The Fickle Market

Or “Whatever Happened to That Other Manuscript I Was Querying?”

You may have noticed that I took Bob’s pitch and query down several weeks ago and replaced them with Steve’s. (Or maybe you haven’t noticed, since you probably don’t scour my sidebar as thoroughly as I do every time I stop by the blog.) I officially stopped querying Bob and started querying Steve in the middle of this month.

I’ve thought about doing a big statistics post like the one I did when I finished querying Bob’s predecessor, but my heart hasn’t been in it. Quite frankly, it takes some doing to crunch the numbers and make the graphs look as pretty and uniform as I want them to look, and I just haven’t wanted to invest the time. (Besides, a lot of those numbers are nearly a year old now, so I’m not sure how useful they would be.)

Instead, I decided to blog about something that really sums up my whole Bob-querying experience, and that’s the fickle market. But first, a little--okay, a lot of--background. (For those of you who’ve been around the blog for a while, a lot of this will be old news, but bear with me.)

I started querying Bob last fall, in late October. He was the third manuscript I’d queried, so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the response that Bob received. My first three query replies were all partial requests, and one of those partial requests turned into a full request literally overnight. I was ecstatic. I was impatient. I was certain I would have an agent within a week or two.

But then that full request came back as an invitation to revise and resubmit. I told myself this was a victory--not quite the victory I’d been hoping for, but a victory, nonetheless--and buckled down. The agent had some good ideas, and I knew the manuscript would be stronger if I incorporated them. Besides, I could work on the changes through the holidays, when it probably wasn’t wisest to send out fresh queries, anyway, and not lose a lot of time. I didn’t want to lose momentum, after all.

I finished the revision in mid-January and e-mailed it to the agent. A week and a half later, I received her reply. It was kind and complimentary, but she still wasn’t in love enough with the manuscript to take it on. At the time, I was devastated. Now, I look back and realize that agent’s tastes and mine probably wouldn’t have been very compatible over the long haul, anyway.

After drowning my sorrows in a good cup of hot chocolate, I took my stronger manuscript and sent out a fresh batch of queries. I also sent it to the agents who’d requested more material during the weeks I’d spent revising it. Once again, the response was pretty positive. My request rate was over fifty percent, and I pulled in several more partial-turned-full requests.

Then more R&Rs appeared. I picked up my second one in mid-February; by the first week in March, I had three more. I looked at everything they said and decided to undertake a massive revision: flip-flop the narrative responsibilities for my two POV characters and make Adair, the female lead, the more prominent one. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I felt good about it, really good. So good, in fact, that I believe I said something like, “I think this is the story I’ve been trying to tell all along,” in one of my query updates during that time.

This revision--although, in all fairness, it was really more of a rewrite--took me three months. And when I finished, I knew it was the best thing I’d ever written. It really was the story I’d been trying to tell all along.

By this time, I had something like eight agents waiting to read the revision, so I sent it to them straightaway. I tried not to get my hopes up, but deep down, I let my imagination get away from me. Surely at least one of these agents would love the manuscript enough to offer. Surely this was a done deal. And as the days stretched into weeks, then months, and the rejections piled up, I realized it was--but not the kind of “done” I’d hoped for.

The rejections were all eerily similar. They started out by praising various aspects of the manuscript, then finished with some variation of one of these two lines: “But I just didn’t fall in love,” or “Unfortunately, though, the market has really softened up in the last couple of months.” Whereas six or even three months earlier, every agent and her pet Labrador had been trying to sign the next THE HUNGER GAMES, no one wanted a YA dystopian anymore. Editors were no longer biting. The market was saturated.

Did this market saturation account for all of Bob’s rejection? Of course not. If an agent had really loved the manuscript, the market probably wouldn’t have prevented her from offering representation, and I can think of a few YA dystopians, including Mindy McGinnis’s, that recently sold for good money. But the fact remains that during those months when I was working on the revision, something changed. The market shifted. What had been a hot commodity was now barely a lukewarm one. I sent out a few new queries, but my request rate was nowhere near what it had been before.

Moral of the story: The market is a living, breathing thing, and none of us will ever be able to control it. So instead of worrying about the things we can’t change, we’d do better to worry about the things we can. And sometimes, we just have to know when to let go of a manuscript, especially a trendy one, and get to work on the next project.

On Waiting

Waiting, I've decided, is as much a part of writing as writing is a part of writing. You wait for your subconscious to work out tricky plot points. You wait for beta readers to read through your manuscript. You wait to hear back on your queries, and if you're lucky enough to get a request, you wait to hear back on those. If you're lucky enough to land an agent, you wait to hear back from editors, and on and on and on. You wait and wait and wait, and some days are good, and others aren't so good, and after a while, even on the good days, you start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, you're starting to go a little crazy...

Or maybe that's just me:)

But in all seriousness, I've been thinking about this waiting for a few weeks now and had a few thoughts I wanted to share. Many of you know that I finished Bob's revision about six weeks ago, and since then, I've been--you guessed it--waiting. And the truth is, I didn't think I'd have to wait this long. You always hear these stories about writers who submit their revisions and have an offer within, like, twelve hours. Why don't we ever hear the stories about writers who wait...and wait...and wait before receiving any kind of response?

I suspect it's because those stories aren't as newsworthy. "Writer waits six months to receive an offer of representation" isn't nearly as exciting as "Writer wakes up to agents mud-wrestling in her front yard over her manuscript," and "Writer receives many compliments from agents, shelves project after eight months" never makes the front page (let alone the tenth). And yet having to wait isn't something to be ashamed of. In fact, I daresay waiting is the period of time in which we grow the most.

We often talk about how to cope with waiting (namely, get to work on your next project, spend time with your family, and GET TO WORK ON YOUR NEXT PROJECT), but we don't talk as much about how waiting refines us, how it shows us what we're made of. There's a big difference between waiting and waiting well, and the only way we ever learn how to do the latter is if things don't go the way we want them to (or at least not right away).

I still don't know exactly how to let our waiting change us, how to let it push us to become better people, but I do know we'll never become the people we can be without those opportunities. So I'm trying to look at it that way. I'm trying to see this waiting as a Krista-refining period of time. That way, if I ever achieve this crazy dream of landing an agent (and, fingers crossed, a book deal), I will have achieved even more.

Bob's New Query

With Bob's revision winding down, I find myself in need of a new query. It's still a little rough, but here's what I have so far:

Sixteen-year-old Adair’s life isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. She lives in Mandalay Bay, sure, but the Bay hasn’t seen a high roller since the Last Recession, just an army of luckless squatters. She goes to school at Wynn, but it’s more of a prison camp than an actual high school. And while she doesn’t have a lot of parental supervision, that’s only because her mom is dead and her dad has to work long hours for the man who ruined their lives.

Old Man Hermes did a lot more than revolutionize the biomedia industry when he invented Wingteeth, oral implants that link people’s brainwaves to the Stream. He also created a class system based on technological orientation, with the sharks and their Wingteeth on top, the Toothless grannies on the bottom. Oh, and he also sacrificed her mother’s life to save his precious company. Adair wants to return the favor--by taking his company away from him.

With the help of her secret society, Adair plans to carry out her hostile corporate takeover in five easy steps: First, rustle up an invitation to Old Man Hermes’s annual symposium. Second, assassinate him at the banquet. Third, shut down the Stream. Fourth, make the whole thing look like an accident. Fifth, install one of the grannies as chairman of the board.

What she doesn’t plan is to fall in love with one of the sharks at the symposium or to turn them into zombies when she shuts down the Stream. And she certainly doesn’t expect not to have the guts to murder Old Man Hermes when she gets the perfect chance.

All right, tear it apart. What doesn't make sense? What needs more explanation?

What About Bob?

Several people have asked about Bob's progress of late, so here's a quick update. At the moment, I'm in the middle of a silent read-through, and then I'll only have one more out-loud read-through to do. (I didn't used to read my manuscripts out loud at all. Now, I can't stand the thought of NOT reading the whole thing out loud at least once.)

While reading, I'm tweaking small details, shaving words, freaking out. Mostly freaking out, I'm afraid. (He's awful. He's wonderful! This is taking forever. I'm finished! I'm not. He's awful. He's wonderful!) I'm planning to finish sometime in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully, I shouldn't have to live like this for much longer. I haven't been myself lately.

And now, since I'm a card-carrying member of the Society for Math Nerds, Geeks, and Dweebs, a few numbers:

Current word count (to the nearest thousand): 79,000 (and falling)
Highest word count ever: 80,000
Lowest word count ever: 59,000

Number of betas who've read any part of Bob: 9
Number of betas who've read all of Bob: 7
Number of betas who've read all of Bob more than once: 3 (thank you, thank you, thank you, Myrna, Kelly, and Honey Bear!)

I can't say enough about my awesome, awesome beta readers. Honestly, they've made all the difference. Thank you, all nine of you, one more time.

Where are you at with your works-in-progress?

Catharsis and Enlightenment

Last night, I had a bit of a meltdown. I’m sure you can imagine what it sounded like: “Aw, my writing stinks! I’m a horrible writer and a horrible person! I’m ruining Bob, absolutely ruining him!”

Now, in my defense, I was tired, and I’m generally not my best when I’m putting together a revision outline. Honey Bear wisely told me to go to bed, and I did. And this morning, I had an epiphany: I’ve been doing this revision-outline thing all wrong.

In the past, I’ve organized my revision outlines by chapter. I’ve made a list of all the changes I want to make within each chapter and added a short list of general changes to the top of the outline. Then I’ve picked someplace to start (which is rarely the beginning), fixed that problem, and moved on to another item in my list (which is rarely the next one).

There’s no method to my madness--I just change whatever I feel like changing whenever I feel like changing it. I try to start with the biggest problems first and work through to the smallest ones, but that’s sometimes easier said than done. Last night, for example, as I was going back through my outline, I was getting bogged down in the little chapter-by-chapter issues and forgetting the big picture.

To put it another way (and to use yet another cliché), I was getting lost in the trees and losing sight of the forest.

The feedback our betas give us is invaluable, but if we want to make good use of it, we have to learn how to separate major issues from minor ones. I’m still relatively new to this whole beta-reader thing (Bob is the first manuscript I’ve written that anyone but Honey Bear and my mother has read), so I’m definitely still developing this skill myself. Last night was just one more lesson in the all-inclusive education Bob has been giving me.

All of this has been a really long way to say I’m going to try organizing my revision outlines by topic instead of by chapter. That way, I’ll be able to see at a glance the major issues I want to tackle. Then I’ll add bullet points under each of those big issues to flesh out the specific changes I plan to make. Hopefully, this will lead to less meltdowns.

Or maybe not:)

P.S. For more information about the revision process, check out Kayeleen Hamblin’s awesome post, “Pulling the Weeds.” Whether you’re a writer or a gardener (or both), you’ll appreciate her analogy.

P.P.S. Some of you may be wondering about my “Interview with an Agent” series. I’m still working on it, so no worries, but this spring has been tricky. Lots of agents are agreeing to do the interview, but they’re taking a bit longer to get back to me than they have in the past. This probably means they’re busy signing clients and making awesome deals, but I’ll keep plugging away!

Fear

The notes from my latest round of beta readers are starting to come in, and as I’ve spent the last few days going through them, I’ve realized that I’m a lot closer to the end of this revision than I am to the beginning. And that realization has filled me with one thing.

Fear.

Fear that all these agents will end up saying no. Fear that, after all these months (and almost years), Bob still won’t be good enough. Fear that, after years and years of writing, I’ll be right back where I started.

It’s irrational, I know. On the one hand, I can see that I’m closer now than I’ve ever been before, that the writer I am now is a hundred--a thousand--times better than the writer I was three years ago. And I know that the changes I’ve made and will make to this latest draft of Bob are the changes I needed to make. But on the other hand, I worry that it still won’t be enough, that published books all have some special, secret Something and I’m still trying to figure out what it is.

I probably feel this way precisely because Bob is so much better than anything else I’ve ever written. I’ve invested so much time and energy into this project that I really don’t want to believe all my effort’s been for naught. The other day, Honey Bear said, “It’s like you’ve got nine slow pitches coming at you, and they’re all right across the plate,” and I replied, “Exactly! And I don’t want to mess them up!”

I like to think I’m not the sort of person who is paralyzed by fear--that I’m the sort of person who attacks it--but this revision has definitely made me slow down, take a step back, and think things through a little more. With these pitches coming at me nice and slow, I definitely want to take my time to swing.

Like I'm Heading Out the Door Without My Underwear

I plan to send the new, new Bob off to some beta readers later this week, and I must say, this is the most uncomfortable I've felt before sending him off.

I'm not doing this on a whim, mind you. Over the past eighteen months, I've learned something about myself when it comes to incorporating reader feedback: The more time I spend fixing things before I send him off to betas, the more anxious I get about sending him off to agents, which means I usually end up spending less time fixing things after I receive those betas' feedback. And that's a horrible attitude to have. I should definitely spend more time in the post-beta phase of revising than in the pre-beta phase, so I decided to send him out sooner rather than later. Still, I can't quite shake that icky feeling, like I'm heading out the door without my underwear or something.

How do you decide when your manuscripts are ready for a second--or third, or fourth--set of eyes?

An Announcement and a First Page

No interview today (spring must be a busy time in the publishing world, as agents have been taking a little longer to get back to me), but I did want to let you know about next week's interactive interview with Victoria Marini of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents, Inc. Ms. Marini will be here to take your questions next Thursday, March 31, and we'd love to have you here, too.

Also, I thought I'd share a bit of the new, new Bob with you. This rewrite has been consuming me, and I'm happy to report that I'm just as excited about it now as I was when I first started. So without further ado, here's the new, new first page (so far):

Wynn High School had to be the snappiest-looking hellhole in the country’s entire public school system, but then, what did they expect from a high school that had started out as the snappiest-looking casino on the Strip? Everything was decades old, from the leaky roof to the even leakier plumbing, but thirty years ago, so they said, it had all been really nice. The desks were leftover nightstands from the tower suites upstairs, and the golden details in the frescoes had supposedly been painted with actual solid gold.

Of course, the frescoes were all so pockmarked they were completely unrecognizable, and Adair was pretty sure actual solid gold wasn’t actually paint-able. Still, she liked the idea that Wynn was sort of a metaphor for her life. Once upon a time, it had all been pretty posh, but now everything about it pretty much sucked.

Adair sank into her threadbare seat in what had once been called Encore Theater but was now known as Plunkett Auditorium, so named because Mr. Plunkett was the first principal who’d been brave enough to use it since the Last Recession. The others had been too afraid of creating a Toothless mob, but that, of course, had been before her time.

The mood in the auditorium was trippy, all nervous anticipation and pent-up energy. The teachers, transplanted sharks from the southeast and northwest quadrants, probably thought they were excited to find out who would have the chance to hang out with all the rich people at Old Man Hermes’s annual Symposium for Kids and Old People on Biomedia, Nirvana, and Discovering Just How Screwed You Are Because You Don’t Have a Wingtooth (or something like that).

Little did they know that Adair wanted to do a whole lot more than hang out with Old Man Hermes and his brainless sharks.

I'm still smoothing things out, of course, and I'm not entirely convinced that this is the absolute best place to start, but I do like the imagery in these lines and this first taste of Adair's voice. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. And if you'd like to share a snippet of whatever you've been working on, I'd love to hear that, too.

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Steve

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 15,000
Status: On hold for the moment
Attitude: In love!

You’ll notice a couple of curious things about this introduction. First, Steve isn’t Judy. (Sorry, Judy.) Judy was great while she lasted, but I’m all about Steve now, my new MG historical with a dash of science fiction. The idea--actually, just a first line--popped into my head as I was falling asleep one night: “Mama said it was plum foolishness to keep Robby’s dog tags like that, with his blood still stuck between the tiny grooves and ridges of his name.” I wondered what kind of story would start with that kind of line, and Steve was born.

Second, even though I’m totally in love with this one (heck, I wrote those 15,000 words in about eight days), the project is on hold for now. Some things have come up with Bob (no, I don’t have an agent or even an offer of representation, but I do have some promising new leads), and they have to take priority. But I had to make a note of Steve, because he’s the book I’m coming back to after I rewrite Bob. (I’m rewriting Bob? What? WHAT? (More about that later this week…))

So what have you been working on?

A Few Housekeeping Notes

Today, I’m thankful for my health, which I only seem to notice after I get sick.

First off, I won’t be posting an agent interview this week, just so we can all enjoy the holiday, but I’m very excited about next week’s interview, which will feature Kathleen Ortiz of Lowenstein Associates. December’s a crazy month, so the interview won’t be interactive, but Ms. Ortiz came up with some wonderful answers to the usual questions.

Also, I’ve been playing around with Blogger’s pages, mostly because “Interview with an Agent” has been unnecessarily elongating my sidebar, so the link to those interview archives is now just below the title header. Maybe someday, when I’m feeling in the mood for a little self-torture, I’ll add genre listings and a bunch of other cool stuff to that “Interview with an Agent” page. For now, though, it’s just the same old list.

And just so the “Interview with an Agent” tab isn’t up there all alone, I also added a “More About Me” page (as if you didn’t already know way more than you wanted to just by reading this blog) and a “WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS” page, which features Bob’s query and first chapter.

I think that’s it. Unless anyone knows how to fix that silly-looking border around the tabs. (If I can’t figure it out, I may have to relocate them to the sidebar, because I really can’t stand that border…)

Oh, and if I don’t get a chance to say it later in the week, happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Today, I'm thankful for sunrises, which always bring light back to a darkened world.

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 73,000
Status: FINIS
Attitude: Crazy relieved

I’m crazy relieved because I’m finally done, and I’m just plain, old crazy because I started querying a few days ago and it’s already got me all tied up in knots. But this (work-in-) progress report isn’t about the querying, it’s about the Bobbing, and the Bob (yeah, he’s so cool he needs an article now) is finished. HE’S FINISHED!

(Okay, so I was just kidding about that whole article thing. I mean, I think he’s pretty cool, but as little Sheryl Yoast said in REMEMBER THE TITANS, now ain’t the time to be proud.)

Another huge thank-you to my awesome betas, Amy, Jeni, Jess (who just landed herself an agent on Tuesday!), Liesl, Mandy, and Myrna (double thank-you to Myrna, since she read Bob twice), and to everyone else who has given me feedback on this blog and over at Nathan Bransford’s forums (yeah, that means you, Holly). I’ll quit there, I guess, since this is starting to sound like the Acknowledgments page at the back of a book, and that would be putting the cart way, way, way, way, way out in front of the horse.

Anyway, I can honestly say Bob is the best book I’ve written so far. I’ve grown so much as a writer as I've worked on him this year. I realize that sounds cliché, but it’s true, so I’m sticking to it.

And one more for good measure: BOB’S FINISHED! (At least until the agent feedback starts rolling in…)

What about you? Where are you at with your works-in-progress, and how are they going? (NaNoers, feel free to chime in--unless you'd rather not give away the fact that you're here and not writing:) )

Seven Scintillating But Mostly Useless Facts

Fellow bloggers Ishta Mercurio (awesome name, don’t you think? Ishta, you should name one of your characters after yourself:) ) and Carol Riggs gave me these delightful awards a few weeks ago. Thank you so much, ladies!

To claim Carol’s, I have to tell you seven things about myself, so here are seven scintillating but mostly useless facts I hope I haven’t mentioned before:

1. Bob is thiiis close to being finished--like, I-have-the-first-few-chapters-and-almost-the-whole-manuscript-completely-totally done. More about that in the next couple of weeks.

2. I already have a Shiny New Idea that I could start outlining, like, yesterday. Actually, for the first time in my life, I have a few Shiny New Ideas, but I’m pretty set on this one. I think.

3. As scintillating but mostly useless fact number two implies, I’m not very good at coming up with Shiny New Ideas. Some writers have more ideas than they could write in two or three lifetimes. I’m lucky to come up with one roughly every time I need it.

4. My blood type is O-positive (’cause I’m sure y’all were dying to know that).

5. I can say “y’all” because I lived in Texas for, like, a year when I was twelve. (Have I mentioned that before?) The rest of my childhood I spent in Utah. (Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that before. Oops.)

6. My sister is half Guatemalan, but it didn’t occur to me she wasn’t white until I was, like, sixteen.

7. I don’t usually say “like” as often as I’ve said it in this post.

I’d like to pass these awards on to the following six bloggers, all of whom have served as betas for Bob in one way or another:

A.L. Sonnichsen of The Green Bathtub
Bittersweet Fountain of A Bittersweet Fountain
Jenilyn Tolley of Jenilyn M. Tolley
Jess of Must Love Books
Liesl of Writer Ropes and Hopes
Myrna Foster of Night Writer

Amy, Mandy, Jeni, Jess, Liesl, and Myrna, feel free to claim one or both of these. I’m feeling generous today:)

Thanks for reading, everyone!

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 66,000 (and rising)
Status: Incorporating feedback from my latest batch of betas
Attitude: Fluttery

Fluttery because I’m excited. Fluttery because I’m nervous. Fluttery because I’m fast approaching Bob’s first birthday and I can’t believe it’s been a YEAR.

This week, I plan to put together what I hope will be my last revision outline, and then I’ll only have to pretty up each chapter according to said outline. (Well, I also plan to try that dreaded out-loud read again, but as we all remember how well that went a few months ago, I’m still kind of ignoring it…)

My first batch of betas caught the major problems with my plot and story construction, and my second batch uncovered some issues with characterization and world building. That’s just how it should be, I think--the first batch found the biggest problems, and the second batch the second biggest problems. Interestingly, none of my second-batch betas brought up the same major issues my first batch did, which (hopefully) means I fixed those plot problems. Phew.

Depending on how I feel about this fifth draft once I finish it, I may decide to give Bob to a third round of beta readers, but for now, I’m thinking these two will be good. Which means I’ll probably be ready to query by late September.

Wowsers. Querying by late September.

And that’s why I’m all fluttery.

And Bob's Official Title Is...

…At the bottom of this post:)

Aw, you guys are awesome! Five hundred words isn’t a lot to go on, but you came up with 249 titles. Like I said, awesome.

Before I announce the winners, I have a brain fart to confess. I should have mentioned how I planned to handle the word “The” in the contest post, but since I didn’t even think about it until I was judging all the entries, I guess I’ll mention it now. I decided to treat entries with and without “The” as separate entries, so TOOTHLESS and THE TOOTHLESS are, in fact, different. (Which actually makes sense in the context of the story, because TOOTHLESS can refer to the condition of being Toothless as well as the group of people who are, whereas THE TOOTHLESS is most definitely the group.)

My short list was pretty long, but here it is:

Honorable Mentions

BITE THE HAND by Ryan Z Nock
THE LAST WINGTOOTHER by Myrna Foster
SETH TUCKER AND THE SHARK ZOMBIES by Liesl
SETH WINGTOOTHER AND THE STREAM BREAKERS by Joseph Adams
STREAM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS by L. Bowser
STREAMBREAKERS by Taryn7
TOOTH FOR A TOOTH by Joseph Adams
THE TOOTHLESS by Gwendolyn Conover
TOOTHLESS RISING by Stephanie McGee
THE WINGTOOTH CHRONICLES by Holly
WINGTOOTHER by Christauna Asay

I liked a lot of things about these entries. For instance, I loved SETH TUCKER AND THE SHARK ZOMBIES and SETH WINGTOOTHER AND THE STREAM BREAKERS, but both of these felt more middle grade than young adult to me.

THE LAST WINGTOOTHER sounds great, but it follows a too-common pattern. (You can blame THE LAST SAMURAI and THE LAST AIRBENDER for that:) ). And while I love the idea of using THE WINGTOOTH CHRONICLES as a possible series name, I’m not as wild about it for a single book (which Holly already pointed out).

Because I thought these titles were so great, I’M OFFERING THE HONORABLE MENTIONS A PRIZE AS WELL. I’m not an agent, but I’ve spent the last two years trying to get one, and I think I’ve learned a thing or two about writing queries and first pages. So honorable mentions, if you’re looking for some feedback, feel free to e-mail me at kvandolzer@gmail.com with your query OR first page. I’d love to learn a little more about the stuff you’re working on.

Third Place THE ASSASSINATION OF MARVIN HERMES by Diana. Love this title. Really love this title. But if anybody’s name is going to be in the title, I’d rather it were Seth’s.

Second Place FEED DEAF by Too Cute (Penelope Wright), which I am taking the liberty of changing to STREAM DEAF. I didn’t mention it before, but sometime between now and when I first set up this contest, I actually came up with two titles I really liked. STREAM DEAF was one of them, so when Honey Bear read this one off, I just about snorted my ice water. I figured it was a sign:)

First Place WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS by Ben Spendlove. I honestly couldn’t decide between STREAM DEAF and WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS, but I decided to give WHOSE TEETH the win because it was the one title I couldn’t get out of my head. The phrase comes from a scripture in Proverbs (Proverbs 30:14), and that verse couldn’t be more applicable to Bob.

Congratulations, Ben, Penelope, and Diana! Please e-mail me at kvandolzer@gmail.com so we can work out prizes. And everyone else, thanks again for all your help. Bob has needed a title for a long, long time, and now he has one.

Bob, I dub thee WHOSE TEETH ARE AS SWORDS. Or maybe STREAM DEAF. I can’t quite make up my mind.

Next stop--agents’ inboxes! (And Ben (or maybe Penelope), no one is rooting for you to win that Kindle as much as I am:) )

The "Help! Bob Needs a Title" Blog Contest

Hooray! It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for! (Okay, maybe I'm the only one who's been waiting for it...) The “Help! Bob Needs a Title” Blog Contest is here!

As many of you know, I’ve been calling my work-in-progress Bob for almost a year now, and while it’s an affectionate nickname, it’s not a very useful title. I’m thinking you can come up with a better one.

To enter, simply read Bob’s query and first page below, then leave your suggested titles in the comments section of this post. You’re welcome to include feedback in your comment, but make sure you clearly identify your entries so my trusty sidekick (read: Honey Bear, my husband) doesn’t miss them.

I plan to judge the entries blindly, meaning I won’t know who submitted what. My trusty sidekick will transfer all the entries into a separate document, no names attached, and I’ll make my picks from there.

The Rules

1. Anyone may enter.

2. Everyone who enters may submit up to seven entries. (You don’t even have to do anything to get those extra entries--I just don’t want you to have to choose between several equally good titles.)

3. In the unlikely event that the same title is entered more than once, every entry but the first will be disqualified (although the disqualified entrants may submit other entries).

The Prizes Four lovely agents have agreed to offer query and/or first-page critiques to the winners:

Amy Boggs: Query plus first-page critique
Sarah LaPolla: First-page critique
Andrea Somberg: Query plus first-page critique
Marissa Walsh: Query critique

I plan to name three winners, so the first-place winner will get to pick two of these prizes, the second-place winner will get to pick one of the remaining prizes, and the third-place winner will receive the remaining prize.

And here’s the kicker: If I like the first-place winner’s title enough to actually use it AND this manuscript lands an agent, the first-place winner will also win a fifty-dollar Amazon gift card. In addition, if said agent likes the title enough AND the manuscript lands a book deal, the first-place winner will also win a Kindle (or another comparable e-reader of his or her choice).

The Query The 2046 International Biomedia Conference is the most celebrated event for high school students on the planet. But when Seth receives an invitation to attend, the last thing he wants to do is celebrate.

Seth hates biomedia, especially his Wingtooth, the tooth-shaped implant that links his brainwaves to the Stream. The too-smooth voices give him headaches, and he’s never found much use for a Camera that takes pictures with his eyes or a Music Player that blasts its sounds straight into his brain. His parents, though, are less concerned about his health than they are about his chance to meet Marvin Hermes, the industry’s reclusive founder. He has to go--and use his Wingtooth, which he hardly ever does.

Not ten minutes off the shuttle, Seth introduces himself to the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen by accidentally dumping his breakfast on her. Worse, the girl is Toothless, part of the recession-ravaged class unable to afford Wingteeth, and probably took the dumping as an insult. Little does Seth know that wearing his breakfast on her sleeve is the least of Adair’s concerns.

Ever since her mother died in an overcrowded Wingtooth factory, Adair and her father have been masterminding a Toothless takeover. Their plan is simple: Shut down the Stream, assassinate Marvin Hermes, and make the whole thing look like an accident. Then install one of the Toothless as chairman of the board. But their plan collapses when Adair doesn’t go through with the assassination--and when shutting down the Stream leaves the city’s Wingtoothers unable to think or even eat for themselves.

Now Seth and Adair are the Wingtoothers’ last hope. Seth will do anything to save his parents, but Adair isn’t so eager. Can she really abandon the cause she’s worked so hard for? But is she willing to let the Wingtoothers just die?

The First Page The principal’s office was bad, but the principal’s office waiting room was much worse. Seth shifted in his toothpaste-colored seat and tried to concentrate on his homework (Problem number eight. Find the limit as x approaches e of the natural log of x, b-Reader droned inside his head), but his own thoughts were so loud he could barely hear the words.

What could Ms. Mahoney possibly want with him?

The secretary looked up, almost like she’d read his mind. “Sorry for the wait.” She flashed him a phantom grin. “But I think you’ll find it worth your while.”

Problem number eight. Find the limit as x approaches--

Seth pushed the words aside, out of thought. “What do you mean?”

She cupped one hand around the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell her I said anything, but … congratulations.”

Problem number--

“Congratulations?”

“Not so loud!” The secretary leaned over her laptop, bleached blond curls bouncing stiffly, like she was going to say more. But then something on the screen caught her attention, and she forgot all about him.

Problem number eight. Find the limit as--

Seth closed the calc book with a thought and exited b-Reader with another. But that only made way for a new flood of sounds and pictures, which burrowed into his brain with almost no thought at all. In the quiet of the waiting room, without his homework to distract him, Stream Surfer’s smooth-talking voices were impossible to ignore.

Phew. I think that’s everything. The contest closes on Monday, August 23, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. The winners will be announced no later than Friday, August 27. Good luck, and happy titling!

Contests!

Just wanted to make you aware of a few ongoing or upcoming contests. First, KarenG of Coming Down the Mountain is hosting an awesome blog contest. Submit the first three chapters of your manuscript to an editor at WiDo Publishing, an independent publisher based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and you could win a full request/critique from the same. The best part is, every entrant will receive some kind of feedback on their chapters, so scurry on over there and find out more details. The contest closes on Saturday, August 21, so you have a little time. Good luck!

Also, I'm excited to announce that I'll be hosting my second blog contest next week. Bob is in desperate need of a title, and I'd love to get your ideas. To make it worth your while, I'm offering query and first-page critiques from four awesome agents--Amy Boggs of Donald Maass Literary Agency, Sarah LaPolla of Curtis Brown, Ltd., Andrea Somberg of Harvey Klinger, Inc., and Marissa Walsh of FinePrint Literary Management--to the people whose title ideas I like best. So make sure to drop by next Tuesday, August 17, for all the details.

Any other contests going on around the blogosphere that you think everyone should know about? Maybe you'll get an extra entry in those contests if you leave a notice in the comments...

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 65,000
Status: Finished with the fourth draft
Attitude: Uneasy, a little

Well, Bob is off to his next batch of beta readers, and I'm feeling, as I said, a little uneasy. I have more concerns about this draft than I had about the last one, which doesn't make sense, because shouldn't Bob 4 be better than Bob 3? Maybe I'm afraid I didn't fully resolve all the issues my first two betas raised. Or maybe I realize I'm getting ready to buy another ticket to Queryland and I'm a little nervous about that.

I've never been nervous about querying in the past. (If anything, I've been a little too un-nervous.) But Bob feels different somehow. I've spent a lot more time on him than I spent on the first two projects I queried, and I've grown a lot as a writer since I've been working on him. Does that mean I think the universe owes me an agent and a book deal? Of course not. But it does mean I have a lot more invested in Bob. It does mean that if this one doesn't work out, either, I'll have to take a long, hard look at myself and my writing.

It does not mean, however, that I'm going to quit. As I mentioned in a previous post, I refuse to give up--for two reasons. First, I simply can't quit; I'm too addicted to these stories, these words. Giving up writing would be like giving up sanity, and those of you who write to stay sane, to have something grown-up to do every day, know exactly what I mean:)

But I'm not planning to give up my pursuit of publication, either, because my writing's still improving. As long as my knowledge of the craft--and my ability to execute that knowledge--is increasing, there's no reason to quit. (Thank you, Honey Bear, for pointing that out.)

So I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens with Bob, I'll still be right here, writing away, inflicting my musings on you. But since you're perfectly welcome to inflict your musings on me, I guess it's a fair trade:)

How are your works-in-progress coming along? And what do you know now about yourself or your writing that you didn't know when you started your most recent project?

Half Full, Half Empty

I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of gal. When I exercise, I exercise. When I clean, I clean. And when I don’t, I don’t. So I’m either really in shape or really not, and my house is either spick and span or so chaotic that we have to slide the junk around to find a place to eat.

I have the same attitude toward my writing. (Perhaps you've noticed:) ) No matter how much water is in that glass--and it’s almost always the same amount--I manage to convince myself it’s either so half full it’s nearly overflowing or so half empty it barely holds a sip.

I fear I’ve fallen into one of those half-empty funks. I’m starting to think Bob’s never going to be Perfect or even good enough. And I’m starting to wonder what I’m going to do if this one doesn’t work out, either.

I’m not thinking about quitting or anything (sunk costs be hanged!), but I am reevaluating where I’m at. I'm not as good a writer as I want to be right now, and Bob isn't nearly as polished as I think he should be, but that's okay, I guess. As long as I keep at it, I'm sure I'll be better tomorrow than I am today. Bob, too. (But sometimes, I just wish everything were better now...)

P.S. Just so I don’t leave you on such a downer, here’s a clip I happened across that had me laughing so hard I cried. (I would have embedded it in the post, but College Humor disabled the embedding feature.) I loved BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, but these guys do have a point:)

Bob's Query (So Far)

I started writing Bob’s query last week, and it ended up coming together a lot faster than I thought it would (assuming, of course, my beta readers don’t uncover a massive plot revision that renders the whole thing obsolete). I posted my first draft on Nathan Bransford’s forums, got slammed, and put together this draft, which garnered (winks at Myrna:) ) a few good reviews. So now that I won’t be completely embarrassed by it (I think), I wanted to share it with you and get your opinions and advice.

Dear [Agent]:

The 2046 International Biomedia Conference is, according to the pamphlet, the most celebrated event for high school students on the planet. But when Seth receives an invitation to attend, the last thing he wants to do is celebrate.

Seth hates biomedia. He hates Hermes United, the company that pioneered the industry, and he loathes his Wingtooth, the tooth-shaped implant that links his brain to the feed. The too-smooth voices give him headaches, and he’s never found much use for a Camera that takes pictures with his eyes, or a Music Player that blasts its words and sounds straight into his brain. The truth is, he hardly uses his Wingtooth, even though ripping out Wingteeth is about as socially acceptable as ripping out real ones.

But his protests fall on feed-deafened ears. Monday morning finds him at the conference, which gets off to a not-so-promising start when he slips and dumps his breakfast on the most beautiful girl in the whole world. And that’s the high point of his week. The low point hits the night of the Last Banquet, when Hermes United’s Toothless workers launch a hostile corporate takeover--literally--and disable the feed.

The Toothless rebels meant to humble their Wingtoother colleagues, but they end up crippling them instead. Because the feed’s smooth-talking voices have left the Wingtoothers incapable of independent thought--except for Seth. As the last Wingtoother standing, he’s biomedia’s last hope.

But does he really want to save the thing that turned everyone into thoughtless nothings? And if he wants to save them, does he have any other choice?

[BOB] is a 63,000-word YA dystopian. [Agent-specific comments]

I am a BYU graduate, a stay-at-home mom, and a blogger. [BOB] will be my first publication.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Name
Contact Info

Any thoughts?

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 63,000 (barely)
Status: Finished with the third draft!
Attitude: Relieved

I usually don’t post on weekends, but I just wanted to drop in to say…I’m finished! Bob is currently sitting in the inboxes of my first two beta readers, and I couldn’t be more excited.

As for my last (work-in-) progress report, I gave up on the whole reading-Bob-out-loud thing. I decided that should be one of the last edits I do, and so that out-loud read is still several months away.

What have I been doing, then, this past week and a half? Filling in all the little holes, as I mentioned in my last report, and using the find-and-replace feature to get rid of too-common words and phrases. I’ve never used that technique, but now I can’t imagine NOT using it. (Yesterday, for example, I eliminated about two hundred “justs,” “rights,” and “backs.”) I’m sure I missed a few, but I'll leave it to my beta readers to point out the next several hundred to me:)

And speaking of cutting words, I’ve cut some the past few weeks. Bob was at 59,000 words by the end of the first draft, up to 66,000 somewhere in the second, and now he sits at around 63,000 (even though this third draft has been largely about ADDING words). For the most part, the words I’ve cut have been unnecessary dialogue and action tags. (“Hi, my name is Krista, and I’m a dialogue and action tagger…”) Sometimes the characters just need to speak for themselves, you know?

Well, that’s all for me. Back to the manuscript I’ve been beta-reading for the past more-than-a-month…