Hey guys!
Just wanted to wish everyone a VERY Merry Christmas!
And remember: "The best gifts in life will never be found under a Christmas tree! Those gifts are friends, family, kids and the one you love!!!"
I hope you are all enjoying special time with family and friends!
Happy Holidays! :)
X <3 O
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Ouch...that one hurt....
Hey guys,
So unfortunately this afternoon I got a form rejection from the agent that had my full manuscript. I feel....a lot of emotions actually. I know that you have to have REALLY thick-skin when you go out there and try to get into the publishing world....but that doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt, you know? Though I'm sure he's understandably VERY busy with reading a lot of manuscripts, I sort of wish he'd said a little bit more than the form rejection...like, not even what he specifically didn't like necessarily, but just a little bit more than I'm a "fine storyteller" but they just didn't fall in love with it enough to represent it, you know? Now my mind is like spinning; is that the nice way of saying my writing isn't good enough? Is my story all together actually just bad? Should I completely revise my story? No one else has requested it, does my query letter stink? And the list goes on and on.
I still want to thank all of you for supporting me though. As down as I feel right now (he only sent the email like an hour ago), I'm not going to give up in getting this book published; I still have a lot of agents I haven't heard back from (although they basically have the same query letter the other agents got, so I don't know how much hope I have in this query letter anymore). I really believe in this book, and I just can't let it go so easily! Hopefully I'm not deluding myself into believing that this book is publishable....
Back to the drawing board I guess...well, sort of...
X <3 O
So unfortunately this afternoon I got a form rejection from the agent that had my full manuscript. I feel....a lot of emotions actually. I know that you have to have REALLY thick-skin when you go out there and try to get into the publishing world....but that doesn't mean it still doesn't hurt, you know? Though I'm sure he's understandably VERY busy with reading a lot of manuscripts, I sort of wish he'd said a little bit more than the form rejection...like, not even what he specifically didn't like necessarily, but just a little bit more than I'm a "fine storyteller" but they just didn't fall in love with it enough to represent it, you know? Now my mind is like spinning; is that the nice way of saying my writing isn't good enough? Is my story all together actually just bad? Should I completely revise my story? No one else has requested it, does my query letter stink? And the list goes on and on.
I still want to thank all of you for supporting me though. As down as I feel right now (he only sent the email like an hour ago), I'm not going to give up in getting this book published; I still have a lot of agents I haven't heard back from (although they basically have the same query letter the other agents got, so I don't know how much hope I have in this query letter anymore). I really believe in this book, and I just can't let it go so easily! Hopefully I'm not deluding myself into believing that this book is publishable....
Back to the drawing board I guess...well, sort of...
X <3 O
Saturday, December 10, 2011
I feel like the Jeopardy song should be playing in the background
And the waiting game continues....
It's so hard to wait patiently; you just want to know whether or not the agents like your work, or even want to look at it! Querying has definitely taken my patience to a whole new level. I think the hardest part is that of the nine queries I have out right now, only four agents will definitely respond within their respective time periods; the other five will only respond if they're interested. And also, it's hard because a few of the agents got back to me right away, so when some of them don't respond right away (probably because they're understandably busy), even though they haven't gone beyond their stated response time, I automatically think "Oh my goodness they probably hate it and rejected me already and I just don't know it!" Needless to say, I still check my email everyday, multiple times a day!
But I love when I'm able to do things that get my mind of the querying process (besides school and homework of course). Yesterday I started tutoring a young boy named Omarion, who is a fourth grader at an inner city charter school in a town nearby my college. It's through a tutoring program that one of my friends started this year, and even though I just started yesterday I'm really excited to continue doing it next semester! It was his first day at the program as well, so I think we're a perfect tutor-student match for each other! He's really sweet and polite, so I was so happy to help him with multiplication yesterday (he didn't have any homework, so we just went over his 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 times tables for an hour since he said he had the most difficulty with those). I've tutored before in high school (both kids around his age and high school students), so it felt really good to be able to get back into it! :D
Oh, and you know how I was stressing out about re-reading my manuscript one more time? Well I did last weekend. Granted I only took two days to go through it (literally 14 hours each day; that's like ALL that I did Sunday and Monday), I found SO MANY silly mistakes!!!!! So as soon as I was done on Monday (well, more like early Tuesday morning), I sent it to the agent who had requested my full manuscript only a week previously (which is another reason why I wanted to send it too him sooner rather than later, in case he'd already started reading the old copy or was about to); and I was honest with him (just basically saying I found stupid mistakes that I just couldn't expect him to read through...). He didn't respond to the email, so hopefully he got it, and hopefully he'll look at the new manuscript....and I didn't change the plot at all when I edited, it was just the sentence phrasing, spelling, things like that (though I'm sure it's not "perfect" in that a few errors throughout a 300+ page manuscript is probably inevitable).
But yeah, at first I wasn't going to because I saw someone ask a similar question about re-sending a manuscript to an agent if you find mistakes, and everyone (being like 4 people) was telling him not to (granted this person only had a few mistakes in the last few chapters, whereas mine were throughout!). So I didn't; but then something told me to look it up again to see what other people thought, and I found an actual agency who answered this question, basically saying that I should do whatever I feel is right (since it's obviously eating away at me for a reason, and you don't want to regret not at least trying if the agent were to turn down your work, you know?). So that was enough of a push for me to resubmit my manuscript, so fingers crossed he accepts it and he likes it! :)
And I thought it'd be fun to give you guys a little "query update" at the end of my posts whenever I can, so here's the first one!
Query update:
Full Requests (that are currently out): 1
Partial Requests (that are currently out): 0
Rejections: 5
Responses (that I'm currently waiting for): 9
X <3 O
It's so hard to wait patiently; you just want to know whether or not the agents like your work, or even want to look at it! Querying has definitely taken my patience to a whole new level. I think the hardest part is that of the nine queries I have out right now, only four agents will definitely respond within their respective time periods; the other five will only respond if they're interested. And also, it's hard because a few of the agents got back to me right away, so when some of them don't respond right away (probably because they're understandably busy), even though they haven't gone beyond their stated response time, I automatically think "Oh my goodness they probably hate it and rejected me already and I just don't know it!" Needless to say, I still check my email everyday, multiple times a day!
But I love when I'm able to do things that get my mind of the querying process (besides school and homework of course). Yesterday I started tutoring a young boy named Omarion, who is a fourth grader at an inner city charter school in a town nearby my college. It's through a tutoring program that one of my friends started this year, and even though I just started yesterday I'm really excited to continue doing it next semester! It was his first day at the program as well, so I think we're a perfect tutor-student match for each other! He's really sweet and polite, so I was so happy to help him with multiplication yesterday (he didn't have any homework, so we just went over his 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 times tables for an hour since he said he had the most difficulty with those). I've tutored before in high school (both kids around his age and high school students), so it felt really good to be able to get back into it! :D
Oh, and you know how I was stressing out about re-reading my manuscript one more time? Well I did last weekend. Granted I only took two days to go through it (literally 14 hours each day; that's like ALL that I did Sunday and Monday), I found SO MANY silly mistakes!!!!! So as soon as I was done on Monday (well, more like early Tuesday morning), I sent it to the agent who had requested my full manuscript only a week previously (which is another reason why I wanted to send it too him sooner rather than later, in case he'd already started reading the old copy or was about to); and I was honest with him (just basically saying I found stupid mistakes that I just couldn't expect him to read through...). He didn't respond to the email, so hopefully he got it, and hopefully he'll look at the new manuscript....and I didn't change the plot at all when I edited, it was just the sentence phrasing, spelling, things like that (though I'm sure it's not "perfect" in that a few errors throughout a 300+ page manuscript is probably inevitable).
But yeah, at first I wasn't going to because I saw someone ask a similar question about re-sending a manuscript to an agent if you find mistakes, and everyone (being like 4 people) was telling him not to (granted this person only had a few mistakes in the last few chapters, whereas mine were throughout!). So I didn't; but then something told me to look it up again to see what other people thought, and I found an actual agency who answered this question, basically saying that I should do whatever I feel is right (since it's obviously eating away at me for a reason, and you don't want to regret not at least trying if the agent were to turn down your work, you know?). So that was enough of a push for me to resubmit my manuscript, so fingers crossed he accepts it and he likes it! :)
And I thought it'd be fun to give you guys a little "query update" at the end of my posts whenever I can, so here's the first one!
Query update:
Full Requests (that are currently out): 1
Partial Requests (that are currently out): 0
Rejections: 5
Responses (that I'm currently waiting for): 9
X <3 O
Thursday, December 1, 2011
December = No Mo' NaNoWriMo!!!! :/
Hey guys!
So we are officially in the month of December...which for writers means that National Novel Writing Month is officially over! Did anyone participate in NaNoWriMo? If you did, did you finish 50,000 words on time? I really wanted to participate this year, but I didn't have time too... hopefully next year I will though!!!
Now that it's December, I'm starting to get scared. Scared because (1) in a couple weeks most of the agents I queried should be getting back to me, (2) because December starts the flood of NaNo-querying to agents, and (3) I don't know if I could handle trying not wait until February (when the flood settles down) to query anyone else (although I may have to; I don't want to be lost in the sea of NaNo'ers).
But then again my overall feelings are mixed; because I'm happy to be taking that initiative in trying to find an agent, and yet I'm nervous for when I get ANY news, and I'm also nervous because that one agent has my manuscript (which I probably why I'm stressing over going through my manuscript again... Do I want to because I know it will most likely benefit me in the future? Yes. But will I be kicking myself in the butt if I find a lot of things to edit since I already sent to one of my top agents? You betcha!)
But yeah, I haven't gotten any updates from any agents in the past few days; but I'll make sure you guys are the first ones to know when I do!
Oh, and something else REALLY awesome that happened this week that I haven't told you about: I met THE John Irving! After listening to him read a scene from his new book coming out next year (In One Person), he signed my A Prayer for Owen Meany (one of my FAVORITE books) afterwards!!! I'm really shy and I was SO nervous about meeting him, so I didn't have a conversation with him like most of the people in line did ... I didn't know what to say! I just asked him how he was, and he said "good;" then he signed my book and gave it to me and I said "thank you so much!" and then I left. Pretty boring, I know; but it was still really cool and I'm just proud of myself for even going in the first place because I am so shy (and he's such an phenomenal writer!).
Hope you all are having a just as AMAZING week as I am having! And remember....TOMORROW'S FRIDAY!!!!!! :D
X <3 O
So we are officially in the month of December...which for writers means that National Novel Writing Month is officially over! Did anyone participate in NaNoWriMo? If you did, did you finish 50,000 words on time? I really wanted to participate this year, but I didn't have time too... hopefully next year I will though!!!
Now that it's December, I'm starting to get scared. Scared because (1) in a couple weeks most of the agents I queried should be getting back to me, (2) because December starts the flood of NaNo-querying to agents, and (3) I don't know if I could handle trying not wait until February (when the flood settles down) to query anyone else (although I may have to; I don't want to be lost in the sea of NaNo'ers).
But then again my overall feelings are mixed; because I'm happy to be taking that initiative in trying to find an agent, and yet I'm nervous for when I get ANY news, and I'm also nervous because that one agent has my manuscript (which I probably why I'm stressing over going through my manuscript again... Do I want to because I know it will most likely benefit me in the future? Yes. But will I be kicking myself in the butt if I find a lot of things to edit since I already sent to one of my top agents? You betcha!)
But yeah, I haven't gotten any updates from any agents in the past few days; but I'll make sure you guys are the first ones to know when I do!
Oh, and something else REALLY awesome that happened this week that I haven't told you about: I met THE John Irving! After listening to him read a scene from his new book coming out next year (In One Person), he signed my A Prayer for Owen Meany (one of my FAVORITE books) afterwards!!! I'm really shy and I was SO nervous about meeting him, so I didn't have a conversation with him like most of the people in line did ... I didn't know what to say! I just asked him how he was, and he said "good;" then he signed my book and gave it to me and I said "thank you so much!" and then I left. Pretty boring, I know; but it was still really cool and I'm just proud of myself for even going in the first place because I am so shy (and he's such an phenomenal writer!).
Hope you all are having a just as AMAZING week as I am having! And remember....TOMORROW'S FRIDAY!!!!!! :D
X <3 O
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