It’s day two of the query letter boot camp and that means we have to write our letter, get the first ten pages of the manuscript in tip-top order and submit to our assigned agent by 11PM tomorrow night. I have the pages formatted and will review again before I send it out and I have the letter basically written. It was synchronicity that caused an order of books to be delivered today. I had ordered a submission bundle from Writer’s Digest and expected it to take days to deliver. Surely only Amazon and Jimmy Johns have lightening fast delivery?
Anyway, when I got home from work this evening, a box was sitting on the porch…and it was heavy. Without my glasses on, I just assumed it was for my husband, a man who is single-handedly keeping e-bay and dare I say the entire American economy afloat. I picked it up and left it on the living room end-table. I then rushed upstairs to take part in the last half hour of the boot camp chat. When the chat was over, I made my way downstairs…with my glasses on.
Yippee, the box was for me and it was loaded with books that are sure to a big help with the submission process. It contained Weekend Proposal, Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, An Insider’s Guide to Publishing, The Author Training Manual, Formatting and Submitting your Manuscript and….Guide to Query Letters. How amazing is that? Ok, not terribly amazing as I DID order the blasted books. What is amazing is that they arrived in time to be useful for this boot camp!
I know I said yesterday that there is a time to read books about writing and then you need to stop and JUST WRITE. Well, this is different, I know I have a writing book problem, but I don’t or didn’t have any books on prepping your manuscript and submitting. So really, this is completely different and I don’t have a problem…
The cool thing about this boot camp is that your assigned agent will read your materials and critique your query letter. I don’t expect anything further to happen from this exercise, the agent I was assigned to doesn’t represent science fiction/fantasy. What I’m hoping for is good feedback so I can craft an excellent query letter(s) to agents that DO represent my genre.
I’ll get the feedback sometime during the first week of October. I am excited to be on this journey.
Write because you want to, write because you must.
One Story at a Time 
You must have miles of bookshelves 🙂
Where does one sign up for the boot camp? It sounds like fun. I haven’t gotten to the querying part yet and I’m looking forward to hearing more about your experience! Best wishes.
Hi there,
Go to: http://www.writersdigest.com/ and look under the education tab.
I wasn’t really ready for the boot camp as you’re not supposed to query until your manuscript is completely done. I think mine needs at least one more rewrite. I just wanted to get the experience and the critique.
Good luck to you as well:)