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what's lit

What Files You Need at Your Fingertips While Querying

The art of querying is hard to define. The exhausting process of emailing multiple agents asking for representation for your book in order to become a traditionally published author means you have to be a queen of preparation. With many literary agents and their agencies asking for various documents to support your plea, there is a way to make sure you have everything at your fingertips to make the process a bit easier.

Query

The letter that’s usually around 400 words and fills one double-spaced page is the main component of the process since it tells the literary agent what your book is about. The secret is to describe your book in the way you would want to see it on a dust jacket: What would pull in the reader cruising bookshelves? That’s the mindset for the quintessential query letter. Successful examples can be found on The Writer’s Digest.

Synopsis

The synopsis describes the story in a longer format up to three double-spaced pages.

Brief synopsis

The brief synopsis can be a page-long or 500 words. Sometimes, literary agents ask for this version instead of the full synopsis.

First 10 pages

The first 10 pages paired with the query is the most common materials agents ask for. Both need to do the job to attract the agent also known as the most important reader who can connect you with a publisher. Because these pages have to do some heavy lifting, it’s good to start with action full of tension to magnetize the agent to the point where they ask for materials. And what exactly is action varies from genre to genre, such as a literary fiction piece may not have an eye-popping event happening in the first 10 pages, but the tension is already building up at the very start.

First three chapters

The first three chapters can be requested by an agent in lieu of the first 10 pages. It’s good to have these pages ready in a separate file. Most agents expect the first three chapters to be around 50 pages. This can be categorized under partial manuscript request if the agent asked for them after receiving the first round of materials, e.g. the query letter and first 10 pages.

First 50 pages

The first 50 pages is another alternative amount of pages agents ask for instead of the common 10 pages. They should be ready in a separate file as well. Like the first 10 pages, there needs to be the right dose of action and tension to pull the agent in. With a longer sample, this may give you more room to attract the agent unless they stopped reading at the 10-page mark. This counts as a partial manuscript request upon an agent’s reply.

First five pages

This is one of the rarer requests, but some agents want the first five pages in order to read quickly and go through queries faster. The opening line and pages should deliver a punch up-front to get the agent hooked. For an easy copy-and-paste job, these pages can be in their own document.

Full manuscript

Of course, have your full manuscript ready to go. Certain guidelines on how to put your name and title on the double-spaced document varies with, for example, putting just your last name, title, and page number in the right-hand corner.

Most literary agents want a combination of the above with the query letter being the most important and the first 10 pages being the most common amount of materials to be initially requested. The industry standard has become pasting the materials inside an email to an agent due to the fear of virus-containing attachments. So preparing all the above in separate documents and putting them in a single folder on your desktop will allow you to query and respond to agents faster.

Keeping the font Times New Roman at 12-point in the document will leave that same style in your email when you copy and paste. Sometimes, changing the style within the email may make your writing appear wonky. Indentations may be off, but in the document 0.5 indent in tabs is standard for manuscripts and will help solidify the style in the email as well.

For a full manuscript request, most literary agents want the actual Word document or PDF file to be attached to an email (now they trust you!) or submitted through a portal like the Query Manager that conveniently allows you to see updates to your query.

Even after putting in all that work in researching the agents and submitting the documents they requested, there is still a high likelihood you’ll never hear a response. Sometimes, agents say on their websites and social media accounts that they welcome follow-up emails, and those may never be answered. More agents are straight-up saying if you don’t hear anything from them, then it’s a no.

Authors are usually advised to query 6 to 8 agents at a time, in case one says yes. Then it’s a 6- to 8-week wait for a response, if one gets back to you. Most agents say it’s time to take a look back at your query, first pages, and full manuscript if you haven’t received a response from an agent after 50 queries. But there are well-known authors like The Hate U Give‘s Angie Thomas who said they queried over 100 agents before hearing a yes, so there’s no rule on when to stop and if you should stop querying a book.

The best advice is to send materials like the query letter and full manuscript after it’s gone through multiple edits, either by you, your beta readers, and/or a hired editor. Many aspiring authors don’t go the paid editor route and wait to paired with one through their literary agent and/or publisher in case of different visions clouding (and extending) the work process.

On the other hand, the writers who do hire a professional editor before querying may have a stronger chance to attract an agent. Misspellings and grammar mistakes, incorrect or misleading context, and other issues glaring in the first pages will turn an agent away faster. And you shouldn’t feel pressured to accept edits you feel take away from your work.

Despite the stressful process, making sure all your items are formatted properly and ready to go whenever you want to query an agent is paramount to succeeding in the query game. A no gets you closer to the agent who will say yes.

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what's lit

Literary Love in the Time of Coronavirus

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I couldn’t breathe. It was the first day of December in 2016 when I was grasping my chest on the curb waiting for the ambulance. I didn’t have enough strength to battle my Los Angeles parking woes with my car locked in a garage three blocks away from my shabby studio apartment building in Koreatown. I had been having similar episodes over the last few weeks, but I was able to control them with pulling out the inhaler I barely used.

This time, it failed. Though I was one of the few adults who never outgrew my food allergies to wheat and milk, I had outgrown asthma. At the hospital, I had a breathing treatment on a noisy nebulizer sealed behind a curtain, reminiscent to scenes throughout my childhood of receiving daily treatments during school in the nurses’ office. The doctors said I was having a bronchospasm, a sudden constriction of the muscles in the walls of the bronchioles that lead to the lungs.

Returning home with a sore chest that felt like I was recovering from a heart attack, I soon realized the bronchospasms may be caused by stress. Self-quarantining while immunocompromised amid the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to be the best option for my lungs, but other readers and writers seem to be taking advantage of the potential self-care that could be done over the weekend and possibly the next two months.

As a writer, I want to:

  • Finish the short story collection I started during NaNoWriMo: In November, thousands of writers around the globe embark on a monthlong adventure called National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo to come close to completing a novel with 50,000 words. And like most of those writers, my projects suffer after November. I’ve surprisingly been adding to the one I started in 2019, and I would like to complete the roughest first draft this spring.
  • Send out more query letters for my young adult novel: Every new year means me pitching my novel to literary agents. In past years, I quickly grew annoyed and stopped sending letters. Now realizing I quit before the odds weighed in my favor, I’ve been sending out a good number of letters every few weeks. I need to keep the momentum of my 2020 resolutions.
  • Resurrect three old manuscripts and make stronger story plans: In part to the previous goal, I queried other novels. But I think they could be better, so for the past few months I’ve been trying to find quiet times to meditate on how the story should morph, what should happen next for my characters, and what will the story look like at the end. Many authors discuss how they weren’t able to sell manuscripts at first, but I want to take the challenge that these stories have promise and could succeed with extreme improvement.

As a reader, I want to:

  • Write several book reviews: 2020 is already a heavy reading year, so much so I fell behind on producing book reviews for books I had read weeks ago.
  • Create an ancestry search book syllabus: Over the past year, I’ve been researching my family trees in the Americas. It had become stressful looking through death certificates, Census Bureau lists, and other government documents, so I decided to stay on track with books that could open my mind on the subject. I’ve just started reading Roots by Alex Haley. I hope to finish the almost 700-page book within this quarantine period.
  • Read more appealing books: Like other book bloggers, I tend to focus on the hottest books of the moment. But some of these books didn’t keep me engaged. From my personal statistical analysis, many books that rise to the top are usually three stars, so I want to read books that appeal to me regardless of its release date.

What are your reading and writing goals during the coronavirus crisis?

Write your goals into existence in the comments below. And stay healthy!

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what's lit

How to Invest in Yourself As an Aspiring Author

I started she lit originally to tell my story of balancing a full-time career while birthing a creative writing career. Throughout the 10 years of participating in the writing community, mostly in Los Angeles, I’ve been given a lot of advice on how to succeed as a published author.

Yet I still made a lot of wrong moves because not all advice worked for me as it was rooted in spending gobs of money. The top problem with trying to enter the industry without a fine arts degree or other background knowledge is the amount of money you’re told to invest in order to get a tip-top manuscript approved by a literary agent then a publisher.

I do believe you have to spend money to get it right, but where should you spend that money? That’s what I’ll explore in the Invest In Yourself series to share the other ways to jump-start your career that may save you a pretty penny and help you reclaim your writing time.

As I prepare a manuscript for querying in 2020, I’ll share ways that worked better for me and helped reduce the likelihood of money and time wasted.

Again, this is what I learned on my journey, so it won’t be one-size-fits-all, but it may be helpful to you. Also, if you have had financial flubs trying to get into the publishing industry, then please share them below in the comments or at shewrites@shelit.com.

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what's lit

A Bibliophile’s Guide on How to Marie Kondo Your Bookshelf

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Already a best-seller list mainstay, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up revived new interest in conscious cleaning via Netflix this spring. But book enthusiasts riled against the KonMari method—the official name rather than the author’s name becoming a verb—that recommends only keeping around 30 books in the home, a range too minuscule for people who actually read.

If the number of books don’t matter yet your bookshelf looks disheveled, these tricks should help you declutter.

Donate books you are never going to read

You really wanted a book and bought it only for it to still be on your bookshelf five years later—unread. The book industry is lit right now, therefore the book you wanted to read five years ago may be stomped by another book released this year. Adding both would be contributing to clutter, so reconsider books that you’ve bought in the past that have been left unread. If you feel you can read it the next few months, then keep it, but when you read the synopsis on the back and you don’t get the warm feeling inside anymore, throw it in the donation heap.

Donate books you don’t absolutely love

Sometimes, we get into what society thinks about a book. You might have a book on your shelf that you did read but admittedly didn’t get why it won all those awards or spent all those weeks on the best-seller list. Unless you feel it might come in handy in some way like you refer to it for guidance, then to the donation heap it goes.

Books autographed by the author that you paid full hardcover price and attended the book launch are difficult choices: should they stay or go? Your name is penned inside with a note from the author, and depending on how you connected with the author, it might be a personal note. How to deal with those books may be a future post. What do you do with those books?

Donate books you know others need

The Free Black Women’s Library recently launched in Los Angeles, looking for gently used books written by black women. That’s one example of a charitable group looking for specific books. If you have a book like a children’s book that doesn’t hold as much meaning anymore, maybe a children’s hospital would appreciate it. Book donations can carry more meaning when it benefits a mission-oriented nonprofit if you’re not feeling the corporate Goodwill donation route. And donations could mean giving a book to a friend or a family member as long as it’s not taking unnecessary space on your bookshelf.

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what's lit

Best-selling Author Ann Patchett Breathes Digital Detox Lifestyle: Could It Help Your Literary Goals?

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Award-winning novelist and indie bookstore owner Ann Patchett is on a media tour for her first children’s book Lambslide, but when she stopped at ABC’s Strahan & Sara, she described her lifestyle—a lifestyle that might benefit other writers and readers.

On Thursday’s telecast, host Michael Strahan posed the question of the day for the show’s guests and audience in the studio and at home: “Have you ever looked at social media and it’s made you jealous of something or what someone else doing or having?”

Gleaming, Ann—whose best-selling novels include Commonwealth and State of Wonder—seemed like she couldn’t wait to answer the question.

“I’m so glad you asked me this question because I have never once in my life looked at social media. I don’t have a cellphone. I’ve never sent a text. I don’t watch television. I’ve never seen this show.”

What? Though it’s a good idea to watch a TV show you will be on to promote your work, it’s so astonishing that someone well-known doesn’t have a smartphone or social media that Ann added she felt like she was surrounded by smartphone-addicted zombies when in public. Then Michael called her a “unicorn.” A segment for a book with the mention of zombies and unicorns is literary in nature. It even ended with Ann inviting Michael to sell his book, Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life, at her indie bookstore, Nashville’s Parnassus Books. Authors supporting authors with guaranteed book sales.

A digital detox is defined as a period of time during which a person refrains from using electronic devices such as smartphones or computers, regarded as an opportunity to reduce stress or focus on social interaction in the physical world. Ann probably uses a computer for writing her novels and submitting them via email and cloud programs to her publisher, but living the partial digital detox life may spark creativity simply based on the time take-back component.

The average American dedicates 30% of leisure time to perusing the web, according to Digital Detox, while 67% of cellphone owners find themselves checking their device even when it’s not ringing or vibrating. The access to this information is deriving from a website, but that’s another philosophical conversation. (What are other ways to get publicity without a digital screen? By pigeon? Or snail mail the press release and pamphlets? Then that contributes to our paper overconsumption…)

How would time away from constant digital consumption affect your writing and reading goals?