Do your queries spike after NaNoWriMo?

Hi Janet,

There was a comment left on Moonrat's blog by anon, which was quite negative about Nanowrimo. In it, he or she said, "But I'd love to see how Advil consumption amongst editors and agents goes up in the months following NaNoWriMo as they're deluged by manuscripts that "I wrote last month during NaNoWriMo" and they're all unedited, unconsidered pieces of poo."

I was wondering if this is the case - that you do get a spike in submissions that the writer tells you they wrote during November.

Maybe?

I rarely keep track unless I'm doing stats for the blog like I did here and here

I try to do my queries twice a day. I usually respond to the ones I know aren't a good fit right away. I hold on to the "maybes" for a couple of days. Usually that's to read the pages or take a second look at the idea when I'm not tired/cranky/annoyed.

If there's a spike after NaNoMo, it would have to be HUGE for me to notice. Huge as in twice the number of queries. I get about 100 a week and I haven't really noticed it changing much in December over the past couple years. (January, yes, there's a spike)

And honestly, who cares if agents get more queries. Authors aren't in business to make agent's lives some sort of vacation at the beach. Query on. You'll either learn something or you won't. I'll either find something worth reading or pursuing, or I won't.

I think anyone who wants to write a novel in a month is nutso, but I make my living working with nutso. And if you want to query me with the results, go for it. What's the worst that can happen?

Oh wait: