~~~Lara Zielin~~~

STATUS: Rising like Lazarus after three days of the flu.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Karaoke is so often painful, but this takes it to new levels.

One of the questions I get a lot is whether or not an author can go back to an agent who has said no to them and try, try again. I guess the answer depends on the manner in which you re-ask them, and if you’ve worked at improving your book.

If you haven’t significantly altered (read: improved) your book, then don’t waste the agent’s time. If they said no to your book once, they’ll say it again.

But if you have edited your manuscript and if you really feel that it’s improved, then a second query might be in order.

But before you re-query, consider the following:

First, the timing. If it’s been a week since your last query, forget about it. You can’t revise an entire book in a week. You just can’t. But if it’s been a few months and you’ve been working diligently on it, then the door might be open a crack.

Second, consider whether or not you want to introduce yourself under the same title. If the book has been revised enough, you may want to tweak you query letter, change the title, and have the agent look at it with fresh eyes. I’m not advocating dishonesty here. The reality is that agents are swamped with queries, and they likely won’t connect your first query with your second. There’s no harm in that IF (big IF!!) you’ve worked hard on your book and revised it since your initial query.

Third, you may want to consider keeping the title and asking the agent, up-front, for a second shot. Write them a note and say you’ve been working hard on the ms and you would like another chance. Make it funny, or make it punchy, or make it engaging — but whatever you do, write it in a way that gets their attention and makes them say, yeah, this person’s worth another shot. (I personally have done this and it’s worked. Before I was picked up by LJK, I was rejected by an agency I really wanted to be with, then re-queried them a few months later with the same ms. They agreed to a second look and rejected it again. Ultimately, when LJK picked me up, it was on a second read. Susanna, my agent, was really, really gracious and nice and didn’t have to pick up my book a second time. She could have told me to get lost. I count my blessings every day that she did. But I had worked darn hard on making that second read worth her while.)

If you get rejected by the agent a second time, I wouldn’t advocate asking for a third read. You might just piss them off at that point. Instead, go back to the drawing board, figure out what needs to be done to make your book work (ha! If it was only that easy), and then maybe look at a different agent. If you can only imagine yourself with one agent in the whole world and you must get in with them, then write a different book and submit that. An agent reading a work twice is gracious. Three times … I wouldn’t push it.

STATUS: Taking a break.

FAVE LINKEY POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: This video on the history of Lolcats. I heart Lolcats so much. I’m obsessed.

As I was doing my makeup today, I was thinking about the funny relationships we writers, editors, and agents all have with each other. And that got me thinking about what writers, editors, and agents all want to say to each other but sometimes can’t. And THAT, gentle readers, inspired the following shirts. They’re all available on CafePress.com for sale if you are inclined to buy one. But you don’t need to buy one to get a laugh out of them.

Here’s a shirt for agents:

And one for writers:

And one for editors:

STATUS: Crank-Yankery. It’s Monday and I’m a little grumpy, but things are still funny. Like this morning when I drove to work and heard the always-classy Britney Spears call a member of the papparazzi a nasty name connected to weight, apparently forgetting her own sojourn in the land of Eats Everything. Oh Britney, Britney, Britney. How is it possible that K-Fed is the one looking good these days?

So, I thought I’d post my DONUT DAYS query letter for the world to see (well, the world of three people that read this blog — and thank you, three people. You know who you are).

As I stated in an earlier blog, I totally had good success with this query, but I had bad luck selling DONUT DAYS for a while there. Mostly because it sucked and needed lots of work. (Thank you, fabulous agent Susanna, for helping get me to the finish line.)

I think this query could be better in a lot of ways, but my 50% show-me-some-pages rate wasn’t too terrible. Some of the things I did right were give it a good hook in the beginning, and reference other books that the agent had represented that would make my book a good fit with him/her. I also highlighted my connections with people who deal with books (teachers, librarians, etc.) and emphasized I’d been published before. Without further ado, here’s my query, and I hope it’s helpful for this blog’s three readers.

Dear Agent,

Seventeen-year-old Emma Goiner (called “Goiter” by her classmates) is the daughter of evangelical preachers. Every Sunday and Wednesday she attends church where the congregation rolls on the floor, speaks in tongues, and shouts “amen!” during the sermon. But there are cracks in the church’s spiritual veneer and the behind-the-scenes dogma is making Emma’s already difficult relationship with her parents even more challenging. So when Emma’s best friend, Natalie, suggests Emma leave the church’s problems behind by camping out in front of Birch Lake, Minnesota’s, soon-to-open Crispy Dream donut store, Emma agrees. Emma also believes that by covering the opening as a journalist, she has a chance at winning the Paul Bunyan Press’s $5,000 prize for the best feature article by a high school student.

In this novel for young adults, titled DONUT DAYS, Emma must contend with her peers, Harley bikers, donut cops, preachers and gamblers – plus a visit to jail and a life-altering sermon by her dad – to get her Paul Bunyan Press story. Yet for all the story’s sugary quirks, the novel still retains true substance as Emma works to figure out what she believes in – and winds up finding faith in herself. Based on your agency’s representation of GREAT TEEN FICTION, I believe DONUT DAYS will be a fit with [insert Literary Agency here].

I am the published author of a teen nonfiction book titled Make Things Happen: The Key to Networking for Teens (Lobster Press, 2003). Since its publication, I have cultivated relationships with librarians, teachers, and teen-center directors across the Midwest in my role as a speaker on the subjects of goal setting, careers, and creative writing.

Per your submission guidelines, I have included the first 10 pages of the manuscript.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of DONUT DAYS and I hope to hear back from you.

Has this ever happened to you? You finish your novel, write a kick-ass query letter, send it out and get a really good response? Agents want to see partials! People are reading your words!

And then — thud. Rejection after rejection hits. “This just isn’t for us.” “We liked the premise but it just wasn’t strong enough.” “We’d love to see something else.”

Blah, blah, blah.

It’s happened to me, and more than a few other writers I know.

So what do you DO? Where do you go from here?

The first thing is to play the numbers game. I know urban legend says Fitzgerald got, like, 650 rejections for THE GREAT GATSBY before someone said yes, but the reality is that if you get more than 10 on one work, it’s probably time to edit.

I know that sucks, but just hear me out.

The question becomes, then, how to edit effectively. My previous post about family relationships is a good place to start. Can you flesh any of those out? But what about other relationships? Friends? Significant others?

Here’s another example from DONUT DAYS:

Emma, the main character, likes a boy. Of course. (This is teen fiction, people). In the first draft, he was a cute boy who was out of her league. Not terribly inventive. I thought about whether or not I could add some spice to that relationship and thought, okay, he’s a cute boy, but what if he wasn’t always cute? What if Emma sees him and suddenly he’s pulled an ugly duckling, going from geek to chic?

Now the relationship is a bit more complicated. Suddenly, there’s an element of surprise there.

Then, I thought, what if he wasn’t just any boy. What if he was the son of a family rival? Ah-ha! Now we’ve got some Romeo and Juliet strains playing in the background.

I’m not saying I wrote a masterpiece, but I am saying I went back and worked on characters and their relationships to one another, and it made a huge difference.

Anyone else out there got some stories to share about this process?