literary agent

Rejection–A Necessary Evil

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Last week I started sending out query letters. Inevitably, I started receiving rejections. My biggest surprise upon receiving these rejection emails was that the agents had taken the time to actually hammer out a rejection;  usually it was only one line of text, but it was more than I expected after reading the horror stories on various blogs of sitting anxiously for months and months, never getting a response. Thus, a quick “Sorry, this isn’t for me.” was completely more shocking than the denial itself.

I was denied by three agents last week–plus, I had the bad luck of all three denying me on the same day! Rejection is always hard to take, but I was expecting it, so I didn’t take it as hard. I began my queries with some of the top agencies in the country, and it was asking a lot to ask my query to live up to their exacting standards. But it was worth a shot. It’s always worth a shot–you never know when that one special agent will read your words and fall in love with your novel. Many blogs and websites say that finding an agent is a lot like finding a romantic partner; you have to just get each other. I’m sure most people would agree that the search for love is not supposed to be easy, and you almost never get it right the first time. Just like we’ve all had a bad date, the querying process isn’t going to be love at first sight with every agent. But just because you’ve had a bad date, or the relationship you thought was sure to be “the one” didn’t work out doesn’t mean you stop dating. Thus, rejections shouldn’t mean it’s time to stop querying–yes they are frustrating, but who wants an agent who isn’t the right fit?

In the meantime, between these “bad dates,” I am making myself fall a bit less in love with Capacitance. If I sink my heart into it too much, rejection gets all the more difficult to handle. Now my challenge is to walk the thin line between confidence and blind adoration of my novel. It is not “my baby” anymore, it is a marketable product–while I can be confident in its qualities, I cannot be overly sensitive if it is not the right product for everyone.

Admittedly, I did take a few days off from querying. Maybe that is not weakness–maybe it’s for the best, since I have gotten rather off track in my work on Inductance. However, I will resume my efforts to find and agent and get published; I want my books to be read and I won’t stop until that effort is fulfilled.

Disconnected

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Through all my adventures lately–both in attending the conference and querying–working on my second novel Inductance, has taken a backseat. This has been frustrating both because it is leading to a few errors in the work as well as because I don’t like days where I don’t write; unless it is a specified day off, I feel anxious and less accomplished than I do on those days where I have written a chapter. Don’t get me wrong, I usually take the weekends off, unless I am sitting at home with no plans (there have to be some days to recharge the mind and give the story a break!). However, especially with the conference, I did not have time to write for four days, and before that, preparing for the conference was time consuming as well. I started Inductance a little less than a month ago, and now I have 27,000 words done, so I am not doing awful at the whole thing, but I am definitely not as prolific as I was in my heaviest work phases of writing Capacitance.

I want this to change. This disconnected process that I have going right now is causing just that–disconnect–in my story. Once again, I am forever thankful to my Dad, the in-progress reader and editor, as he has caught some of these disconnects as he reads the new chapters of Inductance. For the most part, they have been relatively small, easy to correct errors. For example, today at lunch he caught a snag where the characters had planned to change their meeting place to different room, but then later on when the meeting actually occurs, I forgot to change its location to match the new plans. A minor detail, but one that readers WILL notice. I am glad it was caught, and I am actually excited to go back and change it because by connecting the details and having the characters meet at the new room, I think I can insert some really cool scenes into the story.

All that being said, I have decided to go back and read my work so far on Inductance–when I write, sometimes it is such an organic process that I literally don’t remember what I wrote after it’s done. This isn’t such a problem when I am writing a chapter each day and the flow remains fresh in my mind. I think that by going back and reading my manuscript thus far, I can refresh myself with the story and that will make it easier to keep on track with things, as well as possibly spark some new plot lines (the necessity for an action packed book is still daunting me!). It will also give me a chance to get some early edits!

Today I prepared and sent out five query letters, and hope to get a couple more done before the day is through. I think once I have all those sent out, then focus on Inductance will come much more easily.

Query Week!

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Today marks the day I started sending out the first of the dreaded query letters to literary agencies! While rejection is to follow, I am sure, I am glad I have finally settled on a query letter format to go with for each individual email I send. I plan on querying 10 agencies this week, and perhaps 10 more next week. I have read conflicting views–some sites say to query around 10 at a time, while others say that 50 is better for the initial round. I am starting large and working my way down; for example, today I queried agents at Trident, Writer’s House, and Janklow & Nesbit. I also sent my synopsis and requested chapters to the agent from the LKG Agency who requested them at the conference.

The most time consuming part of querying–after you have your hook and mini-synopsis constructed–is researching the agents you’ve decided to query. It takes time to narrow down which agent in each agency will be right for you and find some little detail of evidence to support this which can be added to your query letter to give it a personal touch, but I am sure that showing you’ve done your homework makes your query stand out to the agent reading it.

Here is the query letter I finally settled on sending out (excluding the personalized opening paragraph); it is not perfect, but I think I could have done a million drafts and never felt fully confident!

Mara is a university student of genetic engineering who has just discovered a deadly DNA mutation in users of Meditrinum—a genetic enhancement drug used by the government, society’s elite, and Mara herself. Faced not only with her own impending death, but the potential destruction of society as a whole, Mara’s ultimate focus is to develop a cure for the mutation before time runs out.

 

However, things get more complicated when Mara meets Runey—a shrewdly personable design student with a hidden agenda. A member of an underground government resistance organization, Runey has been tasked with the mission to find out what Mara is working on through any means necessary—specifically, by making her fall in love with him.

Under increasingly threatening demands for results from the ruthless leader of his resistance group, Runey endeavors to reveal Mara’s secrets—while keeping a few of his own. Although Mara tries to remain focused on curing the impending mutation, she finds herself growing closer to Runey. Despite her internal struggle to keep her distance, Mara falls in love with Runey and tells him about the mutation—after this disclosure life is never the same for either one as both Mara and Runey realize the stakes are much higher than they ever expected and the distinction between right and wrong is not as clear as they once thought.

 CAPACITANCE is the first of a planned trilogy set in the dystopian future on a university—creating a setting which is a marriage of the unknown and the familiar. The manuscript is complete and full or partial submission is available upon request.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Elise M. Hardenburger

I googled “how to write a query letter” and found a lot of great examples; many of which were structured in short paragraphs such as above. I think this allows for points to be emphasized and clarified, allowing for a presentation with more impact. Hopefully, this is a correct assumption! Call me crazy, but I am looking forward to seeing how this all turns out–even a rejection imparts a lesson that I need to try a different tact. Stay tuned!

Conference Contemplations

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This past weekend was a big step in my career as a writer–I attended my first writers’ conference! It was the Henderson Writers’ Group conference in Las Vegas; the crowd was small (limited to 150 people), the classes offered were a mix of business and craft, and the faculty was interspersed with interesting individuals. It was a good first conference, in my now slightly more qualified opinion; since it was relatively small, it was not too overwhelming, yet it still offered the opportunity to make some influential connections with agents!

I will start with the pros of the conference. The first and foremost bonus is getting to pitch to agents. Yes, it’s scary, and intimidating–but do it! When I arrived at the conference I didn’t know that formal pitches were an option, but quickly found myself signed up to pitch to two agents and two small press editors. Did I panic slightly? Of course. But I simply reminded myself that I know my book and am confident in my book, and it went just fine. In fact, all of the agents and editors requested either partial or full manuscript after my pitch! I had a good experience, but that is not solely why I advise authors to take the plunge and pitch at conference–you should do it because chances are relatively limited for you to run into agents during breaks and such. Before I attended the conference, I had read the opposite advice which told me it’s better to try and casually run into agents and spark conversation. However, after having been to the conference, I have to say that is leaving a lot to chance. If there is a chance to get your name down for a (no matter how small) amount of time to talk to an agent or publisher about your book–do it!

The next pro for me was that I met a potentially great friend/colleague; we met at the breakfast section of the day, and ended up being in the same class sessions, so we got a lot of chances to get to know one another and talk about each others’ books. Now we plan to email regularly and exchange critiques and editing advice. This isn’t to say that I just met one person and stuck to only talking to them all day–I talked to a lot of different people, and that in itself was a pro. Meeting fellow writers is always interesting.

Now, the cons. First and foremost, I was already knowledgeable on most of the information presented in the classes. Most of this information is accessible on great websites such as AgentQuery and Writers Digest. Due to my extensive research on querying and agents after I finished my novel, I had stumbled across most of, if not all, the information presented in the class sessions (I stuck to mostly the business/querying type of presentations, so I can’t speak as much to the craft sessions). Thus, for me the conference was a learning event, but not in the sense of the structured classes.

The second con I will list is the inaccessibility of the agents that were present at the conference. The only time I saw an agent outside of the pitch session room was when they were teaching their classes. This made it difficult to interact with them (which was most likely by design, at least in the case of one particular agent!), so had I stuck to my original plan which was to organically strike up conversation, I would have been sorely disappointed. Like I said above, the pitch sessions saved my weekend from being disappointing!

Now that I have attended my first conference, I have been getting asked whether or not I will attend another one. The answer is “probably.” I think I will be more selective in the conferences that I attend; I want them to be a bit more high profile. Now that I know more about agencies and agents I may want to target, I can look out for conferences they may be attending. I will be looking to see what kind of pitch opportunities will be available. There are a couple high profile events that I will consider–namely, the New York Pitch Conference and the San Francisco Writers Conference. However, right now, I am switching gears and will be exclusively focusing on my first round of querying agents; I sent out my first materials requested email today to an agent who requested a synopsis and partial, so I am very excited about that (excited, but also fully prepared to wait for a response or simply never get one). Aside from querying, I will, of course be diving back into my work on Inductance; I think getting back in the flow of writing might be a little tricky after my mini-vacation, but I am excited to ebb back into the story!

Writers Conference Packing List

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This is a post that most likely will become a before and after comparison in two parts as I will probably need to post once I get back regarding what I forgot/should have brought. However, I noticed a couple followers mentioning they have not attended conferences, but might in the future, so I will give you a little cheat sheet summarizing my list things I plan to bring after extensively scouring the web for tips.

Of course I am bringing the obvious things: pen and paper, business cards, etc. I am also bringing three copies of my synopsis and one copy of my first ten pages. I don’t know if anyone will actually ask to see them, but I want to have them on hand–it’s better to be prepared. One other item that I stumbled upon yesterday was a One Page. A one page is just like it sounds–one page in which you state your name, bio, contact info, book title, word count, tag line, one paragraph synopsis, target audience, and series description (if applicable). I thought this was such a great idea that I immediately threw one together! I included a picture on mine, and used textboxes for blocking it out and including pops of color–best of all, I matched the fonts, color scheme and picture to my business cards for a professional, coordinated look. I plan on bringing ten copies of my one page with me to the conference as I think it will be the most distributed piece of information.

Finally, I am going to bring a copy of my manuscript. I read a lot of conflicting views on this choice, but what stood out to me was the advice to bring it along just in case. Being the type of person I am, I would simply rather lug around a 275 page manuscript all day than miss out on the opportunity to give it to an agent who might request it! My soon to be aching shoulder will probably argue me on the advisability of this decision, but I am sticking to it. On another note, I read a lot of disturbing advice saying not to stalk agents, sneak your manuscript into their bags, or corner and pitch to them in the bathroom. To me, I find this advice laughable as it is purely following the laws of common sense and courtesy…but I saw this similar admonishment on SEVERAL websites! I truly hope I don’t see any examples of that embarrassing behavior this weekend, and I can assure you all I don’t intend to be so aggressive with my manuscript. In fact, I fully expect it to stay in my purse and travel back home with me.

That’s what I will be carrying along with me in my (obviously gigantic!) purse this Saturday. As far as the outfit to coordinate with said purse…well, I haven’t gotten that far yet! Unfortunately this lack of wardrobe selection is troubling me more than my lack of pitch preparation. However, I am of the firm belief that my pitch will turn out a lot better if I am impeccably attired. With that being said, I am off to my closet to plan! I will be posting one more time tomorrow (if I am not too rushed), and then I am leaving for Las Vegas through the weekend! If anyone else is attending the Henderson Writers’ Group Las Vegas Writer’s Conference, please let me know–I would love to meet some of you!

The Business Side of Things

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It’s writers conference week!! I am not nearly as prepared as I should be, but (as I like to remind myself) it is only Tuesday, so I have plenty of time to prepare! I didn’t post here yesterday because I was out of the office for the day running errands; one of the stops I had to make was picking up my new author’s business cards. I had not even thought of the concept of having a card if you are an author, but I stumbled across the tip while reading up on preparing for a writer’s conference and was shocked I hadn’t thought of it earlier myself. I fully expect to meet lots of new people this Saturday and now they will have an easy way to remember me!

My good friend and graphic designer, Michaela, created the cards’ design for me and they are perfect! The only thing I stressed about was whether or not to include the titles of the next two novels in the trilogy since Capacitance is the only one finished as of now. Ultimately, I decided to include all the titles so I won’t have to go through reprints every time I finish another book. Besides my personal information, I included a photo of myself on one side of the card–I think this is a great way to make myself memorable because there will be a face matched to a name. I am terrible at names, and this is a fairly common problem, especially at a conference so the picture should assist those people who, like me, are not the best at committing names to memory!

I love them! What do you guys think?

I love them! What do you guys think?

Now it’s back to prepping–I really need to perfect my “hook sentence” and pitch! If anyone has any tips for attending a writers conference, I welcome your suggestions!

Optimism

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To continue the past couple day’s unintentionally alliterative title choices, today I am focusing on another “O” word: optimism. I will admit, this is not a concept I have been overwhelmed with this week–researching agents whose tone comes off as intimidating at best and reading blog posts of authors lost in a post-query depression makes optimism about the whole process a little hard to swallow.

However, maybe because it’s Friday and the living is a little easier with the weekend coming up, I am feeling the optimism today. I’m sure I will smirk derisively at this post in future moments, but for now I think after the rush of panic, dread and general anxiety of earlier this week I have finally come to terms with things. There are going to be rejections, there are going to be cold silences, but I also believe there will, one day, be acceptance. I am just starting out as a writer, and instead of bemoaning the dismissive attitudes of some agents or despairing that my work will never get published, I want to sit back and enjoy the ride! 2015 is a year of firsts for me–first novel finished, first writing conference coming up next week–and I want to enjoy that, and come into my own as an author.

Ultimately when–months down the road–I come back to this post, I don’t want to scoff at my naive, wide-eyed idealism, but instead be reminded of my confidence as a writer, and keep enjoying the journey.

Overthinking?

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Today was spent mainly becoming more and more panicked as I delved deeper and deeper into my research of the ten agents I have decided to query. It is hard not to get frustrated reading all these interviews and seeing agents speak about the biggest mistake authors make is querying too early. Perhaps I am falling prey to this, but to me, my manuscript feels ready–my query letter, maybe not so much, but it is getting there! I wonder if I am doing my homework too much on all these agents; reading so many of their interviews makes it seem like they go into a query with a pessimistic attitude. Maybe this is scaring me off unnecessarily. So now not only am I toeing the line between too hopeful and too pessimistic, but I am additionally straddling the balance of being over-prepared and under-prepared. As a first time novelist, there is a lot of risk no matter who I query–by default, I can’t list an impressive inventory of published works and accolades. Querying soon feels right, because currently I am very passionate about my novel–maybe it’s time to listen to my gut feelings a little more, and give the jumble in my head a bit of a rest.

One thing is for sure, I need to give querying and researching agents a rest–particularly because I am heading to the Henderson Writers’ Group Conference in Las Vegas next weekend, and I need to focus on prepping for that! I am very excited about the opportunity to meet fellow writers, and get a chance to see the human side of some of these agents that are giving me so much anxiety right now. If anyone out there is heading to the conference next weekend, let me know, I would love to meet some kindred spirits!

#Overwhelmed

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Today I finally narrowed down the list of agents I want to query, and now as I begin to do more research on each one specifically, I am finding myself getting more overwhelmed and a little nervous. Seeing agents’ who have the likes of “Gone Girl” or “The Fault in Our Stars” under their published client belts makes one’s head spin. I find myself wondering “Do I really know what I am doing here?” The lead-up to actually submitting my queries and waiting to hear agents’ response is arguably more tense than it will be after I have submitted my first round as I am second guessing my own capabilities. I am very confident in the quality and marketability of the book I have written, but how will I feel after that first inevitable rejection letter? Will I still believe in my abilities as an author?

Conversely, I also am nervous about the possibility of success–like stepping off of a roller coaster or drinking too much coffee too quickly, the possibility of success is a major head rush. Obviously this is a better kind of overwhelming sensation than the fear of rejection, but it is just as intense. It would be surreal to accomplish this lifelong dream at such a young age. One thought is clear in my mind through all the spinning emotions–it is paramount to toe a delicate balance between fear of getting rejected and over-confidence at being accepted and published. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I don’t want to cast aside all hopeful optimism either.

Maybe–scratch that, certainly–my writing won’t be for every agent, but that doesn’t mean I should lose confidence in it; at this point, with a polished manuscript, I need to remind myself that my job is relatively easy…just sit back and let the writing speak for itself.

First Draft Query Letter + A Glimpse at Capacitance

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Today I have spent a good chunk of time on AgentQuery.com, sifting through agents and slowly compiling a list of those agents I want to send my query letter to. I am going to narrow my list down to ten agents. It is a daunting task due to the extremely large volume of agents listed on the database site, and I am happy to have two definitively narrowed down after today! I have also been working on drafting my query letter, and I decided today to post the first two paragraphs of it–if any of my followers have any tips on this, please share as this is my first draft! Read ahead if you would like to see my first attempt at a query and also get a small preview of Capacitance!

Imagine a university very different from the ones in today’s society—a university where instead of doing keg stands and battling hangovers, students were engaged in top level, government sensitive projects or were members of secret high-stakes resistance organizations against those in power—enter the world of Capacitance where readers are introduced to Mara, a prodigy science student whose project in the field of genetic engineering is critically important to those in power; and Runey whose involvement in an underground resistance movement sends him on a mission to uncover the nature of Mara’s work, through whatever means necessary—even making her fall in love with him.

Capacitance, the first novel of a trilogy set in the dystopian future, is filled with themes of secrets, love and betrayal as it follows the stories of Mara—a stylish Science student whose intelligence has won her a place in the lavish life of society’s elite—and Runey—a shrewdly personable Design student whose dissatisfaction with society’s inequality led to his involvement in a government resistance organization. Their very different paths cross due to Runey’s mission, but the love that was supposed to be a farce, ignites between them in blazing reality. As Mara’s work unearths a problem which not only threatens the government, but also her life itself, Runey is also trying to uncover her secrets—while maintaining a few of his own. Throughout Capacitance, the characters tread a thin line between navigating the waters of young love and coming to terms with the sinister nature of the world they live in.

I am not entirely satisfied with this attempt, but I definitely like where it is going, and I am just relieved to have gotten the first draft hammered out–when I am dreading something I can drag my feet for ages before getting started, but when I finally do begin I always feel so much more optimistic! With that being said, I am off to write my next chapter of the next book in the trilogy, Inductance!