Hello, dreamers. Last week I was all over the place. I did some writing on several short fiction projects. I submitted several stories to literary mags. And perhaps most importantly, I made significant progress in my query prep. Overall, I feel very good about what I accomplished, and I’m eager to see what I can do this week. As I always say, the work of an aspiring writer is never done. So with that said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Querying Pioneers

I spent much of my writing time last week working on query prep. And at last, I think I’ve really made some headway.

Though I submitted my query to “The Shit No One Tells You About Writing” last week, I’m no longer content to sit on my laurels. So this week, I went ahead and started revising my query. As I did, I spent some time listening to the podcast. I also read a few successful queries of past sci-fi works. And I began winnowing my list of prospective agents. All of that served to inform my work, and I dare say it’s much better for it.

The culmination of all of that was a query letter that I’d say is by far my best yet. The letter I sent TSNOTYAW was, in my opinion, good enough to serve as a starting point. Good enough that I was ready to have someone else tell me all the ways it could be better. But the one I wrote last night feels good enough to end up on an agent’s desk. I’m still probably a few weeks away from my first round of queries, so I’m sure the letter I’ve written will not be the final version. But for the first time, with each draft I feel better and better about it.

Listening to the podcast and seeing what many agents ask for in queries also led me to reopen my manuscript. At the moment, many agents are asking for only the first five pages of manuscripts for queries. I dare say my opening page is pretty great. The stuff after that, though…

So I began looking over my opening pages, seeing how I can deepen interiority and avoid anything resembling an info dump. The info dump is an especially serious problem for a sci-fi writer; you’re eager to show off all your juicy worldbuilding, and it can be hard to avoid just starting with “This is the year, and this is what Earth looks like, and this is what my ship looks like, and here’s how the engines work, and…”

Sure, I might find all that utterly fascinating. But I’m not writing this book for me. I’ve already read it. So I began tightening language, moving things around, trying to pull the story more firmly into Franklin Bedford’s head. And so far, I like the results.

Now that I’ve largely narrowed down my list of potential agents, I plan to spend much of the coming week working on individual query packets for each. Each agent will get an assigned folder, in which I will include their copy of the query letter, the synopsis (if applicable), and the sample they’ve asked for. Given the amount of work I’ve done on my manuscript’s opening pages, all my existing sample documents will need to be revised…heavily. And over the course of the week, no doubt I’ll make further revisions to both my opening pages and my query letter. I still have a lot to do.

But day by day, I feel better and better about this. I’ve waited so long. The pandemic got in the way, then came editing, then I spent literally years waiting for favorable conditions in the literary market. But the time is now. And finally, I think I’m ready.

Short Fiction

Over the course of the past week, I started another short fiction project. I also did some amount of writing on no less than five existing projects. After spending all of January moving seamlessly from story to story, I’ve grown more comfortable “writing around” as I like to say.

I do plan to complete at least one of these projects over the coming week, though I already have ideas for several additional stories, and I’m eager to see how they turn out. Either way, I’ve still been working on keeping things brief. At present, I have no plans to venture into flash fiction, which I still struggle with. But I’m confident that at least a few of my current projects will end at a more marketable length. Though that’s not to say I don’t have an idea or two that will likely evolve into another novelette.

New Content

As I mentioned in last week’s “Self-Pub Sunday”, for the time being I’m pulling back from the self-pub space. It was a difficult decision, but there were many factors that led to it. In the end, I have limited bandwidth to work with in my writing. Limited time. And I’m simply unwilling to just throw things out there and ask readers to pay for them if I don’t know it’s definitely my best work.

Instead, over the coming months I plan to devote much of the time and effort I’d been pumping into self-pub projects to platform building. And that means I’ll be more active posting to this site. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be resuming several of my lapsed weekly posts, including my “Thursday Features”. So for those who’ve missed my regular posts, your ship is about to come in.

Keep an eye out for new posts this week. And as always, dare to dream. – MK