Literary writers speak up

Queried an agent this week who listed four genres she was looking for, one being character-driven, literary novels. Her response to my character-driven, literary novel query: "Gosh, this sounds interesting, but I wouldn't know the right markets for
it!"

Just done one. (literally, just this minute finished what I truly hope will be the last revision). It's lit fic of some kind*, but I'm hoping I might have just toned it down a degree or two...

Dear little chap. Almost sent me insane.

Goodbye, Little Book!!!


Shinta - all I can say is Drink Plenty of Fluids.

Also, watch out for the asterisks...

shinta said:

Perhaps, you might consider not calling it character-driven in your query as there is no such genre and all literary fiction is supposed to be character-driven anyhow.

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I was merely following the agents lead. That's what she asked for and I gave it to her. It was nice to get a personal response and, I guess, refreshing to have someone admit that gosh, even if it sounded interesting, she wouldn't know what to do with it...

I recently completed a literary novel (with strong commercial appeal, or so I said ). I'm in the midst of querying for agent representation. Two agents are looking at it right now.

shinta said:

Good luck playing the agency game, Carogirl and August. It's lovely that you are getting some responses.

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Thanks! Are you querying the novel you just finished, shinta? Are you planning to?

Just trunked the novel I've been working on for more than a year. I started a new one and am already (five days later) as far as I was in the other. Feeling sluggish today though. My biggest struggle is getting past the mid-point hump. At this point I feel reflective and begin doubting every word and what merit (if any) my writing has. I've been writing for 15 years and have never completed a novel.

In short--struggling to finish!

I am an almost exclusive literary fiction reader...somehow, I don't write it...at least, not so far. My first three novels are more mainstream women's fiction (or so I've been told) but I think the WIP I am working on now is more "literary" than my others so, we'll see where that goes.

I'm always up for good comparisons though and since I read a lot of it I am always willing to share what writers I think are good examples of this or that

good luck everyone

My WIP is inspired 99% by Lit Fic, but I think I'm calling it 'quirky'. It's far from finished, so I can angst about that part later

I put literary elements into the work currently being queried, though I think it's a little too commercial to be a "literary novel." The WIP has almost no literary elements at all.

Sometimes I think my writing is more "anti-commercial" than "literary."





Crap.

This is long:

I've been struggling with whether to place my WIP within Literary, or Suspense-thriller. It is similar to some of T.C. Boyle's work re: is set in the 60's, baby boomer characters, but when much younger, deals with "Crazy Love" and is written like a Sports Bio, or true crime in some sense-- so: Crazylovetruecrimesportsbio. I've been writing for about 15 years as well, and have approximately 13 unpublished novels to show for it. About 4 of them are about 85-95% done. I get to one point, full well knowing the damned ending, and yet can not write the turn-around scenes.

Most took only about a year to write, so it is not that I have been actually working on them for many years. Some, to be frank, are embarrassing, and I would not think of publishing them. Most are in the suspense thriller-to-literary mode. A few are fantasy. A couple are historical. I tend to think of myself as a Hitchcock throwback. It's more like things written by Tom Wolfe, or Norman Mailer-- writers of stories like that. The reason I call it literary as opposed to suspense thriller is because s/ts tend to be about big nuclear bomb attacks and such, and this is just about a mean guy in the closet with a knife. They all, in fact, have a truly normal beginning and yet end up as bloody as a Shakespeare tragedy at the end.

It is not that I thought the books were "bad" and so did not publish them, it is just that I was not able to get the final 1/8th or so done. About 2 years ago, I decided to try to find out why I wasn't getting past the character climax, and to the story climax. That's when I decided to try all this final write/writer's club crap. I've met a lot of people, but feel very awkward because I always find myself in the room with nothing but kids writing vampire books for teenagers or whatever bandwagon comes around next year. I've even thought of getting a masters, simply so I can get "referred to an agent."

In the meantime I continue to work on my most recent novel. I had to quit for a year. I think I just was emotionally drained. Things in my life had become disastrous. Now, a lot of that commotion is nearly over.

Or get a really good beta - the answer is probably right there in your books already, and you're just too close to see it. A beta can help you with that

(and here's a little prayer of thanks to the betagods for giving me mine....)

Hi folks.

I've been pretty bad about checking here lately. I've been on the long submissions slog. I started in January and was hearing cricket chirps, so I ran my query through QLH and got some new feedback on the opening pages. Reworked the query three times, revised the pages, and then gave the whole book another pass looking for the same things that had come up in the opening. Resumed submissions in May. Still crickets, but I feel better about it.

I've been using Aimee Bender as a comp, and her new book is just out and doing well, so I'm hoping that will help in my querying. But I'm also feeling like agents probably only want to take on litfic from people with credentials, MFAs, etc. My entire publication history is in Web-based non-fiction.

Most of the local writers I know aren't fiction writers. Because of my work history, they're journalists, films critics, and former English majors who don't write fiction. I know several poets, as well, and countless visual artists. Need to find a few more friends like me. Doesn't that sound sad? Actually it sounds like an Internet dating ad. LOL.

shinta said:

mkcbunny,

publications in small literary magazines probably do not add up to much when it comes to agent search, unless ofcourse, you have published in the top tier such as the New Yorker. I really doubt having an MFA adds much value either. I believe, it all shakes down to how intriguing your query is and how compelling the manuscript is. In my experience, it's a matter of targeting the right agents ( although many say they do take literary fiction when in reality they really don't.) I'd consider subscribing to Publishers Marketplace for a month or two, looking up the agents of other literary writers, and then targeting them.

Are you getting any requests for manuscripts at all--partial or full?

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I've had a PM subscription for about nine months. I use the site info, read the daily news, and troll the deal news for compatible agents. I also have gone through Agent Query to find agents who rep the right combination of litfic and other applicable genres (offbeat/quirky and, in a pinch, women's fiction). But as you say, some agents say they take litfic but don't when it comes down to it. And one person's offbeat/quirky is another's too-freaky-weird. So putting all of those subjective things together just puts me into a very small pool.

No bites yet. I think I shot down my first dozen options with a mediocre query. I'd run it past a few people, two being published authors I don't even know so therefore not friends who would be back-patters, and I got thumbs up on all of my submission materials. But after hearing crickets, I put the query through QLH as noted above.

I'm thinking that I'll do a third pass on the query and shake it up again.

I was excited to see this thread - I write literary fiction, and nonficton. I love the concept of an online writer's workshop and that is why I signed up here, but have been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of this forum. It seems like there is a LOT of genre fiction here, which is wonderful, just not what I read or write. So, after all that blabbering, here are a few answers to the thread questions:

I have an agent (stroke of luck, contacted me after reading me in some literary magazines).
I have a novel in progress, but am only 80 pages in.
I love literary fiction, but I really have my heart in memoir. My agent feels that fiction is easier to sell, and having books sold is the key to getting a good deal on the memoir.
I want my novel to be commercially viable. I am not going to "sell out," mostly because I can't rewrite my brain and make myself something besides a literary writer, but I DO want to write something that people will buy and read.

Please write the book you want to write and one can always adjust the manuscript during revisions

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Exactly. Write the book you want to write, and if you have to change it into a book that the publisher wants to publish, well, do that too. But first write the book you want to write.

Good luck!

Hi everyone. Today (7-6-10) was a milestone. I actually started to cry. I passed the parapitia stage in my shortest novel. 2 more scenes to write, and a few more chapters to flesh out with a 1000 words or so.

When I got there, I thought, "Oh no, it's finally happened," I've written the words I have been evading all of these years since 2008 (that was when I stopped working on this one) the "theme" of the book. Now everything will be a lot easier.

I've really been thinking whether I avoid the "Theme" because it is too close to my greatest fear?