I can hear your yowls of protest even before this is posted

Clearly some of you have been nipping into the cooking sherry at breakfast; many suggestions have the whiff of spent decorum and what-the-hell, do-your-worst bravado. In other words, laying the gauntlet for  #100 to be the craziest contest EVER:

To wit:
Casey Karp 11:45am

But if you really wanted to make contest #100 special for the participants, "anthropomorphic" wouldn't be a bad choice.

Kate Higgins 11:56am

Can't do Hooptedoodle huh???
Oh, well something more mundane then;

I'll choose Casey Karp's "kippled"

(Oh geez, I just sounded like the sorting hat in "Harry Potter"!)

Timothy Lowe 6:21pm

Course, I think janet should throw us all a curveball and scramble the words. I know too many of you devious mo fos have already worked out half an entry.

There were some really good suggestions:

feral
plant 

fix
slim
bleat

But the winner has to be: Megan V 8:50am

My vote goes with syndrome(from Hank's entry), if only because 1. I want to see how Reider's try to Forti that one and 2. Syndrome is the villain in The Incredibles.

You'll notice NONE of those good suggestion words appear in her comment. So, guess which word I picked and post it in the comment column here.)

PS And don't for a second think I didn't consider using this lovely comment as the prompt and asking "what happens next?":

IJ has decided sleep is for those who can't use milk like an upper. She's the infant equivalent of the college kid with a coffee IV and too-big ambitions. More milk, more Yertle, more snuggles. She looks like she's napping but I know better. She's just resting her jaw.

Did someone call fo yowling?

A new and diabolical way to torment you!

Nothing cheers me up faster than finding new and even more evil ways to torment writers. And the caption contest provided me with same! I feel MUCH better. (Yes, that sound you hear is a shark cackling madly)

First things first. Herewith the results (so to speak)


Brigid 9:11am

There is a tiny baby on my lap. She is wearing a sleeper covered in anthropomorphic milk and cookies, and making goat bleats so noisily that she keeps dropping her breakfast and getting outraged.

Brigid's new baby, Ilaria Jacqueline, makes me happy just being here in the world. For starters of course, she's got a J-name, and that makes her special. But I also like the idea of one more reader coming in to the world.  Of course, she won't be allowed to read this blog till she's 32 years old, but for right now it's just enough to know she's here, hearing great literature being read to her! (And by great literature I mean good books, NOT this blog!)


Casey Karp 12:11pm

fomerly feral feline

I love that phrase. It just falls off the tongue purrfectly!


Kitty 8:17am

Henry: “Ever wonder what it’s like
outside this apartment? How about
outdoors?”
Pablo: “No. When she hauls out
the cat carrier, I
exit. I hide under her
divan
or
on top of the frig. I
don’t ever want to
leave this sanctuary. {stretch} Not
ever.”
.....

No explanation required of why I love this one, right?


french sojoun 10:24am

Henry: "Hey Pablo, wanna play guess my sickness?"
Pablo: "No!"
Henry: "Damn U."
Pablo: "Seriously?"
Henry: "Fuk'n A."
Pablo: "That's classy."
Henry: "Ass O"
Pablo: "Tourette Syndrome!"
Henry: "Shit-E guess."
Pablo: "Grow up, Henry."
Henry: "Fuk'n I_diot."
Pablo: "Alright, I give up.
Henry: "Irritable Vowel Syndrome."
Pablo: "You wasted all my time for that? Now shut up and let me finish watching 'To Kill A Mockingbird'."
Henry: "You know they never do show you how, don't you?"

The only thing I would change about this is leaving out the last two lines.
Otherwise it's a pretty hilarious little story.


Donnaeve 11:18am

"This TV watching thing doesn't seem all that bad today."
"Huh? It's turned off, ya know."
"Yep."

This is exactly how I feel about TV and pretty much all media right now.



Casey Karp 3:46pm

A young man is reading on the bus, occasionally casting a lingering glance at the attractive member of his preferred sex seated next to him. Finally, he closes the book, and asks "Do you like Kipling?"

"I don't know," the AMoHPS replies, with an oh-so-cute look of befuddlement. "I've never kippled."

There are a million versions of this joke, but I've never heard this one and it cracked me up.
Some of the delight comes from the personal twist Casey put on it (AMoHPS)


Angie Brooksby-Arcangioli 3:08pm

That dumb cat sitter thinks we're called Pablo and Henry. Won't even give us our fix.

Let's teach her a lesson. You knock the plant off the table and I'll spray the book.

Yeah, then she'll know who Iceberg and Slim are.

Somehow the two cats being named Iceberg and Slim just cracked me up.
Hooligan cats!



Ginger MollyMarilyn 4:50pm

The weird scene going on in my house right now: A platypus getting it on with a rabbit. Picture that for a second, it may be a small escape, alleviating your worries.

There's really nothing to say about this entry other than I'm still laughing.
Well, I guess I should say "I wish you'd gotten pictures!"


RosannaM 5:37pm

QOTKU's dictionary's definition of gaze.

Indeed!

Now, on to the new and diabolical way to torment you!
The prize for this contest is that the winning entry will provide the next prompt word for #100.
And I can hear you all shrieking and saying "oh my god, she IS going to pick Hooptedoodle, I knew it!"

But no. I'm going to let you choose your own adventure torment! From the entries above, pick the word that you think should be Word #4 for Contest #100.

Remember, a good prompt word is generally short, has more than one meaning, is not by definition pornographic or a swear word (although any word can take on those characteristics depending on context!)

Post your suggestions in the comment column. Include the entry writer with the word too, if you would.


Ready? Set? Go!
(I'm going to close the comments later today and tabulate the results so don't dawdle!)

Comments closed.
We now move to Round Two of the torment (tomorrow's blog post)

What are they thinking?

Pablo and Henry

I had one of those fierce days yesterday; the kind that leave me clutching a bourbon bottle and showing the cabbie my passport so he could see my address; no longer sure of my own name let alone where I lived.

Ah yes, a day of meetings and proposal revisions.

At 8:21pm I realized I had not even started a blog post, let alone written or revised one.
Writing a blog post was beyond my grasp at that point. Beyond by a country mile.

So I hunted around for content and found the pet photos from last August.
There's nothing more restorative than a stern cat gaze (see what I did?) is there?

So, here are Pablo and Henry.
Tell us what they're thinking.

Post in the comment column of this blog post.
Comments are closed, results are posted!


I'll be under the duvet watching The Great British Baking Show purely for medicinal purposes.

Greenwich Mean Time minus HOW many?

Did I sabotage myself?

These past few months, I've been querying my MS with a modicum of success. Out of the 50 or so queries I sent out, I've received 15 full requests, and all but three (still pending) came back with the same rejection--"Love the voice, but didn't fall in love with the novel." I haven't really thought about a detail I mention in my query until I read your blog post on lackluster sales, in which you also talk about hands-on bookselling and touring. I'm not from the US. Never even visited. I live in a small European country and mentioned this in my query's bio section.

I know my writing's probably lacking since all these requests turned into rejections. But I'm wondering if one of the agents was on the fence about offering rep, saw that I'm not from the States, and that info tilted the decision into the dreaded rejection realm. I'm asking because my next MS is almost done (get published or die trying) and I want to know whether I should keep my whereabouts to myself for the next batch of queries. Do agents take that into account when making a decision?

No.
I don't care if you live on Mars.
(but, if you do, query me NOW.)
If I see an address that is non-US the only thing I care about is if I can pay you, and making sure you understand we bill you for postage if we have to ship stuff to you.

However, you're anxious about this and no amount of "don't worry" from me will really assuage that.

On the next round of queries leave out your country of residence.
(Your email should also be a straight gmail address, not Name@Domain.ca(nada) or @Domain.au(stralia) or whatever your suffix is. FelixButtonweezer@Kale.Ka(rkoon)

You know what the real problem is though. You told me: I know my writing's probably lacking since all these requests turned into rejections.

Something about your novel isn't working. It might be the writing, but it may the lack of plot, or tension or pacing or character development. The plot might be,  at best,  a rehash of any Starsky and Hutch, or Dark Shadows episode, or worse 7 Magnificent Gladiators (which is possibly the worst movie ever made, but at midnight on Saturday is a howlfest of fun.)

Before you query, you might want to find a prickly-pear beta reader. Someone to tell you what's not working, and won't pull any punches. Not the easiest thing to see (and I'm the absolute worst at getting critiqued, let me tell ya) but if something is not working, better to find out now, before you query.

And I really hope you live in Andorra.
I've always wanted to go there.

woop and wharf

A comment from Susan on yesterday's blog post prompted this one today.

"One of my favorite pieces of writing advice is from Elmore Leonard: Take out everything that sounds like writing. Here's an example "his gaze wandered to the television."

This gave me pause. Dialogue, character development, and descriptions are my strong suit, but I cannot for the life of me get a proper handle on action sentences like this, particularly when they're surrounding dialogue.

How would you propose a fix for this sentence, if it's not a throwaway line and the character had to look at the television for plot purposes?

Words are your tools. You have to know what they mean, and sometimes what you think they mean isn't right.  Gaze for example.

Gaze means to look intently, steadily. Thus a gaze by definition doesn't wander (ie move randomly.)

And "his gaze wandered to the television" is clunky. He looked at the television is better, or just the television blared.

What I drew from the query is that the writer did not know the difference between "gaze" and "look."

It's an easy mistake.

I have a couple words that I err on. You've all seen me write "woop and warf" which is not only not correct, it's really REALLY wrong.  Somehow I have woop and warf describing the weave of a rug in place of warp and weft. I have no idea how woop and warf got stuck in my mind, but it's taken some pretty pointed side-eye gazes (!!) from the readers here to flag that phrase as one I need to verify before hitting "publish" on a post.

"Reading the dictionary" is the punchline to more than one joke, but as a writer, reading the dictionary is actually a pretty good use of time.

6 Reasons you heard no

1. Grammar mistakes I haven't seen since 4th grade.
How you will avoid this: If you know you're weak in the fundamentals of sentence construction, take a class. Proper grammar is essential. You don't have to use it, but you have to know it. And if you use bad grammar it should be on porpoise. Like for a laugh. Or to make a point. Or to convey a character's voice.


2. The premise of the novel was so distasteful I wouldn't even want to know the writer, let alone work with him/her.
How you will avoid this:  Hard to say. You might run the idea past some readers and watch their reaction. Otherwise resign yourself to Lysol-scented replies.


3. You flat out told me you disregarded the query guidelines.
The problem isn't that you did so; I get queries every day that do. It's that you added "I don't have time to do this kind of folderol" which tells me you're impatient and convinced you're right about everything (including stuff you don't know anything about.) This bodes ill for your career path in a new industry. Make no mistake about it: being published is a job. Being a writer might be about art, but once you want to be published, it's a business. Would you hire a person who flat out told you the job application was beneath them?

How you will avoid this: if you don't follow the directions, keep it to yourself. If you think agents are witless, mercurial, and savage beasts, put here on this earth solely to torment writers, well you're right of course, but keep it out of your query. In other words, pretend to be a polite person I'd want to work with.


4. Misused words/homonyms
I literally stop reading your work if I see more than three of these in the pages you include with your query. I've ranted about this at length in other blog posts. No matter how good your story is, I can't read it if I'm frequently drawn out of the narrative by thinking "wait, she means alley here, not ally."

How you will avoid this: Have a beta reader who could double as a grammar velociraptor. Pay someone if you have to.  Spell czech Will Not Help You!


5. Pages are not compelling
Your pages need to entice me to read more. It doesn't have to be with some sort of wildly dramatic event, although that usually works pretty well. This is more like you create a world I want to see more of, a world I want to explore with you.  Dennis Lehane is a master of this.

How you will avoid this: study a novel that you love. When I say study, I mean close study, as in typing it out in its entirety or reading it aloud yourself.  Watch for how the writer entices you to read more. Then do that. All great artists learn from those who came before. What you're doing is the equivalent of art students sitting in museums re-creating the paintings of the great masters.

One of my favorite pieces of writing advice is from Elmore Leonard: Take out everything that sounds like writing.  Here's an example "his gaze wandered to the television."  


6. Your query was brilliant; your pages not so much.
A good query entices me to read the pages you include. Those pages have to be as good or BETTER than the query. I don't request a manuscript if the pages don't entice me, no matter how good the query is.

How you will avoid this part one: Have someone read your pages. If they ask to read more, you're on the right track. If they don't, you know you need to do some work.

How you will avoid this part two: don't ever send a prologue if it's markedly different in tone and voice from the book you describe in your query. It will just confuse me. Send it ONLY with a full manuscript request.

Do current events affect what editors buy?

In your years as QOTKU, have you see the tenor of publishing change as presidential administrations change? My agent told me last month that the fiction market has been tough — and she expects it to be tougher — because a lot of the folks in New York have taken a bit of a (possibly justified) apocalyptic view of things the last two months. I’ve seen the same in a lot of the twitter feeds and blogs I follow, and I wondered whether you’ve seen current events affect what editors buy. It sounds obvious, but given the lag time between idea conception and a book appearing on the shelves (and the much shorter attention span of the buying public), have you seen a consistent correlation between topics that are talked about and what gets bought?

Yup.
But it's not presidential administrations, it's broader than that. Or at least it was until this current administration became the only thing on anyone's hot topic list.

After 9/11 there was a real lag before we could pitch anything about 9/11. It was too raw for anything but serious non-fiction, and even that was a pretty tough sell.  I still remember weeping openly as I read the 9/11 Commission Report on the subway. Since this is NYC no one noticed, but I never took the book outside my apartment again.

I didn't consider anything that involved the assassination of president during the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency. Threats to his life increased three-fold compared to Bush 43, Clinton and Bush 41. I didn't want to be mentioned in the People article about where some nutcase got his ideas.

And we're certainly seeing a sea-change since November. There's no market for satire. Editors aren't looking for much of anything that's grim. There's enough grim (at least to their way of thinking) on the front page of the Times.

I think we're going to see an uptick in escapist fiction.

And I think we're going to see a lot of Resistance Fiction, as writers begin to talk about what this new zeitgeist feels like to them.

But the bottom line is you can NOT write for trends. Write the book you want to write. If it doesn't sell now, one thing I know for sure: markets turn.