Dear Writer...

I've started submitting the revised draft of my novel You Don't Think She Is. Last year around this time, when I was still living in suburban Philly, a few months after I graduated from Goddard, I submitted the first draft of the novel. Ten submissions; ten rejections. You'd think that'd be a disheartening and discouraging experience, but really, it wasn't. After carrying the book around, in various stages of completion and then in various incarnations, since 2001, it felt good to finally put the work OUT THERE and get feedback on it, even if the feedback was just ten "Sorry, not for us"s.

That first round of submissions was also a learning experience, in so many ways. It spurred me to really look at the book and see what its strengths and weaknesses were, and to focus myself on further revisions so I could submit a stronger version of the book the second time around. But it also taught me a lot about the submission process itself.

I found that the most discouraging and frustrating rejection letters I received were not those that I had to wait the longest for; they were the ones that came almost immediately. These were responses from agents to whom I'd submitted no sample chapters or excerpt; just the prescribed one-page letter with my curriculum vitae, my publications and prizes, the "elevator pitch" ("Pretendyou'reinanelevator andthedooropens andanagentstepsin andyou'vegot30seconds beforehegets out sopitchyourbook whatdoyousaywhat'stheplot what'sthestory andnowthedoor's opening TOO LATE! BZZZZZZ! HE'S GONE FOREVER!!!"), and the marketing/positioning statement (where I see the book fitting in the racks at the stores. To which the only reasonable answer is, "Right at the front, on the BESTSELLERS table." But I digress).

How, I wondered as I wrote and sent these letters, can someone possibly judge my BOOK on the strength of a letter which contains none of the elements (voice, plot, subplot, story, dialogue, narration) that make the book what it is?

Those few rejections made me realize that, during round two, I wanted to submit only to agents who accepted excerpts or sample chapters. I didn't want my work to be judged or rejected on my strengths or weaknesses as a letter writer; I wanted it to be judged and accepted on its strengths as FICTION.

A few weeks ago, I got the idea to write my query letter in one of my characters' voices. Voice, after all, is such a huge element of this work. The narrative voice of Brian, of course, holds the book together, but woven into the work are the voices of his best friend Margo and his soon-to-be-girlfriend Christy, in both dialogue and in epistolary interludes.

Why not have Margo write the letter for me?

Dear Agent,

Well, it may seem weird, having a character in a book write the query letter for a writer (if he can write a book, why can't he write a letter?) but that's what I'm doing, so weird or not, here goes.

My name is Margo LeDoux, and I'm one of the characters in Max Harrick Shenk's novel You Don't Think She Is...

It felt like it solved the problem. Somehow, first of all, writing the letter in Margo's voice gave me a detachment that I'd lacked when I tried querying the first time. As I wrote in a previous post on this blog, part of my revision process was that I found it difficult to state concisely what the book was about, what the story was, what happened. Strangely enough, though, when I sat down and typed it out in Margo's voice, the single 'graph, 20-second-stuck-in- the-elevator-with- the-agent plot summary came right off my fingertips:

...So what's the book about? It's about me, and about my best friend Brian (he's the narrator) growing up... and this neighborhood girl, Christy Kelly, who has a crush on Brian and who hates me because I like him... but she figures out by eighth grade that if she wants to be with him, she has to get through me... and the rest of the story is what happens when she finally figures that out.

Simple. That's the story. Why didn't it come out in MY voice in those OTHER letters?

More than this, though, I felt like I'd communicated one of the book's biggest strengths: THE VOICES OF THE CHARACTERS (Margo's voice in particular) and their sense of humor.

Finally, remembering all of those boilerplate form rejection letters I'd gotten last spring, I addressed the letter to "Dear Agent," with a P.S. from Margo:

Forgive the impertinence of the salutation, but I've seen some of the rejection letters that Max has gotten. If you agents can send him form rejection letters that start out "Dear Writer," then HE can send YOU form submission letters that read "Dear Agent." Just trying to be fair.

I felt a little hesitant about this approach-- it wasn't "by the book"-- but something about it felt right. It felt like it reflected the spirit and character of the work more truly than the boring step-by-step template queries that WRITER'S MARKET and so many other writer's books and workshops prescribe. It reflected my strengths as a writer, my sense of humor, my story, my characters' voices, all of it.

If an agent didn't like the letter, then that agent probably wasn't a good match for my work... but they would DEFINITELY get a feel for my book from reading the letter.

Still, before I started querying, I sent a rough draft of the letter to a Goddard friend of mine, who responded that it was "brilliant" and that I should use it.

So earlier this week, I started round two of submissions. I went into the online WRITER'S MARKET agent listings and did a focused search (agents who worked with new writers and who represented mainstream novels and YA --young adult-- titles), and, armed with a list of eight agencies, started sending. I sent the letter and a sample chapter (chapter one: thirty pages) to one agency, and (grudgingly) sent a letter only to a second. I did NOT use the "Dear Agent" approach in either letter; I feared that it was somehow too over-the-top. Instead, I addressed the letters personally to the agents in question.

Two days after sending out the first submission email (the one that was a letter only), I received my first reply:

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, your project is not right for this agency at this time.

Best of luck to you as you seek representation.

Warmest regards...

"Warmest regards." Indeed. How warm that form letter was.

If submitting a work, like every other part of writing, is a learning process, then I learned two things from this opening round of two submissions. One, that I need to try to submit only to agents who are going to actually READ MY WORK regardless of the letter... and two, if I am going to send a letter only, use the version where "Margo" addresses the letter "Dear Agent."

Just trying to be fair.

To read chapter one of You Don't Think She Is, click here.

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