evolution of a query, part I

i can't speak for all authors, but for me, revisions are not "fun."
(wait, the title of this post is about queries. yeah, i'll get to that. stay with me.)

first drafting is fun. pure creation and freedom with no pressure for perfection.
revising is work. confined within a mold already created and with a LOT of pressure to perfect.

but as much as first-drafting gives me pleasure, it's revising that gives me pride.
revisions are hard work that pays off, because when they're done, you look back and think, "now that is good."
that first draft was fun, but it's an embarassment at this point. the revisions - the hard work - are what made that stinking pile of crap something to be proud of.

i started thinking about query letters and how they go through a similar evolution. the first drafts are fun to write, but they often need revising before they're good enough to present to an agent or publisher.

i thought it would be fun to share a couple of my own query letters, from the first stage to the last, to see how "ho-hum" turns into "hey now! that's not half bad."

today, i'm sharing the query for my trunked novel, LOSERS.
this is the first version of the query, which i shared online in a contest on fabulous-former-agent-with-five-million-blog-followers-who-shall-not-be-named's blog:

Today, a bully broke a kid’s nose against a urinal; a rebel wrote her high school hit list; a sci-fi dweeb got caught with porn in class; and a social pariah got humiliated in the girls’ locker room.
Tomorrow, they’ll all be in deep trouble with no one to turn to but each other.

LOSERS is a 50,000 word young adult novel about isolation, friendship and discovering who we are through the people we connect with. Trapper, Andi, Boston and Tuna are four teens with nothing in common, until they witness a police officer committing a crime. Scared for their lives and caught up in the excitement, they hit the road until they can figure out who they can turn to for help. The novel takes place over a 24 hour period, and by the end, they learn exactly who they can count on – each other.

I wrote this novel because, while I never experienced death or drugs or other untold horrors in YA novels these days, I DID experience the daily abuse that can define a teenager at the most vulnerable time in their lives. I wanted to tell a story that every young adult can relate to.

As a journalist, I write facts all day, every day. This is my first work of fiction.
I would love to send a partial or full manuscript of Losers for your consideration.

*cringe*
well, okay, it's not ALL bad. it's very long, it's vague on the storyline, and i got shredded in blog comments about that "i wrote this novel because..." paragraph. big no-no. but as far as rookie mistakes go, it wasn't the worst one i could make.

i ended up winning a query critique from fabu-agent, so i did a second draft to tighten things up, get more specific, and of course - i deleted that cringe-worthy paragraph.

this is the version i sent him:

Today, a bully broke a kid’s nose against a urinal; a rebel wrote her high school hit list; a sci-fi dweeb got caught with porn in class; and a social pariah got humiliated in the girls’ locker room.
Tomorrow, they’ll all be in deep trouble with no one to turn to but each other.

LOSERS is a 50,000 word young adult novel about isolation, friendship and discovering who we are through the people we connect with. Trapper, Andi, Boston and Tuna are four teens with nothing in common, until they witness a police officer committing a murder. Scared for their lives, they hit the road until they can figure out who to turn to for help.

A corrupt cop may be the catalyst that brings these teens together, but as they make their escape, they discover what they’re really running from are the inner demons that so many teens have to battle in high school. Some Losers just have more demons than others.

The novel takes place over a 24 hour period, and by the end, our Losers discover they may not be able to fight the law, but there are a few fights they can win.

As a journalist, I write facts all day, every day. This is my first work of fiction.
I would love to send a partial or full manuscript of Losers for your consideration.

honestly, it's still a little long, but at least all the words are now spent on the story and not wasted talking about things that don't matter to a potential agent.

and guess what? instead of a critique, i got a partial request! it was my first-ever agent request, and the manuscript wasn't even finished at that point.
i never did query that book, or i suspect the letter would have gone through even more changes.
but the experience did teach me revisions get results.

tomorrow, i'll share the evolution of the query that landed an agent!

write what you want to write

"I want to write a book about vampires, but all the agents say vampires are over."
"I want to write a contemporary YA, but all the 6-figure deals are for dystopian stories."
"I have this really great idea, but I just heard about a book with almost the exact same concept."

but.. but.. but NOTHING!

i see all of the above lines and many more from authors lamenting how the story they want to write, isn't what they should be writing, if they want to get published.
well, here is a huge, not-so-secret-but-hard-to-believe fact i have learned: the #1 way to get published is to write the best book you can.
and in my opinion, the best book you can write is the one you want to write, have to write - the one with the characters who keep you up at night. even if they ARE vampires.
that's the good news - freedom to write the story you want.
here's the bad news: you're right. it might not get published. this post is about why that's OKAY.

JM Tohline put together a great blog post today on the biggest mistakes writers make when querying agents. (when you're done here, go check it out. he got excellent input from tons of agents and compiled it all in one neat post for you.)

one of the agents JM quoted on his blog said something that really resonated with me:

Cameron McClure (of the Donald Maass Agency) added this: "Most writers query too soon – either before the book is really ready to be read by an industry professional, or with a book that is a learning book, or a starter book, where the writer is working through the themes that will come out in later books with more clarity, getting things out of their system,making mistakes that most beginners make, finding their voice."
the bold is mine. i wrote that book - that "starter" book - and it was everything McClure says. it was my training ground for the kind of themes i wanted to write about, for practicing plot and pace, for learning whether 1st or 3rd person worked better for me and above all, for finding my voice.

fortunately, i never made the mistake of querying that novel. during the year i spent pecking away at it, i also learned a lot about publishing. by the time i was done, i could see all the reasons it didn't work. so i recognized it for what it was - a book i had to write for me, and not for anyone else.

one of the first conversations i had with my agent was about this very thing - about the books you have to write versus the books you might actually want to sell. we were talking about my other WIPs/ideas, and i was asking what kind of stories she'd like to see... and she told me she would never discourage a client from writing anything, because there are stories in us that just have to be told - even if we only ever tell them to our laptops.

i guess it's impossible to know, when you start a new manuscript, whether it's one of the stories you'd be proud to put out in the world or one of the stories you need to learn something from. but i would argue: it's equally important, either way.

if i hadn't written LOSERS, i'm 100% certain i never would have been able to write BUTTER.
i have started taking lines and scenes from L and working them into new manuscripts. i basically stole one of the characters and made him the MC in BILLY D.
i will probably keep deconstructing L until there is nothing left but the concept, and then i might steal that too, and write the whole thing over again from scratch.
for all of these reasons, i know, without a doubt, that my time was not wasted on that first manuscript.

if you feel compelled to write something - write it. the story that never gets published may very well be the most important one you ever write.

move along

note to self:
if the writing's not moving, neither is the story.

my first completed manuscript took more than a year to write, largely because i would hit a patch of disinterest and walk away from it for a loooong time (one break lasted 3 months).

my next completed ms took less than three months, because i never got bored writing it. the story kept propelling itself forward, to the point where it was moving so fast i had to write every day, or i wouldn't be able to keep up.

guess which book is better?

i didn't really make the connection at first, but i think the parts where i walked away for awhile as a writer are the same parts where a reader would walk away forever. if you, as the writer, aren't interested enough in what happens next, you can bet most of your readers will lose interest too.
i mentioned in an earlier blog post that i deviated from the outline in my current WIP, because i needed some action for the characters. before this deviation, i found myself writing a couple hundred words then walking away for a day or two... because i was bored. but once i changed the direction, i sat down and BAM! - 1500 words in an hour.

it made me realize my writing pace matches the story pace.
i know a scene is working if i spend an hour or two writing in the morning and still can't turn off the words. i'll dictate the next paragraphs into a voice recorder on the way to work. if the words are still coming, then i'll email myself a couple more paragraphs from work during lunch. then i'll transcribe all of it into the manuscript that night and probably write another thousand words or so.

that doesn't mean it's always good writing or that the whole chapter won't get deleted later, but it does let me know the story is moving.

this might not be true for everyone, but if you hit a point in your book that has you wishing you were doing the dishes instead of writing, it's worth asking yourself what's happening in the story - the answer may be "nothing."

learn as you go

my dad (AKA the blogging police) pointed out i've been slacking here.

perhaps that's because i'm in a bit of a "path-to-publishing" lull. the agent search is over; the submission nail-biting has yet to begin. i just don't have a lot of insight to share during this brief limbo stage.

instead, i've been studying and learning. and by that - i mean writing.
i learn something new with every book, and i thought i'd share a few of those lessons here.

Sammy Vegas
the first real novel i ever attempted to write taught me:

• without an outline, my stories amble off course and never get finished.
• writing a book is time-consuming and requires some sacrifices to find that time.
• most important, it taught me: maybe i don't suck at this, and maybe i kind of love it... a lot.

Losers (Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah)
the first novel i ever finished taught me:

• a good hook/concept is nothing without a well-planned plot.
• third person with multiple MCs is not the right format for me.
• most important, it taught me: i can get to "The End," and even then the book might not be good enough... and that's actually okay, because i have this other idea...

Butter
the first novel i ever queried taught me:

• how to edit - really edit. cut scenes, re-order chapters, insert new story elements and completely rewrite multiple chapters from scratch... all after i thought i was "done."
• what kind of stories i want to write and what i really want to say.
• most important, it taught me: finishing a book is really just the beginning. and with any luck, this one's not done yet.

Billy D. & the Bully (working title)
the book i'm writing right now taught me:

• not every book gets written at the same pace; not every book is built via the same process (for me anyway).
• writing is the best distraction from all that "path-to-publishing" neurosis.
• most of all, it taught me: ....well, i don't know the "most of all" yet. i'll let ya know when i'm all done. ;)

one of the many things my agent and i talked about before signing was how every book you write is important. maybe it's not the book you query; maybe it's not the book that sells; but you had to write it for a reason. sometimes you just don't know what that reason is until you're done.

what about you? what have you learned from your own writing?

what else ya got?

if you are serious about writing, this is a question you will (hopefully) be asked over and over and over again.

in so many words, it was one of the first questions my agent asked me.
and it's a question you WANT to be asked... because if people don't like your writing, they won't be asking to see more.
you want agents, editors and especially readers to always being asking:
"what else ya got?"

in fact, if you're very lucky, you will get this question so fast and frequent you won't be able to keep up with the demand. (unless you are one of those freaky fast writers who churn out books in a matter of days. man, i hate admire you guys.)

it is possible you have just one great story to tell, one opus that will soar into literary history and make you a household name without ever writing another word. or perhaps you are in it for the money and are just talented and lucky enough to pull it off - that impossible 7-figure debut. if you achieve those goals and feel finished, then by all means retire and enjoy!

but if you're like me, you have way too many voices in your head to write just one. when i go on sub, if editors ask "what else ya got," and i have only empty hands to show them, i won't feel like i'm letting the editors down; i'll feel like i'm letting my characters down. each of them deserves a story. now, whether that story ends up in a trunk or on sub is a very different matter. i love Trapper, Andi, Boston and Tuna, but 'kids, get comfy. you're gonna be in that trunk for a looooong time.'

so now i'm hard at work telling the story of my two new favorite characters and hoping i do them justice... because there's a tiny bit of pressure in that question of what else you have cooking - this itty bitty, unspoken sub-question:
"and is it better?"

if you're learning and growing and pushing yourself as an author, the answer should probably always be, "yes, it's better." but when you're going from working on a revised, polished, finished manuscript to a new rough draft, it's kinda hard to see much that's better.

the point is to keep writing. work on one project at a time if you must (i certainly do), and work it until it's sparkling. you can even take a break afterward. but then push that diamond away (preferably in the direction of an agent or editor) and get back to digging through the dirt for the next rock you can polish into something precious. KEEP WRITING.