From time to time, I receive requests from near or complete strangers to help them in their quest for publication.

(Also, occasionally to help them in their quest for college admissions, since, you know, my first series was set in college and that somehow makes me an expert into how to get in?)

Most often, these requests come from folks I know peripherally through one of my writing organizations, like RWA, or from a reader of my books. (It is very difficult to say no to a person who starts off their emails with “I love your books!”)

Now, it’s pretty easy to say no when a complete stranger asks me to introduce them to my agent (my agent accepts queries at her website), or to read her manuscript, or to critique her first chapter. It’s a lot harder to say no when they are asking for help on their query letter. It’s just a few hundred words. This person is such an earnest young aspiring writer! I remember being an earnest young aspiring writer, and how much it meant to me when a published author (in this case, Julie Leto — HI, JULIE!) offered to read my query for me.

And these requests have become rather ubiquitous lately, as the story about how I helped Carrie Ryan (HI, CARRIE) with her query letter made the rounds on the internet. (What this story does not seem to include is the information that Carrie and I had been critique partners for over six months at that point, which means I’d READ HER ACTUAL BOOK.) And now, they are not necessarily coming from fans of my books (HI, READERS!) or even people I may have had drinks with once at a conference. They are coming from random people who stumbled on this story somewhere on the internet or at one of Carrie’s events and somehow came away with the impression that I run a free query-writing service.

And despite having received these requests for six years, and despite them ALWAYS TURNING OUT THE EXACT SAME WAY, I have not learned my lesson. Because I keep saying yes.

So I’m writing this post as a lesson to you, future requester of my assistance, after the latest effort in which I spent several hours assisting a perfect stranger with her query and received absolutely no response whatsoever.

You may certainly ask me to read your query letter. I will not necessarily say no, but I will not necessarily say yes. And if what you mean when you ask me to “read your query letter” is not, in fact, “read your query letter” but instead “tell me that my query is brilliant and you’re handing it off straightaway to your agent” then you can go jump off a bridge.

Perhaps if you knew me at all, instead of just having heard my name associated with the writing of a query of a big debut novel that hit the bestseller lists and got a movie option — perhaps if you’d spent five minutes reading my blog, you’d know that it’s not all puppies and unicorns around here. (Well, it is, but the unicorns? Not so nice.) I do not believe in some glittering representation of the publishing industry. I am a realist. Selling a book is hard. Writing a query is hard. It’s not pretty, it’s not art. It’s business. And though you slaved over your precious manuscript for who knows how many months or years, realize that the agent or editor who looks at it is going to give it approximately 90 seconds of attention over a tuna sandwich on their lunch hour.

And when I read your query, I’m putting myself in that agent or editor’s shoes. I’m not going to spend much time worrying about whether or not you’ve started with a rhetorical question or saying thank you at the end or whatever randomly specific thing some blogging agent (who may or may not be even agenting anymore) says to do — because I promise you, if the rest of your query is compelling, this is all just window dressing. And I’m not going to dress it up in soft language for you. If it’s a mess, I’ll tell you so. If you packed it with cliches or 70-word sentences or managed to completely neglect mentioning one of your main characters — I’m going to tell you so.I’m not going to couch it in pretty soft sell language. If you want someone to fawn, ask your friends or your mother or your significant other. I don’t know you. We aren’t friends.

If this hurts your feelings, well, you’ve now been warned that it might. If you are so astonished by the idea of me not blowing smoke up your ass about your query, then please do not send it to me. (Personally, I’d rather have my feelings hurt than a ton of rejection letters, but hey, your mileage may vary.)

And, if you ask anyone I actually know, anyone I am actually friends with and have critiqued with, you’ll find that I shoot straight. It’s constructive criticism, not bashing. But it certainly ain’t flowery. If I see something that’s a problem, I tell them. They are free to take my advice or leave it, and I don’t care. I often do not take the advice of my well meaning critique partners. My opinion about the query is just one opinion. But you asked for my opinion for a reason. Presumably because you think that I, having written a few successful queries, somehow know what I’m doing.

So if you, perfect stranger, do ask me to read your query, and I do give you advice, even if you think it’s traumatizing that I tore apart your little darling, remember that I took time out of my day –time I cold have spent working on my own books, time I might have been spending ACTIVELY PAYING A BABYSITTER, time I DEFINITELY could have spent hanging out with my baby — to give you, perfect stranger advice on your query letter.

And you disappeared. I never heard from you again. I didn’t hear “thanks” or “wow, that helps a lot” or even “you unholy bitch, how dare you say that about my darling little baby query letter!” I heard nothing.

You know what that comes across as?

“Hi, writer. I know this is your living, but I don’t care. In fact, I have so little respect for you as a fellow writer that I’m not even going to PRETEND that I’ve read your books before I ask you for help. All I care about is what you can do for me, and I heard that you wrote a query letter for a bestselling author. Please read and rewrite mine, or better yet, tell me it’s brilliant just as it is. And no matter what, don’t ever expect to hear another word from me again.”

I am not some google translator that you plug your query gobbledygook into and out spits something (hopefully) more coherent or helpful or even just a different perspective. I am a person. You asked me for a favor. I am not expecting a freaking parade. But an acknowledgment of receipt might be nice.

So, now you have been warned. Feel free to ask, with no expectation that I might say yes. And if I do say yes, feel free to send, with no expectation that I’m going to like the darn thing. And when I do write back to you with my thoughts, please give me some common human decency, or next time I’ll call you out by name.

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On one of my writer’s loops, a writer is bemoaning the fact that she’s been waiting to hear back from an agent about her submission since last summer. When last she wrote in for a status update, the agent responded that she’d been swamped with travel.

“Why do agents travel so much?” the writer asked. Why are they out there attending conferences and presumably garnering new submissions if they have a pile of submissions on their desk already waiting to be read?

The answer is easy, but it’s not easy to hear: They do want submissions. Just not that one.

(Now, there is a class of agents who are, in my opinion, playacting, similar to those “writers” we all know who have been working on their Great American Novel for ten years. They don’t make any sales, or maybe they have one or two sales but only to houses that don’t require agents to get in the door (Harlequin, etc.) — but boy do they show up at every conference and judge every contest!

There are also some agents that do a lot of travel. Any agent located outside of NY must travel to NY several times a year to conduct business. As other mentioned, a lot of agents do travel to conferences so they can sit in a room with their clients and the editors at the same time, and then of course, there are the overseas rights fairs.)

But none of those things is the issue. It’s not “why do agents travel so much?” Even agents with a packed travel schedule will make room to read a hot submission if it crosses their desk. The real question — the question the writer isn’t asking but should be is, “Why is this agent uninterested in getting back to me in a reasonable amount of time?” And we can sit here and analyze it like girlfriends trying to figure out why some guy isn’t returning our call, but it’s simple: He’s Just Not That Into You. In which case, you are better off without him.

An agent who doesn’t read your submission in eight months (EIGHT MONTHS — longer than my baby has been alive), is not an agent who is all fired up to represent you. It’s entirely possible that this agent has already read your submission, or glanced at the first few pages, and isn’t interested. But… writing rejections? Not fun. Maybe the agent thinks they need to come back to it when they are in a better mood. Maybe they’ll like it this time. Maybe they can’t think of a good reason to reject it and they aren’t the kind of agent who likes to send form letters. Maybe they honestly haven’t read it.

But it all adds up to the same thing — they’re just not that into you.

I have said this before, but it is the truth — your writing career is not one book. If the book you’ve written is failing to get very far, then write another book. When you have the right book, getting an agent is a relatively straightforward process. Wouldn’t you rather get the agent of your dreams with a book that everyone thinks has a strong chance of selling rather than wait around for months or years begging agent after agent to please put down their rollaboard suitcase for five minutes and look at this book that they aren’t really all that interested in?

Please note that I’m not saying “good” book for a reason. I’m saying “right” book. There are plenty of “good” books that aren’t going to get agents excited right now. Maybe the market is bad. Maybe the market is small. Maybe the market isn’t ripe for a debut in that particular subject. Or… maybe the book isn’t good enough.

And you might as well get used to it now. This doesn’t stop when you get published. You will write books that will fail to find an audience. You will write books that won’t sell to publishers, or that your agent tells you isn’t a good idea to shop. Yes, everyone loves to tell the stories of the plucky writer who thumbed her nose at the establishment and switched agents/sold it elsewhere/published it herself and made a mint. So it’s very tempting to believe that your book is also one of those exceptions. And maybe it is — this advice is not universal.

But for every one of those stories, there are more stories of writers who retired manuscripts or listened to their agents or sent something else to their publisher and sold it and made a mint. Every writer I know has a book collecting dust in the recesses of their closets/hard drives, and most of them are relieved that it’s back there. This could also be the situation you are in.

And, if it is, and you do write a new book — a book that does get some attention, maybe in eight weeks instead of eight months — and sell it, who is to say that interest might not circle ’round to your other, older-but-beloved book?

Story Time: Before I sold Secret Society Girl, I was shopping a paranormal romance novel. At least, that’s what I was calling it. It had done very well on the contest circuit, but it wasn’t really catching the agenting world on fire. I’d sent it out 20 times. I had gotten a smattering of full requests, but in the end, I was looking at 18 rejections. Two agents still had it.

Meanwhile, I wrote SSG. I sent that out 4 times and got 4 offers. One of the agents was the one looking at my other book, the romance, and when we spoke about forming a business relationship, she said that after we sold SSG, we could look into marketing the romance novel.

We never did. And I’m glad. That book was not going to be a strong contender in the then-burgeoning paranormal romance market. (As one of the rejecting agents, who now works for my agent’s agency pointed out — what was selling in pararom was paranormal boyfriends — werewolf or vampire or etc. boys falling in love with human girls. This book was about two humans and some ghosts.) It was a good book, but it wasn’t great for the market, it wouldn’t have grown me as an author, and it wouldn’t have been a good use of my time.

What would have happened if I’d thought about the book, instead of my career? I’d spent over 18 months writing that book. What if I had despaired over “wasting” all that time and had sent out that book to 20 more agents? Or 100 more? It would have gotten a bite eventually (actually, it did — an agent who had mistakenly sent me a rejection called a few months after I sold SSG to offer me representation for the para romance). But the agent would have had as hard a time selling the weak-for-the-market book as I’d had trying to get representation. What if it had sold, but poorly. What if it hadn’t sold, but, having gotten farther (i.e., securing agent representation) with that book than I had with any other, I kept harping on it, maybe for years? What if I’d done that rather than writing a new book that was right for the market and sold very quickly for good money?

Instead, I sold nine other books. Books that I love every bit as much. My career is not about one book.

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It’s not the fur. Even when it gets everywhere. Even when it won’t come off your favorite coat. Even when it makes you sneeze.

It’s not how they bark at leaves, or chase the squirrels, or run after cars.

It’s not the hole they chewed in your shoe, or your couch, or your door.

It’s not the way they track mud into your house, or shake it on the rugs, and the wall, and you.

And it isn’t that time they ate that favorite thing of yours — the item of clothing, or the piece of furniture, or the Thanksgiving Turkey.

It’s not the infuriating tendency they had to act perfectly behaved until such time as they need to act behaved, and then they jump, or they beg, or they pull on their leashes.

Or how they have that “poor me” look down so well that they can make you feel guilty for not paying attention to them five minutes after taking them for a two hour walk.

It certainly isn’t how warm they are when they snooze on your feet, even in the heat of summer.

Or their wet doggie kisses.

Or their stinky doggie breath.

Or the way they can destroy a tennis ball in four seconds flat.

It’s not the way the whole house shakes when they decide that they just have to scratch that spot, right there, right now, and for the next five minutes.

Or even when they just have to lick that other spot. You know the one. And then try to lick your face afterward.

Nope, it’s not even that.

And it certainly isn’t the way they love you so much, even when you know you don’t deserve it, because you haven’t been walking them, or playing fetch with them, or even petting them as much as they deserve.

Or the way they always greet you at the door when you come home and want to play, even if you’re so exhausted all you want to do is collapse on the nearest flat surface.

It’s none of these.

The only bad thing about dogs is that they don’t live long enough.

Rest in peace, Gracie. Your owner is my best friend, and you were Rio’s. We loved you lots and we’ll miss you terribly.

2000-2011

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I haven’t been posting. Instead, I’ve been posterboarding:

See what I did there?

Books are complex, man. I never have to plotboard for my short stories.

Related: I’m so out of practice. I haven’t made a plot board since Rampant, and that one kind of went off the rails. I fought to keep this one as simple as possible. Too complex, and you can’t see what the problems are.

Of course, I now know plotboards don’t ALWAYS help. For instance, though it did help me see one problem (not enough yellow), it totally glossed over another problem that I know from the text I’m having. Because although you can have all the ingredients in the dish, it doesn’t mean you are using them in the right order or the the right amount.

I repeat: Books are complex, man. And hard. Did I mention hard?

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Back in December I posted a list of goals for 2011, and said I’d check in once a month. Here’s January’s results. How did I do in February?

Writing: This was a stellar month for writing, as evinced by the tickers on the right. I wrote the other short story I have due this year, as well as finally finally, FINALLY finished the manuscript I’ve been working on for a year. Yay!

Home: My home is currently a bit of a disaster. Eh. You win some, you lose some. (Pantry still looks nice, though. I’m so glad for the reaarange!)

Blog: I only blogged 6 times last month. Oops. Again, I claim writing.

Quality time with SB: We actually had a date night, y’all. It’s the first time that’s happened in five months.

Rio: As I suspected, Rio has had another rough month. It’s been very cold and very icy until recently, when I’ve been working really hard and neglecting my poor girl. But with spring upon us, I’m looking forward to spending a lot of outdoor time with her. She did get more walks this month except for the last week or so.

Garden: Still too cold to plant. But I’ve been making plans.

And, the big list:

1. Revise/finish my contracted novel.
2. Write short story #1
3. Write short story #2
4. Write short story #3
5. Write new proposal #1
6. Write new proposal/book #2
7. Go to one writing-related conference.
8. Walk my dog.
9. Plant a garden.
10. Make sure I spend quality time with Sailor Boy.
11. Do at least two home improvement projects.
12. Cut our budget.

How did you do this month? Any big plans to kick yourself into gear this spring?

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