Query Letters and Me: An Anecdote
Or: What the ever-loving dreck does “compelling” mean to you?
This isn’t an organized educational essay. It’s a kind of rant.
The publishing industry works backwards, as far as I’m concerned. The fainting violet writer caste is expected to be the upbeat, talkative seller of his or her own book, and the unfeeling masses of readers are cozened and preened and catered to past their limits of appreciation. It should be the other way around.
It shouldn’t be the other way around, but at the same time it should be.
Basically, I’m saying it’s a hard-biting, street-fighting world for the writer on the thankless alleys of trying to be noticed by a glutted industry that could be just as happy without you.
Or so it thinks.
And that’s where the trouble lies. How the publishing industry is supposed to “work” at it’s lowest level of entry is a writer’s hardest test of fiction writing skills.
I think about publishing like a video game. Maybe I’ll update my metaphor before I die, but right now that’s how it feels.
The Writer’s Life: The Video Game
It feels like the kind of video game with only one difficulty setting — madhouse. And I’ve got stuck on level three. Which is a short level, but an impossible one.
It’s like…
Level one was the innocent fun of writing a novel. A good introduction to the idea of being a writer. It was fun and airy and it felt good. And I was all like, hey, I can do this. Not only can I, but I would love to do this. So I will!
Level two: editing, drafting. Craft like that. Making the slop-fest of a novel into an at least adequate story. More work, less fun, maybe, but I could see progress. I can see how this is related to writing.
Now…
Level three: writing to agents.
Level three is still writing. Level three has a lot to do with the original novel I wrote. Level three still keeps me thinking about the novel.
Except…now it’s not…fun anymore.
Or, no, that’s not exactly right. It’s something other than fun. It’s not that it’s not fun. It’s just that it’s something else now.
It’s like…growing up, a little, is sort of what it’s like. It’s like, I had fun at grade school and told a good story, then I posed and pretended and actually learned some stuff at high school and college, and made that story into something good.
And now me and the story got out into the “real” world, and we’re looking for jobs.
It’s like that.
Level three of A Writer’s Life: The Video Game is like job hunting.
Just as promising. And just as frustrating.
Grr.
Here’s how it’s been for me.
So, we’ve written our story, and we know how our story goes.
But how do we summarize that story in a catchy way? I mean, how do I summarize my story in a catchy way?
The answer isn’t “tell the story but shorter” either. That’s gets me nowhere, since the story, but shorter, is “a person has some problems and he does some work and solves some of them.”
Which is a great story, but it’s also literally every other story ever. And when I use “literally” I mean it, so don’t give me that guff about how you read a story once that broke down all conventions of story structure and it really worked. You may have a good point, but I’m not interested in that argument at this moment.
It does no good to summarize by telling it, but shorter, because that’s not…something. Catchy is the right word, but it’s also too small a word.
Here’s the problem: who’s asking, right?
Some of the advice out there will tell you to write a query letter that’s real pretty, then just copy and paste it into every single query you send out.
That may be, ultimately, the best advice you can get about query letters.
Except, when I search for agents and read up on them a little, I discover that every single one of them has a slightly different implied definition of the word “compelling.”
Which is the ultimate problem. Writers want to be compelling. That’s one of the things I’ve secretly been talking about from the beginning of this whole thing. I think that I’m not alone in secretly coveting the review, “well, that was moving.” Right from the beginning, that seems to be the goal of each level of A Writer’s Life: The Video Game. To be moving, which is to be, as it were, compelling.
We wrote a novel to be compelling to the masses, and we edited it so that it could be even more effective.
In the stage of figuring out how to summarize my novel for agents, I’m asking myself, “how can I write something about my novel that’s compelling to this guy?”
The answer doesn’t seem general. It’s personal. Each agent’s got a different thing they’re looking for, you know? In spite of how they sometimes appear, agents are people too, I guess. And, like…I feel like it’s only been fair to write each of them different query letters.
Like today. Her name’s Monika, and she didn’t ask for any information about me. She just wanted a summary of my project and the first ten pages of my novel. And the way that her profile stated that, so clearly and succinctly, made me think she’d appreciate something tidy and succinct from me.
So that’s what I wrote.
Level Three Strategy
A lot of what I’ve read about querying agents says that what you’re supposed to do is treat it like a professional obligation.
Which makes sense. Me and my novel are on a job hunt. It only makes sense that it should be professional.
Here’s the thing that only a few of the things I’ve read about querying agents say: figure out how to be yourself.
Because the thing that I don’t see in many “how to” articles about getting an agent is a few words about the fact that you’re essentially applying to enter into a professional contract. Not your novel — you.
You are opening a dialog with another person who needs to decide whether they can work with you. They need to like your book too, but they’re going to end up working with you far more than your book. That’s my theory, anyway.
For a long time, I adopted the strategy of querying like…my book was applying for jobs, and I needed to remove myself from the negotiations as much as possible.
I’ve changed my attitude.
Now the tones in my query letters take a far more “I am a person who you can work with” tone. Instead of excusing myself from the conversation and inviting the agent to talk to the novel.
I don’t know yet if this works “better” for agent queries than anything else.
I have determined that it makes them easier to write.
Because I’ve stopped thinking, “how do I make my novel sound exciting?”
Instead, I’ve started thinking, “How do I interest this other human being?”
Okay, I think the tone and point of this thingy shifted six times in the past five minutes…
I’m no longer particularly grumpy about querying literary agents. Not today. Not after writing this out of my system.
I’ve gotten five queries sent out in the past week. That’s a pretty good amount for a week. I did one today, and I’ll do another tomorrow. It’s a good thing to be disciplined about. Treat it like work, but not like drudgery. It’s writing letters to potential colleagues. That’s what I’m saying.
I have this plan to undermine the whole publishing industry, since it is so very backwards in its treatment of writers and audiences. There are a lot of strong financial reasons why the publishing industry makes it hard for writers. But there are a lot of ideological and technological reasons why the publishing industry could work better.
In order to “improve” the publishing industry, I need to be in it, though. So fishing for agents it is.
There are other ways of getting agents. Sending out query letters is a good way of getting some repetitions in on the skill of talking about your novel to strangers in a catchy way. Which isn’t such a bad thing to practice.
Leaving you with a practical tip…
Send lots of query letters. At the same time, look into other ways to meet agents. At the same time, work on your blog.
But send lots of query letters. Make sure you’re thinking them through, and you’re reading the agents’ requirements. Make it a thoughtful, purposeful exercise. Approach it intelligently. Spend time on it. But write lots.
And keep a spreadsheet to record all the agents you query, just so you know who you’ve queried, when you queried them, and whether they’ve responded.
There. See? Useful information.
