Monday, July 7, 2008

Submissions

I don't have the camera hookup on hand so I can't upload my pictures from Wyoming. Nevermind. I'll blog about that later.

Meanwhile today, I've been doing agent submissions. It's hard to overstate how much I hate these. They take hours, they require serious attention to detail, and the result from 90% of them will be a form rejection letter. Yet, it's an essential part of working as a writer. Today, the car is still not all the way unpacked, there are suitcases on the floor, the house needs to be cleaned, and the yard desperately needs to be weeded. I've been up and working since 7am, and only just got back from the post office. And that was for a whopping 9 submissions - a piddly number. Each agency has their own requirements and their own forms to follow.

These subs aren't likely to lead anywhere much. This is for my second LDS novel, which Covenant just passed on because they found the protagonist too young. So this also means I need to get another novel written for them ASAP - ideally I'd like one coming out every year; it's important to keep ones name out there.

I think it very unlikely that any agent will be interested in one of my LDS novels, especially at this stage of my career, but it'd be silly of me not to send my work around to them. When I expect to get extremely miserable is when I do agent submissions for my young adult SF novel at the end of the month. Those'll have me blubbering in the corner, I'm sure. I'll have to do a million of those. One of my friends had to do forty-five submissions to land an agent, and she is a brilliant writer, way more brilliant than I am. Each query packet reduces your confidence in your writing by about 30%. You discover new depths of humility with each new one, but given the way limits work, by the time you're self confidence is almost gone, each additional 30% doesn't hurt so bad.

5 comments:

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  3. Yes, well, you don't appreciate it as much if it comes easy.

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  4. I'm okay with people thinking I'm unappreciative. Really.

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