Do you feel this way sometimes?

I just saw this post, Love/Hate relationships, from a friend of mine. I tend to be practical (meaning both empathetic and hard-assed, as needed) about the difficulties of the publishing biz—and I'm fortunate to have a marvelous agent after much trial and error—but hooooyeah, we can all empathize with the frustrations. (And haven't most of us been there a time or two, or twenty-nine?)

BTW, music I'm listening to: kitty purrs and snores, all at once, from the dueling feline twins.

Critique Partners and Revisions

Greetings from the land of clouds. I just hope the clouds bring snow to the mountains (yay, skiing!) and leave those of us in the valley alone. (I hate driving in snow. Especially considering some of the drivers around here. =-0 )

I'm revising my latest WIP. It's taking forever. And driving me nuts. And if I didn't have my fabulous critique partner, I'd be paddling by hand up a very disgusting brown creek.

So here's a wee roundup of articles about dealing with critique partners and critique groups. (You have one of those, don't you? If not, do consider finding one. We're all a little blind when it comes to our own work.)

Shelly Thacker Meinhardt's The Gentle Critique: How to Survive (and Thrive) in a Critique Group

Carolyn LaFever's A Brave New World: An Online Critiquing Primer

Terescia Harvey's The Critique Partner from Hell, or One Hell of a Critique Partner

and finally, even if you're in a crit group or partnership, and especially if you go it alone, take a look at agent Vivian Beck's Be Your Own Critic.

An Agent's Dos and Don'ts

The Magical Musings blog has a new interview with agent Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, LTD. The subject is how to pitch your manuscript to Ginger, and it includes some handy tips on how NOT to commit social gaffes at a writers' conference.

I would hope all the readers here would have the common sense not to do these things, but writers have been known to lose their higher brain functions in the heat of the moment. And no one wants to be the crazy nutter everyone laughs about for years afterwards.

Agent Opinions

Here's a tidbit dedicated to my wonderful clients Jan and Leigh, who are deep in the agent query stage. Lori Perkins mentioned in a recent post that her agency gets 30,000 queries in a year. Yep, that means an average of 2500 unsolicited queries a month, or 125 each workday... That's enough mail/email to make even John Wayne shudder.

(J&L: 30,000! All that competition... So doesn't this make the good news and requests you're getting all the sweeter? :-D )

Lori's post also has an interesting take on snailmail vs. email submissions to editors in The Modern Age.

Speaking of agent queries, Jenny Rappaport shares a useful list of what she wants to see in a query (and what she really doesn't!). I love her examples of bad and good hooks. Read, enjoy, and learn.

Organized!

Good evening, folks! After my near-acquaintance with Death last month, I confess I'm a little behind on tackling my New Year's resolutions. (How are you doing with yours, dear readers?) Fortunately, I'm happy to report I now have two clean desks, a visible office floor, a dining room table empty of all extraneous piles (just in time for hubby's Superbowl party on Sunday), a daily to-do list short enough to actually complete each day, a new organizational and filing system that rocks, three terrific new clients (hooray!), and my blissful infatuation with the revisions to my WIP. Life is good!

Ah, speaking of New Year's resolutions, as well as my dance with Death (if one can be said to dance when laid out cold on a hospital gurney), here's a useful site that's helped me shed some pounds AND keep track of my water intake. (Water tracking is very important for those of us blessed—shyeah—with kidney stones.) Basic membership is free free free.

Not free, but certainly worthwhile :) are the changes I've made to my coaching packages for writers. (I changed them some time ago and kept forgetting to blog about the new prices and options. How silly is that?!) Check out the good stuff here at my main website, Women-Ink.com.