The Weekend Writer: Some Query Letter Critiques

I just stumbled upon author Mindy McGinniss' blog in which she critiques query letters. This is interesting stuff, at least as far as I've read.

McGinness is the author of The Female of the Species, which I liked. A lot.

The Weekend Writer: How NOT To Personalize A Query Letter

There are countless numbers of articles out in the world on how to do countless numbers of things related to writing. Personally, I have become selective about which ones I read, because there really aren't countless numbers of ways to do things. But How Not To Personalize A Query Letter by Tiffany Hawk did catch my eye because of the NOT in the title.

Essentially what she's saying is don't personalize your letter in an illogical way that's not connected to a professional connection. For instance, sometime in the last year or two I submitted to an agent who has an apple orchard. It was all I could do not to say in my cover letter that I love apple orchards. I hope I didn't say that.

Also, don't do any of these things.

Hawk also has a 6-step strategy for finding literary agents that I think is very good. 

What Did You Do This Week, Gail? Oct. 24 Edition

Goal 1. Adhere to Goals and Objectives I am. Yes, I am doing that.

Goal 2. Prepare Mummy Hunters for Submission Have I mentioned that I'm doing this for the second time? And I'm nearly done?

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Promoted cooking/writing post
• Time Management Tuesday post
• Promoted TMT post to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter
• Family Fletcher post
• Promoted Family Fletcher post to Facebook community, Google+, Google+ community, and Twitter
• Goodreads review of Family Fletcher and Case Histories 
• Goodreads blog post
• Nearly finished the November Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar

I also submitted a book manuscript to an editor. I don't seem to have a goal this year for that sort of thing. I revised my query letter using info I picked up at the Reinventing your Query Letter with Kristine Carlson Asselin and agent Kathleen Rushall I attended at the NESCBWI spring conference. As I've mentioned here before (though I can't find the post(s) now) you're wasting your time at workshops, if you're not able to use the content in your work. I've done a lot with the content in this workshop.