Tryptophan, am I right?

Well, I warned you that it was likely I wouldn’t check in here in November, what with the craziness of NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving. I suppose I failed to mention the possibility of me being a complete and utter no-show through Christmas, New Year’s, Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, the birthday of every member of my family, and nearly into April of 2022. I mean… tryptophan, am I right? 🦃…😴

So. NaNoWriMo. I didn’t “win,” but I still awarded myself a hefty participation trophy in the form of five extra pounds of weight, themselves courtesy of “magic writing bean” (AKA, peanut M&Ms) consumption and a healthy lack of exercise. I did crank out thirty-some thousand words, made some really surprising discoveries about my characters, and got the story heading in a pretty interesting direction. But I’m taking some time away from it to focus on my completed novel and agent search. 

In that regard, one pretty awesome thing I did during my silent months was to join Manuscript Academy, which provides amazing resources for writers, including agent and editor consultations. Just a few days ago, I met with the wonderful John Cusick (agent to the fabulous Julie Murphy). In the short ten-minute meeting, he completely changed my mind about how to categorize my novel. I’d been calling it YA since before I wrote it, based primarily upon the ages of the main characters and the circumstances they find themselves in. But John made the point that the older, wiser, omniscient narrator coupled with the “literary-ness” of the writing made for a much more adult story. (I mean… of course! It makes so much sense now.) He said I might have a lot more luck submitting my novel as adult literary—which is exactly what I did when our Zoom call ended. I immediately tweaked my query letter and sent it off to three or four agents. And get this: I got a request from one of them for a hundred pages the very next day! It’s good to feel like you’re headed down the right path.

Until next time (which, I swear, will be fewer than five months).