This post is a self-reflection. A realization:

Art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind by transmitting emotions and/or ideas.

The all important first draft (and maybe 2nd and 3rd drafts, too) is for myself and myself only, and then I want to share, I want to ‘transmit’ it to others. For right now, I believe the best way to accomplish that goal is to seek representation with a literary agent and sell my novel(s) to a publisher.

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be attempting to perfect the be-all-end-all sales letter (also known as query letter), I would have raised an eyebrow, thanked you for the information, and proceeded to wipe such an idea from my brain.

Now I know better.

Query Madness

The querying process seems so mountainous, so finicky, I want to shake my fist high in the air, laugh, and shout, “This will drive you MAAAAD!!”

When I am tempted into this fist shaking shout, I envision the Narcoleptic Argentinean in the movie Moulin Rouge! with his throaty MAAAAD! during the song El Tango De Roxanne (a remake of Roxanne by The Police).

I did not begin writing fiction with the idea in mind that I would need to be a saleswoman. In fact, I went into fiction with the idea that it would take me deeper into art and farther away from sales.

I don’t need to query a literary agent, I don’t need to sell my books to a publisher, but I would like to — and for money please. Not a lot of money, but enough money to someday make real the dream to write full-time without feeling guilty for making my family sacrifice things like, oh, electricity, hot water, fresh produce from the farmer’s market.

So I must put on my saleswoman’s hat and become skilled at writing pitch letters, because if not me, than who?

ALERT: Extended Simile

Querying a novel, or trying to sell any creative work is essentially selling your mind. A couple lines from El Tango De Roxanne:

Roxanne
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight
Roxanne
You don’t have to sell your body to the night

The Narcoleptic Argentinean begs Roxanne not to give in, but to hold herself to some higher ideal of love and chastity while going hungry and probably sleeping on the street. Art for art’s sake is a grand and noble idea, but it does not pay the bills or put food in my pound puppy’s bowl. Luckily, I do have a day job and do not count on my writing to bring in any income.

Yet.

Reality Bites, Now Move On

I do not hold my querying agony against literary agents, or even the publishing industry. I regularly lurk on many different agent blogs (and am very thankful for all the knowledge they’ve shared that has helped me be more savvy about the entire publishing industry).

I understand the reasons for form letter rejections, the passionate hatred some agents have of opening a query letter with a rhetorical question, how you can still land a great agent even with a rhetorical question in your query, why agents are looking for any reason to reject…

I understand this is how the game works. If I want to play the game I have to play by the rules.

How about you? How do you handle it? Comparisons encouraged. I’m always looking for new favorite lines to yell out when I become frustrated.

In my quest to write the best query letter possible I’ve found some great resources off and online. I’ll share them with you soon. In the meantime, check out my previous post where I talked about The Query as String Theory.

So I planned to continue posting about queries today, but I want to talk about the contest Literary Agent Nathan Bransford is now running.

He’s asked people to post not more than the first 500 words of a novel, work in progress, or prompt based passage. He and Holly Burns will pick their favorites. There are prizes for the winners.

As of now, the entries stand at just over 400. You have until today (Wednesday) at 5:00pm Pacific Time to enter. You can read the full details about Nathan’s contest here.

Contest Drama?

Now some might say (and I would agree) that a blog, almost by definition, is a public forum. Unless the blog is by invitation, everyone can see the posts and comments.

A few very gracious (some might say crazy!) bloggers offered to critique every entry! You can read Nathan’s own discussion of it here. Some people complained about not wanting feedback from anyone but Nathan.

My take – I posted my entry to a public blog knowing full well I might get skewered. I would like to extend thanks to anyone who decides to critique my entry, whether you did or didn’t like it.

No need to tell me “you suck”, my inner editor already does a great job at that, but constructive criticism is always welcome.

Let me make it clear – I think you are WONDERFUL for providing feedback!

To that end, I’m reposting my entry here to make it easy for anyone to comment on it. You can also check out the current version of my pitch for Rhinoceros Summer to give you a better idea of the scope of the story.

Update: JJ from OxyJen was kind enough to provide feedback on my entry. I’m #119 in the post.

Update: Chro from Journey of the Scribe was kind enough to provide feedback on my entry. I’m #9 in the post.

RHINOCEROS SUMMER

Chapter 1

The two men knew it was dangerous, driving into the crater in full daylight, a hunter’s gun and camera resting on the backseat.

Barry sat in the passenger seat, mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief. “Hey, maybe we should wait till it gets dark.”

Paul didn’t say anything at first. His sweaty hands gripped the steering wheel as the Landcruiser snaked its way down. He kept the speed slow. One wrong move and they’d plummet over the edge of the switchback, a three thousand foot drop.

The volcano’s sides had collapsed to shape the crater millions of years ago, but he liked to think this bowl of tropical vegetation and wild animals was his personal African snow globe—he would shake it till he found what he was looking for.

He threw a quick look at the trembling cameraman. “How you gonna get video in the dark? Don’t fuck out on me now.”

They reached the crater floor and continued past the soda lake ringed with pink flamingoes and tourists, then through the lion and tourist infested grasslands. Not until they approached the edge of a wooded thicket did Paul find what he was looking for.

Rhino spoor.

The men left the tourist road miles behind. Biting flies landed on their bare arms and face, and buzzed in their ears. They marched through thick swamp grass, let mud soak their legs, allowed flies to bite them, wiped sweat from their foreheads, made sure to keep their equipment clean. Both men knew getting caught would destroy their careers. Getting caught meant jail.

They saw the six gray bulks feeding on swamp grass near a small grove of acacias. The bark from the trees seemed to glow in the slanting sunlight. Paul broke a three hour silence. “I’m gonna make one of these big shits charge us.”

Barry seemed about to faint from heat, fear, exhaustion. Paul wished he had brought someone else instead of this coward.

They crept into thicker bush, moving near a rhino sleeping separate from the group.

Paul gripped his rifle, careful to not let the sweat of his hands make the gun slippery. “You keep ready.”

“Yeah.”

Paul yelled. “Hiyaa fucker!”

The rhino’s ears perked up.

Paul stood his ground. Less than a thousand left in the whole world. It was enough to make a man weep for the glory coming his way. This was going to fix everything.

They heard the chuff-chuff of the rhino’s angry breath as it swung around.

Paul almost lost his grip on the barrel. “That’s a fucking square-lip!”

The rhino charged from twenty yards. Paul fired, plugging the animal with a huge tranq dart near the spine. But the rhino kept flying through the air, its head lowered, its horn ready to put a softball-sized hole in a man so his intestines had nowhere to go but the ankle-deep dirt.

The man with the gun got out of the way.

The man with the camera did not.

To sum up all my wonderful expert knowledge on string theory and query writing:

– It is a theory of everything

– It involves lots of extra/alternate dimensions

Query as Theory

The query is supposed to be the end-all-be-all letter. It is how you get a literary agent to look at your novel in the hopes that he or she will represent and sell it to a publisher.

THE MISSION is to create an exceptional query letter – and do it in less than 300 words. I have accepted this mission, even with the more than 90% probability of failure.

The Art of the Query

There is an art to this, but everyone seems to have his or her own definition of what this ‘art’ should look like. And by everyone, I mean literary agents. Under no circumstances should you assume that anyone else knows what they’re talking about when it comes to query writing. So don’t take what I say here as the only way to write a query, because it’s not. I’m not a literary agent. I’m just another writer trying to get published.

You can visit these literary agent blogs and see what each has to say about how he or she wants the query to be written:

Nathan Bransford II Pub Rants II Bookends, LLC II Lyons Literary, LLC

You might notice several things:

1. There is overlap in what each agent wants in a query letter (title, word count, genre, pitch or hook)

2. Each agent prefers the information tweaked a certain way

3. Most agents will admit that they have signed a client or requested a partial from a letter that did not follow their query rules.

Alternate Dimensions
What genre is my book? Women’s Fiction? Action Adventure?

The simple answer: make sure the genre you use in your query letter is one the literary agent actually represents.

There are plenty of books that fit into only one genre (think category romance, etc.). There are also plenty of books that crossover.

If I really like a literary agent who only represents women’s fiction, then maybe my novel is women’s fiction. If the agent represents multi-cultural fiction, then suddenly my novel is multi-cultural fiction — because it is, and because it’s also women’s fiction and it’s also action adventure and maybe even the classic hero’s journey. The reason I’m trying to get a literary agent to represent me is because I want professional expertise on how to sell the book.

Check out the BookEnds, LLC post about figuring out the genre of your novel. The post and comments discuss how various publishers and bookstores will categorize the same novel. Now think about how that might apply when you query a literary agent.

The Point Is

The publishing industry is a not so friendly place for new writers. Do things that will open doors of opportunity, not close them.

If you are in the midst of querying, or will be soon, I wish you lots of good luck!

Next Time

For the next few Wednesdays, expect links, books and other resources related to
writing a query letter for your novel
and some tips and tricks that might help
prevent a query writing breakdown.