Top Ten Query Letter First Line Misfires

1) I have written a 134,569 word novel…..

2) Would you consider my fictional novel…

3) I have written two trilogies, a novella, and one cook book that I would like to publish.

4) I know getting published is all about connections but I hope you will be interested in me…

5) If you like a hot, sizzling read…

6) I read on your website that you like the “hard to categorize…..”

7) Melanie thought she knew everything she had to know about  men.

8 ) You rejected my first novel when you were an editor at Doubleday…

9) I am a big fan of your fucking blog! And I think you might like my memoir.

10)  There are approximately 35 million Irish Americans who I think would be interested in my novel, Erin’s Locket.

What’s the first line of your query letter?

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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, the National Book Award for Fiction goes to Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA). Congratulations. Your acceptance speech was beautiful and gracious. Shout to my pal, her editor, Kathy Belden. First rate editor and great person. It was a magical evening, and I’m not just saying that because a cab pulled up just as I was leaving my building in the pouring rain.

John Ashbery, a poet I’ve loved since I was sixteen, received a lifetime achievement award . He laughed at his own jokes, twice remarked how difficulty has gone out of fashion in favor of accessibility, and how you wouldn’t be caught dead telling someone you were a poet at a cocktail party for fear of looking too taken with yourself. My great friend Mitch Kaplan, owner of Book & Books and founder of the Miami Book Fair, received a big deal award, too. He is the soul of book selling. The other winners were also  magnificent. Inspiration in the form of Nikky Finney’s amazing acceptance speech, which John Lithgow called the greatest acceptance speech of all time. And John Lithgow himself (pronounced LITH-GO): witty and dapper and charmant. Wondered what it would be like if literary luminaries hosted award nights for the entertainment business: Philip Roth hosting the Oscars, for example, or Joan Didion hosting the Emmy’s.

I can’t tell you how proud I was to be there with Andrew Krivak. If you haven’t yet had a chance to read The Sojourn, treat yourself. LIke his book, he is economical, spare, smart and handsome. Beneath that facade is an intensity matched with purpose, desire with discipline. It is a pleasure and honor to be his agent. And a shout out, too, to his intrepid and passionate publisher, Erika Goldman at  Bellevue Press. Long may she wave.

Tiaras, ribbons, roses, rain-drenched red carpets. I could’t find a cab home. I missed the late train, and the train after that.

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Tonight, at the National Book Award reading, the evening’s host thanked all the finalists (including my brilliant client Andrew Krivak, author of The Sojourn) for spending their time writing and revising instead of all the other great things they could be doing like having great early morning sex. Was it me or did a wave of nostalgia sweep over the room? She riffed on all the things a person could be doing besides writing. For me, I always thought the big thing I could be doing besides writing is living. I could give that a try.

What would you do in lieu of scribbling?

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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?

How do you sleep?

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There are basically two schools of thought about writing and therapy. Of course, I’m speaking in general terms. The first: that therapy saps the writer of his creativity. That you fuck with the subconscious and you essentially give up some mystical part of the process, or interfere with it. Therapy is like a vampire that sucks your creative life blood. The other school would counter by arguing that more awareness, more consciousness, more investigation leads to more clarity in the work. Knowledge is power, so to speak. Going to therapy helps a writer get in touch with the darkest part of himself, and bring it forth. Or you could go to therapy for a third reason, as I do, to hear yourself carry on like a pussy sock puppet and pay for the pleasure. It’s degradation minus Jack Nicholson. It’s a burnt offering, the head of fish with a death stare, it’s mumble core, Albacore, saving arse, er face, it’s trying to mend a broken shoe lace, trying to pull the panties out of your ass after a five hour train ride. Did I say five hour? I meant fifty minutes.

Therapy. Good, bad, fugly?

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Remember when you used to spin your rolodex, dial a number and either get the person or get a busy signal? It was called making a phone call. Now, you get an email that asks when is a good time to call. Or an email that asks to set up a phone call. Or my favorite, an email that says: call me. Call me?  Or a text that says you can’t talk right now. Or a text that says you’ll call later. Remember pink message slips? Those adorable boxes you’d check off: returned your call, will call back, eat me, and so forth. In L.A., assistants say, “I don’t have him right now.” Or, “let me see if I have him.” And by this I believe they mean they can patch you through to their boss who is pulling his Porsche out of an In and Out while shoving a few burgers down his throat. Or am I projecting?  A call is no longer something you can just make. YOu have to email first, then text, friend, tweet, run the receiver between your breasts and paint the ceiling sky milk glass blue. Are you there god, it’s me Betsy. My mother has a cell phone she can neither dial nor field calls from. A lady on the train has a ring tone from a Barry White song.

When I was a little girl, I’d visit my dad’s lumber yard. A lady named Ann Esposito was the switch board operator. When a call came in she’d say things like “hold the wire please,” or “please allow me to connect you,” and pull a snake like cord from the switch board and plug it into a hole and push a lever;  I found the whole thing insanely exciting. And because I was the boss’ daughter, from time to time I’d get to sit on her lap and pull the snake-like cord and plug it into the big board. Heaven!

Why has calling someone become such a freak show?

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Top Ten FAQ’s

1) Are you the Betsy who curses on the internet? Who the fuck wants to know?

2)Aren’t most of your readers wannabe writers? My “readers” range from bestselling and prize winning authors to glistening moths in the moonlight. 

3) How do you come up with this stuff? Like all writers, I draw from my life for my material. And my ass. 

4) How do you it every day? How do you floss every day? Dedication. 

5) Is it fun? It’s a fucking blast. 

6) How long does it take you to write your posts? Fifteen minutes. 

7) Aren’t the people who read blogs lonely? Not as lonely as the people who write them. 

8.  Don’t the people who read your blog just want to be repped by you? Nothing would make me happier than to sign a commenter or lurker and sell his or her  book for a boat load of money and sit beside him or her at the National Book Awards. 

9) Does blogging take away from your writing time? Hell, yes. 

10) How long are you going to keep blogging. Two more years.

Any other questions?

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It looks like I qualify for some ads on WordPress. I have no idea what they’ll be. I’m hoping for double dildos, fur purses, Camel Lights, Cartier “Saphire” blue lacquer pens, Betsey Johnson intimates, Ben and Jerry’s Mint Oreo, Showcase Cinemas, Apple, Trident Layers, and Lancome Porcelain Concealer. I want to be clear: I have always been in favor of selling out if it’s for money. If I make billions with these ads, I should add, I will use it for good. If I make fifty bucks, I’ll probably buy a quaalude and go to a movie. And buy Milk Duds.

What would you do with fifty bucks?

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Do you ever feel like you’re fucking insane with this writing shit? Or totally alone. Or happily alone. Or jerking off more than a teenage boy? Or bff’s with the dental technician because you can’t stop grinding your teeth. Or spending a writing weekend organizing your ribbon box. Or imagining yourself in a three way with the dry cleaner and his pretty wife. How many notebooks have you lost? Filled. Did you drink the Dead Sea? Did you explode a balloon of red blood? Hammer your foot to the floor. Did you cry out in aisle six because you could not find Product 19? Could not name the states and her capitals. Her birds. I watched my wife wipe the table with a sponge and wondered if I still loved her. How many novels stopped dead in their tracks at page 60, 30, 10, 1? How many days do you get to you enjoy all the flaws on your body? What were you doing at sixteen? Making love with boy who wanted to be a writer?  Was that a found poem or a lost cause? Why do you think you’re special? Gifted? Talented? Deluded? Sad? No one gets out alive.  I wish I were here with better news.

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