Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I admit it! I'm addicted to Submitting!

No really, I am. They should have some kind of Submittaholics anonymous. I love submitting to agents, especially by e-mail. I love getting requests for partials and fulls. Even if they get rejected, I like having stuff requested. It's a high.
However, that can get me into trouble. Case in point, I started submitting for Lady Diane before it was even done. Bad idea. The first three chapters were done and polished so I figured, hey, I have a nifty little website that tells me how soon agents reply and what they generally request. So I won't query agents who generally request fulls or reply to partials right away. Worked for a while, was fun to have stuff requested. But I did quite a lot of revising and ended up sending out two partials that were so rough they still had typos in them. (forehead smack) And one was to my very tip top choice. (stomps on own foot.)
So what does that have to do with now? Well, I am done with my slashing of Symbiosis (yes, I went back to the original title:)) and I want to send it out. Before I finished I told myself very firmly that I would finish the slashing, spend a couple of week tightening and re-writing, send it out to a couple of beta reader with a red pen, get results, apply, write a query, spend a week sending it through critique circles, and then start on my rather short re-query list.
So how the *&%$ did I end up with a manila envelope containing a query, synopsis, and five sample pages (not to mention a SASE) sealed and ready to mail out this morning to one of my top choices?!?!?!
(sigh) Silly me. Luckily, I went online and did some blog reading and stumbled on Caitlin's site (no link, sorry) a woman who is represented by the person that manila envelope is addressed to. She mentioned that she spent a full three months revising her manuscript after she got it back from betas. She worked on it till she was sick of looking at it and did not start querying until she knew is was as ready to sell as she could possibly make it.
She also got an agent in 3 1/2 weeks.
That's commitment.
So I did the smart thing; I took that little envelope and put it in my dresser drawer and recommitted myself to the process I originally outlined for my self. It's the whole losing weight thing. I want my pie (requests from agents) now, but if I decide not to eat the pie (wait) then I get much closer to my ultimate goal. (getting skinny/getting an agent/yanno(TM))
Man, I want to send that envelope right now. But I'm not going to. You know why? Because I have a fabulous book and it deserves an agent and then a publisher. But If I send it out naked, it's not going to get either.
So now I am going to start on more revisions. You all have a fabulous day.:)

Ciao!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hold to it aprilynne--mom

Anonymous said...

Never send out querries with typos in them. Uhuh!!! It's like going out on your first date with curlers in your hair. Even in your blog. Check what you wrote, proofread it. Your own QA and QC will tell people a lot about yourself.