Remember WIP Wednesdays? Sure you do. It's that thing I used to do on Wednesdays, back when I used to update my blog fairly regularly. So. My 'work in progress' this Wednesday isn't a novel or anything like that, it's a query letter. Actually I've been toying with it for like six months, but these last two weeks, it's kind of been my full-time job (when I'm not working one of my other two jobs). I'm not even going to mention what a joy they are to write, because that's as obvious as saying "the grass is green" or "gosh this malted beverage is refreshing". But for those of you who may not have had the pleasure, query fun is multiplied exponentially when it comes time to workshop it on the message boards.
My lil guy spent the past five or six days running the gauntlet in 'Query Letter Hell' at Absolute Write. Some of you probably know this because of my last blog post, where I asked for your help and crit. And thanks for your help and crit, but don't bother scrolling down to find said blog post now, because it has since been deleted. Why? Because seriously -- who wants a direct link to humiliation on their blog?
Okay, maybe 'humiliation' is a little strong, but I am embarrassed by the first few drafts now. I didn't think they were so bad at first, but the folks at AW schooled me otherwise. As always, they did so with their trademark inexplicable hostility, using words to describe me and query like 'pretentious', 'off-putting', 'newbie', and 'preachy D-bag'. Mostly in response to the statistics I included at the beginning.
See, a long time ago query letter advice use to encourage writer's to say something about the marketability of their book, but guess what? Now it just pisses people off. 'Inexplicably-hostile-people-who-may-or-may-not-have-ever-written-a-winning-query-letter' anyway. Ultimately I was able to see beyond the inexplicable hostility, and accept the fact that my statistics did, in fact, seem pretentious, and off-putting, and even preachy. So I cut them. And rewrote the rest of query according to their specifications. And just when it seemed I'd almost crafted something that softened the inexplicable hostility, a second wave of writers showed up to insult me with renewed fervor.
I'll admit it. I flaked out a little bit. I started seeing demons in every sentence and I was convinced that every word I typed was tainted with arsenic. I lost all perspective and all hope, and more importantly, all confidence in my ability to write anything more complicated than a grocery list. Until Kate Walton talked me down. And let me just pause here, and just say a big 'thank you' to her once again -- thank you, Kate -- you're a true friend and inspiration. (Her book 'Cracked' came out earlier this year from Simon Pulse: check it out here).
As a result of her calm encouragement and sage advice, I have now made the uncharacteristically mature decision to get the hell away from my query letter for a while. And that's where things stand on this WIP Wednesday. My query in one corner, and me in my own, catching my breath. Tune in next week when the bell rings for round two.