Writer's Fallout Shelter

Hi, Molly Jean!

Regarding your question, my advice is to finish the book. Agents are allergic to unfinished books unless you're a celebrity. In a single week of last year, my agent received 512 manuscripts, some solicited, many unsolicited. For the year, he topped 100,000 queries. And this is a moderate-sized NYC agency with half a dozen agents. Queries regarding unfinished projects seldom made it past the opening sentence. If you fail to mention the book is unfinished and the agent asks to read the entire manuscript, you'll be caught in one of those "Ut-oh." moments.

Don't think about agents, publishers, or sending out queries until the story is finished and polished. Concentrate on nothing else.

Once you're finished the story and tweaked it, it's time to send out the query letters in which you'll provide the agent or publisher with a small amount of information about yourself, and describe the premise of the story and other data. More on this a bit later.

I know I sound like a broken record, but finish the story, finish the story, finish the story. I'm not sure how far you're into your project, but until you reach The End, it's not time to think about anything else.

Please keep us posted on your progress.


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