alexandra alger

Nailing it

Querying: I used to think it was going to be no big deal once the time came. You tell the agent about your book in pithy, irresistible prose. How hard could that be?

Ha! I’m in revision hell. I’m finding terrible flaws in each query I sent out, but only a few days later. At the time of sending, it’s perfect: well written (pithy!) and error-free. But it’s an illusion. A day or two later, when I reread it in order to congratulation myself on my fantastic query, I’ll discover it’s stiff sounding, or sort of meh; or there’s a typo.A typo! In one query, I had two “I”s in the first sentence. How did I not see that before? I have no answer. There is no justification, no explanation. Well, there is one, and it’s obvious: I’m a nervous wreck about querying.

Get over yourself, Alex. I keep telling myself this. Who isn’t a nervous wreck about querying? I’m going to take a step back and give myself time to rewrite without pressure.

Then I’ll just have to go with what I’ve got, because I’ll reach a point at which I’m not making the query any better. It’ll probably be unintelligible at that point.

I really have to stop making typos, though.