Query Letter Blues

The dreaded Query Letter…

We’ve all been there— staring at the screen, reading then re-reading our attempts at the dreaded query letter. Every writer has to write them, and every writer seems to hate them. I myself loathed my recent foray into the seventh circle of query letter hell.

My journey started simple enough: a homework assignment from an RL writing group. My mission: to write a first draft query letter for critique. No problem right? Wrong. Many problems, and drafts later (I think I got up to version 9.2) the query letter had me beat (500) to my (0). I was lost.

Miss Conceptions

It’s not that a query letter is confusing. It’s not. No, really— it’s not. The problem with query letters is that they are subjective. There is no right, or wrong way to write a query letter. There are good query letters and bad query letters. Mine fell into the latter category for many reasons.

Thanks to Writer’s Digest resources which can be found HERE I had lots of advice on how to craft my query. But something was still missing. What I had was a lifeless letter that didn’t represent my voice, the tone of my novel, or even its characters. My problem was that my query letter lacked the punch my novel had, but why?

Realizations

In a query letter, you have one page to sell your writing, and your novel idea to an agent, or editor. The piece I decided to do my letter on wasn’t even a completed project! I realized that I had to boil my query letter, and my project down to the bones, then pick the bigger plot question, and that would become the basis for my query letter. Sounds easy right?

Then why did it take me four days to figure that out? Because I got so tied up in trying to find the right way to do it, that I forgot to step back and look at the bigger picture.

Query letters are a pain in the neck. There is no magical way around that, but knowing what I now know, I would strongly recommend authors write a query letter regardless of where they are with their particular work in progress. 

If you’re looking for a place to workshop your query letter, there are several online forums that were of great help to me. The first is WritingForums, I’ve been a member here for years, the people are polite and extremely helpful. Kevin Hearne also recommends AbsoluteWrite’s water cooler forum.

I hope this post helps fellow writers remember to take a step back (and a deep breath) before the query letter blues get to you!  

Thank You

Our blog has been featured in a post called Other Encouraging Words .

I have been following Bonita's blog for over a month now. It's a great place to pick up frequent tips and reminders for your writing. She has a lot of good information and encouragement. If you're in a writing slump, you may find just what you need at Encouraging Words for Writers.

Thank you Bonita!

Freewriting Exercise

During our latest Tuesday meeting we had fun doing a free-writing exercise from Creative Writing by Kathryn Lindskoog. We took some small pieces of paper and each of us wrote an abstract word on one paper and the name of an object on the other. Then we mixed up each pile of papers and drew one slip from each. Then we were to tell how the two were alike. We enjoyed it so much, we decided to publish! Here they are in their mostly unedited forms:

Humor-------Bird

Birds with humor tease the squirrels in my trees. Of course this thought presumes that birds are like humans and capable of thought. Humor exists in creation in like manner as birds do. It takes flight in the mind of the observer or communicate and lands where it is safe in the minds of joyful people and singing birds. The humor of the world is wrapped up in bird songs-making fun of us with their sounds.

mcj

A Toenail is Like Honesty

A toenail is always just what it is, so it is "honest".
One can paint it, cover it up, or hide it, but it will still be a toenail. Therefore, a toenail is like honesty.

Nana

Lemons & Depression

Not the bright elegant yellow of a lemon, but the sour taste of the inside of the lemon.

Is this how we present ourselves .... happy, sunny on the outside, but depressed, sour, introverted on the inside?

Depression will eventually turn a person's sunny side sour if it is allowed to take over our thoughts, our very being.

Grannie Carol

Kleenex & Intrigue

Kleenex is like intrigue because it is made up of layers, tissue thin, which build upon each other to become opaque. At least the good kind of kleenex. I guess cheap kleenex is like a failed attempt at intrigue - it tears and you can see right through it.

MadeByAmanda

Sculpture & Humor

Humor is molded like an artist molds clay. the artist presses and shapes until he gets the effect he wants. In the same way people play with words and ideas, pushing them and shaping them to have a specific effect.

Humor is like a sculpture that was chopped apart and put back together carelessly or absurdly. The sculpture had one message and was morphed into a different message.

DJ

Faith and Hat

A hat covers your head, keeps you warm, protects your vulnerability to the elements. I've heard a hat on your head is more effective than a coat in keeping core body heat in.

Like faith, which seems so small and insignificant, yet the Bible says that if it's like a mustard seed, you can move mountains. Faith, like the humble hat covers you more effectively than any single component in your belief system. It protects you from the spiritual elements that seek to "lower the core temp" of your soul.

Solard

Changing Gears...

Thank you, madebyAmanda for posting the Orwell's Rules post -- timely information from a classic source!

Here's something I came across when satisfying a little curiosity that you all might enjoy -- since most of us have expressed interest in being published...

This link: http://www.pwcwriters.org/penpoints4.htm

Contained therein is a concise bit of information on the different approximate word counts for different types of published works. Begging pardon of anyone if you've already seen it -- I hadn't, so thought I'd share.

Happy...uhm...Day that begins with "M" day!

Hey, Y'all!

DJ had a great idea and although it may have been collaborative in nature she presented it to us on Tuesday's library meeting. The idea was to have a weekly post for this blog, with each member of PnP signing on to take a week. If we all participate, we'll only have to do it about once every 8 weeks or so.

This is my week ;0)

As most of you know, after I mentioned that I'd suffered from writer's block in college and feared it happening again, madebyamanda suggested a book to me, Page after Page by Heather Sellers. At our last Monday meeting, I mentioned that the book was giving me fits because the exercises are so many and so... intense. The book is an Interlibrary Loan, and I'd already extended that IL twice so it was becoming a problem! But I vowed to make it through the book. At about Exercise 17 or 18, the "compost" (Ms. Sellers describes this in the book) really started to cook and I realized -- much to my own surprise -- that I was really doing some productive work following the exercises in this little book!

I think it's a book that a lot of y'all might like to read... and struggle through (!) as well. So, when I was up in Amarillo the other day, I ordered it from the Barnes and Noble! I want to retain ownership of it, but I will lend it out with a full heart to as many of you as wish to try to conquer it's summit! It's a tough little hardback, so it should withstand whatever we can collectively dish out. Hee.

Anyway, Ms. Sellers has some powerful exercises in the book and she backs it up with a rich and varied background-- not always pleasant. The woman has had her share of bumps in the road! But I feel it's been wholly a great experience going through the book, working the exercises -- even if I started the writing with an angry disclaimer as the first sentence: "WHAT is the POINT of this EXerCISE!!!" heh.

Hopefully, the book will be in my possession in a week or so -- and I will hand back the IL copy to Bren, finish the exercises in my newly purchased book, then offer it up to whomever wishes to try it out next.

The book will get you writing. I promise.

OK, I give up!

I used to have a hard time finding things I wanted to read. Because of that, I had a lot of time to write.

Now I have too much that I want to read. With the internet and Inter Library Loan, I am able to find things to read that weren't available to me years ago.

I'm even finding great books of authors that I read as a kid. I never knew of their other books! I'm also finding a lot of newly published books on author websites. ( Deep Waters by M.D. Meyer is one of them.) Then there are the books about writing! So who has time to write?

For those of you that do, here is a website that explains many of the things writing books are frequently telling us to do, like, use the active voice, or show, don't tell, etc. This website for a high school English class explains at least eleven of these basics. So, those of you who don't mind going back to school (I could use a refresher), try out the General Writing Resources of Mr. Braiman. (And, no, you don't need to tell me where I messed up in this post... :-)