Cover angst

[mrissa]

Does anybody else hate writing cover letters? Anyone else in the world? I can't decide if it's harder for a book you believe in desperately hard or a book you've lost hope for entirely along the way. I lean towards the former because that's what I'm doing right now; if I was doing the latter, that's how I'd lean. I mostly want to bounce and flap my hands and repeat the same key words: "Very early computer stuffs! And Finnish magic! And, oh, these British spies!" And then bounce again and move my hands in circles as if to say, "C'mon! What more do you want here! I told you about the computers!"

It is extremely difficult to look professional while bouncing, even leaving the flapping out entirely. Especially when you are not very old and not very big and very female. So you try not to go with the bouncing. On the other hand you don't want to sound like that monotone guy in the St. Olaf Physics Department who singlehandedly convinced you never ever ever to go to St. Olaf, no matter how the scholarships came out, because if you had to spend a semester with That Guy, somebody would end up dead and your money was on him. Umm. Perhaps the second person is not the appropriate person for this last sentence.

I especially hate the bit where you have to put what the book is about in a short paragraph. The only thing I hate as much as that bit is where you have to say in what ways you do not suck entirely and how Stan Schmidt and Sheila Williams and The Jer and at least one somebody or another over at Ideo and lo these other people as well think you do not suck entirely. So that's the whole letter, really, except for the bit where you say, "May I send you the whole shebang?" I like that bit all right. I just put it in to make me feel better about the rest. So now the file in its entirety reads:

"Dear [editor's name here]:


May I send you the full manuscript?

Sincerely,


Marissa K. Lingen (Gritter)"

Oh, wailie woe. Cover letters. Despair.

Comments

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact I will need to write a synopsis and cover letter for the novel in the very near future. Just the idea fills me with dread and makes me slightly nauseous, and I don't have any way to explain to them that I don't suck entirely. In fact, I fear I (or at least the novel) might well suck something awful. Hopefully I'll find out during the workshop phase just how much suck the novel suffers from.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You don't have to have any way to explain to them that you don't suck entirely. Many people don't sell short stories at all or don't start until after they've done novels. It'll be fine on that front. And having critiquers is good: means you can fix more sucky bits before an editor sees them.