My last WIP Wednesday was 11/18/10, and I screamed from the rooftops that I finished my first ever novel. Following that post I headed into revision-town, where I stayed for about a month before beginning the exciting, scary, encouraging, deflating process that is querying. 🙂 I also began work on my bright, shiny new idea.
Today’s WIP Wednesday will be an exciting update on both projects and I’ll share my thoughts on the process from this new standpoint. You know, for all y’all waiting with bated breath. (Is it incredibly sad that I had to look up if it was baited or bated, yet felt compelled to use the cliche anyway? Never mind, don’t answer that.).
Completed YA Contemporary Romance:
Final Word Count: 67, 491!
Little Hints: an old school game of Truth or Dare can definitely spice things up for some people.
Soundtrack Song of the Week: Want To by Sugarland. A perfect song to capture the “should we or shouldn’t we” question. (As always, email subscribers click through on the link to watch it on my blog since it doesn’t want to include itself in emails, grr)
Query Trick That Seems To Be Working Particularly Well: My first draft of my query had a synopsis of the story that followed a formula I saw over and over on blogs. It was . . . okay. Then I decided to have some fun one night and wrote what I thought the jacket copy would sound like for my story, and I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that I put that in my query letter instead. I started querying last month and with the holidays, many replies are still tricking in, but even the few rejections I’ve gotten have been personalized and mentioned how much they loved my pitch and query letter. I totally give the credit to the new and improved “jacket copy sounding” synopsis. . . in fact, one agent who requested a full said exactly that–that it sounded like a jacket copy! Goal accomplished!
Personal High: Again, I just started the query process but so far I have received 3 Full requests and 1 partial! I am so grateful for those, especially since they came from the agents at the top of my dream list. I know this is just another stage and there is no guarantees but I FINALLY get the cliche about just being happy to be nominated, ha! It is an honor for these wonderful agents that I respect so much to see enough promise in my samples to request to read more–especially on my first attempt at this old writing thing!
Personal Low: I haven’t gotten many rejections yet, and the ones I have received have all been personalized and complimentary . . . in fact one even referred me to another agent at her agency. But last night, I got the first rejection that hurt. It was by another one of those top agents, someone I totally respect, and it didn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Oh well, it wasn’t the right fit, right? And I am SUPER excited about the agents who have requested more of the manuscript.
Bright, Shiny New Idea . . . YA Contemporary:
Current Phase of Writing: I have my rough draft of 15 plot points and tons of ideas to beef that up, have my main and supporting characters picked out, pictures from IMDB snagged, and their back stories working. I am now in the Interview phase, starting with my Protag. I have awesome questions gathered from around the web and Noah Lukeman’s The Plot Thickens, and yesterday I figured out her astrological sign (didn’t do that last time but that was fun!) and her Myers-Briggs personality type. Today I plan on finishing up that interview and spending much of the writing time figuring out her musical tastes which are much different than my own.
Little Hints: I was born and raised in New Orleans and am excited to be setting this story in my hometown. My characters live in Marrero (anybody remember that rap from 1991 by MC Thick: ‘rolling down the street, real slow, while the fellas be yelling, M-A-R-R-E-R-O?’ No, just me? Hmmm…). For those not in the know, Marrero is on the WestBank/Best Bank of New Orleans 🙂 Who Dat!
Writing Goal For the Coming Week: Finish the Protag Character Interview and at least have the majority of the Love Interest’s Interview completed. Work on story soundtrack.
What about YOU? Anyone else in the Query Trenches? Any exciting news to share? Anyone else starting their own Shiny, New Project? If so, what do you do first (character interviews, plot, listen to music, etc)?
HAPPY WRITING!
