Earlier this week, John Scalzi posted a letter on his blog from the Ethan Ellenberg agency (his own agents) to remind folks that they were open to submissions.
I took it as a personal challenge.
Unfortunately, in my naivete, I took a glance at my unfinished work and began putting things together (finally!) in a sensical way, cleaning up the first three chapters until they were in a presentable format. As I mentioned a few days ago, a side effect of this was the erasure of one of my protagonists who had grown too superfluous, and quite frankly, hard to work into the story (I firmly believe the story should flow around the characters, not require them to be wedged in sideways with a sledgehammer, but that’s just me). I now have what I consider to be a clean, clear first three chapters to the book. In the process, despite cutting 6000+ words, I’m edging back to my pre-cut numbers for word count. Still a long way from goal (or target) for the book, but its progress.
Then it struck me, after getting this level of resolve – if they like it, they’re going to want to see the rest of it. Not that I’d be opposed to that if it were in a polished state, but since I haven’t even finished writing it, that might be difficult to produce on demand. Luckily, Mr. Scalzi’s kind enough to respond to comments on his blog, because I did ask the obvious n00b question – should you contact an agent before the work is completed? Practically minutes later, he’d responded with the now obvious:
Yes. Don’t query until you have something done, polished and ready to send.
Yeah, I know, obvious as hell in hindsight, but I wanted to confirm. The takeaway here? All of this editing and rearranging has reminded me of how much I love the story I’m writing – I mean, it has all of the things I enjoy reading when I sit back for fun, what with the wars, aliens, ancient technology, galaxy spanning events…and of how much I want to get it finished and actually send it out there for others to read.
So if you find yourself wondering where I am for the next two weeks (corporate’s given us a few days off around both holidays, and there’s a snowpocalypse descending on Virginia right now), consider it a safe bet its going to be with a cup of tea resting in front of me while fingers are flying furious like.