X is for X-factor

The X-factor is that something that makes you special and different.  This (X) is the reason that an agent or publisher should sign you, why a consumer should buy your book.  Your uniqueness.

This X-factor is also something you need to discuss in your query letter.  But what is it?

To figure out what makes you special you have to be well read in your genre and find what makes your work and what makes you different from the rest and what makes you sale-able?

Make a list of your best qualities focusing on what makes your writing different and then one for what makes you different; both aspects are important because you are a packaged deal.  Make a list of all your best qualities that you think would appeal to an editor, agent or publisher and then use these attributes to your advantage when you market yourself and your work in your query letter.

If you have a hard time coming up with items ask your friends and your writing group what they think your best qualities are or for some adjectives they would use to describe you.  They may come up with items you would not.

Good luck and happy writing!

U

Uniqueness and Unity

Excuse the generalization but as a whole we humans are not very accepting of uniqueness.  We should be accepting of the differences in others and in ourselves.  What makes us unique is usually where our strengths lie.

Accepting differences makes it easier for everyone to get along and for the people of the world to unify.  The sooner we all realize that we are one planet and that all the individual countries cannot fix the environmental problems until we work together then no real progress can be made.

Scientist Ken Caldeira was recently interviewed on NPR.  I found this snippet so incredibly astonishing.

But here's how Caldeira visualizes it: "If you were to compress the entire atmosphere so it was the density of water, it would only be 30 feet deep, so all the stuff we're throwing into the atmosphere, it's like we're throwing it into an ocean that's only 30 feet deep."

In fact, when you look at the chemistry of the oceans, the carbon dioxide is already making a measurable change. It reacts with seawater and turns into carbonic acid, and has made the oceans 30 percent more acidic than they were before the industrial revolution.

Doesn’t this make you want to act?  It does for me but we cannot do it on an individual basis.  

We have to unify and act as one family sharing the same home. 

Here is the link to the whole article: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/22/176344300/this-scientist-aims-high-to-save-the-worlds-coral-reefs

Accept and embrace uniqueness and unify across cultures, countries, political parties and save our home.