http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog An aspiring author's journey to be published Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:33:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=113 I haven't been writing. Life has been keeping me busy. I had a short temporary job that didn't work out well, and the road back to normalcy has been filled with rabbit trails. Today it's back to query letters for Forget-me-not and editing for Mystery Valley Ranch. Your prayers and pleasant ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=104 Queried 3 agents last week and 6 agents today - all by email. Most just request a query letter (SHORT synopsis - like back of book jacket, info about length, genre, etc), but a few ask for some pages from the manuscript. I've identified agents to query using two different websites ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=99 Revised the query letter a bit. What do you think? I hoped to query 3 agents today, but so far I've only found one that looks promising. Will find 2 more before bedtime! BEGIN LETTER If the lost love of your life was just a mouse-click away, would you log off or would ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=96 I've spent a lot of time trying to write my query letter for Forget-me-not. It's short and hopefully sweet. Input is welcome! Does it need to be expanded? I do plan to adapt the short paragraph targeted at each specific literary agent, explaining why I've chosen to query him or ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=94 A good thesaurus is indispensable. My word processor had a great integrated thesaurus. That is, up until I updated my software and the thesaurus underwent a transformation to a less useful and more unwieldy version. Sigh. I can use thesaurus.com and I do so, on occasion. I've also used the Visual ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=90 Well, mostly I've been writing here about word count progress. And that's probably not all that interesting to y'all, even though I find it very motivating. :-D Last night I finished editing Forget-Me-Not. It weighed in at 102K words. YAY! I've realized that one or two more scenes are needed to ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=87 [caption id="attachment_84" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A painting that is all golden glow and admirable wordless heft"][/caption] I read a quote today that I thought was worthy of sharing with you. "To gain the book one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written. ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=82 I wrote the ending today! It's finished! Just over 100,000 words. Next week, I'll go back through and add in chapter divisions and edit for cohesiveness, spelling, etc... (No, I don't write with chapters already figured out. Can't seem to do that!) Hopefully I can finish that next week and pass ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=79 I've now racked up 43,000 words to add to the 51,000 previously written. I think I'm finally on the downswing, wrapping up the plot. YAY Go me! I'd like to finish this week, and it will probably end up around 100K.  Unless one of my characters does something unexpected, which ... http://www.meredithmalone.com/blog/?p=76