The loneliest part of writing: submitting.

I supposed it's a bit overstated. But, today, I started to look for agencies and agents to submit a query to. It occurred to me that unlike developing an idea, writing the story, revising the story, this is something done alone. Writing the query? You can get feedback from other writers. Same thing for the synopsis. After all that, it's just me that has to click the send button. Alone in the room, a dog barking in the distance, clicking sending.

There are people who give themselves goals. "I will submit to two agents a day." Or, "I will send out three stories a week." And yet, when it comes down to that moment, it's just them, at a computer, clicking send/submit. All alone.

Even if I or they went out to a coffee shop, crowded with pour-over hipsters, all that cheeriness has nothing to do with my mission, any author's mission. Click the send button. And I'm really the only one that knows that I did it.

Maybe we need an "I submitted a query" sticker. Kind of like the "I voted" sticker. But who'd give it to me? The agent/editor? Be serious.

Oh, what if I threw a submission party. Not to celebrate my submitting something. Rather, a bunch of writers sitting around, chatting together, drinking something mind numbing, and cheering every time one of us click the send button. Would that be encouraging? Would it really be a group thing? Or is the act of clicking send on a query/submission always an isolated action?

Click. Send. Click. Send.

Hook line and stinker

'Cause sometimes a hook line stinks. Not so much because it's poorly written, at least there was an effort made. No, what bugs me is the slight of hand.

"I have something to tell you about A, but first I'll tell you a bunch of stuff I really wanted to talk about but didn't think I could make interesting enough."

Sometimes it just doesn't live up to the promise. It's like an eagerly awaited blind date that arrives so late that all the excitement is gone. (That and they look nothing like their picture.)

Do I have a specific book in mind? Yes. And no. The post is because of a specific book in mind, but it's not the only nor will it ever be the last. And as I don't want to disparage any individual writer I'll have to sort of make it up a similar situation.

The opening paragraph is a single line.

That was the day I saw the man in the polka dot suit for the first time.

So this is interesting. Someone in a polka dot suit the speaker will see more than once. Today was the first time. There must be significance to this. I shall read on.

I was scaling the broken exterior of the old city hall. The pigeons had their nest up here and I was always assured of finding at least a couple of eggs. Pigeon eggs are good eating when you've nothing else to eat.

And so it goes. Two pages in and I've heard nothing more about this man in the polka dotted suit. I've gotten a lot of backstory. I feel I've read my way down several tangents before being yanked back to the building and the eggs and the view. But where's the polka dot suit?
I think it's a primordial problem in writing. It is drilled into writers that they need a hook to grab the audience. Some overdo it with exaggeration. Some are very good with it by just starting the story interestingly. Megan O'Keefe's book, Steal the Sky opens thus:

It was a pretty nice burlap sack. Not the best he’d had the pleasure of inhabiting, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t bad either. The jute was smooth and woven tight, not letting in an inkling of light or location. It didn’t chafe his cheeks either, which was a small comfort.

And we continue with this character as the burlap sack is soon removed and the story moves forward. I can't imagine how big of a fail this would have been if Megan had switched to some other scene after this paragraph. Or worse, started filling in the backstory of the town or something else that she might have felt the audience wouldn't read unless she gave us a picture of her story that didn't represent the story.

How about this from Patrick Swenson's The Ultra Thin Man:

They said Dorie Senall deliberately killed herself, but I doubted the truth of that, considering she had worked for the movement.

There's a lot of interesting stuff to hook a reader. But rather than start telling me about the city or the pigeons, Patrick tells me about Dorie Senall's death and why it didn't jive with the protagonist.

My point isn't to tell anyone how to open their story or how to write a good opening line to hook a reader. I want writers to know that if you want me to read your book - I gave up on the polka dot suited man after three pages - deliver on the promise you made at the beginning.