Are you home from the ACFW conference? Finally unpacked? I took a terrible head cold home with me from the plane (thank you coughing guy sitting next to me). But, what a great weekend we spent together at the annual ACFW Conference! I hope you came home filled with encouragement and new ideas on how to make your writing breathtaking.
Now what?
Conferences can be overwhelming – between the requests for proposals or full manuscripts, new story ideas, craft lessons, marketing epiphanies and loads of new friends. Where and how do you start to process all this information?
First, sit down a make a list of everyone you met, from editors to fellow authors, to newbies. Then, start reaching out. If they are editors or agents who gave you their time, even in an elevator to listen to your proposal, thank them. If they asked you for a submission, thank them and tell them that you’ll be sending it. If you have more work to do on it, give them an estimated time of delivery. (more on that in a moment). If they were fellow authors whom you enjoyed meeting – tell them that! ACFW is great place to make new friends. And, if you’ve met someone just beginning their journey, someone who feels overwhelmed, perhaps reaching out to encourage them is a way to remind yourself of where you’ve been. We learn by helping others.
After you’ve spent a day or two writing letters, take stock of where you are in your proposal submissions. No doubt you’ll have come home with something you’d like to work on in your story. If it is something you are going to weave into the plot or the first three chapters, knuckle down and do this immediately. Sometimes if I have a list of revisions – I go ahead and apply them, easiest to hardest, to the synopsis and first three chapters. I can fix the rest of the book while the agent is reading over my proposal. (however: if it is a full book rewrite, you may want to hold off submitting until it is finished. You don’t want an agent to read your proposal, be excited about it, only to have you say…sorry, it’ll be six months before I get the rest to you.).
Let’s just talk about the “I must submit immediately” panic that most authors experience after a conference.
Here’s what reality looks like. An agent arrives home a few days after the conference (some of them have taken other trips to visit publishers while they are on the road and are only just getting back into their office this week) to a slew of mail. They’ll take a few days just to sort through their mail. Then, proposals will begin to arrive. They will stack them like cordwood on their desk (or on the floor next to their desk), maybe read a few query letters, synopsis and first few pages. Those they like, they’ll send out to their readers. They’ll do this in between taking care of their regular clients who will also have proposals and perhaps even contracts to negotiate after conference. Maybe they’ll get to your proposal in a month. Maybe not…but guess what – here comes Thanksgiving. Then December – and nothing gets done in December. So, suddenly it’s January and they’re still looking at the pile of proposals they received in October. Or, they’ve read them through and haven’t found anything fabulous….
And, that’s when you’re rewritten proposal arrives.
My point? Don’t rush into this. You get one chance to impress them with your writing. Take the time to give them a polished proposal, even if it takes until January. (ironically, Amanda Luedeke, Chip’s new agent posted a blog yesterday about just this topic.)
The key is to keep communicating. If it takes you until mid-November to rewrite, then simply send your agent/editor a Christmas note giving them an update on the story. I promise they’re not waiting by the computer for your submission, but it’s courtesy to let them know what’s going on.
Stop back tomorrow and I’ll outline what goes into a great proposal. In the meantime – stop by the Clubhouse at www.mybooktherapy.ning.com and shout out all the great stuff that happened at conference in the Shout it Out Discussion!
My shout out? I’ll bet you can guess. J
Susie May