Tips To Make Sure You Receive Agent Replies

In the past I’ve talked about ways to ensure your email queries actually arrive in an agent’s inbox. [Don’t be Spam] 

But recently I saw a post from an agent where she described loving a query and requesting a manuscript, only to be disappointed when her request bounced back as undeliverable. Frustrating for the agent, for sure. But what a huge loss for the author. And I know you don’t want this to happen to you, so here are a few things you can do to avoid it.

When querying through a form, make sure you enter your email address correctly. Double and triple check. Maybe even read each letter out loud one at a time. I know this may sound extreme, but it really is that important. One little typo and you’ll never hear from that agent. I’ve seen it too many times.

If you’re using a new email account, make sure it works. If you have multiple accounts, send yourself an email and make sure it arrives. 

Check your spam folder regularly. Especially if you have your email client set up to automatically delete spam after a certain period of time.

Don’t use an email address provided by your internet provider. This one may sound odd, but the problem with these is that they tend to change. What if you are using a @verison.net address, but then change your carrier to AT&T? Or switch from Charter to Optimum for cable. Suddenly the reply-to address you used for all your queries no longer exists. A lot can change with your carriers in the many, many, many months it can sometimes take for an agent to respond. So do yourself a favor and sign up for a more permanent email address, such as gmail, yahoo mail, or any of the other popular solutions.

Don’t use spam blocking services such as Boxbe. If you’re not familiar with it, these services will require anyone sending you an email to first verify they are legitimate and not spammers. The way it works is the service sends an automated verification email back to the sender. Sure, all they have to do is click a link in the email to be verified. But what if hundreds of people are using this service and the agent doesn’t have time to verify them all? Or, what if the verification email lands in the agent’s inbox like another query, and therefore sits there for another few months while she works her way through her inbox? Your email will not be delivered to you until the agent clicks that verification. Don’t take the chance. If you get a lot of spam and want to avoid it, create a special email account just for queries. If you limit its use to just queries, you won’t get much spam at all.

Another thing I see way too often is authors intentionally marking an email from an agent as spam. Maybe they’re upset about being rejected and this gives them a little satisfaction. But don’t do it. At the very least, it could mean that any other emails you receive from that agency will go to your spam folder. But that isn’t the worst case. Many email sending services have a policy that if you mark something as spam, they will not allow that sender to ever email you again. It doesn’t even go out, so it doesn’t go to your spam folder. It just never sends. So, no matter how upset you get with an agent, don’t mark their email as spam.

I hope these tips will ensure you hear from an agent when the good news comes.

Uploading and Emailing Manuscripts

Thankfully, the days of printing out your manuscript and sending it off to an agent are mostly over. Now days, all you need to do is email the file, or upload it using a form on the agent's website. But there are problems and gotchas involved.

One of the biggest problems you may run into is file size. Many services will block large files from being emailed or uploaded. So, I'm going to discuss ways to shrink your file.

But before I do, one warning. Never send a file to an agent unless the agent asks for it first. Many agents do not want to receive attachments to emails, and may delete the file unread.

A typical Word doc or docx file for a completed novel will be about 300 to 400 kilobytes in size. That isn't very big and should upload just fine. But file bloat can happen, sometimes swelling files sizes to several megabytes or more. Once a file gets that big, you're going to have problems emailing or uploading it.

In case you're not familiar with kilobytes and megabytes, one megabyte equals 1,000 kilobytes. Some computer systems may only display your file sizes in kilobytes, so if it tells you a file is 1,000 kilobytes (KB) than that's the same as 1 megabyte (MB).

One thing that can bloat a Word file is if you have change tracking turned on. Especially if you've been working on the file for years. That's a lot of changes to track.

If you do have a lot of changes being tracked, chances are you don't want to lose them. So, the first thing you should do is copy the file and give it a different name. This way you'll have two versions of the file; one with change tracking and one without. Then, in the copy, accept all changes, then turn tracking off. This should make your file a lot smaller. But, in some cases, it still isn't enough.

If turning off change tracking didn't work (or you never had it turned on in the first place) then you'll need to take a more aggressive approach. But don't worry, it's still pretty easy.

Create a new blank Word file, copy all the text from your old file and paste it into the new file. Save it and check the file size. Hopefully it is a lot smaller now.

To quickly copy and paste your entire file contents, go to the original file and press Control+A (or Command+A on a Mac). This will select the entire file. Then press Control+C to copy (Command+C on Mac). Place your cursor inside the new, blank document and press Control+V (Command+V on Mac) to paste.

Another solution, as mentioned by ikmar in the comments below, is to perform a Save As command, and save your file as an RTF file (Rich Text Format). The nice thing about RTF files is that they have very little overhead information that can bloat your file, but still keeps any formatting you may have applied. So, basically, saving as an RTF will flush out any extra unnecessary data. Then all you need to do is open the RTF file in Word, and then perform another Save As command, this time saving it back to the standard Word format of docx. You should now have a new, thinner version of your original file. Thanks to ikmar for the suggestion.

Reducing File Sizes for Images

But what if your file contains images, like for a picture book? Images will bloat your file size like nothing else. So, you need to be really careful with them. Luckily Word comes with a built-in image compressor that can help. It will reduce the size of all your images, thus reducing the size of the overall file.

To use it, go to the File menu and click Reduce File Size. In some older versions of Word, you'll find it under the Format tab.

To be safe, only perform this command on a copy of your file. Just in case something goes wrong.

In order to reduce the file size, Word will have to reduce the quality of the image. It's a tradeoff that can't be avoided. But you can experiment with the different options to see which settings give you the best results without losing too much quality.

Here's a sample of the pop-up window you'll see when you run the Reduce File Size command.

The Picture Quality option is the one you'll want to experiment with. But always leave Delete cropped areas of pictures checked. Also, make sure to check the option for Apply to: All pictures in this file.


The options for Picture Quality are Print, On-screen, and Email. Print probably won't save you much file size, so you can ignore that one. First try Email, as it will reduce file size the most. But it will also reduce quality the most, so after running it, check your images to make sure they are not too blurry or jagged. If you don't like the way they look, try the On-screen option (but start with a new copy of your original file.) It won't reduce your file size as much, but hopefully it will be enough, and your image quality won't be reduced as drastically.

You're trying to get your file size below 2 megabytes or so. So, if you have to go with a little less quality to do that, then you can add a note to the agent explaining that the quality was reduced for sending. She'll understand.

You'll find the full instructions for reducing file size at the Microsoft Office website:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/reduce-your-file-size-in-office-for-mac-2011-631d1d48-a56b-4fd4-ad66-091dd201db10

You may also be tempted to turn your Word file into a pdf. There was a time when this was almost a requirement, because it was a file type that all computers could read. But a pdf, especially one with embedded images, can be significantly larger than a native Word file. And, since Word has become a standard, there is no reason to change your doc or docx files to a pdf,  unless the agent specifically requests it. You can always save it as a pdf and send whichever file turns out smallest.

Writing Historical Fantasy Fiction: Resources and Tips for Writers

The key to crafting a captivating historical fantasy is to submerge the reader’s senses.

Writing contemporary fantasy is easier by comparison because, in some way or another, we are simply recording the details of the world around us while we weave our fantasy story. Likewise, pure fantasy worlds are realities we ourselves shape. We make the gods. We make the men. We make all the rules.

When writing historicals, however, we have a duty to capture the details and the experience accurately. How does a writer capture the essence of a past era, whether 100 years ago, 300 years ago, or even millennia?

The answer: research.

As daunting a task as you may think researching your time period might be, if you write historical fantasy, you’ve probably been doing it for a long time without even realizing it.

Here are some sources and references that will be useful to the historical writer.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS: Yes, I will start by saying the vastest source of historical detail lies within history books. It’s absolutely true—but very daunting. Apart from earning your degree in history, what else can a writer do to get those necessary details?

FILM & SCREEN: This is avenue of research you’ve explored without really thinking about it. It may even be the reason why you’re interested in writing historical fantasy in the first place: you’ve visited a particular era and you want to go back and put your own spin on it. TV, movies, documentaries. If it’s on a screen, watch it. Get a feel for the way people move, their mannerisms, their speech. Beware, though—you cannot view one program and declare yourself a historian. You’ve got to watch a lot. Look for patterns—consistencies, oddities. Over time, you get a feel for what is perceived by most viewers as the norm. Anything outside it will be viewed either as uniquely difference or wildly inaccurate. Choose your path wisely.

TOURS: Visit the place where you’d like to set your story and seek out historical details yourself. Stop at a visitor’s bureau. Go on guided tours. If you cannot travel, take a virtual tour instead.

Those are what I consider the easy ways. Here are a few others I’ve learned from a wonderful author, Nomi Eve, the author of Henna House, a historical women’s fiction novel set in 1920s Yemen. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at a writing conference and she gave amazing advice to authors on how to “breathe life into the past”.:

MISSIONARY & EXPLORER JOURNALS: These are first person accounts of strange lands and new places. Some were scientists, out to record every detail of a new land. Some were missionaries, eager to bring back the details of new cultures. You can collect their sensory experiences—taste, smell, sound, color—and wrap your readers in them.

COOKBOOKS: Did you just laugh at me? If you did, then stop, because one of my favorite cookbooks is one based on A Game Of Thrones. The feasts are massive, the food both eloquent and medieval. The cookbook puts me right back in the middle of George R. R. Martin’s world. My second favorite is a German cookbook that is perhaps fifty years old. I love it not only for the recipes but also the stories within, the introductions to each chapter, the side notes about preparation and serving. That cookbook transports me back into the kitchen of someone’s Bavarian great-grandmother and is a historical excursion all on its own.

Think on this a moment…how much of our lives are spend eating and drinking, alone or with others? Cookbooks will tell you not only how food tastes and looks, but how a house smells, how people prepared their meals. You know that one does not snap their fingers to have a feast appear. Work goes into food preparation, and life occurs while we do that work.

MUSEUM CATALOGS: Museums will publish and sell catalogs of their exhibits which you can purchase on-line or in museum gift stores. We can’t all travel to different continents to tour an exhibit, but we can buy the catalogs: they contain pictures of the items on exhibit, along with descriptions and explanations of their use. My favorite museum catalog is one I picked up after viewing a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit.

MUSIC & FOLKTALES: Both are wonderful sources of historical data. Lyrics are signs of the “current” times. Songs are part of a culture’s “oral tradition” and is accessible to all singers, all listeners. We even classify music by the era in which it was recorded. The language, the sentiments, and the “current events” used to write lyrics give great insight into the singer’s world at the time. The bardic tradition truly is alive and well today. Likewise, folktales are windows to the past. You can find folktale collections for sale anywhere you shop for books.

HISTORICAL SOCIETIES: The Internet makes contacting them easier than ever, and they are generally staffed by people who are passionate about the history they preserve. Nearly every town in my area has one. We have a rich coal mining history in my area and so our towns were established on the coal companies, the German and Welsh men who ran them and the Irish who worked them. Lots of history, both Old World and New, have been preserved by our local historians.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Crowdsource your contacts list. Ask questions on Facebook or Twitter. You may be surprised at who in your friends list knows the answer. Social media truly is a global community so you may find a lot of information about the world you are researching just by posting a question.

Five Tips To Improve Your Historical Fantasy Reader’s Experience
Some things to remember: when you set out to write a historical fantasy, remember that it’s a fantasy, first and foremost. You need to incorporate the proper types of plotting, characterization, and story elements necessary for the fantasy genre. The historical aspect should come secondary to the story—it anchors the story, it enhances the setting, it gives individualized details to your character, and it may cause you to alter story specifics to fit the era.

Historical aspects should submerge the readers in the experience so make sure you provide a sensory experience: sight, taste, smell, sounds, and touch.

1. Capture your setting. Incorporate street names, landmarks.
2. Pay mind to clothing worn at the time, especially if social classes had great disparity between them.
3. Add a layer of language. Remember that speech varies among people based on social class and education, even personal experience. Do use slang and foreign words when appropriate. (I’m not a big fan of books written in dialect, though. I don’t want to have to sound a line out just because I didn’t know what to do with all the apostrophes and mysterious contractions.)
4. Incorporate prevalent religious beliefs. Faith systems are very important because they may influence social behavior, mannerisms, and speech--everything from ethics to OMG.
5. Make sure your fantasy fits the history, and vice versa. They should enhance each other, not make people wonder what the heck was that author thinking? 

The last one may be the most important tip of all. When I wrote The Heartbeat Thief, I chose to begin the story in the English Victorian era because of its societal views on death as well as a woman’s place in the world. The story itself is a vampire-type tale, where the Immortal steals heartbeats rather than drinking blood to survive. The character wanted to remain within society, not pursue a dark solitary life. A touch on another’s skin is intimate, perhaps to the point of scandalous—at least to a Victorian mind. It seemed like the fantastic elements were ideal for a Victorian setting.


Another reason why I chose that era if because the story is structured to follow Edgar Allan Poe’s story Masque of the Red Death. The first lines of the book mention the character was born the year it was published, each section is started with a relative quote from the story, and the main character’s journey through her mortal/immortal life take place in the same order as the seven apartments of Prospero’s palace. The last room is draped in the colors of black and blood and it is there that Death awaits. Once again, the fantasy and the history complement each other as perfectly as I could imagine.

Give Your Readers An Experience They’ll Never Forget
Ultimately, you want to write the story that takes a reader to a place in time and space that leaves them wondering…could this have actually happened? Historical details aren’t just decorations—they build an environment that readers can experience for themselves. You want them to journey back with you to live out that story, page by page.

And there is no greater reward than hearing a reader tell you that you got it right. This is a review  The Heartbeat Thief earned shortly after it was published.

"Krafton not only tells you a story, she makes you experience it with your senses. You can feel the fog moistening your skin as Senza wanders around London. You can smell the city's decay. You can hear the clatter of horses against the cobblestones. And your own heart will anguish along with Senza as she despairs about life--and death--in an era when a woman's beauty guaranteed her a well-matched marriage, even more than her wealth..." --Ronesa Aveela, author of the Mystical Emona series 

This review quote went a long way to validate the research I’d put into writing The Heartbeat Thief. It makes me feel proud of this book.

You should be proud of your book, also. Put serious work into researching your historical period. Don’t write your book as if it were a history lesson; write it as an amazing fantasy that dwells within the constraints of an interesting time period.

Historical details should infuse the setting and characters with the flavors unique to that place and that time. If you wrote your fantasy story a dozen different times in a dozen different historical settings, you should end up with a dozen separate, unique experiences.

Take your reader back to a time long gone by. Let the fantasy keep them there.

USA Today Best-Selling Author Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. She's the author of two urban fantasy series (The Books of the Demimonde and The Demon Whisperer) as well as several stand-alone titles. She also writes for upper-YA audiences under the pen name AJ Krafton. THE HEARTBEAT THIEF, her Victorian dark fantasy inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, is now available.

The "And then!" Plot

Folks, let's talk plot and how it relates to your query letter, because I've seen a mistake repeated a few times recently and heard other writers complaining about the same thing.

Here's the story. Fred is going to work. He meets Wilma. They have their meet-cute and they both like each other.

AND THEN!!! Fred breaks his foot, and Wilma stops by to loan him her crutches.

AND THEN!!! Wilma runs out of milk and goes to the grocery store where she gets a flat tire, so Fred comes over and changes it.

AND THEN!!! There's a thunderstorm that knocks out power to the city, so they can't charge their phones to text each other.

AND THEN!!! A wormhole opens up and Fred has to go shut it to save civilization.

You get the picture. None of the major plot points are related to each other. It's as though the story itself were a bunch of snapshots. Sure, the main characters keep getting together, and sure, they'll probably have their Happily Ever After at the end, but it's not satisfying because none of the events are related to each other any more than the first pitch ("STRIKE!") is related to the second pitch ("BALL!") and so on.

The solution to this is to figure out how to connect your plot points with "And therefore" instead. Fred and Wilma meet and hit it off, and she loves hiking, so Fred pretends he loves hiking too. They decide to meet for a hike.

AND THEREFORE Fred breaks his foot, because he doesn't know what he's doing.

See how this works? When you're reading it, everything seems to flow naturally one from the next, almost as if the events were inevitable. Of course Fred would want to show off and end up hurting himself. Of course Wilma would respond to that with compassion and just a little mockery. And at the end, of course that thunderstorm would open the wormhole, and of course Fred will be willing to climb the skyscraper and shut the wormhole because he's learned from the foot-breaking incident how to be careful and not show off.

In hindsight, all those things will be perfectly sensible. Of course there are plot twists, but not plot twists like, "Oh, and then they got into a huge car crash and everything changed." Not unless you've shown us ahead of time that your MC is a lousy driver who doesn't pay attention, and therefore was texting while driving and hit a truck.

Readers and editors don't like and-then plots, and therefore neither do agents.

And therefore your query shouldn't look like a string of things that happen to a bunch of interesting people.

One of my ex-agents (we shall not name which) accidentally turned out a pitch like that for one of my stories, and I only realized it when we got back a rejection saying, in effect, there's no causation here. Of course in the story there was lots of causation, but in an attempt to work a complicated plot into a 250-word pitch, the agent had in effect listed a bunch of plot points. And then they do this, and then they go there, and then the antagonist does this other thing, and then they have more problems, and then they pull it together somehow.

So we reworked the pitch until it had that sense of rolling inevitability. This happens and they respond by doing that, which has the unintended side effect of this other thing, which triggers a specific response by the antagonist, which results in the following chaos for the main characters.

See how that works?

Oh, and yes, "and then!!" happens all the time in real life. And then you come home to find a notice from the IRS in your mailbox saying you're getting audited because you reversed two digits on your 2011 tax return. And then your kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm. And then you get a promotion and will have to move to Pensacola. Keep in mind that life itself doesn't make for good fiction, and that people expect the author of their fiction to craft a story that flows toward a climax and a resolution.

And therefore here is your takeaway: when pitching, set up your characters and their circumstances so that as every piece unfolds, the agent will feel a sense of, oh, I see why that would happen, and then Yes, they'd get into trouble doing that, and then Oh no, they're making their situation worse.

Remember, it's not "AND THEN!!! you get an agent." It's and therefore you got your agent. You crafted a wonderful story with a compelling plot and characters who responded believably to their circumstances, and therefore readers loved it.

Jane Lebak is the author of Honest And For True. She has four kids, eleven books in print, three cats, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and tries to do one scary thing every day. You can like her on Facebook, or visit her at her website at www.janelebak.com.

Guard Your Time

I was on vacation a couple of years ago when I got an email from a former critique group partner. At first I couldn't even recognize his name, but I opened the email because it was kind of familiar.

 It started by praising my suggestions in the past as the most valuable he'd ever gotten (I don't remember being brilliant, but okay) and then telling me the great news. He'd finished his book! It wasn't one of the ones I'd seen, but a new one. He'd had many health issues, so it had been very hard to write, but he'd pushed through.

I looked again at his name, and then I remembered. That guy! He'd turned in sections of different stories as part of this one novel-length group I'd been in. He had argued with me about every point I ever made. I don't think he ever changed anything in response to my suggestions, and later on, he stopped participating. Except now he wanted my help.

Okay. I mean, I blog for QueryTracker, and I teach query-writing workshops, and I've done what I consider mentoring. I can see why he might think I'd do this.

Without asking anything about my life, he then explained that he wanted me to read his novel, edit it, and tell him how to publish it.

Mmhmm. Of course you do.

Here's where I will now jump in and admit I did the next thing wrong.

What I should have done was deleted the email right here and never thought about it again. Let him think I was dead or that I was so special that I'd forgotten everyone I'd met on the way up to stardom (pardon me while I laugh a bit) or that my personal secretary had deleted the message by accident.

I should have guarded my time, so I'm going to pass this on to you, dear QueryTracker readers: guard your time. You have been given twenty-four hours every day to spend on an assortment of activities. Your writing (and associated efforts) take time, so you need to budget your time.

Critiquing other writers is an excellent use of your time. Interacting with other writers is going to help both you and them by creating relationships. You'll form loose partnerships with other writers and discover how much you have in common as well as what makes you different. You'll learn and they'll learn. You'll encourage each other. You'll inform each other.

But at the same time, note that some people are not going to give as much as they expect you to give them. They think it's fine to join a query-letter critique forum and immediately post their critique, their synopsis, and their first five pages, then never comment on anyone else's submissions. When they have what they want, they leave. With those folks, they don't want a give-and-take relationship, so it's okay to back off.

Anyhow, I made a mistake and answered this guy. I said I was sorry to hear he'd had health problems but glad to hear he'd finished his book. I pointed him toward QueryTracker.net as a resource for finding literary agents.

And then I told him (Dumb, Jane. Dumb) that I'd look over his first three chapters, but not the whole book. I told him I didn't have time to do an edit, but I could give some overall comments based on the first three chapters. Besides, I explained, most of the errors a writer makes will evidence themselves in the first three chapters, so that would be enough.

He wrote back and sent the whole book.

"Once you start it," he said, "you will want to read the whole thing."

(Imagine my "What the hell?" face.)

I opened the document. It was 300,000 words.

I'm going to repeat that: three. hundred. thousand. words.

The first chapter alone was forty pages long, and it was filled with all the same mistakes he'd been making a decade earlier. So I guess I'd given him the most valuable feedback anyone ever had, but that doesn't mean he'd opted to follow it.

And this is the second thing I'm going to point out about takers. It's not just that they don't give back when a community generously shares with them. Of course we all start out as information-sinks rather than information-sources. That's the nature of learning.

The difference is that someone who wants to belong to a community comes to that community with an attitude of participation. They want to work.

They want to grow. So they look hard at where they're falling short and focus on those areas. They keep reassessing, and they keep retargeting their efforts.

The taker who shows up and says, "Fix my query so I can get a bestseller" isn't willing to put in the effort. The person who sits around for an hour or so trying to think of who in their critiquing past might know how to get a book published, then launches their book in that person's general direction even when that person says no, isn't willing to put in the effort. And this interaction showed it.

Why? First, no sense of what the market will bear. Three hundred thousand words is three times longer than most publishers will consider from a first-time author.

Second, no evidence that he'd in any way tried to improve his craft. The only thing he'd changed in a decade was his subject matter.

And third, he'd invested nothing in trying to restore a realtionship with the person he was culling for a favor that would involve at least a hundred hours of her time. Just, "Get me published."

Since chapters should be ten pages long rather than forty, and I'd volunteered to read three, I read the first ten pages and skimmed the next twenty. I sent him some suggestions, starting with removing all the unnecessary stage directions and repetition, removing the head-hopping, and beginning where the story actually began. I rewrote a 550-word paragraph to show how you could do it at half the length.

He never replied, proving how right I'd been to guard my time.

Reading that book would have taken weeks; critiquing it would have taken even longer, and what would have been the result? Would he have pared that book down to a slimmer volume or maybe a trilogy? Or would he have decided I was just an ignorant hater and looked for someone who would snap their fingers and publish his work?

Guard your time. Nurture relationships with other writers who are interested in you and your work as well as their own. Trade critiques, and when you find brilliant critique partners, invest your efforts in working with them. In fact, seek them out by reading their work and approaching the ones who seem like a good fit.

And grow. Always grow. Never be afraid of working hard, but keep in mind that a lot of that effort has to go into your own writing.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of Honest And For True. She has four kids, eleven books in print, two cats, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and tries to do one scary thing every day. You can like her on Facebook, or visit her at her website at www.janelebak.com.

What is Success in Publishing?

Sometimes it's easy to define a win. A promotion, a perfect score, winning the spelling bee. All of these things can be measured and quantified. And in many careers, certain benchmarks tell you if your trajectory is up, down or lateral.

But not so in publishing. As I thought of a topic for the blog, I perused the forums and thought about my critique group meeting last week. It struck me that we ask each other for input and endlessly fret about rewrites and editing and because we are all seeking success in our writing careers. But success in a publishing career is really in the eye of the beholder. In one of my favorite movies, Caddyshack, another golfer asks Chevy Chase's character how he measures himself, since he doesn't bother to keep score. Chase responds, "By height."

There is a lesson in the quip. If you keep score based on number of books written, or number of national awards received, or sales, you will almost always feel you've failed. It can make you crazy to compare yourself to another writer. The odds are stacked against any of us being as prolific and lauded as Joyce Carol Oates or selling as many books as Stephen King.  Most of us will never quit our day jobs. Many of us will not be agented. Even those who are agented may not get a publishing contract. If we do, maybe it is with a small press and not a large one. Meanwhile, a semi-illiterate reality star gets a ghostwriter and a book deal and goes on a national book signing tour. Success? Well sure, depending on how you measure it.

Defining a win, I think, requires us to stop looking outward. There is always a golfer with a better score. There will always be a writer who has something we don't. So define for yourself what your "win" is going to be. Start with writing a great story. Then add the other ingredients to your own taste and your own score card.

I'm curious how you're measuring your careers. Is it completing a series, getting an agent, or getting your self published book out into the world? Or something else? Or do you write for the joy of it and not bother with the business side? Let's talk success.

Kim English - is the author of the Coriander Jones series and the award winning picture book 'A Home for Kayla.' Her latest picture book, 'Rolly and Mac' will be released in 2016. Her website is Kim-English.com. She is represented by Gina Panettieri.

To Critique or not to Critique

I wrote my first my first book in 2012 in a complete vacuum. I had no critique partners, no real beta readers (unless you count my sister) and no idea how to critique my own work. Since then, I've tried, with varying degrees of success, to obtain more feedback during the writing stage. Many writers swear by their weekly or monthly critique groups. Others have tried and true critique partners. Others prefer to fly solo until it's time for a beta reader.  I have yet to find the exact sweet spot, but I have come up with some thoughts on how to decide what works and what doesn't.

A critique group has the upside of making you write something, anything. The crappy first draft won't write itself, after all. If you're a procrastinator or find time management  a challenge, that regular meeting where you're supposed to show up with something can be excellent motivation. But I'm glad I didn't have a roundtable to chime in on each chapter on my first book as it was being written for this reason: It may have been too discouraging and I may have given up.  After a few years in the query trenches, a few projects later, and after over a year on submission, I'm less likely to take a negative critique as a reason to quit.

Finding the right group presents a few issues. First, geography and time are critical. Retired folks who meet at 3 p.m. on Tuesdays won't work for someone with a full time job. Commuting across down during rush hour? Maybe not. And then there are the groups that have some version of the "know it all" who relentlessly assails passive voice and third person omniscient point of view because... well, because they heard it somewhere so it must be true. And frankly, sometimes a group member's writing  is riddled with tropes or purple prose or stereotypes that it make it hard to take her critiques seriously. Having the self reflection to recognize our own weaknesses is hard enough but telling someone else their hard work is only mediocre is not a fun way to spend your spare time.

I was recently invited to join a critique group (geography and time worked, fortunately) and am cautiously optimistic that it won't kill my spirit or cause me to spin my wheels in endless re-writes that address every single comment. It has been eye opening to see how others view my characters (not likable? How dare you, sir!) and even more eye opening to read in other genres. And the camaraderie among writers makes me come away from each meeting feeling more determined to get through the next chapter and figure out that plot bunny. But at the end of the day, you have to analyze the input, make the changes that will improve your story, and learn to weed the rest out. You can't please everyone, and if there were ever a better example of the subjectivity of publishing, it will be the diametrically opposed viewpoints you sometimes hear from the group.  But if your regular meeting leaves you feeling depressed, anxious, or talentless, then move on.

If the group meeting dynamic just isn't for you (writers are often introverts, right?) you may have better luck with a critique partner. Finding the right CP is like sighting a unicorn. But the nice thing is that your CP and you are tailor made because you choose each other based on what you write and what you are willing to critique. You set your own parameters about the kind of input you want: plot, consistency, voice, general impressions or a line by line commentary. You set the swap schedule and you're certain to be interested in their genre. QueryTracker and Twitter are only two of many web sites where CP marriages are made. I've had limited success finding a long term CP, but many people forge years-long and multi book CP relationships. It's more personal, and more flexible than a group.

Even if you're a die-hard loner, do consider beta readers, who will read your completed and hopefully edited book and give you feedback. Pick someone who will be honest with you and who reads in the genre you've written.

And whatever method you choose for getting feedback, don't ever let any one person's opinion deter you from continuing to write.

Kim English - is the author of the Coriander Jones series and the award winning picture book 'A Home for Kayla.' Her latest picture book, 'Rolly and Mac' will be released in 2017. Her website is Kim-English.com. She is represented by Gina Panettieri.