Partners & Deadlines

This season started with the greatest of intentions: put the polish on the novel, write the query letters and submit to at least a handful of agents by the first of June.

Here we are at the end of the first day of summer – 21 days into June – and the novel is polished, but the query letter is still knocking around inside my head. (In my defense, I have researched agents who specialize in my genre and have a short list. That’s good, right?)

I felt a little better when I read a Facebook post by a fellow blogger advertising the blog post that would be coming out tomorrow… that she hadn’t begun writing yet.

Ah, deadlines!

In college, a postcard held a special place of honor on the bulletin board above my desk in the newsroom: “Deadlines amuse me.” And our SPJ chapter sported shirts that read, “Not tonight, honey. I have a deadline.”

With my blogs, I keep to self-imposed deadlines. The Network Goddess updates every week; this site updates twice a month. I had a very strict schedule for writing my novels, too: a calendar on the wall held my goals for the entire month, including a number of hours per day researching, a word count for the week, and so on.

But this next step is daunting, so I’m avoiding the self-imposed deadline and have turned to an even more frightening taskmaster: the Accountability Partner.

Actually, I have a number of them.

There are the folks from my writing workshops. Several of us have formed a group we loosely refer to as “Friday Night Writes” – we meet each Friday with a folding chair and camp out on the sidewalk downtown. Sometimes we write, sometimes we talk shop, and sometimes we just talk and people-watch. It’s very therapeutic.

And those guys are good at the accountability thing. One of them emailed me this past weekend when we were unable to meet, offering the following one-liner: “Okay, but the question is...did you write your query letter? If not, get to it!”

Guess this blog post answers your question, eh, Matt?

Then there was Carla, a dear friend and one of my “test-readers” who not only loved the book (which I sent to her section-by-section), but asked when the sequel would be available. Well... I have some rough notes and an intro written for the sequel, but I hope to have the first book on the shelves first, which would require my having an agent and a publisher (a release date would be nice, too). But there's that little query letter issue that I'm putting off...

Yes, I'm still taking Carla's daily calls. One of these days I might actually be able to respond in a way that saves me from a tongue-lashing!

Then there's Sheila, my first reader and my primary research source (for lack of a better term!), who has appointed herself my “cosmic cattle prod” in the agent-acquisition department. Her favorite phrase these days is, “what are you waiting for?”

So I've set a new deadline. By the time I post another blog on this site, I will have written and polished my query letters and submitted them to the handful of agents on my list.

If you are a writer and don't have someone to hold you accountable – whether it's a coach or a fellow writer, a friend or a calendar with dates marked in ink- I encourage you to find someone now. You'll thank yourself for it!

Tags: Canton, Georgia, professional writer, success, writing