I’m a huge believer in BRIEF query letters. In the first place, what I really want to do is read the pages. It’s all in the pages. I don’t want to wade through a two-page single spaced letter telling me what the book is about. What I want to learn from the cover letter is the following:

title: I’ve said this a hundred times, but a great title gets you more than halfway there.

Brief description that focuses on themes, possibly mentions influences, mentions an unusual setting or very specific world (a sideshow, a grist mill, a molecular lab, the oompah loompahs, a blind optician, you get the idea).

Credentials are super important. Where have you published, studied, worked, fellowships, prizes, major social media following, etc. Who do you know? Who might endorse your book? If you don’t have any of these, then just say:

This is my first novel. Many thanks for reading.

But I would like to make the point that you should be working on getting credentials, especially publishing credentials. Send out chapters that can be stand alone stories. Write essays and try to place them. Try to get yourself to a writers conference and connect with your teachers. When I pitch a book, the first or one of the first things an editor will ask me is where has the writer published, who are they. It’s better to say that you published a story in the Paris Review or that your first collection of stories won the Flannery O’Connor Prize, or that you have an MFA from Syracuse and studied with Mary Karr, you get the idea.

Let me know if this is helpful. How can I help?

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QUERY LETTER LESSON #2

First, I would go with “Dear Betsy Lerner” for the salutation. It’s professional, pure and simple.

Next: Your opening gambit. This is your first line. It’s crucial that it makes the agent want to read more. Here are some approaches I’ve seen.

Dear Betsy Lerner:

I am a big fan of your book The Forest for the Trees and a regular reader of your blog.

or

I met you at the Miami Book Fair where you gave a talk on memoir.

or

Do you like cheese? I’ve worked at gourmet cheese shop in Wisconsin for the last ten years and have written a memoir called “Put Your Faith in Cheeses.”

or

Amanda doesn’t know what’s good for her.

or

I’ve written a 130,264 word fictional novel.

or

I am a fan of the late Elizabeth Wurtzel who I know you worked with. I’ve written a memoir about depression that I think you might like.

Let me know what you think of these approaches, or better yet leave a first line and I’ll critique it. Be brave!

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I’m back and we’re going to attack the query letter piece by piece, bite by bite. Today, The salutation:

Dear Betsy:

Dear Betsy Lerner:

Dear Betsy (if I may):

Dear Literary Agent:

Hi Betsy:

Dear Ms. Lerner

Which do you choose and why?

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When I started out in publishing, I learned that one of my favorite books was found in the slush pile, Ordinary People by Judith Guest. More recently, the Twilight series was found in the slush. I’ve always kept my eye on the slush, though most of what passes through are projects that are not right for me (fiction specifically, self-help, business, global politics). I also get a lot queries that people assume are right for me: psychology, memoir, mental illness, family crap, etc. In all fairness, I worked on a lot of those book and was even called The Pain and Suffering Editor. At some point, I found myself more interested in stuff outside myself. That point was probably when I went on Lithium. LOL. I never get stuff I really want to see: science, history, narrative on-fiction, investigative journalism. Today, I received a wonderful query. I’ll keep you posted if the pages are as good as the letter/title/author’s credentials. Eternal springs hope.

Do you know how to write an effective query letter?

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Yesterday, I went to Walgreens and bought a new binder and dividers, yes with the color tabs. I walked out feeling happier than I’ve felt in months. The reason: for me, every new project starts with a binder. Once I commit to a binder, it’s pretty fucking serious. I’ve been thinking about this project for 2-3 years, like an alligator lurking below the swamp line. Blink. Blink. Blink. If all this shit isn’t nerdy enough, I type out the title and tape it to the front of the binder. Have all my binder projects come to fruition? No, of course not. But I don’t recycle binders. They have their place on my floor where a wall of projects, mine and my clients take up residence in a tidy line, some secured with paperweights. (If you ever want to gift me, I love paperweights.) But for now I feel like a second grader sans pigtails, my heart full, my courage restored. Maybe I’m not a piece of shit after all. LOL.

What implements do you need to start a project?

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I get a weekly report of how much time I spend on my phone and it’s horrifying. A lot of that I think, hope, is phone time. And I yak on the phone a lot FOR WORK. The others are spent scrolling. I’m not going to lie. If I were a teenager, I would never do anything else except scroll, pluck my eyebrows and drink kahlua and creme. Then I found out that you can put restrictions on your phone. I gave myself 15 minutes per platorm. When you reach the limit, they ask if you want more time. That’s like asking an alcoholic if he wants another shot. Reader, I blew through my time limits. I used to read in bed before I went to sleep now I watch middle aged couples line dance on Tik Tok. I used to read on the subway, now I scroll through Keanu Reeves pictures on instagram. I used to sit on a park bench and read. Now I listen to podcasts and scroll. I feel I should go to Social Media Rehab. Take away my device, let me sweat it out, kick the covers, all that bullshit. I want my mind back.

What’s your social media drug of choice?

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KICKING YOUR CAN ALL OVER THE PLACE

What happens when your skills as a writer fail you? When you can’t get something to say what it needs to say? When the words fail you? When the plot peters out? When your characters are hopelessly two dimensional? What happens when you’ve written more than 150,000 words and you have no idea what your book is about? What does “about” even mean? What happens when you hit a wall and keep hitting it and you start to wonder why you do this writing thing at all? I’m asking for a friend.

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I’ve been in LA for the last nine days. Why do I love that city so much, every crumbling bungalow and broken neon sign. I love the palms and cypress, a shock of bougainvillea crawling over a cement wall. I love the cars, the traffic, the fumes. I love the lot where my sister’s directing a film, the fridge filled with Popo Gigio and Perrier, the golf cart, the white board, the stars (I didn’t actually see any, but I feel I did). Even the biggest cliche of all, the Hollywood Sign, moves me in a kind of Tarantino way in that I’m both in awe of it and want to torch it. I wish I had brought my cape and leather gloves. I love LA because I’ve been living the dream in my own mind since I was seven years old.

What’s your secret dream?

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I wish I could tell you it’s going to be okay.Terry Gross will interview you, you’ll win a prize! Your editor will be charming and alarming. Buckets of moonbeams in your hair. Is it hyperbolic to say writing saved my life? Poetry saved my life? That therapy and meds saved my life, but really without all those fucking journals, the pages tufted from pressing too hard, from pressing too hard in general, from wanting to be someone else and understanding that misery and happiness were not opposite sides of the same coin. I wish I could say getting published will change your life, or that one accomplishment or another will be enshrined in the tree of life. I wish I could say ten years of research into insect life will manifest in a garden full or neon green and the quiet sound of continuous crunching. I wish I could take you on a writer’s retreat inside a volcano and wait for it to explode.

Do you write out of pain or what?

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I’m in LA and can’t sleep. Sort of a Barton Fink moment. Can’t read, can’t write, a mosquito dancing around my ankles. I used to go nuts when writers blamed geography for their writer’s block. You’re not a princess. I wrote the bulk of my first two books on Metronorth, a loud and smelly commuter train where six people would cram into the six seater, their broadway playbills in hand, and yak about how dirty the city is, the portions at Carmines, their kids bringing home college laundry, a rude receptionist at the podiatrist. I worked with an author who needed complete silence. Another who couldn’t work if anyone was home. Another who could only work in cafes with a symphony behind him of cups and saucers, the sound of milk being steamed, the tapping of a small spoon inside a tea cup. Saying you can’t write somewhere is a mattress and a pea. Any restriction is avoidance in my opinion. Unless you’re in LA, in which case it’s totally justified so get yourself an Arnold Palmer and shut the fuck up.

What circumstances do you need to write?.

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