I Think They Call This The Hard Part

Two submissions, two rejections. Yes, I know, it's what's supposed to happen.

Labor Day weekend was spent at Dragon*Con, where I was able to talk with all kinds of smart people and get different kinds of writerly advice from various writerly types. I also had a few people ask to read the novel, so I'll be gathering email addresses and sending out PDFs to them soon.

I'm also 21,000 words into another book and STUCK AS HELL on it. I think I need to grab a looseleaf notebook and do some free writing to get through the logjam.

Thanks to a link on the Absolute Write forums, I came across Query Shark, which has been enormously helpful for giving me ideas on how to tighten and refine my query letter. It does help to learn from other people's mistakes. I've just put my own query on the block and we'll see if I get a response on it, but I'm not going to let that be an excuse to keep me from sending the thing out anyway. I've fallen for that trap before and I'm not eager to repeat it.

I'll probably be resuming the habit of excuse notes to keep me moving on the new book. My excuse note for today is as follows:

Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today as she was working on the query letter for her previous novel and that took up most of her writing time. Thank you.

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