Changing Perspectives

So I'm querying again.

Shot that sucker right out there. So for now we'll sit back and see what we see. I hadn't realized it's been since October 2009 that I last sent out a query. Since then the novel has gone through three major revisions.

Last night, just for kicks, I took a look at the original draft from September 2009 and cringed. It's horrendous. Completely infantile. I can't believe I was arrogant enough to actually send that out into agent-land. It's hilarious when you think about it.

When you start your writing career in a vacuum, everything feels right. Your family tells you how great your stuff is. The words flow and before you know it, you think you the next great American novelist. It's funny to look back at those original words. They're awkward, overly-complicated and the writing style was so over-grammatically correct it was stiff as a board.

But what was there was passion. Probably more than I have now. There was a lot of feeling in that story, and it reflected in the plot. The basic concept was great. How do I know? More than a few professionals have told me so.

Haha, but therein lies the rub. I had to learn how to write my great story. And that took time. Make no mistake; I'm still learning to write. There's a reason the average time to publish is around eight years and a hundred queries sent. Make no mistake about it, this shit is hard.

So as I stared at the draft email containing my query, my finger paused over the 'send' button. I was fearless the first time I queried. Back then I treated the endeavor like I do with any request: the worst they can do is say no. In 2009 it took me two seconds to hit that button.

But two and a half years later, the stakes are higher. I've got a boatload more experience and learning, not to mention the scars earned from the monthly exchanges in Kelley Armstrong's Online Writing Group. In 2009 I wasn't afraid of failure because I had truly nothing to lose.

Enter 2011 and a different perspective. I am afraid of failure. Strike that. I'm not afraid of failure; I'm afraid of lack of growth. I'm afraid I'm no better than I was in the final months of my tour in Iraq in '09.

But I am better than 2009. There's no question there. Remember, I looked at that old manuscript and laughed. I have grown. This round of queries is a test to see how much. The goal is still to get picked up and published by 2015. So this time I did hit that 'send' button, it just took twenty seconds longer than the last.

Hey, the worst they can do is tell me no.

And He's Coming Down the Final Stretch!!!

At least that's what it feels like. Isn't it horse-racing season or something? Kentucky bourbon and fancy hats? Show's you what I know of about that culture. My knowledge of thoroughbreds is limited to what I learned watching Secretariat, Seabiscuit, and Racing Stripes. *snicker*

But my post-beta WIP is heading towards the finish line. I've made it through the wild forest of debilitating partner-critiques and a massive rewrite. The second. A little perspective on this one: This marks the third calendar year I'm working on this novel. It's also the last. I should have been smart and let it go after one; should have chalked it up as a tremendous experience and accomplishment. It was my first novel. While spending a year in Iraq, I started with an idea and turned it into my 150,000-word opus.

Then I committed myself to learning the craft, joined a group and spent another year getting beat apart by my fabulous critique partners. I still had faith in the characters and plot from my creation, so rather than move on to something new, I took another stab. A year after that, my 150K opus was a 72,000-word YA novel a little more carefully aimed at my target audience.

But reality and a few friends slapped me back to reality. A couple of harsh critiques exposed some rather serious flaws in the plot. So back to work. For the last three months I've been hacking and slashing. Deleting poor material and replacing it with words more relevant to the core plot.

In the next week it will be done. I'm into the third act of the manuscript which survived the beta-round fairly intact. I'll get it done, do a final edit then move on to the queries.

But for Mason Ramsey (my MC) and his gang of friends, this is probably it. Barring some serious feedback from an agent or publisher that would lead to another round of edits, I'm retiring my beloved WIP. In the last several months I've had too many good ideas, and eventually even the marketplace will leave my novel behind. C'est la vie.

I'm ready for that, ready to move on. As I've been told by writers much wiser than myself, eventually you have to admit you've done your best and put it on the shelf.

Until then I'm going to enjoy this final stretch. Finishing a novel is like finishing a marathon. There's miles and miles of isolation and pain followed by that final high as the end comes in sight. In spite of all the mental fatigue and frustration, you still manage to get up on your toes and drive towards the finish line.

Okay, that's enough. Move on. Nothing to see here. Time to fire up some Daft Punk and get to #amwriting.

Two Weeks to Con!

So we are at T-minus fourteen days to the DFW Writers' Conference.

Breathe.

That's the advice my crit-partner Julie Particka passed to me a couple weeks ago when I was on the verge of losing focus and going into a full blown noob-writer panic. I'd made a list of the million things I thought had to get done before the end of the month. Her advice:

Finish the manuscript, prep for the pitch.

Two simple things. Of course, finishing a manuscript is never easy, but I did. And for the last week I've been going over the first five chapters with a buffer trying to make them as smooth as possible.

Then comes the pitch. Now a pitch is a funny animal. It's not a document. As my other friend PJ Schnyder pointed out, it's a live interaction between two people. Conversations do not come from a script, so you have to grab their attention right from the introduction. Let the conversation flow, but be able to guide the discussion back to your stories talking points.

Okay, that sounds simple, but it's not. PJ is a sage when it comes to sales and presentations. She has years of experience making big deals. So if you have no experience, how do you compensate? Easy. Preparation. I'm going to dig out some military stuff here and go to my old buddy Sun Tzu:
'If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt.'

Now, referring to an agent as the 'enemy' might not be a good idea, but the theory behind it is sound. Do your research. Read their recent blogs and interviews. Know what they're looking for and who they represent. Showing that knowledge is another form of showing respect i.e. you're serious about writing and you're not here to waste their time. Just make sure not to cross the fine line over to stalking.

Know yourself. Here's where it gets complicated. You know your manuscript. After all, you wrote it, but do you know where your manuscript fits into the grand scheme of the Urban Fantasy YA marketplace? Do you know how your protagonist stacks up against other similar characters? You should. That's knowing yourself.

So you've done that, you've married your novel perfectly to the agent's expectations. You're good, right?

WRONG!

It's a pitch dummy. That's just the conversation to get your foot in the door. They still have to read the manuscript. Which gets back to probably the best piece of advice I've gleaned after months of agent/published-writer stalking:

Write the best damn book you can.

Where am I in this process? I'm waiting for the email from the conference folks assigning me to an agent. From that point I'll go into Sun Tzu mode and do my homework. I'll craft my eight or ten talking points to suit their individual tastes. In about a week I'll push my manuscript to a couple of betas. Ideally, their comments will come back to me about the time I'm ready to respond to a request (fingers crossed). I'll make corrections and barring major issues the manuscript will go out a week or two of the con.

That's the plan. Now, remember what I told you all about plans?

New Writer Seeks Advice

But I'm not the new writer. What? It appears I'm now an expert, or at least other people think I am. Personally, I prefer to think of myself as a student of the art. Over the last year, in the time I've gotten serious about writing and learning about the publishing industry, I've been very content to sit back, ask questions, and learn from those who did this before me, whether they were published or not.

(I think it's important to note that just because a writer isn't published, that doesn't mean an aspiring author should discount their wisdom and experience. This is a long journey; for a few, publishing happens, but for most, it doesn't. As we like to say in the military: it's the reality of the profession.)

Okay, back to title. I've blogged about this stuff in the past, but this is the first time it's hit me in real life. So, late last night dude walks up to me in that parking. (No, I'm not getting carjacked. We're both in uniform, so it's cool. I actually know the guy.) Here's how it went.

Him: "Hey, Ken, I heard you published a book?"

Me: (completely flattered) "Well, no. I'm working on it."

Him: "What do you know about publishing?"

Me: "Not enough, but I've learned a ton. What do you need?"

Him: "Well, I wrote a book. I've been working on it a while. I've tried to get it published, but I really don't know how?"

Me: "What genre is it?"

Him: "It's a series of humorous stories I've written down since I came into the Army."

Me: "Okay, that's interesting. How's your query letter?"

Him: "What's a query letter?"

Me: "How much time do you have?"

So he and I plan to get together and talk. He's a peer, so I'll do my best to help him out. The current problem is we're in the middle of a massive training event that will probably prevent us from getting together until after New Year's Day. To keep him occupied, I gave him a homework assignment:

First, find a writing group and ingratiate yourself with other writers. Second, Google 'query letter' and start educating yourself on how the publishing industry works. Last, go to a site like Querytracker.com and find agents looking for your specific genre.

Me: (military aphorism) "Know your enemy."

Him: (nodding) "Ah, target the right agents." (He meant for his book, not literally. Words matter. You have to watch yourself around Army dudes.)

All this didn't click until this morning. One of my favorite agents, Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency, tweeted that about 60% of the queries she receives are, for lack a better phrase, a wast of time. Of that, she said, only 10% are good enough to seriously consider. I know the competition was stiff. I know there are a LOT of writers out there trying to get published. What I didn't know (and I'm using beer-math) was that the huge majority of queries flat out suck.

So, when I do get a chance to get back with my peer and try to pass on some of my limited knowledge, I'm going to do my best to ensure he falls more into the 10% category rather than that dreaded 60%. I have to wonder what that 60% does with their free time. Obviously not research.

Research, people, it's your friend.

...and, hey, I'm an expert!

Conversations 'Tween My Creations

Is it technically talking to yourself if you're imagining your novel's characters having a conversation, about you? I don't know. The other day I'm mowing my lawn and fighting my Toro Personal Pace mower up the steep grade of my 1/2 acre corner lot, my characters start talking about me.

Oh, before I move any further, for you far east and west coast urbanites whose yard is typically comprised of a concrete pad and hot tub, an acre is a unit of area used in the US to denote 43,560 square feet of land. So my property is about half that. It's a lot of damned grass and takes up a good chunk of my weekend writing time. Thought I'd throw that in.

So, while I'm pushing around the mower, listening to Weird Al's White n' Nerdy (it's an anthem people), my character's start having this conversation. It goes something like this:

Protag: "Dude, I get my ass kicked in the third chapter of the rewrite. That wasn't in my YA Hero contract. What up with that?"

Antag: "At least you keep your teeth, between this version and the last, I lose both up front, and I didn't sign on for dentures."

Romantic Interest: "Before I was hot, smart, and driven, now I'm stuck up and bitchy, and I may even be an antogonist in disquise."

Aspiring Author: "That's because it builds suspense. Simply hooking up the two of you from the start was too easy. Now you're competing with for his affections with two others. You need to work for it."

Romantic Interest: "What--"

Gay BFF (interrupts): "What about me? I got written out? WTF!"

Aspiring Author: "That's because you were never in it to begin with. Too many of you popping up in all sorts of stories. Congratulations, you're officially cliche. Now, if it means getting published, we'll talk."

Gay BFF: "H8er!" (exits)

Aspiring Author: "WTF?"

Protag: "Seriously boss, we need to talk about the budding teen relationship thing. You made me a complete innocent and ignorant kid for over half the book. I suck with girls. Did you suck with girls?"

Aspiring Author: "Absolutely. When I was a senior I was below the Mendoza line. Way below."

Protag: "What's the Mendoza line?"

Aspiring Author: "Obscure baseball reference from the early nineties."

Antag: "I hate baseball."

Aspiring Author: "That's because you're British."

Romantic Interest: "What did you mean I'm competing with two others?"

Protag: "Threesome? Sweet. How do I do that?"

Aspiring Author: Points to Protag. "First, you're too young for the particulars. Second, I'm working that out. It's complicated." Points to Romantic Interest. "Don't worry, you're predestined, and you're HAWT. It's just less obviouos this time around. All three girls get an at-bat."

Antag: "Another baseball reference."

Aspiring Author: "Hey! British! Wanna lose another tooth?"

Antag: "You're only going to bump me off me anyway."

Protag: "He's right." To aspiring author. "How do I get to kill him? Is this another 'bad-guy-trips-on-a-root-and-impales-himself-on-tent-stake'? Cuz that's kind of ghey."

Aspiring Author: "It is, so you get to beat him down old-school. It kind of taints you."

Protag: "Sweet! Wait, tainted?"

Aspiring Author: "Chicks dig tainted. Read every YA out there."

Romantic Interest: "It's true, we do."

Protag: "Sweet!"

And so it goes. As you can tell, I enjoy writing dialogue, and I prefer it funny and sharp. One thing I learned on my first round of queries (almost a year ago), was that I was trying to be too grammatically correct and my dialogue and narrative ended up stiff. So I changed. We'll see how it goes this time around. At the pace I'm going I should have a completed rewrite around February. WTF?

A Memorial

A couple weeks back, our Battalion lost a Soldier. Private First Class Barry Smith left this world far too soon. Only a month in the unit, Barry impacted everyone around him. He was talented, ambitious, creative, and gregarious, possessing a monster work ethic that would have seen him rise to the top of the profession. God decided he was too good for us, and brought him home.

This week my battalion did some platoon-level training and live fire. It was a tiring week. We ran each of our 6 platoons through a thirty-six hours training 'lane' consisting of events that would test their ability to perform basic, required tasks.

No room for error. Because of the tragedy, we compressed what my Brigade Commander called a 'tight timeline' to an insane point where if any of the platoons were hung up, it would adversely affect the training of the entire battalion.

Transparent to each of the platoons, was the tireless work of my Officers and NCOs. They worked tirelessly to make a great training event. We were fielding new equipment, training on new systems, introducing new personnel to the staff, and executing an aggressive.



But we made it, and made the news in the process. When we got back to the rear, we were smoked, completely drained by humidity, frustrating moments, and lack of sleep.

Then I got an email from Jodi Meadows. She posting a critique of my query at her site, (W)ords and (W)ardances. Last fall, I had limited success submitting my YA, EMANARE, with what I considered a train wreck of a query letter. What can I say? I was young. She's the first to look at the redo, so I'm hoping with her assistance and a better overall product, I can move forward.

This is my first weekend home in three weeks. Overall, May has been the toughest month on the job. Can't wait for June.


UPDATE - Jodi's critique of my query letter is up her site here. She provided some extremely helpful observations. Thanks Jodi!