Beyond the enormous hurdle of actually writing a complete novel and then revising and polishing it till it shines, there comes a series of hurdles between the manuscript and the market.
I've now jumped the first hurdle. A literary agent thought my premise was interesting enough to ask to see the entire manuscript or, in the industry jargon, "request the full".
This is akin to making it through the first round at American Idol. I haven't won anything yet, but at least I'm in the competition. Unlike AI, it would be much better for me if I could get waved through this round more than once, by having several agents express an interest. If I'm extremely fortunate, more than one of them will offer representation, and I'll have a choice between agents rather than a choice between one and none. Or no choice at all.
I'm not going to bore you with all the details of this as I go along, but I will post the occasional update. Feel free to chime in with questions, comments, or stories of your own.
11 hours ago
12 comments:
Congratulations on "going to Hollywood", so to speak!
Thanks Ed. :o)
Huge congratulations, that is truly step one right there! You must be doing something right! Here's to more of that, right?
Oooh! Congratulations!
You have my vote! Congrats, Janet.
More would be nice, all right. ;o) (Greedy, aren't I?)
Thanks AF, Libri, and Janna.
Awesome, Janet! I'm wishing you much luck and lots of requests!
Thanks, Spy. I'll take the wishes. Sometimes one shouldn't be bashful.
How did I not comment here yet? Eek! Congratulations!!! I know I did in FB & AW. :)
LOL Melanie. You're not obliged to comment in every venue, you know.
I went to the library and asked for it, just in case.
I told them it was probably pretty good. They said they had lots of pretty good stuff, like the Diary of Anne Funk, (she was a lesser-known "prisoner of conscience" from Burbank, CA, that died of inanition while hiding in the bottom drawer of a dresser until the tax assessor went away) and a Golden Girls boxed set in VHS format, so I'd have to be more specific.
I said it hadn't been edited yet, so the syntax might still be readable, so they should be on the lookout for a book like that. They said most of the books in the library nowadays weren't even spellchecked, never mind edited, so they'd need more information if they were going to help me.
I said the author was bright yellow, I'd imagine it would be easy to track her down. They said about 75% of the library's titles were now authored by primary-colored people; children writing about dragons; pets; or John Grisham. They offered me a book by Suze Orman, who did indeed appear to be painted a kind of dull yellow, but that didn't suit me, either, as she was talking about money and I aint' got any. I'm in the library... duh!
I mentioned you were Canadian, but all they had was an audio book of Brian Mulroney describing his technique for singing show tunes in French, and a coffee table book of Don Cherry's suitcoats.
I told them I could show them a picture of you on your Intertunnel web page thingie, but all the 486 computers in the library were being used by men in trench coats toggling back and forth, so to speak, between pictures of women wearing only very steeply inclined shoes with clear soles and updating their Facebook pages with info from their sex-offender pages.
So it appears you're going to have to publish it, if you want us to read it. The world, or at least the library, is an unforgiving place in this regard. I'd consider it a personal favor if you'd take out all the big words, like Constantinople and Timbuktoo, so I could read it too.
LOL. I'll do my best, Sippi. I can promise you that the words Constantinople (or Byzantium) and Timbuktoo are not in it. There are a couple just as long though. I hope you can overcome that.
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