lost manuscripts.<\/a> Now I’m finding manuscripts that were not only lost but entirely forgotten.<\/p>\nIn most cases, for good reason.<\/p>\n
Short stories, novellas, worldbuilding notes on worlds I never finished building,<\/p>\n
Frex, I’ve found mysterious messages scrawled across the top of a scene that begins and ends on page 5. “Note to self: I’m not sure what ATEN is, but it is really important.” <\/p>\n
Self to Note: WTF?<\/p>\n
On the one hand, I think, well, if I was worried I hadn’t written the million words of drek it supposedly takes to become a decent writer, clearly that fear was unfounded.<\/p>\n
But, egad, it is SO BAD.<\/p>\n
The worst embarrassment of all has got to be the query letter I found. The author talks about herself in third person for three paragraphs, and then in the fourth paragraph, adds, “As the above mentioned author, I hope you will consider becoming my agent…” <\/p>\n
Shudder.<\/p>\n
Let us not even mention the grandiose and ridiculous claims made by this third person author. And the kicker is that I can’t even tell what book I thought I was querying. Somehow I forgot to mention that.<\/p>\n
Unbelievable. <\/p>\n
Present Self: Please, please, younger self, tell me you never sent this query letter anywhere.<\/p>\n
Younger Self: Pretty sure I didn’t.<\/p>\n
Present Self: [lets out breath in big whoosh]\n
Younger Self: HERE’S the query I sent….<\/p>\n
Present Self: MUST…. NOT…. LOOK….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are you ever plagued by the worry, “What if I haven’t written enough drek?” I’ve been going through boxes of my old papers recovered from my mom’s garage. One held a trove of old stories. I’ve already found a few lost manuscripts. Now I’m finding manuscripts that were not only lost but entirely forgotten. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}