Staying Positive

Writers are no strangers to rejection. It’s part of the game. Every contest, only a small percentage of the entries can be chosen. Agents reject something like 99% of queries they receive. Then they reject something like 99% of partial and full manuscripts they receive.* Even after finding an agent, it has to find the […]

The day I understood subjectivity

With a few awesome contests coming up soon,* I want to take a minute to talk about subjectivity. It took me a while to really get it. Everyone says that querying is subjective. That publishing itself is subjective, and that a rejection of the work is not a comment on the writer’s ability, the plot, […]

Killing Time in the Trenches

I’ve got many friends still in the query trenches, experiencing the roller coaster. There are a lot of ups and downs. There’s also a TON of waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. When he started querying, he still had hair. So now, I offer a list of ways to keep from going crazy while waiting for news. […]

After the Call, Part 2

(continued from After the Call, Part 1) So, at the end of my last post, I had two offers, 5 agents reading, and a few days to make a decision. But I was torn, because I knew I’d choose Agent2 even if the other 5 all came back and loved it. I wondered if I […]

After the Call, Part 1

We’ve talked about Getting the Call. What happens next? (I mean, after all the jumping up and down and screaming and dancing and acting like a maniac.) Well, there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen in the week between getting The Call and giving your financial decision. When Agent1 offered, I had one […]