A Little Trickery
Here is the epiphany that finally cracked the query letter code for me. At a certain point I took a look at my query letter and asked myself honestly, “Do you think this would entice anyone into reading your book?” The answer was, No. The problem was, I took the query letter very, very seriously. I hated them, but I took them seriously. Without a good query letter, it seemed to me, I would never find an agent and without an agent I would never publish my novel. The query letter, unfortunately, had become too important. There’s a great story about a Zen master watching an archery contest. The master sees the archer, who is very skilled and expected to win, and comments, “His need to win is interfering with his ability to win.”
So it was with the query letter. There was too much pressure on the query letter. It had to be too good. So I tricked myself. I said, “What if this were an assignment for school? How would you write it then?” I never took school particularly seriously. I wanted to do well and get decent grades and so on, but I never felt that my entire future hung in the balance. This, it seems to me, is a healthy approach. My imagination does not function well with a gun at its head.
I imagined myself being given the assignment of a query letter for a class, and I wrote the best query letter I’d ever written. So take the pressure off. Remember that you are smart, you have a good imagination, and that you care deeply about the book you have written. That will help you write a good query letter. The tips I outlined last week are useful guides, but that is all. The real guide is your own desire to share your work, and you don’t need how-to book to understand that.