The Polish Edit is Finished

Time for celebration? After years of writing, I have a novel that I feel comfortable sending to agents and / or publishers. It feels good to have a complete manuscript, though after years of writing and editing, now I have to do something new. Market. Oh boy.

I've been working on a query letter for some time now. A query letter is basically a one page blind sales pitch. You have 300 words to sell your 120,000 word novel. Go! I think I have a pretty firm handle on the letter. Now I'm going to work on translating my working outline (with choice quotes) into a synopsis. I'm not exactly sure what a synopsis is. There seems to be some ambiguity. I'm assuming its a synopsis (and not an outline or whatever).

I'm not starting from scratch on the synopsis, I have the outline to work from, but I have to distill a lot of information. Ugh. I've had to remind myself to focus. We'll see.

I have a list of potential agents - taken from Novel and Short Story Writer's Market. I'm going to look at their websites and narrow them down to a short list of five to send out the query letters to. Depending on the feedback I get, I'll rework the pitch and send out to others. It is exciting to think that I might have an agent in the near future.