Writing News

This week all of that tiresome character work paid off as I was able to totally skip The Snowflake Guy’s step #5 and step #7 since I already did them both in one fell swoop. Wahoo!

So what did I do this week? I sent out another query to a perspective agent. As you know I’ve already queried everyone at AgentQuery.com who admits to representing both YA and Christian fiction. Now I’m slowly working through a list of agents that they work with at Thomas Nelson. This editor was kind enough to compile it for us wannabees. Although I fear I may have succeeded in enraging this agent upon our first correspondence for her site was a bit confusing. In one place it said “No unsolicited manuscripts” which is fine as I wanted to send a query. Beside each agents name was a button inviting one to send them a message. I figured this was for queries. So I sent one to her…even though sometime during the e-mailing process a message popped up extolling me not to send “unsolicited submissions of any kind.” But at least I’m fairly certain that she is far to busy to bother with sending me hate mail for my infraction.

I also finished Step #6 of The Snowflake Guys 10 Steps to outlining bliss. For this step I took my one page outline (constructed during step #4) and expanded each paragraph of that into roughly an entire page so that I would have a multi-page outline. Mine ended up being about 6 pages single spaced and was quite interesting. Now one of my favorite agencies (yes that one that rejected me right away) wants a 6 page outline that is double spaced. So I thought that since I was doing this anyway I would make a smaller one to. So I began cutting. I trimmed and pruned and finally with great sadness took out the many paragraphs describing the capture and release of the man eating Mexican squids that plague my protagonist. But after all of that heartache I actually ended up with a 6 page double spaced outline. And it makes sense! Do you hear me? The thing is coherent!!! It took me forever to write my 6 page outline for Overturned and even after it was done it was boring and simply made no sense whatsoever. This one does! It was fun to write and reads great and contains all of the main points of my story idea. I am never writing those stupid outlines post-book again. This Snowflake Guy is brilliant. Outlining before is truly a glorious experience.

Oh and I went on into Step #8 a wee bit but I’ll wax eloquent about that next week