The other day, a friend of mine and a fellow aspiring author (the illustrious Rebecca Mallary, whose blog I shall take a tiny moment to shamelessly promote) mentioned that she was trying to keep her blog posts focused. This made me stop for a moment and realize: mine are never focused. Instead, I just tend to write and write about whatever I have (or, as happens much more often, haven't) been writing about lately. So I thought that perhaps I should give this organized, focused thing a shot.
Brainstorming ideas for this blog post led me in a giant what-do-I-write-about-circle, and the topic that I kept returning to was the dreaded query letter.
This is something that's been rather giving me the fits lately. See, I finished Summer of Betrayal. I edited it and rewrote it until I was (mostly) satisfied. These are both good things, but in order to attempt to get it published, I need to convince an agent that it is utterly the most fabulous book in existence right now. And in order to do that, I need to write a brilliant query letter.
I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret: I'm horrible at summarizing.
The idea of having one letter --one chance-- to convince someone that my book is worth their time absolutely terrifies me. I cannot possibly talk my book up in a few paragraphs! Summarizing is all well and good when it's someone else's work, but ask me to summarize my own and I freeze. And it isn't just summarizing-- it's summarizing well, and talking myself up, etc. Essentially I am writing a one-page persuasive essay entitled "This Is My Novel and This Is Why You Should Represent It Instead of That Other Girl's".
Right. I'll get right on that.
I've shied away from the task for far too long, however. It's time for me to put my big girl pants on and get to work. I've got a few sites bookmarked and I plan to research, research, research until I know how to write the most incredible cover letter known to man, but I thought this would be a good place to ask about it as well.
So? Anyone have any advice about query letters for me? I send enormous amounts of gratitude in advance!
