Books on the Beach

I was in Mexico for a beach vacation last week, and I'd say the number of books rivaled the number of bikinis. To my delight, everyone was reading! Because we all know the publishing industry isn't quite at the top of its game these days, (I do so love the idea of giving books as Christmas presents this year -- help an author out!) it was so refreshing to see books doing their thing: helping people relax and taking them into another world.

At one point when I was walking on the beach, I decided I wanted some stats on how many people were reading. It could've been the strawberry daiquiri-induced haze, but it seemed like all I saw were books. So I started to pay attention to just how many.

There is nothing sweeter really, than a couple reading side by side under a beach umbrella. Well, perhaps it could've been Tommy, who was reading one of the Twilight tomes on the flight home. Tommy, who wears boxers with green shamrocks and carries his wife's purple polka-dot Kate Spade shoulder bag. Tommy, who wore a T-Shirt with parrots on the back that read "Meet the Squawkers." Tommy, who's wife, I assumed, wrote the long, curvy, swirly inscription to him on the inside of his book. I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that wasn't Stephanie Meyer's handwriting.

But back to the beach: me walking along, searching out readers, starting to deduce that at least a third of the people had books on their bellies. Then I wanted to know who they were reading. I could spot some covers in an instant: Picolt, Brown, Meyer, Weiner, Irving. I felt foiled when I saw books in foreign languages. I stared harder at everyone, trying to distinguish the covers I didn't recognize. And suddenly I was staring right at a woman's bare breasts. Sorry lady, I was really looking at your book, I swear. At that point I gave up on data collection and focused on the surf.

Beach: relaxing. Frozen drinks: relaxing. Books: relaxing. By my little survey in the Riviera Maya, the publishing industry is doing just fine.

NaNoWriMo or Not, How About a Write-A-Thon?

I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo, but I will be working at StoryStudio Chicago’s November Write-A-Thon this Saturday. Need to catch up on your word count for NaNo? Trying to finish up a short story for end of year submission deadlines? Finally ready to start that first novel? Come on out and join a bunch of other writers who are looking for a quiet, distraction-free place to get some words on the page. We're in Chicago at 4043 N. Ravenswood, #222.

And if you do come out on Saturday, please stop by the front desk and say hello. While the studio is usually packed for these events, it gets very, very quiet at times, and I think people are often afraid to talk. So much so that I get afraid to talk, answering the phone in some kind of creepy whisper. We can chat about your current work in progress, brainstorm ways for your antagonist to antagonize, swap lists of our latest must-reads.

The studio’s open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and you can stop by at any time. Stay for as little or as long as you like. I’ll be there from one to five and hope to see some new faces!

John Irving Video

John Irving was on The Bonnie Hunt Show yesterday and I saw the episode while I was running on the treadmill at the gym. He is my favorite author, and his interview made me stay on the treadmill longer than I intended. I can't find a video of the portion of the interview where he talks about writing just yet, but in my search I came up with this one. It's a few years old, but it's short and sweet, and emphasizes how a story needs to keep moving. He says this gem about his goal with the novel: "To make the story better, more compelling, more unstoppable on page 400 than it was on page 40."

The Lost Girls Book Review

Travel junkies, hop on over to the The Lost Girls to see my book review of The New Age of Adventure: Ten Years of Great Writing, a collection of travel articles from National Geographic Adventure magazine.

FTC, I don't even know what to do about you since all the book review fuss you made has kinda died down. But yes, I got this book for free. It was delicious.

Guide to Literary Agents Guest Post

If you haven't already found this article via twitter, scoot on over to the Guide to Literary Agents blog where I have a guest post about what gets an agent's attention. It's my review of an agent panel at the SCWW conference.

I think the GLA blog, run by Editor Chuck Sambuchino, is one of the best sources for agent info and query examples that doesn't get as much attention as sites like Query Shark and Nathan. I mean, Nathan only needs a single name to be identified. He's just like Madonna.

But the GLA blog has a great series on queries that work, where agents post a query letter for a book they sold and provide commentary on what in particular got their attention in the query.

They also highlight new agents, who are often more willing to take a chance on a debut author to build their list. I've queried many agents (who rep what I write) the day I see a review of them on GLA, and frequently get an immediate response. My request rate for partials is higher with these new agents too.

Plus, Chuck talks about his cover band. How can you not dig a dude who understands the beauty of Pour Some Sugar on Me?

It's a helpful and fun blog. Go check it out now!

A Simple Statement About Loglines

I took a class in Freelance Magazine Writing and in our final session last night, we talked about writing query letters. Pitching an idea for a magazine article really isn’t that different from pitching a novel. You need that hook, the logline, that super brief description of your story.

Our lovely instructor Kate Ancell put it this way: “If you can’t get your story down to a sentence or two, you don’t really know what you’re writing about yet.”

That just says it all, now doesn't it?

Finding Consistency in Query Letter Advice

On Friday I took two classes at the SCWW conference with agents who have a very clear point of view on what they’re looking for when it comes to query letters. One was by FinePrint Literary agent Janet Reid (see also Shark, Query) and the other by Greyhaus Literary agent Scott Eagan. (I missed the session by Knight Agency's Elaine Spencer, but Chuck Sambuchino blogged about it here.)

What surprised me was when an agent would dispense a piece of advice (you know, from their oodles of business experience where they slog through hundreds of queries each week) and a few people would get downright fussy. They’d shoot their arm in the air and say, “but hey, so-and-so agent just said that they don’t like to have information about where I found them,” or point out some other such minor differing opinion.

The agent would often say something about this being an example of personal preference or style. They’d nicely remind the attendees that every agent has his or her submission guidelines on their website, and they probably blog a lot, or are on Twitter, and with a little surfing you can learn their style.

However, the questioner might sigh or huff about how hard it is to figure out what agents want when they all want different things. So I thought I’d collect a list of similar things that agents do say about queries.

Perhaps if we focus on the consistencies, we can learn 80% of the tricks, and stop feeling so lousy about the other 20% seeming like a big mystery.

Here are things both Janet and Scott said in their sessions:

• A query letter is a business letter. It’s not the time to be creative. It’s the time to be professional. Your manuscript is where you get creative. Janet even said, “Formality is never out of place.”
  
• A query letter must tell the agent what the book is about. This is the story’s premise, i.e., “A great white shark haunts a sleepy New England beach town.” Be specific.
  
• Query letters should never ever be longer than a page. Janet said about 250 words.
  
• When writing a query via email, you don’t need to include everyone's mailing address up top. But darn it, don’t forget to put your contact information at the bottom! And have a professional email that identifies you by name, not snookypants49@yahoo or awesomewriter@gmail.
  
• Include the word count and title.
  
• The query must sell them instantly. Scott gives about twenty seconds.
  
• Best quote from Janet: “You can query too soon. You can never query too late.”
  
• Best quote from Scott: “Your resume is your manuscript.”

Writing a query takes a lot of work. It might feel like it takes just as much effort as writing the manuscript. But there are tons of great resources on honing your query letter. If you haven’t yet, check out Query Shark, The Public Query Slushpile, the QueryTracker forum, and from Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford, this post and this series. Enjoy!