The History of My Writing (2).

I wrote my first novel when I was nineteen. I had been reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway during my first two years of college and my style of writing was similar to his--a lot of short sentences, a lot of dialogue--and was based on those college years. I still have the novel, but I've not looked at it in over thirty years. I'm almost afraid to. I did no more novel writing until after I graduated from college and, if memory serves me correctly, not until after I served two-years active duty in the navy. I spent the next two years working and completing my naval service as an active reservist. During those two years I wrote at least two or three novels. I still have them, but I've done nothing with them. I moved to Rhode Island for a year and wrote another novel, about WWII, and tried to get it published after completing the third draft. A literary agent looked at it and said the writing wasn't professional enough. That was my first rejection letter. Instead of polishing it, I wrote another novel as a knee-jerk reaction to being rejected. I had married and worked part-time and wrote part-time, but the need for money became overwhelming and I began working full-time. My writing from that point on, for the next thirty years, was sparse and varied. I did polish one of the novels, The Temple of Eden, which became the basis for much of the fiction I've written during the past ten years.

Literary agents, synopsis, queries, and sample chapters.

Why do agents ask for a synopsis (a short paragraph, or no more than one page), a query letter (no more than one page), and sample chapters? I know they want to get a good feel for your novel before looking at it. But still, why don't they look at all three, instead of just looking at the synopsis and saying 'no.' Or just looking at the query letter and saying 'no.' In other words, why don't they look at the sample chapters to see if the writing works for them. I'm submitting one of my novels through Webook to literary agents. I'm paying a small fee to have my queries tracked. Of the six agents who've looked at my submission, three looked at the short synopsis and said no, two looked at the short synopsis and query letter and said no, one looked at short synopsis, bio, and query letter and said no, and one looked at short synopsis, query, and sample chapters and said no. There are another seven agents who've yet to look at my submission.

What I deduce from this is that the short synopsis is critical. If the agent doesn't like it, she'll go no further. Then, if she does look at the query, it has to be even better than the synopsis. So, I need to make my short synopsis sizzle, and the query letter heat the sizzle to a higher temperature, or agents won't even bother with the sample chapters. And, finally, the first page or two of the sample chapters needs to sizzle. (I won't try to define 'sizzle' at this point. But it needs to be addressed.)

Granted, this is a small sample. But small samples are usually representative of the whole. (I submitted only to agents who wanted all three: short synopsis, query letter, and sample chapters. Many agents only want to see a query letter, and some request a query letter and short synopsis only. I felt that my chances were better if I could submit to agents who wanted sample chapters. Apparently, not so.)

Oh, and one other observation: the agents are so busy, they'll look at your submission when they get around to it.

Literary Agents

Don't you love getting rejections from literary agents? I've come to see them (the rejections) as a forgone conclusion. Agents are inundated with queries. I can imagine how difficult it is to read them and decide whether there's a best seller lurking between the lines, especially when they know that strong query letters are in some ways harder to write than novels. I feel sorry a bit for agents. They might be the most powerful brokers in the literary world, yet they are just guessing. I suppose, taking on an unpublished writer is like walking out on a limb; perhaps their reputations are at stake. They don't want to make a mistake.

Perhaps my query letters should begin "I know you don't want to read this letter, and you don't want to look at my manuscript. Please forgive me for wasting your time. Just stamp on it in big red letters REJECTED  and send it back." Or, maybe, I shouldn't send query letters at all.

I wonder how many outstanding novels were rejected because of poor query letters. How many times have agents taken a look at a manuscript because of a great query letter but the novel turned out to be poorly writen? I have struggled to write good query letters, but none has ever landed me a further look. I am not angry or bitter or even disgusted, just baffled about how to make the letters better. I've read many articles on how to write a query letter that will grab an agent's attention. I've yet to get it right. Or, maybe, my story line just isn't interesting enough. I can't make my historical novel sound like a mystery or adventure or vampire/romance. My books are what they are. I keep trying to make them sound great in a few sentences. Someday, I'll get it right. And, if my novel is not professionally written, it'll get rejected still. Some people do get it right, both ways--query and manuscript--and that gives me hope.

Self-publishing

I'm tempted to self-publish my novels. However, I know the chances of them being widely read are minimal at best. If they're not good enough to get published through the agent-editor method, then they probably aren't ready for publication for any number of reasons. They just might not even be interesting. (I've entered some of my novels in contests, and the reviewers said their opening chapters weren't interesting enough to make them want to read on.) They might have structural problems. My grammar and spelling are mostly correct. But it does seem that, as my writing groups read my novels, they almost always find little things that can be improved. They find redundancies, mixing up of characters' names, inaccuracies of historical facts, some grammar/spelling issues, metaphors that don't work, images that really don't convey what I'm trying to convey. The list goes on. If I self-publish, I'm putting it all out there for my embarrassment. Perfection is impossible, but excellence isn't, and excellence (a difficult quality to define, it's different things to different people ) should be one of the aims of a writer. I'm sure there have been less than excellently written books that have been published through traditional methods and even hit the best-seller list. To a certain extent, it's a matter of pride in your work. I don't want to be ridiculed even as I laugh all the way to the bank.

But self-publishing is tempting. A book is a physical object we can show our family and friends, perhaps even ourselves, that we've done something, that, at least, we tried. (This is not meant to imply that all self-published books are poorly written, or even that the majority of them are. It just means that you can put a poorly written book out there if you want to. It's your money. The writter and editor, if there is one, of a self-published book, should have the same commitment to excellence as those of traditionally published books.) For now, I'm passing on self-publishing. I view it as a last option. But I'm always open to change.