Tuesday, November 22, 2011

"And now a pause for jocularity...."


Apprentice Writer is deep in the throes (this will shortly strike the Gentle Reader as funny) of new-and-improving her query.

A query, for those who may not live in the book world, is a brief letter an aspiring author addresses to a literary agent. It is supposed to entice the agent to read the first pages of a manuscript and then hopefully sign the writer on as a client before going on to sell that manuscript to a publisher on the writer's behalf.

New-and-improving her query currently involves working through the archives of the blog Query Shark by literary agent Janet Reid. Ms. Reid routinely eviscerates (her word) the queries voluntarily sent in by hopefuls such as AW. Witnessing the dismemberment is in equal parts terrifying and educational; AW is in awe of the hapless writers who dare present their work for the shark and all the blogosphere to see.

Tucked in among the earnest efforts is the occasional spoof. AW came across one today that made her laugh so much she wanted to share. Enjoy.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

These are pretty funny. I read her blog sometimes too. Just off to check out the link.

Have no idea on that previous quote you posted. Uh, huh?????

Also, am reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. I know you, like me, are always looking for historical fiction in less represented locales so I thought you might be interested if you haven't already read it.

M. said...

Rachel - that is a delicious book rec. how do you find these things? and after recently pruning my long TBR list, it's filling up again...

Rachel said...

Is a TBR list ever really pruned? ;-)

My book club read his memoir. I don't like memoirs so I skipped around to the Istanbul parts, however, I really liked his writing. So I looked over his other titles and this one seemed really interesting.