Sunday, August 12, 2012

WriteOnCon

About a week ago, my critique partner sent me the link to WriteOnCon – an online convention for children's and young adult authors.

The Con hasn't even started yet, and already, it's been indescribably helpful to me. I was able to get critiques on some of my work, my query and my synopsis.

If you've never heard of a query, it's like a commercial you send to a prospective literary agent. You attempt to sell your book within one page. No pressure there.

Wait – it gets worse. Whereas you can leave the end of the story open in the query (your goal is to make the agent want to read more), for a synopsis, you have to summarize your entire book. In one or two pages. Including the ending. Using beautiful language, it should make the agent care about the characters and the story should flow. Oh, and although you reduce the length by – say 81,000 words – it still has to make sense.

Writing mine was torture. I honestly wondered if I could find someone who'd written a beautiful synopsis and have her ghostwrite one for me. But that would be cheating. Plus doing it myself was good practice, right?

So I'm all the more grateful for the wonderful feedback I received from the other participants at the Con. As of today, my query, synopsis, first 250 words and first five pages are ready for review.

Starting Tuesday, Ninja Agents will begin trolling the forum, giving feedback and, for a lucky few, requesting manuscripts.

Just two more days.... Maybe I'll hear something. Maybe I'll hear nothing.

I have to admit, there's a tiny part of me nervous enough to want the latter. A friend of mine explained it this way – if I'm not successful, my life won't change. That's okay, because I love my life. I have a great family, a good job and a love of writing.

But if I am successful? I would be thrown into a whole new world. An exciting world. A gratifying world. But an unknown world all the same.

Deep breath.  Then another.

Okay, Ninja Agents. I'm ready.

No comments:

Post a Comment