The Week of July 6th

Already, I have to hang my head in shame and admit that I haven’t gotten much done since the last time I posted. I haven’t spent any more time on my novel or on short stories this week, nor have I made any more submissions to journals. I did send out 2 more agent queries, and have gotten a few more ready to send out next week. I also did some more research and have added more agents to the list of possibilities.

Considering that the month is almost half over and I haven’t come anywhere near halfway with my novel revisions, and am just a little under half with my other goals, I definitely need to pick up the pace if I’m going to actually meet my goals by the end of July.

I also received my second rejection from an agent and have spent some more time looking up information on how to snag an agent. It turns out it’s pretty difficult to get plucked from the slush pile. Not impossible, of course, but very unlikely. The number one way to get an agent is to be referred by another client of the same agent, and the second best way is to meet an agent at a conference. So I’ve reconsidered my chances of actually finding an agent for my children’s book right now and have accepted that the chances are so low I may as well consider it a 0% chance; it’s probably closer to that than it is to a 1% chance, anyway.

But that’s actually not a pessimistic outlook. Believe it or not I feel really good about this whole experience. I’m gaining a lot from having to scrutinize my book closely, make sure the first few pages are really engaging, write up a concise but at the same time really interesting synopsis, and try to figure out how best to market myself in a query letter to a busy agent who receives hundreds of query letters a week and probably doesn’t have more than a minute to spend on each one. I assume I won’t find an agent, but I also assume I’ll come out of this a much better writer and with a much deeper understanding of the non-writing side of writing. And in a year, when it comes time to try to find an agent for my novel, I will be ready, man, I will be ready.