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.‘Pelt and Other Stories’ is a collection of characters (some interlinked) living in Africa and Europe, whose lives all undergo surprising and even unwilling evolution: two English snowboarders challenge the savagery of mountain weather in the Dolomites; a pregnant Ghanaian woman strokes across a hotel pool in the tropics; Celeste visits her suicidal brother and his lover in Berlin and realises she will never see them again.
This works for me because I love the title PELT. Then, I like the brief descriptions that zoom all over the world from snowboarding, pregnant swim strokes to a suicidal brother in Berlin. I’m in and I don’t like stories.
I knew my father for only a very short time as an adult, and I associate two things with him: science and loss.
I like this a lot. It’s simple. Science and loss. Again, what comes next is critical. You might be tempted to explain, but I think the simplicity should speak for itself.
If Independent Clause and Catherine would like to send their letters to me at askbetsylerner@gmail.com, I will critique the letters for you. Let me know if I can post the letter for feedback from everyone. Either way is fine. Thanks to everyone for participating. If you have more questions about the query letter, please ask. I want your letters to get you through the door. If the manuscript sucks, well, it sucks. But I want to help you get through that fucking door.
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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?
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.
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.
Top Ten FAQ’s
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.
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.
Betsy Lerner 