Video Blog

Virtual Cons Are Just As Exhausting

/ Morgan Hazelwood / 2 Comments

Well. I ran social media, did tech support/moderation, was on panels, and attended panels all this past weekend.

It was definitely a bit much.

Thursday

I still had my day-job, but after I signed off, my evening was all the last minute prep.

A donation for advertising gave me the go-ahead for some facebook ads on Thursday night. So, I tossed half the money at boosting the ‘Where to find Virtual Balticon’ post, and half at a short slide show, inviting people to the event. We got several thousand views, and a couple hundred engagements — including 5 or 6 people accusing us of spamming them (and my ‘Sorry. fb algorithms are unpredictable’ response led to the complainers accusing me of being a bot. But seriously, if they weren’t going to reply to each other’s ‘spam’ accusation comments, how was I supposed to know they were reading ANY of the comments. I didn’t see a reason to reword my answer to the same exact complaint if they didn’t see fit to reword the complaint).

Then again, we still had plenty of people — many regular Balticon members — that said they didn’t hear about it until half-way through — or after it was all done. Somehow my own mother, despite listening to me ramble about this con on numerous occasions, missed that it was going to be free. *facepalm*

Social media only works so well — and you can only communicate to the people who are on and looking.

Before bed on Thursday, I also scheduled hourly reminders of each panel with links to register. I finished about 4am, after 3 tag-ups with different team members after 11pm.

Friday

Friday morning was helping people log on, and making the moderation schedule (tech had said they would do it, but several emergencies meant they ran out of time).

I’ve never seen Opening Ceremonies before, but when I watched it, I got that ‘It’s Go Time’ feeling, just like I do at a physical con. Only alone. And in silence in my own house. It was very surreal.

I wanted to see all the panels like I normally do, but couldn’t stop myself from making sure everything was still running smoothly on Discord. And helping people sort out how to log-on and talking them through any technical issues.

I have some partial notes from… wow! 11 of the 13 panels/presentations I hit. I didn’t think I did that well.

At first, I tried to get the screenshots from all the techs and post them during the first 10 minutes of the next hour… It only took me 2 hours to give up on that level of perfectionism.

With panels only running until 10pm, I decided I’d just wait until AFTER the last panel of the day, and batch process them. Sure, it wasn’t quite as lively for the social media feed, but they were already getting the hourly schedule. There’s trying to make things convenient for people, and then there’s flooding them.

On Friday, I only hit one panel that I tried to take notes on: the 6pm Writing For Themed Anthologies. The other two, Bad Book Covers and This Kaiju Life LIVE were presentations — or performances — I could just enjoy. Plus? They were after dinner, so the tech support had slowed down by then.

After the final panel, I hit a Discord party or two, hanging out and chatting with con attendees, just like hitting a room party at a con. Only, you had to bring your own drink and snacks. While there, I prepped and posted all the screenshot images, and headed off to bed by 3am.

Saturday

I woke and caught up on the Discord threads and social media before logging onto the 10am You Can’t Shop at Target in Middle Earth only a few minutes late. Next up, I got to hear Nick Martell and Keith DeCandido read some excerpts from their work while eating a bagel. Nick introduced us to his world and characters, and Keith ripped out our hearts.

I was doing tech support, but got to hear most of the noon, Tips for Writing Combat. Then, an hour solo-tasking, and checking all the social media locations to see who needed help. 2pm was storytime with Kingdom of Warrior Women: The Dahomey Kingdom and its Amazons.

I’d considered a few of the 3 and 4 o’clock panels, but ended up just doing Discord and then prepping for my 1st panel at my home convention, and second panel EVER: Dealing With Literary Rejection. We had people who gave rejections, people who received rejections, and people who did both. I had the joy of having the agent I’d gotten my first rejection letter from (via his assistant) on the panel (Joshua Bilmes of Jabberwocky). I did my best to come across as intelligent and well-spoken, and hope I was at least a little entertaining.

After a good hour in the Discord After Panel Discussions room, with some lively chatter, I sat in on Science Fiction Has Always Been Political with some excellent discussion and great examples, and Making Painful Edits. I finished my day listening to some pulpy adventures with Daniel Kimmel and Michael Ventrella.

I took a quiet evening walk around the block, just to move. My back had started tingling, like it was going numb. NOT a sensation I’d felt before. I might should see my chiropractor again…

Then, I visited the tech crew zoom party. While, of course, prepping the screenshot posts and working on outlining my questions for the panel I was going to be on in the morning. Finally, I swung through through the New Media party, just long enough to say goodnight. At half-past-three am. Again.

Sunday

No way to sleep in on Sunday — I was starting off my day with two panels. Sure, 10am sounds perfectly reasonable to most people, but that’s about when I show up to my dayjob, and I don’t usually care if my hair’s dry from the shower or my face is made up before I roll into the office or up to my work-from-home desk. No, I do not own a hair-dryer.

But, I made it, showered and made-up in time for the 9:30am pre-panel check-in. Well, maybe it was 9:32am, but still.

Beta-reading propositions, What Are You In For? By this panel, I started to feel a little more solid with my speaking skills, (although, I think I used the same interjection a couple times.) We’ll see if I’m brave enough to watch it when it rolls out. Then, the after-panel discussion and a quick moderator meeting, before the 11:30 am call for my third and final panel of the weekend.

This time? I was moderating. I toasted another bagel, (cinnamon raisin with plain cream cheese for those of you who are curious), then looked frantically for where I’d put that outline. By the time we had most of the line-up, I followed procedure from what my other moderators had done for me. I asked if the other panelists wanted to hear my questions in advance, read them out, and then asked if they had anything to add. Nothing.

What’s This About A Social Media Presence. I had some solid panelists, including the very chatty Tee Morris who literally wrote the books on social media. Luckily, he knew he had a tendency to chat and smoothly finished his sentence and ceded the floor after each gentle “thank you,” from me. We had a moment of veering into politics (losing one attendee loudly from that, on the chat), but for the most part, it went very smoothly.

In the Discord After-Panel Discussion, Tee complimented my moderation and I admitted it was my first time. Polite or not, I was glad to hear the rest of the panelists thought it had gone well.

I drifted in and out of the Dinosaurs: The Update presentation, then tuned in for most of Momentum for writers and How to Self-Edit That Lousy First Draft.

By the end of that panel? I was FRIED. I wanted to see more. I wanted to support friends and see them chat. But I was DEAD.

Plus? As I reminded myself, I could always rewatch the panels once they went up on Youtube.

So, I swung by the virtual con suite, got myself some hotdogs, and chatted with my dad and another con-goer about guitars until I had food in me. For those who don’t know, my dad usually hangs out in the con suite, and that’s where you go to find snacks and random conversations. That hang out was one of the most-like-a-physical-con aspects all weekend.

And then I NAPPED. For nearly two hours.

I realized when I woke up that I’d never made a special announcement for the film festival, which had gotten its schedule finalized rather late. And that the festival had already started, so it was too late. So, all I could do was announce the Monday 1pm rerun. I’m Sorry Short Film Festival Lovers! I dropped the ball.

But, I made it up in time for most of Choosing Your Perspective and then, because it would NOT be recorded, made sure to take a lot of notes at, Body Disposal – A Primer for Writers. Unfortunately, this presenter has had her presentation stolen, wholesale, 3 times, so I will NOT be sharing these notes publically online.

I did not realize when I went in, that the Body Disposal panel was 2 hours long. And because it was the last presentation of the night, they let it run over and run over it did. I wanted to hit 3 of the zoom parties (closer in feel than I would have expected to the standard room party), but by the time I hopped out of the second one, the third had just gone to bed. At quarter to four in the morning. Again. Whoops!

Monday

I slept til 10:45 am when my alarm went off. I caught up with my alerts, got dressed, and then my alarm went off. That’s when I realized the first alarm was my weekly “don’t forget to sync your fitbit alarm.” Oh well, it’s not like it had woken me up that much early.

At 11:30am, I was hosting my one-and-only zoom session for bluestonearcher’s Reference Like an Artist. He’d been running training for the techs and the panelists for the last two weeks, helping me with documentation and things, so it was fun to run, and I wanted to do it right with my trainer watching. But! I flubbed giving him Any Time Warnings At All. So, he was halfway through a sketch when I messaged, “Um, here’s is your 10, 5, and 1 minute warning.” We managed to wrap with 90 seconds to hand-off the stream so the next panel could go to twitch. WAY too close. Sorry!

I listened in some on Novel, Novella, or Short Story right when that wrapped, getting a scattering of notes. Then, I prepped and listened in on the final panel of the con, Improving Balticon. I logged on in case people had Social Media questions, but no one did.

With the text-only format forcing people to formulate their questions before we got to them, we managed to get through 170ish questions in under 2 hours.

I know many people hated the lack of video/audio from panel attendees, but others LOVED the ability to chat without interrupting the panel. Especially for “what was the name of that book”, but also any side comments. Plus, a lot of people’s bandwidth starts to choke when streaming more than 6 or 8 videos.

During the Improving Balticon panel, I posted the rest of the screenshots our techs had gotten me. On average, 1 an hour. I wanted to be sure the con had faces, not just technology.

And just like that? The con was over. The Discord quieted to a dull roar, I threw together a “Thank You” image to post, and I ordered some Thai for dinner.

I never made it to our Second Life portion — never even installed it on my laptop. Discord was enough of a resource hog.

Virtual Balticon was a massive undertaking, achieved in under 2 months of work. Massive kudos go out to the staff that pulled it together, the panelists/guests who went through all of our training and provided the content, and the fans — without whom, we’d be talking to empty rooms.

Gearing Up For Virtual Balticon

/ Morgan Hazelwood / Leave a comment

Memorial Day weekend, I usually hit up Balticon, Maryland’s regional Sci-fi and fantasy con, where I proceed to attend 30ish panels in four days, meet tons of people, and forget what sleep looks like.

This year is different.

In-person gatherings are banned. And? This time, I’m involved. A LOT more involved.

I felt a little self-serving when I decided on this topic for today’s blogpost — but then I looked back and saw that I pretty much ALWAYS do a blogpost on the con I’m about to head to, so that part isn’t out of my usual.

What IS different is I’m working on staff and I’m speaking on panels for this convention.

In case you’re curious about what Morgan’s been up to for the past month and half…

What Is Virtual Balticon?

Before I make this whole post about me, I should probably explain exactly WHAT Virtual Balticon is.

As I’ve told others:

Balticon is the Maryland Regional science fiction and fantasy convention, sponsored by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS). Scheduled this year for Memorial Day Weekend, it has been held annually since 1966. Due to the pandemic, Balticon, unfortunately, could not meet in person this year. The good news? Balticon realized it could go VIRTUAL!

Balticon features discussions and presentations among authors, editors, publishers, artists, filmmakers, scientists, gamers, and, most importantly, fans.  

Virtual Balticon will have author readings, panels, and presentations; science programming, a film festival, watch parties, artists and dealers, a masquerade costume contest, plus, a variety of role-playing, video, board games, and more. You can find Virtual Balticon 54 on Zoom, Discord, Twitch, YouTube, and even Second Life.

My Roles At Virtual Balticon

I’d already applied to be a panelist when programming contacted me, asking for some input. Apparently, attending approximately 30 panels a year, then blogging about them, makes programming think you might have some ideas on panel concepts that work, panel concepts that don’t, and which panelists are totally worth the hour long panel investment for attendees.

So, I attended several working meetings, tasked with data processing and helping contribute to wording panel descriptions.

Separately, my application had already been accepted to panel at the convention.

Then, 2 weeks after the COVID-19 shutdown, Balticon reached out to me and asked if I would run their social media.

They already — and still have — Matt, their social media director who works for the parent organization: The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS), but the burden to go virtual was more than one man could handle.

Running Social Media

For running social media, I mostly create images and posts for all of our accounts (twitter, instagram, many fb groups/pages/etc). I’m working on 100% consistant branding, but some things take time.

Other departments will let me know when an announcement needs to go out, and I’ll make it. If people contact Balticon for details, I help draft the wording.

I’ve already started scheduling hourly posts to help people find the panels, presentations, and events coming up each hour when Virtual Balticon is in full swing.

I also recorded a “How To…” guide for each of the online applications Balticon is using, and am scheduled to address the technology basics for the Opening Ceremonies.

Our Technology

Since there was no one technological solution for creating this virtual convention, we had to pick and choose our tools.

For our panels, presentations, and many of our events, Shogren Productions donated use of a Business-level Zoom account. Because Virtual Balticon went free, and most of our donations are just going to help pay for the closed-captioning (1 panel per hour, unless someone wants to sponsor us at $2,000 per additional panel/hour), we’ll only have 5 webinars running at a time — so the typical Balticon schedule was cut drastically.

Attendees will have to register here for each event separately, but by using Zoom webinars, we can keep out trolls and bad-actors, and add security to the panel. This does mean that all the people watching can only ask questions via the Q&A window, but all the side comments people love to make? Book suggestions and more? There’s no reason not to toss those all in the attendee chat!

We’re using Discord for most of the “convention hall” space. The Dealers Room, Artists Alley, and Fan Tables can be found there. Plus, the Consuite, after panel break out discussion rooms, tons of gaming rooms (this is Discord, after all), and more. [The gaming can be signed up for here]

Two panels per hour will be livestreamed to either our Youtube [BaltimoreSciFi] or our Twitch account [twitch.tv/bsfsBalticon], with the rest of the recorded panels to come (once we get them closed captioned, using volunteer labor, rather than the paid stuff). Sunday and Monday, you’ll find our Film Festival on there as well.

And, for those on Second Life, or who create a free account, you can join our “Balticon 54” group, and hangout at Balticon station. Many of vendors will also be found there, as well.

All The Training

Now, these technologies are all well-and-good but… before we can run stuff with them, we need to make sure we have enough staff TRAINED.

We need to make sure our panelists can ATTEND.

So, in the transition from physical con to virtual con, the panelists we had space to bring over all had to go through a zoom test session, to make sure they had the audio, video, and internet capabilities to make it even possible.

Matt, BSFS’s Social Media Director stepped up to become our VirtualCon Platform Admin/Expert, helping shepherd us through the process.

We’ve been running 3 practice panel sessions every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for nearly a month to give both our technicians and our panelists opportunities to practice.

One of our artist alley members, bluestonearcher, joined the discord server early and offered to help me make some promo pictures. 2 days later, his teaching background had him volunteering to help run our Zoom training and lighten the load on our VirtualCon admin, taking over those 9 practice sessions a week!

For our Discord Servers, I’ve run 4 training sessions for our Moderators and Admins. I’ve drafted guides for our Vendors, Artists, and Fan Table guests.

Not to mention, of course, all the tech trouble-shooting I’ve done, including three 1am sessions with my dad, helping him try to get a very old, donated web camera working on a linux system. So far, we’ve got the driver installed, the camera working, and the camera option enabled in zoom. Next up? Sort out why the video is blank — but only in zoom.

What Morgan Will Be Up To This Weekend

Working

I will be on discord all weekend, both as admin, and because I’m a chatty sort of person.

Attending panels

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve probably noticed I have no sense of my limits when it comes to attending panels. I’ve signed up, just like a regular attendee, to see 28 panels. (I thought it was 22, but I’d miscounted.)

Since I often take copious notes at the writing panels, I didn’t want to run tech while watching those panels. However, I did review my schedule, and for the fun-to-watch, but maybe not ‘informative’ ones, let the tech team know they could schedule me as a backup technician. I did take the training after all.

Being ON Panels [the other side of the table!]

And lastly, but CERTAINLY not leastly, I’m going to be on THREE panels. I’m even moderating one of them – my first time moderating a live panel, and my second time ever being a panelist at any convention.

Sat 5pm Dealing with Literary Rejection Sun 10am Beta-reading propostitions, what are you in for? 12pm What's this about establishing a social media presence (mod)

I hope all of you are planning to have a safe, but fun, and relaxing weekend. And please, feel free to check out balticon.org to find out all the stuff we have planned and scheduled. Let me know if you have any questions… it’s literally my (unpaid) job.

I’ll be back again next week, with more writing tips and writerly musings. Most likely? The Balticon post-con mortem.

Hello, Executive Dysfunction

/ Morgan Hazelwood / Leave a comment

While some of it is corona-related and some of it is saying ‘yes’ to running social media for Balticon, (less than two months out from the actual event, before they had a virtual plan), the rest is just me.

Hi, my name is Morgan and I have executive dysfunction.

As a kid?

It meant I read five books for fun, instead of the one book I needed to write a book-report on.

It meant doing homework during lunch, for the class right after lunch.

It meant waking up in the night, to make sure I’d done my math homework this time, because my teacher was gonna call my mom if I missed turning it in. Again. (Mom, if you’re reading. I only hit that point once. I promise.)

As an adult?

I’ve learned coping mechanisms.

I find planning and obsessing over the details for big, or even life-changing events keeps me busy and keeps me from panicking until it’s done, and there’s nothing left to be done.

I use online project management tools and artificial deadlines.

I use my joy of momentum of having not broken a streak to pressure myself into doing things – like this blog. And my vlog. And… well. You get the point.

But, right now?

I’m picking off the low-hanging fruit. The tasks I can knock out in an hour or less, where I know what I’m doing and I don’t need to ask for help.

I’m staying up late when I hit the immovable deadlines and making sure I do enough. If only just.

I’ve been sending out author spotlight interviews, when I should be posting them.

I’ve been scheduling tweets 2 weeks away for that convention, instead of chores or things due tomorrow.

I’ve been missing meetings, losing notes, and I’m struggling to stay focused on larger tasks unless I’m actively participating in a collaborative working meeting. Or running the meeting.

And my dayjob is suffering, too. I’m in the meetings. I’m doing the small, easy tasks. And letting those fill my time, instead of the larger projects.

I keep reminding myself that if I break the big stuff into smaller projects, they turn into the easy stuff.

Tips To Help

I’ve struggled before. I’ve been trying to remind myself of my coping tricks.

I keep reminding myself of my “just-5-minutes” approach, where if I make myself focus for that long, I’ll usually keep going until it’s done.

Wait.

When I added the link, it said 15 minutes. Maybe THAT’S my problem. I’m expecting to hit my groove too soon.

Sometimes, I trick myself into being productive by doing it after my bedtime — i.e. I can stay up, but only if I get that task done. I know I’m the one setting my bedtime, but somehow it still works. A little.

It’s helping.

Maybe I have taken on too much.

Maybe I just need to force myself to focus.

But I’m struggling right now.

Do you have executive dysfunction?

I know stress makes things worse, but what other coping mechanisms do you have?

Thank you for reading. Please, share if you can relate, if you found this post helpful.

Choices To Make With Beta-Readers

/ Morgan Hazelwood / 1 Comment

After you’ve written your manuscript and gone over it at least once, it’s usually time to ship it out to some beta-readers, to get an outside perspective. If nothing else, they can spot the things that you know about your story that you didn’t actually put down on paper.

There are tons of different techniques, and I’ve got to say, this time around, I’m kinda winging it.

How Many Beta-Readers To Ask?

It has been quite some time since I sent a new, fresh book off to beta-readers.

My first time, I just asked my friends on facebook — before I’d jumped into the writing world. I had RPG game masters, english teachers, family, and readers reading it. I tried my best to mix backgrounds, gender, and age. I sent it out to seven readers and heard back from five. I had in-depth feedback from four and high-level feedback from three (there was some overlap).

Since then, I’ve had plenty of critique partners — writers, looking at my manuscript with a similar lens to mine, that I let loose in ones-and-twos on more polished drafts.

For this beta? I asked a middle-grade writer friend, a YA writer friend, and was pleasantly surprised when a friend working on base during quarantine asked for something to do while waiting out his shift, helping make sure I didn’t *just* have writer perspectives.

Three beta-readers. Not a lot, but a nice balance if they all come through — which mine have. Just in time for me to have a block of time between chapters on that never-ending YA revision of mine.

What To Ask For

The best way to get beta-feedback you can really use is — shock-of-shocks — to ask for it. You know I’ve got my 10 Questions I Ask My Beta-Readers, such as: what works, what doesn’t, and what parts they enjoyed.

No matter what you’re worried about: characters, dialogue, world-building, pacing — now is the time to ask. Have them focus on the parts of the story that you care about.

You can even tell them to skip the line edits, if you want! Make this a developmental round of edits, not a copy edit.

They might not address all your questions directly, but by asking, you plant the ideas in their head before they begin, and it can really help direct their feedback.

Should Your Betas See What The Others Are Saying?

There are mixed feelings on this, and clearly, the answer is to do what works for you.

If you’re still world-building or playing with techiques and things, where you want to almost brainstorm what the story could look like with your betas, a shared document with open feedback might be just the ticket.

For me? I make sure they all have their own private copy, so they don’t know what anyone else is thinking. This way, I know they’re all facing it fresh, with no one else’s pre-conceived notions influencing them.

The choice is yours.

How To Compile Beta Feedback

Some people read feedback from beta-readers as it comes in, addressing stuff immediately with the excitement and energy they get from the fresh critique.

I like to sit on it.

Well, I read the draft letter they usually send with the big picture stuff and let it percolate in my brain. But the read-through and all the inline stuff? That waits.

I like to wait until I have feedback from ALL of my beta-readers. And then, I–

Wait. Let’s be honest here. This is only my second completed manuscript. I need to stop talking about this like I have a process. I sorta did this with my 2 or 3 shorts I sent out, but noo really. I just have “what I did last time” and “my vague plan that I’m stalling on by writing this blogpost.”

So, my plan and what I vaguely remember from my first round of betas, longer ago than I would like, is that I’m going to go through the feedback, chapter-by-chapter.

I’m going to have all three beta drafts and my own fresh-copy open at once. Maybe on separate quadrants of the screen? As I see line edits, I’ll see what the other betas thought, and decide if I want to incorporate them.

On a notepad, or gmail draft, I’ll be jotting down the larger stuff (although, most of that, I’d imagine, is not in-line, but instead in the draft letters they all sent me, that I already read).

I know, all the advice says to skip the line edits until you know if you’re even keeping that chapter, but I find getting the line edits out of the way makes the big choices easier, because I’m not overwhelmed with all the ‘clutter’ of the small stuff.

Last time, I printed the whole thing out, going chapter by chapter, making notes, writing new scenes on the back of the pages of the last draft. I’m debating now, and if I should do that before or after I do the quick line-edits. I almost called them ‘easy’ line edits, but they can be quite challenging. They’re just often smaller changes in scope, not difficulty.

To me? I consider changing wording and adding descriptions, etc, as ‘editing’. While changing pacing, characterization, and other big picture stuff are ‘revising’.

So, after I use their feedback to edit my manuscript, it’ll be time to look at the big picture and decide where to go from there.

How do you like to work with your beta-readers?

Are there any things you’d suggest I do differently? Does something else work for you?

Let me know in the comments below and I’ll be back again, next week, with more writing tips and writerly musings.

The 10 Types of Queriers

/ Morgan Hazelwood / 4 Comments

If you’ve ever considered traditional publishing, you probably know about querying. In fact, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have seen me mention it a time or four.

Self-published authors get to skip the query trenches, but know that theirs is a hard road — full of marketing, and advertising, and building their brands — while working on the next novel. Without even the little help that small press or traditional publishing can offer.

But, for the rest of us, we all take different approaches to querying agents.

What type of querier are you?

Goldilocks

This querier follows ALL the query tips. They do enough research to personalize if applicable, then tweaks the query and first pages until the request rate is reasonable.

Then, they send out queries in batches of 7-10, and send out a new query every time they get a rejection or hit a time-out window. After 100 queries, this querier is either agented, planning to self-publish, or shelves the manuscript and has a new manuscript ready to query.

I-Know-A-Guy

This querier knows there’s nothing like that personal touch. She goes to conventions and signs up for all the one-on-ones with the agents in her genre, the ones who represent the novels that make the perfect comps for her manuscript.

This querier only queries agents she’s personally met, because she knows that’ll give her that extra level of attention from the agent. Anything to get ahead of the nameless crowds of the slush pile.

The Perfectionist

This (wanna-be) querier is almost ready. The novel just needs one more round of revisions, but he’s going to query as soon as this draft is done. — Or at least, that’s what he’s been saying… for the last 10 years.

Are The Signs Right?

This querier is superstitious. She only queries on Wednesday mornings, when it’s raining, and the dog let her sleep until the alarm. Each query has exactly 246 words in it, and she hits send while listening to the second verse of Hamilton’s I’m Not Throwing Away My Shot.

The Eager #NaNoWriMite

This querier wrote his first book in November, polished it in January, and is gonna query 3 agents a week until he gets that huge book deal! Who needs a beta reader? Inspiration was with him and this book is so timely!

Oooh, Squirrel!

This querier starts out well — ze sends out a batch. But then? Ze gets caught up in a new project or a writing contest and forgets to query that second batch. But, don’t worry, ze’ll get to it, as soon as this new project gets to a — Oh! Ze just got a new story idea!

The Doubter

This querier knows she needs to get her manuscript out there. She agonizes over her query letter, with about 4 bazillion re-writes, finally hits ‘send’ on the query. Then? She rereads it and sees INSTANTLY where those typos were and how she could have made it better. So, she eats a box of cookies, beats herself up for two weeks, and fixes the letter before she sends the next query.

After the first rejection comes in, she stares at her story. Her manuscript is probably getting drowned in a pile of similar tropes by her mediocre writing. Perhaps another tweak on the first pages? The query OBVIOUSLY could be improved. And maybe the market is wrong right now and she should wait and query later? Maybe another look at the synopsis? Hers stinks…

Sweet summer child

This querier has finally polished his novel and knows that he’s ready! So, it’s time to let the agents know!

He looks online and queries every agent in his genre on Query Tracker in under a week, and reaches out for suggestions on other agents to query — before he’s even heard back from the first agent.

Token Attempt

This querier knows their novel is too niche for the market. They’re gonna have to self-publish anyway. But? They might as well pop a few queries off to their dream agent. It’s okay, they’ve already prepped the manuscript and will hit the ‘publish’ button the day that last rejection comes in.

The Morgan

This querier does tons of research using all the social media — staying just this side of stalking. Rearranges and tweaks the query to the exact specifications of this agent and their tastes.

Then, revises her whole novel every 10 rejections, cause clearly there’s something she should fix.

I think it’s pretty clear which querier I am, which one are you? (Or do you think you would be if you were going to query a novel?)

Let me know if there are any I missed!