What I'm Up To

I realize that, since I'm trying to get actual readers for this blog (i.e., I'm conning all of my Facebook friends into following links I post on my Wall), I should probably explain just what I'm up to. Given that this blog is two years old anyway, and was sporadically updated in that time frame, some background should hopefully prove helpful.

In August 2008, I started work on what would eventually become my second completed novel, Seafear. It's a story about pirates, adventure, kidnapping, magic, overcoming your fears, with a little bit of sexual tension thrown in for good measure. It took me a little under a year to write, and I completed the manuscript in late June 2009. Seafear is about as long as the first Harry Potter book, for a reference.

After finishing the first draft of the novel, I spent about two months editing. I printed the whole thing out (and it was 370 pages with the font I used, so that took a while) and three-hole punched all the pages with my mother's help, and then set to rereading the thing. Only another writer can really understand how surreal it is to read a book you wrote, to see things you thought were crap when you wrote them down seven months ago fitting in with the overall arc of the narrative.

Editing was a slow process, and it's a continual process. I went line by line, taking notes on things I felt worked or didn't work, things that needed to be moved, reworded, deleted, emphasized. The notes I took varied from "change 'being carried' to 'carried'" to "no odd symbol. What was I going for?" to "Snide doesn't fit Captain Monday's character." The writer is never the best judge of his own work, so the fact that I'm not actively editing Seafear right now does not mean that it's complete.

Following the revision process, I sent a few copies out to friends to see what they thought about it. That alone was frightening. Here was something that nobody else had ever heard of, a whole world that existed only in my head, and now a few of my friends could sit down and tell me about the plot. To this day, I still think it's weird hearing one of my friends say any of the characters' names -- the characters may be real to me, but to say their names out loud sounds very foreign.

After the feedback, I made the decision to go ahead and try and get Seafear published. A lot of you have been asking things like, "What publishing house did you send your book to?" or "How much does it cost to get your book printed?" Publishing doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.

Going from finishing your book to seeing it on the shelves at a bookstore is a lengthy process that begins ultimately with a literary agent. A literary agent is sort of like a lawyer who negotiates your publishing contract. But they're more than that; a literary agent helps you edit your book, helps you usher your ideas from a few scraps of paper to a completed manuscript, and helps you find the best home for your book. But they don't just take up any project that passes under their nose; no, a literary agent must be wooed. To do this, the author (and prospective client) must undertake an excessively difficult task: the query letter.

A query letter is one part business letter, one part jacket copy, and a whole lot of agony. A lot of agents ask you to kindly summarize your book into a few sentences to hopefully entice them into wanting to read more. You also have to do some background research on the agent you're querying; a surefire way to get a rejection letter is to send your young adult thriller novel to an agent that only represents historical Christian romances. On top of all that, they ask for any relevant background information that could show why you're qualified to have written this book, or any publishing credentials you have.

Then, between the time span of a few minutes to several months, the agent will get back to you. (They receive a lot of email every day, on top of having to manage the clients they represent. It's understandable that it takes a while.) Sometimes it's a rejection letter, saying "Sorry, not for me, thanks" (the extent of one of the rejection letters I've sent), and sometimes they'll ask to see more. If they ask to see more, and they like what they see, they offer you representation, and then the hunt begins for an editor and a publisher.

So where am I in this whole process? Well, I've been sending query letters out for almost a year now, although not with any consistency. I sent a bunch out back in August 2009 and didn't get any positive response -- in fact, most of the agents I queried back then didn't even send me an email back. I rewrote my query letter and sent out a few more emails, and tend to only remember to query more agents once a month. All in all, I've sent out 23 query letters.

I've had two positive responses from agents who, after seeing my initial query letter, asked to see the full thing. Unfortunately (though both said they enjoyed Seafear), they chose to pass. As of now, I'm waiting a response from three different agents, one of whom I queried about five minutes before writing this blog post.

My letter is pretty solid; it's gotten me some positive response, which is more than a lot of unpublished writers can say. I don't have any background in publishing, or any previously published material. Generally these are short stories that have been published in literary magazines, but I think I'm categorically incapable of writing a short story. Instead, this is what I put in my letter where my credentials should be: "SEAFEAR is the kind of story I wanted to read when I was a younger teenager – it doesn’t revolve around the piddling troubles of Mary Sue and her vampire/werewolf/demon/wizard/custodian boyfriend, it revolves around adventure and intrigue." No the most professional bit, but it gets a bit of my personality out there.

Oh, and on top of trying to get Seafear published, yesterday I reached page 200 of its sequel. It has a real title, but for purposes of being coy and annoying, I'm calling it Seaquel. It's not even halfway done yet. So all in all, I've been keeping quite busy.