Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, animals both domesticated and wild ... hmm, this mud on my blog smells like crap.
I'm sure you've all been refreshing this site, waiting at the edges of your RSS feeders for my tales of the Writer's Digest conference, and wondering when my story will be in your fingers. The wait is over!
Please standby while my ego deflates ...
OK, so the conference wasn't bad. Most of the panels, at least the ones not trying to push their own books, were insightful. During the Pitch Slam, I got the sense many of the agents didn't want to be there--surely after two straight hours of hearing three-minute story pitches, I wouldn't want to be there either--but they all smiled, gave me their full attention, even offered some suggestions on how to improve my story, and most importantly, many wanted me to submit fulls or partials, which is a good sign that they're interested in at least the premise of the story.
This week will be me frantically putting together my queries, tightening my novel's prose, and doing other writerly things so I can have all the submissions out by the end of the week.
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Over the next few weeks, I'd like to put together some of the do's and don'ts I learned at the conference. For starters, something all agents agree is the single most likely reason for rejection, is word count. For instance, Sowen, which is YA fantasy, should be between 45,000 and 70,000 words. Of course, you had the commentators saying, what about Twilight? What about Harry Potter? My story is as good. Fact is, if the word count don't jive with the standards, then agents read no further. Fortunately for Stephenie Meyer, Twilight was picked out by an intern not an agent, and J.K. Rowling can do whatever the hell she wants.
Later Fiends,
Monday, June 1, 2009
The BEA/Writer's Digest Aftermath
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