Yes, it’s Thursday. For those of you who are paying attention, this is my second Wednesday update to come out on Thursday. So I decided just to call it like it is this time.
Drafting … that is a new term I’ve discovered for writing on my WIP (work in progress). I love it because it is so easy to say. “I’m drafting.” Often non-writer friends and family ask how it’s going with the writing. We who write know that it is always going. Or it should be. Aside from the non-writing evils … see the next paragraph … we should be either writing something new (drafting) or fixing what we wrote (editing). Now, depending on what stage I’m in, or what is most on my mind (because face it we are often doing both), I will simply answer, “I’m drafting” or “I’m editing.” So much easier than describing all the many chores involved with the writing process.
Deep down, I know they really just want to know when I’m going to get published. Which leads me to another word that I wish I didn’t know … Querying. This process begins once you have drafted, then edited many times until you have the best manuscript you can. The query is a letter that goes out blindly to a literary agent where you describe your book and hope to entice them to want to read some or all of it. Then to fall in love with it enough to represent you. Then they do what you just did to try to get a publisher to buy it. It is a grueling numbers game. The agents are inundated with manuscripts and to be the lucky one they want to represent is often just that, luck. Sometimes the luck happens early in the process, but most often it is after quite a lot of rejection.
“I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” – Sylvia Plath
I embrace Sylvia Plath’s quote during this process. One rejection last week, another this week. I’m fortunate that they have all been very generous in their decline to represent. All tell me to keep searching in this subjective field to find the one agent that fits. So here’s to a little luck the next time I open my inbox!
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