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One Writer's Journey Submission Process - Query Letters Article 2 There are a million and one recipes for the perfect query letter out there. You research and research and research some more. By the time you are ready to sit down and write the ‘perfect’ letter, you are no closer to knowing what the heck to write. At this point, you will probably throw your hands up in the air and say a loud, obnoxious, “Never mind!” No one seems to really know what the ‘perfect’ query letter looks like, at least not anyone I know. And I am, by no means, an expert on this process, so what I do is follow the SUBMISSION GUIDES very carefully. Another good thing to do is familiarize yourself with each publisher/editor you are querying. Be sure to know TO WHOM, specifically, you should address the query letter, i.e. the specific editor that handles your particular genre/non-fiction category. Be absolutely sure to proofread your query and by all means spell the editor’s name correctly! Do not include information in your query that has absolutely no business being there. An example of this would be if you are querying a murder mystery publisher they are not going to be interested in an article you once did for Dog Fancy Magazine. Only include accolades that make sense and are in the same league with the work you are plugging. You only get one chance and very limited time. Keep it tight, concise, and by all means knock the editor off his/her feet. You want to dazzle them with your style, story, and imagery. But you want to do this in as little wordage as possible. Sounds easy, right??? I find this process actually much harder than the actual writing of the novel and I think there are a lot of authors that agree. But the process cannot be avoided so buck up and make your pitch the very best it can be. If at first you don’t succeed…well then, try again and again and again… Don’t give up! Okay, so it took me another year and a half of editing, revision, and querying only to shelf Dancing on the Edge yet again. I’m hearing you, been there done that and I know you’re probably adding an emphatic “Practice what you preach, lady.” Posted by Sharon L Connors on Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 16:10 One Writer's Journey Quest for Publication Article 1 So you’ve finished your book. Well congratulations! Isn’t it a great feeling? You decided to sit down and write a novel, you persevered and you’ve completed it. That’s a lot more than most people can say they’ve accomplished. In fact, most people don’t sit down and write novels. If they do consider doing it and go as far as to start one, most likely they never finished. So yes! Quite an accomplishment, I’d say. Go ahead. Give yourself a nice pat on the back and a few moments to gloat. You deserve it. Guess what? That was probably the easiest part of the entire process, though I know you’ll beg to differ. A couple of years ago I would have disagreed too. Now I know better. Several years ago, I believe it might have been 2001, I signed up for a free six week creative writing course called F2K sponsored by a site called Writers Village University( http://writersvillage.com/) which I will now refer to as the WVU. I’d written earlier in my life and had taken extensive writing courses from creative writing to journalism in both grammar and high school though I hadn’t pursued the craft in many years. Anyway, I was ready to get back into writing for me. Point is one of the lessons was to describe a character through an interview type situation. I had done a characterization using a police detective dealing with the loss of her murdered partner and best friend who had been forced to talk to the department psychiatrist. That one scene set the ground work for my first novel Dancing on the Edge. The novel took me just about three years to complete! But I did it. And yes, if I’d worked on it consistently every day it probably would have been done in a lot less time though things come up in real life, as we can all attest, and story threads drop then become lost for a while then finally you sit back down and plunge on until the next life crisis or issue comes up. I put the manuscript away for awhile, several months I’d say, then brought it back out and began to read through it making corrections and revisions. Low and behold things came up and dust began to collect on the manuscript again. In the mean time, I worked on other writing projects but left Dancing on the Edge alone. Once in awhile I’d even feel guilty and berate myself. Why don’t you do something about that novel? You took three years of your life writing it and there it sits. I’d muse. Still I left it be. One day I sat down and began to play at writing query letters – this is another article in itself. I got motivated as I wrote the queries. At the time, I’d recently become a member of the ‘American Society of Authors and Writers’(http://amsaw.org/) and had access to hundreds of agents and publishers names and addresses, so I devised what I thought would be an adequate query letter and began querying with a new sense of purpose. I was excited. I would find and agent and/or a publisher and I’d be on my way! Ten letters sent out, four or five form rejections came back some quickly others not so quick. You know the type. ‘Thank you for your query but we aren’t taking on new clients at this time.’ Or how about ‘Thank you for your query but we don’t handle that genre.’ Well how about that? I know I read the submission requirements before I queried. Twenty letters out, almost as many back in---rejected. Some were actually very nice and polite but still rejections. I received one that had hand scribbled cryptic notes written on it and none of them gave any real critique or reason why they weren’t interested other than the ‘we are not taking on new clients at this time’. One even had several typos! I could wallpaper my office with them by now. Very, very discouraging, but I kept plugging along. My only recourse would be to revise my query. What else could it be, right? Has to be something wrong with it. Not catchy enough. Not interesting enough to hook the agent/publisher. So back to the drawing board I went. ****These articles will continue**** Posted by Sharon L Connors on Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 11:52 Long time coming... Whoa! time flies! Its been over a year, since my last entry. Well, much has happened and nothing has happened. Isn't that just like life? One moment it can be totally overwhelming, the next dull and uneventful. At the moment, I am involved in several projects in relation to my personal writing and the craft itself. As you may well know, I am and have been a staff editor at ePress-Online(http://www.epress-online.com/) for the last several years and I've been very busy editing many wonderful manuscripts. I urge you to check out their selection of ebooks and trade paperbacks as we have signed some extremely talented authors with suspenseful, fantastical, and historical tales to tell. Just click on the 'Buy ebooks' button on the home page of this website to peruse our selection. The other projects I am currently working on relate to my novels, Dancing on the Edge (completed) and The Curse of the Marimé(mar-i-mey) (work in progress) both of which you can sample right here on my website. Good news in regards to Dancing on the Edge. It is currently being prepped for publication! I have completed an editor suggested revision and forwarded the revised manuscript back to the editor. Once I receive the editor's thoughts on the revision, I will submit to the publisher. I will journal each step of the way here in hopes of helping others through the process, so please by all means visit me often. If you have any questions or comments feel free and email me. Just click on my name at the end of any post. I'd be glad to hear from you. Don't be shy. Writers help writers, its what we do besides write. The Curse of the Marimé first draft is just about complete. I project this manuscript to be ready for final draft revisions in the next thirty to sixty days. So, in essence, things have been moving right along in the last several months. Just a final thought before I go... Like a rose has thorns so life has its prickly situations, but the journey can be breathtaking. So enjoy! (SL Connors) See you all soon. Don't be a stranger! Posted by Sharon L Connors on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 23:25 Thoughts on canine communications... One of the premises of my work in progress, Curse of the Marimé, is telepathic communications with a wolf. Pita, the Protagonist, finds herself linked to a wolf that tells her secrets and protects her from things she does not yet understand. I truly believe communication is possible at some level with the animal world if we humans would just open our minds to it. In this particular area, my expertise would be of the canine variety of our furry, four-legged friends and companions. We’d always had dogs in my childhood years, sometimes more than one at a time. Since married, I have had two wonderfully communicative Shelties. Kazzy, my first little guy, unfortunately had gotten Lymph sarcoma and succumbed to it five years ago, and on the subject of communication, told us precisely when he’d had enough. They really do tell you when it’s time. Though my present Sheltie, Gypsy Lee, a female, speaks to us daily almost to an annoyance *grin* especially when it comes time for her 9 p.m. treat, a Mintie bone, she gets every night, it’s Kazzy I refer to in this short piece. As I said, canines speak to humans in so many ways. We are all too familiar with those soulful eyes gazing up at you when they want something or the titillating excited greeting we get when we come home even if we’ve only been gone ten minutes. How about the slap of a paw when they want you to get something for them or they just want your attention? These are all common communications. I wanted to share a very special moment I experienced with Kazzy. As I said, he got very ill and we had to…well…you know. It’s still difficult to speak of and the memory is tender as I held him in my arms when…well, let’s not go there. Anyway, we agreed to have him cremated and then we’d bring him home. Well, the procedure takes about a week to ten days. Okay, now you have the back-story, so to speak. Exactly ten days after Kazzy’s passing, I awoke to find Kazzy’s gentle dark eyes gazing at me, tongue lolling happily in a huge doggy grin. In my mind I heard, “don’t be sad, Mommy, I’m okay now.” I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourselves, “Ah…she just had a dream.” But that’s where I’d say you are wrong. A few hours later, I received a call from the Vet’s office telling me that Kazzy was ready to come home. I believe it was his way of telling me that he was coming home. To this day, there are moments when I feel the soft rub of fur against my leg or see a blur of sable fur out of the corner of my eye and Gypsy is sleeping somewhere in another part of the house or out in the yard. Kazzy is with us, of that I have no doubts. It comforts me because, to this day, the grief of his loss still pains us like a knife through our hearts. Posted by Sharon L Connors on Sunday, April 24, 2005 at 14:41 A Bump in the Muse Though the actual holiday had been quiet and the weather beautiful, I finally, got some down time and got my trusty little wireless WordPad, a nice cup of green tea and headed out on the patio for some nice quality writing time. The day was absolutely gorgeous. High wispy clouds drifted across and azure sky. The light breeze set the wind chimes at their delicate tinkling music. I sipped my tea in between tapping at the keyboard and gazed at the color-burst of yellow, purple, and white orchids in the arbor just off the patio. Perfect. The scent of fresh mowed grass wafted on the air. Tap...tap...tap...on and on for over an hour and a half. The sun began to infiltrate my little garden patio so I decided to call it quits and head into the coolness of the air-conditioned house. Finally, another chapter of Curse on its way to the 'Hall' posting board. I pushed 'escape' to save the file and the screen went blank. Okay… the sun was bright I thought maybe I just couldn't see it saving the document. After tapping and pushing buttons on the keyboard I figured, alright, I guess the batteries went dead. No problem...got more in the house and the manual says that the memory works up to two days without batteries. Well... I go into my office change the batteries, turn the thing on and ...nothing happens. Hmmm...I push the off button and try again. It pops on...okay. I hit F1 which would be my file for ’Curse’, empty. What do you mean it’s empty? I hiss at the WordPad. I press through the next five function keys. Nothing! Now I'm upset and my stomach is doing nervous flips. I go to the 'utilities' key and press the memory key ... Nothing! O files! I went out to the family-room and seeing the look on my face, my husband asked, "What happened?" That's when I cried. Everything was gone. He guided me back to the office and got the manual and we did everything I just did again..."just to be sure." He’d said. Same result. (I did, however, discover that perhaps the reason I'd lost everything when I changed the batteries may have been due to too many files and not enough memory to hold them, also the machine normally warns that the memory is full. It didn't, but I learned one valuable lesson. Once I transfer something I will delete the file. You best be assured I'll be looking for that memory signal for now on.) Okay...I told myself through fat tears. This is what you do. Write all the finer points of the chapter you just wrote, a sort of outline of events. Everything else I'd lost had already been transferred to the main computer already, so all I'd have to do is re-write this one chapter - it could have been worse. Yeah...right. Well...even so, I whined to myself, this is absolutely heartbreaking. I'll never write it exactly the same and I may miss some of the imagery I'd created or dialogue. *sigh* In a nutshell, that's just what I've done and I am working back through the chapter. I can only hope it is better than what I had written originally, but then, how would we know? 4/10/05 Update… Well, it’s a week since my Easter writing disaster. Being very busy with a multitude of writing and business projects it was very easy to avoid using the WordPad all week. I hadn’t had my muse prompting me with anything new to add to ‘Curse’ either so it wasn’t like I was avoiding the device. Well….maybe subconsciously, I may have avoided using it but not on purpose. Really! Anyway, if I was avoiding it, I could have just written directly onto my computer, right? Point is, the muse struck me on Friday and you guessed it. I whip out my trusty little WordPad. (I like using it because I can go anywhere with it and well…it’s very convenient) Bottom line is, I turn it on, name my new file, enter… Guess what message I get? You got it. ‘ Memory is full; to continue you must empty memory’. What? That figures. There’s nothing on it. Zippo! Nada! And now it tells me the memory is full. Great. Well…I went into the ‘utilities’ and did the only thing I could think of. I ‘initiated’ the unit like I’d done when I first got it. It worked. Go figure. At any rate as the cliché goes, “you learn something new everyday”. In this case, I’ve learned something new every week. The important thing is I’m right on track with ‘Curse’ barring any additional minor inconveniences disguised as disasters. *sigh* Posted by Sharon L Connors on Sunday, April 10, 2005 at 16:43 A Bit of Weirdness... For those of you who have sampled the first chapter of Curse of the Marimé, I'd like to share the bit of weirdness that inspired this story. The scene depicting the Gypsy-like woman who approaches Pita is taken from a true event. This actually happened to me. I’d stopped at a local grocery store after work one evening and was approached by an elderly woman dressed in vagabond clothing, as described in the story, who claimed to have important information for me. She handed me a business card and very adamantly advised that I should contact her as soon as possible. She told me there were things I needed to know. "I see things," she said to me, then went on her way, two young children following at her heels. I stood alone in the aisle feeling apprehensive. I kept thinking why, of all people, did she approach me? Is something bad going to happen to me or someone close to me? I wanted to dump the offensive little white card on a nearby shelf, but with a trembling hand, shoved it into the pocket of my jeans and continued about my business. Let me tell you, I was spooked. On the drive home, I ran the episode through my mind feeling increasingly more uncomfortable, like it was some sort of bad omen. The longer I thought about it, the more paranoid I became. I burst into the house anxious to relate the incident to my husband. He brushed it off and said it was just a scam. “The woman was just trying to drum up some business, playing on your emotions and curiosity,” he’d said. I wasn't convinced. I don't know what happened to the card; I never saw it again, but it took me quite some time to quell the apprehension I felt that something bad was going to happen. Fear is a funny thing. And you know, it could have been good news, but I guess its human nature to think the worst, at least my nature at times. *grin* I am truly not the type of person to go to a psychic, card reader, or have my tea leaves read, as I am afraid of what I'd be told. See? I told you. That's just me. At the very least, I'm honest. Yes, you're absolutely correct if you have figured out that Pita is more adventurous then I am. She went to see the psychic. She wanted to hear what the woman had to say. You won’t believe the adventure Pita wrought from that fateful day at the grocery store. Destiny...hmmm…another strange thing. Posted by Sharon L Connors on Sunday, March 27, 2005 at 01:04 Writers' Tip: Word Gardens Writing is much like tending my gardens. The same way I coax and nurture the orchids and roses, I manipulate my mind for that certain word or image to capture the reader’s attention. Like gardening, writing is a hobby of patience. You tend, till, and feed, control pests and weeds, infernally; then one day the payoff, a beautiful bloom. A perfect flower smiles its face at you the reward for all you laborious efforts. Writing for me follows the same tenuous pattern. I sit, pen poised above a blank sheet of paper, coaxing my busy mind for something, anything. More times than not, nothing comes. But, when the flood gates finally open, thoughts and images flow freely to paper and a story begins to build. My satisfaction is much like seeing that perfect flower. Like gardening, writing is a gratifying and purposeful activity that in the end is a welcome and cherished accomplishment. A creation that without you would never have come to be, much like a seed, had it not been sown into the soil, would never have matured to a beautiful flower. Do not be discouraged if you’ve nothing to put to paper. Get up. Go. Do something else you enjoy. Sit quietly as I do in my yard. Gaze around you, listen, feel your surroundings and I guarantee something will come to mind. That is precisely how this piece came about. The next time you sit down to empty that vivid imagination, the thoughts will run free. Be patient, be persistent, and never be discouraged. Tend to your mind and it will always be fruitful. Most of all, KEEP WRITING! Posted by Sharon L Connors on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at 01:31 Powered by Web Wiz Journal version 1.0 Copyright ©2001-2002 Web Wiz Guide