Saturday, May 7, 2011

File it Under “Whoops”


I made a lot of mistakes when I queried my first novel (you’ll notice that I never drew interest in it; there’s a reason). A lot of it was inexperience, along with a dash of ignorance. I didn’t know how to write a query well (okay, whether I can do it now is still up for debate), I didn’t understand what really went into a novel, and I thought my idea was AWESOME. Needless to say, it was not.

I wish I could find an old copy of that query to post on here as a warning. But I’ll have to settle with telling you of my journey from that to…wherever I am now (I’m honestly not quite sure : ).

When I first tried to write a query, I pretty much typed “query” in a search engine and looked at the result. I’m probably lucky that AgentQuery is so far up the search list. While its advice didn’t exactly leave me with an unputdownable letter, it did help. More importantly, it gave me a list of agents, many of whom were online with their own query advice.

But that was only the first step. I also learned a lot from all the bloggers I’ve met here. There have been query contests, query critiques, and nice people willing to tell me why my letter doesn’t work.

This is where I am now. Does that mean this is the end? Far from it! There’s still a long way to go, but thankfully, there are many other tools to get me there. There are conferences, critique sites, and many other people and places to learn from. The journey to that place where your query is accepted? It never ends.

6 comments:

  1. So true but it can be a good journey filled with great people. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. As someone who has been lucky enough to be published, I just want you to know that what drove me was the fear of regret.
    Keep at it! Dream big and then go get it!

    -Jimmy

    ReplyDelete
  3. The one thing I love about the writing community is that they are always supportive and willing to help. It is a long journey, but so worth it in the end.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah ,I've learned SO much about writing queries since I began getting them critiqued...and yet I still can't do them very well. LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've come to love the writing community because of how supportive they are. It's a great group to be a part of :) Lol.

    I came really close to querying too soon with my first book. I was pretty young at the time and didn't know much about the writing industry. Luckily, I found a few blog posts about the "horrors" of querying too soon and reconsidered. I'm sure this post will probably help a couple of young writers down the line :)

    ReplyDelete

Please validate me.