Preparation

It’s been almost a week since I got an email from an agent saying she was interested in see my book A Slice of Life Death. My jubilation has finally begun to wear off, and I have begun to prepare myself for the worst-case-scenario: a rejection. She told me to put sending out my query letters to other agents on hold for at least a month to give her enough time to read it and then come to a decision. At the time I thought a month would be no big deal. Now I’m wondering if I’ll be able to keep my sanity for that long! Just to give you a peek into my head right now it sounds something like this: “What if I wait all of this time just to get a rejection? Then all this time I spent waiting is wasted and I could be working on finding some other agent who wants my work.” “But then” another part of me says “if there is someone else would will want my book it doesn’t really matter when I send it, they will still be a interested in it now as they will be later.” “But what if I wait on a query and I catch them in the wrong mood? What if they need to see it now in order to like it?” “In that case I won’t ever know about it now will I?” “Exactly!!”
So, you see my problem? If you don’t, then just keep in mind that these inner conversations are ten times louder and faster than you can read them, and in the background there’s voice just screaming. Then there’s another voice that is telling the other voices to be quiet, and let me write!
Until I get the yes, or no from the agent, I’m going to do my best to distract myself with writing on my various other projects, getting a job, getting my driver’s license and cleaning the house. Let’s hope it’s enough.

Agent, First Contact!

As a new writer, I view agents as elusive creatures, and nearly impossible to please. Yes, I said “nearly” today, I finally intrigued somebody! An agent from Pippin Properties Inc, who wishes to see my A Slice of Life Death book no less! She asked if it were possible for me to hold off on sending queries to other agents for a month to give her time to receive the manuscript and read it before coming to a decision on whether or not she will want to be my agent. I am so excited! Finally a personal response! The last time an agent took the time to personally email me, it was to critique my query letter! I messaged her back saying I would gladly postpone sending out more queries as she requested, and was more than willing to send her the manuscript. I enquired in what form would be best to send the work, and I am presently waiting for a reply. This is so exciting! That is my entire report for the week; I figured that's more than enough suspense for one blog.

Weekly Report

Well, this week has been pretty good in my writing world. I got back into the swing of things despite my little break to go up to Sacramento. I tried to look up some agents who are known for dealing specifically with collections of short stories for the purpose of sending out query letters for my “A Slice of Life Death” and found that there really isn’t anyone like that out there, the collections that generally get published are by authors who have already been established in the writing world, in other words, my chances of my first published book being either one of my short story collections are slim to none. However, that is still good to know, even if it’s not good news.
This week I decided to enter a short story into the Orange County Fair, so I put my short story “Fairy Gardens” through a fine-toothed comb, and I am now satisfied that it is as perfect as it can possible be, and it’s all printed out, all nice and pretty and ready to go. For safeties sake, I’m going to be bringing it to The Coffee House Writer’s Group, and see if they have any helpful suggestions.
I’m still editing away at my novel “Survival” and have boosted up the number of chapters. I haven’t been adding information; I’ve just been splitting up the longer chapters up. The last time I blogged, for those of you out there who are keeping track (yea, I should be so lucky to have people that interested in my writing passion) I last said that I had about forty-one chapters, well, now I have forty-six. This might not sound like much of a change, but I’m happy. For some reason, even though I know nothing about the story has actually changed, just the bigger number makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. Call me silly. I know I am!

A Collection of Death Stories

I think I’m finally ready to write then send out some query letters for “A Slice of Life Death”. I’m usually nervous at this point in the process, but after receiving so many “no” and non-replies from other agencies on my other books that were, in my opinion, so much better than this book, that I can’t even work up the energy to get nervous. I’ve decided it’s just not worth it. That’s not to say, I’m not going to give writing my query my best shot or anything like that. I’m just not nervous anymore; I’m not giving up either, so that’s got to be a good thing, right?
If anybody knows any name for agent or publishing houses that publish collections of short stories, let me know with a comment on my blog and that’d be great! Thanks!

Reporting from the Writing Prison

After a day of Blogger not working on Thursday, which nearly drove me up the wall, I’m back to posting.  

  This week has been very eventful. I went and took my assessment test at my community college of choice and passed both the English and Reading test with flying colors, Math was unfortunately a different story, not that I was shocked, Math has never been my strong suit.

  I have edited and revised “A Slice of Life Death” and am getting ready to do it several more times before I start sending out queries to agents. The whole while I am continuing to edit “Survival”, which is taking longer due to its size, but I’m to chapter thirty-one of forty, so I’m almost there.

  It’s also the last week that I was told to wait for a reply from one agent, if they were interested they would contact me, and since they haven’t I am going to assume their answer was “no”. They were the last agent I was waiting on for my book “Samantha’s Animal Stories”.

  I think that gets you guys all up to date with what I’m doing. Till next week then.