Agent Courtney

Monday morning thought.

2012-02-27T10:08:00.002-08:00

“Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to

one thing till it gets there.”

-Josh Billings

More writing tips from elsewhere.

2012-01-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

Lots of good stuff here.

"Leave out the parts readers tend to skip," indeed.

Fun quiz

2012-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

Are you an introvert, an extrovert, or an ambivert?

Most writers, in my experience, tend to be introverts-- maybe it's easier to glue yourself to the keyboard (or the notepad and pen) if you enjoy alone time-- but one of the complexities of publishing in the modern era is how much publicity and promotion we ask authors to do in service of their book. It's part of the job, but I think it's hard for a lot of people. It would be for me!

What was your quiz result? I am "likely to be an introvert," which is the understatement of the century. What parts of the process are hardest for you?

Five tips for revising your novel.

2012-01-26T16:32:00.000-08:00

1. Write a synopsis of the novel-- the whole thing. There are two good ways to do this, for the purposes of this exercise: one is to reread the novel and jot down notes as you go about what needs to go in the synopsis. The other technique is essentially the opposite: write a synopsis of the novel without rereading. Is every chapter of the work present and accounted for? Does anything jump out at you, structurally or otherwise? How many walks at the beach/the woods/the streets of Manhattan does your main character take?

2. Read the novel aloud. The whole thing. You can find someone to read it to or just read it to yourself, but it really does need to be read out loud. I always find sentences I trip over by using this technique, which is a pretty sure sign that the phrasing in that bit could use some fine-tuning.

3. Similar to #1, but suitable for more "visual" people: create a storyboard. Does too much of the action take place in one location? Does the story jump around too much? How's the flow from one scene to another?

4. Make a list of all your characters' names. Most writers, if they've chosen character names they like, will unconsciously return to the same set of sounds (phoneme set? I never took linguistics, and don't know enough about the terminology to effectively look this up) over and over again. So you get novels that include characters named Jessica, Erica, Annika, Veronica, and Monica. Morgan, Aidan, Evan, Damien. If the names are too similar, it's hard for your readers to tell the characters apart. (Watch out for recurring first letters, too-- the "J" is especially common in my experience.) Time to do some renaming. On the plus side: if you decide to have a(nother) kid, you've got a starter list of possible baby names. So there you go.

5. Print out a hard copy and go through with a highlighter, marking all the dialogue tags. Are there too many? Not enough? How flowery do they get? If a writer uses dialogue tags like "exclaimed" too frequently, it tends to be a sign that they're not very confident that the emotion behind the character's statement is effectively communicated. If this sounds like you, and if you're right to be concerned, it's the dialogue itself that really needs work.

Eyes the color of the ocean.

2012-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

This morning, I got out of bed, washed my face, looked in the mirror and sighed. I haven’t had a hair cut in ages, and trying to do anything with my shoulder-length, dishwater-brown hair is hopeless.

I just put you to sleep, didn’t I?

It’s a boring way to start a blog post, but it’s a worse way to start a novel.

Much like New Year’s Day, a morning feels like a new, and natural, beginning; the perfect place to start. But unless you’ve got a very good reason for starting there—meaning the narrative absolutely must begin with the alarm clock—you’re more or less guaranteeing that your novel’s going to take too long to get going, and you’re going to lose the reader’s interest as a result.

I can think of a few exceptions to the “no mornings” rule:

-a story that takes place in the course of a single day (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day)

-a story in which hitting the snooze button or forgetting to set the alarm (or something else that happens in that very first early morning scene) sets off a chain of events that form the core of the story (the 90’s film Sliding Doors)

-a story that starts off being about the banality of the protagonist’s life (the film American Beauty) or the opposite of that (Kafka’s The Metamorphosis).

I’d love to brainstorm some more examples in the comments—I’m sure you’ve got some great ones!—but suffice to say that most of the manuscripts I see that start with this trope are not doing so successfully.

Likewise the character’s appearance. Unless an element of that appearance—a missing limb, perhaps-- is the single most defining characteristic of that person, why on earth should it be the first piece of information you give your reader?

Awful examples of this one abound—and could start their own Bulwer-Lytton style contest, if one doesn’t already exist. Maybe we’ll run a “bad character descriptions” contest (your own inventions, not ones you’ve found elsewhere) sometime soon.

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know that I’ve (as of a year or so ago) started taking on a lot of romance and women’s fiction clients. I mention this because it feels like romance, as a category, should be the easy exception to this: of COURSE it matters what the characters look like, because the whole point is that it’s a love story. Especially if you’re telling a “love at first sight” story, it may well feel like, yes, the heroine’s auburn hair IS the most important detail to lead off with.

I think you’re wrong.

I’m not saying you should never give your readers a physical description of your characters. I am saying that when you give us that description, you need to find a way to make it feel organic, like that moment in the story is the only possible moment at which to deliver that information. For romance, why not the moment when the hero/heroine first lay eyes on one another?

One last thing, a Tip for the Day, if you will, that a friend and colleague alerted me to. The modern world is full of resources for writers in the most unexpected places. When you’re writing your description of your titian-haired detective, and a phrase pops into your mind, start typing the phrase into a Google search bar. If Google “suggests” the description you had in mind, that’s a pretty good reason to come up with another one.

As you know, Bob.

2012-01-10T16:48:00.000-08:00

"As you know, Bob." Are you familiar with this phrase? We (agents and editors) use it a lot as a shorthand. It's a first cousin of a phrase that we're all taught beginning in elementary school: "show, don't tell."

One of many things novelists have to watch out for, when it comes to good ol' show don't tell, is not to drop in a big block of background information in one (or, heaven forbid, several) paragraph(s) of narration. You have to find more artful ways of giving your readers the information they need to follow the story. This is especially tough, as a number of you can attest, when you're writing in an "alternate world" situation like sci fi or fantasy, because there's so much worldbuilding that needs to happen. That's part of what we love about reading stories in those genres: the immersion in a world that's not our own. The staircases at Hogwarts move on their own.

But you as the writer put in a lot of time crafting the details of that world. You probably have a "story bible" that's longer than the manuscript itself, explaining all the nuances of how different the gravity is on the planet where your novel takes place. That's GREAT. As a reader and as an agent, I want you to know all of those things about your work. But what I don't want is for those details to get in the way of the actual story. I don't want the plot to grind to a halt while you detail the etymology of a word you made up. If I really have to know that in order to "get it," you as the author have to find another way to explain it to me.

(Likewise historical fiction: you've done an incredible amount of research to make sure your novel is as historically accurate as possible. It's easy to want to "get credit" for all that time in the library by shoehorning one too many facts into the novel. The story suffers.)

"I know," you're thinking. "I'll put it into dialogue. That way it doesn't count as a big block of exposition, and I've escaped the 'show don't tell' pitfall."

Well, maybe. There are at least two things you have to watch out for, in the exposition-as-dialogue scenario.

First of all, and this is kind of obvious, but based on some of the submissions I get, it's worth mentioning: you can't put quotation marks around a paragraph of exposition and call it dialogue.

Secondly, if you're going to put these details into a dialogue format, it has to actually work as dialogue-- meaning it has to consist of things that one character in the novel would actually say to another. This needs to sound like a real conversation. You can't have Character A feeding all the information to Character B, when Character B's part of the conversation reads like this: "Oh. Mmm hmm. What do you mean? Can you say more about that?"

And now we come to "As you know, Bob." This term refers to a specific subset of dialogue-as-exposition, where both characters already know all the information being explained to the reader. "As you know, Bob," points to a conversation that's really obviously fake: if Bob already knows everything Jane is about to tell him, why would Jane bother explaining it?

Does your manuscript bear signs of "As you know, Bob?" What techniques do you have for ferreting out those moments in your work? Do you have any pointers for providing those crucial world-building details in a more subtle and non-plot-derailing way?

A must-read.

2012-01-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this, I'm guessing this link is going to prove useful.

Which one is your biggest bugaboo? I've narrowed it down to two, myself: 20 and 22.

Go read the post. Then come back and tell me a story, and tell me what you're going to do differently.

happy new year

2012-01-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Little Gidding)

I'm not dead yet

2011-11-30T17:01:00.001-08:00

...just swamped with client-related work, unusually so for the post-Thanksgiving "lull."

But here's your chance to tell me all about your NaNoWriMo experience: did you win? (Let's talk soon about "winning" NaNoWriMo and why I have mixed feelings about it -- remind me.)

What was your word count?

Did you meet your personal goals?

Are you pleased with the outcome and/or the work in progress?

When will you start revisions?

What advice would you share with a would-be NaNo-er, based on your experience?

Tell me, tell me.

NaNoWriMo: The joys of measurable goals

2011-11-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm on Day Four of Crazy Week and, I have to say, pretty delighted with my progress. (If you've queried me recently, sorry to say that's been the bottom of the priority list lately, but the inbox is getting some attention this afternoon.)

I posted, half-jokingly, on Twitter yesterday that I just bought a book called LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR TIME, but wasn't sure when I'd get to read it. I love books like that (shameless plug here for my client Erin Rooney Doland's UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE IN ONE WEEK), where it feels like a book can provide all the answers to your needs.

But I can't be the only one who sometimes confuses buying the book with reading the book, can I? As if the book's purchase would osmotically impart all of the book's wisdom to me. Sigh.

One major thing (of many!) that I have in common with anyone who strives to make money from their writing is that I have to figure out how to organize my time. There's nobody to tell me what my priorities should be, though there are quite a few people who would like a say in the matter, and I am the only person who gets to decide what goes on the day's to-do list. All my deadlines and all my work projects are more or less self-imposed.

That's scary sometimes, and there are certainly days--weeks--when I have to dig deep to find my motivation.

My mom would tell you that I've always worked best under pressure, which might help to explain why despite the stress, I'm having a really good week as I crank through as many list items as I can. Deadlines, even when they're pretty arbitrary and of my own making, are really, really good for my productivity.

I think the connections to NaNoWriMo here are pretty obvious: nobody makes you sign up, and nobody makes you produce the word count. You've all done this to yourselves. But signing up for something like NaNoWriMo is a way of publicly stating that what you're doing is important to you, and worthy of the time and attention it demands.

If you can't make time to write, you can't write anything.

Here's a post from the amazing Neil Gaiman giving his NaNoWriMo pep talk; it's well worth the read.

Check in in the comments and let us all know how you're doing (and what your word count is)!

NaNoWriMo: What are you so afraid of?

2011-11-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick prompt for anyone who needs a NaNoWriMo (or other) boost:

What's the one thing your protagonist most fears?

Make that fear come true.

What happens next?

NaNoWriMo: Almost the halfway point.

2011-11-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

November's a busy month around these parts, too-- I try to get as many things wrapped up before Thanksgiving as I can, so this last full week before the holidays is a mad rush of sending out submissions, wrapping up contract negotiations, and general desk-clearing.

It's tough to get a lot of people's attention between Thanksgiving and New Year's. There's a lot going on outside of work, and even though publishing doesn't party at the holidays like it used to--a friend of mine tells stories of champagne fountains ("tell me again about the rabbits, George!") at a publisher's holiday party-- it's still challenging, at most publishers, to get enough people in a room to make a decision about whether to acquire a manuscript. This presents the risk, from my perspective, of an editor's enthusiasm for a project cooling off before the bosses have had a chance to weigh in. So, with some carefully-thought-out exceptions, the tenor of my job changes quite a bit at that time of year.

But if things feel hectic for me, I can only imagine how the NaNo participants among you must be feeling, staring down the barrel of that 50,000 word count, with a little over two weeks to go. (Okay, that was mean. Sorry.)

If you're proceeding "chronologically" through your manuscript (writing page 1, then page 2), as a client and I were talking about this morning, then you should be near the novel's half-way point. Given the pacing of NaNoWriMo, it's not a great idea to do much editing as you're cranking out the pages, but if you can avoid switching your "inner editor" all the way on, you might give some thought to the pacing in this part of your story.

I wrote, briefly, in my first NaNo post about what I and a lot of others call the "flabby middle," that plague of writers everywhere, the primary symptom being that the story runs aground for some chunk of time. Imagine an Agatha Christie novel in which Miss Marple stops searching for clues for a little while, and instead describes her current knitting project for ten or twenty or thirty pages. (I might actually like that, but I am a knitter, and I have eclectic taste.) The knitting part might be pretty interesting, and it might be beautifully written, and it might be true to the character, but if it's not moving the story forward in a meaningful way, it should be frogged.

Here's a suggested first-draft technique for avoiding the flabby middle: write a one-sentence summary of each of your chapters. Simple as you can. Doesn't matter if it would read as very cryptic to someone else. If you get to a chapter description that reads like "Character goes away and thinks about what just happened for a while," then that's probably going to read like a flabby middle, unless that character makes substantial progress of some sort during the scene, and unless there's no other (more active!) way for that progress to take place.

Do you have any techniques for avoiding the "flabby middle?" Got any battle-of-the-bulge horror stories? And what's your word count?

NaNoWriMo: useful links

2011-11-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

Day Two!

I'm hoping you're not actively procrastinating on your NaNoWriMo project just yet, but if the excitement's starting to wear off and the panic's starting to set in, here are some useful links to take a look at. There is a TON of great advice out there; here are a few of my favorite pieces.

Terrible Minds on NaNoWriMo do's and don'ts

The Struggling Writer on advice from two years of NaNoWriMo "wins"

Galleycat is publishing a tip a day for the month of November

Shameless client promotion: Vicky Alvear Shecter on making NaNoWriMo work for you

Nathan Bransford did a NaNoWriMo boot camp last year, with more to come

I'll share more in a week or so, if these are helpful, but here's my big piece of advice: turn off the Internet. Get off Twitter. Install a browser add-on like LeechBlock if you have to. Limit your distractions so you can focus on what you really want to get done: 50,000 words of a novel.

But once you've met your word count goal for the day, come back here and tell me in the comments section what that word count is.

NaNoWriMo: It Begins!

2011-11-01T09:06:00.001-07:00

Today's the day! How's everyone doing so far?

Post your word counts in the comment section!

NaNoWriMo: How do you get started?

2011-10-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's the day: the official start of NaNoWriMo 2011. All over the country (really, the world!), writers are sharpening their pencils... or charging their laptops, hoping to start tomorrow with a bang.

NaNoWriMo, as you no doubt already know, has all kinds of "rules" about how far into a work you can be before it's "cheating" to use it as your NaNoWriMo project. Fair enough. The idea is not to end the month of November with something super-polished (ha, ha), but to get some words-- a LOT of words!-- on the page.

The official NaNoWriMo organization website says that the only things you're allowed to have done before beginning your novel on November 1 are outlines, character sketches, and research. All well and good.

But here's the thing: I know a lot of you don't work from outlines, maybe CAN'T work from outlines. I know because I've seen the look on your face when I ask you to write an outline or a synopsis. Even when you've already written the manuscript, outlining the plot feels incredibly daunting and unpleasant.

I had the privilege of attending a terrific breakfast panel at the RWA Nationals convention in New York back in late June. The speakers were Steve Berry, Diana Gabaldon, and Tess Gerritsen: incredibly successful, incredibly prolific writers all. And guess what: none of them really write from outlines. Diana Gabaldon, I seem to recall, doesn't use them at all. (She is just as funny as you think she's going to be, by the way.) Tess Gerritsen, who seems extremely organized and "together," doesn't use them either. She wrote an interesting post about her process here, if you want to take a look. But it was Steve Berry's remarks about using outlines that really stuck with me: he said he's used outlines in the past, and it's an effective way of making sure you've got your structure in place from the first draft, but it really sucks all the joy out of the writing. Working on the book became a task to be dreaded, rather than something to look forward to.

This is the opposite of the way I'd always figured I would try to write a novel myself (which might serve in part to explain why I've never actually "gotten around to" it)-- but for all three writers, surprising themselves with what comes next is an important part of the writing process.

Maybe this all comes down to a question of what you're more scared of: a creativity-squelching outline or the ominous and terrifying blank page.

But basically, either way you go about putting your manuscript together, you have my blessing.

Here's a little pre-NaNo reading for you, though, so (regardless of your stance on outlining) you can be mindful of some key points in creating a successful and satisfying novel. I expect you're already familiar with Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine Books; here's a talk she wrote a few years ago called "A Few Things Writers Can Learn from Harry Potter."

NaNoWriMo: Getting Started

2011-10-27T15:51:00.000-07:00

The response on the last post was pretty overwhelming-- yay!-- it sounds like a TON of people are gearing up for NaNoWriMo this year.

So let's do this! From now until the end of November, I'll theme my posts here around NaNoWriMo. I'd love to hear from newbies and from past NaNo participants alike: what sorts of information would you like to see here? Basic cheerleading, writing prompts, stories of NaNo successes, useful links? Funny, unrelated YouTube videos?

I'll be back here soon with lots of good NaNo stuff-- but in the meantime, have you completed your official sign-up yet?

NaNoWriMo: a quick survey

2011-10-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

According to the countdown clock on the official website, the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is only five days away!

I've written about NaNoWriMo before, here, but I'm curious: how many of you reading this plan to participate this year?

Let's do a quick survey in comments. Here's the rundown on what I'd like to know:

1) Are you planning to do NaNoWriMo this year?

2) Have you done NaNoWriMo before? If yes, how many times?

3) What genre would you say best fits your planned NaNoWriMo project?

Provided we've got a good number of people participating, I'm thinking of "theming" the November posts on the blog. I'll do a combination of my own advice and a lot of helpful links from around the internet.

I'm going to spend this NaNoWriMo on the sidelines (alas), but would love to cheer the rest of you on in the process!

Bio Critique #3: Jo Eberhardt

2011-10-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

My apologies to all for disappearing! I’ve just gotten back from a week of traveling on business—and I was swamped for several days before that with trip-related details. I hate it when bloggers go on about the “guys, I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” but I felt I owed a bit of explanation for leaving our third contest winner, Jo Eberhardt, waiting on her bio critique for so long!

Without further ado, let’s jump in. Here’s Jo’s original bio paragraph:

I live on the outskirts of Brisbane, Australia with my husband and two young sons. My greatest ambition as a child was to grow up to be the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Sadly, by the time I was ten, the whole neighbourhood knew I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. So I took my love of entertaining and inspiring people, and turned to storytelling instead. Earlier this year I had a story shortlisted for the Stringybark Speculative Fiction Award and subsequently published in the anthology A Visit From the Duchess. Over the last two months, I've won two of Chuck Wendig's weekly Flash Fiction competitions, as well as this competition on your blog. I'm a member of the local Writer's Group, am an Emily contest judge for the West Houston RWA in the Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal category, and blog about life, the universe and everything at http://thehappylogophile.wordpress.com.

Overall, Jo, I really like this one—the “I’ve always wanted to be a writer” bit is kind of clichéd, but you’ve nicely turned it on its head a bit with the joke about wanting to be the singer in a heavy metal band (especially because it’s often unclear whether a metal singer can, in fact, sing!).

Generally speaking, you’re covering all my usual points here: where you live, your professional (writing) credits, your professional (writing) affiliations, a link to your blog, and a funny detail that gives me a stronger sense of your voice… and proof that there’s a real person behind the sometimes-dry details. This is a solid start.

Now, then, where to improve?

When I get a bio like yours, I often find myself doing a lot of googling to learn more about the credits the writer lists. It pains me a little bit to admit this so publicly, but I am definitely guilty of assuming that if a credit doesn’t have an Internet presence (no Google hits whatsoever), I, um, assume it’s fictional.

However, that’s not the case with yours! Here are links to Jo’s credits, for anyone who is less…what’s the word? DILIGENT, I’m sure that’s what you were thinking, right?, than I am.

http://www.stringybarkstories.net/The_Stringybark_Short_Story_Award/Stringybark_Speculative_Fiction_Award_2011.html

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/77531 (the anthology, on Smashwords)

http://terribleminds.com/ramble (Chuck Wendig’s blog-- I leave it up to you whether to point the link to a specific post announcing your contest wins.)

To sum up this point, which has gotten a little ramble-y, if you were querying me and included the links in parentheses after the description in your bio paragraph, I'd be grateful, and your chances of my giving your sample pages a thorough and careful read would go up.

The “life, the universe, and everything” moment: My geek cred is often called into question, with good reason, but I can certainly recognize this as an homage to Douglas Adams. Given your involvement with FF&P RWA, even without any details about the project about which you are querying, I’m guessing that any agents and editors reading your query are also supposed to “get” the reference here.

I have some concerns, though, about leaving this phrase in. It’s cute and it’s clever, but it also means that you’re encouraging any and all readers of the query to directly compare your work to that of Douglas Adams, who has more or less achieved nerd sainthood at this point, I’m pretty sure. The publishing industry’s full of direct comparisons to other people’s work, but we usually phrase it as “This Famous Book meets That Other Famous Book” or “will appeal to fans of This Famous Book and The Other Famous Book,” so that you’re never inviting a situation where you’re asking someone to decide whether your work is better or worse than the work to which you’re comparing it.

Your work may well be as good as Douglas Adams’s—and far be it from me to say otherwise!—but it should be the work itself which encourages this comparison, not the query letter. Yours is a very mild version of this phenomenon, but I can’t tell you how many query letters I’ve seen which asserted that the novel in question was better than Harry Potter, Twilight, or The Da Vinci Code. Seriously. I’m not paraphrasing here.

My best advice on how to fix? Swap out “life, the universe, and everything” for a line elsewhere in the query that says “my novel TITLE will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and [this is my geek cred failing me again, because I cannot think of another example of humorous SF that’s not Doctor Who, which just seems like too obvious of a reference].”

Otherwise, if the novel is half as good as the bio paragraph, I think you’re in very good shape here.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks again for playing along with the contest!

I’m open to ideas for a new contest—should we do another writing contest (in these waning days before NaNoWriMo begins)? A randomly selected winner from comments? What should the prize be?

Bio Critique #2: Christi Corbett

2011-10-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted today to offer my critique of the bio of our second contest winner, Christi Corbett.

Christi actually sent me two pieces: the bio paragraph that appears in her current query letter, in which she seeks to emphasize her "business and marketing" side:

I spent three years as the head writer for a weekly television show and have written over three hundred broadcast television commercials. My connections in the television industry will be helpful in publicity and marketing efforts for my work: I currently have interview agreements with thirteen television stations and thirty-two radio stations with a total combined audience reach of over five million.

And here's the bio she wrote for her blog:

From a young age, writing was an integral part of Christi Corbett’s life. It was a skill she further developed during her career as a television writer. Now, Christi continues to broaden her writing horizons with the completion of Along the Way Home, a historical fiction about the Oregon Trail.

After graduating from Western Washington University with a degree in Communications, Christi took a job with a CBS affiliate in the Creative Services Department. Over the years her lifelong love of writing was put to good use; in addition to writing over three hundred television commercials, she earned the position as head writer for a weekly television show. Furthermore, she was responsible for writing over one hundred press releases detailing the station’s various special events, community programs, and news department awards.

During her time with the television station, Christi was awarded with multiple American Advertising Awards (ADDY) and recognized by the March of Dimes with an award for providing “Outstanding Communications Support”.

Sharing the power of television has always been important to Christi, both professionally and personally. Through television station partnerships, Christi repeatedly managed advertising and publicity for large scale events with agencies such as The Salvation Army, the United Way, the American Cancer Society, and the March of Dimes.

Nowadays, Christi looks forward to putting her experience in public speaking and marketing to use during the promotion process of her novel,Along the Way Home.

Christi is a member of Willamette Writers, and also participates in a critique group.

Currently, Christi lives in a small town in Oregon with her husband, and twin children. The location of the home holds a special place in Christi’s writing life; it stands just 600 feet from the original Applegate Trail and the view from her back door is a hill travelers looked upon years ago as they explored the Oregon Territory and beyond.

This is a lot to take in, so let me say first of all, Christi, that I think you're right: the first one is too dry and the second one is too wordy.

Since you've given me so much to work with, and since I went into such detail about my "rules for bio paragraphs" in the previous post, I'm going to try a judicious cut-and-past effort here, to give you a sense of where I'd go with this.

I spent three years as the head writer for a weekly television show [CMC: name the show and the network! Local or national, this is a nice credit to have.] and have written over three hundred broadcast television commercials, for which I received multiple American Advertising Awards (ADDYs) and was recognized by the March of Dimes with an award for providing “Outstanding Communications Support.” I’m an accomplished public speaker, and my connections in the television industry will be helpful in publicity and marketing efforts for my work. I’m a member of Willamette Writers and a critique group, and I live with my husband and our twins in a small town in Oregon, in a house just 600 feet from the original Applegate Trail.

This final detail is a nice touch, don't you think? I love knowing about people's personal connection to their writing (Christi's novel is a historical about the Oregon Trail).

Christi, because you've already got a lot of other information in your bio paragraph (at least as rewritten by me), you can probably safely leave out the blog and Twitter-type info-- but make sure it's in your contact information at the end of your letter.

But to make some more general, sweeping comments about hypothetical situations:

Shoshanna (hi, Shoshanna!) asked in comments what I would consider a "good number" for Twitter follower purposes. I've been thinking about this a lot, because I hadn't tried to put an actual numerical figure on what I meant by that. But here are some of my theories:

-A thousand Twitter followers is a lot for someone who's never published before, or has "only" self-published, or published with smaller houses where they've never been assigned a publicist. I assume that with 1,000 Twitter followers, you've proven that you've got an interesting voice online, and that you "get" this particular social media venue.

-A LOT of bestselling genre fiction authors have between three and five thousand followers. If you're tweeting to an audience of this size, and a decent percentage (please don't make me define "decent percentage!") of your followers will buy your book, you are in great, great shape.

-If you have 10,000 Twitter followers or more, chances are you are a household name at least in certain spheres.

-The most Twitter-popular author I could find in my ~ ten minutes' searching was Neil Gaiman, with well over a million followers. Margaret Atwood has about 260,000. Joe Hill has about 120,000. Jodi Picoult has about 38,000.

Regarding your blog, if your blog is important or fairly well-known in one of the following situations, be sure to mention it in your bio:

1) you are a book blogger, who regularly writes book reviews or discussions about the publishing industry on your blog. You know you fall into this category if publishers contact you offering to send you books (via NetGalley or otherwise), or if your posts get picked up in industry link-roundups from time to time.

2) your blog has become an authority on a topic that's related to the book you're querying on.

Note: this is true even if you don't have academic credentials in the topic. If other people have come to consider you an authority on the topic because of your website, that is itself a kind of credential. If you're writing Jane Austen sequels and you're a webmistress on the Republic of Pemberley, for example, that detail is going to help sell your book. So mention it!

One more bio critique to go. Any questions or thoughts? Leave 'em in the comments!

Bio Critique #1: Ms. Snip

2011-10-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

image (c) Kevin Connors. url: http://mrg.bz/xzy4w6

I'm experimenting with using images more frequently in my blog posts-- okay, ever. I'd love your feedback. Do you like blog posts to have a picture, always, or do you care? Is it worth the few extra minutes on my part?

Today, I'm delighted to say, we begin our three-part series of bio paragraph critiques, from the winners of last week's writing prompt contest. I'm going in the order in which I received these, so first up is Ms. Snip.

I've edited out some of the personal information, mostly for privacy reasons, but I hope it's still legible enough to be useful to everyone.

Without further ado.

[TITLE] is a 77,000-word YA Paranormal set in [Really evocative town name], Ohio and my debut novel. A native Ohioan, I grew up not far from [Really evocative town name] and the setting is largely based on my childhood hometown. I started out writing Appalachian ghost stories in high school, and was the editor of the school's literary journal. I now live in [City], Texas, where I work for a small, private university as a Residence Hall Director. I am a member of several critique groups and online writing communites, such as the [professional writers' group, details relevant to the novel but not to my critique].

Courtney's critique: You're doing a lot of things right here. I like that you open the "bio paragraph" with the novel's specs, rather than jumping right into the personal details. Based on the rest of your query (which I haven't included here, obviously), it's clear that you've got the genre right-- a plus. The length is also appropriate for the category.

From there, you launch into your personal connection to the story (good), a bit about your writing history (mostly good-- on which more below), and a bit about your non-writerly life (which I always like to see).

My main concern about this as a bio is that it's a little bit bland, and given the way you've structured the rest of the query letter (this is basically the final paragraph), that's not really the impression you want to leave me with.

Caveat: most of what I'm about to say applies only to novels.

I think there are as many "right" ways to write a query letter as there are agents to read them (we are a rather, ahem, opinionated bunch), but when I'm reading a query from a would-be client, I want the query letter to convince me of several things:

1. This is a book I want to read.

2. This is a book I'd like to sell.

3. This is an author who's got a great career ahead of her.

4. This is a person I'll enjoy getting to know.

I think you can tell from my list that the bio paragraph carries a lot of weight. So let's concentrate, for now, on #3 and #4, as they specifically apply to your bio paragraph.

#3 is covered mostly by your professional (writing) credentials: those critique groups and that online professional writer's group. These are good, but you can go further. Even if you're really, really new to blogging and Twitter and Google + and all those other ways of avoiding your WIP, mention that you do them in your query. I'm still a total n00b at all that stuff, but it's clear to me that if I kept at it diligently for a year (about the period of time it's likely to take a publisher to publish your book), I could raise my platform considerably, particularly on Twitter. So don't worry about your blog's clout or your number of Twitter followers or any of that stuff (unless it's good news, in which case YES MENTION IT).

You're not telling me that you blog or tweet in order to brag; you're telling me that because it's a shorthand for "I understand that I, as a 21st-century writer, will be expected to participate heavily in my publisher's marketing and publicity plans. I intend to be a Team Player in this regard, and I'm doing what I can to educate myself about social media marketing even before a contract is signed."

So that's #3. We know you have a blog, or you wouldn't have been able to participate in the writing prompt contest-- so go ahead and mention it even if you generally only post pictures of your cats. Because we all know how the internet feels about pictures of cats.

On, then, to #4. This is where I would put the detail about your adolescent interest in Appalachian ghost stories. (Can we talk sometime about how messed-up it is that "adolescent" is a derogatory term in American English? Because it is, it's messed up. I of course don't mean it in a derogatory sense here.) Ms. Snip, I think you've successfully walked a fine line here, offering evidence that you've been interested in writing (and in the paranormal) for a long time, without making the mistake I once saw in a real query, where the author told me he/she was 29 years old and had been writing for 24 years. Um...

I haven't read the manuscript, obviously, but one way I would tweak this is to say something like "Parts of the novel stem from a lifelong interest in Appalachian ghost stories, which I've been playing with in my writing since my days as editor of the high school literary magazine." (I ran the lit mag too! Nerd girl high five.) This statement, if accurate, is the kind of thing that would show up in professional reviews of your novel (Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal), and interviews with you after the book is published. It also hints at a body of source material that you can draw on for your future books (aha! we're back to number 3!).

I'd also try to work in one more detail about yourself. I can't tell you what this should be, because of course I don't really know you yet-- but if this were my query letter, I'd be trying to recapture the quirky, humorous tone you've used in the plot summary paragraphs of the query. (Which I haven't included here. Sorry, everybody.) You don't need big achievements or crazy hobbies, either. Something that ties it back a little bit to the novel would be nice. If I wrote a sports novel, for example, I'd note in my bio paragraph that the only "athletic" trophy I won in childhood was for a beanbag toss in the Brownie Girl Scouts. (True story. And don't think I didn't display that trophy proudly in my room for years afterward, too.)

It's not always about the "wow factor," in other words. Sometimes it's just about impressing me with the quality of your writerly voice.

If I get to the end of your query impressed with both you and with the pitch for the book you're querying me about, you've done everything right.

Up tomorrow, schedule permitting: Christi Corbett's bio critique. See you then!

We have a winner!

2011-09-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to announce the winner of the Query Bio contest (I need to do a contest to name my contests, clearly)!

And the winner is...

Oh, what the hell. I loved all three, and it's great blog fodder anyway. Everybody wins.

Here are the links, in no particular order:

1. Ms. Snip

2. Jo Eberhardt

3. Christi Corbett

Congratulations to all of you! Email me your query bio paragraphs (please put "blog contest" in the subject line) and we'll do the critiques on the blog next week.

(Aside to Kim: I couldn't find your post! Send me a link, or post in the comments, and we can do yours as well.)

Happy New Year to those celebrating! I'll see you all back here next week.

Banned Books Week

2011-09-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

(image via the ALA website)

It's Banned Books Week here in the U.S.-- an annual celebration of intellectual freedom in this country. I've long been a fan of the ideals behind BBW, not to mention its slightly-sassy, contrarian underpinnings.

OK, I might be projecting a little bit on that last part.

I find myself feeling a little inarticulate (I just wrote "unarticulate") when I try to express how much this all means to me. Books should be a safe place for people everywhere to explore new ideas, learn about the world, and come to understand themselves better.

In the grand tradition of "putting your money where your mouth is," I'm a big, big fan of purchasing as many books that appear on the Frequently Challenged list as I can. It's hard not to notice that an awful lot of the books on recent lists deal with LGBT issues, along with many other tough subjects I care a lot about. Buying these books is a good way for me, as a reader, to communicate that to publishers-- and to help ensure that publishers will continue to take a chance on these "difficult" issue-driven books.

Here's the list of the Most Frequently Challenged books from the past decade. How many have you read?

Reminder: today's the contest deadline!

2011-09-26T11:24:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

Just a quick Monday stop-in to remind you that today's the last day to enter our mini-contest. Win a query bio critique, here on the blog, by posting a response to last week's writing prompt.

As with the previous contest, I'll leave the comment section for the prompt open until first thing tomorrow morning; assume that if you're able to leave a comment there, it's not too late to enter.

The original post (where you should post your contest entry) is here, and if you have any amazing stories from your weekend, I hope you'll share them in the comments for this post.

Happy Fall (in the northern hemisphere)! I'm off to have more coffee.

Writing Prompt and Mini Contest: The Best Money I Ever Spent

2011-09-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here's another writing prompt for you.

The Best Money I Ever Spent

I'm really eager to hear what you come up with for this one, so let's do a MINI CONTEST: pursuant to this week's blog post about how to write a bio paragraph in your query letter, winner gets a bio paragraph critique here on the blog.

As before, post your response to the prompt on your own blog, and put a link to the post in the comment section below. Let's give this one a deadline of Monday, September 26.

Tell your friends. If I get at least 20 contest entries, I'll post my own response to the prompt next week.

How to Write a Bio Paragraph in Your Query Letter

2011-09-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out a new technique in the blog post title today-- the "On" was starting to get a little cutesy, and maybe this will help SEO results, or something. (I have no idea what I'm talking about there.)

Ms. Snip asked a great question in the comments on last week's post about Brian's query letter: what do you put in a bio paragraph if you have nothing relevant to say? In Ms. Snip's case, she writes SF/fantasy/paranormal, but without any credits to her name yet, it's hard to come up with much that's really going be "pertinent" for query letter purposes.

You still need a bio paragraph, though. So what do you write?

Start by looking at your bookshelf (or the "About the Author" section of the book's page on the B&N or Amazon site, if you're a power Nook or Kindle user. [I have a Kindle but I am e-platform agnostic.]) What do your favorite authors in your genre include in their bio?

Brian Selznick's new book Wonderstruck happens to be sitting at my elbow as I write this (a carrot for finishing enough of my work-related reading!), so let's take a look at his bio. I'll skip the stuff about his Caldecott medal and other awards, since if you had a Caldecott to your name you wouldn't need my advice on what to put in your bio. But after the description of his books and awards, it says:

"He has worked as a set designer and a puppeteer. When he isn't traveling to research and talk about his work all over the world, he lives in San Diego, California and Brooklyn, New York."

If you know Selznick's work, you know the puppeteering actually is relevant, but in any case it's a compelling detail, don't you think? That's the kind of thing I want you to include.

I got a really terrific query last year which included the detail in the author's bio that she had attended clown college. No, really. It had nothing to do with the novel, but doesn't that make you want to know more about the author as a person? That's your goal. Get me interested in you, so I get interested in your work.

You're probably getting the idea that I want everybody to have something really out there or circus-related in their bios. You don't have to take up stilt-walking to impress me, but a detail that really makes you stand out in a crowd is a great thing to have. That pun in the last sentence was unintentional but I am leaving it in anyway. Sorry.

Other ideas: if your novel is historical fiction, and you have some relationship to the material (my author Pamela Schoenewaldt lived in Italy for ten years before writing the immigrant novel When We Were Strangers), tell me that in the bio.

If you're a member of a professional writing organization, such as SCBWI or SFWA or the Historical Novels Society or RWA, tell me that in the bio. Note that not all of these organizations require you to be published before becoming a member, so it can be a good way to underscore your ambition and your sincerity, as well as your professional commitment. It can also be a great way to find a local or online critique group of fellow writers. (Disclaimer: I am an associate member of RWA, but I am not involved in the governance of any of these organizations, and nothing I say here should be taken as an endorsement of any of them. Do your own research and make your own decisions.)

I mentioned critique groups in the previous paragraph. If you're a member of a critique group of writers in your genre, tell me that in your bio. The critique group says to me that you're serious about your craft. In the case of picture books, for example, I can't tell you how many queries I receive from people who made up a story for their children/grandchildren/kindergarten class and decided to publish it-- and all of that is great, but a critique group or an SCBWI membership would hint to me that the author has done his or her homework on what's actually selling in the picture book market right now. (The butterfly who learns to share her toys? It's been done.)

Do you live somewhere? Tell me that in the bio. If and when your work finds a publisher, there will always be a built-in local audience for the work. The local papers will feature you, the local bookstore will probably want to do a reading, the local writing groups will want you to come and tell them the story of how you "made it." Furthermore, there are several cities in the U.S. that are reading meccas, with a high concentration of book buyers. Seattle is one. New York is another. San Francisco, L.A., Denver, Portland OR, Atlanta, and Chicago also all make the list. It is no bad thing, from a publisher's perspective, if you live in or near one of these places.

About your pets and your kids: use your discretion. I think a lot of people really like this detail in their favorite authors' bios, because it helps to humanize the author in their minds, but I also think this can cross the line into weirdsville. I admit to shuddering a bit when someone refers to their "furbabies" (though I've always adored my own pets), and if I learned that someone had seventeen kids, that's probably moved me from "I can identify with this person" to "I can't IMAGINE" territory. I say mention it if you want to, especially if you don't have a lot of other things to say in this section of your query. But if you have a pet capybara, you better send a picture.

On social media marketing.

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm still pretty new at this whole blogging thing, as you know, though I'm pleased that (so far!) I'm sticking to my resolution to post at least three times a week. Yay, me.

I'm also on Twitter (@millercallihan) and Facebook (though I only "friend" people I actually know personally or professionally), and I'm starting to use Google Plus a bit as well. Link is here; let me know if you'd like an invite and don't have one yet (whether I "know you" or not).

I use LinkedIn but have never found it particularly helpful in my line of work. A friend of mine gets head-hunted at least once a week via LinkedIn, though, so I think that one depends on your industry.

What other social media platforms do you use? Have you found anything else that's useful for self-promotion? What's the next big thing going to be?

Friday Writing Prompt: Things would have gone very differently

2011-09-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

For your weekend enjoyment, here's this week's writing prompt. We're not running a contest at the moment, but if you post a link in the comments section, I promise to read your piece.

Things would have gone very differently, had Renee told her sister the truth that day.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Please send me LGBTQ manuscripts.

2011-09-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments on the headache post, guys; I'm going to try a bunch of that stuff and will report back on what's working. E., the no-caffeine thing is a good idea but I don't see it happening-- but we'll see.

I wanted to put this post up ASAP, rather than waiting any longer; there's an awful story going around the internet about literary agents telling authors to take gay/lesbian/bi/trans characters out of their novels. The link I have is here.

I don't have a lot of time today to get creative with this, but I wanted to go on the record as saying (and here I'm going to blatantly copy and paste from the link!)

I would love to see books whose characters are diverse in all or any respects, including but not limited to gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, and national origin.

The words may not be mine, but the sentiments are.

I can't speak to the veracity of the story (EDIT: see link below), but I'm happy to say I don't personally know anyone in the business who would counsel such a change. The publishing industry is always struggling with diversity; it's an industry that tends to be overwhemingly white/European-American, college educated, East Coast (specifically NYC), and with a slight female majority. But that means that there are many, many points of view that are less familiar to the industry as a whole, and those points of view tend to be underrepresented.

It's up to all of us, whatever our part in the process, to work to overcome that. I hope you'll help me bring more diversity to the books that are published.

EDIT, a bit later: The industry is still swirling about the post I linked above; in the interest of fairness and not stirring the pot, here's a link to another blog post giving the other side of the story: http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2011/09/guest-blogger-joanna-stampfel-volpe.html

I still absolutely, really believe that the publishing industry needs more diversity, but I also don't want to get dragged into finger-pointing or anything of the sort, on this or any other issue. As a colleague of mine just Tweeted, one of the best things we can ALL do is to vote with our wallets. Here's a list that Malinda Lo put together of recent LGBTQ YA novels. http://www.malindalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/LGBTQ-YA-2009-11.pdf

On headaches.

2011-09-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've been getting a lot of headaches lately-- eyestrain, mostly, I think. I've been a migraine sufferer for about 25 years now, and I get occasional sinus headaches and weather headaches as well, so I am pretty good at telling the difference.

Having a headache makes everything a little more difficult. I move more slowly (literally), I get irritable more quickly. It takes longer to accomplish even fairly simple tasks, and it wreaks havoc on my attention span-- especially bad on days when my big plan is to power through a bunch of manuscripts, or when I'm redlining a contract.

I thought all of this would be easier to juggle when I was finally free to make my own schedule and set my own agenda (as I am now)... but I find that I'm really hard on myself on days when I haven't accomplished as much as I thought I should, or as much as I planned to.

Why is that? Having had headaches for most of my life now, I'm actually pretty good about not leaving things till the absolute last minute, because I know I can't assume I'll be in any state to do them at said crisis point; there's always a chance I'll be laid up with a migraine, where a dark, quiet room is the only thing worth having in this life. In other words, I KNOW what headaches do to me, and I KNOW a headache is always a possibility.

To get to the real point of this post, then, I have two questions for you guys:

1) Do you have any amazing headache remedies? Here are some things I'm already doing: getting enough sleep, drinking lots of water, maintaining my caffeine intake (I usually drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning), exercising, taking Excedrin or acetaminophen for an especially bad headache. I had an eye exam less than two months ago. I'm pretty bad about taking breaks from the computer, so I know that's a big one to work on.

2) What do you do when you fail to meet your own expectations? I know a lot of you have word count goals and the like; what happens when you don't meet them? How do you cut yourself a little slack when you need it, without lowering your standards?

The Query Critique, at last!

2011-09-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

At long last, I’m delighted to post Brian Buckley’s prize for winning my summer writing prompt contest: a public critique of his query letter, here on the blog. (The delay is on my end, not Brian’s, I hasten to mention.)

Here is Brian’s letter, with my comments rather obnoxiously posted in bold throughout.

Dear Ms. Miller-Callihan,

You’ve spelled my name right and used my preferred form (Ms. Miller-Callihan). Ten points to Griffindor.

I've enjoyed your blog from the very beginning, but I never queried because you don't rep science fiction. Then you said "Send me your query letter," and my keen writer-sense just knew, somehow, the time was right. Here's what I've got:

This is funny and clever, but unless someone specifically encourages you to query them in a category they don’t represent, don’t do it. Still, I like the tone here; it’s confident and charming, and doesn’t read like a form letter you copied out of a book called How to Write a Query Letter. I also like that you mentioned the blog, as it shows me that you’re not planning to spam everyone in the industry indiscriminately. Telling the agent why you are querying him or her, in particular, is a good way to try to forge a connection. I’m more likely to put in the time reading a query if I feel like the author’s done their homework.

Petras Fairburn is clueless when it comes to politics. Too bad he's Emperor of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Witty and concise. The short paragraph is a great strategy here, and you’ve got me wanting to learn more about your story.

Petras didn't want to be Emperor, of course, but he has very persuasive friends. There's the Star-Witch, for one: the most wanted criminal in the universe, near-omnipotent and nearer-immortal. For reasons all her own, she befriended him way back when he was a twelve-year-old nothing on a backwater colony world. He didn't ask for a friend like her, but it's hard to say no to the Star-Witch.

A lot of good detail here, but I’m starting to worry that Petras is too wimpy or passive a figure to carry the story. Readers want active characters that do things, not characters to whom things just happen. You might be better off cutting this paragraph and jumping directly into a description of the main plot of the novel, instead—I feel like this is probably mostly backstory.

And there's Karmindy, his wife, whose sweet homemaker smile conceals the virtuosic mind of the shrewdest tactician in the Empire. He didn't ask for a wife, either, but it's hard to say no to Karmindy.

You’ve got a nice echo of the previous paragraph—“it’s hard to say no”—which is starting to give me a sense of Petras as a character. But again, I think this is mostly backstory, and you might want to cut it.

When Karmindy unleashed a plot to put her husband on the Gardenia Throne, the Star-Witch was only too glad to help. When it actually succeeded, they told him not to worry: they'd handle everything. He'd just be a figurehead.

Backstory. Combine these three paragraphs into one short paragraph—remember that we don’t necessarily need all the character names upfront. Just give me the barest possible outline of what I need to know.

Now Karmindy's dying of a ripgun wound, the Star-Witch has disappeared, and a quintillion human beings are looking to Petras for leadership. They certainly need it. The Empire is one stray shot from a civil war, and the Sagittarians – a billion-year-old race of reclusive, telepathic methane-breathers – seem less friendly every day. But worse than the Sagittarians, worse than the seemingly inevitable war, is the doubt in Petras's mind that whispers: it's impossible, you're in over your head, you'll never, never be good enough...

Some good world-building going on here. I like “quintillion,” I like “reclusive, telepathic methane-breathers,” and I like the humor of the twist at the end, that this is really a story about a character’s anxiety about his inadequacy. I’m still worried that he’s too passive a figure, though, so make sure you’re able to include something showing that he is in fact a hero (I assume this is the case?), so the reader knows this is a story that’s going to be fun to read.

With a novel, the query letter should read like the copy on the back cover of the book (or the hardcover jacket flaps). You’re trying to convince someone to read the book.

True confessions time: when I’m working with a debut author, I often crib heavily from the author’s original query when I’m putting together my cover letter to send to editors. I figure if the query was good enough to catch my eye, it’ll likely do the same for the editors to whom I’d like to sell the manuscript.

At any rate, Brian, I think you’ve got a lot of these details nailed, but I can’t shake the sense that most of your query consists of the things you think the reader needs to know before turning to page 1. Try recasting it instead like a movie trailer, where you’re giving away some elements of the plot in order to entice the reader. You don’t have to give away the ending, but you do have to give me a sense of where the story is going. Tell me enough that I’m eager to find out the rest for myself.

You don’t have a bio paragraph here, which I think is a mistake. Even if you feel like you don’t have much to say, I like to know if you have a blog, if you are on Twitter or Google + or anything else of that ilk, who your favorite authors in your genre are, whether you’ve won any blog contests, that sort of thing. Tell me where you live and one detail about you that would be fun for the game “Two Truths and a Lie.” This is a chance to make yourself memorable, to help yourself stand out from the maybe-100 other queries an agent gets that day.

The Counterfeit Emperor is science fiction, complete at 111,000 words. Thank you for your consideration.

Concise, detailed, a solid and professional wrap-up. Were this a “real query” to me, I’d want you to include somewhere a line like “Per your submission guidelines, I’ve included a synopsis and the first three chapters of the novel.”

Sincerely,
Brian D. Buckley

Mailing Address

Phone Number

Email Address

http://briandbuckley.com/

I’ve edited Brian’s personal details here (except his website!), but I always want to see all this stuff included. If I love your query, you want to make it as easy as possible for me to get hold of you to tell you so. Leave it up to the agent how to communicate with you; give them all your contact info.

SUMMARY: This is a solid query that could just use some fine-tuning. If this were a genre I know anything about (I admire SF but don’t get to read much of it), I’d read the first three chapters with interest.

Well done. Thanks to Brian, and thanks to everyone who participated in the contest! Let’s do this again soon.

On anniversaries.

2011-09-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

(Query critique will have to be next week, guys; we had a power outage here yesterday for 12 hours and I'm scrambling to finish the most urgent tasks on my list before the weekend. Sorry for the delay!)

I've never said so in so many words on the blog, but I'm now an ex-New Yorker, having relocated to my home state of California over the summer. It feels especially strange, not "being there" this weekend, even though when I was there I usually just put my head down and tried not to think about it too much.

I'm not going to say much about the Big Anniversary that's coming up, in part because it's hard to imagine I could say anything here that would usefully contribute to the media glut that's been underway for what feels like ten years already. Suffice it to say, I have my own "where were you" story, just like everyone else, and just like everyone else, I have my own complicated relationship to the anniversary's observance.

This morning I was filling out a bio/questionnaire for a writer's conference I'll speak at this fall, and there was a section in this questionnaire for me to write down any special preferences I have. I never quite know what to write for that sort of thing: too vague and I come across as wishy-washy, too precise and I sound like a terrible curmudgeon. I successfully fought the urge to write "no [you-know-what] stories," but it got me thinking about who "owns" a given narrative, and why.

If it literally happened to you, of course you have the right to write about it. If your experience was featured in People Magazine, you'll probably get a book deal out of it, complete with possibly-optional ghost writer.

But what about the all the (in)famous Law & Order episodes "ripped from the headlines?" Why does true crime, or lightly fictionalized versions thereof, always feel so tawdry? Why is it even more grotesque when the writer tries to claim a tangential, minor, over-eager relationship to the events being described?

Who owns a story? How do you tell a story that you're not sure is yours to tell?

Writing Prompt: Labor Day Edition

2011-09-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

My morning run took me past the local middle school this morning. I have rarely met anyone who regards those years (age 11 to 14, or thereabouts) as the happiest of their lives. Okay, I've rarely met anyone who thinks all the money in the world would be enough to make them revisit that time.

This may be why the age group is one of the toughest audiences to write for, but that's a conversation for another blog post.

At any rate, the misery and trepidation on those young faces inspired this week's writing prompt:

The Worst Day of My Short Life

No contest for the moment; this is just for fun. But I still promise to read your entries, if you post a link in the comments.

We'll start another contest soon; meanwhile, stay tuned for our summer contest winner's query critique in my next post!

On finding time for your goals.

2011-09-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

It's the first day of school here, and even though it's still pretty warm outside, it's overcast and a little rainy; it FEELS like a school day. I'm channeling my first-day excitement into a new copy of my to-do list, which is less daunting than I'd feared, and plotting out my next steps and my priorities for the next few days.

I talked a little in my last post about my desire to create more structure for my days, especially to carve out more time for reading manuscripts during "the work day." It's a real job hazard of working in publishing that the work-reading can take over all of your leisure time. An editor whom I follow on Twitter posted today that among her plans for her "day off" today was to finish editing a manuscript. Most (acquisition/line) editors do most of their editing at night and on the weekends, so this is not at all unusual, but I was struck by it all over again: editors use their time off to do the work that most people think of as their primary task.

Editors, at least at the bigger houses, spend an incredible amount of time in meetings, and when you add in emails and phonecalls and lunch dates with agents, there really isn't much time left in the day to read or to edit. But I, as an agent, have a lot more, um, agency to set my own work-day agenda. I attend far fewer meetings, and at least most of the time I can schedule my phonecalls for a time of day that's convenient for me and my workflow.

Thinking back on my two hours of reading goal, I'm reminded of a close family member of mine, who upon her retirement a few years back, took up exercise in a big way. She is diligent about it, seven days a week, unless she's got a terrible cold or is traveling, and I think both the exercise itself and the routine make her really happy. We talked about it recently, and she told me, "I have to make it a priority, or it doesn't happen. I start inventing excuses."

This, it strikes me, is true of a lot of things in our lives. I love watching TV, and can easily while away the entire evening that way. But when I spend a lot of time watching TV, I have (deliberately or not) made my TV time my priority. (Remember NBC's slogan, "Must-See TV?" And how many times have you heard the phrase "appointment viewing" or "appointment television" applied to this or that HBO or critically acclaimed drama?)

So even in the face of a to-do list full of a million other tasks, I've decided to make my manuscript reading a priority today.

How about you? How do you carve out time for the things you care about?

New Year's Resolutions

2011-09-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

School starts here next week, and even *cough* years after my high school graduation, Labor Day still feels like a new beginning. I miss having the excuse to buy school supplies. Especially pens. Are you guys obsessed with pens, or are you all devout computer-only types?

My all-time favorite is probably still the Pilot Precise (V5, black or blue ink), used in conjunction with a spiral-bound notebook, unlined, with paper thick enough that the ink won't bleed through. My thoughts seem to unfold differently (better) when I write by hand instead of typing. I often compose first drafts of my submission letters that way; it's as if my brain keeps up with my hand/s better when the mechanical process of writing is slowed down.

I'm a serious list-maker, as I think I've mentioned here before. I often have multiple versions of the list going in different places (not always a great idea) because I derive so much satisfaction from writing things down, but it's really not the same if I'm typing the list-- too sterile, and too detached. It's harder to remember the items on the list, too, somehow, if they're not in my handwriting.

Most of my lists are of the to-do variety. I'm currently experimenting with the Auto-Focus system, which Erin Doland at Unclutterer linked to a few weeks back. It's working pretty well so far, but I find I still need a secondary list of the day's "musts," to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. But I do like it, and it's worth trying if you are looking for a new technique for keeping track of all the different parts of your life.

But I also love making lists of other things, and one of the most satisfying (personal) things I've done in the past several years is to do the "101 in 1001" project. There's a link here to a fancy sharing website, but I just made my own without getting all high-tech or social media about it. Part of what the "deadline" did for me was to encourage me to make time for all the "someday" items on my list.

I'm sorry about all of the "unnecessary" "quotation marks" today, guys. I'll move on to the grocer's apostrophe in my next post, I promise.

Anyway.

I didn't come close to finishing my 101 in 1001 list, but it got me out of a rut, and reminded me that weekends are not just for laundry and the grocery store. I'm thinking I'll do the project again soon.

Right now, though, with the new school year upon us (or already begun, in many places), I'm itching for some New Year's Resolutions. Here's a couple of mine. If you're inclined to join me, I'd love to hear yours as well.

-Get faster at responding to queries, especially the ones that I'm excited about! Too often, I set aside the really good ones because it's easier and faster to deal with the quick no's.

(An aside: Jill Corcoran of the Herman Agency had a thoughtful post a couple of days ago about why she doesn't send rejection letters-- I assume she refers here to rejecting the initial query, not a manuscript she's requested from the author. I try to at least write a "this isn't right for me" form letter, so at least the author knows the query didn't vanish into an electronic black hole, but I'd really like to hear how you feel about all of this, being on the other side of the table.)

-Impose more structure on my work day so that I don't spend all day on email or phonecalls. Block out at least two hours a day just for reading, both client work and prospective client work. Get back to prospective clients while my thoughts on their manuscripts are still fresh in my mind.

-Find or DIY a notebook and pen combo that will fit inside my e-reader case, so I can keep better notes as I'm reading. Maybe then I can stop wondering what I meant by a Kindle note that reads like this: "I want to knww moe abt the crmny pls... also why j said hat in the last ch"

-Develop a more realistic sense of what can get done in a given week. Make a good list of the "musts," work through them diligently, and stop beating myself up about anything that has to be shoved to the next week.

-Twitter every weekday.

-Blog at least three times a week, unless I'm traveling. I am, as always, open to requested topics!

What's on your fall list? Tell me all your secret plans.

And the winner is...

2011-08-30T16:58:00.001-07:00

So, out of fairness, I did my best not to look at any of the query contest/writing prompt entries until all the entries were in and the deadline had passed, and wow! There were so many great, fun, really creative entries.

Before I get to the winner, I want to highlight two other entries I really liked. "Honorable mention," if you will.

First, Allan Petersen's entry for prompt #4 (the worst smell in the world): http://elderswill.blogspot.com/2011/08/worst-smell-in-world-is.html

This is a clever, compelling concept that takes the prompt in a really unusual direction; given the framing of the story (the protagonist contemplates his own death), I especially liked Allan's use of first-person here. Trust me, you'll want to know where the story goes from here.

Next up, Chelsie's response to prompt #9 (disappear without a trace): http://rosehipsredink.blogspot.com/2011/08/response-to-prompt-number-nine.html

What I like here is that the characterization is so strong. Her use of language gestures at a lot of detail that isn't technically present on the page; I feel like I know these people. Her narrator and protagonist's descriptions and turns of phrase evoke a region, an educational level, a socioeconomic status, and a religious background. This is a character who's lost everything, including her faith, and again, I want to see what she does next.

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But for this contest, at least, there can only be one winner, so without further ado, here it is. Brian Buckley's response to prompt #3 (inside the last box): http://briandbuckley.com/2011/08/25/flash-fiction-marva/

Brian's got a really economical style with the worldbuilding here; a sparseness that really underscores the bleakness of this character's life. Without inventing a lot of new terms for the various castes of his world, he gives us a good sense of the hierarchy that's critical to understanding the twist at the end of the story. The "rule of three" is a classic for a reason: it's a great way to build suspense, and was used to good effect here. Moreover, the humor that comes through in that twist ending was delightful and unexpected, and the differentiation of the voice of the Empress from the other characters was the icing on the cake for me.

Congratulations, Brian. Email me (there's a link on the Profile page) and let's talk query letters!

*******************************************************************

Thanks again to everyone who participated. This was a real highlight of my summer, and I hope it was fun for you as well. Let's keep the writing prompts as a weekly feature, and we'll do another contest soon.

Got an idea for a contest you'd like to see? Drop me a line in the comments section.

Time's up!

2011-08-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Comments are closed on all the writing prompt entries-- but if you didn't get a chance to enter the contest in time, don't let that stop you from writing on any of the prompts that inspire you.

Back with contest results early next week.

Thanks for making summer extra-fun, everybody!

The final countdown!

2011-08-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Only a few hours left to enter the query letter/writing prompts summer contest-- see previous entries for the details!

I'll leave all of the writing prompts open until I get up tomorrow morning, and then I'll close each entry's comments as soon as I'm able.

I'll read all the entries this weekend and announce a winner early next week. Stay tuned!

Writing Prompt #10

2011-08-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday!

As is my Monday tradition, I'm struggling to find my rhythm a bit today. Hope you are faring better.

Here's a new prompt for you. Don't forget that this is the last week to enter! Details below.

There is a single white athletic sock by the side of the road. How did it get there?

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CONTEST! Post a response (on your site, with a link in the comments section here) to any of my writing prompts between now and August 26, and I'll pick one winner whose query letter I will then critique on the blog the following week. (We can remove the identifying details, if you want; we'll figure that out later.) I'm not promising representation, but I'm not ruling it out either...

Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #9

2011-08-19T10:07:00.001-07:00

This time of year, everyone's heading out on vacation-- or at least wishing they could. But I hope you'll go somewhere much weirder with today's prompt than that.

No one could figure out how he'd managed to disappear without a trace.

Have a great weekend, and I'll see you back here next week.

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #8

2011-08-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a new one for today. (These are really fun. Should we keep them as a regular/weekly feature, even after the contest is over?)

This was the first thing Anna had ever won.

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #7

2011-08-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

I've got a bunch more prompt ideas that I'm excited about, so these will be coming a little faster these next few days. Hope you like them too.

Here's the latest:

What ELSE might you do in Reno that could land you in Folsom Prison?

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Tell your friends!

Public Service Announcement

2011-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

A kind reader brought to my attention that people with WordPress blogs had trouble leaving comments under the old comment system, so I've switched to a new comment form on the blog. So if you've had trouble commenting in the past, I hope you'll try leaving a "test comment" here.

New writing prompt is coming right up!

Writing Prompt/Query Contest Clarification

2011-08-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

I've had a question or two regarding the "rules" for this little endeavor, so let's say this: you can enter the query contest by writing a prompt response ONCE per prompt. So if there are ten prompts total, you can have as many as ten "entries," one per prompt.

Let me know if that doesn't make sense, and thanks for playing along!

Writing Prompt #6

2011-08-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

I'm having fun with these. Hope you are too. Here's another.

Three things you'd bring with you to a deserted island. Assume food and water are not an issue, and that you will be stuck on the island, Gilligan-style, for an unknown period of time. Defend your choices.

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #5

2011-08-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I need a bit of a jump-start today. It was a nice laid-back weekend around here, and I need to find my rhythm and get to work. Lots to do!

Here's a new writing prompt to get you going on this Monday.

There in the morning crossword, plain as anything, was the phrase "ROGER PETERSON HAS TWO WEEKS TO LIVE."

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #4

2011-08-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

New prompt!

(This one's for you, NYC in the summer.)

The Worst Smell in the World

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #3

2011-08-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the great entries. Keep 'em coming.

Here's another prompt. I just moved last month, so this one is close to my heart-- but I encourage you to go crazy with it. There are many more possibilities than a story about moving.

I opened the last box, and inside I found (feel free to switch to your favorite "person")

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #2

2011-07-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the next prompt, for anyone who'd like to play.

The last thing he remembered was...

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Tell your friends!

Writing Prompt #1

2011-07-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm glad you guys are excited about the writing prompt idea. So here's your first one:

"What I Did on My Summer Vacation."

But I want ludicrous, spectacular falsehoods. Make up every bit of it. Were you a stowaway on the last space shuttle mission? Too bad. Write about something even crazier.

Post your prompt-response (someone please give me a better term for that, ugh) on your blog, and post a link in the comments. I promise to read all of the entries. Maybe later this summer we can have some kind of a grand prize-- a query letter critique or something, if you like. Let me know what sounds fun.

Don't have a blog? Why not start one?

EDIT: So, let's do this: post a response to any of my writing prompts between now and August 26, and I'll pick one winner whose query letter I will then critique on the blog the following week. (We can remove the identifying details, if you want; we'll figure that out later.) I'm not promising representation, but I'm not ruling it out either...

Tell your friends!

On the fabled "summer slowdown."

2011-07-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

I can sense August around the corner: my email inbox is quieting. Publishing industry folks and prospective clients alike are heading out on vacation (or at least taking a "tech vacation," a very 21st century term for a practice I highly recommend). Things feel a little sleepy at this time of year. I know I'd certainly rather sit on the patio with a glass of white wine than put the finishing touches on the "tough love" critique letter I owe one of my clients.

It's a great time of year for daydreaming, I think, and that makes it a great time of year to brainstorm ideas for new writing projects.

I'm thinking of taking a break from the "inside baseball" posts for a few weeks, but I've been missing all of you. If I posted writing prompts for a while instead, would anyone play along?

I'm thinking it would work like this: I post the prompt, and you write on the prompt on your blog (and post a link in the comments-- I promise to click over and read!). If your favorite genre is haiku, you can put the whole thing in the comments.

What do you think? And how is your summer going?

On criticism and critiques. But mostly editing.

2011-06-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

Do you take criticism well? I don't, really. It's probably one of the reasons I'm better suited for being on this side of the "desk," in a relatively anonymous role in the publishing process. I try to have a thick skin, but I understand intuitively what writers experience when they see a review of their work which is not so much a negative review as a "nastygram." Not all criticism is constructive, to say the least.

But I've been spending a lot of my day, nearly every day these past few weeks, giving critiques. Not all agents do this, I'm told-- some literary agents send out their clients' work as-is, figuring that it's up to the publisher to work with the author to get the work into publishable state. I suspect this no-critique technique, on the agent's part, is increasingly rare as the market gets tougher and tougher. It's hard enough to find a publisher for a book the author and I have worked very hard to whip into shape. I can't really imagine doing things another way.

I have a spiel that all my clients probably have memorized by now: I do a lot of editing, but I am not an editor. My job is to help the author get the manuscript (or book proposal, for nonfiction) into a state in which the prospective publisher can recognize its potential. If and when we sell the book to a publisher, the editor will then work with the author to bring the work into its final, polished, published form.

At the larger publishing houses, there are three different stages to the editing process, though I hesitate to even call it that. These three stages are done by at least three different people. (At smaller houses, it's more common for one person to wear more hats, as you might imagine.)

1. The editor who buys the book-- usually the person to whom I sent the manuscript in the first place-- is the acquisitions editor. This person negotiates the deal with the author's agent, essentially hammering out all the specifics. How big is the advance? Will the publisher be allowed to sell their version of the work around the world, or just in the U.S. and Canada? Who owns the film rights? At most houses, the acquisitions editor will also be the line editor. This is a somewhat nebulous task, as it really varies tremendously from book to book in terms of what's really needed. For a novel, a line editor will look at things like the plot arc, the tension, the character development, and so on. He or she will work with the author on making sure all aspects of the manuscript, large and small, are the way the author and the publisher want them-- that the finished book will be a product everyone is proud of.

2. The editing many people think of when they hear the word is the work of the copy editor. The copy editor works with the manuscript after the line editor (who's often just referred to as the editor) has signed off on it, and it's the copy editor's job to make sure that the spelling, grammar and punctuation are all in good shape. But a copy editor's work goes well beyond that, also looking at and questioning individual details like a fact checker at a magazine. The two possibly apocryphal stories I was told when I started in the publishing industry are as follows:

-when a room is described in a manuscript, a copy editor will draw a map of the room to make sure that when the bad guy fires a gun from the doorway and the bullet goes through the window, the bullet and the doorway are both in the right place.

-if a novel involves a chase scene through the Paris metro, the copy editor may pull up a map of the metro system to ensure that the characters are following an actual train line.

3. The third and final stage of edits to a book are done by the proofreader. The proofreader is working with literal proofs of the work: reviewing the pages of the manuscript all laid out for the printer. At this stage, the running heads and the page numbers are all in place; the proofreader will double-check that the pagination runs properly and will also look one more time at the spelling and punctuation. This is a fine-tooth comb type job, as you might imagine. Other things the proofreader looks for: font continuity, widow/orphan control, and anything else that will affect the reader's experience of reading the book. I am not an expert on this stage of the process, but I suspect that the rise of the e-book is complicating the proofreader's work quite a bit.

One of the reasons I try to be crystal-clear with my clients about the whole "I am not an editor" thing is that I am immensely respectful of the work that editors (at all stages of the process) do. A good editor deserves every word of the glowing praise you so often see in the acknowledgments section of a published work.

Back to the critiques, though: with many authors with whom I work, my critique of their work is the first real interaction I may have with that person. That first critique often happens before I've offered representation, and how it is received by the author tells me a lot about the author's personality, style, and our likely dynamic.

Today is the solstice, which means that after a month of warm (sometimes sweltering) weather in NYC, it's officially summer in the northern hemisphere. I've already been through my first round of blisters as my feet get reaccustomed to summer shoes, and I'm well on my way to the very important seasonal calluses. It's an accidental (and kinda painful) technique, but it works.

How do you go about thickening your skin?

On Amanda Hocking.

2011-06-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

I'll have lots more to say on this in my forthcoming post on self-publishing, but here is an article about Amanda Hocking's success as a self-published author. And here is Hocking's own post about why she decided to go with a traditional publisher, at least on her next few books.

Self-publishing is an incredible amount of work, especially if you do it well, as Hocking obviously did. A self-published book that's sold less than 10,000 copies, as an absolute minimum, typically makes it much MORE difficult for an agent to get a publisher interested.

Note that I'm talking, first, about self-publishing a book that you'd actually prefer to sell to Random House or Penguin or Simon & Schuster or any of the other "biggies." Hocking's deal with St. Martin's Press-- a "biggie" by anyone's standards-- is for new material, not for the books she's already self-pubbed.

Second of all, when your sales numbers are as good as Amanda Hocking's, the rules don't really apply to you anymore.

This page, on Writer Beware (which I highly recommend to anyone who's interested in these issues), notes that the average "print on demand" book sells about 200 copies. I realize that these are print numbers, and probably a few years out of date at this point. But even with Twitter and the other tools that "social media marketing" has brought us, it's still not that easy to self-publish and self-promote-- very, very few writers find any real success at all via this avenue.

The industry is changing really fast, particularly when it comes to e-books (which is, of course, the medium in which Hocking found such spectacular success), but at least for the time being, if you decide to self-publish a book that you're hoping I'll sell to a traditional publisher on your behalf, you've just made your job and mine a whole lot harder.

On professionalism and communication.

2011-06-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: What I have to say pertains specifically to the literary agent/client relationship. The degrees of formality are very different in different industries—and even in different segments of my industry.

We’ve had a lot of productive discussion in the comments (thank you!) regarding professionalism and formality in business relationships, and I thought it might be worthwhile to map out my own feelings on the subject.

On “first contact,” usually the query letter:

I prefer “Dear Ms. Miller-Callihan” for the first missive, even though I immediately encourage a first-name basis relationship as soon as I start corresponding with an author. When you first email me, you don’t know me or how I prefer to be addressed (okay, you do now), so it’s best to err on the side of formality here. “Dear Courtney” is a little too familiar in this context; “Hi Courtney” is MUCH too familiar.

Extrapolating a bit: I’d encourage you to address women as “Ms. [Lastname]” and men as “Mr. [Lastname].” I don’t know any woman in the working world who, at this point, would be offended by the “Ms.,” by the way, which has become widely accepted as the default honorific for adult women. My marital status is irrelevant to the work I do. So “Ms.” it is.

On staying in touch through the querying process:

Especially when you’re a writer who is querying agents and seeking representation, there are a lot of pitfalls regarding the communication. Is it okay to check in with the agent, and if so, when? How often, and under what circumstance?

If you’re querying me, I always want to hear from you, in descending order of importance, under the following circumstances:

1) if you get an offer of representation from another agent. Please let me know if this is the case, even if you haven’t heard back from me on your initial query. Agents are human, and it’s human nature to want things that other people have. This is just as true of debut novels as it was of the hottest guy/girl in your high school. If you’ve got an offer of representation from someone, use it to your advantage and follow up with the other agents you’ve queried!

2) if you've gotten word that you have serious interest or an offer from a royalty-paying publisher. This rarely comes up, but as a public service announcement I feel compelled to say it here: Please DON'T query agents and take steps to self-publish your work simultaneously. I think there are great reasons to self-publish, which I'll discuss in a separate post if you are interested, but if you're interested in a so-called "traditional publishing" book deal, self-publishing will really mess up your chances, no matter how fantastic your book is.

3) if you have a personal or professional connection that you didn't mention in your first query. Say you write romance novels and meet Nora Roberts at a writing conference, and she offers to blurb your book. I would very much like to hear about that. But don't hold back that information from your initial query (and don't stalk Nora Roberts!); this applies only if something changes in the interim.

4) if you've been to a conference or otherwise received professional feedback (say, from another agent) and have revised the manuscript accordingly, let me know that too. I don't want to tell you not to revise, but generally speaking it's probably better to leave the work alone during the query process. Work on your next manuscript in the meantime!

5) if I’ve requested a full manuscript from you, and it’s been more than a month since you’ve heard from me. I get swamped with reading sometimes. It’s a lovely problem to have. My current clients always get priority over my prospective clients; if you sign with me, you’ll be glad this is the case! But while I try very hard to keep up with all of it, everyone needs a nudge from time to time. If it’s been a month with no word on your full, go ahead and nudge me. (nicely please.)

6) if you sent your initial query six to eight weeks ago and have not heard anything from me, it's OK to send one follow-up email asking me to confirm receipt/let you know if I am still reviewing the material.

Here are some circumstances under which I do NOT recommend following up with an agent whom you're querying (in no particular order):

1) If you've tweaked the manuscript so that Chapter 2 is now Chapter 3 and Chapter 3 is now Chapter 2, and so-and-so's name has changed. It's unlikely to affect my feelings on the work. If you find that you accidentally sent the wrong attachment, or you forgot to attach it, it's OK to send it again. Mention in the email that this replaces your initial query, and that you do not need an immediate response from me.

2) if it's been less than six to eight weeks (or the ballpark time listed on the agent's website) since your initial query. I try to be quick. It doesn't always happen. If you follow up too quickly or too aggressively, I'm likely to take a quick look at the material and (unless it blows me away) send you a nice "no thanks." My interactions with people during the query process definitely weigh into my decision about whether to offer representation. The writing is paramount, but the quality of the interactions matter too.

3) if you just want to confirm receipt of the query (and it's been less than six to eight weeks with no response). I understand the anxiety of wondering whether something's gone into a black hole, but sometimes this strategy is less about the anxiety and more about trying to forge a connection/force some kind of response out of the agent. Let your work speak for itself. Caveat: If I've requested a full manuscript from you, I don't mind a bit if you want me to confirm receipt of that. Asking in the same email where you send the manuscript as an attachment is ideal.

4) calling the office. If I have not given you my direct line (which I do only if I am seriously pursuing the project/the would-be client), please don't call. In the midst of a busy work day, a cold call from a prospective client feels like a telemarketer phoning on Thanksgiving.

5) adding me to your mailing list under any circumstances. If I want to be on your mailing list for some reason, I'll let you know.

6) if you are re-sending the same query, unless I asked you to, of course. I once received the same query-- I am not making this up-- three hundred and fifty times, often three or four times per day.

7) adding me as a contact on LinkedIn. I'll accept LinkedIn invitations from anyone I know personally, anyone with whom I have worked (as colleagues) at any time, any clients of mine or of my agency's, and anyone with whom I've exchanged emails, say regarding a revision. But lately I've had a slew of LinkedIn invites from prospective clients, and I have to admit I'm a little perplexed at why this is the case. If you're looking to engage me via social media, comment on a blog post or follow me on Twitter; I'd love to talk to you. But I don't get the LinkedIn thing.

On keeping your agent happy:

1) Be polite and professional in your dealings with me, with my agency's employees, and with anyone and everyone at your publishing house.

2) Make your deadlines. If you can't keep to the schedule we've discussed, let me (and your editor, if applicable) know as soon as possible.

3) Keep me posted on what's going on-- personally as well as professionally, as needed. I've mentioned before that I love it when my clients let me know if they're going to be away or unavailable for a few days, especially if they are waiting on me for something.

4) Write fantastic books.

5) Write fantastic books.

6) Write fantastic books.

On Bob Loomis's retirement.

2011-06-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is a marvelous tribute to an incredible career, and a deserving interview subject. All writers should be so lucky as to get to work with someone as thoughtful and meticulous.

I'm especially enjoying the stories about Bob's varied approaches to working with different authors (isn't the bit about Maya Angelou's telegrams delightful?), and will have more to say in a future post about how I think this translates to the agent/client or editor/author relationship more generally.

I'm still ruminating on the excellent discussion in the comments on yesterday's post regarding the pitfalls of informality; thank you.

Your turn: who or what helps you to improve or refine your writing? Do you have a critique group, a trusted "beta reader?" When someone gives you feedback on a piece, do you prefer the Styron or the Angelou approach?

[edit: fixed link to point to first page of article]

On a question I get a lot.

2011-05-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

Is the book dead?

On getting back to routines.

2011-05-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

I'm back in my office on this rather warm NYC day, after a nice long weekend. Hope yours was good, too.

Not gonna lie, though; I'm having trouble this morning with the re-entry. Does any of this sound familiar?

"Oh, of COURSE checking Twitter counts as work." (I'm @millercallihan, if you're interested.)

"I should really say hi to everyone in the office before I sit down at my desk."

"I'm just going to read my email before I do the three things I promised myself I'd get done before lunch."

And so on.

Really, though, part of the reason I'm stalling is that a lot of what I need to do this morning is to make phonecalls-- especially chasing payments for my clients-- and it seems cruel to call anyone the minute they get back from their long weekend. (After all, there's a Twitter feed to catch up on!) And presumably some of them, when I do finally call, will still be traveling, extending that nice long weekend just a little bit longer.

So I fear today won't be as productive as I'd hoped.

Fortunately, I have a backup plan: a long list I made before the long weekend (hooray!) of all the things I want to tackle this week. Chief among them, after the phonecalls, is to catch up on my reading, especially my clients' manuscripts. And that I can do no matter who's available.

Which leads me to another topic: professionalism and communication. One of my authors was good enough to email me to let me know she's going to be out of town, and out of email contact, the rest of this week. Hers is one of the manuscripts I need to give feedback on this week, but now that I know she's away for a few days, I know I can have until Friday to get back to her with my notes, leaving me to concentrate on other things in the meantime.

My work life is packed with these kinds of decisions, and I am always, always grateful for updates like J's.

Your turn: tell me about someone who's impressed you with their professionalism, or something you strive for in your own professional life. These needn't be writing- or publishing-related; I'd like to think behaving like a pro translates across all industries, no?

On BEA.

2011-05-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've been here for much of this week. Book Expo America is, I guess, the biggest event of the U.S. book industry calendar, a three-day event that in its NYC years takes over more or less the entire Javits Center, the city's enormous convention center.

Javits is a soul-sucking place. It's in the middle of nowhere, a PITA to get to; your options are basically the crosstown bus or a taxi, and as a result once you finally get there, you feel kind of trapped. A colleague today noted that after you've been at Javits for a few hours you feel like you've been on an airplane. It's that same kind of hollow, disoriented sensation. Nobody's favorite part of travel (or work conventions).

But BEA itself is an amazing experience. A huge array of publishers, from the large to the small, show up and staff a booth. There are giveaways and signings, panel discussions and Q&As, and many, many chances for Courtney to pick up more ARCs and publisher catalogs than she can reasonably carry.

It's always a great education, to boot, on what the publishers see as their major priorities for the fall. BEA, and especially an author signing or a giveaway at BEA, represents a major investment of publisher resources. By expending their resources, they are telegraphing to the booksellers and librarians (and book bloggers and journalists) in attendance at the fair what they think the Big Books are going to be. In essence, Publisher A is trying to tell Bookseller B what Book Buyer C (that's me!) is going to want to buy her friends and family for Christmas.

Preaching to the choir here: If you're reading this blog, I'm assuming you're a book person, in some sense of the phrase. If you care about books, don't forget that books make great gifts. You can even give Kindle editions now, if that's how your recipient rolls. Right, Mom?

On NaNoWriMo

2011-05-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo, for the uninitiated, stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's an event (now international, despite the name!) in which writers commit to composing 50,000 words of a novel (or maybe it's a 50,000 word novel; I'm not entirely sure) during the month of November. It's been going since 1999 and the number of participants is astonishing.

I think NaNoWriMo is terrific.

To my knowledge, I only have one NaNoWriMo novel on my list so far, though it's entirely possible there are two or three more that were originally composed in the month of November, and the author's just never told me the novel's full origin story.

Here are some things that are great about NaNoWriMo:

1) For lots of people, it's the excuse they've been waiting for to finally get off their duff and write a novel. Many, many first drafts of first novels have been composed as NaNoWriMo projects, I'm absolutely certain.

2) For lots of people, even published authors, it's a chance to make a huge and productive start on a new book project. It anchors the writing calendar. NaNoWriMo is a chance to produce what Anne Lamott calls a "sh*tty first draft," to lay the story out on the page so that you have something to work with.

3) For lots of people, it provides a sense of discipline. I look sometimes at the Twitter feed for the hashtag "#amwriting" and think to myself, "you're not writing, you're tweeting." I think the 50,000 word count is an ambitious and useful goal, a reason to disconnect yourself from the internet and really buckle down and write.

However. I see an increase in my queries every year come the first week in December.

I love NaNoWriMo. One of these years, I'm going to get off my own duff and do a NaNoWriMo project, just for the experience.

I don't love unrevised NaNoWriMo projects. Those proud NaNoWriMo finishers who send me their novel the first week in December haven't even had enough time to reread their manuscripts before pushing send. This is a big mistake.

Take the month of November to write the novel. Take the month of December to let it marinate. Give yourself a little psychic distance.

Then, in January, after you've put the holiday decorations away (or not. I put mine away in February this year; who am I to judge?), get out the manuscript and read it with fresh eyes. Read it alongside a book on how to write and revise. There are tons of great ones out there.

Make yourself a list of the main issues that need addressing in the revision. Some major things you should be looking for:

-plot: is it working? in a romance, do the hero and heroine end up together? in a mystery, is it too obvious or too subtle who the bad guy is?

-characters: what are their motivations? are they consistent? are they realistic?

-dialogue: do your characters talk like real people? Are their phrasings age-appropriate and in keeping with their characters? (and how are your dialogue tags?)

-pacing: does the story hold your interest throughout? I'm especially obsessed with the "flabby middle," which I'll talk about more another time, but in short: many novels have a slow spot right around the midpoint. Fix this.

-genre: this reread is a good opportunity to start thinking about how to market your novel. Who do you think is the target audience for your book? (Please don't say "everybody.")

Once you've got your list, give yourself at LEAST another month to do the revisions, and lather, rinse, and repeat.

Then, if you're very happy with the manuscript in its double-revised form, start the query process.

On coffee

2011-05-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a caffeine-fueled happy dance over this.

On queries, part 2: surefire bestsellers and novel introductions.

2011-05-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

Confession: I've been letting the queries pile up a bit this week. It's tricky sometimes, since I'd like to be reading and responding as quickly as possible, but I have to balance my query reading with my other responsibilities... and I also have to be in the proper frame of mind to give each query a fair shot. It's been raining in New York all week, after about a ten-day stretch of gorgeous spring days, so everyone (me included) is a little grumpy, I'm afraid.

At least this week, I know it's the weather and not the queries themselves that are making me grumpy.

Here are some things I never like to see in a query letter.

1) "My novel is a surefire bestseller!" Really? What makes you so sure? The publishing industry is surprised all the time by what works and what doesn't. Sometimes, something a publisher thought would be a more modest success turns into a perennial word-of-mouth bestseller; other times, a book everyone worked hard to make "the next big thing" just doesn't sell. I want you to be proud of your work and to believe in its potential. But try to dial back the bravado. Something like "My novel will appeal to women in their 40s and 50s/fans of Tom Clancy/chess-playing supercomputers" is a better fit for a query.

2) "I would like to introduce you to my novel." This one's just an awkward phrasing; out of politeness, I feel like I should shake your novel's hand. Just say "I am querying regarding my novel TITLE" or "I write in regard to my novel TITLE" or "My novel, TITLE, is a work of GENRE that deals with TOPIC."

3) "Is there anything you hate more than a rhetorical question?" Answer: probably. But I can't remember the last time I liked a query that opened with one.

4) "fiction novel." I think this one may owe thanks to the legendary Truman Capote, who famously described his masterpiece In Cold Blood as a "nonfiction novel." But this phrase still drives me nuts.

5) "My novel defies genre classification." Please, no. My primary job, as a literary agent, is to sell books to publishers. If I can't even tell them where to put it in the bookstore, they're not going to buy it. If your work has elements of science fiction and of Regency romance, tell me that. If it's experimental literary fiction, tell me that. But if I can't figure out how to sell it, I'm not going to take it on.

6) "I have attached chapters 12, 27, and 58." Our agency's submission guidelines request that you send the first three chapters, and we really mean the first three. If the story doesn't really get rolling until page 125, you probably need to revise.

7) "I have included synopses of each of my twelve completed novels." I'm a pretty good multi-tasker, but I can't wrangle twelve different books from the same author at the same time. Unless they're all part of a series, query on one book at a time. You can tell me about the others once I've already told you how much I love the first one. I'll write more another time about other reasons why I think querying on multiple books simultaneously is a mistake.

8) "I am the protagonist of the novel, a fictional character, and I am querying you on behalf of the writer who created me!" High-concept is good, but gimmicky is not. This technique gets points for risk-taking, but both the query and the sample chapters would really have to wow me in order for me to take the next steps.

9) "You can read my entire query and still not know what my book is about, or who the target audience is." I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, but sometimes it would be nice if the ultra-vague queries would cut to the chase this way. At a bare minimum, your query should include:

-the work's title

-the genre

-the word count

-the target audience (if it's not immediately clear from the genre)

-a brief description of the work. Plot summary. Back-of-book stuff. Get me interested.

-a brief bio of the author

The marvelous Nathan Bransford has a great post on what he calls "query mad libs," which is here. If you're getting ready to query and struggling with where to begin, the "mad libs" formula is a good start.

On self-discipline.

2011-05-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not a writer. I have no concrete plans to change this, either-- my mmph years in the publishing industry have given me a front-row seat to just how hard it is for an author to "make it" in this business.

(And how very modest that success usually is, even for authors who achieve their dream of quitting their day jobs. I think there may be easier roads to fame and fortune, to put it mildly.)

To make it as a writer, you have to want it. And you have to work hard for it, usually on a near-daily basis, over a period of many years.

Anyway, it occurred to me this week that I have more in common with the writers with whom I work than I sometimes think. Namely, that self-discipline is not only a requirement, but it might as well be a prerequisite.

As a literary agent, I essentially work for myself. I set my own hours, I choose my own projects, I make my own priorities. This creates both a sense of freedom and a sense of responsibility. There's no one breathing down my neck-- except me! But because it's my job to, well, do my job, I have to be very self-disciplined. Here are some of my strategies.

1. I create deadlines, for myself and my clients, which are generally pretty artificial. Book publishing is a notoriously slow-paced industry, but I find that it really helps me to get something done (like feedback on a manuscript) in a timely manner when I promise someone I'll get back to them by X date. I have someone else who's then holding me accountable, and I'm motivated to keep my word. You could do the same with your critique group, or your friend who's agreed to read your manuscript.

2. I make lists. Oh, goodness, do I make lists. When I can manage it, I make lists of lists. Sometimes I have an electronic list of some sort: an email to myself, a "note" on my phone, or a newfangled web-based program like Remember the Milk. But I always seem to revert to a pen-and-paper list. Ticking the tiny box on my iphone is nowhere near as satisfying as crossing an item off the paper list with a great flourish. (One of these days, we will have to talk about pens. Remind me.) The important thing is that the system seems to work for me.

3. I have a lot of projects going at any one time, and I try to make sure they're all at various stages in the process. I can probably read 400 pages in a day if I don't even try to do anything else, but it's exhausting and it won't be my best work. It's better to have some reading time, some email time, some phonecall time, and so on. If you're a writer, I expect you'd similarly benefit from having various projects at different stages of completion: one very rough draft, one in revision-- and once you've got a book deal, maybe you've also got one for which you're reviewing page proofs before publication.

4. I try really hard to be kind to myself. Everyone has days which are not their best, and if I'm in a growly mood and hate everything that's put in front of me, that's not a good day to try to give someone feedback on their manuscript. It's really important to me that I stay on top of my work, that I give every client (or prospective client) my best effort, AND that I remember that things have a way of balancing themselves out. Some days are more productive than others.

My client Erin Doland, who is the editor-in-chief of unclutterer.com (and whose new book proposal I've been hard at work on today!), had an excellent post last week which speaks to a lot of these issues, particularly my #2 above. Here's the link.

Another client, Elizabeth O. Dulemba, swears by what she calls the "butt in chair" method-- meaning the work doesn't get done unless you sit down and work on it.

How about you? Have you tried NaNoWriMo? Do you have a daily word count? What other strategies for self-discipline have you tried?

On promoting yourself.

2011-05-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Jessica (hi, Jessica!) asked in the comments about how writers can best use social media (Twitter, blogs, etc.). The unstated part of the question, I think, was how to use those tools to further your writing career-- and by extension your book sales.

Agents and editors talk a lot about "platform," but what we really mean is: when your book is finally available for sale, who can you tell about it? And will they buy it? Or ask their library to do so?

The social media stuff is all newer than we often think about, so ingrained has it become in our worldview. The oldest blogs out there, like Kottke, are still less than fifteen years old. These resources just weren't available two decades ago, and it feels like it's changing all the time. The good news is, anyone can build a platform on the Internet. The bad news is that it takes a lot of time and effort to do it well.

I am fairly new to Twitter myself (@millercallihan, should you care to follow) and by no means an expert. Holly Tucker (also an SJGA client! her book is fantastic and now available) gave me some great Twitter advice, though, which I haven't followed as closely as I should: that is, you should pick a sort of Twitter identity. Do you mostly RT other people's posts? Do you post interesting links that you find? Do you post personal updates, a sort of mini-blog? I have taken a hybrid approach, myself, but it works for me. I am obsessed with Community, so that probably makes more than its fair share of appearances in my Twitter feed.

The standard advice for both Twitter and for blogs is that as a non-celebrity (or future celebrity, if you prefer), it's critical to engage with other people. Seek out kindred spirits. Take the time to read other people's posts or tweets, and write back! No one likes to feel that they're speaking into a vaccuum. The idea behind all social media is that you're creating a community. That takes time, so if you're reading this before your book is published, or even before you have a book deal or an agent, start now.

But when it comes down to what you should actually WRITE on your Twitter feed or your blog or whatever, the thing I keep coming back to is something Neil Gaiman said last year. This is great advice and deserves its own paragraph.

“Use your blog to connect. Use it as you. Don’t ‘network’ or ‘promote.’ Just talk.” (source)

So along those lines, let's talk. Anybody reading this who started a blog before, say, this past Tuesday, has more experience with blogging than I do. What works for you? What else should I have said? What advice do you have for newbie blogger me?

On queries, part 1: what's in a name?

2011-05-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Let's talk queries!

Vicky asked in the comments on my previous post how many queries I get in a day. (Hi, Vicky!) The short answer is that it varies widely: some days I'll get upwards of 100 queries in a 24-hour period, and other days it'll be more like ten. I haven't counted, but from the looks of my inbox I've gotten about 20 or 30 in the past day or so.

It won't surprise anyone to learn that the queries themselves vary tremendously in terms of quality. After almost six years (!!!) of reading submissions, I can usually tell in less than a minute whether something is worth a closer look. What IS interesting is that the higher-quality stuff seems to come in waves: I go several weeks sometimes without requesting a full manuscript, and then a day arrives when I'll get three or four or five really terrific looking projects. It never rains, etc.

So let's talk a little bit about what makes a good query. There's a lot to say on the subject, so I'm planning to spread this out over a number of posts.

Let's start with the very first thing I notice: the salutation.

Did the author address me by name? (I prefer "Dear Ms. Miller-Callihan" for the initial query, though I'm considerably less formal in my day-to-day interactions with clients I've signed. And if there's no salutation at all, I've been known to delete the email without responding, if it doesn't immediately wow me.)

Did they spell my name right? (This sounds very petty, but wouldn't YOU want someone to spell your name correctly?)

Did they even GET my name right? (I think this is a mail-merge problem, but once a month or so I'll get a query that's addressed to another literary agent, someone that's not even part of my agency.)

I'm under no illusions that my name is easy to spell. Think of it like the SATs: there are points awarded just for that.

hello out there

2011-05-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hi there.

My name is Courtney Miller-Callihan.

I'm a literary agent with Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc., in New York.

My agency webpage can be found here.

And now I have a blog!

So what would you like to know?