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I'm not lost! This is Christy. I'm home. I'm well. I'm beyond blessed!
Besides lots of feedings and cleaning up after Christmas (we had too many toys BEFORE opening up all of the new toys...Goodwill, here we come!), I've been querying and critiquing. Next week, I'm looking forward to getting back into writing. I have a WIP to continue and a companion novel to the one I'm querying I'm excited to plot out!
I realized recently that although we share lots of advice on querying--most of which says to ONLY include what happens in the first 50 pages of your novel in the query--, I haven't actually taken that advice. My queries have included the main characters, the inciting incident, a few key events and then I jump to the climax and the stakes. Since the climax occurs around page 170 of my novel, that's hardly following the advice we've been given and have handed out.
I was also using the climax as my hook. Whoops. Plus, shouldn't the hook be in the first para? Well, I still don't think I have one of those (I have the first para, of course, just not the hook), but last night I scanned the first 50 pages of my novel and wrote a query that truly encompassed them. I don't know how good it is, but at least I'm doing what I'm told. (Something I constantly tell my kids and students to do. ("Follow directions!") Teachers are the worst listeners, I tell you!
Have a happy and blessed week. I'll be back again soon, I'm sure.