Friday's Fun Facts

Thanks to all who gave me a thumbs-up after Wednesday's post talking my 3 quick agent rejections...but not necessary! Really. There are so many outstanding agents out there. Maybe my book will spark an interest for one of them. Maybe not. Rejection is part of the publishing world. If my book isn't published this time around, maybe I'll rework it. Maybe I'll shelve it for a while. One thing I know: of course I'll keep writing. You must develop a thick skin as a writer, and you must have confidence in your own abilities and keep pushing onward. You must.

Writers' Wednesday: 3 Quick "No's"

Hi folks, no time to blog today except to give you the YA agent search update:

3 rejections since I sent off letters on Monday, two based on a query + 5 sample pages, and one based on query alone.

Now I'm off to bury myself under a pile of papers still waiting to be graded...

Monday's Mentionables: The Agent Search Begins

Yesterday I began my YA agent search and sent out about 8 email queries to agents in my "A" group (I have an "A" and a "B" group, for what it's worth - those who would be dream agents, and those who I'd still like to work with even though they might not be as perfect a fit). I'll admit, I did have a moment of thinking "Should I be sending queries at 8:00 pm on a Sunday night of a holiday weekend?" but then decided that agents who accept email queries are pretty open-minded about when those queries actually arrive in their in-box.

I focused my agent search in a few places: the forums at Absolute Write, because those people run the gamut from new author to published expert; AgentQuery, since it's a nice straight-forward compilation and you can search agents by keyword; and the latest issue of Writer's Digest, which listed 27 agents cuurently open to new authors (not all YA, of course, but there were quite a few who were). One thing I found interesting: on one agent's website (can't remember which one), she wrote that she was interested in any YA sub-genre EXCEPT those featuring vampires or zombies. Maybe the Twilight craze is finally dying down?

At this point, I'm sending out email queries only. I found it interesting that there are still quite a few agents (even well-known, well-established ones) who accept postal mail queries only. Seems like such a waste of trees and time, especially now in the 21st century.

So...I will keep you posted! Today I need to work on my synopsis for the book (hate writing those), since I skipped those agents last night who want synopses in the query. Blech. Sample pages, fine. Synopsis, yuck. But a couple of those agents are on my "A" list, so looks like I'll spent at least part of this holiday from school working on my summarizing skills.

Happy Monday!