14 Jun 2010

Keep it moving - the art of query letters ...

The most important thing to do - apart from actually writing manuscripts - is to keep the material moving. Sending our words out into the world and see what happens. So we have decided to do just that and the past few days we've spent time making a query letter. It's is difficult. We've done this quite a few times - anyone serious about their writing has to do this, and so there's much energy and agony over every word and phrasing.
The intention?
To get an agent or a publisher to ask toi see more of your stuff. So how do we do that? By being as straight forward and honest. No flippancy, no bragging, no overly self-praise. The material has to speak for itself, but you also need to convince the agent or publisher to want to read it. If the query letter is full of spelling mistakes (very important for us second language English speakers), or it's a "glory to us" letter, the person who reads it will most likely never make it to the second paragraph. In other words, the letter shouldn't sound to desperate, but not to "whatever" either.
Jeez - they should have classes in this ...
Anyway - the letter will be sent out this week, and then the wait for the phone call begins ...
Thankfully we are so busy with new and ongoing projects, we will (ha, ha) manage to put it out of our minds and be a bit que sera, sera about it.

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