I'm back and querying again!

So, the last few months have been a bit rubbish for me BUT I have had a partial request from an agent which is a real confidence boost and makes me believe I can do it. Even if she ultimately rejects my ms, at least she has confirmed that my writing isn't completely horrible. 

Wanna know how I got this much appreciated request? Through Twitter! Ah, the power of social media. If you aren't on it, you need to be. There's always someone tweeting an interesting article or a blog post full of great tips. I caught the attention of an agent with my 140 character pitch for my novel on #pitmad day. I sent her the first ten pages and she asked for the next four chapters - hurrah! I'm waiting for her to ask for the rest of it now... :)

Today on Twitter, agents are tweeting their ms wish list all day - #mswl. Search #mswl, check out what they're asking for and query away! I think a lot of them will be Stateside so I'm heading over to Twitter as soon as this post is published! I'm not missing out on any opportunity to query agents at their bequest! 

So, buoyed up by the partial request, I hit the library, grabbed the 'Writers and Artists Yearbook 2014', listed all the agencies who take on women's fiction and then headed home to research, research, research. 

Boy, it takes a long time but I have a comprehensive list of agencies, their submission guidelines, the agent most relevant to me and, crucially, a top five wish list of agents I would really like to represent me. I'm not going to reveal them here but they represent authors who I really like and think my writing is most similar to. 

So, this week's writerly task is to compose a really good query letter which intrigues my five agents enough that they ask for more, more, more! 

I think the most daunting part of that is convincing them that I am qualified to be a good author when I have no evidence to back that up (apart from my writing). I haven't won any competitions or been published in anything since I was nine years old. I have zero writerly credentials and nothing that qualifies me to write about musicians (apart from a few years of enforced piano lessons. Not sure an agent would count that as a qualification to write about rock stars...)

So, how do I bolster my writing CV? I'm not sure I can. I think I just need to make myself sound as interesting as possible - quirky hobbies, having lived abroad, weird achievements. Anything that sounds marketable and is sufficiently interesting enough to set me apart from all the other debut writers out there are the things that are going to go on my 'CV'. 

So, whilst I ponder what makes me marketable, I shall head on over to Twitter and check out #mswl for agents wanting contemporary romances with super hot heroes and a rockstar vibe. Wish me luck!

Submissions once again!

So, I've finished my edit bar rewriting a couple of chapters slightly and next week I will be sending out submissions again. Well, I say again but I only sent three last time.. I'm not even sure that really counts as a submissions round - I plan to send more this time, I promise! 

I'm going to rejig my synopsis too, hence the 'next week' deadline. I will be revisiting Nicola Morgan's 'How to Write a Synopsis' as well as her 'Dear Agent' book. I'm pretty happy with my current synopsis and pitch but these things can always be improved. 

 I've already done some research on agents which was surprisingly difficult. It seems that if you write in any genre other than romance, you can collate a list of agents as long as your arm in a relatively small amount of time. Given that romance is one of the most popular genres, it sure is difficult to find an agent who lists contemporary romance as a genre they represent. Weird, no? 

Anyway, I have found a few but it took a lot of delving around the internet to do so. My top tip is:

Look at the websites and blogs of authors you think write the same sort of stuff as you and check out who they're represented and published by. There are still publishers who accept unsolicited submissions, especially digital publishers! 

You could also take a peek at the acknowledgements page of books which are similar to your own - authors tend to thank their agents. 

I've got a list of five agents and three publishers now including Novelicious who have started up their very own publishing company, Novelicious Books.

Novelicious are also running a competition to win a subscription to Agent Hunter but hurry - it closes on Friday! 

Agent Hunter is 'the most comprehensive literary agent database anywhere' and promises to be the easiest way to find agents for your work. Fingers crossed for a win on this one - I need it!! 

So, my writerly to - do list now looks like this: 

• Rewrite two chapters
• Write a blurb
• Revisit synopsis and tweak as necessary
• Write agent emails and send! 

Scary exciting times ahead... I think I'm going to need lots of chocolatey sustenance like these:

Joy the Baker cookies

and also this:

Because it's totally healthy even though it's chocolate, right?

You will get fat but you will be oh so happy if you buy this book! 

I've only gone and done it

So, last week I finally submitted to two agents! Hurrah for me. Boo that I haven't heard a whisper back. Still. I have dipped my toe in the water, which is the hardest part. And it has only been ten days. Patience is one of the many things I don't have (it's up there with will power and being able to resist using sarcasm). 

And, you know what? All that angst about how I would have sleepless nights, smartphone clutched in my hand, checking for an email - rejection or otherwise - every five minutes, so that I could just go to friggin' sleep once I knew, for sure, that I had been rejected? Wasted. I kind of forgot about it. Weird.

I feel like sending it off has actually given me some kind of release - I've stopped stressing over it. Now I can enjoy re-jigging my synopsis and cover letter. I can wallow in those first three chapters and make them better, better, better! A goal post has been reached - there's no pressure any more and it feels really good. Like floating...

So, to celebrate I made myself one of those modern day type coffees (read: latte) in my china take out cup and baked some of those miso cookies I was talking about last time. I admit, I was a little sceptical but I have a tub of white miso to use up so I thought, what the heck and went for it.

I changed a couple of things - I substituted a third of the sugar for light muscovado and, true to form, added in some chocolate chunks (but only to a third of the mixture as I wasn't sure if it would work. It does). They are yum. And, crucially, not belt busting because they are so rich and dense with flavour that you couldn't eat more than two of them in a row. Well, I couldn't and I have a humongous capacity for sweet things. Next up are compost cookies - see here (and note the date of this blog - always late to the party, that's me!) - check out the masses of reviews and recipes sprawled all over the internet before you turn your nose up! I gotta say, after miso cookies, this seems like a logical progression to me. I will report back when they have been made and sampled.

We're also in the midst of potty training Lady M and bought her some pants. I'm not sure she's really got the right idea:

Just one pair of pants on my head, Mummy? Not enough! I need at least three...

Oh and by the way, the lovely Novelicious ladies are running a 'What an Agent Wants' series on their website - take a peek! They also have a rather wonderful competition for unpublished and 'un-agented' chick lit writers - deadline is pretty soon though, so you'll need to get your skates on if you want to enter! 

Married to a 40 year old...

WOW! The Chardmeister is 40 now!

 We dropped Lady M off at the olds and scarpered to London for the weekend. It's funny how holidays or short breaks are never the relaxing time they are meant to be. We packed a fair bit into the weekend - Friday night dinner at Sarastro's (fabulously fun and garish decor, average food and surly staff - I'm not going to recommend you try this one), Oxford St, the British Museum, Libertys, Fortnum and Masons, Covent Garden, Picadilly Circus on Saturday followed by 'The Phantom of the Opera' at Her Majesty's Theatre (I can't deny it, I loved it. The production was really good, the sets clever and atmospheric and I'm always a sucker for great singing) and lunch at The Ivy on Sunday (lovely food, impeccable service and Jo Woods was there - the only celebrity spot of the weekend) followed by a quick visit to Buckingham Palace. Phew.

With all that excitement out of the way and the Abingdon Writers blog all tidied up and sorted, it's time to use this week to whip my novel into shape and start sending it out. To this end, I have purchased the kindle version of Nicola Morgan's 'How to Write a Great Synopsis' and practically promised a member of Abingdon Writers that I WILL submit next week. 

The Scream by Edvard Munch

The book is currently £1 on Amazon until the end of January - click on the link above to order it! I am hoping that this book plus enough time to get on with writing a query letter, blurb and rewriting my current synopsis plus getting those all important first three chapters as good as they can be, will aid me on my quest to be published.

I have been trawling the Internet for useful advice on submissions (a brilliant displacement activity which easily becomes intense procrastination as you follow all the different links helpfully put up by authors, agents and publishers). I digress - here are some of the ones I think make a lot of sense! 

• http://kate-harrison.com/for-writers/advice-on-agents
• http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/
• http://queryshark.blogspot.com/
• http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/
• http://www.mslexia.co.uk/getpublished/getpublished.php

Of course, you should also get yourself a copy of 'Writers and Artists Yearbook'. There's loads of useful articles in there as well as a complete listing of all UK literary agents. Once you've narrowed down which agents cover your genre, check them out individually too. It's time consuming but worth it.  And then, take that wobbly, angst-filled walk to the post office and force your madly clutching fingers to let go of that envelope.