Thanks to those of you who provided feedback on my #queryclinic idea. The premise behind it is to post a query letter on your blog on Friday, leave a comment on this blog page so others know you are participating, then hop around to provide constructive feedback to others while you receive some on your own.
Today it is an experiment. At the end of the day, I may be the only participant. But hopefully not.
So today I am posting a much-revised version of a query that has been around for awhile. I did get one request for a full based on an earlier version of it. Perhaps I should return to that one. So here it is. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments section. And thanks for your participation.
Dear [ ]:
The victim of high school bullying, Noelle has had enough. The popular crowd has made her life a living hell. Despite this, Noelle’s best friend longs to be part of their group. When Noelle befriends the new rebel of the school, she moves from a naïve and complacent Catholic school girl to a rebellious teenager obsessed with revenge. As she teeters on the edge of losing her best friend, her boyfriend, and herself, she has to decide if her revenge is worth the price.
Since your agency represents young adult fiction and authors whose work I enjoy reading, such as [fill in the blanks], you may be interested in my contemporary novel, OUTCAST, set in modern-day Scottsdale, Arizona. It bears similarities to BURNED by Ellen Hopkins in that it contains a realistic ending and focuses on the darker dimensions of the main character and her life. The manuscript is complete at 87,000 words and is available upon request.
I have written three novels and have been published at The Fertile Source and Cliterature Journal. I was a writer with Inside/Outside Magazine, penning the publication’s “With the Kids” column.
Thank you in advance for your consideration and time. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Susan Oloier
Also, don't forget to visit Shelley Watter's blog for another of her unbelievable giveaways, which begins tomorrow.
Finally, come back next Wednesday. I plan to have some sort of book giveaway. Just haven't mapped out all the details yet.
Okay, this is all very rudimentary right now. I have been playing with the idea of having a Friday (or the day can change to meet the needs) query clinic where we can help one another get closer to publishing our novels by working on our dreaded query letters. At least they are dreaded for me.
I have received so much support from the online writing community that I thought I should contribute, as well. I have had the great fortune of being a part of #ninjachat over at Ali’s blog. The support I have received there has been priceless.
I am no expert at queries. But I do know many of us get too close to our work to write objective and compelling query letters. I know I can always use another pair of eyes and a second (or even third and fourth) opinion before I click the send button on my email.
So I am open to thoughts, impressions, and ideas. But I was thinking that we could post our query letters on our blogs on Fridays and (using a linky tool or the comments section) hop around and give constructive criticism to one another. At some point, we could even use a chatroll (as Ali does for #ninjachat) to give live feedback to one another.
Let me know what you think. We can use the hashtag #queryclinic to connect on Twitter, as well. I know for me, I need some serious help with my query letters.
There are some terrific sites out there already:
Query Shark, which I discovered from my friend Corrine. This is a place where you can read through numerous fiction letters and, perhaps, submit yours for review. It is a great place to help perfect your own query letter by reading the mistakes of others.
Query Tracker where you can organize and track your query letters to various agents and publishers.
Nelson Literary has a FAQ page that I’ve found very helpful. As you scroll down, there is a section of links to help write a better query letter.
I am sure I have missed a bunch of sites, but those are the places I most frequent.
Anyway, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about queries and #queryclinic.
Two weeks is simply way too long to go without a blog entry. In my defense, things have been super crazy. Life started to unravel back in March with pneumonia for my youngest. Since then, things have calmed down very little. There was the deeply unexpected and saddening death of my sister-in-law, a seven-hour trip to Children’s Hospital, more illness for my boys, an infection for my youngest, a Memorial Day trip upended, a driving trip to Phoenix to help out family, and in-patient surgery looming on the horizon for my four-year-old. And throughout it all, I thought to myself: “I truly need to get back to my blog.” In fact, I was such a horrid tweeter (again, the whole defense thing above) that I lost twenty-some followers. Twitter: such a fickle place.
But I have thought about my blog. It has crossed my mind in the quiet and darkened moments of the night when children are no longer talking my ear off or demanding my attention. When the dryer is not buzzing or the feeding pump alarming or the timer for dinner beeping. In fact, I plan to start a new schedule for my blog. It goes something like this:
Monday: Six Things I Did Today…(the usual stand-by)
Tuesday: Travel Tuesdays to celebrate pushing my travel memoir out the door in the hopes it finds a publisher rather than become one of the typical shiftless ski bums that frequent this area (did I say that out loud?). I am thinking it may celebrate the wonderful places I have had the fortune of visiting.
Friday: (And this one I’m not too sure about) #queryclinic. A place for those of us in the query process to critique queries and offer suggestions so we can graduate to published writers. (More to come later).
So that’s that. Thanks to all of you who chose not to desert me during my unplanned hiatus. In addition to my blog, I need to stroke my neglected and seemingly abandoned manuscripts, as well. They are starving for some attention, for sure. Happy Writing!
