Tip of the Day: haven't queried on any of your books in awhile? Sometimes the best medicine is just to get back in the game.
Despite having the pseudonym Miss Querylicious on this blog, I haven't been doing much querying at all lately. In a desperate attempt to reasure myself it hasn't been "that long," I searched my email and was shocked to find my last real query was sent in June of 2008.
A whole YEAR.
As is 52 weeks.
365 Days.
8760 Hours.
525600 Minutes.
OMG times 10. Not only can I not get the Rent song out of my head now, but I honestly can't believe it has been that long. My mind must have been playing tricks on me, because it's felt more like a few weeks since I last queried. The stings of the rejection letters seem fresh.
Moving on to new books does seem to lessen the querying process, because it takes awhile before you can query again. At least that's what I must have been telling myself, despite the fact since those queries were sent I've done extensive revisions on two of my last books for either editors or old query requests that had been coming in.
And even though my books had improved dramatically through those revisions, I still never queried them to more agents or editors, instead I was enticed by my new, shiny books that screamed, "work on me, don't query that old, warn out book. I'm pretty and new and much more fun." Now that those new books aren't as fresh, I've decided to look up some more agents and query on my last two books, which I still love and believe in.
So I'm issuing a query challenge to myself and to all the blog readers who'd like to participate. The challenge will be easy and in fact there are no rules. (Okay, well maybe one rule...which is to make your own rules to challenge yourself in regards to queries. Mine is going to be to query five agents by the end of the week. Your's might be to query someone new, send out more queries than you have been, or just to write your first query or write a query for the book you are working on.)
Let me know if you are up for the challenge...
--Emily, Miss Trying to be Querylicious Again
8 comments:
As a new writer, please tell me the process of query.
thank you.
Kat~ : )
Kat,
That's probably a good idea. I think I'll do that next week for my blog post. So stay tuned. Goodness knows I could use a refresher myself, even though I've been at this for many years.
Good luck to you!!
I could definitely use a query process refresher! I'm not quite ready for your challenge but I'm working on getting there.
Yay! Go Miss Querylicious!
Um... should try it, but it may not be until August. Slogging through revisions right now.
Now I can't get the Rent song out of my head, either.
Oh, Lord, you are reading my mind! I'm always falling in love with the new book at the expense of marketing the old one. It's so much safer.
I do have a new query letter though, I wrote it on Sunday in a marathon session. Now to use it.
Yay! Go Em! :-)
I'm so not ready to query right now, but I need all the help I can get so blog away baby!
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