And Here we Go!

Well, my first couple of queries have been sent. That’s not a lot, but I figure it’s better to send one or two well-written query per week instead of spamming the same one to half the agents in North America.

And honestly, getting the first one ready was hard enough. Obviously, there’s the letter itself to write, but the agent in question also requested a synopsis, which turned out to be a serious pain to write. Condensing a 76,000 words novel into two interesting and fun-to-read pages, while still hitting all the important plot points, turned out be be a solid weekend’s work.

On the plus side, I can see how getting better at writing outlines and synopses will help me at writing in general. They’re awesome tools to locate plot holes and fix pacing issues. In fact, I’ve written two short outlines for future projects already, and I’m planning on writing a third one just to practice that skill a bit more before starting on my next book.

Really, I’ll do anything to keep from checking my email compulsively at this point.

Editing: Done!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days.

WOOHOO!

I’ve finished my third draft/second revision/neverending torment! Don’t get me wrong: doing that additional editing pass was absolutely worth it, but boy am I glad that’s done.

I’ve also ran the spellchecker (always worth it, even if it only caught a couple of mistypes) and formatted the manuscript to industry standards. All the actual text is as final as I can make it, although I probably need to think about the title some more.

The next step is *gasp* writing queries. I’ve put some work into that particular hellish task, enough to know that it won’t be easy. The factual/business part of the query letter will be easy enough (if there’s one thing you learn working in law, it’s how to write professional-looking letters), but I really need the in-voice description of the book to work, and so far my attempts have been of the not-worth-saving-the-file variety. Sigh. A good night’s sleep and a day off is what I need I think.

Still, I’d rather spend a day crafting a letter than doing Yet Another Revision. With that in mind, off to bed I go.