Last Saturday, I attended my first ever, real-live meeting of an RWA Chapter (the San Diego chapter, to be specific). I've been a member of a number of online chapters for a while (including The Beau Monde), I haven't taken the plunge to join the San Diego chapter because their regular chapter meetings are at an incredibly bad time for me (the third Saturday of the month from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) and I didn't figure it was worth the investment if I couldn't attend the meetings on a somewhat consistent basis.
However, last Saturday's slate of speakers included Sally Van Haitsma from the Julie Castiglia Literary Agency. (The photo there of Ms. Van Haitsma does not do her justice. She's much prettier in person...and very tall!) The topic was "What Agents Want from Writers" or something along those lines. Now, Ms. Van Haitsma (pronounced Heights-ma) doesn't represent genre fiction, so I knew I'd probably never have an opportunity to work with her, but I did want to hear about the query and pitch process from an agent's perspective. So, I took a morning away from my family (on the worst possible weekend, since Sunday was our Cub Scout Pack's Pinewood Derby and Saturday needed to be spent setting up and testing for it) to go hear her speak.
Even though I didn't feel like I learned much about how to query an agent properly, I did learn a lot of things I didn't know before. I share these now in no particular order.
- Of the 12-15 or so writers in the room (of perhaps 50-60 attendees) who were published, only two or three had agents. That surprised me. I would have expected the proportion of published writers with agents to be much, much higher. It turns out, however, that many of the published authors have been small-press published, and because the small presses generally don't offer advances and have smaller payouts overall, many agents aren't interested in representing writers with "small press" books. In simple, mercenary terms, it just doesn't make financial sense because it takes just as much time and effort on the agent's part to pitch a project to as small press as to a large one with better payout.
- Having been published, especially in small press, turns out to be not-very-helpful in getting an agent for future projects. That surprised me, too. I would have thought someone with a track record of having been published at all would have better luck getting an agent than someone unpublished. And while it's probably true that publishing credits help, it turns out not to help that much.
- Of the queries she receives, Ms. Van Haitsma said that roughly 75%-80% were obviously either not ready for prime-time or something she knows she doesn't represent. A significant proportion of the "not-ready-for-prime-time" category are incredibly unprofessional (hand-written, addressed "to whom it may concern," full of grammatical errors or typos, etc.). I was really shocked to discover that so many writers are either sloppy/lazy or don't do their homework.
Ms. Van Haitsma also talked a bit about the marketplace for literary women's fiction (and apparently, erotic fiction can fall into this category; she said she'd like to read some erotica at any rate). Even though that's not what I've been writing lately, I realized that I do have some ideas for books she might be interested in. I really wanted to find a few moments to talk to her about one of them in particular (a historically-based story set in ancient Rome that I think is infinitely marketable because there's currently so much interest in all things ancient) just to see if she'd be interested at all in seeing the query should I ever actually write the book, but I had to leave immediately after lunch and didn't get the opportunity.
This book has been kicking around in my head literally for YEARS as a high concept, but I've never been able to attach a plot or scenes to it. However, thinking about it got me jazzed to write it just because I know it could be a winner if I did it well. The problem is that I need to do a lot of research to re-immerse myself in ancient Roman culture and history first as well as to find the plot and scenes to go with the fabulous high concept. So, I walked away with a new project to tackle, but no additional time in which to tackle it (typical!).
The other thing Ms. Van Haitsma mentioned that got my creative juices flowing (although I didn't realize it at the time) was that many publishers are looking for books in an as-yet unnamed category that's sort of a counterpart to ChickLit. Specifically, they want stories with romantic elements about older women (in their thirties and perhaps forties as opposed to the twenty-somethings of traditional ChickLit) and, ideally, younger men. Apparently, the initially proposed name for this category was MatronLit (horrible; it will never sell), followed by HenLit (better, but not appreciably so).
Ms. Van Haitsma's suggestion was CougarLit. I have since discovered that cougar is a slang term for an older, financially secure woman who dates younger men. (Man, I'm out of the loop!) I'm not sure I like the term, but it's better that the two previously proposed alternatives.
When I first heard this, I thought, "Nice idea, but I don't do contemporary so I'll never write anything remotely close to fitting that category." But then, on Sunday morning, an idea sprang into my head, full-blown, complete with plot, characters, and setting. I'm not entirely sure it will wind up fitting the CougarLit category, although it is about a woman in her late thirties who takes up with a man in his late twenties. It's just that the plot is much more typically "genre romance" than "literary fiction with romantic elements." It could also easily wind up being no more than category length. On the other hand, I expect it to end up being very hot, verging on erotica, so I'm really not sure where it will wind up fitting when it's done. But when an idea comes to me that fully formed, I know it's a message from my subconscious that I must write it.
So I am. You'll see a new progress meter on the right for it. The working title is Going Greek because much of the action (especially of the hot boinking variety) will take place in Greece. As Jody mentioned in her comment on my Unfinished Business post, I'm going to crack out a partial at least and get some feedback to see if it's worth pursuing to the end.
Does this mean I'm going to stop writing Lady Libertine or give up on my efforts to revise A Scandalous Liaison? No way, baby, I'm doing it all! Am I insane? Probably. Will I get anything done if I don't concentrate on one project at a time? I don't know.
I do know, however, that I have to go where the stories and the characters take me.
Today's comment questions: What's your approach to multiple projects? Do them all at once? Concentrate on one at a time? Do you ever set aside a project in the middle to concentrate on a new one? If you do, do you go back? Or does setting aside a project mean it joins the never-to-be-finished pile?
8 comments:
Concentrate on one at a time and the jury (of children) is out as to whether or not I go back to the ones I set aside :). It's the plan, at least for some of them.
Good luck, Cougar.
My approach to multiple projects: I only have so much room in my head for things. I'm supposed to reserve a certain amount of that room for work, so that leaves tiny amounts of space. I think I can fit two works in progress in that space, but only if I leave off other things--like dry cleaning and taking out the garbage--so naturally, my apartment is a mess right now. ;)
I don't think I could fit two WIPs in if they were both in the same stage. One of those works is in stage-o-love, i.e. that golden time when you have all these scenes in your head and all you have to do is push them out onto paper. The other work is in meta-revision stage, which means that I'm facing an extremely hard problem now trying to make it seem like this one plot element isn't grafted on at random. So I have the creative part of my mind going all squirrely, which it loves, and the analytic part of my mind attempting to fit all the furniture in the room.
If they were both creative, the cross-WIP squirreliness would probably be confusing. But that's just how my mind works. I multitask well, but only if the tasks are sufficiently different.
I'm more like CM. I could work on 2 at one time because one is in revisions and one was being written, and I was ok with plotting a third book in bullet form, but I still work on each straight through one at a time. I didn't plot half of the third book just like I didn't write half of the second book. I'm revising the first book all at one time. I'm just linear that way!
Good luck :0) We'll be here to kick you in the rear if you go off-course.
MatronLit - blech. HenLit, better but not by much. Cougar (as a term) I've never heard of, even though I'm right there (my partner is 10 years younger than me).
Being in Australia, it wouldn't surprise me if we nicknamed it ChookLit.
Great question!
If a story just comes to me, I follow the same process as with all my other writing. Tag- 3 Line Tag- Blurb- and then four hours of pounding keys specifically on that story to see if it has speed at the end of the teaser crisis. I often plant the last chapter too.
If I merely get a concept and have not planted the characters well enough in my head, then I do the first 3 items above and place it in my 'concept folder'. These I may recycle at a later date into another story I am working on, or, time permitting, they get to shine all on their own.
Normally I revise in a point-up copy. In other words, I take five chapters at a time. Normally this can be done in a few hours. This allows me room to work on what's in the queue.
While I think I'm fairly good at multi-tasking in other parts of my life, writing is not one of them. I can only do one book at a time if I want to see it through to the end. One day, I might be able to multi-book but I'm too much a newbie at this right now and I have too many incomplete manuscripts.
I find I wander off the reservation and start something new when I'm stuck with the current WIP. Right now I have a bunch of ideas, but am ruthlessly tuning them out because I. Must. Get. Finished. Period.
Just had to say that I LOVE ChookLit, Cara. Not sure many USians would get it, though *g!
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