TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: they've heard it all before

When I was putting myself through writing grad school I had the chance to do some preliminary submission screening for a variety of publishers and organizations. This was before email submissions, so it was dusty and surprisingly physical work. (If you've never hefted giant manuscript stacks, let me tell you that paper is heavy.) It wasn't very fun, although it sometimes was funny. But it did give me a transformative glimpse of what longtime agents and editors experience.

The most important thing it taught me was that trying to be original, startling, unique, or otherwise memorable in your pitch, as opposed to the writing you're trying to sell, just doesn't work.

It's as if you were beginning chess player trying to surprise Gary Kasparov or or Boris Spassky with your brand new opening gambit. They have seen hundreds if not thousands more opening gambits than you have. What's unique to you is not unique to them. They've heard, and played, it all before. And the less you understand that, the more amateur you seem.

What does work? In getting your writing published, I mean, not in chess, about which I know only four things. (For the record: Boris Spassky and Gary Kasparov have been champions, Bobby Fisher is one crazy dude, and chess pieces are pretty.)

It's this simple: being professional works. Submitting only those genres of work they say they actually want in the format they request (that is, really researching your submissions rather than sending out huge email blasts). Being informative rather than being "unique" or "different" or "original." Skipping the bold claims and inflated credits for confident honesty. Learning what they need to know to make a good decision, and giving it to them concisely.

Like manuscript screening, this isn't really fun. I'd personally much rather choose fonts and cook up striking first lines for a query letter. But it works. You may still get rejected, and rejected a lot. No letter can sell a work of writing if that work doesn't happen to be right for this particular recipient at this particular time.

But you'll get rejected for the right reasons, and not because you sabotaged a perfect viable book submission by, say, starting your query letter in anapestic tetrameter. That reference sounds impressive, but it's actually the poetic meter used by Dr. Seuss, a writer whose work is permanently engraved on my synapses (which is the only reason I know its name). Herewith, just to show you that I feel your pain despite the rather hectoring tone of this post, is a query for my first book, Home Life, in more or less anapestic more or less tetrameter.

To my dear Agent X: this small book I submit
In the hopes it will charm you with wisdom and wit.
My small memoir of rooms is so detailed and smart,
that its style and its grace will catch most readers' hearts.
I'm impoverished, unknown, and a novice, it's true,
But just try it and see it make profits for YOU!