Update for April
March has been a month of significant change for me, opportunity, breakthrough, and epiphany stepping on the heels of other opportunities, breakthroughs, and epiphanies come only days before, and that’s what I’m going to talk about in this update.
I’ve come a long way since I started writing with my eye toward publication, and even farther since I began writing full time. I look back at some of my early novel attempts with a crooked smile, wondering how I could have managed to get from there to here. My writing has improved immeasurably, and I have more control over what and how I write than I’ve ever had before. I have more objectivity when I look at my writing, and when I revise it. I’m barely even the same writer I was when I decided I wanted to be published someday.
Back in August of last year, when I made the shift to writing as a 9 to 5 job (or more frequently, a 4am to 8pm job) instead of writing as a hobby, I made the decision to abandon my 140,000 word first novel, an epic fantasy, which I had been agonizing over for nearly a year. I still have a special place in my heart for that novel, hope to rewrite it someday from the ground up, but it didn’t work, and I knew it didn’t work.
A week into writing full-time (before I abandoned work on rewriting the epic), I felt like I was a lost cause as a writer, and I’d been fooling myself to ever think otherwise. But then, one morning while lamenting my woes in a writer’s chatroom, another writer I greatly respected encouraged me to put the project aside for a while and work on Incubus, which at the time was little more than a vignette of the main character plus two failed short stories featuring her that wanted to come together to become a novel.
I felt reluctant to do as she suggested because I had firstnovelitis over the epic fantasy. I’d invested so much of myself in it, and I hated the idea of casting it aside as if the time I’d put into it had no value. Facts were facts though; the epic didn’t work and couldn’t work without being rewritten from the beginning. Nothing I could have done would have changed that. I wasn’t sure at the time what Incubus could become, but even I could see if I wanted to succeed at writing full time, I needed something to work on besides the epic. I compiled my notes for Incubus, reread the material I’d already written, and hastily scribbled out a loose outline for the novel so I could start writing and make my word count goal for the day.
I didn’t have an ending for Incubus when I started it. I didn’t think I’d get to the end before I was clear-headed enough to go back to the epic. But I knew what was eating at the protagonist the most, knew what haunted her and figured those ghosts would come into the ending somehow. I worked on it every day, and slowly it grew.
I started Incubus on August 8th. A week or so later, I was at around 20,000 words and trying to decide whether I was ready to go back to the epic. A couple of my writer friends asked if they could see the starting chapters for Incubus, so I sent them off in an email.
They loved the book and demanded I continue. They never let up asking for the next chapter until I finished the book on October 8th, in two months of writing time. I owe Incubus to their encouragement.
I spent the month of October revising Incubus and playing with my ideas for a sequel, wrote around 40,000 words of it. By November, I’d revised Incubus to the best of my ability at the time. I continued work on the sequel and also worked on another unrelated book. My writing friends demanded I start querying agents, so I queried two agents, as much to satisfy my friends as anything. I didn’t feel confident. I was mostly testing the waters.
Two weeks later, I received a form rejection from one agent and a form rejection with a handwritten note attached from the other. The second agent had liked my query, had thought Incubus sounded edgy and original, but too dark for her–and I could see that when I looked over her client list again. Urban fantasy agents seem to come in several varieties, and her clients leaned heavily on the lighter, paranormal romance end of the spectrum, while Incubus, despite containing a strong romance subplot, tipped a great deal more toward the dark side.
Two rejections, but that note bolstered my confidence a great deal. It encouraged me to be brave, look past her rejection, and query agents who handled darker fiction. I took her advice to heart and looked more carefully when I chose two more agents to submit to in mid-November. Two weeks later, I again held in my hands two rejections. And again, I had one form letter, and one personalized response. This time the agent who almost like my work explained that she thought my idea sounded intriguing and might have a lot of potential, but her client list was already far longer than she felt she could handle. She still read her queries, but she really wasn’t looking for new authors, only established ones. She recommended I try querying some newer agents, or those who had recently moved from one agency to another because she thought if the book lived up to its potential, I could find someone who had time to invest in an unpublished author.
I did as she suggested, this time sending to two relatively new agents who openly admitted they were still building their lists. I should qualify this by saying I did my homework to make certain they both had some track record of sales to the larger publishing houses in my genre, so neither were entirely new.
During this time, near the end of the year, I did two things. I submitted a much shorter version of my query hook to Miss Snark’s Crap-o-Meter, and I stopped work on the sequel to Incubus long enough to reread the first book again from beginning to end.
In the time between the day I’d finished Incubus and the end of the year, I’d continued to write full time. I had completed a large part of two more novels, finished about a half a dozen new short stories and had a few others in progress. In short, I’d continued to write as much as I could. Also, I read as much as I could, in many genres, as well as reading as many writing guides as I could fit in.
When my number came up in the Crap-o-Meter, Miss Snark didn’t care for my query. She thought the language was too strong–and it was strong. I’d used profanity because it had seemed appropriate to get across a point and to help demonstrate the voice of the novel. Miss Snark didn’t think it worked. I wasn’t sure. I’d had a 50% near-miss rate and didn’t have enough experience to know if that was good or not. Half the agents almost liked the query, liked it enough to spend some of their valuable time responding, but I didn’t know what that meant.
Between that and rereading the manuscript, I decided once I received my rejections, I’d stop querying to revise again, and I’d seriously consider writing a new query letter once I’d finished the latest revision. I had more emotional distance from the book now that a couple months had passed, and I felt like I could make some improvements. Plus, I felt all that intervening time at the keyboard had pushed my writing to a new level of quality.
But then, mid-to-end January, I received the two responses. They had taken longer, perhaps because of the holidays, but when they came, I again had a form rejection and a personalized response. Only this time, the personalized response was NOT a rejection but instead a request for the partial. I was ecstatic, and terrified.
I’d already decided at that point to start revising again. I’d only just finished making notes on the manuscript, getting the opinions of a few of my readers, and reading a couple of often-recommended books about the revision process, but I hadn’t even started yet.
In a single crazy week, I hastily revised the partial to the best of my ability and mailed it off. Again, I wasn’t confident. Don’t’ get me wrong. I love my book. I love the characters, and I feel passionate about the story. I know the story is good. But I also know there are tons of great writers out there, and the odds of finding an agent and publication aren’t good.
I continued to work on the revision while I waited for a response from the agent with the partial, but I expected rejection. I focused the bulk of my efforts on creating, polishing, and submitting short stories in hopes that a few publication credits might give me an edge later in the game. I also worked on my unrelated urban fantasy novel, thinking it would be nice to have two projects to query for.
I was taken by complete surprise when the agent emailed me to ask for the full. I wasn’t ready.
Sure, I’d thought my book was ready when I had started querying. I wouldn’t have queried at all if I hadn’t felt the book was finished and deserved a publisher.
But in the five months between when I’d completed the novel and when I received my first request for the full manuscript, I’d learned a lot. I believed I could do a better job on certain portions of the book.
I spent 24 hours agonizing over what to do with my opportunity. The agent had already seen a large chunk of pages and liked them enough to ask for more. She had, in fact, seen the chapters which I had the least confidence in. Nevertheless, I felt if I sent her the manuscript as it stood at the time, then she’d almost certainly reject me. I could see flaws in the story and in the writing that I hadn’t noticed back in October. All the same, I didn’t want her to think I was unprofessional or that I’d queried on an unfinished book or a book that I didn’t feel was ready. (I did think it was ready at the time I’d first started querying. Only time changed my opinion.)
Finally, I decided to email the agent and ask if I could revise again before submitting the full.
She sent back a very nice email saying I should take my time and send her the revised version when I’d finished.
Today, three weeks have passed since I received that email, and I have not yet completed my revision. I worry I am going too slow, but at the same time, I can see such a dramatic improvement in my work that I feel helpless to do anything other than carry on. I can see now that I don’t want my name on that old version of Incubus, anymore. The new words are so much better. The characters and story haven’t changed at all, but the new book shines in a way that the old one never could have. I have a level of confidence in these revised chapters that I never realized I could ever have in the book, or even in my writing.
I certainly expect there will be more revisions if Incubus finds an agent, and even more if it finds a publisher and editor. I’m not foolish enough to think this will be my last rewrite. That said, I have to finish this particular rewrite before I submit the full. I hope, desperately hope, I’m not squandering this opportunity by my taking the time I need to take. Worse, I worry because in a bizarre twist of synchronicity Miss Snark posted today about rejecting potential clients who take too long to respond to her emails. I know I’m making the best choice for the book, but I’m filled with dread that taking time for this revision may reflect badly on me as a potential client.
I hope the agent was sincere when she said to take my time.
But even if I lose this opportunity because she expected my manuscript sooner than I can provide it to her, I’ll know I’ve done the right thing.
I love this book enough that I want it to be the very best it can be.
Perhaps that is the biggest epiphany I’ve had of all. During these revisions, I’ve found a confidence in my writing to know I will find an agent, even if I lose this opportunity because it turns out I’ve queried too soon (And I sincerely hope not. There are things I’ve learned about this agent that make me ambitious to work with her further.) I feel nearly as confident Incubus will find an enthusiastic publisher.
And as much as I say I’m going slow, in the grand scheme of writing, I’m not. It’s only the volume of revision and improvement that makes it seem that way. If I could maintain this speed, and I think I can, I could continue to write a book every couple months. Or at least, two or three books a year and a half to a dozen short stories. Knowing this makes me feel as if I’ve found my footing as a professional. Also, I feel as if I’ve developed the ability to look at my writing objectively and see when it works, when it doesn’t, and when I can do better.
It’s a great feeling.
Here’s to hoping I can hold onto this feeling and continue to grow as a writer as much as I’ve grown in the last six months.