My Mentors M&M

So, I'm a writer. And what I mean by this is I spend my days alone writing/reading/editing for at least five hours per day. In fact, I've spent so much time writing/reading/editing that I have two manuscripts ready to go. It's exciting, except for one thing. I've started to despise the proposal/query letter writing process. I find it all just a bit boring and tedious: first you write a letter expounding the wonders of your book, then you wait ... and wait for MAYBE  someone to email you back saying, "Yes, we'd love to read a "partial" (which is your proposal and sample chapters.) Then--and here's the truly exciting part--you wait some more--maybe you wait a month or maybe THREE MONTHS. Then--IF THEY WRITE YOU BACK-- you receive a letter that says any one of the following:
-no thank you, but good luck placing elsewhere;
-you have no "platform" and we've decided to only take on authors with platforms;
-yes! We'd love to sign you on--we believe in you as a writer and we are confident we can sell your book! (This is the elusive answer we writers are all hoping for.)

Well, as they say MISERY LOVES COMPANY and so I thought to make this process a little more fun I would blog about it and hopefully some of you wonderful writers out there would join me in following--to the T--the advice of agents Mr. Mike Nappa (77 Reasons Why your Book was Rejected {and how to be sure it doesn't happen again}) and Mr. Michael Larsen  (How to Write a Book Proposal) .

I will refer to my new mentors as M&M.

M&M seem to know what they're talking about. After all, with chapters titled "Your Writing is Crap" and "You are Lazy" it's like Mr. Mike Nappa knows me already. Mr. Michael Larsen seems no less awesome. He's going to teach me how to build a platform (I've been rejected twice for having no platform), then he's going to teach me how to write a killer proposal "THAT GETS RESULTS." Excellent. Good. I'm ready to learn! And I'm ready to bag me an agent.