Thanksgiving Writing Coma

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Don’t know about you, but with my family, Thanksgiving is a 3 day marathon of food, drama, and awesomeness. Don’t you wish you were there?

I have to admit defeat where NaNo is concerned. I know! I know! It’s terrible, but even if I wanted to make a final push/ attempt the fact is, I still have several chapters of my novel to edit and polish, deal with Beta comments, critique and review a backspacer story (oh, it’s so cool, I know your jealous) and get ready for a new job!

Maybe some are better at multi-tasking, but with this many courses on my platter, I think i’ll give my time and energy to the project that has taken 5 years of my life. I think it’s fair don’t you?

Anyway, how was your writing/ Thankgiving adventure? Anyone finish their NaNo?

The Call comes in…now what?

Many of my fellow Backspacers are writing of this one particular question that was asked. I’m glad, because honestly, I didn’t even think to think of this question.

What happens after you get the mind-numbing, explosive, finally-on-my-way-destiny call from an agent offering you representation?

Everyone was amazed by this question, I’m assuming, because it’s never thought of as important. Ms./Mr. Agent offers to rep and the rest will fall into place, right? Nope, now we have work to do.

ASK QUESTIONS!!

Why do you like my book? What’s your plan for it, where do you think we can take it?

What are your suggestions on rewrites? (yeah, don’t think you’re getting off there)

What kind of contract are we looking at? 

Discuss plans for publicity if the agent is open to it.

Get an idea of what the relationship will be like and who the agent is, is this really the right fit for you?

Yeah, the call came in and life is ten millions times better already. Now take a breath and think about the business aspect of it. After all now you’re a working author 🙂 

Check out The Long Ride Home- http://sarahcookraymond.blogspot.com/2011/11/questions-to-ask-on-call.html

And The Flying Cheetah – http://marierearden.blogspot.com/

For more detail and great information. In fact, just subscribe to them, you won’t regret it.

Backspace and writers

Two days after the Backspace Conference, why haven’t I posted yet, you ask?

Because it was crazy amazing and you need two days to recover before you can do anything else!

First off let me just say, it really was an amazing experience. Definitely something I would do all over again and here is why. I met some amazing people, AMAZING writers. Get this, I probably read several early drafts that will end up on next year’s NY TIMES bestseller list, how cool is that?

You should follow them on twitter now:

@marierearden- You want longing desire with a twist, keep a look out for her book. Your eyes will pop and your heart will swoon.

@RileyRedgate- Hunger Games and Ender’s Game have you entranced buy you want something new? Riley is your girl! You’ll never want to play another game again, unless it’s someone daring you to read this book. It’s an absolute must.

@SCookRay- We all remember those teen boy adrenaline rush books? Alex Rider and all? Well you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen her MC in action. Your typical boy with not so typical skills, but the price to be too cool for school is high.

@madelineclaire- The voice of the book is haunting, the mystical nature is entrancing, and the plot will have your fingers itching to grab the next book! All I can say is i’m buying her novel when it comes out…well i’m buying all of them, but still 🙂

Everyone there was very friendly, very open, and in no way judgemental about what you write. That’s not to say my query letter and first two pages got off easy. Yeah, not so much.

I changed a few things on my query letter per agents’ comments (Let us celebrate the birth of Query Letter #5) and brought it in the next day. The agents (a different amazing group) still had suggestions, all of which I put to good use in Query 51/2. In fact, Query #5 impressed them so much I got a couple of FULL MS REQUESTS!!!! AHHHHHHHH, breathe…remember to breathe.

Then there are my first two pages. A brilliant suggestion was made by an agent on the first day of the conference.

“Instead of starting on the day everything  changes, start at the moment.”

Now I like this and shirk from it at the same time. It’s cool because it means you grab the readers attention right away, the pace of your book is immediately on turbo. The downside is the lack of introduction to the main character. When stuff is blowing up or moving so fast that you dont have a clear picture of the mc, is it worth it to start with a bang?

So I completely changed my opening for Day Two. I thought they were garbage, I was so upset over them, but I had to try. The agents who looked over my new pages didn’t completely hate them! They suggested more showing, less telling, but my new opening line made them laugh! VICTORY!! So yes, now i have to go back and completely change chapter 1, here’s hoping that it will work out.

I met and semi- pitched to a few other agents as well (I need to work on my pitching, always have your pitch memorized!) and got a few bites in the form of partials 🙂 These are the big breaks every aspiring author dreams of right? Well here’s the unforseen downside to those realized dreams. Now I REALLY REALLY need to make sure my MS is in top-notch condition. I was sure of it before, but Backspace makes you look at something old and rethink it a bit. On to a new bout of revisions with old and new beta readers.

For those of you who have never attended a conference but are thinking about it, you need to go. It is worth the entry/registration fee. I can’t speak for all conferences but here is Backspace’s layout

Registration, Panel 1, Panel 2, Query Discussion Groups, lunch, First Two Pages discussion, mixer, panel 3. Then you get to go home with your head full of dizzing new information to process. Like I said, I would do it all over again (but I would hope i’d remember my earlier mistakes in my query and pages so I could change them and get more critiquing!).

Oh and as for NaNo….yeah that’s suffering. Sacrifices, right?

NaNoWriMo And Backspace

It’s a sad thing when life gets in the way of writing, anyone who tells you it doesn’t….well they are better at balancing all that than me.

So anyway, let’s just recap August-October, shall we?

I’ve queried more than 100 agents for novel and have heard back from more than half. Nothing promising, but everyone knows that’s part of the deal when you start trying to make your dream a reality -road bumps and obstacles. I’m told I should just give up and move on, but there is something about this story which I’ve worked on for several years. I can’t let it go until I’ve tried every avenue. Anyway, enough of the “go get-em attitude”.

Worked at the New York Renfair from August through September- always fun with interesting people abound. I highly suggest everyone try it at least once in their life.

I turned 24 in October, a year out of college and I’m still in limbo, but I kind of knew that would be the price for four magical years of college.

Annnnnd NOVEMBER!

I hope everyone who is reading this knows aboutNaNoWriMo, a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month. It is very important (and time consuming) for anyone out there who wants to be a novelist.

http://www.nanowrimo.org- You need to check out their awesome website.

While this is my first year doing this, I do know most of the layout. Here are the important parts:

1) It takes place from November 1 through November 30

2) You must write 50,000 words for any kind of novel/story you want

3) If you manage to write 50,000 words in that time frame, YOU WIN A PONY!!!!! (Well, okay not a pony, but a pat on the back from the person closest to you.)

It’s great fun, and I’ll keep you posted on my doings and stats, if you let me know about yours.

 

Then we have Backspace Agent-Author Seminar (My first in-person conference, yeah I’m excited!)

It takes place in New York Nov 3-4 from 8 to about 5. Nothing but writing and meeting people for  hours, cool! I’m hoping to get some really strong feedback as well as gain a new writing circle of READERS. Not that there is anything wrong with my group of current readers, but it doesn’t hurt to expand right?

I’m also looking forward to meeting the agents I’ve been querying, nice to put faces to the namea! Especially since I’ve been kind of stalking Jennifer Laughran’s blog- and if you haven’t you need to right now….seriously get off my blog and get over to hers!! She’s brilliant!

backspacewritersconference.com check it out. What conferences have you been to/ are your favorite?

 

There will be more updates tomorrow after the conference. Maybe I’ll see some of you there!