"Why don't you read the full, if it looks so good?" I asked, drooling at the prospect of something kicka$$ soon to cross my desk.
"Oh, he hasn't finished the book yet." She replied.
Me:
Y'all finish your books before getting our hopes all up and stuff! This goes for all fiction and for memoirs. Finish the book, let it sit a couple days, edit it, have beta readers read it, and take their suggestions to heart. Let it sit a couple more days, do one last pass, THEN send.
If that seems like a lot of work, consider the competition. There are authors out there that are doing that, and they get signed. And then they go out on submission faster because they've done work on the book. And then your agent feels happy because they didn't have to re-write the book for you.
I'm going to do my job: find editors that will want this book and sell the crap out of it. Hell, I like editing, so we'll do some of that too. But don't you cop out on your job. You should be of the (honest, corroborated) opinion that your book is ready to sell THE DAY you query it. Get used to editing. You'll do a lot of it.
Just a note, nonfiction can be pitched and sold on proposal and a sample chapter. So that's a different case. Nonfiction authors do their pre-query work on the platform side.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: find and finish reading THE book of THE author whose crazy-magic way with words makes the clouds part and inspires you to up your game BEFORE you send the requested full out to the agent you'd love to work with, so you won't have a thousand little "Man, I SO wish I'd have..."-s with every passing second.
ReplyDelete(Probably not make it or break it things, but you know us obsess-over-everything writer-types.)
Yep, even after betas and 302 re-reads, that just happened to me, sadly not in the right order, so I'm stuck with the "man I wish"-es and crossed fingers. (But I'm happy, nonetheless, to have found an author who inspires the heck out of me).
So let me get this straight....you're saying I should finish my book before I query it?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thinkyourwaytowealth.com/2008/10/01/funny-but-true-snl-dont-buy-stuff-you-cannot-afford/
Of course!
ReplyDeleteAlex...yes. And also no more business links, please.
ReplyDelete"Oh, yeah, one more thing: find and finish reading THE book of THE author whose crazy-magic way with words makes the clouds part and inspires you to up your game BEFORE you send the requested full out to the agent you'd love to work with, so you won't have a thousand little "Man, I SO wish I'd have..."-s with every passing second."
ReplyDeleteMy approach is to save these new ideas for the sequel, or a new book. But that may just be where I'm coming from. See, I have a bad habit of preparing forever: tinkering and fiddling with something until it's absolutely perfect. However, since there is no concrete "perfect" in literature, this often winds up as tinkering and tinkering and tinkering and never getting around to actually having a finished project. At some point, you wind up with diminishing returns for all these edits, and that's the point at which you have to pack the book up, send it out, and save the rest for your next book.
-LupLun
Shooting for the Moon
@LupLun Yeah, often those overflow ideas do belong in the sequel! All we agents ask is that whatever you decide for that book you're querying, make it finished and polished!
ReplyDeleteYeah sorry about that Meredith, I know not to query with a half bagged MS. I was going with very dry humor.
ReplyDeleteThe link explained the humor. It is an SNL skit from 2006 poking fun at america's credit card debt issue.
This is a portion of the script for the infomercial based skit. A husband (Steve Martin) and wife (Amy Poehler) are sitting at the kitchen table with their bill woes.
Wife: Ok, so what if I want something but I don’t have any money?
Announcer: You don’t buy it.
Husband: Well let’s say I don’t have enough money to buy something. Should I buy it anyways?
Announcer: No.
Husband: Now I’m really confused!
Announcer: It’s a little confusing at first.
Wife: Well what if you have the money, can you buy something?
Announcer: Yes.
Wife: Now take the money away. Same story?
Announcer: Nope. You shouldn’t buy stuff when you don’t have the money.
Cut to me...So let me get this straight....you're saying I should finish my book before I query it?
Ah ha!
ReplyDelete