Heya!
I touched on this in the Tradecraft Podcast with my guest, Declan Shalvey. Here’s the matter in more detail.
One of my barriers to finding literary representation is the query letter. I wrote a dozen versions of this dreaded missive and never felt like I cracked the code. Not afraid to research what I’m interested in, I dove deep into articles, podcasts, and YouTube videos with agents—piecing together a roadmap. I landed on a structure that made sense and jibed with my findings. But the results still felt clunky and lacked the needed zing to sell my story.
Between life, client work, and an always waiting book draft, it’s a miracle I turn the podcast out with any regularity. Unfortunately, things like query letters slide down the priority list. Objectively, with a completed book, it was the only priority to find an agent.
To force my hand, I paid for a two-night query letter workshop. With all my research and attempts, hope it would be a polish job. Turns out, I had an Achilles heel, elbow, hip, back, and nose.
The painful creative truth, the Thunderdome, is the best teacher. Get in. Get bloodied. Figure a way out, before some mutated outlander drives a sharpened tire iron through your chest. When the call for volunteers to read their queries, my hand rose before I thought better of my action. A few sentences in, my throat figured it out first and tightened as I squeaked my way through the unpolished letter.
With the firehose of information aimed at my head for the next hour and a half, I left, armed with newfound knowledge and inspiration, totally determined to fix my query and gain further feedback before the second workshop.
The two Wednesday night workshops were a week apart. With a huge advertising project starting on Friday, I knocked out my rewrite the morning after the workshop. I hoped for some quick feedback, and a few days to apply it before the coming Wednesday. True to the instructor’s word, she delivered the goods in two days’ time.
The feedback was honest, tough, and constructive. I had expected nothing different. Plus, I had four days to work on the query in-between my client work. Plenty of time.
As the saying goes, man plans, and God laughs. Monday, my biggest client partner called at 8 PM with an emergency. This forced me to pull triple-time with three projects that next week. Following a 9:30 PM briefing call with the west-coast client, I went to bed early to get an early start and set the project up for success. True to Mister Murphy, a searing pain behind my left eye woke me at 2 AM. I’m happy to report. It wasn’t dangerous, but an acute sort of migraine. I never went back to sleep. I slogged through the next two days in a swimmy brain haze.
It wasn’t until two hours before the workshop when I opened the feedback email. Unprepared, I went to the workshop frustrated with myself and the situation.
Without an updated query to share with the group, I opted to listen. Rather than focus on my work, I shut my trap and listened. And finally, though I’d heard it before, I acknowledged my near-impossible chance at selling my book, no matter how good it is.
The simple business fact was, while debut authors get a lot of attention from publishers, they don’t get relaxed page counts and book series. It’s a numbers game. They want tight, stand-alone stories—and my book stood in opposition to those two maxims—with no outlet.
I thought, journaled, and talked with people about my situation and broached a mad plan to still secure literary representation in 2024.
I’ve shelved Blackfire and the series to begin another book—a mystery/thriller—with a twist. For the sake of protecting the idea, I’ll refer to the book as PROJECT HAMMER ECHO. Ten-ish years ago, I wanted to write a book. A chapter and a half in, I abandoned the draft because of my amateurism. It takes more than an idea and a desire to complete the task.
As luck would have it, in early 2022, with a gap between BLACKFIRE drafts, I pulled out my notes and forsaken draft of HAMMER ECHO and wrote an outline. Completed, I squirreled it away and returned to my series. Fast forward to now, and I faced the business problem of needing a tight, stand-alone manuscript to secure a literary agent, and I knew exactly what to do.
Finished with additional client projects, I printed the outline and spent a few days writing notes. Then I transferred those notes into the outline document and began writing the prose draft on February 17th.
I won’t lie. As great as it felt to return to this story, I’m super anxious about loosening up, tuning down my inner editor, and letting the words come.
PostScript. I didn’t abandon the query letter workshop process. I updated the letter and received further feedback. Then another push, which I shared with my critique group. It’s not 100% there, but lightyears better than it was two weeks ago. Now it waits with the manuscript, should they be called to action.
The Numbers.
When I struggled through the first draft of BLACKFIRE, Nate Taylor, the brilliant mastermind at Dwarven Forge, was ramping up to draft a screenplay. He created a shared Google Sheet to track our daily progress. We’re both creatively competitive, so we pushed ourselves to improve. The act of sharing my progress worked, and many of you know I’ve used the same practice for the past three years in Clarion West’s annual Write-a-thon.
This time, I’ve changed my approach. I’ll track and share my daily progress, not on social media, but on my website.
Click here to see my daily progress.
Books in this genre (mystery & thriller) range from 80 to 90k words, so my target needs to be closer to 80. This should be achievable by the end of April. I have some amazing Alpha Readers on board, to keep my words honest. After this draft, I’ll switch to a comic book project as I marinate on the HAMMER ECHO draft before tackling the rewrite.
What’s cool?
If you’re of a like age group like me, then I can recommend LOUDERMILK on Netflix. I’m still on a run of ‘70s movie. I rewatched THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR again. TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, CHARADE (I know it’s from the ‘60s), and the super counter-culture, CHARLIE VARRICK. I didn’t realize I was in a mini Walter Matthau film festival, but no complaints.
I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of books, graphic novels, and audio books. As I mentioned in my quick post last week, about my reading list, I’ve done the same for this year. Here are the links for both.
What are you reading, watching, or listening to?
Let me know in the comments below.
How can I support the podcast?
No this isn’t a podcast post, but it’s on my mind.
There are ongoing costs to a podcast, and I want to provide a free podcast as I have for four years. So, would I love it if you became a paid member to this Substack, or tossed some money this was through Buy Me a Coffee? Of course. But the biggest thing you can do is let people know about the Tradecraft Podcast on social media. Directly share an episode you think a friend would like. The more people who listen, the more the platforms will show it to the people beyond our personal circle.
Thanks!
Since you asked... though it's a little weird for me to share with you... I'm 2/3 of the way through Cancer Ward by Alexander Sozhenitsyn. Welcome to the crags and canyons of life, in a 1950s Soviet cancer treatment ward. Deft, compassionate, and merciless all at once. And those ETCHED characters. Every one a genuine person, and you feel their desire and brokenness. And so beautiful while seeming effortless. Total reading pleasure. Violates the simple-minded crap about "no head-hopping" and it works. But, kids, don't try this at home.
Re-watched Tokyo Vice to prepare for the 2nd season, and I liked the re-watch even better. That's when you can really appreciate the good writing behind it all. But 2nd season episode 1 has some clunky "as you know, Bob," for the purpose of reminding viewers of all we knew at the end of season 1, but it breaks the hitherto-natural dialogue flow. And, my biggest bugaboo: too much implausibility. Is this the fate of multi-season video shows, where writers feel pressured to ramp up the stakes at the cost of ejecting the viewer? Unlike the 1st season, there are things you just go "huh?" about. As in, "how was that even possible?" Scenes happen that lean too much on the viewers' benevolence for the medium. "Oh, yes, the plot required that confrontation, so we'll let the viewers figure out how it actually came about, because on the surface of it, it's preposterous." For a tight, reality-based thriller/drama, a writer can't afford to do that. But they do it anyway. That's why I stop watching a lot of stuff. The immersion magic goes "poof!" when you find yourself uttering the wrong kind of "huh?": The kind of "huh" that means you don't have anticipatory faith that your question will be satisfactorily addressed at some later time. A gloss-over. The tyranny of plot machinations over substance. Oog. A misguided sort of efficiency, perhaps. But those are the joints of the skeleton. When you don't get the joints right, you know what happens.