Finding Hope

I finally feel good about my query letter. I have to thank the Evil Editor blog. Reading the facelifts he does on queries has truly helped me improve my own. I've tightened it up; it's concise but has punch. I abandoned the business letter format I'd been using, which was too wordy and lacking excitement. No wonder I've been getting form letter rejections, my query really sucked. It's discouraging, because I've queried about forty agents with shitty letters, but it's also exciting because I think I'll be getting a better response now. I'm feeling hopeful about it.

I have about fifty pages left to edit on the manuscript and it's getting pretty tight. This time, it's the discussions on Miss Snark's blog that I have to thank for helping me improve. One such discussion was regarding the over-working of dialogue tags. I found that I had a habit of doing this, adding actions to the tags, like this: "See ya later," she said, waving as she walked out the door. I did that a lot, and it isn't an absolute no-no, but you want to watch how often you do it. It can become a pattern and thus a habit, and it's lazy writing if you're doing it frequently. I've been restructuring quite a few dialogue sequences and it reads so much better.

I really believe this is a solid, publishable manuscript. I wish I had an easy way to update the chapters on my website, I've really improved the flow. There probably is an easy way, and I need to call the guy that designed my site, he can probably walk me through it. I have a fear of all things requiring geek-like abilities so I'm procrastinating on that. I need to do it though, the new revision is much better. Oh well, the manuscript will be ready when the agents ask for the full. More queries going out tomorrow with the new letter, and I'm confident I'll get some requests.

So, tomorrow my task is five queries. Email queries as much as possible, but snail mail if necessary. I snail-mailed one today, even though the agent said she accepts email queries, she prefers snail mail. So I snail-mailed it. Any little thing to get looked at.

I'll edit five more pages tonight and then sleep. Peace and skeddi with meatballs...