Jessica Scott

So here’s the thing. Today, I finished rewriting the book that we’ll just call Shane’s novel for the 5th or maybe the 6th time. It’s had so many titles but the one you all have heard me talk about as is War’s Darkest Fear.

But I did something different this time. I wrote the synopsis for it and sent it to my agent, who didn’t like it and subsequently passed on it. But I rewrote it anyway (another story entirely).

Essentially, it was just to see if I could. Because as I sit here and write these words, I am about to bare my writer’s soul: I don’t plot. Or at least, I didn’t. I have 11 novels under my belt (don’t laugh, no they’re not published and yes they need revisions) and I didn’t plot a single one of them. I rewrote 5 of them and if you count the multiple rewrites of Shane’s story, I’ve rewritten upwards around 12 books. Or the same book 6 times, however you choose to look at it.

But see, now that I actually have an agent who, oh I don’t know, wants to work with me on an actual writing career, I kind of have to listen to him. So after he KOd Fear (and I didn’t completely listen but that’s another story) I sent him something like 8 couple paragraph pitches for story ideas because my fab writer mommy and critique partner kicked me in the ass and said you are married to your ideas. Get over it if you want to sell and stay published.

So I sent him my ideas and waited. He came back with 2 that he thought were marketable. And he didn’t comment on the rest (let me tell you that I feel the burn for those stories he passed on. They’re in my blood but maybe, just maybe, I’ll listen to the guy who knows the market, right?). But he picked up on one of the books that I hadn’t written. I’d bounced the idea around in my head a few weeks ago when I should have been writing and jotted down a synopsis.

It was an ugly synopsis but I sent it off to my CP to see what she thought (I’ve completely stolen her synopsis formats, by the way. I heart her). She came back with thoughts which I absorbed. Then I started emailing back and forth with my agent about the idea (we might have had a phone conversation, I honestly can’t remember). So I found a way into the story and I (brace yourself) wrote the synopsis.

Now this is the girl who doesn’t plot, right? I usually start a book with a scene that jumps out at me but by the time I get into rewrites, that opening scene doesn’t stay. And that’s okay.

But for me to plot out an entire book in a synopsis? Unheard of. I tried it once before and I never wrote the book. But I wrote it, sent it to CPs who pointed out issues, fixed and sent to agent. And waited. Not long, mind you. My agent is fast, so I’m a happy girl. I get the call Monday for a file I sent him on Friday.

The first thing he said was, I don’t normally read a 13 page synopsis (what I sent him). And my heart sank a little. I figured this was it, he doesn’t like the fiction ideas, I’m agentless again. But then he says, you really had me on the edge of my seat. You essentially wrote a short story outlining what happens. Most synopses are outlines or are too bogged down in detail but they way you wrote it, you had me hooked.

So I’m like sitting in my driver’s seat (I’d pulled over) doing a little happy dance that he liked it. Really liked it. And basically, he told me to get to work, he wanted a draft in about 2 or 3 months (thank God I can actually write fast but we’ll see how this goes).

So I’m sitting here tonight, getting ready to open up a new Scrivener file for this new project. And it’s not a rewrite. It’s not characters that I’ve already taken through two or three drafts and know so well they’re practically real for me. I’m looking at the blank page and I already know what happens in my story. Rewriting Shane’s story over the last couple weeks was really, really easy for me because I’d plotted that sucker out. Now, this doesn’t mean that my draft is ready to go on to the editor who wants to see it. It needs revisions (and that doesn’t mean checking for commas) but for once, I honestly think I’ve got a draft that doesn’t require major rewrites.

But I’m staring at this open Scrivener project and I’m at a loss. I’ve got the story in my head. I’ve got the characters. But for me, this is uncharted territory. I’ve completely reversed my process. I write the book, figure out the story, then write the book again. And again. And possibly again. But this time, I’ve figured out the story (I think).

Now, I just have to write the book.

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When I first started writing, my fabulous mentor Candace Irvin said go to the bookstore and figure out what you’re like. You need to know the market before you can start to see where you fit.

So I went. I read Joann Ross, Cindy Gerard, Suzanne Brockmann, Marliss Melton and others. I read Robyn Carr after Roxanne St Claire said maybe you’re more like her. After all, I’ve got military heroes, I’ve got to be like one of these great ladies, right?

Oh how wrong I was. Here’s the problem and its not one I’m sure I can overcome. I’m not romantic suspense. So my War’s Darkest Series is not like Suzanne Brockmann’s Seal Team series where there’s a cast of eight or so strapping men to pick a story from. None of my characters are Special Operations Forces.

My characters are also not prior military like Robyn Carr’s heros, who have all gotten out and headed up country to Virgin River, hoping to find a new life away from their military experiences. My guys are the Everyman, my women spouses, nurses and warriors themselves. No Special Forces, Navy Seals or Black Ops. Just regular soldiers, fighting the good fight.

So my books don’t fit. They aren’t small town based like Robyn’s and they’re not suspense like Joann, Cindy or Suzanne. In short, there’s nothing out there that I can compare to because everyone has either written prior military characters or Navy Seals.

When I wrote military romance in a query letter, little did I know I was speaking in code for romantic suspense. When agents are reading it, they’re looking for suspense. Fast pacing, action, action, romance, action. And that’s not what I wrote. I wrote a character based, contemporary romance with men and women who are all still in the military. I wrote books that were not suspense except that by putting military in the query, I was telling agents that’s what they were.

I screwed myself, apparently. I feel like when I sent out this last round of queries, I should have put in big bold letters, THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC SUSPENSE. I don’t know that it would have helped. I’m reasonably certain there are other issues in my current WIP but I’m also reasonably certain that the main problem agents are seeing is that they’re reading for romantic suspense and putting the book down when it doesn’t live up their expectations, wrong or not.

So, bluntly, I think I’m screwed. How do you pitch a book that doesn’t fit into a nice neat genre? Especially in this market? You can pitch to your hearts content but if you can’t get past the gatekeepers, you can’t get sold. I’m not complaining about agents, mind you. I’m simply stating that I think I pitched my books wrong to the fabulous agents who asked for the full manuscript and ultimately passed with great comments.

So that’s the end of this, for now. I’m revising once more because I’ve got a song in my head that is making me work on this book, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a dead end. I’ve learned a lot, but the one thing I don’t know how to fix is how to query the next project correctly. Maybe I’ll put in the query: this is not suspense.

Maybe not.

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Okay, first off, if you’re looking for a ranty post about the poor writer versus big New York, this is not the post for you. If you want to see where potential problems arise with, what else, communications, please continue.

 My agent and I decided to part ways yesterday.

I will say it now: I am incredibly grateful for my agent to have picked me out of the slush pile and spent time working with me. She’s a fantastic agent and I wish her all the best. It was an amicable parting of ways, which is always what you want in this business.

But here’s the learning point, which kept me up last night til about 4 AM.

I’m in the army, which at this point, you know. So I am very much a lean forward type of person. I’m also a signal officer, which is about expectation management. If I tell my brigade commander (which trust me, if you think you know type A personalities, you’ve never met this guy), that he’s going to have internet in Iraq, damn it, that’s what he expects. Conversely, if he tells me he wants high speed internet, if I can’t provide it, I have to go to him with a plan that says, I can’t do that but this is what I can do.
It’s called course of action development and it’s how we do planning in the army. It’s also how we officers keep from getting our faces ripped off by our very high needs commanders. The army is not publishing, it’s life and death. So when I get focused on something, I’m focused. But here’s the thing: we also tend to do planning in range terminology.

What I mean by that is this: when you go to the rifle range, you have 50 meter targets, which are the closest, 100m, 150, etc all the way out 300 m targets. Ninety nine percent of the time, you spend all your time knocking down a 50 m target so that you can’t focus on the 100m until it becomes the next 50m. I can work like that, though, because I can look on my calendar and see the other targets approaching.

For example, when we go home from Iraq (and by we, I mean me and my husband, not the unit), we’ve got to get a new washer and dryer, get our oldest enrolled in school, go on leave, get to Maine. There’s all these things that we have to do and I focus on them in a way that I hit the closest priority target then move on to the next thing. This gets me into trouble with the kids as they have no concept of mommy’s target range and sometimes they want something now that’s not even on the radar yet.

So with my agent, my biggest challenge was that I didn’t know where I was on her target range. I kept being assured that I was but I didn’t know and I wasn’t able to clearly articulate my need to know to her. I’m all the way on or all the way off. There is no cruise control with me. We basically had two different ways of operating and that’s not a bad thing. I’m glad that she felt what I felt in that basically, we have different ideas of where I was heading. We parted ways with a thank you very much and she gave me a couple of recommendations. I’m grateful that she even gave me the time of day but ultimately, things were not working out and rather than continue, we opted to separate.

Folks, if you have to part ways with someone, I’d hope it would be like this. No recrimination, no blame, no hurt feelings. I think that my needs and hers were not in sync. I’m really okay with it and I hope she is too.

And now that decision is made, I can’t change it. I’m happy to say that my first round of queries for War’s Darkest Fear has already had requests for fulls right off the bat and there is still an editor interested in the project, so that’s gratifying for my wounded writer’s soul (trust me, deciding to leave an agent when it’s so damn hard to get one in the first place is a really hard decision and one that kept me up for more than just last night).

So I’d love to hear what you think. Have you ever left an agent? Why or why not? What are you looking for in an agent? Agents, what do you look for in an ideal client?

And agents, if you’re looking for a client who’s got 11 books written, is fast (probably too fast at times), focused, has a built in platform and believes in too much information is better than none, I’m your girl.

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Thank you everyone who emailed and commented on what they’ve done during the submission process. It’s been a tremendous learning experience for me just gaining perspective from people who’ve been there and are there now.

The single biggest agreement about the submission process, regardless of whether it’s for editors or agents, is the waiting. For unpublished writers, the wait can be months if not longer. I had a rejection from an agency a year and a half after I’d submitted to them but I adhere to the 90 day rule. If I hadn’t heard from an agent after about 3 months, I assumed there was no interest. The fun part about email queries is that you don’t necessarily get a response. Agents Janet Reid and Jessica Faust have both commented on their blogs how nasty exchanges get sometimes can get when an email rejection is sent. As a result, many agents simply don’t respond, which leaves the budding writer in a near constant limbo.

The next hardest part about submitted, again which there is wide agreement on, is the rejections that come. Either through silence or a ‘it’s just not right for me’ blanket rejections offer little incentive to the writer to keep going. As the writer progresses, however, usually rejections may get a little more informative and sometimes, the best answers are rejections with suggestions for improvements as well as an invitation to resubmit. Those rejections give the unpublished writer the opportunity to revisit the manuscript with comments in mind for specific issues and ultimately, can help the writer grow, both professionally and as a writer.

For many writers, the ultimate challenge is what to do during the wait. Many mentioned working on the next process because for a writer, there is always work to be done. Either copy edits, galleys, proofs or simply starting the next book. Keeping busy is a way to keep from obsessively waiting for the phone to ring or the inbox to chime, plus it helps advance your career as well.

Choosing writing as a career is not for the faint hearted. I truly thought in December 2007 when I’d written the end that I’d created a masterpiece. Said ‘masterpiece’ is in the trash now, though the heart of that idea has been completely rewritten. Stay busy, stay after it, and above all, keep writing. It only takes one yes to move you from hobby to professional.

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