Writing

Update May 2025:

Alright so the pink sparkly witch book has been edited, completely re-written, and is now… 20,000 words longer than it was before. Not sure how that happened. But now it’s 140,000 which is wayyyy too long for the current NA Fantasy market. Going to probably spend another month editing it back down into hopefully a perfectly toned version, where the prose is succinct but the reader understands everything with the right amount of context and scenery!

 

Update March 2025: Finished writing another book!

Sooooo I think Relic Thieves has had its shot at querying, and after further disinterest, I’m letting that project go. It’s hard because it was the first book I was proud of, but after finishing my current project, I’m even happier and more confident with the result. I truly believe in this new book, and although I’m still working on the final title, it’s my favorite thing I’ve written so far. My goal is to get feedback from beta readers this month and re-write the entire thing in side by side Google docs, tightening up the sentences and dialogue, eliminating anything unnecessary! Hopefully, I’ll be ready to query this project by this summer!

 

Update Jan 2025: Querying Relic Thieves and Finished Writing a new book!

I’ve sent out 53 queries, and so far have 20 rejections, no requests. However, I’m not discouraged- I know this is a tough process, and I’m working on different projects to make sure I don’t get dragged down by this one project not turning out the way every author dreams about. Onward march, ladies!

The pink sparkly witch book has been written, and is now halfway through a second draft! It doesn’t have a name yet though. I’m so much more passionate about this world and the characters than I thought I would be, and I can’t wait to share it with beta readers! I think my main writing fear currently is that I don’t have an interesting enough writing voice. It’s the element of pizzaz that I love in authors, and that makes me want to read anything they’ve written, and I’m not sure how to know if I have that sparkle yet. But I’m going to keep writing, and try to infuse my sense of humor into these plots and characters and hope my voice gets stronger!

 

Update Oct 2024: 

I’ve sent out almost all my queries for my New Adult Romantasy book, Relic Thieves! Out of 42 queries sent out so far, I’ve gotten 5 very kind rejections. But it hasn’t deterred me, and I’m throwing all my creativity at my next book, which is now up to 60,000 words. Which is crazy, because last month it was at 30,000! I think joining a Discord of writers really helped, because we do sprints where a discord timer keeps track of how many words everyone has before we start, and then we write for 30 minutes or so, and it calculates how much progress you made, and how many words per minute you type! Super helpful, and I learned I average about 21-23 words per minute at best, and 17-19 on the slower side. But overall, pretty consistent, and I’m happy with the story’s progression over just one month!

 

Update September 2024:

Honestly, I think I’m ready to query but I’m dragging my feet.

I don’t feel ready for the rejection I know I’m about to face, and even more afraid if someone actually likes it, since there’s a lot of info about how to try getting an agent, but not a lot about what happens after that! But this week, I’m going to try getting my first 10 queries out there. I’ve gone through 6 waves of Query feedback on the subreddit PubTips, and my latest attempt is here.  I’ve received some great feedback, though everyone means well, it does tend to be a little straightforward, so approach with caution if you post to the reddit with your query!

To be transparent with my feedback process, I posted each week I could, and waited a few hours before looking at the comments. Then, I’d read the comments, get sad, get motivated, and then force myself to go do something other than writing so I could let my subconscious brainstorm around their constructive criticism, and come up with something that fixed what they were talking about!

So to all writers in the query trenches, I’m about to join you, and I think bonding over our mutual resilience to keep pushing and believing in the dream of getting traditionally published is something to be excited about!

Have an awesome week and I hope you find something to feel poetic about!

 

Update August 2024:

AHHHHHH!

I received feedback from my first Beta reader and she’s loving it!

First of all, I had such a whirlwind of emotions from this because 1. Someone is reading the book and 2. They don’t hate it. That makes me so happy!!! When she referred to a side character by name, I was like “You know who they are???” It’s amazing to introduce someone to the comfort characters I’ve been getting to know and have them see them too, and love them for the reasons I wrote them.

But more importantly: the feedback!

She didn’t like the main character’s name- which was alright, because someone had given me that same feedback the week before, and I knew then I really had to change it. I’ve already come around to the new name, but it took another read through of the book to make sure my Control F replace worked throughout the whole manuscript. She also gave me an idea for another hook in the first few chapters, and gave me her impression of one of the handsome ‘bad’ guys- which was that she didn’t think he was attractive at all- and it was something I wanted the readers to think. So I had to go back, spice up his description a bit more, and make him a romantic option. I had also set the year of the fantasy world as in the 3000s, kind of post-apocolyptic, but she said it really took her out of the fantasy world, because she kept comparing it to ours. Instead, I’ll suspend reality by just using “15 years ago” instead of the year date for my flashback chapters when the date is relevant. She is about halfway through the book, so we’ll see how she likes the plot progression from there!

This week, I also finished ANOTHER read through of the manuscript, focusing on catching continuity mistakes and world building plot holes after doing the 2nd draft edits that completely changed a lot of the premise of the book. I think now the story is a lot more layered, with better motivations behind all of the character’s actions, and the villains are much more relatable, and sympathy inducing. Hopefully, you understand their reasons for evil enough you almost want them to win.

We’re on a roll, readers,

Meg

 

Update August 2024:

I posted my Query letter on the Reddit subpost PubTips for the 4th time- and got more searing feedback. I’m loving the straightforward criticisms, and it makes me realize how far a ways my writing still has to go, but I really feel like I’m getting closer to a query letter I can use.

But this week, I mostly made updates to this website! I really like how it looks, and I think other than an updated post here and there, I’m happy with it!

Short and sweet this week, but next week I’m aiming to get some work done on the finished manuscript in it’s 3rd draft!

Happy writing,

-Meg

 

Update July 2024: Querying Relic Thieves

After writing down every agency that reps Adult/New Adult Fantasy on Manuscript Wish List and Query tracker and finding a list of misc agencies, I sat down and made a huge Google sheets of every agency and notes about what they represent. Do they have a lot of agents with fantasy? Do they have book covers that look like I think mine should look? Is the website really current, and easy to navigate? Do their agents have good relationships with their clients?

In total, I visted about 230 agency websites. Out of those, about 120 were just not a good fit. Either they don’t list fantasy, or they only do childrens books, or nonfiction, or they only have one agent that said they like everything, but their book covers aren’t really in the fantasy genre. About 60 of the agencies looked really promising though.

So my next step was figuring out which of those agents, in what order, at their agency would be the best fit for my book. Since it’s New Adult and Fantasy with a touch of romance, that ruled out a lot of the agents who exclusively do YA. I went to each of those 60 websites again and looked at the agent’s bio, and their MSWL if they linked it, and chose the ones I thought would enjoy reading it the most to send it to first. Of course, I’m trying to learn what they like reading on a personal level from just a few sentences, but some agencies have a boutique benefit of saying “just send it to one of us, and we’ll forward it to one of our other agents if we think they’d like it”. 

I’ll be sending out queries in waves of 10 in a few weeks, and will try to update the blog here with the rejections. Nothing like some adversity to fuel me in the morning! Honestly, the agents are all really kind and encouraging with rejections, and this is the second time I’ll be querying a book. This is the third book I’ve written, and I feel more confident about it after waves of edits I didn’t put my other work through, and a lot of feedback on my queries. 

But also, every time I get a rejection, (and I know they mean it nicely), it’s one more person’s doubt I want to prove wrong!

And on that optimistic note, I’m going to keep preparing to send out my first 10 personalized queries!

 

Update July 2024: 

Handed off my printed copy to a friend to beta read. First time the book will be read all the way through, and I trust her to give her honest opinions.

I also finished a draft of a synopsis. Harder than the query, to be honest, trying to condense all the plot lines I think are important, and then realizing they’re just subplots, and that one character I love so much isn’t really important to the main arc of the story.

Here are the places I learned more about synopsis drafting!

https://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/write-a-synopsis.html

https://janefriedman.com/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis/

Jericho Writers also has a great page on how to write a synopsis with an example!

 

Update July 2024: 

This week, I printed a hardcopy of the current draft of my manuscript, and I can honestly say seeing three years of work with a pretty cover made me almost cry. It’s not published, it’s not official, but it’s *here* and it’s *real*. It’s something right now I can show my friends and family and be like “I MADE THIS!” Better believe I did show everyone too!

I also posted my query for some feedback on an awesome reddit called PubTips. They tore that thing to shreds, deservedly so. Next week I’ll be allowed to post an updated version for the wolves to critique again!

 

Update June 2024: 

Here’s everything I chugged away at for one week this summer:
1. Made a list of a bunch of Fantasy representing agencies from Manuscript Wish List and Query Tracker
2. Put all those agencies in a Google sheets spreadsheet
3. Researched each agency: which agents rep fantasy, what are they looking for, notes about the agency itself
4. Ended with about 62 agencies (some with multiple agents) I would be over the moon to represent me as an author! They have book covers on their website in my genre, they have a well-functioning website, and they have great reviews from the authors they work with!