R.R. Campbell's Blog, page 3

Reframing the Querying Quest

Note: A version of this post first appeared in the opening minutes of episode 087 of the R.R. Campbell Writescast (below). All querying statistics are up-to-date as of the date of recording.

I want to speak directly to novelists now, particularly those who are querying, as one’s querying quest is, almost universally, rife with far more rejection than acceptance.

It becomes all too easy, then, to look at one’s querying statistics and fret whether our work is good enough, whether it will ever find a home. 

But, as we’ll see in the following exploration of my current querying journey, there are ways to reframe our querying statistics such that they encourage us rather than disparage us.

So let’s explore the how of this by using my manuscript When the Stars Conspire—or, as I have nicknamed it, “cranberries”—as an example.

Why cranberries? Because it takes place on a cranberry farm in northern Wisconsin. Why When the Stars Conspire? Hopefully the one sentence pitch for this manuscript helps clarify that.

After narrowly surviving a plane crash, a mysterious pilot with amnesia and a rural Wisconsin cranberry farmer must rediscover a shared past while overcoming otherworldly foes—from within and without—in order to secure a future for all sentient life in the universe.

Whew. There’s a lot there. Is this the perfect pitch? Probably not, but the good news is I don’t have to use it all that often—yet.

I mean, I am, in fact, querying this manuscript, but so far, I’ve been able to rely on a different hook to kick off every one of my queries. And that hook?

Zachary Carmichael is going to die, and all he’s left with are questions.

Bump. Set. Spike.

Personally, I’m proud of that opening line, but what has it and the rest of my query earned me? We’ll crunch the numbers momentarily, but first, some context.

Seeking the representation of a literary agent is a daunting endeavor, and this manuscript would know. This is the second time it’s been on query road, in fact, after I was offered a contract for this novel in 2018.

I ultimately turned down this contract when it became apparent the small press that offered it would not be a good fit for me or my work, and after refusing that contract, I simply never got back to sending it elsewhere until after I’d completed a new round of revisions in March 2020.

But I’ve been back at it since then, and here are the numbers thus far—

 

52 queries sent
25 pending with no response
Two partial requests
One full manuscript request
25 rejections

These numbers won’t add up, but that’s because one of those partial requests would later prove to be a rejection. That said, for the purposes of this conversation, we’ll ensure we give credit where credit is due and at least acknowledge the fact a partial request was made.

That aside, what does any of this mean? Twenty-five rejections could feel like a lot. Even if rejections don’t quite sting as much as they used to, it feels like we’re at almost a ninety-five percent rejection rate, at least based on the raw numbers. 

But let’s dig further and see if we can frame these statistics a bit differently for ourselves,  which I feel will be especially helpful if you’re someone who’s querying and confronting this yourself.

Let’s ignore the 25 pending queries with no response so far. After all, we can’t say it’s a rejection and we can’t say it’ll be a partial or full request yet either. Think of these as Schrödinger’s submissions. They’re both alive and dead at the same time, and knowing that doesn’t really do us any good either way.

With Schrödinger’s submissions set aside, however, we then have a total of 27 queries with the below breakdown.

One full request
Two partial requests
24 outright rejections

Again, we’ll ignore that one of those partials would later become a rejection; we can’t assume all partial requests will eventually become rejections, after all.

Looking at these statistics, our hit rate is now eleven percent!

Based on these numbers, we’d expect approximately eleven percent of those pending submissions to become either partial or full requests, which would mean, of the 25 still-pending queries, we could see another three partial or full requests come in!

Now, rather than focusing on the prospect of another wave of rejections rolling in, doesn’t it feel better to know there are a handful of agents out there, who, if the numbers can be believed, will, in the coming weeks or months, be reaching out to ask for more?

Personally, I cherish the thought.

Perhaps that’s a thought worth keeping in mind for all of us. Whether we’re querying now, have queried in the past, or will query in the future, remember the querying process is a numbers game. 

More than that, really, it’s a people game.

Because on the other end of every one of those queries is another reader, a prospective cheerleader and advocate for your work. On the other end of every one of those queries is a person. 

You just have to have the patience to find the right one for you and for your work.

So does this help, listener? Does it hurt? What are the numbers looking like for you on your querying journey?

Share them with me in the comments below. Tell me how much you’re looking forward to that next partial or full request rolling in. Tell me, too, if you’re worried about your query, about your synopsis, about your pitch in general. I want to help. We all do.

Because, and I promise you this is true, I want to see your book and my book side by side on the same bookshelf someday.

A version of this content first appeared in episode 087 of the R.R. Campbell Writescast. Click here to subscribe to these episodes and never again miss conversations like these.

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Imminent Dawn Named As Finalist in 2020 International Book Awards

I’m honored to announce my science fiction debut, Imminent Dawn, has been selected as a finalist in the 2020 International Book Awards.

Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of American Book Fest, said this year’s contest yielded over 2,000 entries from authors and publishers around the world, which were then narrowed down to the final results.[image error]

Keen says of the awards, “The 2020 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the world.”

Imminent Dawn is the story of art-school dropout Chandra, a woman who would do anything to apologize for her role in her wife’s coma—including enroll in the first round of human trials for an internet-access brain implant.

It also follows the story of ruthless tech magnate, Wyatt Halman; relentless investigative journalist, Meredith Maxwell; and advancement-hungry administrative assistant, Ariel Commons.

Forced to confront conspiracies stretching from the highest levels of the North American Union government to the lowest dredges of its shadowy hacking collectives, all four characters are set on a collision course that leaves them fighting to reclaim that which they value most: their loved ones, their freedom, their lives.

[image error]New York Times bestselling author Matt Forbeck has hailed Imminent Dawn as “an incisive techno-thriller that gets more tense with every page,” and, upon its release, Imminent Dawn debuted at number one for its genre on Amazon.

You can order Imminent Dawn through your local bookseller or find it on Amazon or via its publisher, NineStar Press. The book, which is the first in the EMPATHY sci-fi saga, is available in both ebook and print.

The full list of 2020 International Book Awards winners and finalists can be found here.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this book at every stage of its journey; this book and series would not be where it is today without you.

There’s someone I’d like you to meet.

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Meet Rachael A. Edwards.

Rachael is, like many of you, a reader, a writer, a dreamer. She hails from Chester, England, and, here’s something fun: she was born on Halloween.

She’s also the embodiment of perseverance.

In 2018, I had the good fortune of mentoring Rachael as part of the 2018 Revise and Resubmit (RevPit) competition. In my capacity as a mentor, I received 100 submissions from the online writing community, and, from them, had to choose one author with whom to work intensively over the course of a six week period.

Our goal by the end of those six weeks? To do a full developmental edit of the manuscript and to revise the query letter such that, by the time our six weeks were up, we could use the new, shinier version of the winner’s work to attract the attention of a literary agent.

After reading Rachael’s first five pages, her submission immediately had her on my shortlist of prospective mentees. I would go on to request additional material from nearly a dozen others, but part of me always new: I was going to choose Rachael and her eerie—and when it had to be, charming—young adult fantasy manuscript inspired by fate, magic, and Russian and Slavic folklore.

[image error]Folks, I cannot emphasize this enough: I absolutely adored the version of the manuscript I had the opportunity to read, and that was before Rach and I spent any time revising and ruminating in order to make it shine that much brighter.

I also, along the way, had the opportunity to get in touch with British slang like “fab” and “brill,” which was an unexpected perk.

But as it’s wont to do when trying to read and revise an entire book twice in six weeks, our time working together flew past, and when the day arrived for the literary agent showcase, I was sure Rach would be among the immediate success stories. Surely within days, if not weeks, Rachael and her manuscript would be swept off their feet by an industry professional and prepared for submission to one of the big-time publishers with which many of you are familiar.

It did not, exactly, work out that way.

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Summer came and went. Fall, too. Winter descended without anything coming of Rach’s brilliant showcase, and all of our hard work in those six weeks felt as though it might have been for naught.

This was not, as Rach might say, fab.

But Rach didn’t let this deter her. She queried agents the traditional way, by looking them up online, evaluating their interests, and, if it felt like this agent might be a good fit, emailing them with her manuscript’s query letter (cover letter) and some sample pages.

Rach would do this for months. A year. Nothing.

In the meantime, she continued to write, but I know the lack of perceived success for the manuscript she referred to as THREADS (as in THREADS OF FATE) was taking its toll. It broke my heart to see tweets from her in which she contemplated abandoning the project altogether.

But she didn’t quite do that, no. Instead, based on my understanding from afar, she rewrote the manuscript. We’re talking earth-shaking, tectonic plate-level rewrites. I always imagined the world and the characters were the same, but it seemed the threads we so carefully stitched in our time together were simply not destined to be.

And yet: even these substantial revisions bore no fruit.

Rach and I stayed in touch throughout it all, and I was honored when she asked me for a letter of recommendation to an MA program in creative writing. This not only gave me an opportunity to rave about Rach and her writing; it let me, as I would say in the letter of recommendation, revisit her manuscript that, “to this day, captures my imagination during life’s quiet moments.”

This venture, however, also proved to be a dead end. I sincerely started to worry Rach might abandoning writing altogether. And could you blame her if she had? By this time, rejection’s jagged edge would have cut most people far too deep for them to consider pressing on.

But nevertheless, Rachael persisted.

And finally:

*drum roll*

I am so beyond excited to announce I am now represented by the amazing @renarossner of The Deborah Harris Literary Agency!!

Embracing Exploration in TO HAVE BEEN RICH

I’m trying something new as I write.

Currently, I’m working on a manuscript I’m calling TO HAVE BEEN RICH. When I say it’s an exploration of family and what it means to grow into oneself, I’m using the word “exploration” in more ways than one.

It’s an exploration thematically, yes, but it’s also been a highly exploratory process to write the manuscript itself. Ordinarily, I write in a very linear fashion. Chapter one is written before chapter two, ad infinitum (or at least, you know, ad “the end”).

For TO HAVE BEEN RICH, however, I find myself writing a snippet of a chapter here, a piece of another there, and then I leave notes sprinkled in between about what, later, I might do to fill in the gaps.

It’s taken a few days of adjustment to this new-to-me method, but I have, so far, found it an absolute joy to really embody the essence of the word “explore” as I write.

The opening line of TO HAVE BEEN RICH may be “It was over the first time they tried,” but, for me, I will keep trying to write this way, embracing the unending journey of growth.

What are you doing to bring joy into your creative process?

You Can Make It Happen, Writers

At long last, I was able to get started on my own manuscript. Well, except that starting was apparently going to be just as much of a challenge as it always seems to be. So how can we get started? How can we get over an aversion to or fear of the blank page? We answer these questions in this morning’s meditation, exploration, and affirmation.

Take Care of Yourselves, Writers

As writers, we can get so focused on improving our craft or learning the ins and outs of book marketing that we lose our sense of self. Don’t fall for that trap! Take time and make space for the non-writerly parts of you, too; it’ll help you feel more refreshed when it’s time to return to the page.

Ask for Help! A Writer’s Guide

When most writers think of needing help, it comes in the form of critique partners or beta readers, but there are so many other times we as writers might need a helping hand. In today’s meditation, exploration, and affirmation, we explore the when, how, and why of asking for assistance. Why? Because it’s dangerous to go alone.

Why Writers Must Embrace Internality (And What, Exactly, That Is)

“Little pig, little pig, let me in!” Or so says the Big Bad Wolf. Honestly, though, that wolf has a point, at least insofar as being let into a fictional character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations is concerned. In this morning’s meditation, exploration, and affirmation, we discuss the what and the why of internality.

How We Can Find Our Story’s Purpose (And Why It’s Important!)

Some stories, though technically well written, fall flat. Why is this, and how can we ensure the sense of purpose those tales might lack winds up in our own work? We explore in this morning’s meditation, exploration, and affirmation.

When Can We Include Backstory?

If one embraces the “conventional wisdom” of storytelling, backstory dumps, setting description, and flashbacks are often frowned upon. But, as we discuss in this morning’s meditation, exploration, and affirmation, there are so many perfect opportunities for their inclusion—if only we’re judicious about when we choose to put them on the page.