Before you write that query

I'm sure every writer has their way of gathering information before they write a query, but I figured I would share my way of doing it. Since I write from Jamaica, maybe this will help freelancers outside of countries like the US and Canada. I try to divide things by either researching my query idea, or looking for suitable markets. Here are the steps I take before I eventually craft and send a query:

Researching the idea
Once I've come up with an idea, I do some research. Usually I look through online newspaper archives. This research helps me figure out some questions I'll eventually want to ask an expert. Newspapers have the information I'll need and also include clues about experts. Newspaper articles don't always include contact information, but having an expert's name or the name of an organization to look up helps. Very rarely do I look through books for query research. I only look through books if an expert I'm looking is the author. I do this mainly to find contact information, or to learn more about the expert.

Make a list of suitable markets
Sometime during the querying stage, I figure out at least one magazine I plan to target. Once I have a solid query idea, I make a list of markets that would be ideal for the topic. I look for markets online, through Writer's Market, and through my freelance website e-mail subscriptions. Some freelance sites are helpful because they have lists of markets and I look through them occasionally for new markets.

Study markets
After I've made a list of markets to target, I study the magazines as much as I can. This is the most important step to me, because it reveals a lot about what editors - and eventually readers - want. I read guidelines very carefully. This is where Writer's Market obviously comes in handy again. I also make sure to read their guidelines on magazine websites. If there isn't guideline information, I send of an e-mail requesting info on guidelines. I usually get a quick response. I also make sure to study the magazine itself, and go through what has previously been published so I don't waste time sending an idea that's been covered. Studying articles helps me learn about the magazine's writing style, typical subjects editors like, and whether the magazine has many freelance writers. Once in a while during this process I come up with a new query ideas.

Contact experts for information
The most helpful information I get during research comes from experts. After finding names and organizations from the sources I've used, I dig for more contact information. Typically, I try to find out if the expert has a website or has written a book. From there, I can almost always find an e-mail address or a phone number. I've also found that calling organizations has been super helpful. If I don't have any experts in mind, I'll call the relevant organization, and ask who they think it's best for me to speak to. In my experience people are always willing to help and either provide an e-mail address, phone number, or pass on a message to the right person.

I'm not sure how this works in other countries, but in Jamaica getting a hold of people, for whatever reason, can be challenging. People either take a long time to respond to an e-mail, or simply don't respond at all. The trick is to be politely persistent. Make as many phone calls, leave as many e-mail messages, and leave as many messages as you can. At first I wondered if this was a bit rude. Eventually I learned that as long as I'm polite, some experts actually find the persistence flattering. If I let them know that they're the only ones who can help me (and honestly, sometimes on a small island they really are) they realize just how important they are to writers like me.

For a query, I think one expert is enough. There's no need to ask tons of questions. Less than five questions seems very reasonable to me, and you'll be able to show the magazine editor that you have the ability to reach sources and get quotes.

What steps do you take to craft a good pitch?

My writing life updated

I haven't updated my writing blog in several months. Since my last post I've accomplished a lot, but I've also had to deal with quite a few challenges.

The first bit of news is that I'm working really hard on my freelance writing career. Two of my magazine articles were published last year, and one should be coming up in the next few months. There were a few times when I wanted to give up because it took a while for my queries to get accepted, but I had so much support from my family. They believed in me and rooted for me, even when I felt like quitting. I also got feedback from some wonderful editors. Even when they rejected a query, they were polite and encouraging. And when I was accepted they were so helpful when I had any questions. I know we all hear that we shouldn't give up, but it can be so hard to keep following our dreams. Now I know that if you keep trying, eventually you'll see some results, and your hard work will pay off. I plan on working even harder this year, and I hope to learn more about writing, and get even more articles published

My next bit of news: I finished the first draft of my manuscript! Considering this is the first time I've ever completed a draft, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. My next goal is to edit the entire manuscript. I've also started doing research for my next manuscript. I originally wanted to write a historical fantasy next, but I got sidetracked by the 1920s - my favorite era (I'm even watching Chicago for the millionth time right now).

And finally, in the last several months, I've been diagnosed with depression. I have dealt with it for quite some time, but I decided to work on getting treatment. I think so many people wait to get mental illnesses diagnosed or treated because there is still stigma and misunderstanding. Some people are accused of being dramatic, or trying to get attention. They're told to cheer up or get over it. I wouldn't put up with this if I was dealing with a physical illness, so why should I with a mental one? As soon as I have a bad case of the flu I go and see a doctor, but I lived with depression for years and did nothing about it until I almost couldn't function. I owe it to myself to recover. I don't want to talk about every detail or anything, but I do want anyone struggling with a mental illness to know that their illness is real and they deserve to be taken seriously. They shouldn't have to feel guilty or ashamed. I'm not cured, but I'm working on recovery.

So, that's what I have been up to. I don't want to leave my blog for months on end again, which is why I plan on updating at least once a month, or maybe every other week. I'll see how it goes.

What have you been working on in your writing or life in general?

Putting it off...and putting it off...and putting it off

I don't like procrastinating while I'm doing it. I mentally kick myself for putting of writing. Or I try to bribe myself out of it. Usually with the promise of chocolate, or an extra hour to watch mindless television or waste on the Internet. It isn't a rare thing for me. I procrastinate all the time. Probably every day. I'll take just a little time to research something I don't need. Or I'll watch just another five minutes of news, because in my obsessive mind I'll be out of touch with the world if I don't know every single thing that's going on. I'll be just as out of touch if I don't check my e-mail one more time.

Some writers probably don't need the delay, but I do. I get ideas when I'm not obsessing over what I'm currently writing. And sometimes that little time I spend on extra research gives me an idea for a novel down the line, or a query I can pitch. And sometimes this leads to more than just procrastination. Sometimes this becomes me scheduling a project for further off in the future so I can have time to think about what I want to do.


Over the last several weeks I've been trying to figure out what I'll write next once my current work in progress is finished. At first I knew exactly what I was going to do: a regency romance. Which morphed into a romance in the late 19th century. But then I thought maybe it should be a paranormal. Or maybe a mystery. Or thriller. Maybe all of these things combined. Suddenly I had a huge novel I was writing entirely in my head. One trip to the library and weeks of just thinking about this huge novel made me realize that something was wrong. It might be that the research is a little too daunting for me right now, but I'm not ready to write it. And that's fine because I had another idea. And after taking a couple of weeks to think about it and do some research, I feel like this is the novel I'm ready to do after my current project.

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of writer who can just start writing fiction the minute an idea comes into my head. I've tried, and as it turns out, I'm not very good at that. I just have to work on finding a balance between using valuable writing time and letting my ideas evolve.

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Rest in Peace, Brian Jacques

When I was very young, I didn't like to read. This distressed my mother. She was a teacher. And an avid reader. She had started to read when she was three. I started when I was four, but by third grade I had no interest.

Then my mother went to the school library, checked out an armful of books and commanded (very politely) that I was to read them all. To my annoyance, these books had no pictures in them, but I settled on the one by Brian Jacques. The one with the mouse wielding a sword on the cover. To my surprise there were pictures inside. Lovely little ink drawings of squirrels and badgers at the opening of each chapter. I must have finished Martin the Warrior in a week. I went to the library myself and week after week checked out the rest of the available Redwall books.

Oh, there were other books along the way. Books about babysitters clubs, and Atticus Finch, but every year there was a new Redwall book. I fell in love with reading. And then I learned to love to write. All because Brian Jacques wrote the most wonderful stories. Stories about courage, and friendship, and loyalty. And the female characters didn't sit around and wait to be saved. They could fight too.

I was very sad when I learned that Brian Jacques had died. He passed away on my birthday of all days.

Thank you Brian Jacques. Thank you bringing so much happiness to a difficult childhood. To this day, when I'm lucky enough to stumble upon a Redwall book in a bookstore, I get so excited that I have to buy it.

Blackbeard's sword discovered?

Blackbeard inevitably shows up in any research about pirates. I've been finding out cool little facts about him that I hadn't known originally. For one thing, he spent a lot of time in Port Royal, which I thought was interesting. Piracy and Port Royal is usually the pre 1692 earthquake, privateering sort of history, so any piracy connection in the early 1700s is fascinating. Secondly, Blackbeard's mother apparently lived in Spanish Town, Jamaica which is where my mom is from too.

Anyway, on to the discovery:

archaeologists now suspect they've found one more clue behind the pirate's menace: what could very well be Blackbeard's sword, or at least part of it. National Geographic published photos released by a team that has for over a decade been excavating the Queen Anne's Revenge, which was Blackbeard's flagship until it ran aground in an inlet off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. These include fragments of a gilded hilt and pommel, possibly of French design (Blackbeard's ship was a retrofitted French merchant vessel). The shipwreck has been worked on since 1997. NatGeo has more pictures of objects recovered here. [Time]

Getting heroes and heroines together

Now that I've started my historical romance manuscript, I find myself worrying a bit about pacing. Pacing is really important with novels in general, but I think they're really important in suspense and romance novels. And it's probably twice as important if you're writing romantic suspense. When should a couple get together? Where do you place the first time they kiss, or touch, or make love? Is there as such thing as moving things along too slowly or too quickly?

The obvious answer is just write whatever serves the story and whatever is rational in terms of character development. I've read novels where there's a first kiss in chapter one and in other novels the couple doesn't make love until the second-to-last chapter. But, I think lots of aspiring writers read what other writers have done and think - I'm not talented enough to get away with that. I can't the only self consciousness one.

I know, I know. I should just write what's best for the story. But I've already veered off my outline, and changing one scene has a domino effect. This isn't a bad thing or a good thing. It's too early to tell what it is exactly. I just didn't expect to change anything and I have. I'm still following my outline. It's just that every once in a while I ignore it and change something when I get bored.

How do you deal with pacing in your work?

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At the beginning

I started my novel. It feels really good to write that. But the week I started was extremely chaotic. For one thing, I panicked a little. It was a bit like a heightened version of the things I say to myself that have kept me from starting a novel for years and years. You'll never finish. This is terrible. Stop writing. This will never sell. Anyway, I paid attention to it for about a day and then I decided to stop. It isn't that I'm not worried, or insecure about my writing. I probably always will be. But if I keep giving in to that annoying, critical voice, nothing will ever get written. So, I've kind of decided to ignore it as much as possible.

The other thing that happened is that I got the flu the week that I started writing. And I wrote through it. I felt really, really awful doing it, but I got some work done. I don't think I'll ever write through the flu again after this, but I was so excited about finally starting something that I didn't want to stop after the first couple pages of chapter one.

I think the beginning of a novel can be the best and the worst thing. There's something thrilling about meeting new characters. It's fun to figure out how much to reveal about a character and how much to keep a surprise for later. And there's a sense of anticipation. What will the next few hundred pages be filled with? What are the things that will surprise me? Starting each new chapter captures some of this, but nothing is quite like the beginning.

This excitement is also why the beginning can be the worst. There's a danger in getting so enamored with the characters and the setting that the beginning is self-indulgent and that doesn't help the story. Or the fear can be so paralyzing that nothing gets written at all. Not even anything bad.

The beginning is what stopped me from writing. That first blank page kept me away from writing and pushed me into wasting so many years doing research for a book I never even wrote. I don't know why I waited this long, but maybe it had to be this way. I had to work on other types of writing to distract myself from being scared of the writing a novel.

What is starting a novel like for you?

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Goals for December

Even though I didn't set more goals than usual for November, it still took a lot more work to accomplish them. I finally finished my manuscript synopsis and I did a chapter by chapter outline.
I did tons of research, but I didn't go to the library. Going across town to the library costs money so I spent money on joining a historical society instead. I might go to the library early next year instead.
I didn't have the time to send my short story to more magazines, but it's still out there with quite a few markets which I hope makes up for this month. Incidentally, I haven't gotten a rejection this month, so yay!
I'm getting out of the house tomorrow.
And finally, I came up with two article ideas instead of four. And I didn't have the time to write an outline for them.


My goals for December:

• Write 12,000 words on my manuscript. I'm going to aim for 3,000 words a week.

• Start research for freelance article. I'm looking forward to this especially. That sounds good, but it might not be. Nothing gets me off track faster than research. Though it was getting of track that led to the article idea in the first place.
  

• Keep doing novel research.

• Come up with two solid article ideas and write one article outline.

• Send out "The Famous Cassini Brothers" to more short story markets.

• Get out of the house. I sincerely hope I avoid the holiday parties though. I'm grateful when people are kind enough to invite me, but I'm extremely uncomfortable at these gatherings for some reason.
  

December is probably the hardest month to get anything done, but I'm still doing to try really hard.

What are your goals for December?

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Not searching for ideas

I finally settled on an article topic. I've been looking for an idea for a history piece for weeks. And since I've been doing research for my novel, I also used the research to brainstorm article ideas. I was overwhelmed with ideas. And I didn't like a single one. It was weird. I got exactly what I wanted, but it wasn't helping me.

But, this week I got bored and frustrated and looked up costumes to get my mind off things. Again. That's what I do when I get lazy with research. I look up pretty costumes of the era and waste time. It beats doing something completely off topic, but it's distracting. Eventually I got sidetracked into watching period films just so I could gawk at the costumes. One of the films got me wasting time Googling the subject because it was intriguing. Did it occur to me that there as an article topic here? Nope. I told my sister about it instead. Her eyes glazed over when I started talking about the technical stuff, but she perked up considerably when I got to the bits about executions and general cruelty. That's the thing about history. It's typically just a string of violence.



Still, I didn't even consider writing about what I'd learned. I moved on to actual research and days later the idea hit me like a ton of bricks. My brain does this a lot. I discover something interesting or think of a great idea and shove it into the back of my mind. My subconscious takes over and parses through everything. It takes a while for the conscience part of my brain to catch up. So this is what I've spent the week doing. Not thinking of ideas, but getting them anyway.

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Happy birthday Robert Louis Stevenson

Today is Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday.

From Treasure Island:

Dead men don't bite.

I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.

Now, that bird ... is, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself.

Them that die will be the lucky ones!

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Swamped

Holy smokes I only have less than a month until I start my manuscript. And I'm working overtime. I'm doing tons of last minute research. Of course I've been getting sidetracked, staring at lots of pretty photos of 18th century costumes. I also tried to cram in some non-fiction work by gathering ideas for an article. But I've been trying to take some time out for myself by catching up with my friends. That's been keeping me sane. All this makes me wonder about all the writers doing NaNoWriMo this month. Seriously, how do they do it?

Goals for November

Earlier this month I posted my goals for October. I completed a few things, not so much of other things. I did a lot of research for my manuscript, sent out my short story, and I created outlines for articles. The outlines unfortunately turned out to be useless because I realized that I was working on subjects I didn't care about. I was bored and since someday I'll have to write about things that don't interest me, I should put that someday off for as long as possible. Why punish myself when I don't have to? So the outlines were good practice, but turned out to be useless. Now I'm doing research for less popular topics that I do care about.

The goals that haven't been completed are finishing a novel synopsis. I'm still working on the last draft of the synopsis, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I worked really hard on it, but I just couldn't finish. It happens. I was also supposed to get out of the house, but I'm getting out on Halloween.

My goals for November:

• Write a complete novel synopsis/outline. This includes writing a synopsis and then a rough chapter by chapter outline. I really need to get this done, but even if I don't I have to start my manuscript in December.

• Keep doing novel research.

• Send out "The Famous Cassini Brothers" to more short story markets.

• Get out of the house.

• Go the the library. I need a few more books and since I discovered there is a small maritime library in my city, I might check it out.

• Come up with four solid article ideas and write one outline.

Do you have any goals for November?

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18th Century Style

I'm not the biggest fan using the Internet to research historical details, but there are times when it can be extremely helpful. I've been doing research on early 18th century fashion and even though I've looked at tons of photos, I still had a hard time understanding how women got everything on. It turns out that Youtube has some helpful videos, one of which I've posted. The great thing about research is that the things that help reenactors and costume designers can help writers as well.

Undead characters

So, I've been watching things about zombies and ghosts all day, which got me thinking about some of the things that have haunted me. I've seen a couple of creepy things in my old apartment, but mostly I've been haunted by my characters. A group of seven in particular have been a part of me since I was in middle school. I know everything about them. What they fear, what they hope, what they look like. Yes, one of them is a badly disguised version of me, but the rest are actual fictional characters.


I've tried writing novels and screenplays with them, not entirely sure what form their stories are best told in. I even tried writing a TV pilot. Nothing has quite worked yet, but I know three things: these characters belong in a series and not in a stand alone novel or script, they're supposed to remain teenagers, and I'll probably never be able to get rid of them. I've tried to move past them for about 10 years, but nothing has worked. None of them has figured out that I wouldn't mind if they left me alone. Sometimes they trick me. I'll think they're gone for a while and then they return. Sometimes they sneak back in quietly, and it takes time for me to realize they've come back. Other times I feel like they make a huge entrance and take over every aspect of my life. When I can't think of any writing ideas I tinker with their stories. When I feel totally uninspired I go back to them. Sometimes it's annoying because I want to write other characters, and sometimes it's comforting because I know I can always go back to them.

Have you ever felt like you were haunted by your characters? If so, why?

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