The Secret to Querying

By Aaron Michael Ritchey

In my next life, I'm going to start off as a used car salesman, then switch careers to write romance novels. Think Nicholas Sparks in a bad suit.

Oh, the fear and gnashing I went through to find a publisher for my first novel. This is what I had to do to query agents, editors, and publishers, so I could get my book in print. Okay, this is the big freakin’ secret.

I stopped writing and I used my writing time to write query letters and ship them out. That is what I had to do. It takes about half an hour to research an agent, write the first few lines saying how you heard about them and what you like about them, and then you copy in your pitch and bio and hit send.

Thirty simple minutes.

Easy.

And yet I had to drop everything and focus on only doing query letters because it wasn’t the time commitment that made it so hard. It was the emotional work involved that left me burning into ashes and exhausted beyond belief.

Oh, the agony, the angst, the mortal terror. It’s like finding a parent for my little baby, and going door to door in a Calcutta slum to do it. Most of the time, when I knocked, no one answered. Sometimes they opened the door, said a few nice things, and slammed it shut. And sometimes they sent a robot to answer the door. They didn’t want my baby. Thank you and good luck with finding a home for your human infant.

Like most things in life, querying agents is simple. It’s the emotional baggage that makes it hard for me. That’s why, if someone wants to be a writer, they should start by going into cold call sales, door-to-door. Because querying is a numbers game.

I talked with Catharine Ryan Hyde, who is a hardcore, stone-hearted warrior, and she tried to help me overcome my fear. I asked how many agents I should query before I gave up. She said ALL OF THEM. And you know what, she’s right.

Now, let me say this. Having no agent is better than having a bad agent. Don’t go with someone who isn’t selling, who smells mildly of corruption, or with one who actually hates what you write. More and more, literary agents are becoming unnecessary, and yet, I still believe in the old system. If you wanna’ play with the big dogs, you gotta’ find a handler for your work—a home for your baby. Or did I just mix metaphors?

But it’s hard. You know what's harder? Looking a reader in the eye and trying to get them to buy your book. Same basic process, but at least with an agent, I can hide behind email. In the end, sales is a part of the game.

Now go out there and sell big!

About the Writer:  YA Paranormal author Aaron Michael Ritchey has penned a dozen manuscripts in his 20 years as a writer. When he isn’t slapping around his muse, Aaron cycles to look fabulous, works in medical technologies, and keeps his family in silks and furs. His first novel, The Never Prayer, hit the streets on March 29, 2012.

Countdown to Conference: How to Prepare

By MB Partlow

To properly prepare for conference, you need to take a page from the Santa Claus playbook.

Namely, you need to make a list and check it twice.

What am I blathering about? Come with me while I walk you through the thought process.

For beginning writers, start with the keynote speakers. Have you heard of them? Read anything they've written? If the answer is no, read their books. This is the easiest and fastest way to find out why these particular writers are considered our keynote speakers.  If you want more background than we have on the PPW website, go to the authors' websites. See if they're on Twitter, if that floats your boat. If you don't go to YouTube and see Libba Bray in the cow costume to promote Going Bovine, you're really missing out.

Look at the agents and editors next. Find out who works in the genres you write in, and make a note so you can attend their sessions at conference. Then take a look at all the other authors and specialists. You probably can't read all of everyone's work, but you can familiarize yourself with which ones are doing something you're interested in.

For those of you at a more intermediate level, start at the same place with the keynotes. But when you get to the agents and editors, pay a little more attention. You might decide to sign up for a Read and Critique (R&C) session, and we divide those up by genre. Wait, you don't know what R&C is?

R&C Author is a closed-door session where a few aspiring writers sit down with a published author and read their first page aloud. The author then gives immediate feedback, and with this smaller session, there's time for some back-and-forth between the newbie and the pro. The other two flavors of R&C are open for any conference goers to attend. In R&C X, you stand at the front of the room and read the first page of your work aloud. The agent or editor in that session will give you immediate, first-impression feedback.  In R&C 123, a designated reader will read each first page aloud, giving the author anonymity. Then the panel of one author, one agent and one editor will each give brief feedback.

One note: you need to sign up for R&C when you register for conference. These are highly organized and meticulously timed sessions, run by skilled moderators. I repeat: sign up in advance. Play nicely. Follow the rules you'll receive when you sign up--the moderator isn't going to let you read a first page that's got 1/4-inch margins and is single-spaced with 6-point type.

More experienced writers, with completed manuscripts, have the option of signing up to pitch to an agent or editor. This means more research, because the last thing we want to do is waste the time of you or the agent/editor. When you visit their website, go further than the bio. Look at what authors they work with, what books they've had published recently. This pays a double dividend. First, it pays to be aware of what others in your genre are doing, what flavor of vampire is "it" this month. Second, it shows you exactly what type of books your targeted agent/editor likes to work on.

Are they on Twitter? Follow them. Run their names through your favorite search engine to turn up interviews they've done or industry news items. Remind yourself that you're a writer, not a stalker. Read their blog, and not just the most recent one. Not familiar with their authors? Go back to the library (or book store, your choice) and see for yourself what kind of work they like. One of the best pitch sessions I ever had resulted because I found out (ahead of time) that the agent and I had a favorite book in common, and it gave us something to talk about.

Oh, yeah, you read that right. A pitch session isn't you sitting across the table from an agent or editor and begging them to publish your masterpiece, this heart's blood that you've committed to paper. It's a small slice of time where you get to know each other. You're much more likely to be remembered (favorably) if you ask them a coherent question or two about their work.

The last suggestion I have for conference is this: practice. The question you will be asked, repeatedly, is "What do you write?" Have an answer. Practice saying it out loud. Say it to your mirror, your cat, your spouse or your neighbors.  If you're signing up for R&C, read your first page out loud. Not just in your head, cheaterpants. Really, out loud. Get the cringing out of the way in the privacy of your own home. Bonus: you'll discover in a hurry if something isn't right. If you're going to pitch, practice talking about your work. You should be able to cover the basic essence of the story, the log line, in a single sentence.

Now get out of my head. You've been here long enough, and you're leaving muddy footprints on my brain.


MB Partlow, 2013 Programming Director for the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, is hard at work getting fantastic speakers and participants for the conference.  You can reach her at programming@pikespeakwriters.com or find more information on the 2013 Pikes Peak Writers Conference at pikespeakwriters.com.

Rocking the 2013 Pikes Peak Writers Conference

By MB Partlow

Who is going to rock it, April 19-21, 2013?

Everyone who attends.

Our keynotes? Oh, yeah. We've got Libba Bray, Barry Eisler, David Liss and Amber Benson. Rock stars in their fields, one and all.

Editors? Only the best, from the likes of Del Ray, Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, Sourcebooks and Bell Bridge Books. These are the people who know the industry inside and out.

What about agents? We've got half a dozen coming. You know what they want? They want pitches! When do they want them? At our Conference!

This year's theme is Writing From the Ashes: Never Lose Sight of Your Dreams. Everybody hits a bump in the road. Or two. Or twelve. Every. Body. Some bumps are the size of pebbles, and some look more like a mountain range, but we all hit them. We want our conference to inspire you to pick yourself up after one of these bumps and keep on writing.

You can pitch your completed manuscript to an agent or editor at no additional cost! This is one-on-one face time, and we fill the slots on a first-come, first-served basis. This means that the earlier you register, the better your chance of getting one of the agents or editors you want.

You can participate in one of our Read and Critique sessions. Unfamiliar with R&C? No problem. With R&C Author, you get a small setting, where you read your first page to a published author. With R&C X, you read your first page to an agent or editor. In R&C 123, our designated reader will read your first page to a panel consisting of one agent, one editor and one published author. Every single one is an opportunity for immediate feedback.

Back by popular demand is Thursday Add-on Programming. The topics this year cover writing personal nonfiction, writing historical fiction, pitching, the query letter lab, publicity and more. You'll get two 3-hour workshops, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, plus a box lunch. That is a bargain!

Have I mentioned that registration is now officially open?  It is!  For all the juicy details, updates and a link to the registration page, please visit http://pikespeakwriters.com/html/ppwc.html.

And don't forget to stay tuned to this space. We'll have a Conference Countdown every third Friday of the month, plus in-depth interviews with as many of the faculty as we can fit in!

Make plans now to join us for the 2013 PPW Conference. We'll have something for writers at every stage of their career, and you get to spend an entire weekend rubbing elbows with the best kind of people we know--other writers.

(And could someone please loan me an exclamation point or two? I've used up at least three months' allotment here.)

MB Partlow

2013 PPWC Programming Director

Programming@pikespeakwriters.com

Choose Your Torture

By Mandy Brown Houk

There’s a trap that many writers fall into when creating their characters. Or maybe it’s just me, in which case you don’t need to read this article.

The trap I find myself in, especially at the beginning of the novel-creating process, is the tenderness I feel toward my characters. I love them. I find them funny, precious, noble, dear. They’re flawed, sure. But only in lovable ways. In ways that make them that much more endearing. I want to stand back and smile at them,  enjoy them, laugh at the funny little things they do.

Only then, suddenly, I find that they’re not doing very much anymore. They’re merely sitting there, looking darling. Smiling sweetly. Maybe even napping.

Why is this so? Simple (and you probably already figured it out): I’ve loved them so much, I’ve protected them from all harm, all danger, all the truly serious complexities of life. Sounds like one heck of a story, doesn’t it?

A wise blue fish once said, “If nothing ever happens to him, nothing will ever happen to him.” Not only would that make for a snooze-inducing story, which is a terribly unkind thing to do to a reader; it also leaves the character in exactly the same place that he started.

In the interest of making my point clear, I will hereby embarrass myself by sharing two of my most spectacular failures in this area.

I was a top-ten finalist in a short story contest in 2004, and I was thrilled. Bret Lott, a favorite author of mine, was one of the top tier judges. When I didn’t win, a writer friend of mine convinced me to contact Mr. Lott and ask for feedback. Worth a shot, right? Mr. Lott very kindly replied, prefacing his comments with, “I hope this isn’t harsh.”

Uh-oh.

He went on to say that, while my writing was good “at the sentence level,” what I’d created was “a bathtub story.” He was borrowing a phrase from Jerome Stern, meaning that all my character did in the story was—well—nothing. She wasn’t doing. She was thinking. Ruminating. Feeling. Reflecting, regretting, hoping, planning. That’s all. And it wasn’t enough. The only thing the reader gets out of a story like that is a yawn. The only thing the character gets is pruny fingers.

A couple of years later, I figured I’d learned something from Mr. Lott. I’d taken that pruny-fingered character and shoved her out the bathroom door. I had her face a long-lost sister, returning home after thirty years. And I made that into a book. Yes, an entire book. No, nothing else really happened. Just the sister. A few arguments. Tears. I believe they left the kitchen a couple of times. Oh, wait—they went out to the garage once, too. (I’m not kidding. I wish I were.)

One of the (many) agents that rejected the book sent me her first-reader’s notes when I requested feedback. The concluding sentence from those notes made the point succintly: “There’s no reason for this story to exist.”

Now, I had been pretty pleased with my writing, “at the sentence level,” anyway. I was pleased with the characters; they were alive in my head, and I knew them, and they were distinct from one another and had all sorts of opinions and emotions and quirks and flaws. In various contests, my writing was generally received well. My characters, I was told, were likable and engaging. It was my stories that sucked (hard to get published with stories that suck). I was so in love with my characters, I refused to torture them; I chose, by default, to torture my readers instead.

Remember that story arc from your English teacher’s chalkboard? If your character never faces anything difficult or risky or terrifying, he’s never going to climb off the first flat chalk line, let alone make it over the peak and down the other side.

Throw something huge and awful at your character and see what he does. How does he react to the pain? What choice does he make to avoid it, or to protect those around him from feeling it, too? What action does he take to get revenge, or make amends, or find a way to forgive? Does the tragedy you’ve created break him? Or only almost? Does it lead him toward something even worse, that adds a whole other layer to your story?

I conquered my over-protective, reader-torturing ways at a Donald Maass workshop a few years ago. He told us to write the scene we were avoiding, to do the thing we dreaded. I did. And it was gut-wrenching and awful, and when I walked past my friend at the door, she said, “Are you okay?” I burst into tears that didn’t stop until I’d had time alone to remind myself that my character was a figment of my imagination, and imaginary figments don’t bleed or drown or cry. Not really.

And you know what? That very scene is the first one my agent brought up when we met for coffee last month. She put her hand over her heart and said, “Oh—I was so worried! That nearly killed me!”

Gleeful torturer that I am, I grinned.

About the Writer:  Mandy Brown Houk is a freelance writer and editor, and she teaches at a small private high school in Old Colorado City. She's written for several magazines and anthologies, and has completed two novels--only one of which is worthy of the light of day. Mandy's work is represented by Sally LaVenture at Warner Literary Group. Her web site iswww.mandybrownhouk.com.