On QueryFail, Or, The Lilybed of Grief
Cross-posted from the Deadline Dames, where you can find more writing advice, giveaways, and cute kittens! (Okay, I’m lying about the kittens.) Check them out!
There’s a fairy story Speshul Snowflakes like to tell themselves. It goes a little something like this:
Once upon a time, Arte was Pure and Preshus. Suffering Artistes had no thought of Filthy Lucre; they slaved away over their Precious Werks. They Wrote with Snow-White Quills dipped in their own Preshus Blood, and they starved Gracefully to Death on their Lilybeds of Grief, Watered with pure Preshus Tears. Now They are in the Afterworld and their Werks are Classics, and they are Much Gratified.
But we have Fallen from this Golden Age. Now the True Artistes suffer because Hacks and Agents keep them from the Editors, and the Readers have not seen the Deathless Werks of Genius and Prefer to read Crappe. Filthy Lucre rules because the Readers have Fallen Too, and read Chick Lit and Genre. The Artistes who refuse to Compromise, who Slave Away over Works of Staggering Delicate Genius, don’t Succeed. There is Nothing for a True Artiste to do but Scribble Furious Screeds on the Internet about woe, woe, woe, the Terrible state of the Artes Today.
Despite being complete and utter horseshit, this fairy story has deep roots. We have this cultural vision (and once again, I’m paraphrasing from Julia Cameron’s excellent The Artist’s Way) of The Artist as a substance-abusing, ill-adjusted fragile flower who starves to death rather than change one word of their Deathless Geeeeenyus. The well-adjusted hack who pays the rent with stuff people actually want to read is somehow less “pure” than the Speshul Snowflake who buys into the fairytale.
Which brings me, believe it or not, to Queryfail.
Queryfail was an Internet phenomena where a few agents live-twittered their responses to queries. They told us in excruciating detail what made them throw queries in the “no” pile. They spent their time giving us a window into the minds of working agents, and showed us EXACTLY what didn’t work.
And some precious, fragile little flowers took offense.
Yes, your writing is personal. It can’t help but be personal. It’s your baby. But you have to be a good parent. You’ve got to make it as pretty and well-prepared as you can before it goes out into the cold harsh world. If you do not prepare yourself and your work for rejection, it’s going to be needlessly painful.
I was amazed when I heard about Queryfail. Here is a gold mine of valuable information for new writers. Here are the things that will get your manuscript set aside on a real live agent’s desk. This information–which you used to have to get by trial and error, by whispered conversations with other authors, or by just plain dumb luck–was completely free. You could avoid years of trial and error and learning just by clicking your mouse and reading some Twitter. FOR FREE. I was utterly bowled over. This was awesome for new writers. Hell, it was awesome for hacks like me, too!
Then the Speshul Snowflakes got involved and started moaning about how it hurt their feeeeeeelings and how, if an agent ever dared tweet some of their precious work, there were going to be COPYRIGHT LAWSUITS, by Gawd!
I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Never actually work on your writing if you can moan (preferably on the Internet) about how you’ve been abused,” that’s a Snowflake motto. Some of them tried to put together an AgentFail day, and have since been getting their knickers in a twist. (The most egregious example of this is The Militant Writer, who I refuse to link to. Go Google her and see her current post on “The Talent Killers”, and be amazed.)
And once again, I was amazed. Here are these people getting priceless advice for free, advice I’d've given my left arm for back when I was submitting, and they have the gall to get angry and moan about it.
Look, if you write for publication you are going to get rejected. Agents and editors and publishers are in the service of the Almighty Reader, looking for things that are going to give the Almighty Reader value for their cash. The Almighty Reader wants to be entertained, moved, affected, and seduced. They don’t want to be bullshitted (bullshat? I should look that up, but where?) or talked down to. (Which is, incidentally, where a lot of Speshul Snowflakes go wrong, since they have no other mode but “declaim from on high”.) Of course agents and editors want sellable fiction by reasonable people who will not be complete and utter boneheads to work with.
A lot of queryfails are as a result of people thinking the rules don’t apply to them. Submissions guidelines are the first test–can you follow simple rules like doublespace, twelve-point, Courier, send it to this address with this subject line? Can you send just the three chapters/paragraphs/one-page letter the agent has asked you for?
If you cannot follow even those simple rules, how will you deal with a complicated revision letter?
If you cannot follow even the simplest of submission guidelines, you will quite probably be more trouble than it’s worth to train[1]. You are not appearing like a good investment. And since a publisher shells out the cash for advances and for actual publishing (which is not free, you know), they are looking for good investments.
A lot of Speshul Snowflakes are under the mistaken impression that The World Owes Them Something. This impression bleeds over into their work, and they do not see rejection as a chance to get better and try again. They are baffled because they think they are missing out on what they’re owed–a chance in the limelight, plaudits and fame for Just Being Their Speshul Snowflake Selves. They are also under the mistaken impression that making a living by art is easy, hence the world owes them a living at it. And not just any living, a red-carpet celebrity living.
You can just guess what I think of that.
There’s another QueryFail going on today, as QueryDay. Once again, editors and agents are telling you in great detail, for free, what sends a manuscript or query straight into the slush pile. If you’re interested in hard work and free advice, go on over.
If you’re not, well, this isn’t the blog post for you. But you probably knew that in the first few moments.
[1] I was going to say “housebreak”.
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Tags: deadline dames, Friday Writing, pennyworth advice, we are not amused
April 17th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
their parents probably have everything they ever created framed and on the walls.. becauser its that good even in crayon!
You write what is required (for school, for work, ect) to learn how to get your words to a larger population, then if you can tweek the paradigm, you can do it your own way. But then, how many authors get the first draft to print? Everyone gets edited, even the Big Name Authors (and they still dont get to chose their own covers!)
They can take their work to a vanity press if they dont like the current system.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Man, I thought that Militant Writer piece was satire. It can’t be for serious. Can it?
April 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I shouldn’t have been surprised by all the Speshul Uniq Snoflake flailing, and yet…. I mean, maybe a couple of the new clueless, but surely not so many.
Truthfully I thought they had all mostly been stomped on years ago by Miss Snark, but apparently this is not the case.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Well said, Lilith. I was utterly amazed at the original event’s detractors – the substance of the critique was almost always centered around the “unprofessionalism” of the agents. Well, ‘scuse me, please, but in my book it’s the height of professionalism to share such knowledge so generously. (Nowhere else but Twitter, by the way, could this stuff happen and so I defy anyone to tell me Twitter is useless.)
As I wrote on my blog, there is no way in Hades I’m going to be anything but completely grateful for this kind of generosity. Anything that helps me move from the slush pile to the “stands a slight chance” pile? Manna from heaven, folks. Manna from heaven.
That said: (ahem) I am a little furrowed of brow over the tone of some of the agents’ tweets. Now, to make it clear: I have no problem handing out snark to people who can’t even follow the simplest of instructions. But there is (not often, granted, but occasionally and not all of them, but some) a haughty, “we’re deigning to entertain your questions but it’s really beneath us” (that’s the royal “we” of course) tone to a handful of these tweets.
I do think that’s part of what some of the detractors were responding to, although it wasn’t as widely acknowledged as the stupid reasons — the “unprofessional” and the “copyright violations” [my ass!] and the “you work for US” crap spring to mind as examples of the latter.
It’s unfortunate, just as it’s unfortunate that a few agents seem to paint all unpublished writers with the same lame brush. ‘Cause none of us are one great big giant snowball. We’re all Speshul Snowflakes, in a sense.
And as for “Ms. Militant Writer” and her “Open Letter” — most unfortunate of all, because for those few agents who have those misconceptions of the unpub’d as a group, that damn thing just made us all look like incompetent, self-obsessed, stupid, whiny fools. Most unfortunate? She had, like, one and a half good points in there. And they got completely lost in the bullshit, not to mention her complete and utter lack of comprehension of the publishing BUSINESS — big clue there, kitten.
Ah well. It’s a fact: there will always be those who want to have written more than they want to write. And for those folks, there will always be something to complain about instead of – oh, I don’t know – doing the freakin’ work, maybe.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Well said!
April 17th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Oh, Lilith, you’re assuming people even bother to READ the guidelines. Trust me when I say I’m beginning to think nearly half of them can’t be bothered.
You might also mention the online “blitz query” sites that are springing up like toadstools, whereby the aspiring author types in a generic query that’s then sent to God and everybody…addressed to “Dear Agent/Publisher.” Not to mention that it comes in looking awful because it’s been run through so many servers.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
The whole reaction to Query* was weird. Here’s professional giving tidbits of advice For Free and people are griping about it? There’s plenty of scams where you can buy the same advice, if you want.
Here’s a question that I think I know the answer to: Is the Query* advice also valuable for those of us who are short fiction folks? (I’m betting the answer is “heck, yes” but thought I’d check).
The other thing I wish was out there was a nice, clean, collection point as all the twitters linked from the above sites are just chock full of replies and other comments, etc. Not easy to find the actual advice. But hey, if you want the info you can do the work to find it!
- yeff
April 17th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I love you.
Have a cookie. That was awesome. Thank you
April 17th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I am 100% convinced that the Spechul Snowflakes don’t actually want to be published, as that would cut into their moaning “No 1 understandz mai staggering gennuus.” time.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Hah, oh, yes. Most of what I saw on QueryFail had to do with people who either didn’t read the submissions guidelines, or read them and felt they didn’t truly apply to really good writers who only want to share their brilliance with the world.
Maybe QueryFail crossed into mockery from time to time, but hell, I’d mock those people, too.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I have to admit that I fell for that whole Pweshious Snowflake routine when I was first starting to write. Of course, I was also 17 at the time. (My mother regularly reminds me that I used to be fond of “Star Trek” at that time, and I give her the same response to that fact as I do to my attitudes in my teen years: “You know, when I was two, I liked eating my own boogers, but I think I outgrew that filthy habit, too.”)
I also have to thank you for noting the widdle darlings that have nothing better to do than whine in public about how the agents are “unprofessional”. Not to sound like a “Back in my day” post, but I remember when these idiots actually had to put something on the line to express their delusions, and that usually meant editing their own magazines. I remember very well the explosion of small-press science fiction and fantasy magazines in the late Eighties and early Nineties…almost every one put out by some snowflake who had been rejected by every serious magazine in the genre and responded with “Well, I’ll show you!” One of two things happened in those days. Either the new editor found him/herself buried in slush from fellow snowflakes (and death threats from the snowflakes if the editor asked them to subscribe in order to keep the magazine going) and learned a valuable lesson about the economics of the magazine business, or the new editor kept making the same mistakes until the insurance settlement that financed the magazine was frittered away. (I’m not kidding in the slightest when I relate that the editor of the first magazine I ever wrote for had to shut down when his mother asked him to move out and he no longer had the disposable income.)
Ever notice how you don’t see all of those little skiffy magazines on the shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble any more? Well, considering that Fine Print Distribution went bankrupt trying to spread the word of zines around the world, the big bad publishing business put its foot down. I guess there wasn’t enough business to subsidize magazines where the editor/publisher was writing 80 percent of the content, including the film reviews and the comics.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Miranda, you got it in one. Having once been married to one such snowflake, I can tell you that you’d be amazed at the number of rationalizations from wannabes who want all of the perks of Being A Writer without actually doing any work.
When I first started dating my ex, she claimed she was a writer, and I figured that maybe I was distracting her to the point where she wasn’t writing. I backed off, but she told me she couldn’t write because I was still in the way. We moved to a two-bedroom apartment, with one bedroom reserved as office space, and then she couldn’t write because my stuff was distracting her. We then moved to a three-bedroom house, and she couldn’t write because her room didn’t have just the right light to it for two months out of the year. I offered to switch rooms with her, and then was told that she couldn’t write in it because the paint color wasn’t right. Every time I tried to make it easier for her to write, she’d find another excuse, and I fully expected to hear that she couldn’t write because a set of electrons on the other side of the galaxy was going counterclockwise instead of clockwise. By the time we divorced, her catch-all excuse for not writing was “depression”, and we divorced partly because I said “Yeah: the one your butt is leaving in the couch cushion from watching television for fourteen hours a day.”
The punchline? Over and over, the people who make the most noise about how they just can’t write are painfully jealous of anybody coming close to living the perceived writer’s lifestyle. They don’t want to work for it, but they’ll hang out at signing and reading events, telling you ALL about the ten-volume series that they’re going to write one of these days when “the book business stops being so commercial.” Of course, you just know those spinning electrons are going to get in the way when that happens.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I’m right there with you. The query is a tool to be uses in publishing. You wouldn’t hirer a roofer who refused to use a hammer.
Ugh, I read that blog rant too. I’d be insulting if the author wasn’t completely cutting herself off in the process of ranting. I’m more than willing to let people show the world how stupid they can be.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I love the fairy tale of Speshul Snowflakes.
The belief in entitlement is one that really irks me. Like an artistic welfare state, the publishing industry is supposed to just dole out (pun intended) contracts? Suuure. Gonna happen Right Now, too.
April 18th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I’ve just come across your wonderful site Lilith and my first exposure to Query*.
It is sad that whinging writers give the rest of us a bad name. There is only one person responsible and that’s yourself … so no point in whining because there should only ever be one person listening – and who wants to hear the sound of their own voice (not me)
I know as an emerging writer I’m happy to get all the insider information to propel me one step closer to my dream of being published. Stephen King tells of the huge spike or rejection letters he got as an emerging writer – part of me thinks it’s part of the initiation process, the hardening up – the letting for of being preshus!
The ex you spoke about Paul sounds like a blocked artist (to use Julia Cameron… was stoked to see her and tAW mentioned in your post Lilith!) Probably a good thing to get the hell away from her.
April 18th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
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