the end, it's less about "honing one's craft" than it is about being who I am.  The craft-honing is important, of course; it's quite likely that the reason Novel #4 is being published when Novels #1-#3 weren't is that my writing got better through practice and experience.

But if you think about writing only in terms of craft-honing, I think you're still missing the point, still focusing on the unknown future (publication) and not the moment (the act of writing, the fact of being a writer).  If you're really desperate to get published, anyone can do it through a variety of self- or vanity-publishing options, so that can't be the point either.

The point is that even if Survival Colony Nine hadn't sold, I would have kept writing.  Even if it ends up being the only novel of mine that sells, I'll keep writing.  Because that's what being a writer is all about.

Writing.

Until the day you die.

Querying By the Numbers

This is going to be a really short post.  I was reading author Lydia Kang's blog post on "The Lucky 13s" website (blog for YA authors debuting in 2013), and I noticed she posted her querying stats.  Seemed like a good way to show people the realities of finding an agent, so I thought I'd do the same.

Here are my stats for Survival Colony Nine.  As you recall, I had two rounds of querying (one that resulted in finding my first agent, one that resulted in finding Liza), but I've combined the numbers for ease of reference.

And the numbers are (drum roll please)....

100 queries

11 requests (11%)

3 offers (3%)

These figures don't reflect some of the details, such as agents who never responded, agents from whom I withdrew my query or manuscript after I accepted an offer, and so on.  But the bottom line is, I queried 100 agents, 11% of whom requested the full manuscript (I received no partial requests), and 3% of whom (two the first round, Liza the second) offered representation.

I should also say that I have no idea how representative these numbers are.  Kang's numbers, for instance, are much better (more requests, more offers).  Other writers' numbers may be worse.

But that's not the point.  The point is simply this: it's tough out there.  Even successful searches ("successful" in the sense of obtaining an agent) are filled with rejection, anxious waiting, close-but-no-cigar moments, and general misery.

Whaddya gonna do, though?  It's the nature of the beast.

And by the way, while I have your attention, check out the website and Facebook page of the debut authors' group to which I belong, "OneFourKidLit," YA and MG authors debuting in 2014.

Agents Who Rock

My previous post, "Agents Who Suck," described my experience with my first agent, who sucked.

Clever title, no?

Today's post concerns my current agent, Liza Fleissig of Liza Royce Agency, who does NOT suck.  In fact, she rocks.

You can see where I'm going with this, right?

For every sucky agent, there's a rocking agent (or maybe two or three).  And it's our job as writers to figure out which ones are which.

For the benefit of everyone who's trying to sort this out, especially debut authors, here's how I knew (and know) that Liza rocked (and rocks).

1. She genuinely fell in love with my book.

As in, genuinely fell in love with it.  No ranting and raving (like the previous, sucky agent) about how great it was and how it was going to set the world on fire.  Just her own, personal, sincere love of the book.  That's what you want in an agent: genuine love, not a bat-signal in the sky and a three-ring circus.

2. She never leaves me hanging.

To this day, every time I call or email Liza, I get a reply within a day (usually more like within minutes).  With the sucky agent, I waited days, weeks, months.

3. She has a sense of humor about the process.

You'd have to talk to her to know Liza's particular brand of humor, but as a general rule, I'd advise hooking up with an agent who finds the process at least partly bizarre and amusing.  Sucky agent was a nail-biting worry-wart who treated everything as if it was a major offensive in a world war.  I wanted to say to her, for heaven's sake, we're just trying to get a book published here.

4. She's a rock.

There are days when I, like all writers, feel really low.  Even after my book was accepted for publication, I had those days.  They happen.  As writers, we're allowed to have those days.  Agents are allowed to have them too--but they're not allowed to dump them on their clients.  Sucky agent did.  Liza doesn't.

5. She doesn't bullshit you.

From the get-go, Liza struck me as someone I could trust absolutely--no hidden agendas, no games, no shenanigans.  She doesn't praise when no praise is due, and she doesn't dangle promises she can't deliver.  For sucky agent, take everything I just said and reverse it.

So there you have it, folks.  If this post seems more effusive than the norm, that's because I'm so pleased to have found an agent who is all of the above.  If you can't say the same about your agent, then in my humble opinion you need to keep searching.

We all owe it to ourselves to find our Liza.

Bad Agent

In a previous post, "Double Agent," I talked about my less-than-positive experience with the first agent for my debut novel, Survival Colony 9. Fortunately, as I detailed there, the story had a happy ending for me, as I fired the first agent and found another who's been supportive and effective (and who's responsible for the book securing a publisher).

But sometimes, even today, I ask myself: should I have seen the warning signs with the first agent before I committed to her? Could I have acted differently and not wasted three or four months of my writing life? Could I have bypassed an ineffective agent and found my current agent more quickly?

I don't know.

The problem with bad agents--by which I mean ineffective agents, not unscrupulous ones, because I don't believe my first agent was unscrupulous--is that they don't advertise their badness up front. Their ineffectiveness might not be apparent until after you sign with them. In fact, there are agents who aren't "bad" in the general sense but who, for whatever reason, just don't work out with a particular writer.

This problem, I think, is particularly acute for debut authors. We're just so darn excited to have an agent make an offer, it can be especially difficult to sort out the bad from the good.

So for what it's worth, here are the things I wish I'd thought about last year, before I signed. I offer this list in addition to all the other information that's out there about choosing an agent (e.g., make sure the agent has a record of recent sales in your genre, etc.). This list grows out of my own experience as a debut. And it's not all about the agent; it's at least half (maybe more than half) about me. My hope is that it'll be helpful to someone else.

1. Enthusiasm is great, but let's be realistic.

In our very first conversation, before she'd even read the full manuscript, BA (Bad Agent) was raving about my book, asking if it was part of a series, talking about movie rights. That might have meant she was genuinely blown away by the book. But it might also have meant she was desperate, naive, inexperienced, or deranged. As a debut, it's easy to get your head turned, so I'd be cautious about agents who come on too strong.

2. Agents had better be good readers.

In a later conversation, I found it puzzling when BA had trouble remembering the names of characters in my book, but I didn't make a big deal of it. I said to myself, "Well, she reads a lot, there are a lot of unfamiliar names in this futuristic novel, so it's not surprising she can't instantly call them to mind." In retrospect, I think that was a mistake on my part; I think her fuzziness about details meant she hadn't read the book closely enough, and that should have been a warning sign.

3. Listen to others.

Being a good boy, I dutifully contacted the clients to whom BA connected me. But oddly enough, when those clients offered only lukewarm praise, I ignored them. I rationalized, read between the lines, tried to come up with excuses that would quell the nagging doubts in my mind. None of them had said she was bad; they just hadn't praised her to the skies. I should have asked them point-blank why they hadn't. And if BA herself couldn't come up with anyone who would praise her to the skies, I should have asked her point-blank for an explanation too.

4. Fear breeds bad decisions.

I see now that one of the main reasons I accepted BA's offer is that I was afraid: afraid that if she didn't represent me, no one else would. This being the first offer I'd received, I told myself it was the only offer I would receive; even though I had another agent interested in looking at the book, I turned her down and went with BA. This, of course, represented flawed thinking on my part; I should have realized that if the book wasn't good enough to attract another agent, chances are it wasn't good enough to be sold. It's very hard, especially for a debut, to turn down an offer. But sometimes, that's the best thing to do.

5. First drafts aren't best drafts.

This, I think, is the hardest lesson. Every writer knows that the first thing you produce isn't likely to be your best. Early drafts need lots of work before they're ready for submission, much less publication. But what if the same is true of agents? What if the first offer should be subjected to particular scrutiny, because it's the first? Had someone told me this a year ago, I probably would have dismissed it: to me, and I suspect to many debut authors, the first offer is uniquely special, the act that confirms one's legitimacy as a writer. To question it is tantamount to questioning oneself. But maybe, for that very reason, one should question it. In my case, I should have grilled BA. I should have been a hard-ass. I should have made sure she passed every test I threw at her, and then I should have thrown three more tests at her just for good measure. If, at the end of that process, I wasn't satisfied, I should have declined representation and continued my search.

The common thread in the above remarks is that insecurity and inexperience--the two factors every debut author faces--need to be countered by reason and willpower. Don't believe every glowing word an agent says. Don't be reluctant to challenge an agent if s/he commits strange gaffes concerning your book. Don't accept anything less than the best from the agent or anyone else associated with him/her. Don't tell yourself s/he's the only agent in the world for you. Don't confuse first with best.

In the end, though there are certainly bad agents, it's the author's responsibility to find one who isn't.

Pantsers of the World, Unite!

A Facebook friend asked me to post on the topic of writing without a plan.  Ever eager to oblige, here goes....

Conventional wisdom holds that when it comes to drafting, there are two kinds of writers: Planners and Pantsers.

The former plan everything out.  The latter fly by the seat of their pants.

Now, like most dichotomies, this one falls apart in actual practice.  There's no writer so organized that s/he doesn't wing it sometimes, nor is there any writer so carefree that s/he doesn't plan sometimes.

However, if we're thinking not in terms of absolutes but in terms of tendencies and dispositions, it's certainly true that some writers lean more toward the Planner side, while others incline more toward the Pantser side.

I'm more of a Pantser.  I like to discover what I'm writing while I'm writing it.  Part of this comes from my history as a teacher, where I've had plenty of opportunity to watch emergent writers discover their skills, their ideas, their point of view over the course of a semester or a paper or a paragraph.

But my Pantser-ish tendencies are also a matter of disposition: I find it boring and tedious to plan everything out.  I find that it limits my creativity rather than liberating it.  I know I'm going to change everything anyway, so why bother?

Case in point: my forthcoming YA novel, Survival Colony Nine, started only with a setting (post-apocalyptic desert world), a name (Querry), and a relationship (father-son).  After a few pages an antagonist emerged: the creatures I call the Skaldi.  After 150 pages or so, I decided I needed to be a bit clearer in my own mind about where the story was headed, so I wrote a series of 2-sentence summaries for the remaining chapters.  Shortly thereafter, I also decided I needed to be clear about the physical layout of an important plot space, so I drew a map.  Finally, as the character list grew, I typed up a running roster of their names.

But that was the extent of my planning.  The rest emerged through the writing and revision.

And oh, did it ever emerge through the writing and revision!  The narrator's voice settled into a rhythm, new characters popped up, relationships among existing characters morphed and solidified, the nature of the Skaldi became clear, the history of the world came into focus, and so on and so forth.  The stuff I'd planned out changed radically while I was writing it (I ended up scribbling changes on the original print-out), and even more radically through five complete revisions: one chapter vanished entirely, two others fused, scenes from still others were created anew or modified or deleted or moved.

In short, I found out what I was trying to say in the act of trying to say it.  The book ended up in a place I never anticipated when I started it, but I'm very happy with where it ended up.

Another case in point: the sequel to Survival Colony Nine, the working title of which is Scavenger of Souls.  When I started, I had only that title, which sounded kind of cool to me.  I also knew I had to take my narrator to a new place, both physically and emotionally; I had to open up his world to new vistas, new possibilities, new threats and challenges.  But what any of those things was going to be, I had very little idea.

I'm now two-thirds of the way through the manuscript-in-progress, and I have a pretty good idea of it all.  But there's still room for surprise and discovery.

The bottom line is this: there is no "right" way to write a novel.  (Or a poem, or a play, or an essay, or an anything.)  In a previous post, "Wake Up and Smell the Novels," I harped at overly restrictive advice about how to structure one's novel; here, I would emphasize that the same applies to how one writes one's novel.

If you're a Planner, you must have a good reason to be so.  If you're a Pantser, same deal.  Don't try to be a Planner when you're a Pantser at heart just because somebody in publishing told you you have to be.  And don't try to write by the seat of your pants if, deep down, you thrive on the planning process.

Be grateful that in writing, as in life, there are many roads to the realization of your dreams.

The Part-Time Full-Time Writer

I'm a full-time writer.  But I write part-time.

Huh?

Let me explain.

I've got a full-time job which, for the most part, pays the bills.  (My advance for my debut YA novel should come in handy when it arrives, but it's not going to keep me afloat forever.)  I seriously envy those writers whose fame and/or life circumstances and/or willpower and/or ability to give up creature comforts enable them to forego the "pay-the-bills" job.  Those people are awesome.

But they're not me.

When my daughter was a baby, I had a part-time job that enabled me to stay home with her two out of five weekdays.  I'm so glad I had that opportunity.  She's not a baby anymore, but we're still very close, and I'm convinced those early daddy days are what cemented our relationship.

Now, though, I teach full-time.  I have summers off and all that, but during the school year, I'm on campus most of the week.  And my circumstances don't enable me to change that--or at least, not without changing the living conditions of three additional people whose needs and desires I don't feel it's my right to ignore.

So I write part-time.  But I'm a full-time writer.

This means two things to me:

First, when I have the time to write, I write as if it's the only thing in my life.  I concentrate on the writing, logging as much solid, uninterrupted time at the keyboard as I possibly can.  I find music and television (not to mention Facebook, Twitter, and other social media) distracting when I write, so I resist the impulse to have noise in the background and multiple windows open on the computer.  When I'm writing, I write.

But more importantly, when I say I'm a full-time writer, I mean that writing is one of the things--though not the only thing--that defines me as a person, full-time.  It's the same, actually, as being a father: though I'm not with my kids every moment of the day (for which, I assure you, they're profoundly grateful), there's never a moment of any day that I don't think of myself as a dad.  Same with being a husband.  Like most married people, my wife and I are only together part-time, thanks to jobs and family and friends and so forth.  But I'm never not a husband.  It's who I am.

I'm also never not a fan of fantasy literature and film, never not a social activist and environmentalist, never not a teacher, never not a lover of language and bad jokes and frogs and gorillas.  I may never see another frog or gorilla in my life--though the former are pretty numerous at the pond near my home--but I've always loved them, and I love them every moment of my life to this day.

Writing can't be a full-time job for everyone.  But that doesn't mean you can't be a full-time writer.

(Self)-Publish or Perish?

I've been thinking a lot lately about self-publishing.

Let me correct that.

I've been thinking a lot lately about NOT self-publishing.

Many of the people I follow or who follow me on Twitter are self-published.  Some are experiencing great success; others aren't.  For those who are, I could not be more thrilled.  For those who aren't, I could not be more hopeful.

But have I thought about self-publishing my own creative works?

Not for a second.

Lest you fear that this is going to turn into some kind of rant against self-publishing, rest assured, it's not.  I don't believe that self-published work is inherently or universally inferior to traditionally published work, nor do I believe that self-publishing is going to destroy traditional publishing or tear apart the fabric of the nation.  Truth be told, traditional publishing is far more likely to destroy itself than to be destroyed by some boogie-man.

No, for me, it's just a personal preference, based on my own sense of self.

For me, there are two major factors that determined my pursuit of traditional publication for my debut novel, Survival Colony Nine, and that will, unless something drastic changes, determine my course in the future as well.

NUMBER ONE

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm not the world's most outgoing person.  I'm okay at presenting myself in public, but not so okay at selling myself.  I could probably get better.  In fact, I've been working on it, with (I think) some success.  By the time my book comes out in 2014, I expect to be even better.

But I'll never be as good as some people, people to whom it either comes more naturally or who are willing or able to work harder at it than I am.  In my case, I feel it's essential to have the support of other professionals whose business it is to sell authors and books.

Don't get me wrong.  I know that, these days, authors can't sit back and expect the publisher's promo machine to do everything (which is one reason I might end up employing the services of a publicist).  But for purely personal reasons, I know I'd feel totally at a loss if I were largely or solely responsible for marketing, advertising, and selling the fruits of my creative labor.

NUMBER TWO

I started out in academic publishing, where no matter how good your manuscript may be, lots of other scholars and critics are going to weigh in on it before it sees the light of day.  I'm comfortable with that model; it makes sense to me as a teacher and writer.  I believe it's vitally important to have fellow readers--and, given my background, to me that means "expert readers"--making editorial judgments.  As with the promotional side of things, so with the writing side: I don't want to go it alone.

Now, of course, self-published authors don't have to go it alone.  There are beta readers, friends and fellow writers, editors for hire, and so forth.  All of these people can help the self-published author, if s/he so chooses, to improve her/his work.

But I know myself.  Much as I believe in the power of outside opinions, I know that my desire to get my book out there might overcome my good sense.  I know I might be inclined to cut corners: skip the beta readers, or ignore editorial advice, or simply be lazy with my own revisions.  I know I need someone to push me to make my writing as good as it can be--someone who simply will not publish my book if it's NOT as good as it can be.

Hence my decision to travel the traditional route.  I could, if I chose, ignore my beta readers.  But I can't ignore my agent and my editor.  If the former doesn't like my manuscript, it doesn't get subbed.  And if the latter doesn't like my manuscript, it doesn't get published.  So in my case, I feel I need the gate-keepers, the categorical imperatives that traditional publishing provides, to make sure I don't cut corners.

I don't want this to sound as if I see the traditional publishing system as a crutch for lazy writers, any more than I see the self-publishing system as a short-cut for poor writers.  Neither characterization is accurate.  My point is simply that each writer has to determine for herself or himself which route is best.

And this means, in the end, that each writer needs to know herself or himself, both strengths and weaknesses.  You can't let either success stories or horror stories decide for you.

If you do, you may never publish.  And your creative spark may very well perish.

Keeping It Real

An interesting conversation on Twitter (started by Erin Whalen) got me thinking about where my ideas for fiction originate.  Do I start with the characters, the plot, or the setting?  Most people in this conversation were character or plot devotees, but I have to admit I'm a setting guy.

Maybe this is because I write mostly speculative fiction, which puts a premium on where things take place.  The fictional world isn't our world, and so it's particularly important for the author to visualize it distinctly and to know it intimately.

And that's what tends to happen in my creative process: I see a place that I think would be interesting, then I ask myself what kinds of characters would be there, and why.  From that, character and plot flow more or less naturally.

An example is my forthcoming novel Survival Colony Nine.  I couldn't get the image out of my head of a wasteland world, a desert setting sparsely populated by small roving groups of people.  The questions of how the world got that way, who these people were, what they lacked and wanted, what obstacles stood in the way to their achieving their desires, and how they might overcome these obstacles all developed from that original image, which I quote here as it appears in the manuscript's current form:

The world stretched in an endless circle of dust around me, broken only by the shapes of ragged tents and squat, rusted trucks.  Both were patterned with camouflage colors.  Everything else was a dead reddish-brown, the color of dried blood under fingernails.  The sky was a uniform brown so similar to the land my head spun with the feeling that the solid ground was only a reflection.  The heat felt like a blanket wrapped around my hands, my eyes, my throat.

That setting was enough to propel me into the story of fourteen-year-old Querry Genn and his colony, Survival Colony Nine, as they struggle for existence in a ruined world overrun by the monstrous antagonists I call the Skaldi.

I wrote in a previous post about the risks of "info-dumping," or revealing too much about the fictional world in a single lump of information.  But balanced against that risk is the need for the author--and particularly the author of speculative fiction--to have all that information in mind.  Indeed, I've found that the more I know about my own setting, the less inclined I am to dump what I know on the reader all at once; if I feel confident in the setting, I also feel confident in letting it emerge slowly and organically.

So let's hear it for setting!  Plot is what makes readers keep reading your book, and characters are what make them fall in love with it--but setting is what keeps it real.

Query Me This

I'm hosting a publication workshop later this week in Pittsburgh (feel free to come if you're in town), and one of the things I'll be talking about is writing an effective query letter.  I don't know if I'm the world's greatest authority on this, but I did write a letter that got a fair number of agents interested enough to ask for the full manuscript, so I thought I'd offer my two cents.

The first thing I discovered about writing a query letter is that, like the manuscript itself, it's very much a work in progress.  You can (and should) revise, refine, and even completely rework it as you go along, based on the responses it's getting.  This is one reason it's important not to query every agent in the world at once; if you send 100 queries with a letter that's not working, you're left with nowhere else to go.

My first-version query letter, for example, went out to roughly 10 agents, and generated exactly zero interest.  It was the first query letter I'd ever written, and not surprisingly, it wasn't my best.  Looking back at it, I realize it was too formal and formulaic; it didn't sound as if I was excited about my book, so why should anyone else be?  It was long, packed with information, and in consequence dull; it was as if I didn't trust the manuscript itself, so I tried to tell the whole story in the query.  It also had a totally unnecessary introductory paragraph, one that began: "I am seeking representation for my Young Adult novel...."  There's no reason to include that; why else would you be sending a letter to an agent's query inbox?  The point of the query is to hook the agent, to get the agent excited about the story, not about the fact that Unknown Writer #20,000 is writing to them today.

So I did a little online research, found some good advice and some good models, and rewrote my query from scratch.  In my new approach, I followed two pieces of advice that all writers know:

1. Begin in the middle
2. Less is more

So in the new query, I plunged right into the story with an opening sentence that I hoped would intrigue the reader enough that s/he would read on.  And I trimmed the letter down to its bare bones, eliminating unnecessary sentences and modifiers, planting hints but not giving away too much, resulting in a descriptive paragraph that's fewer than 10 lines long.  I felt that this query was much zippier and catchier than the first; in the manner of a back-cover blurb, it sold my story, leaving the reader tantalized, rather than trying to tell the whole thing.  I sent it out to another 10 agents feeling much more confident in its success.

And sure enough, the day after I sent it out, the first request for the full manuscript arrived.  Other requests followed.  A month later, I had representation.  (There's a much longer story behind that, which I'll tell in another post.)  Maybe I just got lucky, but I think it was the new query that did the trick.

So here, for your enjoyment and/or edification, is my query for Survival Colony Nine.  Again, I make no claims for its greatness.  All I know is it achieved its objective.

***

Dear [name of agent]:

In a near-future world of dust and ruin, fourteen-year-old Querry Genn struggles to recover the lost memory that might save the human race.

His story is Survival Colony Nine, a futuristic Young Adult novel that follows a small band of refugees as they fight for existence in this hostile land.  The narrator, Querry Genn, suffers from traumatic memory loss induced by an encounter with the Skaldi, alien antagonists that swarm the wasted planet's surface.  Unable to recall his past or his identity, Querry is both protected and tormented by the colony's authoritarian commander, his father Laman Genn.  But there is a secret in Querry's past, one that makes him at once a target of the Skaldi's wrath and a key to the colony's future.  The discoveries Querry makes about himself, his father, and his family will change his life--and the fate of humanity--forever.

Survival Colony Nine is currently complete at 74,000 words.  I have begun drafting a second installment in a possible three-book series.  The story told in Survival Colony Nine, however, stands on its own.

I am the author of the book Framing Monsters (2005), a survey of classic and contemporary fantasy and science fiction film.  In addition, I have published numerous short stories in the fantasy and science fiction genres; these appear in such publications as A cappella Zoo, Niteblade, Farspace 2, and Cover of Darkness.

I have included a synopsis and the first ten pages of Survival Colony Nine.  Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[Me]

***

So there you have it.  I hope this model is useful to others, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and impressions.

Just the Facts?

Though the big news in my writing life of late is the acceptance-for-publication of my futuristic YA novel Survival Colony Nine, I'm also having a run of luck publishing creative nonfiction (under my moniker of J. David Bell).  To wit:

Late last year, two of my essays came out: "Watershed" (about a family excursion to sweep our local stream) appeared in Kudzu Review, and "Body Parts" (about illness, my own and others') was published in Blood and Thunder.

Later this year, my essay "The Last Days of the Frog Prince" (about my career catching frogs) will appear in the environmental journal Snowy Egret.  It's been a long time coming--it was accepted for publication back in 2011--but I think it'll be worth the wait, as I believe it's one of the best essays I've written.

Also later this year, my essay "Moon Man" (a love letter to my son, who was seven at the time I wrote the piece) will appear in The Lindenwood Review.

And finally, I just got word that my essay "Racist Like Me" (about my early experiences with race and integrated education) has been accepted for publication by a journal named--I kid you not--Toad Suck Review.

My guess is that my productivity in this genre will dwindle as I buckle down and focus on Survival Colony Nine and (with luck) other novels to follow.  But I really love the challenge of creative nonfiction, which requires the writer to tell the truth in the garb of fiction (as opposed to fiction proper, which requires the writer to make stuff up yet give it the aura of truth).  Two sides of the same coin, perhaps; maybe even two sides of the same brain.

Or simply two parts of what makes us writers, what makes us human.

Wake Up and Smell the Novels

I recently read a troubling blog post by a well-respected—and, I have no doubt, quite capable—literary agent who specializes in YA fiction.  At the top of her list of how not to begin one’s novel, she wrote the following:

“Waking up: DO NOT.  DON’T.  Don’t even think about it.  Many of the manuscripts I get begin with a character waking up.  Why are you making this choice?  Most good stories begin with a character who has just been knocked out of their usual equilibrium or is going into a tense situation.  Surely, you can begin in a more interesting place than waking up.  And even if the character is waking up into their strange new situation, just change it.  Make them awake.  Do you really want to be exactly like everyone else I reject today?”

I found this post troubling for a number of reasons, foremost of which is that my debut novel, Survival Colony Nine, a futuristic YA, has just been acquired by a very reputable publisher and begins with . . . the main character waking up.

Now, granted, in my novel, the MC is woken up in the middle of the night by another important character (his father, with whom he has a rather contentious relationship); and he’s woken up because a mysterious, unnamed enemy is advancing on their camp; and he’s suffering from amnesia, so he doesn’t know what’s going on; so immediately you have interpersonal conflict, dialogue, tension, mystery, scene, all that good stuff.  Still, my point is this: the novel starts with a character waking up, and I think it was precisely the right way to start this particular novel.

Nor am I alone.  Quite the contrary, I’m in very good company.  One of the finest fantasy novels ever written, Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber, begins with a character waking up.  Rick Riordan’s YA fantasy The Lost Hero, first in a wildly popular series, begins with a character waking up.  And then there’s that little YA novel that begins with the following four words: “When I wake up.”  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  It’s called The Hunger Games.

My guess is that the millions who bought the book aren’t going to be demanding their money back.

As a final example, another of my favorite fantasy novels, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane, begins with . . . a character walking down the street.  Awake.

You see my point.  For some novels, starting with a character waking up is the right choice.  For others, it’s not.  But I would no more tell writers never to start a book with a character waking up than I would tell them always to do so.

The larger point is this: writing is complex.  There are no rules so absolute that they cannot be broken.  There are rules, yes.  And there’s good writing as well as bad.  There are also personal preferences, which we all should respect.  If you’re of the no-character-waking-up preference, that’s fine.  But that’s a preference, not a doctrine, and it should never be presented as the latter.  To thrive, literature needs to be willing to take risks, to try something that’s not been done before, to challenge and upend what’s considered desirable or even do-able.  Otherwise we end up with cookie-cutter books, and both reading and writing are debased in consequence.

I’ve just begun to read blogs that provide writing advice, so I’m no authority.  But one of my current favorites is by fantasy novelist Victoria Grefer, who hosts the blog “CreativeWriting with the Crimson League.”  Her blog is low-key, accessible, friendly; she presents herself as a writer writing to other writers, not as an unapproachable sage or pundit.  She never snipes, censures, or chides; instead, she encourages and invites, using her own experience as an illustration, not an ultimatum.  I’m not sure how she feels about character wake-ups, but my guess is she’d be cool with them.

So here’s my advice to writers: start your novel any way you please.  Not every agent or publisher will want it, but if it’s good, someone out there sure as heck will.

The Things That Take a While

I wrote my first novel when I was eight years old.

It was titled “The Slowest Runner,” and it concerned the trials of a young man whose chances of winning the big race looked pretty slim.  I’m not sure how I planned to end it, considering I gave up after two chapters (a single typed page).  But I do remember that when I started writing it, I was thinking of myself as a writer, and the manuscript as a novel-in-progress.  I just wasn’t ready to finish it.

In middle school, I took another shot at writing a novel.  This time, having just read The Lord of the Rings, I produced a manuscript that was pretty conventional swords-and-sorcery fare, with humans, elves, dwarves, sorceresses, an Aragorn-esque tracker named (ahem) Nordica, a blue winged pixie named Willidrin (Willi for short), and (I have no idea why) huntsmen who looked like gigantic eyeballs with arms, legs, and feathered hats.  I don’t remember the title, and for all my searching I’ve found only a single sketch that survives.  As I recall, the book bogged down around page fifty, after the sorceress had called all the presumptive heroes together but I discovered I had nothing particularly heroic for them to do.  For the next few years, I drafted several outlines of epic fantasies I planned to write, but the outlines were as far as I got.

I completed my first novel at age sixteen.  Titled To Alter the Past, it told the story of Droman Greywolf, rightful king of a magical land, who is slain on the very doorstep of his castle as he attempts to recover the throne his father lost years before.  Through some magical process, two of the king’s followers bring the narrator, a man from our own world, to Droman’s kingdom.  There they beg him to relive the fallen king’s life in hopes that he will defeat the enemy and change the course of history.  He agrees, of course—otherwise no story—and lives an eventful second life befriending Elves and Catmen, defeating swamp monsters and witches, rescuing damsels in distress and gaining mysterious magical implements from mad hermits, before finally confronting not a mortal man but a demon from the pit at the castle gates.  That précis might make the book sound pretty run-of-the-mill, but in fact it shows a considerable degree of imagination and a fair amount of decent writing.  When a family friend who works in publishing agreed to take a look at it, though, he reacted as anyone but a sixteen-year-old could have predicted he would: “Your writing is good, very good.  But is it publishable?  Not yet.”  I was crushed and briefly flirted with vanity publishing—until I read the books the vanity press sent me and realized they were vastly inferior to my own.  I still have the complete manuscript tucked away in my closet.  I sometimes think it’s the best thing I’ve written.

Completed novel #2 came in college, as my senior honors project.  Titled Selfish People (later changed to The S.A.M.E. Semester when I sought publication), it involved the takeover of a small liberal arts college by a group of radical educators claiming to offer the benefits of their new educational philosophy to the students.  The faculty mentor who read it wrote: “This is a very creditable piece of writing.  It shows considerable fictional talent, ambition, scope, perseverance, literary sensitivity, an acquaintance with literature, and many other virtues needed for writing.  But it is not under any imaginable form publishable.”  Turns out she was right: in the years between college and grad school I revised it, found an agent who seemed interested, but then gave up when the agent went out of business and no other responded positively to my queries.  I was gearing up for doctoral study at that point, and while I still harbored the dream that I might return to novels some day, my focus had turned to writing about literature rather than writing it myself.

And so it went.  In the twenty years that followed, I published three nonfiction academic books and lots of articles, co-edited another book of academic essays, and pretty much put creative writing on indefinite hold.  I imagined a few new novels—one having to do with baseball, another with Thoreau—but they never got any farther than the fantasy novels I’d envisioned as a teenager.  I’d discovered that I was pretty good at academic prose, and it just wasn’t possible to devote attention to fiction-writing with everything else going on in my life.  So I held onto the dream, but nothing came of it.

That changed in 2008, when I finally decided I’d had enough of academic publishing and wanted to return to fiction.  I took a class at a local college to rediscover the craft (and to force myself to actually write something), started this blog, and began to compile a list of credits in fiction and creative nonfiction.  Feeling ready to try the long form again, I produced about a hundred pages of a novel with a faculty member as its main character, but stopped when I realized it was too close to my own life.  I completed another novel I really liked, a grim, dystopian retelling of the Santa Claus fable, but found that no agent or editor would touch it with a twenty-foot pole.

Then, in 2011, having read many books aloud to my children, I said to myself: “Why not try writing a novel for young adults?”  With nothing more than a name for my main character, I started writing.  The story took off.  My daughter, whom I showed some early pages just to make sure I wasn’t completely off-track, really liked it.  At the tail end of 2011, I completed it and started shopping for an agent.  I found one, revised the manuscript for her, parted company with her when her enthusiasm for the project waned, found another agent who loved the book (Liza Fleissig of the Liza Royce Agency), made some further revisions for her, then sat back and waited while she sent it out.  Trickles of interest came in, but no offers.  Liza told me to be patient.  I tried.

And then it happened: on Friday, February 22, 2013, a formal offer for my YA fantasy novel, Survival Colony Nine, arrived from Karen Wojtyla of McElderry Press.  I had turned forty-eight earlier that month.  Forty years after attempting my first novel, forty years after embarking on the dream of my life, I was finally on the road to publication.

Or maybe I’d been on that road all along.

On the day I received the offer, my wife bought me a miniature flower pot topped by Woodstock (in farmer garb) and a small sprouting plant.  The legend on the pot: “Faith is for the things that take a while.”

And that’s no fiction.

A Nibble

The title of this post is intentionally restrained, maybe too restrained, because I don't want to get all excited and then all disappointed if things don't pan out. But....

An agent requested to see my novel!

This is big news for me. Big, big news. Huge, in fact.

And it all happened thanks to a revised query letter.

That's right. I'd been sending out a query for Survival Colony Nine that seemed pretty good to me, but it wasn't getting any bites. So I went back, did a little research, and revamped the query, making it catchier, snazzier, snappier, whatever-ier. And within a day, I got a reply from the agent asking to see the whole manuscript.

So first of all, thanks to all those online resources that tell you how to write a dynamic query. They obviously helped.

And second of all, thanks to those (mostly my wife and children) who have held faith in me during this process. My daughter said to me just yesterday, "I have a good feeling about this."

And third of all, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Finished!

This is to announce that I've officially finished a draft of my young adult fantasy novel, a month ahead of schedule! Beating my own deadline is not uncommon for me; I get a spurt of energy and creativity at the end, once I've finally figured out what the heck I'm trying to say, and the last couple chapters fly by. (It also helps that the final chapter is presently very short.) But the draft is complete: 304 manuscript pages, roughly 66,000 words, and a plot that wraps up most of the loose ends but still leaves room for the sequel. I did mention this is part of a trilogy, didn't I?

That makes two novels completed in the past two years. Not bad for a guy who hadn't written a word of fiction since college!

So I think I'll take a week off and then get down to the work of revision. A writer's job is never done....

Survival Colony Nine, Doing Just Fine

Just an update on my young adult fantasy novel-in-progress: it's coming along quite nicely. I've hit a very fertile stretch of the writing, and I'm now pleased to report that if I stick with my 2-page-a-day average, I'll be done with a complete draft by the end of November (not December as originally projected). And, the best part of all, my 12-year-old daughter, who's serving as my test audience, really likes it!

I know, that doesn't sound like much; what's she going to say to her dad? "This really sucks, old man"? "Don't quit your day job"? It's no doubt hard for her to disentangle her affection for me from her estimation of the book.

But what the hey. I think it's pretty good, she thinks it's pretty good, and I've logged just over 200 pages, or roughly two-thirds of the projected total. So there's no stopping me now!

Look for it in bookstores. . . . Well, whenever!