ooooooooook i’m going vegan. actually, i already went vegan as of yesterday (so obviously not too long ago). i don’t think i’ve ever been as unhealthy as am i now. that’s one reason why, but the real reason is the health benefits. i have an autoimmune disorder and since i was diagnosed something like 5+ years ago, i’ve been told giving up dairy would significantly reduce my inflammation but i am lazy and always said ‘oh i could never give up cheese, never ever’ but now i’m nearly 30 and sick of being in nearly constant pain.
so i decided to finally listen and give up dairy.
i have been a vegetarian off and on since i was 13 and decided to go back on at the same time. i also watched the documentary What The Health and recently read the book How Not To Die which both make me feel like vegan is a good way to go for health reasons. plus there was this interesting article in npr that shows the correlation between bad diets and brain function.
disclaimer: What the Health clearly has the agenda of wanting to make you go vegan and some of the science has been called into question, but even so I do strongly believe diet and reduction of symptoms to certain diseases believe and it is impossible to argue with the fact that a vegan diet is best for the planet.
anywaaaay i’m writing this post to hold myself accountable. i’m going vegan for at least two to three weeks. i’m not committing to a lifetime right now (i think it’ll be easier for me to get through the first two to three weeks if i tell myself this). if it DOES reduce my symptoms and makes me feel healthier and better, then i’ll make it a lifestyle choice. until then, we’ll see.
I had to post 5 times a week. If I didn’t, I failed my followers. I had to reply to all comments in a timely manner. If I didn’t, I failed my followers. I had to write good enough poems or prose to posts, even if I wasn’t feeling inspired, because of that 5 times a week posting needs. But I never felt like I was great at it. I started my account (@tornepages) as an outlet from my prose writing. But the more time passed, the more pressure I felt until it was too much and I had to step back.
I’ve been mostly inactive this year. I always take a break from Instagram at the end of the year, around the holidays, because I visit family and just need a social media break. But instead of coming back in 2019 to be active, I felt like I was forcing myself. I wasn’t enjoying it. So I finally took a hiatus in March to re-evaluate.
I had a chapter book series come out this year (Isle of Misfits, under the pen name Jamie Mae) and I’m another book (a queer YA) and I work in publishing during the day, too. I think it’s too hard for me to find a release in writing when I’m getting paid to do it.
So I’ve decided to change direction with my Instagram account. Simultaneously my most viral posts have been my art, and my most unliked posts have been my art. I don’t think I’ll ever be a paid artist than same way I’m a paid writer, but I get enjoyment out of it so I’m going to focus my account on it full-time.
I’m excited about this new direction--to make my account primarily an art one. I think I’ll post when I can, but won’t commit to doing it regularly on Monday/Wednesday/Friday/etc. I’ll interact more with followers and other instragrammers and feel more connected with the content I’m publishing.
There are a lot of fabulous poets on Instagram. I love the community dearly. I think it’s the most open and welcoming writing community on social media. I’ll still be following my favorites but don’t think I’ll be posting poems unless I feel particularly inspired.
I don’t think I have a particular art style, either. It’s something I’ve been doing off and on since I was a little kid, but never developed a style. A signature. I look forward to evolving and finding what that is.
Third person POV has more than one way to write it—it’s not like first person POV. With first person POV, it’s easy. You’re in your MC’s head and only your MC’s head.
With third person POV, there is close and omniscient.
Third Person POV: Close v. Omniscient
Omniscient
First comes the false assumption that writing in third person POV means you can head jump from sentence to sentence or paragraph to paragraph. This isn’t true at all. If you are head jumping constantly within a scene, then you are writing in third person omniscient POV. This is something that is old-school, and you’ll see it in some classics such as The Omen.
With omniscient, you are writing from a narrator’s POV, a narrator that knows everything that will happen and everything that is happening in everyone’s head (hence the term omniscient). The voice is usually lacking, and stiff. As much as I personally love The Omen it is voiceless, the plot and concept of the novel is what carries it—and that’s true for many books that are written in omniscient.
Third Person close POV
In today’s marketplace, third person close POV is highly preferred. There is a reason that first person POV is really prominent in most marketplaces. Readers love to be that close to the characters. They love being able to know one character that intimately. Third person close POV is similar to first person POV in the sense that you are only in one head. You only know as much as that one character knows, and you cannot jump into the head of any other character in that scene.
In the next scene, you can change characters. But not within a scene. This is what separates it from first person POV (along with, of course, the use of the he/she/hers/his pronouns instead of I/me/my).
Third person close POV is better for many reasons:
It’s easier to find a voice. You are writing from the POV of a character, and each character should speak differently and think differently. Which helps to bring more color and vividness to the writing.
Readers—as well as agents and editors—prefer it. It gives the reader the same sort of intimacy as first person POV does. You are allowed to know characters deeper.
Omniscient is MOSTLY dead. Sorry, but it’s just the truth. Very few authors can pull off omniscient, and very few readers/editors/agents are interested in it. It’s old-school, and it’s being left in the dust. (There are a few exceptions, but those exceptions are only allowed when an author has an amazing command of their own voice. When their voice is so unique that you can pick up a random, scattered sheet of paper, read a few paragraphs, and think yes, this is Laini Taylor that’s when someone can write in omniscient. If you don’t have a strong voice, omniscient will only weaken it further.)
When you are writing in third person POV, make sure to realize what you are using. Don’t just default to omniscient because you think that’s how third person POV should be written.
This post, just to clarify, is for breaking into publishing as a career, not a writer. There's a lot of hard truths about breaking into publishing as a writer too, but there's a lot of posts out there about it. Beware writers this, beware writers that—but what if you want to work as an editor, agent, marketer, or anything else in the publishing industry?
Hard Truth #1: You can't be in it for the money
You are not going to make bank at any job in the industry until you have paid a lot of dues. You may end up making good money as a literary agent, but only after two or three years of building a solid client list and connections in the industry. You may end up making good money as a marketing director or editor in chief at an imprint, but only after years of working your way up the ladder.
Hard Truth #2: It's a small industry and hard to break into
This is a small industry. It's also really interconnected. People jump from imprint to imprint, agency to agency, and a lot of time it's interns or assistance that end up with the entry-level openings. Being small, it's hard to break into without any connections. And there's a lot of people who want in.
Hard Truth #3: It requires a lot of (usually unpaid) internships
As I mentioned above, internships are the best way to get an entry-level job. There are very few internships that are paid. Most are unpaid, and can be long hours of doing them. I've personally had three internships. They were all instrumental in getting me my current, full-time paid position.
Hard Truth #4: The entry-level salaries are not awesome
$30,000 - $35,000 is the standard entry-level salary (yes, even in New York City). For a literary agent, a majority of those positions are purely commission based, meaning you only make 15% off of any deal you make (advance and then royalties, but it usually takes 2 years for a book to come out so there's no immediate royalties).
Hard Truth #5: Work/life balance isn't great
This really depends on your position. As an editorial assistant or assistant literary agent, you will be reading a lot of slush piles on your evenings and weekends. Your days will be mostly administrative work. You don't often get to read the submissions during work hours (which will be a majority of what your job details entail).
Marketing, publicity, and the like tend to be a different story. There's usually a good amount of work/life balance—you work at the office, and then you don't once you leave (unless you are going on a book tour as a publicity person). But most people trying to get into publishing tend to want those editorial and literary agency jobs.
I don't mean to depress anyone, but it's important to know the realities of an industry before you start job hunting. That way when it takes 6 months to a year, you know it's not just you. It's everyone.
As a writer myself, I only ever replied to partial manuscript or full manuscript request rejections. If an agent took the time to read some of my manuscript, I always thanked them for it, usually something like this:
Dear [AGENT],
Thank you for taking the time to read my manuscript, TITLE. I appreciate your feedback [if they gave any] and will keep it in mind while I write my next manuscript.
All the best,
[name]
Short, simple and to the point.
This always went well for me. Sometimes an agent would reply and we’d talk a bit more—almost always ending up in “please query me with you next manuscript” request (if I hadn't already gotten one)—and sometimes agents didn’t reply. But either way, I felt good about thanking them.
I almost never replied to query rejections. Agents send out a lot of query rejections, and if every writer replied that would be a lot more emails to deal with. If the agent gave me personal feedback, meaning they clearly took the time to write it, then I would thank them. But most of the time you’ll get form rejections or no response at all.
As a literary agent intern, I’ve seen a lot of weird replies to rejections. I’ve interned for three different literary agencies, and the strange things some writers do still amazes me. At the partial/full manuscript level, the responses were always nice, friendly, and thankful. But at the query level, it got weird more often that it was pleasant.
QUERY REJECTION
What Not To Do:
DO NOT ask them to reconsider. They didn’t reject your novel for no reason. They had a reason for it. Often when someone asks agents to reconsider it comes off condescendingly. Like you made a big mistake, I’m the next big thing. Don’t miss out on this hot stuff. No one wants to work with someone like that.
DO NOT tell them they are dumb/idiots/stupid for rejecting them. I mean, come on, this is an obvious one. Do I need to say why this is a bad idea? (The answer is apparently so.) Maybe the agent isn’t right for this manuscript, but maybe they will be for your next one. Don’t go burning bridges.
DO NOT ask them for a recommendation to another agent. It’s not their job to research agents and tell you who to query. It’s yours. Figure it out.
DO NOT ask them for advice. Again, it’s not their job. It’s your job to figure it out. They give advice to their clients. And agents are really busy, they can’t give advice to every query-er. (They may freely give advice though, in which case be grateful and say thank you.)
DO NOT insult their assistant/intern. For every agent I’ve interned for that I’ve sent out rejections, the agent has looked over every query and pages. I am not the decision maker, I help and give my opinion on pages and queries, but it wasn't always my decision to make. It’s the agents. But, sometimes, I’m the one that sends out the rejection because the agent is too busy to send out personalized rejections. It drives me a little crazy when people reply to the rejections saying Are you sure THE AGENT read this? ‘Cause this is exactly what they are looking for.
Why shouldn’t you do this? It’s super condescending to me as the intern, or to the assistant. We work with the agent on a daily basis. We know their tastes. That’s our job. You don’t know really what they are looking for, and maybe your book falls under the category of what their interest is, but you have a concept they already represent (happens sometimes when you reference old interviews or #MSWL tweets), or your writing isn’t where it needs to be (often this is the case).
Also, the intern/assistant probably is going to move up in the publishing world. It’s small like that. Today’s interns/assistants are tomorrow’s agents.
Overall though, sometimes you'd be surprised what can happen when you reply politely to a rejection. I have a friend who did that, and it turned a flat-out rejection of her full manuscript into a revise and resubmit (since the agent liked the concept, and liked the writer, and decided to give her another go). This turned into an offer of representation, and now her book is hitting the shelves this year.
I’ve seen a lot of query letters. Between my internship experience at multiple agencies and through my editorial services. But sometimes it does baffle me the mistakes I see in the query slush piles.
If you are reading this article right now, you are probably not one of the offenders to make this mistake. Probably, but not certainly. Trust me when I say if you make one of these mistakes, it’s good enough for a busy agent to move on to the next query. If you’re lucky and you get an intern or an assistant, they might give you an extra shot—the query slush pile and requested material tends to be their main feature. But, not always. Sometimes those interns and assistants are tired or overworked or working more than one job. And agents? They work 40+ hours a week, and query slush pile is kind of a side job for them on top of their client work.
Don’t make these mistakes. Give yourself the best shot.
ATTACHING QUERY LETTERS TO EMAIL
What the what? Yeah, a weird amount of people will attach a query letter to the email either as a PDF file or a Word file instead of pasting it into the body of the email. Some agencies request this, but not many. Most agencies want you to paste the query into the body of the email.
Some agents, plenty, don’t want to risk a computer virus to view your query letter. Make this mistake and get an auto-reject.
QUERYING MORE THAN ONE PROJECT AT ONCE
Uh, no. You don’t do this. You perfect one project and query it by itself. Pairing it up with other projects—like the other two books in the trilogy—just means you don’t know how to query properly. If you haven’t done your research to prove that this is not what you do then you probably aren’t ready for an agent.
I’M THE NEXT JK ROWLING
Nope, you aren’t. Sorry, but I don’t believe they’ll ever be another JK Rowling. There will never be another Stephen King. There just won’t. You aren’t going to be them. Or Dan Brown. You can be you, and you might be awesome, but nothing proves that you’ll be a top seller like them yet.
Bragging it up about how awesome you are is stupid. No one wants to work with someone arrogant. Confidence is good, but too much of it sets of red flags about your ability to work with other people.
SUPER LONG QUERY LETTER
Queries should be between 250 – 300 words. Not a ton more than that. If you can’t figure out how to write a query letter, you haven’t researched the industry well enough to understand why query letters are important.
ALL ABOUT YOU, NOT ABOUT YOUR BOOK
Queries that are paragraphs and paragraphs about you, about what you read, about what you do, and three or four sentences about your book is not doing yourself any favors. If you are writing about fiction, you want to talk about your book. You could be awesome, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the book.
NO QUERY LETTER
Sometimes people say they don’t want to “bullshit” the agent with a query letter. They want to get straight to the point, so here is the first five pages of the book.
No.
That’s not how it works, people. The query letter exists for a reason, and if you haven’t researched the industry enough to know why that exists, then … well, you probably aren’t ready.
NO PAGES
If the submission guidelines call for pages, you want to include those pages. Why? Because a busy agent might be on the fences. They might not want to take the time to write you an email, you who ignored their simple submission guidelines, and ask for pages. If they are new, then maybe yes. If they aren’t new, if they are well established with a lot of great clients, they probably won’t. Read the submission guidelines, if you expect an agent to take the time to read your query, take the time to read up about them.
WRONG PAGES
You don’t submit an “excerpt” — you submit the first five or ten pages. Not some random set of pages from chapter ten.
WRONG GENRE
Crazy how reading up about an agent can save you the easiest, quickest rejection—the agent doesn’t represent your genre. You can usually figure that out by looking at the agency’s “about us” page. Querying an agent that specifically says, for example, I do not represent paranormal means that they do not represent paranormal, so querying them with a paranormal novel? Not a good idea.
TOO HUMBLE
“I doubt you’d be interested in this, but I thought I’d show you my novel anyway.” Or something like this, it’s a bad idea. Don’t be too humble. You have an awesome book, don’t assume—if they represent your genre—that they don’t want to see it.
WEIRD SUBJECT LINES
QUERY: TITLE YA/MG/ADULT
Most agencies ask for that sort of format. For example, if you wrote a book called ALL HERE NOW and it’s a Middle Grade novel, then your subject line should be: QUERY: ALL HERE NOW MG. Don’t write weird stuff in the subject line. A lot of agencies have filters, so writing something long like “thriller novel about space aliens invading that find love in all the wrong places” isn’t going to really help.
NO, MG/YA IS NOT A GENRE
So, no, MG and YA aren’t a genre. Also, a book cannot be both MG and YA. It is either one or the other. A genre is sci-fi, fantasy, horror, contemporary. A marketplace is Middle Grade (MG) or Young Adult (YA).
EVERYONE WILL LOVE THIS!
Everyone will love your book—from teenagers to grandmothers!
Nope. Sorry, they won’t. You have a marketplace. Accept it. Know it. You might have crossover appeal, but you have one set marketplace, and it’s definitely not teenagers to grandmothers.
CRAZY MESH UP
“It’s J.K. Rowling magic meets Stephanie Perkins romance with a dash of Courtney Summers writing and Nova Ren Suma magical realism with the atmosphere of Ransom Riggs.”
Does that make your head kinda hurt trying to figure out? Yeah. It makes my head hurt too. Pick one or two authors to compare your work to—if you want to—but more than that it’s insane.
IN CONCLUSION…
Like I said, if you are reading this, you are probably not one of the offenders above. Usually, they don’t do their research. But you do. So you’re really top of the class. Your slush pile awesomeness. You just need to have the right query letter, and give it to the right agent and the right time.
Depending on the literary agent, they can get anywhere between 50 to 100+ queries per week. With that many queries, on top of their current clients’ work to read and contracts to negotiate, can you imagine how much time they have for each query letter? Maybe thirty seconds, a minute at most.
So how do you stand out in the query slush pile? One of the best ways: personalize your query letter. Show the agent you did your research and you are querying them for a specific reason.
How do you personalize a query letter?
STEP ONE: RESEARCH THE AGENT
Publishers Marketplace, Literary Rambles, Writer’s Digest, Twitter, Google, all these are great resources to research literary agents. Find interviews and make sure they represent your genre (you’d be shocked how often people query agents that do not represent their genre, guess what that gets you? An automatic rejection).
In most interviews, agents talk about what they want to see in their slush pile.
See if they represent any of your favorite authors or popular authors in the marketplace and genre you are writing.
Make sure they like personalized query letters. This is rare, but sometimes you’ll find interviews where agents say they would rather just get to the query letter than have personalization. But trust me—most agents like to see personalization. It shows you’ve done your research.
A lot of queriers don’t do their research. By proving you have, you’re already a step ahead of your competition.
STEP TWO: IDENTIFY WHAT MAKES THEM THE RIGHT AGENT FOR YOU
By now you’ve read a few interviews, checked out their clients, and probably can figure out at least one reason why you are querying them—even if they don’t have interviews out there, you have to know why you’re querying them, right?
It could be something as easy as their “about us” page on says they are interested in fantasy YA, and you wrote a fantasy YA novel.
STEP THREE: WRITE THE PERSONALIZATION
Put the personalization on the top of the query, since the agent is going to be glancing over the query—you want them to see it right away. Proof that you’ve done your research. A connection that shows them yes, this will be a good query for me to actually pay attention to and read through.
I know that sounds cruel, but the truth of the matter is that agents are extremely busy and well trained. They can usually do a quick 10-30 second glance over a query letter to know if it’s something they are interested or not.
INTERVIEW PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:
“I read in your XXX interview that you are interested in dark, gritty contemporary YA. As such, I thought you might be interested in my 75,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”
(XXX of course should be replaced with wherever you read the interview. For example, “in your Writer’s Digest interview”.)
CLIENT PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:
“I am querying you because I greatly admire your client XXX. Since he/she writes dark, gritty contemporary YA, I thought you might be interested in my 75,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”
PROFILE PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:
“I read on your blog/profile/agency website that you are interested in fantasy YA. As such, I thought you might be interested in my 80,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”
There are, of course, other ways to personalize a query, but these are the most common. Personalization will help you set yourself apart from your competition.
She reminded me of the sea; the way she came dancing towards you, wild and beautiful, and just when she was almost close enough to touch she’d rush away again.
Querying can be scary. You have to compress your 80,000-word novel into 250 words. After that, you are going to send that query letter to an agent that gets probably between 50-100 queries a week (some get even more than that). As someone who has interned at three agencies, I’ve been shocked by what I’ve seen in the slush pile. Most rejections happen for a few simple reasons—and as long as you avoid these mistakes, you’ll be way ahead of your competition.
TOP 5 QUERYING MISTAKES
MISTAKE 1: WRONG GENRE, WRONG AGENT
This is the most common, and the one that just makes no sense to me! Seriously—why? Why would you shoot off a query to an agent without even looking at their agency profile? If the writer took five seconds to do that, they would realize: Hey, this agent doesn’t represent crime thrillers. I shouldn’t query them.
Querying an agent that does not represent your genre will get your rejected. Easy as that. Your crime thriller could be awesome, but if they don’t represent crime thrillers, they are not going to take you on as a client.
MISTAKE 2: TOO LONG QUERY / SYNOPSIS
Query letters should be around 250 words. Not hugely long, not one full page, not two pages. You don’t want to tell the entire story, aka a synopsis, in the query. You want to cover the first 2/3 of the story. When I glanced over the slush pile, if I saw a query letter that was hugely long it was already a point against it because that usually meant overwriting in the novel, or that they didn’t actually know what their plot was, so their query was all over the place.
You are doing yourself a disservice by not following the query letter guidelines: 250-300 words. Not more. (Though if you have a really killer bio filled with important information, that could push your query to 350 and be totally acceptable.)
MISTAKE 3: COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Like #1, I do not understand why a writer wouldn’t look at the submission guidelines before querying an agent. Where do you get their email address from? From the submission guidelines page! So why wouldn’t you take the extra ten seconds to read what they want to see?
If the agent wants to see pages, and you don’t send pages … that’s not good. What if they are on the fence about your query? If they have a full client list, they aren’t going to take the time to ask for more pages because they are on the fence; they needed those pages to really determine if your writing style jived with them. They are more likely to reject you and move on to the next query.
MISTAKE 4: NOT DOING YOUR RESEARCH / STRETCHING IT
Doing your research is vital. You can save yourself rejection by doing it. You can also personalize your query and set yourself apart by doing it.
For example, one literary agent can be widely known for being a horror fan. However, if you look at her profile page, you’ll see she clearly states:
“I am no longer looking at science fiction and I have never accepted paranormal/supernatural/fantasy.“
So … she isn’t interested in paranormal. She isn’t interested in supernatural. But she still got a lot of queries for paranormal horror, supernatural horror, and sometimes even fantasy horror (at least when I was her assistant). But since Bree is known for being a horror fan, people will still query her with paranormal horror because they think—she wants horror.
It’s a stretch, and obviously not true. It’s also an avoidable rejection if you read her profile. This is true with a lot of agents. There is probably another agent at the same agency that would fit with you better anyway.
MISTAKE 5: BEING POMPOUS
Declaring you are the next best thing — that you are the next JK Rowling or Dan Brown or Gillian Flynn, well, guess what? You probably aren’t. I’m sorry. You might be, but no one likes a pompous person. Don’t be pompous. No one wants to work with a pompous person. (Have I made the whole pompous = bad case repetitively enough yet?)
It’s a turnoff and a waste of space to go on and on about why your book is awesome, why you are obviously the next Stephen King, etc., etc… You would be doing yourself a favor by showing the agent your book is awesome with a strong query letter and strong opening pages.
Using them as a comp title (while not encouraged) is a separate thing. When I say pompous, I mean the people who really do declare they will be the next Dan Brown and they expect their advances to be at least six figures and to sell the movie rights within a few months after making a book deal. Yeah, these people exist. They don’t understand the way the publishing world works, and dealing with that sort of unrealistic expectation is not going to be fun for anyone involved.
