The Story of Open Minds
Ch 7: How to Know When to Query
Ch 8: A Writer’s Journey: Self-Publishing Open Minds (Part 1)
Ch 9: Owning theWriterly Path:Self-Publishing Open Minds (Part 2)
Epilogue: Finding Time to Write the Sequel
How
do you know when your story is ready to query (assuming you’re going to make a
pass at the get-an-agent-traditional-publishing gauntlet)?
This was my biggest question, when I first started
writing. In my previous life as an engineer and
scientist, there were measureable goals, actionable items.
Projects came with deadlines, tests, and presentations. You knew what you were
supposed to do (for the most part), how to do it (sometimes), and when you were
expected to have something to show for your efforts (always).
This is how it works in the normal muggle world. But
in the world of fiction…not so much.
In creative works, you are in charge of deciding
what to write, and how many times, and what revisions must be made. And when to
stop. That last one was the most difficult of all for me, because how was I to
know I had reached THE END of the endless revisions?
My novel Open Minds was not the first
novel that I queried. And neither was Life,
Liberty, and Pursuit (my first published novel),
because that book had a quirky path to publication, going past
GO and collecting $200 right away. My first queried
novel was Clone Runners (middle grade science
fiction), which I decided was ready to query because I couldn’t figure out what
else to do with it.
This is actually not a bad criteria to use for
querying readiness.
I believe that every novel is a learning experience,
and if you aren’t learning anything new in working on it, it probably is time
to move on. In fact, taking the next step of querying is a learning experience
in itself, and I learned a LOT from querying Clone Runners. I learned
that I could write a query that would get a lot of requests; I also learned
that there were some peculiar biases against middle grade science fiction
in the publishing world; and I learned that Clone Runners wasn’t really
ready for publication yet. Close, but not quite.
As I worked revision after revision of Open Minds,
it became clear to me that it was ready for querying. Not only had I learned
all I could from the story. This time, the signal came from the reaction I
received from the people who read it.
When you read your opening chapter to your crit
group for the first time and the response is shocked silence, followed by Wow:
it’s time to query.
When the critiquers who read your MS two revisions ago
keep asking when you’re going to query because they want to see your story
published: it’s time to query.
When you’ve put every last bit of your storytelling
and craft skills into the story: it’s time to query.
Because keeping that MS in your drawer isn’t doing
anyone any good.
p.s. I did query Open Minds and received lots
of requests. But I ended up cutting the query process short in order to
self-publish. The story of that adventure in publishing is in the next
two posts.
I made the mistake of querying my first novel too early. A mistake I won't make twice.
ReplyDeleteBut even from that you learned a lesson, yes? I think all of this is a giant learning process. Thanks for stopping by! (and for the tweetage) :)
DeleteThe way I see it, we self-pubbers are still in the slush pile. People watch self-pubbed books and send agent/publishing emails all the time, querying upstream, in the direction of the author! Not to me, of course, but so I hear ... one never escapes the slush pile. It's slushy in here!
ReplyDelete