Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Query Carnage

In early February, I saw a post on an agency blog I follow. The agents were running something called 'Slush Week.' Writers were invited to send their queries, with the chance of having one of the agents review it.

I did the dangerous thing and sent mine in. In the intervening weeks, I changed it completely. (Thank God!) It got to the point that I was praying that my old query wouldn't be chosen. But you guessed it. It was.

You can view the carnage here.

3 comments:

  1. Michael,

    I too live in the Portland area, a stay at home dad during the week, and an aspiring writer. I would like to connect with you on writing resources here in the Portland area. You can contact me by email at mattsterpeace@gmail.com. Look forward to hearing from you!

    Matt

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  2. Well, as I mentioned at Slush Week, your query worked on *me* -- I liked your book from the description, and that brought me here to your blog.

    One thing that struck me about Slush Week was how personal the process is: even if you have a great book, the query makes it a bit like dating. Sometimes you can tick all the right boxes together, but just don't 'click'. Thank you for participating in that, because it was an amazingly helpful series. I'm hoping to get to the query stage sometime this summer.

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  3. Thanks, Matt and Susan, for your comments. One of the great benefits of this blog is getting to know new people. It makes the writing life much less solitary, all to the good!

    Michael

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