First, thanks to Joan Maze for her thought-provoking post yesterday, and to everyone who dropped by. As you'll see below, we were busy while she played host at Terry's Place.
Yesterday, we signed a contract on what we hope will be our new home. As with the selling process, however, nothing is a done deal. Our first and highest hurdle will be the inspection scheduled for next week. Sellers are supposed to fix anything the inspector finds wrong, but there are always loopholes.
If I compare it to the publication process, we started with the query. We told the Realtors what we wanted in the way of size, location and price range. They (or their computers) came up with possibles. We could view these on the web and decide if we wanted to see them in person. In the submission process, this would be the equivalent of an agent or editor asking for a partial.
Once we narrowed the choices, we went out for up close and personal looks. As expected, every house had its good and bad points. While you might snag an agent's attention with that query, once you send pages, your writing talent and the story itself take over. One house had an impossible floor plan. Another had cramped space. Others didn't have enough items on our wish list to make the cut.
First, a Very Happy Birthday to the Hubster. And the answer is, "Yes."
Having been the recipient of countless rejection letters, it was strange to have to be on the sending side. I can appreciate what agents and editors have to deal with.
If you've been following this blog, you know we've been dealing with selling our house in a very slow market. It's very easy to draw parallels to selling manuscripts. Our first agent was an acquaintance of hubby, and we decided to give him first crack at selling the house. However, after six months of inactivity, we decided to go with a larger company with more resources.
I'd gone to the Internet to look for Realtors who handled our area. I found six and filled out their web forms. Five responded. All came in with the same basic information. All tried to give us reasons why they were the best one for the job. But there can be only one. Based on their presentations, any of them could do the job. It becomes a matter of being very nit-picky.
First step was to see if we could eliminate any for whatever reason. One didn't bother with a competitive market analysis because nothing in our immediate vicinity has sold. They'd deal with pricing once we committed to a contract with them. But the other four did come up with numbers, and went into the details about short sales and foreclosures, and how that would affect our home's price. One came by to look at the house, but took three days to get his proposal to us. Since communication is one of my hot buttons, that was a negative.
Keep Reading... So, we'd narrowed it down to three. We discussed pros and cons of the companies they worked for. We eliminated one because they're not selling in and around our neighborhood even though they have an office nearby. Doesn't mean they won't market our house, but it means if a potential buyer is driving around looking at signs, they won't see one from that company. That left us with two. Tossing a coin would probably have worked, but we ended up choosing the one who seemed to be more about what she would do to market the house rather than what the company resources were.
Now the hard part. I have to figure out how to tell the four we didn't choose that we've opted to go with something else. Do I create one form rejection letter and send it to all of them? Do I personalize bits of it? Do I tell them why they weren't chosen? Agents and editors send out far many more rejections than acceptances, and it's often for reasons as minor as the ones we had to use to reject 4 out of 5 Realtors. Had I used the dartboard method I suggested on Friday, it would probably have served us just as well.
Maybe I should dig out one of my rejection letters and use it as a template. My personal favorite: "We did review your proposal, and for some reason we don't feel we can represent it. Some of them come close, and yours may well be one of those, but we do have our reasons for declining."
With a little modification, it might work.
And, on the manuscript landscaping: I've cut almost 6000 words from my WIP. On the house landscaping: Hubby gave the green light to the tree-trimming crew to come in and "make it pretty." He's finally come to grips with the reality that this can't be for him anymore, and as proof, he's not even going to be around while they're working. Not only that, he even seems to grasp that the usual excuse of "it's a waste of time because ... " doesn't work. True, the bugs will return to the porch light, the mildew will grow on the driveway (he actually rented a pressure cleaner and took care of that chore) and the windows and sliders will get dirty again. The buyers come in expecting perfection. Based on what the Realtors have said, things will be busiest right after the new listing and new pricing hits the web. Once that's passed, I'm sure we'll resume our 'wait for a call, then clean' habits.
My guest tomorrow is Teri Wilson, who's real life job revolves around dogs. She's relaying a recent experience, and it's quite possible it'll show up in her next book. And I hope to have some 'during' and 'after' pictures of the new front yard on Wednesday.
Yesterday's comic, Non Sequitur, by Wiley Miller caught my attention. I'm not sure you can see enough of it here, but if you visit the link, you should be able to read it more clearly. And why did it strike a chord? Well, after reaching the 76K word mark in my manuscript, I've finally discovered who the bad guy is. Now, not knowing the bad guy isn't quite the same as not knowing the ending. I'm sure Author-Girl in the strip knew that Wolf-Girl would escape and survive, but the question was "How?" Likewise, when writing a romance, you know the hero and heroine will have their Happily Ever After, and when writing a mystery, you know someone will solve the crime. It's getting there that's the challenge.
In mystery fiction, readers seem to demand that they've at least met the bad guy before the end of the book. Is that the case in real life crime solving? I'm not so sure. After all, a detective will follow leads based on the evidence. A lead might fizzle, eliminating a suspect, in which case he'll dig deeper and move on. I can accept that he might find a lead by interviewing person A, which leads him to person B. If he discovers person B is indeed his bad guy, then he stops looking. (Which reminds me of that childhood riddle: why is it when you look for something, you always find it in the last place you look?) So, in a typical case, it's quite possible that the cop never saw or considered the suspect until he'd eliminated a long string of dead ends. Is that fair in fiction? I don't know. In true-crime, perhaps, but if a reader is trying to solve a puzzle, I think they want all the pieces on the table. I was concerned that I might have to go back and add a character to be my bad guy, since I was so close to having to wrap up the story. Didn't seem fair to introduce him in chapter 26 for the first time. Realistic, maybe, but who said anything about fiction being real?
So, although I knew what the bad guy had done, and that he'd be caught, I really didn't know who he was. The good side of that? I'd left the possibilities open for a number of characters to be the bad guy, so when the one I thought might have done it turned out to be a red herring, I'd already laid clues so (I hope) the reader might have reason to suspect him as well.In going through the broad strokes of the manuscript, I did find the culprit. Not only that, I'd already given a fair number of scenes where he showed up. It's now a matter of tweaking his back story, and solidifying his motives. It doesn't look like I'll have to add much to what's already on the page. I think these kinds of 'surprises' are what makes writing fun. And, to me, more natural, because I haven't been consciously trying to plant and obscure clues, which I think would end up being red flags waving in the reader's face.
On the real-life front: We've lowered the asking price of our house, per our Realtor's suggestion. He's now getting a few clicks on his "For Showing Instructions" link. About 1 in 3 of these seems to be coming to see the house. (Based on a sample size of 3). I don't mind those who request instructions, but I do mind those who then follow them by calling to set up an appointment and then don't show up. Or call. Friday, the hubster and I went to the mall to have lunch and shop for shoes for me (HIS suggestion. Frankly, I'm more of a barefoot person). We found a few to his liking. I predict a broken ankle within a month. The store had to order them, so I don't have them in hand (on foot?) yet. And as far as taking them on the cruise goes – I don't think so. Hard enough to walk on those stilts on a substrate that doesn't move. But he likes me tall. Anyway, when we got back, our credit card weighted down with our purchases, we found no card from the Realtor, and unless they've mastered the art of levitation, so they didn't leave footprints on the carpets I'd so carefully vacuumed as we left, they didn't show up. And no phone call to reschedule or apologize. At least Saturday's Realtor did call twice to update his schedule. Number three hasn't called for an appointment at all.
Tomorrow, my guest is author Karla Brandenburg, who's talking about what keeps a writer writing.
