Save Trees...Use Technology.

So I'm officially going through my second round of editing...I have three points of view other than my own on my book and I've been mentally deciding what I want to change after hearing my three test-readers' advice.  I added a chapter in the beginning after hearing my sister's advice, I've changed a little bit of who I want my main character to be based on my friend Dan's advice, and I'm trying to add detail in areas where I feel it's lacking after my Aunt's advice.  Otherwise I'm working on catching minor errors and making awkward sections sound less so.  The reason for the title of my blog post...I FREAKIN LOVE TECHNOLOGY.  I was trying to decide the best way to do these edits without killing five full trees and since I already own a Mini iPad and a new inexpensive netbook type laptop, I wanted to make sure I could come up with the easiest, most pain free way of editing without having to go back and forth or use the laptop the entire time (Scrivener, please come up with an iPad version so you can solve all my problems!!).  Here's what I came up with:

1.  I compiled my manuscript from Scrivener (where I've already written the whole thing) and saved it into Dropbox in a PDF format.

2.  I opened it in Goodreader on my iPad.  It's an amazing app.  I can write edits directly on the page, like so...

3.  I uploaded what I edited into Dropbox (up to chapter 8 so far...my goal is to do edits everyday and then fix up the manuscript one day a week...it was supposed to be yesterday but I slacked..my parents are coming to visit tomorrow and I have a lot to do)

4.  Opened up Scrivener and added my edited version into the 'research' area of the program, then opened it so it was side by side with the actual manuscript and Viola (spelling?)...I can scroll each down as I go and edit my thoughts in a very user friendly and completely simplified way, all without killing a single tree.  In fact, none of my entire 80,000 words has ever seen a piece of paper.

And that's all for today :)

First Two Queries Sent, First Two Rejections Received

So I finally buckled down recently and finished my query letter.  I have no idea if it'll be good enough to catch an agent's eye, but I felt pretty good about it.  If I get any type of positive response from it I'll probably eventually post it here, but for now, I'm going to wait and see.  My sister also gave me some really great feedback on the book after she read it.  So far, I have feedback from three people, and I've been going back through the manuscript trying to fix it up and tweak it so it works.  I need to put more effort in the synopsis, which I hadn't written yet as of a couple of days ago, but writing it is making me really doubt myself, which I hate.  

I sent out the query to two agents so far and I have already received two rejections.  I really assumed it would take longer to get responses.  I saw somewhere that email queries typically don't even get responses, and I'd honestly rather not get any if they're planning on rejecting.  So far, no such luck, so I get to deal with rejections from jobs and NOW rejections from agents.  I'm really hating the number 13 right now (aka, the year 2013).  I'm gonna  get a whole lot more rejections, from jobs AND agents...so I hope it makes me better at handling it....because it has always been a major weakness of mine.  

Back to sending out the query, working on the synopsis, and sharpening up the manuscript.  I'm going to be unrelenting.  I'm determined.  This is what I want in life, above anything else ever, so now that I've finally written an entire manuscript, I'm not going to quit that easily.  Or at all.  One really great part about the entertainment industry, it's so subjective that even books like 50 Shades of Grey can make millions of dollars.