Picture this.  You’re an author.  You’ve spent a very long time dreaming up and typing a fantastic story.  You’ve found the perfect market for it, and you (following the guidelines, of course) send it out.

Goodbye, little story!  Goodbye!  I hope you do well and I hear from you soon….

But you don’t.  A week passes.  And then another. And then a month!

OH MY GOSH!  What happened to my story?  Did I accidentally send it to Great Aunt Ruth instead of the market?  What if I accidentally sent a picture of myself in Jamaica instead of my story?  GASP!

What Do I Do Now?

The answer: Query!

The Shimmer guidelines say to query if you haven’t heard from us if a month has passed.  Why do we say this?

The internet is a wild, wild place, dear readers.  Any number of things can happen.  Your story could get lost on the way and never arrive.  Our response could have been eaten by a dreaded interweb monster.  Maybe your story was misplaced?  Who knows!  That is why you should query if you have not heard from us.

What if I come off as needy?  Or desperate?  What if they autoreject me for bothering them?

Relax, grasshopper.  We invited you to query.  If you’ve read the guidelines and understand when to query, we won’t be mad at you.  We’re happy to help, honest!

Besides, I’m going to tell you how to query.  Right after I tell you….

When to Query

Should you query us at EXACTLY thirty days, right down to the minute?  No.  That’s unnecessary.  The thirty day rule is not a contract of any sort, it’s just an estimate. Here’s what we’re really trying to say:

“Hey!  Usually we can read and response to your story within 30 days, but that’s just an average.  If it’s been like 40 or 50 days and you haven’t heard from us at all?  Something probably went wrong.  Shoot us a polite little email and let’s figure this out.”

Also, sometimes a market will read your story and hang on to it.  Why are they holding on to it?  They just want to read it a time or two, maybe let it bounce around in their minds for a bit to see if it’s memorable, or if it will fit in with the particular theme or niche they are going for. If we’ve let you know we’re holding on to your story, there’s no need to query–we’re on the job.

It’s been forty-five days and now I have to write a query letter. How?!

Here’s an example of a good query letter.

Dear [Editor’s Name]

I submitted [story] on [date], and have not yet received

a response.  I am writing to make sure my story arrived safely.

Best,

[Author Name]

That’s it!  Keep it very simple, and very polite.

Here’s an example of a query letter you might NOT want to send.

Dear Sir/Madam

I sent you my story, but you never wrote back.  Why not?  Are you mad at me or something?  I told you I like your magazine, and I even bought a copy once.  Is this how you treat your fans?

So I just wanted to know if you just hated my story and decided not to reply.  You probably did.  That’s okay, though, cuz I’m gonna be a famous author one day and I’ll never send you another story again.

Bye.

Ouch!  No one wants to receive a letter like that.  Don’t be defensive or over explain everything.  Remember, keep it simple and to the point.

Now You Know How to Query

It’s not as hard or scary as you think.  Stuff happens.  Editors understand that.

Part II of this post will be on how/when to query for length.  So stay tuned!

I’d love to hear about any querying questions or comments you might have.  Feel free to leave them in the comments.

Happy Querying!

Last time on the blog, Elise had a wonderful post about rejection dissection and what those pet phrases slush readers use actually mean. It was a great post and I was happy to see that some people commented about their different rejection experiences. (In a related post, Silvia Moreno-Garcia talked about how not to deal with rejection.) I want to talk about something that’s related, too: the personal rejection.

Realistically, there are very good reasons why a rejection may not be personal. The sheer volume of stories a publication receives makes it impossible to give every rejection that personal touch. We all love the warm fuzzy, but need to remember that the focus of the editors at any magazine is to put out the magazine, not train writers.

I think every rejection should be personal. Not only because it’s nice for the writer to receive, but because I’ve found that writing a personal rejection hones my own writing and editorial skills. A little bit of personalization helps everyone.

Personal rejections are helpful and insightful, and they make you feel good. Probably not as good as you would feel if your story was accepted and the acceptance letter had lipstick kisses all over the page, but it’s nice to know that a real person took the time to share their thoughts about your story.

Even if you already know that personal rejections can come in handy, you might be surprised to find out that there are a handful of categories of personal rejections. Personal doesn’t always mean unique, and that’s also helpful. It means you can identify telling characteristics and determine what best to do with your newly acquired rejection letter.

I generally categorize rejections into one of three categories:

Market Research

Let’s face it, even if all the magazines in the world could keep their submission guidelines up to date all the time, there are bound to be little quirks of the editors’ that don’t make it into the guidelines. This doesn’t mean you should panic or second-guess the guidelines. A lot of the time, it comes down to a problem of semantics.

I submitted a story that I described as “quirky fantasy.” To me, quirky meant something with an unusual storyline that focused on the absurdity of the situations that my characters found themselves in. When I submitted that piece, I found that when a certain editor said they wanted “quirky,” they really wanted quirky characters, not storylines. When I received that rejection, I made a note of that preference and moved on. In the future, if I happen to write something with quirky characters, I’ll try that magazine again.

Revision-focused Rejection

This editor liked X but didn’t like Y. She wants to see more tension in the first part of the story, and thinks the middle sagged. Hmmm…this sounds eerily familiar. Maybe it’s because this is what my beta readers were saying! If I get a rejection like this, I try to incorporate any criticism the editor has into future revisions of the story. Of course, most rejections won’t be very detailed. There’s a fine line between addressing problems in a story and hitting the author over the head with them. Most editors try to stay far away from the latter.

Encouragement

Even if the editor doesn’t have anything to say about your story that you find particularly helpful, a personal rejection can give you a little zap of encouragement where a form rejection would not.

I have some of my favorite rejections in a folder that I keep in my desk. The best ones tell me to please keep writing and submitting. These are my favorites because I know that someone other than my writing partners or my sister saw potential in my work–enough potential that they felt they should encourage me to continue writing. The support of a stranger is an incredibly powerful thing for a writer to receive.

Your Turn

What about you, readers? How do you feel about personalized rejections? Do you find them useful or encouraging? Let us know in the comments!

Aaron Polson submitted to Shimmer roughly eleventy-billion times before recently making his first sale to us. Here, he speaks to persistence, and why it’s vital.

#

My four-year-old son, Max, plays with the Soccer Hobbits on Saturday mornings, and no one keeps an “official” score. Soccer Hobbits focuses on playing, learning to love the game, experience, and fun. When Max pursues the ball during scrimmage, however, the look of grim determination on his face speaks all business. Max might not be as big or as fast as some of his peers, but he makes up for his lack of prowess with sheer guts and persistence. One tiny tap of the ball, even if it is stolen a microsecond later, proves enough to keep the fight in his tiny legs.

I can’t help but draw a parallel to what it takes to stay in the game as a writer.

Anyone can write. I have to believe as much to survive my day job as a high school English teacher. Some days are harder than others, for my students as well as me. Writing well and developing one’s craft requires patience. Patience requires a healthy dose of perspective. Since I started my writing journey four years ago, I’ve gained as much perspective as any bit of craft. Rejection is part of the game, and I’ve received my share. Each “no” used to sting like a solid punch in the gut, knocking the writing wind out of me.

But persistence requires a certain level of stubbornness despite little defeats. I listened to editors. I dusted off my knees and worked harder. I read. I’ve read the best in the field, devouring year’s best volumes, retrospective collections, award winners—trying to unlock the magic. Along the way, I identified what I liked, what worked and what didn’t, in the stories I read. I made a mental list. I wrote, too. Every day. Even days when I was too sick or tired or defeated to keep going, I forced at least one hundred words on a page, just as Max forces his little legs to keep pumping on the soccer field.

I first submitted to Shimmer in 2007. By my count, I’ve beleaguered the editorial staff with 27 manuscripts over the past few years. Persistence requires a writer to believe the next time will be it, the golden message, an acceptance letter with contract attached. It’s a sort of insanity, really, trying to find a home for one’s stories in highly competitive markets. For a writer to stay with the game, a writer must believe each story is better than the last, each story is a move forward.

And finally, most of all, a writer must be patient—as patient with her/himself as with a market’s submission wait-time. Craft does improve, only with time and effort; no “magic writing beans” exist, no overnight elixirs of brilliance. Stories need patience, too. Patience to develop. Patience for the characters and setting and plot cogs to snap together in the right way. Sometimes patience requires a story be set aside for months, as I did with “The House was Never a Castle.” I’m not the same writer I was when I first submitted to Shimmer back in 2007. I won’t be the same writer a year from now.

Max can keep playing soccer as long as he loves it; I’ll hammer away, story after story, page after page, word after word, putting my patience and persistence to the test.

Some writers know instinctively who they are from day one. Words bloom on the page, and the writer’s personal style spills over and saturates the story with meaning. To quote the lovely Anne LaMott, we don’t like those people very much. Most writers struggle initially to find their voice and wonder what the hell narrative voice even means.

To put it simply, Voice equals Style. Voice is what makes a person’s writing unique. It’s the personality and attitude the writer conveys in the story. The more charismatic and fine-tuned the voice, the more immersive and enjoyable the experience is for the reader.

When you pick up a book by a favorite author it’s like slipping into a snuggy with a cup of hot cocoa. Your expectations are rewarded; you know something of what you’re about to enjoy – whether that’s an immersion into lush prose, to be confronted with a gritty and uncompromising tone, or simply transported by a transparent style.

But even if we know what narrative voice is, how do we find our own? We often doubt we have the skills to achieve the soaring lines we admire in our favorite authors. Sometimes, this doubt can become crippling, and stall out your writing career before it even begins. So what’s the answer?

Pretend.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” –Kurt Vonnegut

Pretending is what writers do best; it’s like breathing. When we pit our bi-polar heroine against the evil Cobbler, and bequeath the Cobbler with halitosis, a smoker’s cough, and a penchant for wearing lacy thongs beneath his leather apron, we’re pretending.

Why not take a half-step further and pretend to be awesome writers, even when we don’t feel awesome enough?

Borrow from the writers you admire. Read their works twice: first for the sheer enjoyment, and then again, critically. Pinpoint what you love most about the author’s voice (what you don’t like is also useful). Think about the tricks and flourishes the writer uses to make the story better, and then borrow them. Go ahead and try one of them yourself. Then try another. And another.

Another fantastic way to learn voice is to type or write out chapters from a beloved book, or even copy the entire book, word for word. It helps to feel those words on your fingers. You begin to understand how and why the author made certain choices, and you will probably enjoy an AHA! moment or two.

Borrow away then, to gain confidence and skill, and to discover what suits you. Authors have learned from one another since stories were invented. Our heroes blazed the trail before us; they studied, and continue to study their own personal heroes. When we borrow and try out their skills, we become more fluid, take risks, and improve and grow along the way.

No one else can write like you; your uniqueness is inbuilt. Each new skill adds to that. Like kids dressing up in adult clothing, we eventually fill out those clothes, and then we are what we pretended to be.

Be AWESOME.

Your turn.

Let us know what you think about developing your voice. What have you learned?