Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even a…
Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even acclaimed in the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. I was even more flabbergasted that after being told to allow six weeks for a close reading, he flew through my novel in two days, called it a 'well written and engaging narrative' and then even offered to help me get it published after I fixed a few things. A perfect opportunity, needless to say, and a dream-come-true for an unpublished writer. But that was almost four years ago, right in the middle of COVID, and at the time I was working in a busy New York Emergency Room (I am a nurse), getting divorced, and helping my sister care for our mother, who was on home hospice back then. So I put my literary ambitions aside to take care of much more important things. Only when I finally got around to the edits and got back to my book doctor almost a year later, he was too busy to look at it. And I understood that, since he works for the State Department and the Ukraine war had just broken out. But I couldn't help feeling I had let a great opportunity slip through my fingers, and now he doesn't even return my emails. So I went back to Gotham Writers and took a much cheaper course in getting published (the book doctor set me back two grand, and the hilarious part is it all goes by word count, so when I found out the small fortune I would be shelling out for my door-stopper behemoth, I edited out 100,000 words over three months: KILL YOUR DARLINGS haha). Well, that was almost two years ago, and I have only sent out about a dozen or so queries during that time. But I think your blog is the shot-in-the-arm I need to get my ass in gear again. I will follow your advice here-68 agents queries in a week! Wow! What the hell have I been doing all this time? Thanks!
I paid Gotham Writers so much money over the years for “query critiques” etc. They are quite useless in my opinion. My philosophy is you are the best judge of your own work.
Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even acclaimed in the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. I was even more flabbergasted that after being told to allow six weeks for a close reading, he flew through my novel in two days, called it a 'well written and engaging narrative' and then even offered to help me get it published after I fixed a few things. A perfect opportunity, needless to say, and a dream-come-true for an unpublished writer. But that was almost four years ago, right in the middle of COVID, and at the time I was working in a busy New York Emergency Room (I am a nurse), getting divorced, and helping my sister care for our mother, who was on home hospice back then. So I put my literary ambitions aside to take care of much more important things. Only when I finally got around to the edits and got back to my book doctor almost a year later, he was too busy to look at it. And I understood that, since he works for the State Department and the Ukraine war had just broken out. But I couldn't help feeling I had let a great opportunity slip through my fingers, and now he doesn't even return my emails. So I went back to Gotham Writers and took a much cheaper course in getting published (the book doctor set me back two grand, and the hilarious part is it all goes by word count, so when I found out the small fortune I would be shelling out for my door-stopper behemoth, I edited out 100,000 words over three months: KILL YOUR DARLINGS haha). Well, that was almost two years ago, and I have only sent out about a dozen or so queries during that time. But I think your blog is the shot-in-the-arm I need to get my ass in gear again. I will follow your advice here-68 agents queries in a week! Wow! What the hell have I been doing all this time? Thanks!
I paid Gotham Writers so much money over the years for “query critiques” etc. They are quite useless in my opinion. My philosophy is you are the best judge of your own work.