Hello Ms LernerThank you for offering to help people online. I am in the middle of writing a book on WW1 with a view to releasing before the 100th anniversary of WW1 (1914). Is it too early to approach a publisher now or should I wait till I’m finished?
thanks and regards
NAME WITHHELD
I am so psyched to get this question. It’s a really good question and no one has asked it in three spectacular years of blogging. Timing, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is everything. Publishers plan their lists 12-18 months in advance. If a book has a hook, a peg, a bonafide reason to be published in a certain month, publishers need to know about it well in advance. An anniversary, birthday, holiday, or season gives a publisher a real peg to hang its publicity on. The media is always looking for those pegs.
It’s January, publish your diet books. It’s February, publish your relationship books. It’s March: kiss me, I’m Irish. April is poetry month. May: Mother’s Day. June: Dads and Grads! Having a book on the 100th anniversary of WWI is way more enticing than a book publishing on the 103rd anniversary. Pegging your book to a major birthday or anniversary is good. But remember, the book needs to go into production about a year before it publishes (of course, electronic publishing changes all that). But if you’re going the traditional route, you need to be able to deliver a finished manuscript 9-12 months in advance of the anniversary.
Personally, I’m going to peg my new screenplay on national family dysfunction month, which fortunately is every month. What you got, baby?
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When I packed up my bag for work this morning and hoisted the 500 or so pages of manuscript on my shoulder, I actually thought for the first time that maybe I should get a Kindle or a Nook. Then I thought, I’d rather be a hunchback than read on a screen. When I got on the train and unfurled my NYT, I noticed the man next to me reading from the well lit place of his ipad. Gosh, it sure looked cheery in there. And then I thought I can’t cope with any more chargers, passwords, etc. I imagined myself dangling from the end of a charger, the screen flashing: low battery, low battery. My epitaph: She Forgot Her Password.
One day in a high school English class, a teacher handed out construction paper and crayons. Then he wrote a short poem on the board by William Carlos Williams.
Well, here we are again, a season in hell. Thanksgiving through New Years. If I had my druthers (druthers? who the fuck am I?), I’d be on a valium drip at a twenty-plex. I know it’s a cliche to hate the holidays, but I really hate them. All that enforced gaiety. All those carbs. All the guilt over what you do or don’t do, give or don’t give. The happy families in holiday sweaters or sailing on a brighter horizon: merry xmas from the Knopfs! The Jew on Christmas. The crescendo of family failings. The wrong gift. Please write. The new year is upon us. It doesn’t mean a thing. Just write. Every fucking day. Finish the fucker.
If you don’t have a referral, a newly minted writing prize like the Whiting, or a story in the New Yorker, you need to introduce yourself and your work to editors and agents. Query letters come in all shapes and sizes and sadly most of them fail to accomplish what they most desperately need to do: spark interest. That’s all you really have to do: spark interest. You can do this with your title, your credentials, the one or two sentences that sum up your project. Mostly, you need to do this with the writing. Writers know how to write, how to manipulate, seduce, win friends and influence people. My advice: keep it simple. No bells, no bows, no bending over. Don’t over promise. Don’t make something out of nothing. Don’t try something stupid, whacky, quirky or attention getting. This is first and foremost a professional gambit.
Top Ten Query Letter First Line Misfires
They say that children aren’t developmentally ready to accept losing until they are about seven or eight years old. I still remember when my daughter was around that age and she would quit a game before losing or start insanely cheating and fiercely deny it. I would tell her that she could carry on like that with me, at home, but I urged her to understand that out there in the big wide world, no one likes a sore loser. And that if she wanted to have any friends at all that she’d better learn how to be gracious, win or lose.
Tonight, at the National Book Award reading, the evening’s host thanked all the finalists (including my brilliant client 
I grind my teeth. I have nightmares. I try to call out but I can’t. My nightgown is twisted with the sheet. I have to pee. Then I have to drink. Sometimes my right foot burns with a passion. I realize what is wrong with my screenplay. I realize what is wrong with me. I want to get up and take my lap top into the tv room. It’s 3:33. Christ. It’s not about making my lead more sympathetic. The whole thing is in the wrong key. INT. BEDROOM – 3:33 A.M. Emily Dickinson twists in her bed covers, checks her Blackberry for comments. Craves apple juice, room temperature. What keeps you up at night? Regrets. Mistakes. Scenes at the altar of I should have said that. All those sentences. The parade of punctuation marks. Period. Period. Period. Are you with me tonight? Am I tapping at your window? Can you write a word? On a quiet wave? On the beaded glass? Inside your small palm?
Betsy Lerner 