The Query that Won

I've had a few emails recently from people asking me if I would consider posting on this blog the query that ultimately got me my agent. I had absolutely no problem doing that - I know, from experience, how hard writing a query letter is, and how useful seeing other people's successful or unsuccessful queries can be - but I hesitated for two reasons. First, that a query only gets you so far - and like your book and your actual writing, a query is so subjective. 

With WOVEN (which I queried as ECHOES, because that was before my agent told me there was a young adult novel coming out this year with that title), my query got me three partial requests (one of which turned into a full request) and three straight-off full requests (one of which turned into a phone call). 

My query also got eleven 'thank you, but this doesn't sound right for us' responses, which just goes to show that a query can be both successful and unsuccessful.

The other reason was that my situation was slightly different in that I wrote to my agent Melissa after being referred to her by another agent (for more on that, read this post). So the referral would almost certainly have sparked Melissa's interest; that said, if the query hadn't interested her as much, if not more, I doubt she'd have asked me to send her the full.

So it's important to bear those things in mind, especially the subjective part, and to just work like crazy to make your query sound like something you wouldn't dream of rejecting. And get a friend or objective outsider to tell you (honestly) whether they'd request pages. 

And now for the actual query. This wasn't the first query I ever wrote, nor was it the first that generated requests for a manuscript. So I found the general stuff - greeting, description of genre, etc - fairly easy to write. The pitch for the actual book, however, took me days to iron out. It was honestly the hardest thing I've ever written and I still don't know if it's all that good. 

I've cut out a few bits that aren't really relevant (like the part where I mention the referral), but the rest is all here.

Dear Ms. Sarver,

[A single line about the referral redacted]

Echoes are created for a single purpose: they are a safety net against the death of a loved one. Stitched by three Weavers in London, echoes are copies of 'others', real people in the world. From birth, they must learn every aspect of their other’s life and behave like them in every way. They must be ready to step into their shoes as soon as they are needed. They have no name or identity of their own, and must learn to survive in a world that despises them.

The novel explores this concept through the eyes of Echo, a teenage echo who pointedly names herself. There are certain laws that bind her kind, and Echo knows that breaking them can be fatal.

Echoes must not be themselves, which means they’re not supposed to love art when they know fully well that their other does not. They must not fall in love with their guardians, even if he is young, sarcastic and named Sean. When their other dies in a car crash and they travel to Bangalore to replace her, they must love her grieving family, friends, and - most especially - her bitter, handsome boyfriend. They must not expose themselves to persistent hunters, and certainly mustn’t invade the Weavers’ Loom and try to destroy it. And they must never, ever cut and run.

ECHOES is a YA urban fantasy, set in contemporary England and partly in India, and clocks in at 124,000 words. I hope it will be the first of a series of novels. If you'd like to see a partial or the manuscript, I'd be happy to send it along. This is a multiple submission and the manuscript is currently being considered elsewhere.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

Sangu Mandanna

Note: I still don't know how I got any requests with that word count, considering it's somewhat high for YA, especially YA from an unknown author. Melissa and I did some revisions before we sent the book out to editors, and the word count has since reduced by about 10,000 words.

I hope that proved at least slightly useful!

(For more on queries, I cannot recommend Query Shark highly enough. Janet Reid may be snarky and sharp - which I personally love - but she knows what agents are looking for and she certainly gets results!)

Echo Keeps Echoing

It's been a busy week for me re. submissions. Most of you might know that I've had my manuscript out with two agents for a while now. Well, this week, both got back to me in the space of two days. Both passed.

But, lest this throw me into a fit of depression to last the next decade, the first rejection was, quite possibly, the best rejection I could have gotten. The agent in question had a few very complimentary things to say about the book, including that she absolutely thought I was on to something, and she referred me to another agent who she thought ECHOES-aka-WHERE SHE LINGERS would be right for. Needless to say, this cheered me no end. I decided to look at it the positive way: she had no problem with the quality of the book, it just wasn't right for her. Agents don't refer you to a friend and fellow agent if they think you suck, right? (No, don't answer that!)

So I rattled off an email to said New Agent at once. Twelve minutes later, I had an email back from her saying my book sounded great and could I send her the manuscript? I did, seventeen minutes after that.

That brings my tally up to five full requests, four rejections thus far. Not the happiest tally in the world, but hey. I'm still thrilled about that referral. Apparently they're like gold dust.

It's not the end of Echo, not by a long shot.

No, I'm not stubborn. What on earth gave you that idea?

Oh, all right. I am.

What have you been up to this week?

A series of (unfortunate?) events linked very loosely together

Well, after a long and exhausting weekend involving house-hunting, I've returned to the blogger-world. House-hunting is so much fun, but also very stressful because there's so much you have to think about, you have to face the possibility of loving a house but not being able to get it, you have to face that all-important fear of what if I can't find a job? and so on. 

Conclusion? Being a Real Adult in the Real World is scary. Personally, if an agent would get back to me, say he/she loves my novel, wants to represent it, and somehow wrangles me into a situation where I can be a Real Author Who Lives in Fictional Worlds, I'd be very happy.

Fingers crossed. Still haven't heard back from anyone who has my manuscript. When does it become okay to write in and say 'just making sure you received it...'? After eight weeks? I'm not quite there yet!

I bought another load of books last night, and am so excited to get to them! Well, actually, Steve bought them for me, which made me very very happy. Ah, he knows me too well. Among them were two books I've already read before, but don't own: Agatha Christie's The Labours of Hercules and Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract. If anyone likes mysteries and a nice dose of humour (Christie), or historical novels and a sweet and also bittersweet love stories (Heyer), I'd highly recommend these!

Lately I've been doing more revisions on ECHOES and writing bits and pieces of HALF and TEA WITH DEATH, DESIRE AND RAGE. In an earlier post, I mentioned my dilemma about going back to ECHOES when I'd already worked it to the bone and it was out on submission. In the end, I decided to make the small revisions that were keeping me up at night, just because if I felt that made the story tighter and better, it had to be the right thing. I've resisted the urge to pick at things too much, though, so as not to lose the book entirely.

I guess that means that while I haven't quite achieved the frenzied writing state I usually work best in, I'm not living in my totally dry spell anymore either. So, woo!

Monday seems a strange day to reflect back on things that have been happening of late, but apparently it's what I've done. Ah, well.

Writerly Updates

I haven't yet heard back from either of the agents who are reading ECHOES at present (one partial, one full), so there are no updates on the publishing/not-being-published front yet. However, I do have a significant update re. CLOCKWORK.

Point of view.

I started writing it in first, but it's suddenly struck me that it might do better to be in third person instead. This is obviously a pain in the rewriting sense, but fortunately I haven't written much of it yet. This may seem like a small change to be making to some, but it's actually quite important. I often write in first person, but I have written in third before, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. In writing ECHOES, first person put me in my protagonist's head, and the reader spends their time there too. And I think that works. I think a lot of the book's strength (in my biased opinion) is in Echo's voice, thoughts and the way her character and feelings are so clear right through.

With CLOCKWORK, with a lot of secrets at work and a prickly and ruthless yet fiercely loyal heroine, I think the third person will work better. I need other characters to see my heroine, to have the reader see her through their eyes. I need to get into my male protagonist's head. And, with a lot of the book relying on humour, I think that works better when there are multiple perspectives. It's an oddly powerful feeling.

Let's see how it goes.

How do other people feel about this? What's your preferred point of view, to read or to write? 

Literary Relationships

Having (vaguely) fixed my dreadful and erratic sleeping pattern (I fell asleep last night before 5 AM for the first time in two weeks), I was up and about during the day and spent three hours in the afternoon packing boxes as part of a part-time job. Feel a little bit achy now.

So it was only about half an hour ago that I finally managed to get onto the laptop and do my usual Internetting. While running through my usual list of agency, publishing and other random blogs and websites, I came across this post by agent Jessica Faust on the BookEnds blog. I thought it was an incredible post, especially how touched she is by a dedication in a client's book. It made me think about relationships in the literary world, real-life and fictional, and about how wonderful and memorable these can be. Obviously, there are the great agent-author relationships (and oh, how I long for one of these...) and there are author-editor relationships and author-character relationships. The latter are probably the most fraught and complicated.

But there are also character-character relationships, and in the spirit of that theme, I'd like to point many fingers at the compelling, funny, touching and all-round amazing friendship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

Right, seriously. Watson's devotion, loyalty and nagging must be celebrated. The man is not only patient, he's astonishing. Of course, while reading the stories, his exasperation, confusion and devotion regardless is obvious and funny. This relationship is the building block upon which other great fictional relationships have been based - notably the relationship between House and Wilson in House. I love House, not least for that relationship.

I think one of my favourite moments in the entire series (Holmes, that is, not House) is from 'The Three Garridebs'. Watson is shot in the course of catching a criminal, and Holmes's reaction, viewed through Watson's eyes, really reminds the reader that the good doctor's devoted friendship is not by any means one-sided: It was worth a wound, Watson/Conan Doyle writes, to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. A furious Holmes then informs the criminal that if he had killed Watson, Holmes would have killed him. Aw.

*feels a surge of nostalgia coming on, and glances at the massive Sherlock Holmes volume on the shelf* Erm, yes. So, where was I?

I really can't recommend the stories highly enough. But, for now, this post is my small tribute to one of my favourite fictional literary relationships of all time.

Suitable blog fodder?

Have just had a couple more rejections, but an agent has requested the full manuscript of ECHOES. This means that, when I send it to him, I'll have one partial and one full out with agents. This is a promising tally, and I'm very excited! And also terrified. Can't quite shake the feeling that the book is just not good enough. But it's the best I can make it, so it's worth a shot, right?

So, being swamped with university work and a need now to format said full manuscript, I don't really have a scintillating blog post. Nevertheless, I thought I'd point readers to this article.

Ants that have evolved so that they don't need men. Wow.

Should we be taking lessons? Or does this 'world without sex' sound bleak?

Hopefully, that article provides some amusement. Not to mention knowledge. To quote from Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, 'all knowledge is worth having'. I'm not sure what use I'm going to put knowing about all-female Amazonian ant hives to, but we'll just have to see...

The Lonely Writer

A nostalgic hearkening back to another stereotype: that of the isolated, lonely writer. On a more serious note, though, there's a little bit of merit to that stereotype. I know I said that if writers were isolated all the time, they'd never get great ideas. But the truth is, that's the inspiration part. When the actually work begins, writers almost always work alone. It's hard to get chapters written and dialogue to flow when you have distractions coming at you from every angle. As promised, this is a sort-of follow-up to my post about editing a novel. This is how I write.

This process varies from book to book, but as someone who has written several novels that never got anywhere and started several others, this is generally how it goes.

• An idea slips in, insidiously. They're sneaky things, ideas. Sometimes you're inspired by something you've seen or read or heard. Sometimes you have a dream and snag on to one delicious element of that dream. Sometimes you just have the idea and for the life of you, you can't tell where it came from. Sneaky. See?
• The idea stews for a while. The core idea for ECHOES stewed for all of a few hours before I got writing, but, it must be said, I'd had similar ideas and started a book with a vaguely similar premise a few months before. So maybe that's why I got writing so quick. Some details were already fleshed out. With HALF, the idea stewed for months before I got writing properly.
• The writing begins. Cue frustration, tears, despair, excitement, pride and the nearly irresistible temptation to tear out your hair. Cue long wanderings off to your friends'/parents' bedroom to have a chat, just to procrastinate writing a dreaded scene. Cue long days where you do little but write, and your friends call you an antisocial git. Cue more frustration, tears.
• I send chapters to a close friend or to Steve as I finish them. Sometimes they have good things to say. Sometimes they're lukewarm. They often have suggestions. This not only helps me fix mistakes, it also provides the encouragement some writers need to keep going on bad days.
• While writing, I keep going back over what I wrote the previous day, or week. I compulsively reread, tweak, edit. I find that I can't just write a full first draft without stopping and editing as I go along. It hurts me physically to think that the previous scenes might not be what I want them to be, so I have to fix them before I can move on.
• My OCD kicks in, and I change the font about six times, desperate to find one in which every letter, speech mark and italic looks good. [Note: they never do. There is no perfect font. Fellow OCD-ers, cry.]
• I hit a roadblock. It always happens, whatever book I write. I give up. I decide I'm rubbish, the book isn't good, and it's useless pursuing it. I close the file and turn away, angry.
• I find that I can't stop thinking about the characters, or imagining a wonderful scene that I was going to write for the end of the novel. I find that when it's quiet or I'm trying to get to sleep at night, I can hear my characters having conversations. Sometimes, they refer rudely to me as the 'giver-upper'.
• To shut them up, I go back to writing. Sometimes, if I'm lucky and the story simply has to be written, like ECHOES insisted on being, I'll finish the first draft. I'll collapse back in my chair after writing the last sentence, and feel rather weak and drained and stunned. Did this really happen? Did I finish a book?  
• At this point, I celebrate. Usually by eating, sleeping, and rather guiltily returning to the university essays and dissertation I've neglected for weeks. Sometimes if I'm lucky, I get to celebrate with a drink or dinner out. Not often, though. The one stereotype I do fall completely into is that of the struggling, penniless artiste. Tragic.

And that's the first draft. Or, in my case, the 'sort of first draft', because I do a lot of tweaking as I go along, which no doubt slows the process down, but it's what works for me. I know of writers who rattle out their first draft without ever looking back at a single page, and then go into editing full-throttle.

The time frame: anywhere from a month to about six. The 'sort of first draft' of ECHOES took me four months to write and complete. I started late September and finished mid-February, but I'm taking into account a few weeks in this time frame where I wrote nothing whatsoever.

And then, I edit. Properly. Compulsively. Painfully. But that's another post, because otherwise this one will get exceedingly long, and I'll be guilty of neglecting my dissertation yet again.


Finally, an exciting bit of news: I've just had another request for a partial of ECHOES. I just sent off the first fifty(ish) pages to the agent in question, and I'm very excited to see how she responds to them.


Picture above photographed by Simon Howden. One day, I'll take a picture of my own desk. It's not nearly so tidy.

Cut, Polish: Editing a Novel (Part One)

A return to the writing world for a short post. Someone asked me a while ago about editing a novel, and asked me how I do it. I'm going to save my long explanation for another post, and, for now, offer advice from two authors who have not only been published, but who are very successful and no doubt actually know what they're talking about. So if anyone is interested in fine-tuning or editing a novel but has no idea how, I highly recommend the many pages offered by Kate Mosse (author of the bestselling Labyrinth, amongst others, and owner of a truly beautiful website too) and Holly Lisle (prolific, successful, and full of wonderful advice about writing: the art, the business, etc).

One of the most useful things for me, as a writer trying to get published, has been getting good advice from successful authors and agents. Visiting author blogs and agent blogs is a great way to meet people and talk to people who have made it. I hope to be able to post many useful links and resources on this blog over time.


Coming soon: a post on the way I personally edit/work. I've taken heed of the advice of many professionals, including author Jo Baker, my creative writing tutor this year. Ultimately, though, the way you work is completely your own and that's what I'll be talking about in 'Editing a Novel (Part Two)'.

It really never rains, it...

A veritable heap of writing-related and like updates today. First, a note on this blog and blogging in general. I'm amazed by how much I enjoy doing it! It's really grown on me, and posting once a day (or more often) has been easy so far. Of course, there will be exceptionally busy days and days when I'm away, but it's been fantastic, and a big thank you to the small handful of people who have been reading my posts so far!

I've been meaning to write this post for the last two hours, but was repeatedly delayed by a number of extraordinary and bewildering factors: checking various accounts, reading other blogs, explaining to my mother how to comment on a blog (she worked it out eventually, as evidenced in my previous post), three different conversations on Facebook, a Twitter update, writing an article on a website... and, at last. I managed to work my way back here. My head reels. I kid you not, it spins and boggles and does peculiar things to my eyes. I glimpse worrying signs of crow's feet and forehead wrinkles, borne of the hours I spend frowning at the screen as a multitude of tasks continue to boggle my brain.

But let's steer away from my encroaching age and move on to the meat of the post, which I am rather excited about...

It's amazing how I can have dry spells for weeks, where I won't be able to write anything except what I have to (read: essays, dissertation chapters, portfolio self-reflections and other painful necessities), and then, out of the blue, I'll find myself with not one, or two, but three things to write. 

1. This blog, of course, which readers will have known about already. While the elite may not count this as writing, I think it's very useful. It keeps me practicing, and it forces me to (try to) be interesting, scintillating, honest, witty, and more, all of which are key to writing novels. It also inspires me with ideas.

2. A website called HubPages.com, where people write up articles about just about any subject they can think of or find interesting. It's a little bit like blogging, only it involves being a lot more detailed, clear-cut and academic, in a sense. There's less freedom, obviously, than blogging, but it's a place where people go to find information about certain things and that's useful. I've just written my first article, which was, of course, about Sherlock Holmes and I hope anyone who likes the subject will go have a look. 

I realize I haven't mentioned Sherlock Holmes on this blog yet, which is a travesty considering my love of it. I am obsessed, addicted and thoroughly enamoured of the stories, the characters and the Holmes/Watson dynamic. Occasionally, I'll re-watch episodes of House just because the House/Wilson dynamic is so deliberately intended to echo Holmes and Watson. My ultimate quest is to one day write a detailed guide to the stories and the world created by Arthur Conan Doyle. What fun. One day. When I'm not a student, when I don't have a dissertation scowling at me, when I have that imaginary thing known as Lots of Free Time.

Anyway, I've started up on HubPages, and will hopefully enjoy writing articles and reading them as and when I feel like it. Sometimes, I think I deliberately add things to my plate just to distract me from the fact that Steve isn't here much.

3. And the third and, to me, the most exciting thing I'm writing: a new project! I began writing it on Friday and although I've only written about a page and a half so far, I'm very excited about it. It's not technically a new project, because it's sort of been in the works and stewing in my head for months now. But with ECHOES pretty much done, dusted and its sequels temporarily shelved during my quest for its publication, this is the first time I've really started a new project with the intent of plunging into it full-tilt.

It's tentatively called HALF at the moment, the title inspired by the enormously significant fact that the two protagonists are half siblings. I'd classify the novel as fantasy or science fiction, but it really only deserves these tags because it takes place in a dystopian future where Britain is ruled by the Lifeblood, a Nazi-like government that believes all people of colour and disability have no place in Britain. The novel is narrated by Seira, a half-Indian girl who struggles to survive in this world, builds fragile relationships and, ultimately, fights back. Key characters will also include Kenneth, Seira's half-brother; Isabella, niece of the Lifeblood's Prime Minister; and Remy, a poet and secret revolutionary.

Of course, all of this is subject to change, because I'm still in the early, first draft stage, but it's exciting to jump in and see where this goes.

Finally, a few other small writing-related updates. First, most people will remember my post where I talked about putting some of ECHOES online on WEBook. A few hours after that post, I put a page of the novel up for WEBook's PageToFame contest, where readers rate the first page of a story and vote whether or not to send it through to the next round. Although I had to pay a few quid, I thought it was a useful way to find out whether or not ECHOES (first page or more) is popular with anonymous readers. My first ratings on that first page were posted for me today. 

*drumroll*... 

...It turns out that, so far, 60% of readers want my submission elevated to the next round! Of course, in the interest of being scrupulously honest, I ought to add that 20% think my first page was 'not great'. Still, first pages can be polished and reworked, and I think the first statistic is pretty exciting! Will let people know how this goes. 

On a different note, an update re. queries to agents. Of the ten I have now written to, only two have replied as yet. One was, as I mentioned before, a request for a partial followed by a rejection. The other response, received this week, was a rejection of the query. It stings, but the great thing about writing and being excited about HALF is that it keeps me optimistic and stops me from letting every rejection depress me for days.

And wouldn't you know it? I had at least one other update to post, but it has been swept clean out of my head. I really and truly can't remember! Such is my absent-minded brain. Ah well. I'll post again when or if I remember. Until then, I'll sign off with an apology for how long this post has been and with the hope that everyone has had a lovely weekend!

So... Echoes?

It just occurred to me that in spite of posting my introductory post only a couple hours ago, I forgot completely to elaborate on the reasoning behind this. Writers should have blogs, as put forward by Eric of Pimp My Novel. So, that begs the question, doesn't it? Am I writer? Why is my blog called 'Echoes of a Wayward Mind'?

Yes, I'm a writer. Not an author, because that means you have to be published, and, apart from the time I had a short story published in a newspaper when I was fifteen, I am not. So, I'm a writer. This means I've written a (many, several, but only one that's worth much) novel and am concentrating pigheadedly on trying to get it somewhere. The novel's called ECHOES, and it's told from the point of view of a teenage echo** who is struggling to survive and live on her own terms in a world that really and truly and generally despises echoes. It's an urban fantasy, technically young adult, with a mixture of adventure, romance, tragedy and hopefully some humour. It's also quite lyrical, because I love words, though I do try not to use them superfluously. (Yes, I've always wanted to use the word 'superfluously'. I'm sorry. I'll try to be better.)


So, that's why the blog is called what it is. Echoes (pun intended) of a wayward mind. I wasn't trying to be witty or clever. Honest. I also think you'll find, if you stick around long enough, that my mind is very much of the wayward type. I really can't help it. Don't you ever find that you start to talk about something, then wander off on a hopefully scintillating tangent, then eventually come back to your original point an hour later? No? Oh, dear. You'll probably hate me. Sorry again.


More about the novel, story, characters, etc. in due course. For now, a few writing statistics, as I'm aiming to chart the long, painful road to (possible, maybe, unlikely, maybe) publication:


ECHOES word count: approximately 125,000.
Words written today: 0
Words written today on work that's not ECHOES: 2,034. Dissertation chapter. The joys of being a third-year English literature university student.
Number of queries sent out to agents in the last four weeks: 8
Number of replies (so far): 1
Partials requested and sent: 1 
Rejections on partials: 1
Rejections on queries: 0


It doesn't look very good, does it? On the other hand, I think it's encouraging that the one reply I have thus far received to a query asked to see a partial. That must mean something's working. Of course, he then rejected me based on the partial, which means something else isn't working. I've tried working on that since, so fingers crossed. Still waiting to hear from the others. And yes, if you're wondering: rejection is ouch-I've-got-a-paper-cut, ooo-you-cut-my-heart-out-with-a-spoon painful. I sound optimistic and cheery now, but as my boyfriend Steve will testify, in the days following the rejection, I was ready to quit. I haven't.


So that's that, and now it's time for bed...




**echo (n.). Safety net for a loved one. Person stitched from mysterious materials by a Weaver. Designed to look exactly like a real person, their other. Must learn other's life and behave like them in every way. If other dies, the echo must replace them.