Personal Digest Saturday: September 5 – September 11

Life news this week: 

• Holiday weekend! I spent most of the weekend sending out my Pitch Wars feedback and working on collecting some visual aids for my upcoming 5,000-subscriber Q&A video, which would be pretty boring if I was just reading and answering with no variety. Unfortunately it took longer than I wanted it to. :P
  
• I sent out some short story submissions too. Still hoping to sell one more this year to meet my New Year's resolution of selling two stories.
  
• Had Mom over on Tuesday. We ate at Panera and went shopping and lounged around watching silly videos. I wasn't feeling very good. Just tired and probably not sleeping enough. Mommy slept over and left in the morning at the same time that I left to go to work.
  
• Wednesday was Jeaux Day and we ate at IHOP, went shopping for comics, and watched America's Got Talent and Gravity Falls at his house.
  
• On Thursday I went to Jeaux's house briefly after work because we wanted to watch the new episode of Steven Universe together, which we did. We talked about the episode and then I went home to do some reading.
  
• And Friday my friend Yasmin surprised me at work with food. I got rice and cake. Quite tasty! I baked biscuits and finished making comics and that's about it.

New reviews of my book:

• Five-star review from Miss P. Martin on Amazon UK.

 Reading progress:

• Completed reading: The Martian by Andy Weir. Five-star review.
• Currently reading: Asexuality: A Brief Introduction by Asexuality Archive.

New singing performances:

Here I'm singing "1985" by Bowling For Soup.


 
New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0539: "Because I Can."

New videos:

None.

New photos:  

Just a blurry picture of me with my Crying Breakfast Friends stickers.

Social media counts: 

YouTube subscribers: 5,042 for swankivy (18 new this week), 503 for JulieSondra (no change). Twitter followers: 674 for swankivy (2 new), 1,171 for JulieSondra (3 new). Facebook: 288 friends (no change) and 186 followers (1 new) for swankivy, 604 likes for JulieSondra (8 new), 54 likes for Negative One (no change), 110 likes for So You Write (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,140 (13 new).

The Fans

As some of you might have noticed *ahem* I like cartoons. After a pretty long break, one of my favorites is coming back from hiatus today and I'm going to a friend's house after work to watch a new episode. Everybody in the fandom is freaking out about it, throwing around fan theories, and even making art about what they want to happen. And, of course, preparing to have their emotions fried. When fans get invested in something, their enthusiasm really shows.

It's been a while for me since I've been in anything like that--pretty sure the last time was about eight years ago, when I was feverishly consuming the manga issues for Eyeshield 21 as they were being published in Japan and weren't even available in my country yet--but I'm sure having a great time with it. And this is certainly the first time in a while that I've been into something that's actually popular in my country. You know your thing is a "thing" when they start selling the merchandise at Hot Topic.

I've never been the hugest fan of Harry Potter, but I liked the books. The hype surrounding Harry Potter is STILL pretty amazing, but when the books were still coming out I was working at a bookstore. You can imagine I saw my share of crazed fans.

I don't write or read fanfiction, but I know people love writing it as a way of participating in their fandom. They draw fan art. They produce songs inspired by the fictional work. They create online quizzes featuring trivia or personality analyses based on the characters, and they post reaction videos and they write blogs full of theories, analyses, and responses.

Some authors don't like it.

There have actually been authors and creators who go out of their way to stop fans from celebrating their work in this way. I've heard the most about cracking down on fanfiction because people are taking their characters and doing stuff with them, and sometimes that "stuff" can be, well, adult. Yes, if something gets popular enough (and in some cases popularity isn't necessary), there will be porn of it in both text and art form. This is true of Harry Potter. This is true of the children's cartoon that I watch.

Fans are kind of weird.

Now, as far as I know, many authors have a policy of not reading fanfiction because they don't want fans thinking they "stole" ideas from derivative works. If they state upfront that they don't read fan works, people won't be as likely to accuse them of using their ideas, though I'm pretty sure you would get laughed out of court if you tried to pursue legal action to stop a creator from using "your" ideas after you used theirs to create it in the first place. And some creators are pretty disturbed by the adult-themed creations (especially if they create children's media), and make statements or pursue action to get them removed.

My perspective on it is that fans are gonna fan.

Some of them are going to do so in sort of gross and inappropriate ways, but if you're a creator and you holler about this, you're probably going to attract more people looking to pervert your work on purpose. I don't really agree with creating pornography from someone's non-pornographic creation, but I accept that people are going to do it, and that a (usually small) subsection of a popular work's fans like to explore all of their favorite fictional works through adult-themed art or stories.

I'm similarly not a fan of people taking existing characters and grafting different thoughts or feelings onto them (like making them attracted to a character they're not attracted to in the original story, or giving them a different past, or creating an alternate version of them), but these are also very popular ways fans like to interact with media. People sometimes write alternative universes where Harry Potter got together with Hermione instead of Ginny. People sometimes draw fan art featuring if Harry and Ron were gay. A surprisingly popular pairing is taking the character Hermione and putting her in various adult scenarios with her teacher Professor Snape. It's weird to me because I fall in love with certain fictional creations because of how their creators created them, and I wouldn't want to interact with that thing by saying "hey, I love this so much that I'm going to recreate it with fundamental differences," but lots of people enjoy this form of creativity, and in a way it's a bit like fairy tale retelling (which you all know I like to do, though I think it's different since fairy tales are not single-author stories with a set of regular, specific characters). 

This is just how some people like to celebrate their favorite stories besides just consuming it and talking about it. I guess writing a story about something that didn't happen in the canon is not much different from drawing a picture of the characters doing something they've never done in canon, though I think it's more appealing when it features scenarios that could have happened or could happen later. Ultimately it's all about imagination and enthusiasm. And even though I probably wouldn't want to look at or read "alternate universe" or pornographic derivative works from any of my creations, I would be happy if my stuff got popular enough that people got invested in it and showed their investment by creating derivative works.

I have received some fan art over the years, which is fun because often the artists will create a scenario they enjoy imagining or put the characters in clothes or situations they wouldn't be in in the real story. Sometimes it's something they wish I would write about. 
 

Artist Corinne depicted a reunion of two of
my webcomic characters, even though
this can't really happen. 

And sometimes it's a silly joke.
 

Artist Jessie imagines what would happen to my character
Delia from Bad Fairy if the economy tanked and
she had to get a job as a tooth fairy

I've also received a very few pieces of fanfiction. The fanfic in particular makes me a little uncomfortable, because I know where the authors "get it wrong" when they make my characters say things they wouldn't say and do things they wouldn't do, but as long as I remind myself that it's their interpretation and they're just playing, it's not as difficult to read. And sometimes it's illuminating; when someone "gets your character wrong," sometimes you're actually seeing how they think your character is and how they're coming across, and you can gain new perspective on your own writing. (Of course, sometimes they're changing them on purpose, but many fanfiction authors try to write established characters "in character.") 

It's also neat to see which characters and which scenarios get written about the most and therefore must have captured readers' imaginations. In the digital age, we have access to our audiences in ways we did not have before, and while I would not want to use that connection to deliberately write my work for crowd-pleasing or fan service, it can sometimes be illuminating. I'm sometimes surprised by which issues of my webcomic inspire the most comments (and what they're commenting about), and the parts of my novels that others like don't necessarily tend to be the ones I like the best. That subjectivity becomes more real, more solid, when you can see your audience's reaction right in front of you.

It must be kind of amazing and frightening at the same time when your creation Really Takes Off, and there are hundreds of thousands of fan creations about something you came up with every week, and I'm sure there's an increased sense of responsibility too; you want to make sure you're doing something good with the microphone that got handed to you, and you know any mistake or misinterpretation will be amplified and broadcast to throngs of followers who may be elated or devastated based on just about anything you say. When J.K. Rowling says anything new about her characters, it literally makes the news, and thousands of blogs analyze it and critique it and put it in context with everything else we know. It's intimidating, but it's also such an incredible opportunity. Rowling mentioned the sexual orientation of her character Dumbledore during an interview once and the news still hasn't shut up about it:

She was criticized for this because people would have preferred Dumbledore be presented as gay in the actual text if that was the case, and yet it was only implied in the foggiest way. She got some crap for trying to suggest she created gay characters when she had to point out they were gay after the fact for anyone to figure it out. (Of course, some people would have preferred that he not be anything but straight at all, but I think a lot of those people were already boycotting Harry Potter over the witchcraft, though you might be surprised how many people were suddenly disgusted at the implication that a children's book contained gay characters.) 

And then when it comes to sexual orientations outside of heteronormativity in children's material, here we have Steven Universe with multiple queer characters just being queer all over the place with no fanfare in the show. Because they don't use the Actual Words "lesbian" or "queer" or "gay" or "femme nonbinary" or anything like that in the show, people are sometimes confused about whether this is "representation." It's been discussed in interviews here and there. For example:

Question: Steven Universe has really pushed gender norms and supported queer representation on television, was it always the plan to show real love and a loving nurturing “non traditional” family on this series, or did the characters just fall into place as you began working on it?

Rebecca Sugar: The show was always very much about family, because Steven is based on my younger brother Steven Sugar, and I really wanted to get at the unconditional love and support I get from him and try to give to him and that we get from our parents, so that’s always been the foundation of the show! I don’t believe that those themes are exclusive to traditional families or heteronormative characters, and I’m very uninterested in trading on genericisms, or talking about what is or isn’t “normal.” I think so much entertainment deals in those terms that almost everyone is left feeling abnormal if there’s anything specific about their life at all. I hope to represent people who have felt a lack of representation, but I hope to also show people who have felt represented that they can also relate to characters that are not heteronormative, and to families that are not traditional, maybe even more so than the more generic characters and families that they’ve been seeing on TV. 

And one of the directors/co-developers of the show, Ian Jones-Quartey, was asked about the romantic relationship between a couple of female-presenting characters, and he came up with this on Twitter:

This was following some brouhaha where Ian said it's okay for people to imagine whatever they want, and some other people took that to mean that he agrees that it's valid to interpret these characters' romantic relationship as friendship, thus ripping away much-needed representation. Even though he later established that he believed they were canonically in a romantic relationship, he was trying to say he's fine with people making up their own stories about characters he helped bring to the world. He has to be especially careful about what he says because people might use it to suggest he supports things he does not support. Creators of very popular media have to be so delicate about their interaction with fans, because someone will always use their words to shove in someone else's face.

With my nonfiction publications, I've of course been in that situation--do I support this, would I recommend that, hey let's get a statement from this chick because then we can claim "the asexual community says X." With fiction, what you say can certainly intersect with the real world but so much of it is about a world that only comes from inside your head. And then people still want to interpret it their way, put their own characters in your settings or take your characters and put them into their own settings, and put words into your characters' mouths (and sometimes your own).

Like I said, fans gonna fan.

On the one hand, it's a little scary, especially since you never know whether something you wrote is going to end up under that spotlight.

And on the other hand, I think I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wednesday Factoid: Strange Food

Today's Wednesday Factoid is: What's the strangest thing you've ever eaten?

I'm not an adventurous eater so I probably don't have a very interesting answer to this.

I might eat a few things other people think are weird. Like baby food, egg roll wrappers, and artichokes (not just the hearts). But I guess if I have to pick one weirdest food it would probably be something I ate in Japan.

I tried a bunch of different sushi (all vegetarian) and managed to consume a natto roll. I thought it was good! Not sure what other foreigners are always complaining about! If you don't know what the big deal is about natto, you should know it is a fermented soybean dish that is perceived as kind of slimy and smells like feet. People apparently fear it. When I was visiting Japan, a school child asked me "can you eat natto?" Like can you, is it physically possible? Well, apparently yes. And it was anticlimactic. I just ate it. It was fine.

Making okonomiyaki was kind of neat too, and maybe strange to some people.

It's like a do-it-yourself grilling thing where you mix the batter and other ingredients up in a bowl and cook it on the in-table grill like a pancake and eat it.

Like I said, I am not an adventurous eater. Sorry to disappoint you.

Pitch Wars feedback is out!

Just a short one today to say I spent part of the weekend sending out all my feedback to everyone who applied to me in Pitch Wars. I think I wrote around 600 to 800 words for each Pitch Wars participant, with a little more sent to the people whose additional chapters I sampled.

Many of them have replied to the feedback, and I'm amazed (though not surprised) that everyone's being so gracious about it.

It's hard to take feedback. Especially on the heels of disappointment if you didn't get into this particular contest. Even if the feedback comes with some praise, every piece of feedback that would seem pretty tame to most people will feel like a pick-axe on your heart sometimes--especially if you're not used to it, haven't had much critique, or thought you were really close only to hear that someone thinks you have a lot of work to do.

And yet everyone's being so nice about how I beat them up.

I would honestly expect people who are seeking agents to be professionals here. That's why I'm not surprised it's like this. And many of them have been very understanding about the fact that the Pitch Wars mentors are usually pretty busy people who have volunteered for the contest and should be prioritizing edits with their mentees. They've made it clear to me that they saw my feedback as above and beyond the call of duty, and they've expressed so much gratefulness and appreciation.

I don't need them to lick my butt or praise me for paddling their babies. But it's just so affirming to hear that I made the right choice in offering feedback to everyone. I don't do it for the praise or to get followers on Twitter. I do it because every time I see someone reaching this level of expertise, feeling they're ready to make that step into the professional world, I know that person must be serious. So I take them seriously. And I treat each one--for the minutes I can spare--like it's the only story in the world, knowing they'll probably put my words to good use in fertilizing their gardens.

If they weren't willing to do that, they probably wouldn't be willing to do research on publishing or enter contests like this anyway.

So this is my thank-you to everyone who's expressed thanks to me, and I hope you all continue your quests and reach the destinations you desire.

Personal Digest Saturday: August 30 – September 4

Life news this week: 

• So the biggest news was Pitch Wars, of course, and as everyone who reads this blog knows I selected a mentee (Lynn Forrest) and began work on her book. Leading up to that choice was a lot of reading on Saturday. I was still trying to decide on Sunday and I only had until Monday to declare. I felt good about my decision once it was over, though.
  
• My sister called on Saturday and I got to chat with her for a while.
  
• My mom came over during the wee hours (I seriously mean like 4 AM) on what was technically Sunday and we made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. It's funny that my mom is a weird night owl like me. And later on Sunday I got to chat with my dad on the phone.
  
• I was back to work on Monday, and had to spend the first three days of the week folding more than three thousand fliers to send out for some workshop stuff. I had to put stamps, address labels, and sealing stickers on them too. I wore tape on my fingers so I didn't kill my skin, and it worked.
  
• Tuesday I slept over at my mom's. We ate ravioli and spring rolls and she gave me a weird ice cream thing too. I watched the Pitch Wars video with the mentors discussing the contest and then the surprise at the end with the mentee announcement. It was fun celebrating with my new mentee on Twitter, even though I was distracted since I was at my mom's.
  
• Wednesday was Jeaux Day and we ate at Flipper's, and then did our usual America's Got Talent watching and updated ourselves on the latest Night Vale.
  
• I finally started sending the feedback out to the authors who submitted to me on Friday night/Saturday morning. Kinda disappointing because I had it all ready to go and then just couldn't scrounge up the time to send each letter to 91 individual people. Oh well. Doing it now!

New reviews of my book:

• Five-star review from no thanks on Amazon.

Places featured:

• Dahlia's Guide to Bookish Twitter: Author and Twitter pal Dahlia Adler recommended people follow me on a list of worthy Twitter authors to follow, specifically if you want to learn about asexuality.

 Reading progress:

• Completed reading: Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway by Steve Purcell. Four-star review.
• Currently reading: The Martian by Andy Weir.

New singing performances:

Here I'm singing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan.


 
New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0538: "Names For Us."

New videos:

None.

New photos:  

Me with TINY COKE BOTTLES my mom got me!

Relaxing on the air mattress where I sleep at my mom's.

Social media counts: 

YouTube subscribers: 5,024 for swankivy (22 new this week), 503 for JulieSondra (1 new). Twitter followers: 672 for swankivy (1 new), 1,168 for JulieSondra (12 new). Facebook: 288 friends (friended my cousin and another ace activist) and 185 followers (lost 1) for swankivy, 596 likes for JulieSondra (1 new), 54 likes for Negative One (no change), 110 likes for So You Write (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,127 (lost 2, hmm, could it be because I reblogged something feminist? Maybe).

Pitch Wars Analysis: My submissions

It's time for me to commit more nerdery upon you!

Pitch Wars was lovely. I got pretty much exactly what I wanted: lots to choose from, but fewer submissions than last year. Since I love giving feedback on everything I receive, it's much harder to do a good job on it if you get over a hundred (like I did last year), so this year's 92 was okay with me. (I got 90 that were eligible; two were marked for categories I was not accepting.) 

I selected Lynn Forrest, author of urban fantasy THE MEASURE OF A MONSTER, for my mentee. We don't have alternates this year, and I was not one of the mentors who volunteered for a second mentee. 

So Julie, what was in your inbox, anyway?
 
For those who do not want to review my Pitch Wars 2015 Nerdy Analysis of my submissions, I received 60% Adult, 40% New Adult. Of my 90 eligible submissions, I got 45 fantasy, 25 science fiction, 6 paranormal, 5 speculative fiction, 3 contemporary, 2 magical realism, 2 women's fiction, 1 historical, and 1 thriller. I had two manuscripts below 50,000 words and one over 150,000 words, but most were between 80,000 and 100,000 words. And the mentor I had the most submissions in common with was K.T. Hanna.

Hey Julie, what kind of feedback can we expect?

I will be sending out my feedback soonish to everyone who submitted to me, but my day job and my social life have been more demanding than usual this week, so I'll be rolling it out as soon as I can. I composed 55,646 words of feedback during the consideration window. None of it is "form letter" stuff--though I think form letters with a little bit of feedback are also a good way to handle feedback for the mentors who are not able to offer lots of individualized feedback for various reasons. I had the luxury of working a job that doesn't take up much of my life and I don't have to take care of any children and I wasn't on deadline, so I probably have more opportunity to devote time to this when compared to some of the other mentors. I hope nobody uses my feedback offerings to shame anyone else if they are not able to do the same. Giving feedback is optional in this contest. I hope those of you who submitted to me will be able to benefit from mine!

I am giving specific advice about what to change in query letters, and there are quite a few places where I started line editing. I tended to give more feedback to people who had better submissions, because they were almost there. If I didn't give much feedback, it's because I felt like there was too much to fix and stampeding in to micro-manage might not be a good idea for a developing voice. My feedback is fairly irreverent and sometimes extremely goofy. Hopefully it is not going to be interpreted as mean if I joke around with you a little. And there are a few of you who might get personal notes or questions from me. I like to make friends during the contest too. :)

Yo, Julie, didn't you say you give some kind of "score" to submissions?

If you weren't aware of my nifty Pitch Wars report card, you may be interested to know I gave a rating to every submission I considered, with 25 points possible for the query and 25 points possible for the writing sample. No one got 50 points. The highest score I gave was 22 on the query, 23 on the pages, 45 total. And that score was given to someone who was not my mentee. My mentee was the #2 spot, not the #1. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Weirdly enough, the person who received the highest score from me isn't even one of the writers I asked for more pages from. She doesn't even know she was one of my favorites. (I'll tell her in the feedback.) I didn't ask for more pages because I had a personal reason I knew I could not take her manuscript, and it's frustrating to get someone's hopes up if you know you won't end up taking them. Everyone I requested more pages from was someone I honestly considered for the mentee spot. 

It just goes to show you how much that "subjective" thing really is true. Everyone does it, all the way up the ladder. Right now I have a manuscript on submission to editors that today got a "not my thing" rejection, you know? I dunno, I think it's kinda like dating. Some mixture of attraction, common interests, mutual availability, and shared goals results in good matches, and someone who wants to be a good match with you can't just barge in and say Excuse me, I fulfill what I have determined to be your requirements; you are now required to give me a chance! (Well, they can do that, and sometimes they do. While insisting that they're quite eligible mates and deserve your attention. Which makes them even less attractive, right?) Oh dear, I have digressed again. Silly me.

How many writers did you request more pages from? 

I only asked for more pages from six writers. I'm not going to reveal who they are here, but I will say I requested four adult urban fantasy books, one adult science fiction book, and one new adult fantasy. Three authors got the same "score" as my mentee did. The one in my group of six with the lowest score--41 points--was the one I came closest to picking for my mentee before I decided to go with Lynn. So I guess my scorecard helps me figure out which individual aspects of writing my applicants are good at, but doesn't necessarily help me make a decision.

Initially I thought I ought to ask for more pages from everyone who got 40 points or above. That would have been 17 authors! Maybe I should have. If I do Pitch Wars again next year, maybe I will do that.

Julie, did you go to battle over your mentee? Did you lose any battles?

Two of the authors I was considering had at least one other mentor either considering them or choosing them as a mentee. I am a pacifist in most senses and declared that I would not fight any other mentors over mentees. I had enough stuff I liked that I would have simply chosen someone else if it came down to it. So no, no battles for me. 

You've been doing Pitch Wars for three years, Julie. Did you get any submissions from authors you recognized from previous years?

Yes! One author who'd submitted to me last year submitted to me again this year with a new manuscript. And one author who'd submitted to me last year submitted to me again this year with the same manuscript. Both got high scores from me but neither was my selection. 

How many authors who submitted to you had really good submissions? How many just weren't ready?

This is a hairy question and a sometimes-subjective one. I did sort my submissions into the following categories:

• Ineligible--wrong category
• Not ready
• Ready, but not for me
• Low maybe
• High maybe

The high maybes were reserved for folks I requested pages from. If I hadn't connected with any of the additional chapters in my high maybes, I would have started requesting from my low maybes, but it didn't happen. 

Of my 92 submissions, I had 2 ineligible books, 42 not-ready books, 34 ready-but-not-for-me books, 8 low maybes, and 6 high maybes. 

Sometimes stuff I determined to be not ready was enjoyed by other mentors, so I can absolutely say it was subjective. I also put perhaps unfair emphasis on the query letter. Many of the other mentors say the pages matter more than the query, and they're right, but I also know agents use the query to decide what they want to read, and I did that too. Sometimes if the query was way off, I still put it in the "not ready" pile even if the pages were okay, because it made me feel like the person did not do basic research on what a query is supposed to be, and that indicates lack of readiness in a different way. There were a couple even in my high maybes who had queries that needed some serious work, but they weren't way off. You definitely need to pay attention to what query letters are if you're entering a query-letter-centric contest.

What were the biggest problems in the query letters? What were the biggest problems in people's writing samples?

More or less exactly like last year, in the queries I yelled at people for lack of trajectory or too much/too little detail. I gave specifics in each case and a push in the direction I'd like to see it go. For some, I suggested picking up a couple paperbacks in their genre and modeling a query synopsis after the back-of-the-book description. And when I commented on pages, I would talk about whether I connected to the character, why I thought their language was too passive or inundated with unnecessary speech tags or adverbs, and how I'd like to see them reconceive their opening if I thought it didn't work. If I didn't read the whole first chapter, I sometimes told people so and explained where/why I disconnected.

And, of course, I screamed about grammar. Dashes, mostly, and curly quotes/straight quotes. If you didn't know there are differences between hyphens (-), en dashes (–), and em dashes (—), you may have gotten yelled at by me. If you didn't know that some quotation marks and apostrophes get "curled" by certain programs and others are left straight (and you used more than one program to show me your document, including Scrivener), you may have gotten yelled at by me.

The most common problem I saw was lack of trajectory. The one comment I found myself typing over and over was a request for firming up the straightforward direction of the query. This means when evaluators look at queries, they're generally looking for you to tell them what happens and who it happens to/who makes it happen. We want to see your character(s) defined; we want to see the problem in your story; we want to see how your character(s) might approach solving said problem; and we want to know the stakes (what will happen if they don't succeed).

This won't do for every query, because obviously not every story is so straightforward, and some have more than one problem. But remember, this isn't an attempt to sum up your book in two paragraphs. This is an attempt to pull us into your story enough to start reading it. You don't have to tell us everything. You don't even have to tell us about every plot if your book has several. This is a document that is designed to do nothing more than get us to open your book and read page one.

A list of common issues I saw in the synopsis bits: 

• Too much detail (we need broad brush, not explanations of each plot point)
• Attempts to insert storytelling into the query (we need story, but not "and her heart soared when he kissed her in the rain")
• Presenting final stakes as a question ("Can she save her mother in time?"--yes, probably; now we don't have to read it)
• Vague stakes ("or he will lose everything"--nah, tell us what he will lose specifically)
• Cursing (snark is okay, but I recommend against actually using swear words in the query)
• Giving too many character names (main characters and villain okay; every member of expedition team, not)
• Telling the ending (yes, you tell the ending in a "synopsis" attachment; you do not tell the ending in a pitch blurb)
• Message and themes (show us what your story illustrates, but don't tell us it's deep or unique or that it examines human nature)
• Too much setup (you need to bounce right into the plot, not spend a paragraph on who the character was before the plot happened)
• Lists of what happens in what order (pitches are not a stark outline of your book's plot points)

Your Query's Personal Section: 
The most common problem I saw in the bios was irrelevant information. Most people did pretty well giving me just a little taste of their writing background and pub credits (where applicable), but I did get a fair amount that went into loads of detail about their other projects--especially when said projects were unpublished, reviewed by nobodies, or published by nobodies. Queries are for agents who want to get you a mainstream publishing deal. They care about your publication credits and writing affiliations, but they don't need to know about them if yours aren't impressive or indicative of a building career.

You should personalize your queries and by all means tell an agent a little something about why you think their website, blog, or Twitter presence suggests you have something reasonably professional in common. But you should not deviate into rambles about your personal life or shift focus onto other projects.

A list of common issues I saw in personal sections:

• Authors telling me who they think they write like
• Authors comparing their work to established work and giving me long-winded explanations of why it's similar
• Authors telling me this is their first book (and I say don't do this because this is like going into an interview saying "Hello, I've never done this before, but hire me!")
• Authors claiming their self-published books or small-press books got good reviews on Amazon (please focus on THIS project, and only quote professional reviews for other projects)
• Authors telling me they've been rejected by others
• Authors sharing details about why they wrote the book
• Authors launching into in-depth explanations of special rules in their fantasy books and explaining their cool concepts, divorced from story
• Authors discussing their writing or publishing process (do not say how long it took to write, how many agents you've queried, how long you've been looking for representation, how many revisions you've done, or who you hired to edit it--notifying me that it's been proofread as a guarantee of quality is a mistake, because we expect professional quality)

I hear that agents also often get promises from authors that the book is going to sell well and/or transform the genre and life as we know it, but I didn't actually see any like that. If you were considering making promises about the sales and success, don't.

Your Sample Pages

By far, the most common problem (and the most fatal problem) in people's sample pages for me was unnatural backstory. If you are already launching into history and context and setting up your world while your characters stand still and it's in the first five pages, I know you haven't quite figured out how to tell this story. You've figured out your stuff, you've realized it needs to be in the story, and then you've . . . dumped it on us at the beginning. I tune out. Because I'm not invested yet. I have to care first. If you begin a novel by expecting me to sit for a lecture first, you've mistaken your book for a class I have to take. I don't have to be here. I can put the book down anytime I want. Remember that and get us hooked immediately.
Marry background details to character perspectives, natural revelations through story, or dialogue. And you can probably leave out more than you think. We're pretty observant--we'll figure it out.

A list of other common issues I saw in sample pages:

• Telling (narration tells me a protagonist is good, or has been a doctor for 10 years, or has three children, instead of letting me just see it come up)
• Characters have an awkward conversation about things they both/all know so I can learn about it
• Setting and situational backstory relayed through narration and divorced from character
• Spelling and grammar errors (!!!)
• Disconnected storytelling (I passively watched the character do things without understanding what they wanted or why they were doing it)
• Opening with something exciting, then backing up halfway down the page to tell me how we got here and slowing the momentum considerably
• A feeling that I would have to be patient to get to the good part (I shouldn't feel like I'm humoring an author by reading their stuff; they need to make me want to read it!)

I was excited that I really got very few clichés, though. I didn't see a lot of authors writing the opening that describes the sky or the weather. I didn't see the protagonists waking up on a normal day and trying to decide what to do next. I don't think I had anyone describe their protagonists by having them look in the mirror.

Anything else cool to tell us? 

Well, you tell me what you want to know! Here's just one more cool factoid: Protagonist names!

I'm a name nerd and I love paying attention to naming trends. There was no one Most Popular Name in my submissions, but I went through to see if I could find any patterns, and the most I could find was I had two Alexes, two Ambers, two Claires, and two Victorias. (I only counted one protagonist for each book, and if it had multiple perspectives, I just picked the character whose name was mentioned first.) Here's the list of protagonist names in my 92 submissions, for all you other name nerds!

Abigail Addie Addisyn Adela Adele Alby Aldonza Aleks Alex (2) Alistair Allison Alyssira Amber (2) Ami Ana Anna Arietta Blake Brandy Cami Carrie Cassandra Charlotte Christine Ciro Claire (2) Cole Daphne Dhel Dillard *

Dinah Edison Eithne Emma Enzo Erissa Erling Evelyn Freya Greg Hadley Hope Horatio Ian Inga Jack Jamie Jay Jem Jeremiah Jim John Katherine Keegan Kerry Kharis Kitty Lavie Letty Linus

Luke Maggie Marietta Marla Mike Natalie Nathan Nora Nyra Peet Reilly Rhiannon Riam Robert (R.J.) Rose Sam Santos Sara Silen Simon Suzanne Theo Tilly Tiny Verity Victoria (2) Vivian Zayria

* ("Dillard" was listed as a protagonist's last name, but no first names of protagonists appeared to be listed in the query.)

Okay, so if you have any more questions after all this rambling . . . go for it!

Wednesday Factoid: Happiness

Today's Wednesday Factoid is: When was the last time you got really happy and why?

Oh good, this question came at a time that something that got me really happy has just happened!

Last night, Brenda Drake surprised all the Pitch Wars participants by announcing the mentors' picks early, and it was so much fun watching my new mentee celebrating on Twitter and getting so excited!

Er, oh yeah . . . everyone meet my new Pitch Wars mentee for 2015, Lynn Forrest!

Lynn is the author of a nifty urban fantasy entitled THE MEASURE OF A MONSTER. It is a very odd pick for me because it includes both vampiric creatures and a sort of detective story, neither of which is generally my bag at all. But there are a ton of reasons I picked it . . . and I'll be able to discuss these more coherently after I've had some time to settle into editing the book. ;)

I'm quite happy to be working with Lynn, but to get back to the prompt, this thing that made me happy did so because it really is a great feeling to make someone's day (even though it meant I had to disappoint 91 other people), and because I think Lynn and I are really going to get along well. Before I knew if I was going to pick her, I definitely wanted to be pals based on her values and her interaction style. Making a new friend is always something to get excited about. (At least, if you're me!)