Query letters and ……..turning the pages.

Okay, you might be bored reading about my agent process by now.  So here’s a very short update.  If you’ve been following along, you know I had six agents to query as a result of going to the San Francisco Writers Conference.  As of last week, I had sent out 5.  They wanted varying amounts of my writing, from 10 pages to the entire manuscript.  So far I’ve gotten three rejections. 

This past Saturday, I was finished, as much I could be at this moment in time, with my full manuscript and I sent it the agent who requested the full.  I got an immediate email back, saying that she is too busy to take queries right now.  The second paragraph said that if she met you at a conference, she would still be taking those.  Whew.  On Sunday I got an email from her with two words – Got it. 

So now I’m waiting for responses from three agents.  How long that will take is a total unknown.  But as I said before, after four weeks, I’m assuming a no and moving on. 

Here’s my question for those of you who are still reading this.  Why do you keep reading?  What makes you keep turning the pages?  It’s something I’ve thought about a lot during my journey of writing.  I’ve been wondering that even more lately, since I’m hoping agents will keep turning my pages. 

There’s a series of three books by Stieg Larsson that are huge bestsellers right now.  The first one, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, was given to me by a writing friend.  I had a hard time getting through the first pages.  I probably wouldn’t have kept on reading it but I brought it along on an airplane for a 6 hour cross-country trip.  A flight attendant walking by asked me how I liked it. 

I said, “Not much.”  She said, “Once you get past the first 200 pages, it’s great.” 

What?  I had to read 200 pages to get to the good parts?  Yes, I did.  I skimmed those first 200.  Some random thoughts while I did that:  too much back-story, he’s giving us everyone’s point of view and it’s confusing, too many characters, too many adverbs, meandering plot.  I can’t believe someone published it like this.  Where was the editor?

But on the other hand, I can’t argue with the fact that all three of the books are huge bestsellers.  There are probably many reasons why so many people are willing to keep turning the pages of these books.  I just can’t figure out what they are.  Right now I’m struggling with the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire.  I skim through the parts that are boring to me.  I’m only reading it because I’m fascinated with what makes this a bestseller.  I’m on page 400 out of 724.  Along with my other complaints, it’s too long as well.

If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.  If you have an opinion or idea about this topic, I’d love to hear it. 

Sent out the query letters, waiting for responses, editing while I wait.

Last week I blogged about sending out query letters, most by email, to the agents I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference a few weeks ago.  I got back two rejections immediately.  In the past week, no responses to the next three I sent out.  It seemed the time was right to do a search on-line as to how long I should wait.  Lots of opinions.  One answer was – as long as it takes.  What does that even mean?  Other answers were expressed in weeks or months.  A few years ago I got a response from an editor 6 months after I sent the full requested manuscript. 

What are the chances that there will be no response at all, I wondered.  I searched that.  Apparently, it’s getting more acceptable not to respond.  Hmmmm.  How long does it take to send an email?  A few seconds to write “No, thank you.” and one second to hit SEND.  Are agents really so busy that they don’t respond unless it’s a yes?  If that’s true, no wonder more and more authors are self-publishing. 

I think I’ll give them all an arbitrary 4 weeks.  If I don’t hear within 4 weeks, I’ll assume it’s a no.  After all, if they’re interested, they would get back to me right away.  And if it’s a no, that’s okay.  If they don’t love my writing, then they aren’t the agent for me.

I still have to send my full manuscript to the one agent who requested that.  I’m taking a little time to go over the entire ms again and making some more edits.  At writing workshops over the past few years, I’ve heard other writers ask - when do I know I’m finished editing?  The published writer’s usual answer has been – when it’s published.  While on-line searching for how long to wait for an agent to respond to a query letter, I got bored with that and started searching for information on how many times published writers have edited their own work.  I came across some fun quotes about the editing process:

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"Ernest Hemingway once confided to George Plimpton during an interview that he rewrote the ending to "A Farewell to Arms" 39 times before he was satisfied. Why so many rewrites? Plimpton asked. Because, Hemingway responded, he wanted to get the words right."

"There is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting." -- Harry Shaw "Errors in English and Ways to Correct Them"

"Books are not written--they're rewritten." -- Michael Crichton

"Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear." -- Patricia Fuller

"My wife took a look at a first version and said, 'That's high school stuff.' I had to tell her to wait until the seventh draft." -- James Thurber

"There are passages in every novel whose first writing is the last. But it's the joint and cement between those passages that take a great deal of rewriting." -- Thornton Wilder

"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon." --Richard Cormier

"Tolstoy revised WAR AND PEACE seven times, by hand, and his long-suffering wife typed out every page on an ancient typewriter, seven times."

“I can’t understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again. — Leo Tolstoy

Good writing is essentially rewriting. — Roald Dahl

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Guess I’ve got some work to do.  I’ll report back in about a week.