Young Authors And Your Hair

I brought this up with Ciara Knight who runs an amazing blog, and yes, I am an odd duck that thinks of these things. Oh and I may have been influenced from having just watched Tangled as well (and the subliminal messages pushed by Disney).

Basically, I just want to know what's up? Why is long hair draping the heads of all of your books? Why do all of your female protagonists have long hair? 

Exhibit A--Please turn your eyes to the anecdotal evidence I have gathered to support my hypothesis:

Now, I just want to dismiss the idea that I'm making a blanket generalization.  I know that the percentage of young adult books that feature girls with long hair is not 100%.  Ciara Knight has already told me in a comment that her protagonist has short hair.  But the percentage is high.  I'm going to say maybe 95%.

So what's up with hair?  Why?  One of my best friends is Meg.  I asked her if I could post a picture of her and she agreed for this post that it would be okay.  So here she is at left.

Notice how short her hair is.  I think that Meg is a beautiful woman. So I guess my question is this.  What kind of message are all of you young adult authors out there peddling in your book? Is it that young ladies need to have long hair? If so...why?

Is it beauty?  Does having short hair make you less attractive to men?  I for one have plenty of guy friends and they never point out a girl's hair as the thing they are attracted to. It's always the "rack" or "butt" or body type.  So, am I just not getting something here?

Amanda Hocking goes really far with hair.  Her book Switched has pages devoted to hair care products, she refers to her character's hair all the time, calls it an unmanageable frizz and a tangled mess and whatnot.  She even says that her hair makes her ugly.  Like WTF?! Really?

And then there's the young adult movie Tangled by Walt Disney.  Rapunzel loses all of her magical power and becomes normal when her hair is cut.  It also goes from sunny gold to dark brown. However, I still find the new Rapunzel attractive for a cartoon.  But having her hair cut also freed her from the evil witch that dominated her life.  So is this a message? If you cut your hair you lose your power but you also set yourself free.

So discuss please.  Let me know your opinions on hair. I'm interested and want to know.  And please tell me if you are writing a young adult novel with a protagonist that has short hair. I would like to know why you made that choice seeing as the market is awash with long-haired ladies.

Error in your query? Don't sweat it. Agent and Big Six contract incoming

Recently, Suzie Townsend got very excited over a query sent to her by author Mindee Arnett.  You can read it here.  By very excited, I mean she took time away from a conference and from planning a trip to New Zealand to drop everything for it. That's pretty major, right?  I want you to notice this line in particular from that query:

"Dusty learns that together she and Eli posses the rare ability to predict..."

pos·sessVerb/pəˈzes/

1. Have as belonging to one; own: "I do not possess a television set".

2. Have possession of as distinct from ownership.

And in Suzie's pitch that she sent to editors at the Big Six that she sold in 16-days to Tor Teen, she also had an error.  You can read it here and I point out the error for you below:

"Now the Dusty has to follow the clues..."

Extra "the" there in case you don't see it.

Scratches head in puzzlement.

I'm not trying to throw eggs on Mindee's accomplishment. On the contrary, I congratulate her for being successful. And the same goes for super agent Suzie Townsend...congrats on her being so successful too.

No, what I'm bitching about discussing today is the lack of actual standards for this industry. It's all subjective.  It depends on mood, lighting, whatever a person ate for breakfast, timing, what they had to drink, did they sleep well the night before, etc.

I think that for the unpublished, unknown author, the single greatest factor in publishing success is LUCK.  Maybe as high as 50%.  Think about that...your chance of publishing is at least 50% luck.

This should read "Avoid publishing unlucky authors. Throw half of the slush pile
in the automatic rejection bin without reading them. What's left are the lucky ones.
Thank God for the form rejection. Otherwise you might actually owe
some of those people an actual response."

I just think that the advice given to authors about writing query letters should be more...I dunno... truthful.  For one, spelling errors don't necessarily matter. If your query letter can get the point across and the agent reading it likes what you've written, then you'll be successful.  Anyone that's written a query knows what a pain they are to write.  A ton of work goes into them.  Maybe if agents said, "Hey...you can follow the guidelines but really...to get our attention...you need to be lucky. Sorry...but the truth hurts."

Here's what I would have on my agency website if I were a literary agent.  I'd have the usual stuff, query formats and whatnot withstanding, but right after the part that says, "Send us only your most polished query letter" would be the part that says, "And if you're LUCKY, you'll get my attention, and I'll get back to you."  That would be honesty.

Random but related thought ==> If Suzie did care about spelling...maybe she actually thinks that "possess" is spelled "posses" and never called into question the quality of the book. I mean, I hear all the time from agents that "an error in your query gives us an impression of how your book is. One error there makes me wonder how chock full of them your manuscript may be. It's an instant form rejection!" So just imagine if the person reading your query thinks a word is spelled one way when in fact it is spelled another and they reject it thinking you didn't spell check. Wouldn't THAT be interesting?

And just for the record...I don't see content-wise why this offering from Mindee caught Suzie's eye.  That's why I say she got lucky.  It seems like a cross between Harry Potter with a wizard "school" via Chamber of Secrets (kids being killed) with that of other tropes like Being Human's ghost main character that watched her former boyfriend sleep and Piers Anthony's "Nightmare" (part of the Xanth series). I mean...I've read lots of "these types of queries" on my journeys through the blogosphere from people getting ready to send to agents that want help on their query letters.

I'm not saying it doesn't deserve to get published. It absolutely does. And absolutely deserves representation. But so do a dozen others that I can name off the top of my head that have queries very similar to this only without any errors, and these authors got nothing but rejections.

And you know what advice people out there give to these writers that are getting rejected.  It's this: "Oh, your query must not be working. It must be bad. Revise and resend."  Basically, they are told to go back to the drawing board, to re-edit, and revise, and send to new agents when they are ready.  However, there is no scientific rock-solid proof that this is the case. I'm an atheist...I need proof to believe in things. There is no proof. It's simply conjecture...guessing.  You know what I say?  I say you got rejected because you just WEREN'T LUCKY.  You got that?  You have BAD frickin' luck? How do you like them apples?  I don't suggest you go and buy a lotto ticket anytime soon. You'll probably lose at that too.

With regard to the query example...I don't see what caused the "OMG...I MUST DROP EVERYTHING NOW BECAUSE THIS IS AMAZING" moment. Especially given the spelling error. "Posses" is plural for "posse" which means a group of individuals.  It's all...just...interesting.

That's my two cents for today.  Invest in some four leaf clovers and some giraffe earrings of amazing juju.  They shall serve you better than a spell check.

The Secret is the McDonald's Cheeseburger

DISCLAIMER:  I AM NOT an industry professional. I am not an agent nor a publisher. I'm some dude with a middle-class salary that sits around and throws his opinions out to the world on a blog. Some of them, like this one, will be controversial.  I read A LOT into books, into what people say, and into what people do not say (that I think is the most interesting).  So read my latest interpretation of what I'm saying about the Big Six publishing industry below knowing that I'm just some guy with an opinion and every person has them.  I just happen to write them down.  And thanks for the shoutout at The Quintessential Query Experiment :)

Yesterday I came across a post written by fellow writer and blogger L.G. Smith.  She attended a workshop held by Sara Megibow, an agent for Nelson Literary Agency, and what was talked about just confirmed what I've been saying all along.  Here...I'm going to cut and paste it:

"Not knowing your genre and NOT writing to a formula. Sara (who represents highly commercial fiction) needs to be able to immediately identify within the first thirty pages which genre the submission falls under. Each genre has a formula or certain expectations that must be met. For example, a Young Adult novel can only be told from the perspective of someone between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, must be a coming of age story, and cannot ever show the point-of-view of an adult. Adhering to word count standards is also part of following the formula. Most adult novels should come in around 100K, while Young Adult should be between 65K-85K. Veering from these standards will result in a rejection, because she isn't looking for the exception to the rule."

So there you have it.  Getting published traditionally by the Big Six means you are writing to a formula (not my words but an authentic agent that has the cahones to come out and say it). It's why all the books that are coming out all sound the same. Stop kidding yourself if you have an agent and write YA and think that your work is not formulaic.  For those of you that desire to have the literary agent, fame, fortune, and snobbery rights to look down on those who are not represented, here is your toolbox:

• White-wash your story. Blacks, gays, lesbians, hispanics can only be put into the book if they die or are there to come in second-place to the white people.
• Female point-of-view, first-person, present-tense. Look at the Hunger Games for a really good example of this. 
• Love triangle. You gotta have two hot guys and they gotta really want to bone your protagonist. But the actual boning can never happen.
• Powers: vampires, mermaids, x-men, angels, demons, undead, magic, and if all else fails, go for the autistic savant that melts brains when he counts toothpicks.  People will be like OMG...that's so original!
• There must be tension between the guys to the point that the girl is always throwing up her hands saying, "Enough!"
• A setting.  If you don't want to make one up roll the dice on the following chart (grab a six-sided die):

1. Future apocalyptic. The world has gone to shit for one of the following reasons: a) overpopulation b) natural disaster c) global warming d) nuclear fallout e) a Jerry Springer virus made all the people in the world into white trash and they killed each other over child support.
2. Underwater.  People live underwater because living on land is so 2008.  And being underwater means everyone has a swimmer's body.
3. Sky.  People live in the sky because living on land is so 2007.
4. Underground. People live under the ground because Sn00ki got a disease called tanmonsteritis from UV rays and they turned her into a monster that started eating people by the truckload but she cannot go underground because UV rays now power her life force.
5. Space.  People live in space because the planet is overcrowded and space is where no one can hear you scream (blatantly stolen from Alien--like that matters since ideas from the eighties are getting recycled anyway).
6. Modern high school.  This only works if there are bullies.  Bullying is so 2010. The bully should also be a stupid jock because there are no smart jocks and if they were smart they wouldn't be bullies.

I have to say that knowing this and being validated by hearing it from an agent even though I suspected it to be true...puts a slightly bad taste in my mouth.  This brings up a matter of respect.  As authors, we tend to look up to the writers who are Big Six published.  We put them on a pedestal.  Is this all misplaced when we realize that the reason they got picked up and published in 2011 is because they followed a formula...whether it be accidental or intentional?  Here's an analogy for you.

The McDonald's Cheeseburger is made the same no matter where you go.
It's one of their most successful formulas and is a constant seller. Just like
in writing, you can change it up a bit. Hold the mustard, no pickles, no ketchup.
But all-in-all it remains the same.  It's kinda like Dystopian YA fiction, right?

I don't know about you, but I don't respect the McDonald's cheeseburger. It tastes the same no matter what city I happen to be in.  Even though I occasionally eat them, I'd rather have a bacon, garlic burger covered in sauteed mushrooms and made from prime meat that I can get at a greasy spoon any day.  But no one can dispute the selling power of McDonald's, right?  Do you aspire to be McDonald's or do you aspire to be the chef that makes an individual burger that is unforgettable? And if so, how do you get the world to know about it when McDonald's has a vested interest in keeping your unique creation unknown to protect their business model?