Day 25: Requests

Oh boy... so I need stamps now, because the last two agents who requested partials want snail mail packages. I'm also a little broke, being a college student and all. My parents are lending me a little for the process, but they're not exactly literary people and would rather I spend my time studying science instead of writing.

I ran my plot and theme against a professor of mine, and she said that if my book as a intricate as what I told her, there shouldn't be any problems on getting it published. The problem, she said, was that agents may not see the theme initially unless I tell them, so I should revise my query to state my point more clearly.

So I sent more (revised) queries out yesterday, mostly because the wait is killing me, and two came back this morning: one for a partial, one for a full, both for a synopsis.

So far...

Status

Queries sent: 38
Query Rejections: 19
Material Requests: 14
Waiting on: 5

Day 16: Kind of quiet...

Nothing happen anymore. I haven't gotten a e-mail from anyone for a week. Maybe I should have sent out a "query only" query last week so that I'd have some kind of news this week...

In the meantime, I've had more people on my floor edit my book. A sort of "experiment", if you will. I sat four of my friends down and asked them to read my novel to the point where they get bored. The results were very interesting.

A (boy): Chapter 2 midway, went to play Starcraft

B (boy): Chapter 3, started homework

C (girl): Chapter 5, had to go to class

D (girl): Chapter 20, it was 2 am in the morning...

They also gave me some helpful feedback, so it's back to editing. I think I've read my own novel enough times that I've memorized the first 5 chapters...

I wonder if there's such a thing as "over-editing"? While personally I can live with the quality and progression of my novel, I can't help but think that it can always be improved. Words rephrased, humor redone, dialog rewritten to give the character the extra flair that we value in interesting people.

Or it could just be 5-am in the morning thinking...

Day 15: More queries

So I couldn't resist sending out two more queries, one of them being to another agent at CB (Nathan's agency, but not to Nathan. I'm building up courage to querying him...) I hope their policy isn't "no from one means no from everyone".

Still editing book... no matter how many times I do it, something can always be improved

Day 14: I misread...

Chem midterm tomorrow. I'm nervous. Please God, give me an A...

Also heard back from another agent. No go =(

Funny thing happened today, so I apparently, I read the name of the full-manuscript-requesting agent wrong. It wasn't my partial-requesting-agent; their names are just similar. The partial the full-manuscript-requesting agent was referring to was actually the attached first five pages at the bottom of the email. So in other words...

Status

Queries sent: 8
Query Rejections: 3
Silence: 1

Partial Requests: 2
Whole Manuscript Requests: 2
Partial to Whole Requests: 0

Partial rejections: 1
Whole rejections: 1