agents and editors

Putting on my bravest face I have made first contact with an agent named Daniel Lazar from the writers house. Of course with my luck, the man is now on holiday until March 14th, but secretly I welcome adversity, it gives me more hope to that happy ending. It's silly, I know, but this whole writing experience has suddenly made me very supersticious and almost religious.

With my (poorly written) query letter I had to send the first 5 pages of my manuscript, which is basically my prologue. Though I think my prologue is okay, I don't think it is a great representation of the rest of my manuscript. The characters are very young in the prologue and the first chapter so the writing style is different.

I just hope that if or when he lets me down, Mr. Lazar will let me down gently.

And so today I finished my rewrite and sent it off to Joy, who is going to edit it for me and I will be sending it to Mark for his opinion. This is dead scary and I am afraid my story is going to bomb. The thought of it sucking is keeping me up at night. What if my complex plot is too surreal? What if my characters aren't as likable as I think they are. What if my writing is too childish? What if, what if, what if?? I am driving myself bonkers now that the insecurity has blossomed to it's full extent.

update

A lot has happened since my last post and I should really be more of an active blogger when it comes to my writing process.

First off, Februari 1st was one of those milestone days, because that was the day I finished my rough draft. And it is very rough indeed because half way through my story as I was writing I was changing the ending to the story. All good and well, but that means there are a few indescrepancies that I need to work out.

Now that I have my rough draft finished I am starting to look into getting it published. Not that I will send it anywhere in this state, but my curiosity is peaked. To my horror I found out that my views on publishing are rather out of date and life doesn't exactly 'work like that' any more. I am not to send my work to editors... nay nay, I am to send a query letter to an agent and hope they find me interesting enough to introduce me to a publisher. After some research I have decided to try and hook me an agent at the writers house. This might be a little ambitious, but no guts, no glory... right?

So, let's be honest, I have no friggin clue how to write a query letter. Thank god for google, but all the websites are mildly vague and very contradicting. A friend of a friend is willing to look at my query letter, but I haven't hear back from them still, so I wonder.

And so I cried out on facebook for an editor and two friends from my past stood up to the challenge. As soon as my rough draft is slightly more presentable I shall be sending it to them and shitting myself as they scrutinize it. And I need it because my spelling (as you might have noticed) is appaling.

But another problem reared its ugly head. My query letter must be accompanied with a SASE (self adressed stamped envelope) and that needs to have some nice US stamps, which are impossible to get by in the Netherlands. A man offered to help me, but in retrospect his intentions did not seem as noble as he made them out to be and I ended up blocking him from my facebook page. But then another young old friend came to the rescue offering to get her sister to send me some stamps. So when all is said and done, hopefully in a few weeks I can send of my query letter. I wish I could have just used internet, but I am told (by the actual agency) that emails are not always read and so I will stick to this expensive and difficult way.

At this point doubt is making itself a master of my emotions. Is my book strong enough, aren't there too many inconsistencies? Well, here's hoping that one day my work will be published. I even have a name for the book: Celestials; a vessel's quest.

Hope it will be in a book store near you ;)