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Maybe this will help people understand writing a novel. I started writing THE CAUTIONER'S TALE in 2009, finishing a first draft of it by 2010. I did an initial rewrite from 2010-2011, and then more rewrites in 2012 through a group of friends who embarked on a writing group. https://twitter.com/my2senfs/status/1352379124581593089
Then in 2012, I read this series of books known as ASOIAF. I semi-abandoned my own book to write about this other set of books (why most of you follow me) for a long time. In 2017, I decided to stop writing about ASOIAF (lol) and do another rewrite of THE CAUTIONER'S TALE.
The whole thing was rewritten again in 2017. After completing that rewrite, I decided to start querying: a process by which you send a letter and manuscript sample to literary agents to ask for representation. Here's my 1st shit-ass attempt at a query letter.
Some of you who follow me are successful authors and are cringing at the letter. I accept this. It was bad. But I also realized there were still issues with the manuscript too. I would re-read parts of the book, find mistakes, fix them or sometimes rewrite whole sections.
Gradually, I realized that the book needed a 4th? 5th? 6th? who knows how many times full rewrite. So, I hired a very lovely friend to serve as a story development editor. And the entire thing got hit with a fine toothed comb with great edits like this:
So, the book was rewritten again and completed in early 2020. And then the world fell apart, and as a result, I put querying the book on the backburner. When the world resume a momentary tranquility in summer 2020, I started querying again and rewrote my query letter to:
It ain't perfect, but it's a lot better. (Many thanks to @inkasrain and @TiMikkel for the excellent query letter suggestions!) A few queries went out, did not receive responses -- which is completely fine and understandable. Literary agents need to love the material.
At the same time, another great friend ( @theMsSarah) decided to be extremely kind to me and went out of her way to try to help me. I won't go into full details here as things are still in progress there, but the suggestion came back to seek professional editing.
