Yesterday I sent the full
manuscript of my first novel to an editor for a look-see. I’ve made those pages
into as proper a book as I can make it without professional/divine
intervention. The editor asked me to list some of the agents I have already
queried. (She said my query sucked. Her words not mine but the same meaning.) I
was at a loss to recall who I have queried over the past seven years, so I went
into my ‘sent’ file (on this computer, I have two others as boat moorings
stored in the attic) and started to list the names.
When I got to twenty-five agent
names I started to cry. Some of them I queried twice and one agent, a true
gentleman allowed me three chances. All the hopes and dreams regarding that
book, all the ups and downs of clicking send and checking emails came back.
When the list reached in the high thirties I became embarrassed. Admitting that
my query produced no requests for fulls and only a few partials was beyond
heartbreaking. The partials, which garnered no further requests, at least got me
to re-write, not just edit, the opening pages well over a dozen times. Only a few
members of my writing group have read the entire book.
One of the members of our group is
a college level creative writing teacher; she loved the book and said it was “the
one.” My first reader, a very astute non-smoke-blowing truth teller also loves
the book. I have clung to those opinions as if I am splayed across the bottom
of a flipped boat in the middle of the north Atlantic. It’s cold and rough out here, and lonely. I have been waiting on the bottom so long that I fear all my paddling has been for nothing. All my efforts for fiction survival hinge on one set of eyes to spot me floating in this see of saline.
I haven't just been waiting. I've worked hard on other stuff and achieved a modicum of small successes elsewhere, but that book, "the one" is my ship.
Is that a rescue helicopter on the horizon or is it someone throwing stones?
I haven't just been waiting. I've worked hard on other stuff and achieved a modicum of small successes elsewhere, but that book, "the one" is my ship.
Is that a rescue helicopter on the horizon or is it someone throwing stones?
I am adrift. Where are you?
I hope this works out...assuming the list of those you've queried is so they aren't approached again. I'm hoping you get the life ring tossed. Keep paddling till then.
ReplyDeleteYes to the life ring Donna but I keep thinking she'll say it's crap, don't waste your time. My list of agents is so extensive that I think I'm left with some guy with a computer and a phone book somewhere east of New Yorphilabostochicaangles.
ReplyDeleteBTW Caroline sends good wishes your way.
Well, don't give up just yet...you might be surprised. When I thought my writing was the worst, is when it was the best...and vice versa...(unfortunately) if that makes any sense.
ReplyDeleteI love Caroline, she's (as Averil would say) the bomb diggity bomb.
AN UPDATE
ReplyDeleteMy editorial letter was very promising.
She loved the story and suggested a change in POV so I am on to playing God with words in a world I created eight years ago.