An adorable pair of walking shoes for today’s SPEED ROUND! No delays, let’s just get right to it!
Just went through another pile of queries and it sometimes amazes me the simple things that queriers don’t do. Is it that hard to personalize your email? To make sure your book’s title actually appears in your query? I know I throw a lot of information up here on the blog, and I don’t expect people who are querying me to read every word I’ve ever written (some of them — like that Sweet Valley High rip-off novel I wrote in middle grade, about a dancer and the guy she liked named Lance — are totally stink-o), but don’t blithely ignore the easy-to-find submission guidelines and list of genres I’m looking for, ok?
Shoes that were given away in a contest for C.C., who writes, “Okay I have written a manuscript and am now trying to find a good publisher. I had a publisher interested but when he found out I was only 14 he kind of stopped writing back. Then I found a web site about the Random House Young Novel writing contest. But if submit my manuscript, I am legally not allowed to send in the novel into anyone else until they pick the winner in roughly 8 months. I was really hoping you could give me some insight on what is a good decision, to submit or not to submit.”
I’ve had occasion in the last few days to recommend this brilliant article by Jon Scalzi to several writers, and figured it was worth sharing with all. It’s a few years old, so you may have seen it already, but it’s a practically timeless piece of advice on writing for teenage writers.
Steph writes, “I’m 14 years old and I’m in the middle of writing a novel. I’m doing everything I can to be an author like going to a good high school with a good writing program. Do you think it’s possible to maybe get it published sometime soon? And do you have an age requirement of how old someone has to be to send in one of their stories to you?”
