The authentic globe.
I watched some of the Golden Globes the other night. Good thing the honorees weren’t trying to get writing assignments.
Have you ever seen so many displays of BS? Such unbridled pretentiousness?
I admire actors. When they’re acting. When they’re acting well. What they do is amazing. But when they can’t stop acting, when they ooze and emote and dramatize without any trace of authenticity, it’s embarrassing and off-putting.
Which brings me to a crucial point for freelance writers writing query letters:
Be authentic.
Don’t go all writerly on the poor editor. That’s what often happens when writers take their cue from the godawful books and blogs out there brimming with advice about how to write a query letter. Writers then think they’re supposed to adopt some sort of magical writerly tone, and follow a scripted writerly template for their pitch.
Those often manifest as gagworthy blunders like opening your query with your story’s lede. If you called the editor on the phone to pitch (a no-no, of course), you wouldn’t launch into reading your article without first saying hello, would you? Say hello. Be conversational. Say:
Dear Joe,
I’d like to pitch you a story about an emerging craze: penguin tourism. I call it “Waddling to Antarctica.”
See? Friendly but catchy. Authentic. Then spell out the gist of the story, refer the editor to some clips, and get outta there. If it’s a complex pitch, don’t worry about length. Spell out the gist and then set up the extra information with a subhed like “A Bit of Background.” But don’t make a simple pitch complex.
Even worse is when writers drop all sorts of clues that they’ve read the publication’s or the website’s writers’ guidelines in Writer’s Market. Like, “I understand you’re looking for exciting first-person accounts of challenge in trying situations.”
No editor is impressed one doodly bit by the fact that you read their (undoubtedly out-of-date) blurb in Writer’s Market. They’re more likely unimpressed to the point of hitting “delete” immediately. Editors are impressed by the fact that you’ve bothered to read their publication. (Drop hints!) And that you’re pitching the kind of story they actually need and want.
One other thing the get-published books and blogs have spawned: Blind adherence to every gospel word of a publication’s writers’ guidelines. If they say their response time is eight weeks, that’s just code for “We’re swamped. We may not get back to you for ages. If ever.”
Don’t be a chump. Follow up. Two weeks is fine.
Oh yeah: While we’re talking authenticity, don’t be so frigging important that you make a responding editor jump through antispam hoops to reach you. Duh.
I go into a lot of detail about other query do’s and query don’ts in Write Where the Money Is. But after seeing the Golden Globes, I had to get this off my chest.
Be authentic. Or an authentic person on the other end will simply change the channel.
