PITCH WARS IS COMING!!!
All of the important dates can be seen at Brenda Drake's blog. I'm not allowed to announce my wish list yet, but make sure to join us for the blog hop on August 3!!!!
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Monday, July 6, 2015
AFTER Query Kombat!
Query contests are always thrilling. Throwing your work out there to be judged takes courage, and if you're lucky enough to make it into a contest, your work will be posted/commented on/seen by others. It's easy to get caught up in votes, moving on, agent requests, and the whole whirlwind of twitter activity.
But eventually the contest will end. They all do. So what's next?
Um, old-fashioned querying! You've evaluated feedback and made your revisions. You're ready to send out that shiny new query!
But my advice is to wait a second and take a good look at your entire manuscript. If you received comments regarding your first 250 words that your language was too flowery, was it really the case that you were too flowery only in the first 250? If you received feedback that your language tags were confusing--check and change throughout your manuscript. If you received comments that you were repetitive (and I saw a LOT of this), I doubt that issue was limited to only your first 250 words.
So before you jump on querying, take a look at the suggestions you received, and if you think there's merit--if you revised your first 250 based on those critiques--do yourself a favor and apply those same principles to the rest of your manuscript. Your work will be that much stronger for it, and when you get that full request from an agent, you can feel comfortable sending it off without first diving back in and trying to make a bunch of quick fixes before you press send.
Good luck everyone!
OH! And since I'm a part of Michelle's guess the QK judge contest, all I can say is: 138.
But eventually the contest will end. They all do. So what's next?
Um, old-fashioned querying! You've evaluated feedback and made your revisions. You're ready to send out that shiny new query!
But my advice is to wait a second and take a good look at your entire manuscript. If you received comments regarding your first 250 words that your language was too flowery, was it really the case that you were too flowery only in the first 250? If you received feedback that your language tags were confusing--check and change throughout your manuscript. If you received comments that you were repetitive (and I saw a LOT of this), I doubt that issue was limited to only your first 250 words.
So before you jump on querying, take a look at the suggestions you received, and if you think there's merit--if you revised your first 250 based on those critiques--do yourself a favor and apply those same principles to the rest of your manuscript. Your work will be that much stronger for it, and when you get that full request from an agent, you can feel comfortable sending it off without first diving back in and trying to make a bunch of quick fixes before you press send.
Good luck everyone!
OH! And since I'm a part of Michelle's guess the QK judge contest, all I can say is: 138.
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