Rejections

I have noticed some things about my rejections.

So far, I have only queried via e-mail. I have a response in about half the queries I have sent, and all of those came within two business days of being sent. Regardless of what the agent says on their website, I now assume that if I don't hear back within three business days, I won't hear back at all.

But judging from the responses, I noticed something else. None of them turned me down because the writing was bad or the plot was dreadful or the narrative made no sense.

One said, "Unfortunately you've caught me at a time when the demands of my current clients leave me with very little time to devote to developing new talent." Another said, "Due to the high quantity of query letters I receive, I must be highly selective in requesting further materials to read. Unfortunately, I¹m afraid I must decline on this project right now, but I do want to encourage you to continue submitting."

I am not getting responses that say that I or my writing is crap.

Perhaps people are just being polite. After all, half the agents don't respond at all. But I'd like to think that the value of my work is getting some consideration and that it does have some value. There are countless reasons to reject someone's work other than its writing.

So, keep the faith. I know I am.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Writer's Digest

I love Writer's Digest. I just love it. There are always so many helpful articles and it never fails to encourage me and my writing.

I saw a blurb on the cover and I immediately turned to the article and read it. As a result, I am modifying an area of my query letter that I fear can easily lead to rejection letters. And so far, I have gotten enough of those. I am sure more will come but in the end I will find an agent and get my work published.

Publishing is a hard business to crack but with some talent and lots of determination I am sure it can be done.

And so I must get back to writing. And you should too.

More computer woes

I had intended to blog today about meeting a fellow author over the weekend but computer woes still top my agenda.

I was able to boot up last night and, before all the icons disappeared, was able to call up all of my mystery novel. Then I printed it out, using up most of my computer paper. (I need to go to Staples tomorrow and get computer paper, more black ink and some legal pads. As a working journalist, I take notes on legal pads.) But I have a copy.

I plan to take my laptop tomorrow to a techie guy that was suggested to me by the editor of the business newspaper I freelance for. He said he can probably fix it and get the material off the hard drive. Happy to hear that. Since last Friday, I have been writing the novel directly into my yahoo account. Later I will merge what I have recently written with the material from the hard drive.

I have a friend in New York, bless his heart, who said I should get a Mac. That's not surprising since he has almost always used an Apple and currently works for Apple. He makes a good argument. He has always been a man of sound judgment.

But, as usual, I will probably not take his advice. And, as usual, I will suffer for it.

I hate being so predictable.

On to being a writer . . .

I haven't gotten any rejections lately. But I haven't gotten an agent yet, either. There are still a couple of queries out but I guess I need to step up sending out queries. I know there is an agent out there waiting for me to find them. I just wish they'd be a little more helpful in being found.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading and don't give up on writing.

BACK UP YOUR WORK!

Hey. I have been gone for a couple of days because I am an idiot. I hadn't adequately done what I always tell people to do. BACK UP YOUR WORK!

I was working on my mystery novel late Wednesday night when I noticed something was wrong with my laptop. I minimized my text and saw that all the icons were gone. And since I had just minimized my text, so was what I was working on. It was gone and I had no way of getting it back.

I do have a memory stick that I back up work on and my goal is always to save material on it at least once a week. But I hadn't used it in at least two weeks. So anything from the hard drive from the last two weeks wasn't backed up.

I have all of the first draft of my first novel, "Fighting Chaos," backed up, as well as later versions. It is all there.
But between 6,000 to 9,000 words of the mystery novel, "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal" (a working title, of course), are not.

Apparently, the virus on my laptop makes it virtually impossible for me to fully boot up __ icons come and go __ but it doesn't appear that text is damaged. That is my hope. And on Thursday I might have gotten the latest version of the novel backed up. I'm just not sure yet. If so, I now have all of "Death" that I had done so far.

The computer tech guy who looked at my laptop says it will probably be nearly as cheap to buy a new laptop as to repair the four-year-old computer I have. But he thinks he can recover the data on the hard drive.

My wife says we can't afford a new laptop now and will have to wait at least until next month. So I guess I will be doing a lot of writing in long-hand. I just hate the idea of having to type in all that copy later.

So the lesson here, my friends, is two-fold. Always have the latest version on virus software that you can get and ALWAYS back up your work. It will save you headaches, if nothing else, in the end.

Next week I plan to discuss meeting a guy who just had his first novel published. He was on a book tour and I met him at an event at a bookstore. And also I plan to talk about independent bookstores.

But for now, thanks for reading and don't give up on writing. (And back everything up.)

Borders

I was feeling sorry for myself today.

I took an online survey that Borders sent to me __ they promised it would only take 15 minutes and it took nearly 40. But I also got a 20 percent off coupon __ and it listed a couple dozen authors and asked what, as a reader, I thought about each. I hadn’t even heard of some of them.

But the common thread, of course, was that they are published and ae currently in bookstores. One book on addiction was nearly exactly the book I intended to tackle in the future, probably next year. (More on the reason why at another time.)

And once again I felt the weight of the challenge before me __ the challenge of getting published. Sometimes it feels like a burden I will never overcome.

But I noticed I got a comment from a blog posting from earlier this week and I felt better. And now, for the first time today, I have time to work on my next second novel, the murder mystery. I found both of those encouraging.

So this is the path I have chosen. That is to write fiction and to get published, and hopefully to make a living at it. I just have to have faith and keep at it. And so must you.

Thanks for reading and be encouraged. And keep writing!

A visit to a post office

I was talking over the weekend to a very good friend who lives in rural backwater Virginia, a half hour’s drive from Charlottesville. Rachel and her husband Colin (not their real names, of course) have one of the nicest homes of any of our friends. Their house sits on a plateau at the base of a mountain and looks out over a mountain range in the distance. It’s beautiful and serene and I love being there because I always feel at peace. We may take the children there for spring break this year.

I met Rachel (still not her real name) while I was in college, so we have known each other for years. For more than 20 years she worked as a reporter and then as an editor at one of the top newspapers in the country before she and hubby moved to Virginia. She is a wonderful writer and perhaps the most well-read person I know. But she does not read John Grisham. She thinks little of his writing.

So it was a bit ironic last Friday when she went to her post office in rural backwater Virginia to pick up her mail and bumped into Grisham who was there picking up his mail. (I wondered whether he was there to pick up royalty checks from his latest novel, “The Appeal,” which, as it turns out, isn’t destined to be one of my favorites.) Recognizing him, she said hello. Then she recognized that he wouldn’t recognize her because he is a celeb and she isn’t. But he was polite nonetheless.

What she did not do was go “hack, hack, hack” as she pretended to cough as Colin (still not his real name) suggested she should have done. She also didn’t wrestle him to the ground and badger him about her having a longtime friend (me) who had just finished his first novel called “Fighting Chaos” and needed an agent. That's what I wished she had done.

But since she didn’t, I guess when we next go visit Rachel and Colin, I will just have to hang out at the local post office all the time. Just my luck, I’d probably see Mary Chapin Carpenter instead. She also lives in the area.

Thanks for reading and don’t give up on writing.

Feeling sad

I was feeling a little down this evening. I was at the bookstore __ I love bookstores, by the way. I go to the bookstore several times a week, even if I'm not going to buy something __ and noticed a nice black-covered book with a gold statute (did I spell that correctly?) on it. It was a murder mystery around the Oscars. Quite timely, don't you think?

It was interesting and I picked it up and read some of it while I sat in the coffee shop. Ultimately I didn't buy it, although I think I will in a week or so. But it was by a first-time author and it looked good and was interesting. And I thought, why can't that happen to me?

I wrote a nice book. It seems readable. Saleable. Why can't it be in bookstores?

I don't know how long it took for the author to get published but the ordeal of getting an agent and then getting published is a pain in the ass, it seems to me. I wish it were all done and then I could concentrate more heavily on my second novel. (I'm still thinking the novel starts too slowly but the important thing now is to get it all on paper and fix that later, if I still think it needs it.)

But, like I said a month ago, I think this is going to be my year. January is gone but it is only the first month. Things are going to look up. I just need to stay positive, work hard and be ready for whatever comes.

So, I have to get back to work. And you should, too. Write!