Notes from New York: Memoir and Platforms

Welcome back to Notes from New York. Today we have a shorter post, less about writing and more just a query tip in general regarding memoirs. When I first started interning I hadn’t read many memoirs (or much nonfiction in general), but within the first month, I had read several samples and two full manuscripts. The two full manuscripts were both well written and engaging. One came from a writer with a strong journalistic background and platform who had an exceedingly interesting life to boot. The other came of a writer who also had an interesting life, but did not have much of a platform to speak of.

Guess which one drew more interest from the agent?

Yes, that’s kind of the hard thing about memoirs and nonfiction in general. Any editor or agent is going to look at your life story and judge it not just on quality of story, but also on marketability? It’s not that a memoir from someone without a platform can’t sell, but it’s certainly less likely. It’s one of those difficult facts about the nonfiction publishing world. If you don’t have a platform through your work or even through social media, an agent is going to wonder if you can advertise yourself. Memoirs, unlike fiction, are deeply personal and require more self promotion.

On another note, don't try to sell your memoir as fiction. Agents can usually tell a memoir masquerading as women’s or contemporary fiction. They’ve been in this business awhile, and you don’t want to try to get an agent by lying. That’s not to say you can’t use your life as influence for a fictional novel, but remember that there is a difference between real life and fiction. Real life doesn’t have a concrete story structure, for instance, nor does it always have a complete arc.

And lastly, if the agent doesn’t accept memoir…don’t query them with memoir. Not even if they also represent women's fiction, romance, etc. Unless specified otherwise, that means the fictional genres, not memoir. It seems like common sense but you wouldn’t believe the number of people who ignore submission guidelines.

That’s it for today. Happy writing!

Notes from New York: The Importance of Comparative Titles

Welcome back to Notes from New York. Today we talk about a querying tip rather than a writing tip: specifically ‘comparative titles’, or as I always heard them referred to ‘comps’.

Comps are something that a lot of people write in their queries. In many ways, it’s a good idea. If you can compare your book to a certain title, that gives the agent some idea of what to expect and also how they might market your book in the future. If you do get an agent, part of submitting to editors is making a list of comparative titles to show where your book stands in the industry.

However, while comps can be a good thing in a query times they can work against you. So here’s a list of dos and don’ts with comps.

1. Don’t aim to high

Your book is not the next Harry Potter. Even if it somehow, spectacularly, is the next Harry Potter, you have no way of knowing that at the time of querying. Some people comp really well known, best selling titles because they think it shows their books money making potential. Really, all it does is show you don’t know the industry or you way overestimate the selling power of your work. Most books don’t sell like Harry Potter. In fact, just about all books don’t sell like Harry Potter. So don’t aim too high.

2. Do aim at the middle

It never hurts to comp a relatively well known, but not unbelievably popular title. There are a lot more of these, and chances are, it will be easier for you to find an accurate comp to your work in this category. This will better show that you know where your book stands within its genre

3. Don’t comp books your agent already represents

Mostly because, the agent already has a similar book for their list and might be less interested. An agent will love the authors that they have taken on, which means that you’re fighting an uphill battle when you claim they will love your book just as much. Additionally, they might not have room for more similar titles on their list.

4. Do comp an agents favorite books

Most agents have blogs or websites or twitters where they talk about their favorite books and TV shows. They write about these things so that people will know what to send their way. You still may be fighting an uphill battle because they have high expectations, but if they are looking for something in the vein of their favorite work, comping said work can be a way to get you noticed. Just be sure its accurate and back it up with great writing.

5. Don’t feel the need to include comps

Comparative works in the query really aren’t necessary. If you don’t have good ones or you’re not sure what to compare your book to, leave them out. The most important part of the query is the part about your book. If your query is good, you don’t need to add comp titles if you’re not sure what you’d put

6. Do still be aware of comparative titles
When you are querying you should none the less be aware of your genre, category and marketability. This will help you enormously in the querying and publishing process. Read a lot in your genre to find some comparative titles. Even if you don’t put them in your query, they will help you down the line.

Good luck querying and I hope everyone has hit the midpoint of NaNoWriMo :)

Queries, Rejections and the Overflowing Inbox

Back with a new episode! Okay, USUALLY, this series will only update every Wedensday as I plan to start up Lessons from Anime again. However, this time, since I only gave you an intro on Wedensday, I'mma give you actual content. Away we go!

Okay so…agents get a lot of queries every day. A lot. And if you consider the fact that reading queries is basically something they do in their free time, they don’t have a lot of time to comb through the slush every day. In the case of one of my internships, it was my job as the intern to comb through the slush and look for queries that fit the agents taste.

When I came to the office there were about six hundred queries in the inbox with more coming in every day. That's A LOT.

You just don’t have time to carefully read all of those queries so you have to find ways to get through them quickly.

Its easy to throw away stuff that doesn’t follow the query guidelines, but here are some other reasons that I tossed a query into the no folder soon after I started reading.

1.       Lots of errors

Really, if you want your work to look good, edit it ten or twenty times before pressing the send button. A lot of errors quickly tells an agent that you have some basic developing to do and that you’re not great at self-editing. Put your best foot forward.

2.       Cliché premise

Some stories, we’ve heard before, and there are plenty of queries that sound as dull as they come. Nothing original sticks out about. It sounds like a conglomeration of other plot lines that have been done before. Now, of course there aren’t many original ideas out there, but most works do have a stand out element. Find what stands out about your work and feature that in your query

3.       Played out genre

The agent basically told me to put anything dystopian and paranormal romance in the ‘no’ folder unless it was REALLY good. When you’re writing in a genre that’s been played out, it has to be something truly special, so sometimes you’re fighting an uphill battle. That’s not to say that some agents won’t still be on the lookout for your genre, but if an agent says that they’re tired of something…they probably aren’t the right one for you.

4.       Similar to something already on their list

A lot of times it’s good to submit to an agent who reps titles comparable to your work. But if they’re too comparable, then the agent isn’t going to take it on. Simply put, they’re already working on something similar so unless yours blows their socks off, they’ll let it go

5.       Just not right

More than once, I forwarded a submission that I thought was original and really knocked my socks off. But sometimes that would still get rejected because it wasn’t right. A picture book that was a little too long for instance, or just something that didn’t peak the agents interest. It happens, to be sure. And you want someone who is fully passionate about your book, so its for the best.

6.       No Voice

Sometimes a book lacks a certain feel. A certain life. This life is usually imbued by voice and there are plenty of submissions that don’t have that. Often they come from more inexperienced writers who haven’t found their voice yet. Its one of those things that come with practice.

7.       Just…average

I read plenty of submissions that were well written with nothing technically wrong with them but none of them grabbed me. An agent wants to be pulled off of their chair (figuratively. I don't recommend actually pulling an agent off their chair) and into the story. When something is just ‘good’ then it goes in the no folder.

8.       I’ve seen something similar that day that was better

Sometimes a submission raises my standards for the day. Then I might stumble across a similar submission that isn’t as good. Because of the first, brilliant submission, the other submission might pale in comparison.

As you can see, a lot of this stuff is situational. It depends on the day and the other things the agent sees. Agents are biased people. They have good and bad days. Their tastes and interests shift. That’s what makes the trenches a difficult place to navigate.

The point is: sometimes rejection isn’t your fault. Don’t go running off to change your query after a few rejections. But several rejections may tell you that your query isn’t standing out.

No matter what, put your best foot forward and do whatever you can to help your novel stand out. But always follow the query guidelines ;) 

Notes from New York: Introduction

Hello friends! The Heroes and Heroism series is over, but now we have a whole new series to look at, this one more editing focused!

I meant to start this series earlier because, you know, it would be fresher on the mind. But, while I had a very productive writing life over the Summer…not so much with the blogging. Kind of fell off the wagon with that one. But let’s jump back in shall we?

One of the reasons I fell off the wagon with blogging in the first place was because during the spring semester of last year I was in New York City! The Big Apple, City that Never Sleeps, etc. The program, through my school, focused on viewing art, music, theater, dance and film all throughout the city, as well as completing twenty hours of internships a week in order to gain work experience in our chosen fields.

So, of course, I decided to pick up two internships at Literary Agencies: Defiore and Co, and McIntosh and Otis. As a writer, the publishing process is often an ‘other side’ that we never entirely understand. That’s why we have our lovely agents to guide us along and help us through the trickier parts. It was bizarre to really be on the other side of the trenches where I queried for so long, and it definitely gave me some insight into the process.

While I interned at these two places I:

Read the slush pile

Read partial and full requests and wrote readers reports

Also read client manuscripts and offered feedback

Compared contracts

And did some fun office work like mailing, copying and filing (fortunately that was a small part of my internships)

I also got to observe real literary agents as well as their assistance in their natural habitat, which involves a lot of emails and editing and calls and over all hard work.

And I think that’s the most important thing: Literary Agents work really hard. They are constantly juggling projects and clients in addition to reading the slushpile. But there are only so many hours in the day, so they only have the time for stuff that wows them.

So how do you wow them? How do you really stick out in that slushpile. And what kind of pitfalls should you avoid. I hope that I’ve gained a little insight into that and in this series, I hope to cover some editing tips for you as you’re fighting through the trenches.

Until next time, happy writing!

Slushpile Musings: Why Agents Only Rep Specific Genres

Why do so many writers send their manuscript to agents who don’t represent their genre? Its just a waste of time for both parties. Despite what some people might think, the submission guidelines are not the pirate code from Pirates of the Caribbean. They are, in fact, rules to be followed.

Sometimes I think these mix-ups happen simply because a writer doesn’t do their research. But I think some writers make the mistake of thinking that their manuscript will be so good that the agent’s genre preference doesn’t matter. So to dispel this way of thinking, let’s talk about why agents represent specific genres.

1. Connections

When you get an agent, it’s the agent’s job to find someone to publish the MS. If they’ve been in the business a long time, or they’re new agents with an established agency, they have certain connections. That is, editors they go to first with projects. These editors specialize in certain genres just like agents do, partially because the publishing process is very different depending on the genre. Agents specialize in genres because they have strong connections built up with publishing houses who publish the same. If you send them something they don’t represent, they might not know the best way to get it published. Simple as that. Look for an agent who knows your genre and your audience. They’ll be the best match.

2. Specialization

Agencies have different agents for different genres and categories. Some agents represent young adult, some adult. Some represent speculative fiction and some represent contemporary. There is often an overlap, but an agency tries to cover a lot of different genres with different agents. That way a writer looking to query the agency can find a good match. An agent who doesn’t rep adult fiction might very well read adult fiction. But its not what they represent for their job. Again, pick your best match. That’s what will take you far.

3. PASSION

In the end it’s all about passion. Agents read ALL KINDS of books. But they have preferences and certain tropes that really stick with them and tickle their fancy. An agent reps a certain genre or type of book because they have to LOVE the book. Not just enjoy reading it. They have to love it enough to read it over and over again and champion it as it goes to publishers. They need to want to fight for it. And they can’t do that for a genre they don’t love no matter how good the book is.

Bottom line: You want someone to fall in love with your book. There are many reasons agents only represent specific genres but the other thing is, there are agents who love your genre. Great agents. Seek out the ones who will be passionate enough to champion your book. It will work out best for everyone in the end.

Slush Pile Musings: Opening Pages

Opening pages are egregiously hard to nail. Any writer knows this. At first during the first draft, openings don’t seem like as big a deal. Because we, as the writer, see the novel as a whole piece. A story that begins, progresses, and hopefully comes to a proper conclusion.

But then, after going through many a ruthless edit and critique partner armed with a deadly red pen the manuscript is ready to be sent out to agents. It is time with the world to fall in love with your magnum opus.

Or the first ten pages of it.

Only ten pages? That is such a small fraction of my genius! How am I supposed to place all of my hopes and dreams on only ten pages?

Suddenly that opening scene is EVERYTHING. It must be succinct, original and attention grabbing if you ever hope to get a partial or full request. That’s a lot riding on just a couple of opening scenes and a 200 word query pitch.

Typically agencies ask for the first ten pages, though it varies. Some ask for five (even more horrifying) some ask for 30 pages, and some ask for the first three chapters no matter their length. In the case of the agency I intern for, we request the first fifty pages.

But no matter how much requested there is a lot riding on openings. I get it. Openings have always been the hardest for me. My first book, CHILDREN OF INK, has gone through about nine openings at this point in time. And its not done yet (I am writing a new beginning as you read this). I cannot for the life of me write the perfect first pages for this book and, as a result, it never got any requests from agents when I queried it.

HOUR OF MISCHIEF on the other hand, has only ever had one opening and that opening has never changed. I knew where it needed to start it and, hey, apparently it worked. It landed me my agent.

The point is, some books start easy and some books don’t. Openings are killer hard, especially when you consider they are going up against hundreds of other openings in the slush pile every week. So how can a writer learn to write an eye catching opening to grab an agent?

Using my knowledge of what grabs me in the slush pile, I think I have come up with a comprehensive list.

1. Avoid clichés

This probably seems like it should be a given, but clichés are still alive and well. If you’ve read any list of agent pet peeves, you know that beginning with your protagonist waking up is the kiss of death to any opening because it has been done over and over and over again. And yet, what did I see in the slush pile a few weeks ago? An MS that began with someone waking up and getting ready for the day.

Don’t make your opening a cliché. Make it something fresh and new. There is a tendency amongst writers to think: ‘Well my book begins with this cliché but it’s a SPECIAL version of that cliché so I’ll be the exception’. Never assume this. Sometimes first pages can make a cliché work but these pages are in such a minority that they should be set on a pedestal in a temple to unlikely ‘Eye-catching Openings’. To be safe, try to find a more creative way of opening your novel and stay off the agent’s pet peeve list.

2. Make me Care

Wow, your protagonist got into a huge, bombastic fight and almost died in the first few pages. But do I care? No I don’t. Because I was just thrown into a mess of characters and events before I had time to register these characters as human beings rather than tools to the plot. You want to start off fast but you also need to make agents see your characters as living, breathing human-beings that they could be friends with in real life. That is the key.

 If an agent sees a character as a tool in the machinery of the plot, they will not connect. If they see them as flesh and blood, well, then you have them hooked. Make me care. Make connect with your character’s voice. Do that and I will follow them anywhere.

3. Read Opening Pages

Go into your local library and find the section for your genre. Good. Now start reading. Pick a book off the shelf and read the first ten pages. Focus on the first line, the voice, the character, the plot. Observe the most common opening for your genre and avoid it at all costs. It is important to both learn from successful openings and improve upon them, developing them into your own unique opening. A successful mix of familiar and different will catapult your query into partial and full request territory in no time.

I could do whole posts on each of these three tips and I could probably come up with several others. But these three are what make or break openings for me and what helps me when I’m rewriting my opening pages for the tenth time.

Openings are hard, but you can find the perfect balance of environment, character and plot. And when you do, it is magic. When you do, you will hook the agent—and other readers—in with the first sentence and never let go.

The Nerves of the Waiting Game

Any writer who has ever been in the querying trenches knows of the harrowing ordeals. Ordeals of patience, which when you're waiting for a response to a query, you don't have much of.

It gets worse once you send out partials or fulls. Then you have to wait even longer. And by that point the ever torturous seed of hope has taken root in your chest. "They liked the beginning," you tell yourself. "They saw something in my idea. Maybe, just maybe, they'll like the whole book."

I've recently reentered the trenches and I know this feeling. Upon entering #pitmad I got a few requests to see pages so I sent them out. I also sent out a few queries. I was fine. Playing it cool. I wasn't going to get as freaked out as I did the FIRST time I started querying. Whatever happens, happens.

But hope does wonders to the calm mind. I was sitting in History of English class when I got an email. Casually I checked to see who it was from. One of the agents I sent my pages to.

They wanted a full.

Apologies to my History of English professor because my mind short circuited the moment I read those words. She was still talking but I watched her lips move and heard gibberish. All attempts to process the lecture were in vain.

Suddenly, I've gone crazy. Checking my email a million times a day, hovering over query tracker and twitter. I'm a ball of nerves.

Last night I had a dream I got an offer of representation. After which I started wondering if it was a dream. My dream family said it was and I started arguing with them about why it wasn't a dream, even though I knew it in the back of my mind (This dream also included space school but I don't need to get into that). It was kind of depressing to wake up the next morning.

The point is, every writer has been there. When you look for an agent you WANT it so bad and you hope and pray and pray some more that you might finally find the right one. You want someone to see something in your work.

You want to be an author. No, you NEED it.

Keep hoping and dreaming and never lose that edge. The dream is what keeps us going. But also keep calm in the face of rejection. Accept it. Busy yourself with other projects. Go outside every once and awhile. Breathe. Its going to be okay.

When the time is right, your book will find a home and you will see it in print. It could be this book or a few books from now. Heck, you could get the call tomorrow. But we all have a lot of life to live and a lot of time to live it.

Now if I could just take my own advice, I'll be dandy!

-Aimee

Pen Names and Internships

Hey everyone,
So, I am now a literary agent intern to the fabulous Pooja Menon! Its an exciting and unexpected experience that I wasn't really searching for this year. I happened to run across Pooja's tweet while browsing twitter and thought I might look into it. Just for fun.
As soon as I found out the internship was a remote position, I jumped at the chance. I'm thrilled that she has given me the opportunity to sit on the other side of the industry.
There's something really exciting about reading a project, loving a project, but also wanting to improve the project to make it the best it can be. I love reading. I love that foggy feeling I get when I've just come out of a three hundred page book. I look around at the world and wonder... why is everyone still moving around?
They're going about their lives?
Don't they know what just happened?!
Being able to read and critique books as a job instead of a hobby is kind of gratifying. I'm really excited about where this will take me.
This means I'll of course be blogging about slush in the days to come. Little pointers and patterns I notice. Maybe I'll be able to offer up some helpful advice from the other side of the query letter.

But in other news, I promised to talk about my pen name. "Kallypso" first came to being on fanfiction.net in my middle school years (Gag me). I guess I decided I was too cool to go by the normal spelling. Calypso is obviously a cooler word spelled with a double 'L'. And everyone knows that 'K' is the new 'C'.
Pretentious spelling changes aside, I kept the name and I wrote the majority of my fan fiction under it. I've always had a passion for fan fiction and I still genuinely believe its a wonderful tool for improving writing. You get a pass on world building. You are able a scene between two characters you know and love without having to come up with them yourself. It helps to practice prose and dialogue and gets the creative juices flowing.
For this reason, my old pen name has an important place in my heart. So, I think I'll keep it for the purposes of my blog. When I think 'Kallypso' I think of my journey as a writer, from awkward middle school years to now. And that's kind of nice. In retrospect, I guess even the preteen years have some value.
But only in retrospect.

- Aimee (Aka: Kallypso)

The Journey of a Book

The journey of a book, especially one written early in a writer's life, is a rocky one at best. Often a long one too. This thought occurred to me while I was looking through my 'Novels and Shorts' folder. Anyone who knows me or my computer knows that my folders have folders have folders. I like organizing things.
Within my Novels and Shorts folder I have a folder for each genre. Realistic, Fantasy, Sci Fi etc. Each of these genres have about, say, twenty-thirty files all together. That's for each genre.
Then you get to the Urban Fantasy folder. Within the Urban Fantasy folder there is another folder entitled 'Children of Ink'.
And within that folder, there are about 60 files. Extra scenes, outlines, character profiles, world building. You name it, its there. You could say this novel has been a long time obsession of mine. But because of that it has gone through many, many changes. And that's fine. Today I'm going to show the timeline of Children of Ink, my first baby as a writer.*


Early March, 2011- The first inception of the idea. I came up with my basic plot and characters in the span of a few days, writing most of it down in my journals during school.

Springbreak 2011- Writing spree of epic proportions.

April 2nd, 2011- Completion of the first draft. My magnum opus, originally entitled 'Inkpen' The draft went into storage for the rest of the school year so that I would become detached from the material (I got that tip from Stephen King)

Summer, 2011- EDITING TIME! The book at this time was dubbed 'The Gifted' because I realized Inkpen and Inkheart were too similar in title. Also the realization that maybe every word wasn't brilliant. My brother began reading and critiquing my work in this time and pointed out some fallacies in the opening pages.

Fall, 2011- Ignoring a lot of the feedback, I launched right into writing book 2. I continued to get feedback from my brother. Slowly, mind you. He's a lawyer with a busy work schedule.

November, 2011- Finished first draft of the second book in the series and put it away... now I had to wait and edit the first book. I ditched the prologue and changed up the beginning for the first time.

Spring 2012- Began seriously editing. Also began researching literary agents like a madwoman, writing query letters, and other such things.

Summer 2012- The querying began. And the waiting. When no one took the bait, I began editing again. The opening changed for a second and third time during this period. Oh yeah, and my brother finally finished reading my book (Took him longer than it took me to write two of them...)

Fall 2012- The discovery of twitter as well as competitions. Changed the opening for a fourth time and entered in a few competitions. Changed the title of the book to 'Children of Ink'. Some interest from one agent but followed swiftly by rejection. Wrote and finished the first draft of the third book in the series. Lost a lot of confidence with Children of Ink. Changed the opening for a fifth time.

Spring of 2013- The doldrums. Did little work on Children of Ink. Experimented with a few new openings (I had about eight possible openings over the course of the process)

Summer 2013- Joined a Speculative Fiction group to get feedback. Used that feedback to completely change the planned POV. Re outlined.

Fall 2013- The final (hopefully) outline and a fresh start. I plan to write the book again from scratch, hopefully with my new found knowledge about writing.

The journey of 'Children of Ink' isn't over yet. It's probably far from over. But this time has gotten me so acquainted with the characters and world that I feel an inherent attachment to it. It will never truly go into the trunk, even if its another book that eventually gets me an agent. Children of Ink was my first book child, and I love it dearly.

The point is, just because your book isn't working now, doesn't mean it will always be like that. There's always knew insight to be had. Join a critique group. Brainstorm with friends. Write experimental side stories to get your juices flowing. Put the book aside for awhile and write something else. Its okay. There's a lot of life to live and a lot of books to write. The worst thing a writer can do is get stuck in their first effort and never move on.

One day I hope to see 'Children of Ink' on shelves. But until then I'll keep writing and loving every moment of it.

- Aimee (Aka: Kallypso)

PS: I know I said I'd talk about my pen name in the next post but I lied. This was on my mind to write. NEXT post I'll talk about my pen name.