You’ve spent countless hours preparing, making sure everything is perfect. You’ve done your research, asked others who have been there before you, and now you’re salivating to hit the ‘send’ button out to the agent of your dreams. You're uber-polite and formal, as professional as you can possibly be. You haven't queried another agent at this agency within the last month or so, and you've verified that they read your genre. You have the format down and everything is in the proper order. Greeting (using the agent's name), hook, description, word count, bio, why you are querying this agent, offer to send chapters, thank you (etc.). If there was a way to bow or curtsy via email, you'd do that, too.
Should you spellcheck again? Give it one last read-through for good measure? No, you assure yourself with a swift slice of your hand through the air. It's been through Query Letter hell 87 times. All the bloggers and forums have declared there's nothing else they can do for you; your query is brilliant and life-changing and sure to be the next best seller (or, you know, whatever). Enough dilly-dallying! You hit the ‘send’ button.
Too late, you realize that you sent it out to‘Ms. Agent’ instead of ‘Mr. Agent.’
BAM!! Form rejection!!
NO SOUP FOR YOU!! Come back, three months.
Of course, it could be because of some much larger mistake than that, but the despair is the same.
I haaaaaate querying!!!!!
Anyway, only a few days left to enter my blog contest for free jewelry! All you have to do is follow my blog and leave a comment under the contest announcement post (which is immediately beneath this one) by Friday.
Also, I think I forgot to mention this before, but the pendant designs are NOT restricted to only writing gods, etc. I can make any design you’d like. Goldfish, keyboards, toilets, liquor bottles, asparagus, ghosts, family photos…whatever. I’m awesome like that.
perfect comparison! i hate it too.
ReplyDeletewow, anything? you ARE awesome!
Yeppers, anything you like! Since I'll be making them to order anyway, it'll be the same amount of effort. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is so very very true. Only too late during my last batch of queries did I realize I left off contact info. CONTACT INFO! *headdesk* I almost cried. I also left off synopsis and sample pages off two that I would have gnawed off my arms to work with (defeating the purpose, I know, unless I learned to type with my toes or got voice recognition software...). One was a pretty quick form R. The other will probably be a no response... *le sigh*
ReplyDeleteGood luck, doll. I hope you land a non-soup nazi ;)
I completely agree! Aargh! I am having the darndest time with querying, and I find the Soup Nazi comparison just spectacular.
ReplyDeleteLMAO!! Excellent analogy! Thanks for the laugh :)
ReplyDeleteIf only that soup weren't so good! Yes, it's an affront isn't it. And, Laura, u just dragged me a bit further into this century, I just found out what LMAO means and now I'm LMAO!
ReplyDeleteI went through the Soup Nazi line in NYC many years ago, and I still remember the absolute terror of screwing up and being publicly ridiculed. Yeah, that about sums up the whole querying process.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, I have never made the connection between Soup Nazi and literary agents before, but the comparison is brilliant! Well done!
ReplyDelete