C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

10/05/2010 • 7:08 PM 0

Links for Advice on Pitching Your Book

Adventures in Agentland: the pitch session from the agent’s side of the table.

The Pitch is a Bitch (but don’t fear the query)

And agent Rachelle Gardner asks, are you into writing for the long haul?

How to pitch a pilot or movie (countercultureprodco.com)
Literary agents are flooded with pitches for the next Eat, Pray, Love. (slate.com)
Book Writing Advice for Nerds [Writing] (lifehacker.com)
Another Reason To Nail Your Query Pitch Paragraph (pubrants.blogspot.com)

Filed under: agents, publishing, Rejection, writing tips, pitching, query, querying, writing career

05/13/2010 • 10:52 PM 0

Querying Agents, Blagents and Checking Out Their Blogs

Email has made querying is easier than it used to be (and the same with rejection.) There are still a few ancient agents still murdering trees but generally we’re firing off our missives in pixels and saving stamps. Presumably the agents and editors who insist on snail mail ride to work on horseback. As for the rest, there are numerous agent blogs so you can take their temperatures and read between the snarkiness to divine where they fall on the bonehead/human being/transcendent genius maven index.

They all have two things in common: they complain about getting lousy manuscripts to evaluate (as if we all don’t have aspects of our jobs that suck) and they are all looking for a book to fall in love with. (Maybe yours! Well, not yours, but somebody’s!)

I’m working on an agent query now. It’s a mammoth exercise in second-guessing that goes beyond editing. It’s more like looking for the tiniest excuse for the query letter to be laughed at, denigrated or misconstrued. And then blogged about. (I’m also naked in the paranoid fantasy that ensues and it’s really, really cold.)

We were all happier before the Internet and the wave of agent blogs. We did much the same submission for everybody back then and didn’t see the sausage getting rejected and thrown on the slaughterhouse floor. Now the agent blogs are there for us all to see the sausage not getting made in ugly detail.

BONUS:

Don’t believe me. Go to their blogs and form your own opinions. Best thing? They all have their individual quirks and guidelines laid out somewhere in their blogs. Look it up before submitting. They’re looking for any excuse to say no. Don’t give it to them.

*About the term blagent. It means a blogging agent and no, I cannot recall who coined the term first.

Filed under: agents, publishing, agents, querying, writing

05/10/2010 • 5:04 PM 0

The Writer’s Trial

First they tell you your manuscript sucks, but genially. Form rejection. You chalk it up, along with all the others, as paying your dues just like everyone else.

Your next manuscript is also not for them. Or anyone else. Your family asks what happened to that book you were writing. You mumble and start drinking because that’s what writers do. Now you know why.

Someone tells you rejection is good for you. Someone else says it’s part of the process. You fantasize about murdering these people with ballpoint pens.

Another year passes and you submit again. This time they make fun of it in their agent blog. You question your raison d’etre but somehow you climb in off that ledge. You keep writing because…well, let’s face it, you are otherwise unemployable. You have always self-identified as a writer and if you aren’t that, what are you? (Uh-oh…you shove that dangerous and dim realization back into the dark because that way lies existential oblivion.)

Time passes. You’re grayer. You give up drinking for your health. Somehow you keep writing. The starter wife is out the door. At 20, yours was a romantic aspiration. Past 30 and still nothing? Pathetic. Don’t worry about her. She’ll find a nice safe accountant/lawyer/landowner.

Worry about you. A lot.

Another vampire manuscript is rejected because it’s a vampire novel…or they didn’t read it or they read it but they just graduated from a MFA program so obviously, no way. You’ll never really know.

More time passes. You take up drinking again, this time for your sanity. Your writing group loves your new book–except for the guy who hates everything. But who cares? They aren’t publishers or agents. They’re a bunch of unpublished losers. Just. Like. You.

They want to promote you at the dead end job that was supposed to be temporary…when was that? How many years ago? You turn it down so you can stay focussed on the next manuscript which doesn’t seem to have a thrid act. Or a second. Or maybe it’s the alcohol on top of the pills.

You send in the first manuscript to the first place by accident. (You’re forgiven a clerical error. After all, you’ve sent out a ton of these over a long time. And vodka may have been involved. You’re doing better though. You don’t have a problem as long as you don’t start drinking before noon.)

Surprise! Somebody thinks you’re a genius! (Same bonehead who turned you down as laughable years ago.) Now they want to publish all your manuscripts.

Huh.

ALTERNATE ENDING:

Publishing? That’s so over. You build a website and give your stories away and maybe sell some t-shirts. Now you start the day with lots of vodka. You can take that promotion now.

Finally your life is on track. Finally, you’re happy. You gave up. You’re free.