Dashboard Literary Agents Success Story Interviews Elise Scott

Success Story Interview - Elise Scott

An Interview with Elise Scott (EliseScott on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Marisa Corvisiero of Corvisiero Literary Agency.

04/22/2024

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?: Elise Scott:
How to Grow an Apocalypse is an adult speculative fiction novel with sci-fi, eco-fiction, and horror elements. When disabled elder Hazel saves a dying ivy vine and discovers it's filled with nanobots and has achieved consciousness, she finally has a friend she can really relate to—until it decides to destroy humanity.

What inspired me to write it? Fear. I was grappling with some unresolved trauma, and a lot of it was coming up as fear, so I asked myself to imagine who I would have become if the thing I feared most (losing my rainbow baby) had come to pass. And thus, Hazel was born in my mind. Then I remembered this article I'd seen a few years before, about how scientists at MIT were putting nanobots into spinach leaves and the plants were emailing them to let them know whether there were landmines in the soil around their roots. I'm really made for speculative fiction, because my "what if...?" brain kicked into overdrive.
QT: How long have you been writing?: Elise Scott:
I've loved writing all of my life, but I didn't write my first novel until about 2005 or 2006 (what happened to it is a long and ridiculous story). I got some toxic feedback around 2010 that banged up my confidence pretty badly, but I picked writing back up again about five years later, and I haven't stopped since.
QT: How long have you been working on this book?: Elise Scott:
I wrote my first draft of How to Grow an Apocalypse during NaNoWriMo 2021. First time I ever won NaNo. I remember the boots I wore to out dinner with my kiddo to celebrate! I felt zesty as heck!
QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?: Elise Scott:
The bad thing about really toxic advice is that it really can destroy a writer's confidence. The closest I ever came to quitting was when that happened to me. But the good news is that if you overcome that, you get a whole lot better at finding what's useful in each bit of feedback you receive. And honestly, for me, the biggest step forward came when I found my writing partner and best friend, April. She tells me the absolute truth, good and bad. She's my biggest fan, but also my most pointed critic. And when she tells me what's not working, she always does it in a way that inspires me to see the potential, not just the flaws, in what I'm writing.
QT: Is this your first book?: Elise Scott:
Nope. Aside from the one that went missing almost twenty years ago, I wrote two fatally flawed and forever shelved manuscripts, then a YA manuscript that I still have hope will see the light of day, and then How to Grow an Apocalypse. While polishing and querying it, I've written 1 ½ other books, and plotted out the next one in line after I finish my current WIP.
QT: Do you have any formal writing training?: Elise Scott:
Nope. I've read lots of craft books, spent endless hours talking about writing with my writing partner, given and received a lot of feedback. But my last English class was ENG 201 in undergrad, and I've never taken a class on creative writing or composition.
QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?: Elise Scott:
I respect that some people do, but I am a disabled solo parent and homeschool mom, so I write when and where I find time, energy, and inspiration.
QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?: Elise Scott:
How to Grow an Apocalypse has been through 8 significant revisions, and quite a few editing and polishing passes each time. I'm a big believer in trying out developmental edits to see if they make the story better, so when I came across a good idea for a revision, or one was given to me, I made a new version number and dove right in. I don't always end up keeping them, but for me, the only way to know if it will make the story better is to try.
QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?: Elise Scott:
I absolutely did, and their help was invaluable. Especially my writing partner, April!
QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?: Elise Scott:
I had a beat sheet for an outline, but I went off the rails a few times when the story or characters went places I wasn't expecting. It all worked out in the end, though. I guess I'm a pantster.
QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?: Elise Scott:
I started querying in 2018, so six years ago. I started querying How to Grow an Apocalypse just a few days shy of one year ago.
QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?: Elise Scott:
78 for this book. 411 total.
QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?: Elise Scott:
I looked for the genres they represented, and I was really focused on finding someone who could understand my marginalized identities/experiences and was looking to advocate for writers like me. I found a lot of agents through searches and reports on QueryTracker, and a lot more by seeing what agents had to say in interviews and on social media about publishing and the roles they felt agents should play in it.
QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?: Elise Scott:
I did tailor the vast majority of my queries. Some people, I'd interacted with on social media before querying. Others had a specific relationship with a book, a genre, a trope, or a marginalization that I shared, so I would start with how that was important to my story and my hopes for its place in the world.
QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?: Elise Scott:
My writing partner and I have this button jar. It was originally a one-gallon pickle jar. Every time either one of us gets a rejection (on any writing, including short work, poetry, etc. as well as queries), we put a button in the jar. I'm betting it holds well over 1000 buttons. If you want to see pictures, I blogged about it on my website at elise-scott.com. Anyway, every time we got a rejection, we'd put a button in the jar, and we'd try to make sure we had at least twenty queries out at any given time so that each individual rejection stung less.
QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?: Elise Scott:
Sure thing!!

Success Story Interview - Elise Scott

Query Letter: