Unsolicited advice, and smut report
Apr. 26th, 2006 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesLoose Id authors are chatting all day on Thursday at the Coffee Time Romance Exotic group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/karendevinkaren/
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The blogging agents are getting very, very annoyed about the recent rash of queries that are obviously the result of people using some sort of query-writing service, whether human or software-powered. I've seen half a dozen of them griping about it in the last week or two. Not only that, but my fellow Loose Id author![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jjsass has received a couple as well -- addressed to her non-existent agency. She's a writer, not an agent, and yet she's had a couple of these things from people who are clearly shotgunning them out to anyone they can find who's remotely connected with publishing.
Just in case there's anyone out there who's tempted by one of these services or software packages -- don't. The Wylie Merrick Literary Agency's blog explains why here:
http://wyliemerrick.blogspot.com/2006/04/paying-for-query-services.html
The executive summary: "Our take on this is that if you need to pay someone to write for you, apparently you cannot do it yourself, and we would therefore have very little confidence in anything you write."
That doesn't mean that you have to do it all by yourself. It's no bad thing to get advice on what the well-formed query letter looks like, and to get your draft letter critiqued. Look back a couple of months and you'll find me asking for people to cast a beady editorial eye over one of mine. Look in rasfc and you'll find people doing the same thing, for both query letter and synopsis. Writing these things is a skill that needs practice, and probably some help the first few times. But in the end, you should write it.
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I've been too hazy from the headache hangover for the last few days to write anything longer than rapid-fire usenet/blog posts, but I managed to scrape together enough attention span to get 700 words done on the WIP last night. I left them having foreplay. Another 1000 words today for a total so far of 14,000. We have achieved penetration, although the poor lad is probably going to have to wait until tomorrow for his orgasm, because I'm off down the pub now. I will worry tomorrow about the Great Pronoun Problem as applied to three cocks in one bed.
***
I've revised my user info to reflect my new friending policy. Perhaps that will be blunt enough on the subject of "It's a *reading* list, damn it!"
***
Gardening report: the cocoa shell mulch hasn't kept the snails off altogether, but it's definitely making them think twice about just how badly they want something. The general depredations have decreased, and I still have all my plants, even if some look a little nibbled. It's also acting as a mulch-mulch, and keeping the soil underneath moist, which is good. However, I think the squirrels have been frolicking, as predicted. I'm sure *I* didn't leave that much of it scattered around the patio, and the day after buying the bag I caught a squirrel chewing through it in an effort to get at the yummy-smelling substance inside. Stoned squirrels are not something I really want in my patio area. They come too damned close to lounging around, scratching their balls, and saying, "Man, that was good," for my peace of mind. And before anyone suggests it, I'm not writing were-squirrel porn, thank you.
There are seedlings in the big trough which I am fairly sure are self-sown tomatoes from the currant tomato that was in there last year. That was an attractive-looking plant as well as a productive one, and kept going through until January, so I'll be pleased if one or two of them survive.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/karendevinkaren/
***
The blogging agents are getting very, very annoyed about the recent rash of queries that are obviously the result of people using some sort of query-writing service, whether human or software-powered. I've seen half a dozen of them griping about it in the last week or two. Not only that, but my fellow Loose Id author
jjsass has received a couple as well -- addressed to her non-existent agency. She's a writer, not an agent, and yet she's had a couple of these things from people who are clearly shotgunning them out to anyone they can find who's remotely connected with publishing.Just in case there's anyone out there who's tempted by one of these services or software packages -- don't. The Wylie Merrick Literary Agency's blog explains why here:
http://wyliemerrick.blogspot.com/2006/04/paying-for-query-services.html
The executive summary: "Our take on this is that if you need to pay someone to write for you, apparently you cannot do it yourself, and we would therefore have very little confidence in anything you write."
That doesn't mean that you have to do it all by yourself. It's no bad thing to get advice on what the well-formed query letter looks like, and to get your draft letter critiqued. Look back a couple of months and you'll find me asking for people to cast a beady editorial eye over one of mine. Look in rasfc and you'll find people doing the same thing, for both query letter and synopsis. Writing these things is a skill that needs practice, and probably some help the first few times. But in the end, you should write it.
***
I've been too hazy from the headache hangover for the last few days to write anything longer than rapid-fire usenet/blog posts, but I managed to scrape together enough attention span to get 700 words done on the WIP last night. I left them having foreplay. Another 1000 words today for a total so far of 14,000. We have achieved penetration, although the poor lad is probably going to have to wait until tomorrow for his orgasm, because I'm off down the pub now. I will worry tomorrow about the Great Pronoun Problem as applied to three cocks in one bed.
***
I've revised my user info to reflect my new friending policy. Perhaps that will be blunt enough on the subject of "It's a *reading* list, damn it!"
***
Gardening report: the cocoa shell mulch hasn't kept the snails off altogether, but it's definitely making them think twice about just how badly they want something. The general depredations have decreased, and I still have all my plants, even if some look a little nibbled. It's also acting as a mulch-mulch, and keeping the soil underneath moist, which is good. However, I think the squirrels have been frolicking, as predicted. I'm sure *I* didn't leave that much of it scattered around the patio, and the day after buying the bag I caught a squirrel chewing through it in an effort to get at the yummy-smelling substance inside. Stoned squirrels are not something I really want in my patio area. They come too damned close to lounging around, scratching their balls, and saying, "Man, that was good," for my peace of mind. And before anyone suggests it, I'm not writing were-squirrel porn, thank you.
There are seedlings in the big trough which I am fairly sure are self-sown tomatoes from the currant tomato that was in there last year. That was an attractive-looking plant as well as a productive one, and kept going through until January, so I'll be pleased if one or two of them survive.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 11:02 pm (UTC)Good advice on query letters - it's true that an agent or editor would lose confidence in someone's writing ability right away if they saw that - another point against the idea!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 11:15 pm (UTC)Oh god. I just had a really, really horrible thought. The last time I even thought about the chipmunk characters Chip'n'Dale was before I ever heard of the male stripper troupe the Chippendales. And now I'm thinking about a troupe of were-chipmunks who earn a living in the human world by...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-27 01:03 am (UTC)