Query letters and lottery tickets

Of late, I have been thinking a lot about query letters to agents.

With the book done, all 80,000 words of it, getting published rides very heavily on the 250 (or so) words in the query letter. Blow that and you have taken months, if not years, writing something that only you, and perhaps a select group of friends and family members, will ever read.

So the query letter is a lot like a lottery ticket.

When you plop down a buck on a lottery ticket with a multi-million-dollar jackpot, you aren’t buying just the chance to win the jackpot. You are also buying, for only one dollar, the dream of what you would do with the money. All your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations are tied up in the one-dollar ticket.

And you have that dream and can keep that dream until you know that you haven’t won __ all for only one dollar. If the drawing is held and it takes you a couple of days to read the lottery results, you get to keep your dream until you do.

So it can be with the query letter.

Anything and everything you wish to accomplish through your writing __ your goals of becoming a successful writer, your dreams of becoming famous, your aspirations of financial independence, if you have any of those __ can be tied to the query letter.

Agents generally say they respond somewhere between two weeks and two months to submissions. That means for each query you send, you get to keep your dreams for at least two weeks.

But that was when queries were only sent through what we now call snail mail. (By the way, I hate that term and use it only sparingly.) Most agents still count their response time in weekly increments but the reality is, with e-mail, it can be counted in only minutes.

E-mailing a query saves time and money but __ and this is what I find is somewhat sad __ the trade off is that a negative response can come before you really have enough time to ferment hope.

Thus, the key, I believe, is not to tie your dreams to your query letter. You have just written a brilliant book and your first audience __ you! __ knows it. It may get published and it may not. But you know it is brilliant. Maybe one day the world will know. And that’s why you query agents and publishers. But until then, you know. And that’s the most important thing. It is something to pin hope on.

Thanks for reading. I will see you next week. And remember, keep writing.