Friday, July 16, 2010

From this side of the fence

So I was reading BookEnds post on what NOT to put in a query letter. My first thought in reading these was "Well, duh. Obviously you shouldn't do that stuff."

Then my second thought was, "Wait. Wait. I almost did do some of that stuff. What was I thinking?!"

And I remembered then, what it was like to write a query letter cold. I had no--absolutely zero--things going for me in the query department. I had no great recommendations, referrals, conference connections or other "ins" that would make me stand out in the slush pile. I had a ridiculously non-existent bio section of the letter. My only writing credit was...this blog. That's it. No publications, no contest wins.

Nothing.

And even though I wished I had something to fluff out my query, all I had was a pitch paragraph, a paragraph with the nitty-gritty info (word count, genre) and two sentences of bio--one pointing to my blog, and the other thanking the agent for her time.

At the time, I thought it would never work. I was tempted to do all that crap that all those blogs tell us not to do, just so I had something else in my query letter.

But I didn't. I reigned in my frothy-mouth crazy-writer instincts, and wrote the simplest, shortest, clearest letter I could. And I prayed. A lot.

And it worked. (I mean, not at first. I got rejected at first. A lot. But that was because my book sucked, not because of my query letter.) Guys--I realized in reading the BookEnds list that the reason why we writers do all that stupid stuff is because we're looking for something--anything--to give us an edge and help us get these manuscripts we love published. We're not crazy on purpose. Mostly, we're just desperate and frustrated. At least I was.

And it's only now that I'm on the other side of the fence that I realize the best, the very very very best thing we can do is trust the system, write the best pitch we can, and realize that's enough.

14 comments:

Marcia said...

Yes -- the best book and the best query we can. And isn't it such a RELIEF that that's enough? I mean...it's an awful lot, but still.

Christine Fonseca said...

Best book, best pitch AND timing! I think you need it all...

Candyland said...

I made a ton of mistakes that make me cringe now!

Karen Lange said...

Good thoughts. When it comes to queries, I'm open to advice for I dislike them immensely. But all part of the writing life. Thanks for sharing:)
Happy weekend,
Karen

Janet Johnson said...

Oooh . . . I agree with Christine. Timing is so much more than we realize.

But great post Beth. It's good to be reminded. :)

JEM said...

Good advice! Sometimes I just try to keep my head down about what to do or what not to do because it messes with my mind and I end up getting frustrated and turned around.

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

Yay! Thanks for the sanity. Looking for the magic pill = never a good thing.

Dawn Simon said...

Great, inspiring post! Thanks! :)

I hope you have a great weekend!

Rebecca J. Carlson said...

This is a great post, Beth. I recently heard a talk by an author who said that during a certain period of time, her queries got worse and worse due to desperation.
Desperation is ugly.
I think Christine has it right - no amount of fancy query writing will make up for a manuscript that's not ready.

C.R. Evers said...

It's great to see perspectives from both sides. I think a lot of people forget the other side once they've crossed. Some have been fortunate enough to have never been on the "wrong" side long enough to realize the down side. Thnx for sharing!

Anonymous said...

But it's sooooo hard to be so simple and clear :)

Vicki Rocho said...

I had that "no duh" moment too. But if I'd had to write one back in January when I was just starting to learn about all this stuff, I would have made so many huge (and stupid) mistakes.

I'm not ready to query yet, but I'm hoping my all-things-query-obsession will pay off when it is time!

Kathi Oram Peterson said...

I know what you mean about at first thinking you'd never do that in a query and then you stop and think, wait a minute I almost did. Yep, the best book and best pitch and timing play a big part, AND the query needs to be your best. Thanks for the reminder.

Malika Horton said...

Same here Vicki. I'm no where near the time to query yet, but I hope that with all this "studying" I'm prepared.

I need to learn how to recognize my best pitch when I see it.

Awesome post! :D