Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Raymond Carver is without a doubt the master of the short story. I'm not sure how long I've been reading his work, but I read for the first time the other night a story that touched me deeply and reminded me in the fullest way possible why I read and why I write and love short stories.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Pleas? tells the story of a man who in a weakened, vulnerable state forces his wife to tell him the truth of a one-night affair that she had. The title characters, Ralph and Marion, met as students years before, fell in love, married, and as the story takes place have two kids. Their love is true and Carver shows this by describing the fealty each had to their own studies and intellectual lives as students, that would only be set aside for the other.

But, one night, at a friend's party with heavy drinking, Marion went out with one of the male friends to purchase more booze and the two ended up having sex in his car. They were gone from the party for three hours.

The pain that passes through the couple as she bit by bit lets details escape until it is all laid out is so expertly done that I shivered as I read it. In my own life I was deeply in love with a woman who on her birthday, during her party, went off with a mutual friend and had sex with him. Months later, I drew it out of her and the pain it caused was and remains excruciating. As it would turn out, I would learn after we broke up that for most of our five year relationship, four of which we lived together, she was continually unfaithful to me with a string of other men. Most were drunken encounters and one where I was left asleep while she went to have sex with another man.

As one friend said after I found all of this out, "It's not like she broke up with you. You just lost your turn."

In Carver's story I saw myself in Ralph. I felt his pain, really agony that someone so close, so intimately connected to you, whom you trusted beyond doubt, and whom you loved like you never thought possible, could betray all of that love and trust. The story was moving beyond words and helped give me a bit more perspective on my own experience, which I think is probably not that uncommon.

And there, is the power of the short story. It can transport you to a place never before known or experienced and bring it to life. Or, it can hit very, very close to home in unexpected and emotionally taut ways.

A Good Cafe & Creating Characters: An Exercise

Generally, I'm not a big fan of writing exercises. I would rather be writing something I plan on doing something with than performing the writerly equivalent of navel gazing. Probably the worst of these is the writer's prompt. Search for writer or writing on Pinterest and you will be spoon fed numerous prompts that are supposed to inspire or give practice. But really. I don't want to practice writing another person's idea.

But, there are things that writers can do that will lead to bigger and better things. I call it sketching because it is essentially what an artist does. Head out with pen/pencil and paper and find things to sketch.

One thing that I like to do is head out to a cafe or park or some other place where people meet up with friends and find a couple of group of friends and sketch out the conversation they are having. I don't eavesdrop, though sometimes I will hear a bit here or there. What I do is watch them for a minute or two. I look at how they use their hands, hold their heads, their lips move, and the way they carry their bodies and dress. Then I sketch out their conversation or the hidden thoughts that each is thinking to create a little scene. It doesn't have to be much, certainly not pages, just a little bit on how I interpret the scene.

This makes great practice for characterization. All the details of the colors of their clothes, gestures, and especially what they do when listening help improve scenes that I intend to write. It creates a catalogue of reference scenes, I suppose.

You Won't Fucking Believe This...

I've included this advice as part of a past post, but its value was recently reinforced.

My son has Asperger's and is in college, one of the best for what he wants to do with his life and I am very proud. However, he got into a little trouble with his grades and had to write a letter and plan for how he would get out of it.

He did a great job, but it was work.

The biggest writing challenge he faces is that when he has to create and write, his mind seizes up like a frozen computer. Sometimes it is so severe, that he needs a reboot. This can be a brief walk, getting out of the room and having a snack, or something like that.

However, this letter and plan had to be done in a a couple days. We couldn't take our time with it. So, he spoke what he wanted to say and I typed it. This helped, but he did frequently become stuck.

This is where I said, "Okay, clear your mind, take a deep breath then say, 'You won't fucking believe this, but...' and then just let loose with what comes next to your mind."

He did it and it worked, every time.

We all get stuck. This is what I do to get unstuck because it helps me reach past my conscious mind, the portion of my mind that is aware and usually the confused and blocked part, into the subconscious where things are clear and orderly.

In short, this is a way to harvest your blinks (a reference to Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink). These are the insights, memories, and deeper thoughts that your mind works over behind the curtain of the conscious mind.

Writing Hard Stories: Memoir

Last night I went to a reading and discussion at Water Street Bookstore here in Exeter with author Melanie Brooks. The reading and discussion were of her new book Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists who Shaped Art from Trauma.

In her case, the trauma she refers to is that in the mid-1980s her father, a prominent surgeon in Canada, suffered a heart attack, underwent a quadruple bypass, and received HIV tainted blood during the surgery. Being the 1980s, her parents kept the illness a secret.

Writing Hard Stories comes from her research to write a memoir of her experience as she worked to earn an MFA.

Though the reading and her discussion felt as if it touched the surface of what it means to write through trauma and honestly in memoir, there was one takeaway that I thought to share that comes from, I believe, Andre Dubus III: When writing the first draft, don't think about the people who will read it.

Meaning, if you write about your alcoholic mother and her abuse and degradation from addiction and she is still alive, push from your mind that she may read it. You will self-edit and the writing will come across as soft, glancing off the subject rather than burrowing into it. After the writing, you can begin to think about how to ensure you keep the strength of the writing while mitigating harm it may cause.

Middle Aged Gray Haired Guys Still Got it or Shine on You Crazy Diamond

Saw this today and thought, "You know, just because there's a bit of gray hair and pudge in the middle doesn't mean we middle aged married guys can't make a guitar sing."

In One Person by John Irving

I bought a hardback of John Irving's In One Person a few years ago and then placed it in my pile of books to read whereupon I promptly forgot about it.

A few days ago, I picked it up and started reading and am so far loving this book. Irving does not write in poetry, but his storytelling abilities can achieve great heights. In this book, he tells the story of the bisexual Billy with great craft and renders complex thoughts and shifts of time and place like a true craftsman.

This is one of his better books and well worth reading.

Obstacles & Challenges

While it is true that the plight of humankind is to seek out happiness, those people seeking out a good story want to see characters face obstacles and challenges.

These are the things that bring about meaningful change because they often create a sense of fear, isolation, and loneliness and sometimes rise to the level of life threatening. I would trust that someone has changed after facing cancer more than someone who says they read a good self-help book.

And here is the essence of good storytelling brought to us by the great Mary Karr: No change, no story.

If the characters don't go through significant, meaningful, and authentic challenges (authentic means the reader does not have to suspend all belief) then it is hard for the reader to trust the change the character goes through or to feel it in an emotionally satisfying way.

That said, don't mercilessly or unnecessarily torment characters. This is where the authenticity comes in to play. If the work is fiction, people won't really find it believable. If it is nonfiction, the risk is overstating the obstacle or challenge and/or overstating the change/epiphany.

This issue touches on trust. Trust the reader and the reader will trust you. If you overplay the hand, then that does not bode well.

Monday morning... Trump

Where to start.

In a world where evil has such a strong foothold, Trump and his supporters are bringing ever more evil, hatred, ignorance, bigotry, and misogyny to the people of the United States and the world. Any thinking person with humility, awareness of the effect of policy, ethics, and morals is simply shocked that such an ignorant hateful person could now lead our country.

And yes, it is our country. Even those of us who voted against him have some ownership in him. We can try to separate ourselves from this horror of a human, but not completely. He is ours and we must deal with him. There will not be a grownup who comes along and saves us from him. We must stand in opposition to all that he represents and at the soonest opportunity peacefully remove him from office.

Already, he has given more than enough reasons to be impeached. Gross dishonesty to name one of many. There is also enough reason to remove his enablers, which include Pence, Bannon, Priebus, Conway, Ryan, and McConnell. All of these people are either actively supporting the actions of Trump or remaining silent in the face of his unethical and unconstitutional behavior, which places them in conflict with their oath of service to our country.

Right now, America is in one of its darkest places. But, as Leonard Cohen wrote, There is a crack in everything where the light gets in.

So how do we be sure to create the cracks where light gets in. Protest. But that is not what will ultimately do it. There are organizations at this moment fighting against Trump and for a better America. They include the NAACP, Democratic Party, CAIR, CHCI, and others. They need your time and your money.

And to my liberal friends who believed there is no difference between Hillary and Trump or Democrats and Republicans, it is time to wake up. The differences are huge and have been obvious for a very long time. So start being active in off-year political campaigns and state and local races.

A Healthy Writer

After a few posts bitching about some very bad, awful, or silly writing advice, I found something that works and speaks to being a writer.

How to be healthy when what you do demands being sedentary for long stretches of time. For one, I think any advice that describes how to make a writing life work--whether it is how to think of yourself as an artist, or how to manage rejection, etc.--is useful. What I try to do with this blog is examine what it means to be a writer and live a writer's life. It isn't enough to learn the five killer plot twists every writer should master (in fact, avoid advice like this). Being a writer means being an artist and so living life with a mindset that reflects that fact.

Anyway, staying healthy and how to do that is great advice because the mind-body connection is real and when you get nutrition and exercise right, you keep both healthy. There are few artists of any fame who didn't have some healthful thing they did, whether it is long walks or exercise of some sort.

Plus, you need to get away from the work for a period of time to let your subconscious chew on things. I do believe that a lot of writing gets done in the back of the mind rather than the front. Even as we walk through the woods or around the block and focus on other things, the subconscious is still writing and producing and solving problems.

Very

Ack. Went on Pinterest and saw this: Words to Use Instead of Very. All of them were adverbs.

Now, I am not a purist when it comes to adverbs, they serve a purpose, but like exclamation points, they should be used sparingly at most. If you go through any piece of writing once you are through and search for the word "Very" and delete it, I guarantee the sentence will read better and be more concise.

The same is true of extremely, deeply, awfully, outstandingly, and so on. Hunt these little buggers down and make them justify their existence beyond any shadow of a doubt.

You will be very glad you did :-)

Things I saw on Pinterest Today

I like Pinterest a lot. Great recipes, tattoo ideas, photos, and just plain old stuff.

However, it seems to have also become a home to really inane writing advice.

For example:

1. Below "19 Lasagna Recipes That Will Change Your Life" was "8 Steps to Cracking the YA Mindset."
2. "22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling," with number 1 being that readers admire a character more for trying than succeeding and number two was keep in mind what's interesting to an audience.
3. "10 Methods to get better at Writing," which includes, condense wordy sentences.
4. The juxtaposition of a post saying insecure people try to make you feel smaller with someone stating 3 unforgivable sins your character should never commit.

And for most if not all of these lists, they use the numeral instead of writing the number as per Chicago Manual of Style.

Now that I've complained, what are some helpful bits of advice and information one can find? I don't like lists nor do I like rules or rules posing as advice. There is a great series of Master Lists For... that offer examples from which a stuck writer can improvise off of and get unstuck. There are photos--that have nothing to do with writing advice--that can be used to imagine the features of characters and settings. There are descriptions of food that can provide all sorts of ideas for engaging a readers senses. There are little known stories from history that can spark creative ideas.

Basically, most things that aren't advice to writers can be used to improve your writing and storytelling while most advice isn't really that helpful. 

Journalists Get Trump

Below is an open letter from the U.S. Press Corps to Donald Trump. If they follow the ground rules they've established, we who seek the truth in Trump's Alice-in-Wonderland world ofgovernance will be able to easily find it. Of course, one has to want to know the truth--whether it supports your ideas or not--in order to find it. This is something that Trump's enablers and supporters have not yet wanted to know.

In fact, as we watch these people believe things that are factually incorrect and continue to maintain that Trump is honest even as all facts say he is the most dishonest person ever to run for president much less win it, we must understand why this is so. When they say he is honest, they also admit he is dishonest. They are arguing not that he tells the truth always or even often, but that he is lying for them, for their interests, to save and help them.

He is their liar and he lies in furtherance of their interests.

The only way they will see the Trump the vast majority of the world sees, is when they begin to understand he is only in it for himself and that they are the victims of another one of his cons.

If the press follows their ground rules below, the truth will eventually be revealed to those who refuse to see it.

And now, the letter:

Dear Mr. President Elect:

In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps.

It will come as no surprise to you that we see the relationship as strained. Reports over the last few days that your press secretary is considering pulling news media offices out of the White House are the latest in a pattern of behavior that has persisted throughout the campaign: You’ve banned news organizations from covering you. You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same. You’ve advocated for looser libel laws and threatened numerous lawsuits of your own, none of which has materialized. You’ve avoided the press when you could and flouted the norms of pool reporting and regular press conferences. You’ve ridiculed a reporter who wrote something you didn’t like because he has a disability.

All of this, of course, is your choice and, in a way, your right. While the Constitution protects the freedom of the press, it doesn’t dictate how the president must honor that; regular press conferences aren’t enshrined in the document.

But while you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too. It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us over the next four years. 

Related: The coming storm for journalism under Trump

Access is preferable, but not critical. You may decide that giving reporters access to your administration has no upside. We think that would be a mistake on your part, but again, it’s your choice. We are very good at finding alternative ways to get information; indeed, some of the best reporting during the campaign came from news organizations that were banned from your rallies. Telling reporters that they won’t get access to something isn’t what we’d prefer, but it’s a challenge we relish.

Off the record and other ground rules are ours—not yours—to set. We may agree to speak to some of your officials off the record, or we may not. We may attend background briefings or off-the-record social events, or we may skip them. That’s our choice. If you think reporters who don’t agree to the rules, and are shut out, won’t get the story, see above.

We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates. We will strive to get your point of view across, even if you seek to shut us out. But that does not mean we are required to turn our airwaves or column inches over to people who repeatedly distort or bend the truth. We will call them out when they do, and we reserve the right, in the most egregious cases, to ban them from our outlets.

We believe there is an objective truth, and we will hold you to that. When you or your surrogates say or tweet something that is demonstrably wrong, we will say so, repeatedly. Facts are what we do, and we have no obligation to repeat false assertions; the fact that you or someone on your team said them is newsworthy, but so is the fact that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Both aspects should receive equal weight.

We’ll obsess over the details of government. You and your staff sit in the White House, but the American government is a sprawling thing. We will fan reporters out across the government, embed them in your agencies, source up those bureaucrats. The result will be that while you may seek to control what comes out of the West Wing, we’ll have the upper hand in covering how your policies are carried out.

We will set higher standards for ourselves than ever before. We credit you with highlighting serious and widespread distrust in the media across the political spectrum. Your campaign tapped into that, and it was a bracing wake-up call for us. We have to regain that trust. And we’ll do it through accurate, fearless reporting, by acknowledging our errors and abiding by the most stringent ethical standards we set for ourselves.

Related: 12 images that capture the new reality show at Trump Tower

We’re going to work together. You have tried to divide us and use reporters’ deep competitive streaks to cause family fights. Those days are ending. We now recognize that the challenge of covering you requires that we cooperate and help one another whenever possible. So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don’t like, you’re going to face a unified front. We’ll work together on stories when it makes sense, and make sure the world hears when our colleagues write stories of importance. We will, of course, still have disagreements, and even important debates, about ethics or taste or fair comment. But those debates will be ours to begin and end.

We’re playing the long game. Best-case scenario, you’re going to be in this job for eight years. We’ve been around since the founding of the republic, and our role in this great democracy has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again. You have forced us to rethink the most fundamental questions about who we are and what we are here for. For that we are most grateful.

Enjoy your inauguration.

—The Press Corps

Ugh, A Storytelling System

I do think it is important for people who want to write and are driven by that desire to study the art and craft of writing. There are many paths to the same end and while some are maybe more efficient or do a better job of imbuing a writer with the craft and art, they will bring you to a place where you have a deep and intuitive understanding of the maxim, show don't tell. Really, the heart of writing.

One method I've heard a few times is sitting down and typing out the work of favorite authors in order to understand language, word choice, voice, etc. Probably not a bad idea.

However, the world, and for some reason Pinterest in particular, is flooded with websites that offer how tos on everything from your opening line to creating conflict to you name it. And all of them manage to take one point of the craft and art of writing and boil it down to a handy set of bullet points. There is even one writer offering people a free storytelling system.

Helloooo... these are infomercials that add up to distractions from what you need to do to learn how to write. The information is shallow, often useless, sometimes wrong, and designed more to sell you something. But it's often free, you might say. Yeah, they are trying to build their own publishing platform off your back. The more blog visits they get the better their chances of getting published. So, to do that do you tell the truth--writing is hard and takes work--or do you promise instant rewards and an easy system?

My other problem with these folks is that they undersell and misunderstand what it means to be a writer. To be a writer is to be an artist. It is to be a crafts-person. It is to have a love of solving writing problems in an artistic yet succinct way. It is to see the world from the eyes of an artist and writer. It is many things that requires greater depth and sense of self than a bullet point list on the five types of characters your novel needs, the 40 words you should never use, the ten phrases not to edit out, and so on.

Writing is not a DIY votive candle or quick bread recipe. It is art.

Garrison Keillor & Lake Wobegon

One of my greatest regrets, one that I developed on June 25, 2016, is that I didn't see Prairie Home Companion more than once at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts. It was my first and only time.

Tanglewood is one of the most beautiful places on the planet and thank goodness it was saved for people like you and me to go there and sit among towering, hardwood and pine trees on a gorgeous, well-manicured lawn beneath a setting sun. God lies just beyond and within such an experience.

I also read today in the New York Times that Garrison Keillor writes much of the show and his News from Lake Wobegon is a riff that he steps into for each telling and is able to access some internal spirit to bring out such incredible and subtly deep stories. I loved seeing it and love hearing it whenever I have the chance.

Below is the News from Lake Wobegon that I was able too see.

Photo Books and Character Details

One of the harder bits of writing fiction and nonfiction is coming up with the individual personal details that create the cast of your book. This can be idiosyncrasies, unique facial expressions, time-period clothes, body type, etc. It is entirely possible to fall into cliches when putting together the characters that will inhabit your world.

There are resources to help, such as the series of master lists for writers, but one that I've found helpful is photography books and individual photographs. When I go to used bookstores I spend at least a little time in the photography section looking for collections such as those published by Phaidon and others where the primary focus is on candid shots of people who are not posed or in a studio.

Another resource is old photographs that can be found in secondhand stores, yard sales, and so on. These again often show people in their natural state or capture some moment of truth and expression.

The point is not to steal the person, but see within each face, body, posture, expression, etc. an opportunity to capture a unique personal trait that can be used to create true characters.

The Passing of Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill passed today due to cancer. She was one of the best of the best when it came to journalism and just being a descent person. Her chair at PBS News Hour and Washington Week will be hard to fill. Such a loss. Such a lovely woman.

Trump & What a Writer Does

Trump is hate. He is ignorance. He is the inciting incident of a new civil rights era.

As writers of conscience, our sense of right and wrong will not allow us to stand with a man who stands with the KKK and who so willingly accepted the mantel of hate. This is as true for those who wanted disruption to the political and economic systems as well as those who wanted to maintain the modest but steady march forward begun in the wreckage of the Bush presidency.

So I am brought to this question: What are we as writers to do?

My first thought is a quote I heard recently, not sure who from, that reads: "You're a writer, talk like one."

This leads me to one though: I am a writer, act like one.

We do not lack for role models in this area. Steinbeck, Grace Paley, Trumbo, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Frederico Garcia Lorca, James Baldwin, Jorge Ramos, and many, many others acted like writers when confronted with injustice, bigotry, and hate.

But what does it mean to act like a writer when fighting for social justice and against hate? When I think of the list of names above, I remember not just their writing, but their actions and their bravery.

This blog post is not enough nor is it enough to tweet, Facebook, or rely on any other social media to speak the truth and be heard. They have their uses, but the message needs to be carried to those who feel so dispossessed that they would vote for a man of hate whose policy promises will harm his own supporters.

Unlike the Civil Rights era--we are in a new one and the old battles of disenfranchisement and bigotry must be fought again--the message need not be carried any further than our own street. These people are our neighbors.

They feel the same sense of desperation as we do. And for probably many reasons, they chose to support a man of hate whose policies will harm them. Among many examples, he promised tax cuts, but only to the wealthy and corporations. He also promised trade wars and withdrawing from trade pacts that directly or indirectly support the jobs these people hold, blue and white collar.

But why are we writers credible and authentic voices to speak to these people as peers with shared experiences, fears, and desires for our future?

The answer to that is simple: We writers know work.

Many of us support ourselves with blue and white collar jobs that barely make ends meet so that we can write. We often live without health insurance or on the brink of losing it. After paying our bills for the month, we wonder how we will manage to do it again next month.

We know the stinging bite of winter air as we leave our homes to work in jobs out of doors and where there is little heat. We know the oppressive feel of ninety degrees and eighty percent humidity. We know the pain of overworked bodies and the frustration of bosses who've risen to their level of incompetence. We know the insecurity born of jobs for faceless, bureaucratic corporations. We know the unfairness of a country that will not wrestle with the cost of health insurance and taxes us for Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare at 12.5 percent, but only taxes millionaires at .01 percent for the same programs.

We know all too well the fear of economic insecurity because we live with it every single day.

We need to be brave and we need to be calm.

Brave because we have to do more than just write. We have to share our experience with those people who voted for such a hateful man. And we have to do this in person, in conversation, without the safety of an internet connection.

Calm because we are peers. We share a fear of a country that listens all too well to the wealthy and sells our rights and interests out for the promise of a campaign contribution and while lying to us that the wealth that is given away will trickle down. How humiliating it is to be told our economic futures, the success of our businesses and careers, our families and children do not depend on our work and its quality, but on the vagaries of the spending habits of wealthy people. We can share this experience with our neighbors as neighbors and friends because they feel that same humiliation. And we can share why we do not support the practitioners of trickle down anything.

We can share our ideas for what a fair deal looks like and be surprised by how much we all agree.

So, as we are confronted by the most hateful president in our lifetimes, we can act like writers.

On Being Sharp and Short

For someone who spends his time ghostwriting books, I prefer writing short stories when I do my own writing. I always have. The two that gave me the bug were A Clean Well Lighted Place by Hemingway and A&P by Updike.

These may be cliche choices, but I was in eighth grade, maybe ninth, so they came as they came.

The downside of this is that literary journals don't publish short stories like these, or like Grace Paley's or Raymond Carver's all hat often if at all. Instead, there are numerous slow starters that never seem to develop or catch my interest.

Generally this is because they fail to make a promise to me at the beginning that it's worth reading through their leaden intros to get to the meat of their story. Perhaps there is no meat. That's why if there's no promise, I flip to the next story.

The need to make a big promise to the reader at the beginning is true of novels. You need a strong start to let the reader know there is a worthwhile story coming.

The best means to do this, is to establish what's at stake. This is not the only way (see Cannery Row by Steinbeck), but it's a good way.

And when writing short, even just a sketch, there needs to be something at stake. If the story is about a couple in a cafe leaning over a table talking quietly, they should be breaking up, meeting for the first time, discussing her pregnancy, planning a crime, etc. The issue doesn't have too be resolved, but there needs to be a reason why you are telling the reader this story or presenting this sketch.

Queries, Stakes & Conflict

Queries not working? Think about this.

What makes a good story? Is it flowery description of a setting and character or is it meaningful conflict? The general answer is meaningful conflict where the stakes are high and the protagonist is changed by the end of the book.

So then, does your query concisely and compellingly describe the conflict and the stakes for the protagonist? Or does it briefly describe the genre, the characters, and story from 50,000 feet?

I've been reading a great compilation of advice on how to write queries here. There's a lot there and well worth reading. One of the KEY pieces of advice I've taken from it comes from an agent:

"I think the biggest mistake people make is not telling me what their book is about. They give an overview of the book in flowery writing that really doesn't say much, or they talk about the genre or the main characters etc., but they never tell me what the book is actually about and there's no way for me to judge whether or not I'm going to be interested in the story. Tell me who the main character is, what conflict s/he faces and what's at stake. You'd be surprised how many people don't do this."

And another agent:

"The bulk of a query should consist of 1) the main character, 2) what happens to complicate their life, 3) what goals they now have in response to that complication, and 4) the main obstacle between them and their goal. That is the cake of the query; everything else is just frosting and sprinkles."

One common mistake I think all writers make is they try to cram too much into an individual piece of writing because they want it to do too much. This is true of individual sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, and books. It is also true of query letters.

A query's primary job is to get the agent or publisher to WANT to read your manuscript. You need a sentence or two to describe the business case for the book (your platform), but the primary objective is to create a sense of curiosity that you've written a good story. Your sentence or two on your credentials as a writer is how you entice them to believe you carried it off.

So, the reader needs to know what the conflict is and what the stakes are.

Remember: the query says I have a great story that is well told.

The Mediagenic Author

Does being handsome or beautiful increase your odds of being published and succeeding as a writer?

The answer seems to be yes and yes and yes. Is this fair? No. But what the hell else is fair about publishing?

Is this always true? No. I won't point to an example because I'm not going to make the judgement of who is or isn't attractive, but of course there are plenty of people who succeed because they write well.

I will also admit to at times thinking if I took on a female pen name that it would increase my chances of being published. Then I realize that it would only increase the chance that I'm an idiot.

The point is, writing and who gets published and paid well are completely, or at least mostly subjective things. And we know this. How many of us ease our broken hearts after receiving a rejection for a piece we thought would be bought by saying [name of famous book or author] was rejected one-hundred times before they received a yes?

As a group, we have more ways to convince ourselves of our impending success than nearly any other profession. And we do this because the only thing worse than writing and being rejected is not writing and submitting.

Think of it this way: Each submission is a lottery ticket. We can wake each morning hopeful that today is the day the call or email comes to announce our career has just taken a major step forward. We can push send/receive with a little prayer that a single, wonderful email will appear.

[SHAMELESS PLUG] I like to think that by ghostwriting a book and/or writing the query and proposal as well as mentoring a writer I can help increase the chance of their lottery ticket being a winner.

Meanwhile, I keep writing my own lottery tickets and sending them out.