Query Me This...

I just finished my read-through and edit of the first draft of Branson Heights! Now my fabulous 2 first readers are going through it before I give the book to Amazing Ashley--who will no doubt tell me all the things I've done wrong. From there, I'll have a few more beta readers go through it for me, do a final edit, and start to query. Really though, I feel great about this manuscript because of how much I learned from writing and editing Eternal Starling.

I decided to start drafting my query letter, thinking the experience would be as long and painful as writing my last query letter was. So I was shocked when my Branson Heights query seemed to just flow onto the page. The query for Eternal Starling took me about twenty drafts, several phone conversations with Amazing Ashley, as well as advice from an author friend before I got it right. It was truly harder to write than the whole book! I'm not sure what the difference is this time around. Maybe it's because I know what I'm doing now and what agents want, or it might be because Branson Heights came together better and that made it easier to summarize the book in 250 words? But it's nice to know that I learned something and that the more practice I have, the easier it gets.

What about you guys? If you've written more than one novel, do you feel like the whole process from writing to querying is easier with each additional project?