Tag: query letter

Toughen Up?

In the last couple of weeks, agents and writers have been buzzing about the practice of a few agents and interns who critique queries via Twitter and the web. Some sites – like Query Shark – require writers to volunteer their work for review. I think these sites can be extremely helpful, especially for those who learn by example. Others are not voluntary. Any writer who submits to the – sometimes anonymous – agent or interns running these sites or hashtags could see their query pop up for critique and ridicule. While the agent/intern may intend to be helpful to writers, too often the tone of these query critiques can turn to ridicule. Regardless, I’ve seen many writers defending this practice, and the main defense has been that querying writers need to “toughen up.”

This “toughen up” philosophy makes me cringe every time I read it, especially coming from other writers. This business of writing is so difficult. Forget the actual work that goes into writing a book, and the heartache that goes into editing it. Forget how painful it can be to get your first and fifteenth beta critiques. Completely disregard how mysterious and difficult it is to hammer out that first query letter.

What about sending that query letter out and getting umpteen rejections from agents? Say you actually get an agent and you go on sub. Now you are in for a series of rejections from editors. Okay, you finally get an editor who loves it, and your book is published. Now, you get a bunch of book reviewers shredding your work.

Of course writers have to toughen up, but that happens naturally – trial by fire, if you will. My own skin has toughened – how can it not? BUT I don’t understand why we are so quick to throw other writers and their work under the bus – whether for our desire to learn or for pure entertainment – and justify it by saying writers need to toughen up or not be so precious about their work. The inference is that we’re helping this writer by tearing down their work in a public forum. Seriously? It sounds more like natural selection – only the thick-skinned writers will survive to the next round of horror. WTH?

Isn’t this business hard enough to navigate without criticizing people who dare to TRY? Why is it okay to learn at the expense of others? And how arrogant is it for us to decide when others should “toughen up” on their individual journey’s?

*steps away from soapbox*

Guest Post: Kate Hart on Querying and Applying to College

I begged invited Kate to guest post a gazillion years while ago. She is funny, talented, and an amazing friend. We are proof that a “virtual” friendship can work, and I have approximately 900 Twitter DMs to her in case you doubt me. Aside from my sister, she was the first person I told when I got an agent, and she jumped up and down with me. I can’t wait until it’s my turn to do the same with her, and I am biting my nails to the quick as she embarks on this terrifying illuminating journey.  Read on to see her thoughts on querying.

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Cory is my first “writing friend,” and among the many things cementing the friendship is the fact that between the two of us, we have probably applied to school more times than half the eastern seaboard. I’ve tried and disliked three separate graduate programs (turns out I really want to write– who knew?); I’ll let Cory fill in her own educational history below.*

My fickle obsession with higher education has an upside, though. It was good preparation for querying. In many ways, the processes are the same:

• You must sum up your entire novel/being in a short letter/essay and submit to the judgment of strangers.
• An obscene amount of research will serve you well.
• Connections in the biz/on the board of directors can help you out– but aren’t necessary.
• That said, having an alum/a published writer for a parent doesn’t hurt.
• Your extra-curricular activities really can help– or hinder, depending on what you’ve been doing outside of school/saying online.
• There will be lots of hurdles to jump through. (Synopsis or no? Sample pages or no? Personal statement or no? Times or Courier?) These are designed to test your dedication. You have to prove you want it. And that you can follow directions.
• It will be tempting to apply/query the same places as your friends.
• You will spend a LOT of time checking your mail/inbox.
• You will probably panic. A lot.
• You’ll have to accept that the decision is out of your hands.
• Rejection will hurt. It will be disheartening, even embarrassing. It will not be the end of the world.
• You will be jealous when others succeed before you.
• You might have to choose between several good offers. You can only choose one.
• A good match is essential. If you choose wrong, you can probably change later, but it won’t be pleasant.
• Once you get in/get agented, you have a whole new challenge ahead of you.
• In grad school as well as writing, it’s publish or perish.

The good news is that unlike school applications, you don’t have to pay to query (and if you do, RUN THE OTHER WAY). You don’t have to take a standardized test… but you also don’t get the luxury of a safety school. Few people will question your decision to go to school; few people will believe you actually think you can get published.

You can query from anywhere and don’t have to worry about a campus visit, but there’s no promise of keg parties in the future to keep you motivated. There is, however, the dream of hitting it big and making a gazillion dollars. And if you’re really lucky, both in school and writing, you might make some new best friends– and you don’t have to share a small dorm room or eat cafeteria food in the meantime.

*Note from Cory: I’ve been to so many colleges, I frequently lose count. I think I’m at 11 now, and I’m working on my second Master’s. Even between degrees, I’ve taken classes for fun, like Poli Sci and French.  Admissions departments fear me and my boatload of transcripts.

Tough Love for Writers

December was a dark month in my life. Behind on my schoolwork, my responsibilities, my life, I felt like my writing had no direction and no hope of getting published. Agents had requested my full, but as time went by without a response I let doubt sink in. This niggling, pervasive doubt said, “You’ll never make it,” and I started to believe it. A horrible thing happened: I sabotaged myself.

I see it every day on the AW boards and Twitter. A rejection comes in, and a writer thinks about quitting, no longer sure this dream is worth balancing on the edge of heartache every day. Like those other dejected writers, I couldn’t write, couldn’t think, couldn’t find the joy I had when I was writing my novel. If you can relate to me at all, here’s where I tell you something you may not want to hear.

It was my own damned fault. I let the querying and the quest for publication overtake my love of spinning stories. I did that. Not the agents who rejected me, or the ones who were too busy to get back to me on my timeline. The stories didn’t go away. My confidence in my ability to tell them did.

When you are writing, the experience belongs to you. The exhilaration and obsession and frenzy to put words to screen: All yours. The experience of reading the finished work belongs to others, but you have sole and proprietary custody of the rest. Shame on you and shame on me for giving that away to others.

You might think it’s easy for me to say this now that I have an agent. Not true. My family knew my self-doubt had reached an all-time low when I went home for Christmas and basically cried for a week. My brother-in-law – a very talented musician – knows all about dreams that don’t come true. For Christmas, he had two copies of my book bound in secret – one for me and one for my greatest fan, my sister. Then he delivered me a solid lecture about having a little faith and remembering that my accomplishments are not measured on anyone’s scale but my own. Wise man and a lot of tough love.

I didn’t rediscover hope like I was in a Hallmark special. I went home, opened my new WIP and made myself write, even though it felt like pulling impacted wisdom teeth. And damn it if he wasn’t right. As soon as I let go and started writing, the worry about the queries and all the rest faded. I didn’t give up on my dream of getting published, but I let another one take higher precedence: a dream that I could fall in love with words like I had before. And then I wrote some lines that shocked me with how right and perfect they were, and I sighed, “There it is. There’s that feeling again.”

Two weeks later, I got an offer.

My friend, Kate, called me a “zen princess” recently. The truth is I’ve discovered that being a writer is like taking an upper followed by a downer and then repeat. I’m going to do my best to hold on to the joy where I can in this process. And when I begin to doubt myself, or give away what’s mine, I’m going to hope my brother-in-law delivers another swift kick to set me to rights.

Querying: Where to Begin?

You wrote a novel, and you made revisions. You had beta readers, and you made revisions. You went to a workshop, and you made revisions. You’ve polished your piece to be the best you can possibly make it. Now what? I get this question a lot from writers who have no idea what the whole querying process entails. Here are some basic tips to help guide the uninitiated.

1. Write a rocking query letter. This letter is your introduction to agents and includes a short summary of your work. You get one page to draw the attention of the elusive agent. You will spend hours crafting this one-page Times New Roman nightmare. Lucky for you, several agents have been kind enough to post their guides to writing query letters, including Nathan Bransford, Kristin Nelson, and Janet Reid. Peruse their blogs for tips. I’ve also included my query letter here as an example, along with the tips an agent offered to make my specific letter better.
2. Have other proof your rocking query letter. After you’ve drafted your query letter, you might want to post it to the Absolute Write Share Your Work forums to have it critiqued, or have a good friend (who is grammar-wise) proof it for you. You will find that you are constantly tweaking that letter to make it better. Continue to proof it with each tweak. Tweak. Proof. Repeat. [Did you catch that I left the “s” off of “others” in this heading? You might not catch it on your own work either.]
3. Research agents. There are hundreds of agents out there. How do you possibly figure out who to send your work to and who would be a right fit? Here’s what I did. I went to Querytracker.net and looked up authors in my genre. Those agents went on my to-query list. I visited their PublishersMarketplace and AgentQuery pages to see who they repped and their record of sales. I also checked the Absolute Write Bewares and Backgrounds Checks forum to see if authors had issues with any of these agents, like scam agents who charge writers to read their work. After all that, if the agents fit my criteria, they went on my to-query list. This process takes HOURS, but it’s important. This person will have your career in their hands, and you want to make the right decision.
4. Research specific agent query requests. Don’t send a query until you know if the agent wants a query letter or a query letter plus the first ten pages of your book. Every agent has different criteria. Know what they are.
5. Address your query properly. This is by far one of the biggest pet peeves agents seem to have and an easy mistake to make. Make sure you have not sent a request for Ms. X to Mr. Y. This screams unprofessionalism, and your query may be deleted immediately. I can’t say I blame the agents, so check the address and salutation before you hit the send button.
6. Be organized. It’s important to keep track of your submissions. Know who you’ve sent query letters to and record who you’ve heard back from. You don’t want to bother an agent with a query follow up if they’ve already rejected you. It makes you look unprofessional. I used Querytracker to organize my queries, but a lot of people use tables in Word or Excel. Whatever your method, stick to it.
7. Wait. This is the hardest part. You will hear querying authors wail about this. Sometimes an agent responds in five minutes and sometimes they respond in five months. There is no norm. Rejections may flood in, and you may begin to feel despondent. During this time, you should get going on a new work. Don’t let your life revolve around your gmail. Trust me. I speak from experience.
8. What to do with a rejection. Chalk it up and move on. Nine times out of ten, you will get a form rejection. Agents get hundreds of queries a day sometimes. IF they take the time to give you personal feedback, show some class and thank them. This applies to every step from here on out.
9. Partial Request. If an agent writes back and requests a partial, they will tell you what to send. It may be the first 30 or 50 pages, or even the first three chapters. Pay attention to their request. If they read your partial and don’t think it fits them, they may reject you. If they like your partial, the agent may ask you for a full. This whole process can take months, so be patient.
10. Full Request. This is the mecca of querying. You may get a full just from a query or it may come after a partial. Either way, it’s exciting and your heart beats fast and you’re thinking OhmygoshohmygoshIcouldgetpublished. Slow down. You may be one of 50 fulls that the agent requested of which they may make only two offers. Celebrate the victory (because it is a victory), but KEEP WORKING. More months may pass while the agent responds to their fulls. If you don’t get an offer for your work, you want to have something new to start querying.

Now, if you are lucky enough to get an offer after all of this, trust me on this – you will put Ochocinco’s endzone celebrations to shame.

Query Me Crazy

**UPDATE: My agent, Laura Bradford, broke down my query letter over at YA Highway to reveal why she asked to see my novel.

So you wrote your novel, and you want to get published. So you send your manuscript to editors at all the major publishing houses and bam! Done deal. You’ve got a contract and your book will be on the NY Times Bestseller list and you’re bragging to your friends. NOT! Most publishing houses won’t even open the envelope with your manuscript: they only talk to agents of writers.

Okay, you regroup and research agents and send a bunch of them your manuscript and they decide to rep you and they get you a contract with a publishing house. Back up a minute… Did I hear you right? Agents want a one-page query letter before they even decide to look at my work? Seriously, the whole publishing business is a mystery.

For the last few months I’ve been in query letter hell. I sent a bunch of letters out following the standards I’d found online from culling information from various writer/agent websites. When the rejections came pouring in, I wrote to an agent who had a reputation for being helpful and asked why she rejected me – was it my idea or was it the query letter? She extended some invaluable advice. I promptly sent out my revised letter to new agents. Within two weeks, I had seven agents asking for full or partial requests. I can only believe it’s the letter, so I offer this up to you in hopes that it helps. This is also posted in the Absolute Write Water Cooler SYW Query Letter forum where you can have your query letter critiqued by other writers.

Original Query vs. Revised Query
ORIGINAL:
Dear Agent,

I would like you to consider Touched, my YA novel. The manuscript is complete at 102,000 words.

Seventeen-year-old Remy O’Malley knows nothing of Healers or their formal allies, the immortal Protectors, who have hunted them for over a century. All she knows is that her secret ability to heal others has kept her and her mother alive despite her alcoholic stepfather’s cruelty. When the abuse goes too far, Remy’s absent father finds out and insists she come to live with him in the small town of Port Townsend, Washington.

To Remy’s surprise, she loves her new home, family and friends. But the true transformation comes when she meets eighteen-year-old Asher Blackwell, who has powers like hers. Sparks literally fly the first time they meet, as Asher has a secret, too; he’s a Protector who has sacrificed his ability to touch, taste, or smell to become immortal. Befriending Remy goes against everything he’s believed for the last century. Enemies at first, Remy and Asher learn to trust and love one another as their powers begin to change; he soon discovers he can read her mind and that Remy has the power to make him feel human again.

For the first time in years, Remy isn’t looking over her shoulder, but she’s far from safe. She is the first Healer with the power to hurt others, and she must learn to control her powers before she kills someone she loves. Remy must find the strength to fight the stepfather who wants revenge for using her powers on him and the Protectors who are hunting her because she is the key to what they fear most: the power to take away their immortality.

I have a Master’s in English Literature. I received a scholarship to and am working on my MFA in Fiction at Spalding University. My work has been published in Dash Literary Journal. I’ve included the first five pages and synopsis of Touched per your submission guidelines. I’d be glad to send my complete manuscript for your review. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
My Name

TIPS FROM AGENT ASST:
Refocus query on what’s unique in my story, like the part about sacrificing senses
1.Protag and their problem
2.What they’re going to do about problem
3.Conflicts that keep them from achieving goal
4.Stakes: what happens if they don’t succeed. Why the reader should care
Limit to 150-200 words and only include essentials. Don’t talk about the plot, but the characters and the struggles they must overcome.

REVISED:
Dear Agent,

I would like you to consider Touched, my YA suspense novel. The manuscript is complete at 102,000 words.

Seventeen-year-old Remy O’Malley heals people with touch, but her power comes at a steep cost. Every illness or injury she cures becomes her own. The pain she can handle, but she worries a day will come when she won’t recover from healing some terrible disease. Then she meets eighteen-year-old Asher Blackwell. Scarred and dangerous, he knows more about her abilities than she does, and she can’t resist wanting to know everything about him.

Once a Protector of Healers, Asher sacrificed his ability to touch, taste, and smell to become immortal. Only by killing a Healer can a Protector feel a shadowy echo of their human senses, and Remy’s kind have been hunted into near extinction to feed their enemy’s hunger for sensation. After a century of living a half-life, Asher yearns for mortality. Remy is more powerful than any Healer he’s known, and the intense pain he feels each time he touches her shocks him, almost more than his inexplicable desire to be near her.

Falling in love is against the rules between these two enemies and could destroy them both. Because Remy has the power to make Protectors human again, and when they find out, they’ll be coming for her, if Asher doesn’t kill her first.

I have a Master’s in English Literature and am working on my MFA in Fiction at Spalding University. My work has been published in Dash Literary Journal. I’d be glad to send my complete manuscript for your review. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
My Name

PS. I’d love to give the agent credit, but I worry she would be inundated with requests for help, so I withhold her name to protect her since she did me a kind favor.