We are proud to be sponsored by JC Hutchins’ Personal Effects series, the podcast Sword of Blood is available free now, and the novel Personal Effects: Dark Art, launched this past week (order now!)
Note- I recorded this before I spent two weeks of hardcore writing and editing. I wrote 25,000 words in four days, and did basically nothing else. So I apologize for not getting this up until now.
- 00:07: ISBW #119
- 01:30: Balticon was a blast!
- 02:30: War launched June 1
- 05:23: Promo: John Mierau’s Serving Worlds
- 06:17: Ghostbusters’ lessons – and yes, I now remember SW’s character was not Zool – If someone asks you if you’re a god, YOU SAY YES. (most of the time)
- 13:35: Promo: Feedback: A Hero’s Calling Season 2
- 14:50: Interview with Seth Harwood, author of Jack Wakes Up
- 35:07: Promo: JC Hutchins’ Personal Effects: Sword of Blood
- 36:58: Feedback: Very awesome “I’m a writer” email, outlining including the snowflake method, wordcount, standard manuscript format (see edit below), mentors, you’re allowed to suck, kill your darlings, self publishing, more outlines, putting work online, Super Note Card is good writing software for PCs, how to send mss to publishers when you can’t afford printing, always send polished mss to agents/publishers!
EDIT- mistakenly said standard manuscript format is 10 pt Courier- I was wrong. It’s 12 pt Courier. Sorry! Thanks to people who reminded me!
Share and Enjoy!
4 Responses to ISBW #119 – Are You a God? / Seth Harwood Interview
Subscribe!
ISBW Endorsed Programs
New from the Murverse- ISBW Special #46 – Stonecoast Writer’s Residency January 31, 2012
- ISBW #230 – Feedback January 30, 2012
- Short Story Alert- Gimme Shelter January 27, 2012
Word count = manuscript in 12pt Courier x 250???!!?!
As you and certain listeners may remember, I’m the writer who was struggling to get to 60K words, but with this method of calculation, I’d be at 68K!!! Have I been sending the wrong info to all the literary agents that I’ve been querying? I’d feel like such a cheat sending out a “word count” that was 13% higher than the actual number of counted words…
I wonder if I can write back to the agent who nixed me for having too short a novel, and ask her flat-out if this makes a difference? Sigh. I thought this was one thing I didn’t have to put that much thought into!
To the author who was worried about printing costs…
Yes, it is AgentQuery.com where authors can search for agents who accept email queries. Some agents ONLY accept email queries, so printing costs will never be an issue with them, and in fact unsolicited mail is thrown away without review by these agents… do your research! I love AgentQuery.com for doing research on agents… find agents who are looking for new clients, who are looking for your genre(s), all in one place. It rocks.
Next, please keep in mind that I have not yet seen even ONE agent who wants an unsolicited full printed manuscript. Each agent has his or her own guidelines that can be found on AgentQuery.com and the agency websites, and the MOST I’ve ever sent out (absent a specific request for more material) is the first 3 chapters and/or 50 pages. The vast majority of agents don’t want more than the 1-page query letter to start of with.
Here’s a quick summary of the 74 agents I’ve sent queries to:
Query letter only: 37 (50%)
Query + 1-5 pages: 18 (24%)
Query + first chapter/10-20pgs: 15 (20%)
Query + first 3 chapters/30-50pgs: 4 (5%)
Re: printing costs, only 11 of these 74 agents (15%) wanted mailed materials instead of email, and only one agent has asked me to mail additional materials after getting my initial query by email.
So, GO DO YOUR RESEARCH ON WHAT AGENTS WANT! Then worry about printing costs. (Disclaimer: this applies to novels only, not short stories, about which I know nothing.)
Just a quick point about writing long documents (i.e. novels, technical papers, etc.) in Word. There is a facility called ‘Outline View’ which displays all the headings and sub-headings in a document within a separate window. It’s far from ideal and I’ve only resorted to it at work because they have no alternatives, but if you _have_ to use Word, it will make life a little easier. It lets you click in the outline panel and jump straight to that chapter or section instantly, avoiding excessive scrolling.
OpenOffice has a similar facility called ‘Navigator’.
I use Write It Now writing software in combination with word. Word is very powerful when it come to micromanaging a single chapter, but it’s godawful when you try to skip around your book. Write it Now is FAR from perfect, but its reasonably cheap and does what it says on the box.
Really enjoyed the interview with Seth, thanks Mur.