Endgame: Congratulations to Joan!

There is silence (or maybe I should say "singing") reigning in NaNoWrimo land. For some folks, anyway, as Joan reports:

Hi NaNo writers and supporters,

This fat lady is singing. Thanks to much chocolate and the support of friends, my rough draft novel climbed its sorry self over the summit of 50,000 words within the International time limit of the month of November..

Day 30 is 2 hours; reached 50,360 words total.

Bev's WOTD (word of the day) is "endgame." Shades of Sam Beckett.

As I'm on GMT, I had to finish before my California companions. So for me it is:
Triumph. Celebration. A good massage. Sleep. Happening today!
Status page.
Lessons learned.

Bonfire on Saturday.

Joan
p.s. other statistics:
Total hours spent WRITING = 79.
Average 2.62 hours/day of actual writing.
Average words/day = 1678.
Average words/hour = 637.
In addition to the writing, there's a lot of background time of perhaps on average 5 hours/day spent on additional research, pondering, milling around.


Sounds like Lorna is nearing the finish line, too. All this makes me wonder if I should challenge myself to creating a (poetry) chapbook in a week, or maybe 2 chapbooks in a month. NachoWrimo?

A Cautionary Tale: The Abbey Agency

Never pay an agent to read your manuscript. Read more here. Via Writers on the Scam forum.

Scovill, Chickchak, Galen Literary Agency

Scovil, Chikchak, Galen Literary Agency
By Phone: 212-679-8686
By Fax: 212-679-6710
381 Park Avenue South
Suite 1020
New York, New York 10016

Agents: Russell Galen; Jack Scovil; Anna Ghosh;
For inquiries about British and translation rights contact Danny Baror at Baror International, Inc. Their authors include Nick Tosches, Minal Hajratwala, Madhusree Mukerjee, Terry Goodkind. Nice range of fiction and non-fiction. Diverse group of writers.

Submission Guidelines:
"Begin with a query letter describing your project, background, and credentials, which you may send by mail or e-mail. If you wish to receive a hard copy reply you must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

For this first contact, nothing should be enclosed with the letter; don’t send any sample material until we advise you that we’d like to see it. E-mails with unsolicited attachments will be deleted unread, out of concern for viruses."

Everyone Who's Anyone

Gerard Jones has a website with agent listings that is both informative and entertaining, as we follow his adventures in Literary Agent Land. It doesn't look that interesting at first glance, but if you stick around long enough to follow what's going on, it gets interesting -- especially if you are looking for an agent yourself.

Differences

Differences between British agents and U.S. agents: British agents tend to combine literary work with scripts & screenplays for film and television media, and sometimes even handle performers (actors) all in one house, while U.S. agents are more specialized. U.S. agents tend to want to see only your query letter first, a proposal and chapters weeks later, if they like the letter. British agents prefer getting your letter, synopsis and several chapters up front.

David Godwin Associates

55 Monmouth St.
London WC2H 9DG
0044 207 240 9992

London, NYC and Delhi. Clients include Wm. Dalrymple, Arundhati Roy.

"Please note that we do not accept proposals for children’s books, science fiction, autobiographies, graphic and illustrated novels and we do not accept new submissions by email. Please assume that it will take at least 3 weeks for you to receive a response as we do not have a fulltime member of staff dealing with submissions."

http://www.davidgodwinassociates.co.uk

Submission:
CV
Cover letter
Synopsis
3 Chapters
SASE

Looking for Literary Agents

I've been helping a client look for literary agents on 3 continents, and it occurred to me that I might as well post the information I gather in one place. So, on a fairly regular basis I'll be posting, as succinctly as possible the information I find out about the agent (usually in one "house") and their submission guidelines, along with some publishers. It's been interesting to see that, while major publishers in the U.S. absolutely require that you go through an agent first, in India, publishers like Penguin and Random House allow you to submit without an agent.

More coming up...

Progress

Joan is making good progress despite the unfortunate development of NanoWrimo elbow...

Riding the Deck

OK, I feel better now; I have written several pages, and hope to write more later this evening. My main character is flashing back to his experience of "riding the deck" of an SP boxcar from Oregon to Oakland. After which, he comes down with pneumonia (but recovers). In the process, I've found a lot of interesting websites on the dangerous "hobby" of hopping freight trains.

NaNoWrimo Report from Joan

"3 hours for today; reached 7700 words. Looks like 3 hours/day is going to be essential for me to take Sunday off."

Joan's report is making me anxious. I didn't sign up to be a NaNo, but it's putting me to shame, since I need to get out a new revision of my novel to my writing group, and haven't gotten it out yet.

It's HERE

The First Hay(na)ku Anthology, which I edited with Mark Young is now available. Special offer this month only given by the Mother of all hay(na)kus here!

Books Forever

Let's face it; books will last forever. Despite all the trouble and angst in the world, despite rising e-book sales, the AAP reports that hardcover book sales are strong and steady, and rising. I've decided that books themselves are comfort-objects. Yes, you can download them as e-books, but the eyes love paper. Printed text lays on the page like a leaf on the ground. Books are smallish and compact, and the covers open up like doors into another world. On the computer, or on a PDA, a text is information. In a book, it becomes something more familiar and lived-with.

Lorna's Novel

Lorna Dee Cervantes begins her novel, and posts two credos to get started.

Status Report

Joan reports on here novel-writing status here.

National Novel Writing Month Challenge

The great novel writing marathon has begun, also known as NANOWRIMO. I interviewed Joan, of Bookblog fame, and asked how she prepares for the race; what kind of "training" does she do? What kind of prep? Here's her list of 10 Steps:

Here are my 10 steps to Prep:
(1) Wonder if this is for real.
(2) Ask friends to help, e.g. by writing chapters. Receive rebuff and guilt trips.
(3) Buy Baty's book (see my site).
(4) Panic.
(5) Eat chocolate.
(6) Enlist friends to go through this shit - er, I mean adventure - with you. Hooray, Marianna took me up on it (and she will be writing a NONFICTION project) and Gayle took me up (she is writing fiction); both of them have very sensibly blown off the word count.
(7) Decide not to blow off word count yet but leave it as an option.
(8) Read Baty's book.
(9) Think about characters.
(10) Decide not to overtrain by writing anything before the starting parrot falls out of the cannon.