They
might all be friends and family, but I’ve got blog fans! It’s so nice to have
an *adoring* audience, even if it’s small. Everyone starts somewhere, right?
Check out this amazing birthday present I got from an awesome friend!
My
critique group met again this week and I was excited to learn that they all
thought I’d done a good job with my revisions. I think the consensus is that my
story is getting pretty close to submission ready. Now I just have to learn to
write an amazing query letter to go with it.
I’ve been reading up on writing effective query letters and it turns out they’re a little different than I was imagining. The first part of the letter really reads like a book jacket—it makes you want to read the book. I spent hours yesterday reading a blog called Query Shark. The author of the blog is an agent who accepts submissions of query letters for critique. As a reader, you get to see her suggestions for improvements as well as how the suggestions were incorporated (or not) into revisions. She’s super-direct and often pretty funny in her commentary.
I’m still having some trouble figuring out how to deal with writing a query for a picture book. Most of the information I’ve come across deals with novels. So a query for a novel might include three paragraphs about the story. This of course doesn’t make sense for a picture book since it’s so much shorter. It seems like it’s going to be really hard to tell enough, but not too much. I definitely have my work cut out for me.I finally subbed at the school down the street for me. The people at this school are so nice! The secretary actually walked me to the classroom and then introduced me to a few teachers. Then the principal stopped by the classroom to introduce herself and welcome me. The kids were really nice too and a lot of them came to me at the end of the day to thank me for being their sub. It was very sweet.
What I’m Reading: Call the Midwife is getting better. I think, but I’m not sure, that the author’s writing has improved since the beginning of the book. Lost in Shangri-la is pretty interesting. The author chose to include a lot of information about WWII that doesn’t relate directly to the story he’s telling, but I think it really adds to the book. I started reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, based on a recommendation from a friend. It is quite an unusual book both in story and format. It has all these photos that go along with the story (Yes! A picture book for teens!). Anyway, I’m really enjoying it so far.
 |
| Yes! My blog is immortalized on a shirt! |
I’ve been reading up on writing effective query letters and it turns out they’re a little different than I was imagining. The first part of the letter really reads like a book jacket—it makes you want to read the book. I spent hours yesterday reading a blog called Query Shark. The author of the blog is an agent who accepts submissions of query letters for critique. As a reader, you get to see her suggestions for improvements as well as how the suggestions were incorporated (or not) into revisions. She’s super-direct and often pretty funny in her commentary.
I’m still having some trouble figuring out how to deal with writing a query for a picture book. Most of the information I’ve come across deals with novels. So a query for a novel might include three paragraphs about the story. This of course doesn’t make sense for a picture book since it’s so much shorter. It seems like it’s going to be really hard to tell enough, but not too much. I definitely have my work cut out for me.I finally subbed at the school down the street for me. The people at this school are so nice! The secretary actually walked me to the classroom and then introduced me to a few teachers. Then the principal stopped by the classroom to introduce herself and welcome me. The kids were really nice too and a lot of them came to me at the end of the day to thank me for being their sub. It was very sweet.
What I’m Reading: Call the Midwife is getting better. I think, but I’m not sure, that the author’s writing has improved since the beginning of the book. Lost in Shangri-la is pretty interesting. The author chose to include a lot of information about WWII that doesn’t relate directly to the story he’s telling, but I think it really adds to the book. I started reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, based on a recommendation from a friend. It is quite an unusual book both in story and format. It has all these photos that go along with the story (Yes! A picture book for teens!). Anyway, I’m really enjoying it so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment