Second Rejection

This rejection came from a literary agent. I queried about a dozen literary agents. This particular agency represents Young Adult novels but not really the fantasy genre, so I knew I wasn't quite what they were looking for. I queried them anyway, and this is the e-mail response I got:

"Thanks for taking the time to query me and send your writing sample. While your project sounds interesting, it’s just not what I'm looking for at this time. Please keep me in mind, however, for future projects as I’m always looking for well-written commercial fiction and nonfiction with a strong voice and unique angle."

First Rejection

Hey, I got my first rejection from a publisher, and it was actually rather encouraging. It was a personal e-mail rather than a form letter or even a form e-mail. Anyway, here is what it said (I will blank out the name of the publisher, since they didn't send this to me for public consumption):

Thank you for your interest in ****** and ***** Publishing. 
Out of the many fantasy queries we get, yours is one of the few
that makes more sense than most of the others. 
I enjoy good fantasy stories,
but unfortunately, we are not accepting unsolicited manuscripts at
this time....

Thank you and keep writing!

*** ***
Fiction Editor
******
******* Publishing 

Third Revision = Done

Okay, I just completed the third revision of my novel, and I can say with confidence, it will be my last full revision. I am at a point where the book is not going to get markedly better. Further revisions might swap words around, but the book is what it is. I have made it pretty much as good as I can make it. There are a few chapters early on that I need to go back and work on a little bit more (chapters 2-4), but other than that, I am pretty much done. People will either like it or not like it, but they are getting the best that I have to offer, at this point.

The third revision clocked in at roughly 94,600 words. More adverbs and repetitions were cut. A few more story details were added, some extra dialogue to clarify things, a little more action during the climax, and that's about it.

Dagnab, I've spent too many hours on this dad-blamed story.

Submitting M'Crap

Some publishers prefer e-mail submissions, which is an unusual and recent trend. They tend not to want the entire manuscript but a query and brief synopsis. I have queried three publishers already: Top Publications, Penguin Books, and Sol Books. Of course, even with an e-mail query, it can take from weeks to months to get a response, so I don't expect to hear anything soon.

I have been working on the third revision of the book. I think the first chapter is finally complete, although you never really know. Does it really get any better when I rewrite it for the fourth time? Maybe.

Synopsis

In the world of publishing novels, you almost never send your manuscript to a publishing house uninvited. That is called an unsolicited submission, and almost nobody accepts them. Send your manuscript to, say, Tor, and, guess what, into the slush pile it goes, never to be read.

Instead, you have to query publishers. A query is a small packet containing a brief query letter, a short bio, two or three sample chapters (usually, chapters one through three) and a synopsis of your novel. So I worked on the synopsis of my novel all day today. Sheer tedium. I had seven pages of single spaced writing. Then I did some research on writing a synopsis and discovered that, in general, a book synopsis should never, ever be longer than seven double spaced pages. Preferably, you want 1 page per 50,000 words. Holy crap!

So I went back to the drawing board and wrote a much shorter synopsis. It came in at about 4 double spaced pages. Basically, the synopsis needs to answer, in as few words as possible, these questions:

• What's the setting?
• What's the hook?
• What's the tone of the story? That is, its feel, its authorial voice, its approach to the story. Is this a light-hearted book, a dark book, or a funny book?
• Who are the main characters?
• What are their motivations?
• What are the key scenes?
• What is the prime conflict?
• What are the main characters' blackest moments?
• What is the main character's big crisis?
• What is the story's climax?

So you send the query packet to every publisher under the sun, and if they are interested in reading the full manuscript, they will reply and request it. Only then do you send the full manuscript. Once you send the manuscript, you sit back and wait, wait, wait. I wrote a novel some years ago that sat at a publisher for almost an entire year, before they returned it to me. I received it back all beat up and scribbled on and grungy. They liked it very much, they said, and passed it around the office to be read by one and all, but they ultimately decided not to publish it. Nice. That book was called The Deep Water, and it is never coming to a Barnes and Noble near you.

Revision Two

So the second revision is complete. I found myself increasingly frustrated with the manuscript this time. The prose in places sounded rough, and no matter how much I fiddled with it, I was never satisfied. It is probably because I need to step back from the material for a little while.

Anyway, the text got pared down a bit this time. 93,097 words. Mostly, the removal of redundancies, adverbs, excess words, etc.

Second Revision

Lisa finished reading the first revision of the novel, and she gave some constructive suggestions, as well as located many typos. I have made a few changes and additions and will now start on the second, and perhaps final, revision.

The stats: 94,077 words. Page 377.