I’ve really got to get some writing done tonight so the blog’s not going to be very long today.  Got some good ideas while in class today and I want to get to writing them while I’m thinking about them.

I’ve been in NYC for five days now and I can safely say I’m having a great time here, even though I’m doing training for the Navy here.  Monday night, we just walked around Madison Square Gardens and Times Square and took pictures like tourists.  Got back to the hotel around 3 in the morning.  I was very tired at 5:45 the next morning when I had to get up for training.  Then a bunch of us went out last night and did some drinking.  It was a lot of fun, not to mention flattering because I’ve never been hit on so much in one night before.

I had planned on attending the Dallas Warrior Writer Workshop (given by Bob Mayer) in July but unfortunately, that’s the same weekend as drill so… not going.  Boo.  Maybe next time it comes through, if it does.

Ok, big chunks of my childhood have died this week.  I’m not going to do a whole blog about them, just a respectful mention.

Rest In Peace, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Ed McMahon.

Oh, on a side note, if you’ve got something specific you would like to see from me on this blog, either leave me a comment or email me.

Ok, time to get to writing.  Peace out.

Today’s topic has to do with…you guessed it…query letters!  The bane of every aspiring writer’s existence.  What makes a good query letter?  How much is too much?  How much is too little?

No writer likes to condense their baby into a paragraph.  It doesn’t do the story justice when it took you 100,000 words to convey the message originally and the agents/editors want you to–gasp–condense it into about 200 words.

Every agent is different and it’s best to research exactly what they want before you send out a query letter to them.  For me, there’s always been four points to a query letter:

1. Introduction
2. A paragraph explaining your story.
3. Information about your story
4. Information about yourself.

Introduction

Here is where you get to say “I love your blog!” or “I heard you were looking for more epic fantasies with one-eyed monsters!”.  Ok, maybe you might not want to say that exactly, but you get the idea.  Generally, tell the person why you chose this particular agent, why you’d fit in with their clientele now, ect. Keep it short, because this query isn’t going to be more than a page, if that long.

Your Synopsis

The second part is explaining your story in about four sentences.  Nathan Bransford has an excellent blog post about this subject, which is what I’ve based all my queries on.  Too vague will put your potential agent to sleep.  Too indepth will confuse them.  Remember this is a business letter.  Keep it short and sweet.

About Your Story

After you’ve written your masterpiece paragraph about your story, tell the agent the necessary details. What genre is it?  How long is it?  Is it completed? (A good rule of thumb…Don’t send out query letters without finishing the manuscript.  It seriously pisses people off and wastes the agent/editor’s time)

About You

Finally, close out your letter by telling the agent a little about yourself. This, by no means, means your life story.  If you’ve been published before, include the publisher and when it was published.  If not, don’t worry about it.  Don’t even put it’s your first novel, because chances are, they already know that. 

The Closing

Ok, I didn’t put this in the beginning because it’s a gimme.  Professional courtesy.  This one I’m going to word for you:

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Simple, huh?  Remember this is a business letter.  Would you send something you wrote for your best friend to your boss?  I’m assuming your answer is no, because if it isn’t, you have more problems than I can fix with a blog post.  But if it is no, then why would you send it to a potential business partner?  Because in the end, that’s what agents are.  Business partners.  They don’t get paid unless you do.

Ok, homework time.  Do your own query letter.  If you’ve got a finished product, send it out.  If this helped you in any way, let me know.  I’m always tweaking my own way of doing things, and I like to see what gets people the job.

So I’m back from my little military trip to San Diego.  I had a lot of fun but I’m so exhausted I can’t even stand up.

My first order of business is to help Daphne Walsh (because I promised) by letting people know that she’s selling a series on Amazon, specifically for the Kindle called A Talent For Trouble.  Each chapter of the story is set for $.99 and goes towards maintaining Daphne’s lucky full time writership.  Please help out a fellow author by checking out her stuff on Amazon.  Go to Daphne Walsh’s website for more details on release dates and such.

I’ll be back later with today’s real blog post.

I’ve been playing around with a lot of different types of novelists’ software lately, trying to come up with a good process for myself because it seems my way currently is chaotic and most of the time, Iget lost in my own thoughts.  It’s weird, huh?

So the first software program I tried was Liquid Story Binder from Black Obelisk Software.  I used this one for about six months or so.  I wrote a full novel with it as an experiment.  What I really liked about this program is that I could install on my USB drive and run it on any computer I wanted.  That is a handy thing to have when you’re a student and hardly ever home or on your own computer.  I also loved that you could make Dossiers for every character and it had built in templates to use.  The program also saves the chapters in RTF format so you can use an outside editor like Word, which is what I did most of the time.  The only drawback I saw is that it does do so much that it might overwhelm those trying it out for the first time.  A couple of writer friends of mine actually shot this program down simply because they said it was too complex.  They needed something simpler.  In my opinion, LSB isn’t hard to use and the website has a ton of tutorials you can use if you’re having issues with it.  On the whole, it’s a great program but it was more than what I needed.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  Liquid Story Binder is available from Black Obelisk Software for a free trial.  Below is directly from their website:

“Liquid Story Binder is a shareware product. You can download it absolutely free, with no restrictions or limitations. It is completely functional with all available features included within the download. Yet, after a period of 30 non-consecutive days of use, Liquid Story Binder will cease to work.

When this occurs, you may decide to uninstall Liquid Story Binder, or purchase a special registration code that will allow you to keep using Liquid Story Binder indefinitely. There is no obligation for you to buy, just test out the software to see if it fits your specific needs.

If you like what you see, return to our website and purchase your $45.95 registration key. The code will be sent to you by email.”

I recommend this program if you like adding pictures, playlists, and want to keep all your notes for each novel in one spot.  For me, I simply didn’t need all the features it offered.

Which brings me to the next program I tried.  yWriter from Spacejock Software. This program is an OCD’s dream.  It concentrates on scenes rather than chapters, which is cool because if any of you writers out there are like me, you tend to move the scenes around a lot.  It also keeps a word count total.  It was exceptional in that you can add characters to a list and then you can specify the viewpoint character as well as the characters that are in the scene.  That was handy for me as I have issues with forgetting where everyone is.  It also lets you import a TXT file and separates out the chapters for you.  When I did this, I just went into Word, saved the file as a TXT file and then imported it via the yWriter program.  It separated very well, which some programs have a tendency to butcher imported files.  There isn’t a lot of formatting options, but I believe that was what the programmer was trying to accomplish.  In his eyes, formatting in programs like Word distracts from the writing.  I don’t necessarily agree with that as I love Microsoft Word but to each their own.  I ended up uninstalling this one from my computer.  I just didn’t click with it.  It’s a good program and a lot of my writer friends adore it.  It just wasn’t for me.

yWriter is  a free novelists’ software developed by Spacejock Software, however, the programmer does take donations so he con continue to feed his family.

The third program, I’m still experimenting with.  It’s SuperNoteCard from Mindola Software.  I have to say so far, I’m happy with this program.  It emulates the Index Plotting Method™ I already use but has a whole lot of other options.  SNC starts with the Project page, where you can name your project and provide a description of it.  Then you can create a Deck, which is what I use for chapters, and then add a new Card, which ends up being each scene that I want to write.

When you’re done putting in all the scenes, you can export the whole thing to an RTF file, all broken down into a nice outline form you can print out and keep beside you while you write.  Now i’m not so much a planner, as I’ve written in a previous blog post, but it’s a handy program to have when you have to go back through and reverse outline because you’ve screwed up the story somewhere.

SNC also has the feature of colorcoding the cards according to different Factors, which can be person, place, thing, idea, whatever.  I use it for characters so I can see whose viewpoint is where or what characters are in what scene.

Mindola Software also has an SuperNoteCard for Scriptwriting which I have downloaded but haven’t really played with since I’m on my novel writing kick and have left the scriptwriting on hold for a while.  Mindola also offers a free trial version but I don’t know how long it is since I haven’t been able to find it on the website.  I believe the full version is $29, which isn’t actually that bad.

I think I’ll stick with SNC for a while because it really does emulate what I already use to write.  I may change it up in the future, depending if I find something better out there.   Nothing’s ever stuck in stone, especially in the Age of the Internetz.

Wow, this was a really long blog.  Maybe if I remembered to post regularly, I wouldn’t have to type so much.

Today’s goal is the rest of Chapter 10, which I have probably have at least 2k from, and all of Chapter 11.  I’ve found these little deadlines I’ve been giving myself actually helps out with keeping me  on track.  I won’t have this finished by the end of May but I’m way on track to be done by the end of June, despite the traveling I’m doing for most of the month.   Then I’m going to revise it, fix the little mistakes, and hopefully have the revisions done by the time the end of August rolls around.  It’s a little fast, I guess.  But seeing as how it takes me about a month to write a first draft of a novel, I figure two months is enough time to get through a revision, since that seems to take longer than actually writing the first draft.

I like giving myself all these deadlines.  It gives me purpose as an unpublished author and gets me used to working with the deadlines that published authors work with all the time.  Eventually, I’m planning on turning out at least three books a year, hopefully from at least two different series that I’ll be working on.  Maybe it’s just a pipe dream, seeing as how I’m unpublished still but that’s what I want and I’m willing to go to the distance until that happens.

I’ll be in San Diego in the first part of June and in Kings Point, NY for the second half of June with the military.  I also have the oppotunity to meet two of the members of my online writing group, which is the best group of people I’ve ever encountered.  Maybe three if one of them can out of working such crazy hours.

I’m going to be scouting out other blogs to see if I can come up some new blog topics because I’m not the most interesting person in the world and reading about me all the time has to be boring.  So… if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to email them to blog @ suzanisik.com (without the spaces, of course) and talk to me!  I love hearing from you guys!

Well, off to my local coffee shop to work on the writing.  Have a lot of work ahead of me.

My goal today is to at least finish Chapter 9 today.  I’m kind of taking it easy on myself because I wrote both Chapter 7 and 8 yesterday and I’m afraid of burning myself out.  The new plotting method I used with this book had worked out amazingly well.  I’m already at the point where I usually scowl and stare at the words I’ve written wondering what to write next.  But the words are still flowing because I have some idea of where I want the story to go.  It’s changed a little since I wrote the notecards and I added a couple scenes that I hadn’t written cards forbecause that’s where the natural story progression went.

Maybe one of these days I’ll post a picture of the “plot wall” as I call it.  It’ll have to wait until I clean up the area around it first though. 

As I’ve said before, I really want to finish this book before June but I don’t see that happening.  I have seven days and at least 75k to go.  So I’ve given myself through the end of June for the first draft.  Then I’ll take July and August for the revision.  I’m hoping to start submissions for this book in early October, maybe late September.

The other thing I’m doing is trying to create a brand for the book.  A logo of sorts.  I have some ideas, but I’d like some more because I’m not really an artisty sort of person.  So, that aside, I might be posting possibilities over the next few weeks and I’d like your honest feedback on what you think.  If I can’t think of anything, I’ll probably have to contact a professional, which I’m trying to avoid because of the whole “they’ll want money” thing. 

Alright, well, I have to go finish the mountain of laundry waiting for me to wash and fold it.  There is no rest for the weary writer!

I am so not productive when my kids are home. I barely graced a thousand words yesterday. My kids have a four-day weekend that started Friday. Boo. I’m not expecting a big word count until some time next week now, sadly enough. I know myself. that’s what’s gonna happen.

So Friday, I read two more books, both part of the Broken Heart series by Michelle Bardsley.  Great books, by the way.  Truly talented author with a love for chocolate that rivals mine.

I’m on Chapter 8 today, after a sort of short Chapter 7 that I really struggled with in the first place.  I’m getting to the meat of the story now, where it usually gut-punches me and tells me it’s not budging anymore, but even though it’s moving slower, it’s really still moving.  The plan is to tackle Chapter 8 on a Saturday with my two boys and my nephew running around without losing my mind.  Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna happen either but I’m gonna give it a shot anyway.

It’ll be an interesting day, that’s for sure.

Man, I am so not feeling this economy crisis.  I hate it.  One of my best friends made a phone call that I know killed him a little inside.  He lost his job, like many people these days, and he hasn’t been able to find another one and for him, it hasn’t been for a lack of trying like me, who’s a lazy ass.  Anyway, long story short, I’m paying his rent today so he doesn’t get kicked out of his apartment.  The rest, unfortunately, is up to him.  That, at least, gives him a month to get his shit together.   I’m praying that something works out for him.  I can’t help him out next month so if he doesn’t get something, he’s SOL.

Well, i had a pretty productive day yesterday.  I spent four hours at Starbucks and managed to write the entirety of Chapter 5 there.  After I take the kids to school, I have about two hours before I meet up with my friend today to work on Chapter 6.  I’m beginning to think I should have started it last night, but I was wiped.

In case, you didn’t notice, I also did a little redesign on the website.  Not much, just a little tweaking.  I’m trying to come up with a good logo and header for the site.  I have ideas but they just aren’t done justice so i’m trying to keep it simple and light and when the money starts rolling in from the first book, I’ll hire someone and deduct the expenses on my taxes. (hehe) 

Anyway, back to the word processor for some story time.  Chapter 6 awaits.

I polished off somewhere around 2k of actual new writing and I have to say, I’m pretty happy about it.  It felt good.  Now I need to pause in the writing and restructure the scene cards I wrote in my Index Card Plotting System™ so the story keeps its flow.  I threw out about twenty scene cards this afternoon and wrote about thirty more.  I’ll probably add more because my scenes tend to run really short.

Before I decided on the restructure, i was on Chapter 10.  Since beginning it, I’ve regressed to Chapter 4 but I think the writing is much stronger and more likely to make sense.  I think actually trying to plan this stuff worked out well for me.  I’m usually a “write by the seat of my pants” or a pantster as I like to call it.  I took the time with this idea to play out the main characters and develop them a bit before I even worked out a plot.  Based on their personalities, I came up with the plot.  I guess that makes this a character-driven story and that’s okay with me.  But my issue with stories has always been plot and I’ve taken the time to plan out the plot line this time and honestly, the story feels so much more coherent now.  I think after several tries at novels, I’ve finally found what actually works for me.

So many authors debate the merits of planning vs pantsing it when it comes to the plot of a book.  I think the answer is there is no one way to do it.  Some authors need the security of having everything on paper before they write the first sentence.  Some just let the fingertips fly.  I think I’m somewhere in the middle.  I can plan a little but it isn’t tangible until I have at least the first scene written.  Once the characters and the storyline start coming to life in my head, the rest pours out on its own.  But the writing (for me) needs to have some sort of structure before the words for the actual novel come out in the word processor.

Every writer needs to experiment to see what works for them.  I’m lucky in that I’ve just discovered what works and it only took me half my life to figure out what that was.  Granted, now, I’m not that old, but hey, whatever.  It sure felt like a long time.

These last couple of days have been somewhat crazy for me. I’m writing more, but I’m also cutting more words than I’m writing. I try to tell myself that it’s a good thing I’m doing, that to cut useless words out makes the story stronger. It makes me feel like I’m not being productive when I actually have a negative word count for the day. So, I’ve stopped actually paying attention to the wordcounts and simply started writing. I’ve also outlined the particular story I’m writing now, and that’s also something I’ve never done.

I think tomorrow, or rather later today (LOL) I’m going to get out of the house. I know I’m going to go crazy this summer with no job and no classes. It gives me time to write but I’m going to be stuck in the house a lot. Maybe I’ll be able to take the laptop outside while the kids are playing in the pool or something. I don’t know. I guess I’m just going through a phase.

I’m going to go hang out at the local Starbucks and do some serious writing because I want this story finished by the end of June, do a one-pass revision, and get the damn thing submitted to agents so I can start working on the next one.

I’m also going to start doing a “Quote of the Day” thing on my Myspace blog just for fun.  We’ll see how it works out. 

So check back for new and upcoming stuff and hopefully by the end of the year, we’ll all be celebrating this story I’m slaving over being a new release.