Captain Hook. Are you?

Warning: crass analogy ahead. For all you query virgins like myself, the hook of a query is its ever elusive, throbbing clitoris - untouched, unloved, and sometimes frightening. Learning to stroke it just right takes several failures, feeble attempts of polite but otherwise disappointed feedback from partners, and a very sexy attitude. Like any suave swinger who knows his assets, a writer must know what it is about her story that titillates readers the most.

Yes, I know. Easier said than done. How do you boil down a world down to a sentence or two? How do you take all the tension, emotions, pain, intrigue, and mystery into account? In many cases, it is simply impossible. "The Little Engine That Could," for instance, is about a little engine that struggles uphill (fetched from Nathan Bransford's How to Craft a Great Hook, which was, in turn, fetched from Colleen Lindsay's Some Posts You May Find Helpful). It does not even scratch the surface of an otherwise agonizingly repetitive struggle. But the phrase itself is iconic because it boils down the essential story - which isn't exactly an arc, theme, allegory, or symbol. It really is about a little engine that can. It is conflict. How, then, do we take a boiled down version of our work (just conflict) and make it sexy?

I don't know. I haven't gotten that far yet. I already told you I was a query virgin. But! I did read a hook that I thought was pretty sexy. Written by S.J. Maas querying for her novel, Queen of Glass, to be published in Bloomsdale by 2011:

What if Cinderella went to the ball not to win the heart of the prince, but to kill him? In THE EYE OF THE CHOSEN, the first book of my fantasy trilogy, QUEEN OF GLASS, Celaena Sardothien is not a damsel in distress—she’s an assassin. Serving a life sentence in the salt mines for her crimes, Celaena finds herself faced with a proposition she can’t turn down: her freedom in exchange for the deaths of the King of Adarlan’s enemies.

Not a fan of rhetorical questions, but it still is a fascinating hook. Maybe someone can add to this post a few of their suave hook-writing techniques.

Being the editor of your own journal.

In 2007, I published a short story in The Green Silk Journal. When I checked in 2009, the journal was gone. Then I received a newsletter and checked, and now The Green Silk Journal is back, and my story is still there (good news!). Green Silk has operated for about five years now, which is remarkable. I have always wanted to start my own literary journal and read submissions day in and out, but I have no clue how to advertise or monetize, or how to run a site, or do all the things that come with being the editor of a literary journal. I guess I will start doing some research. Maybe even join a new reading staff.

Writing addiction. This is bad, guys.

Today I should have finished reading half of the two-foot-tall stack of manuscripts by my work desk. Instead, what was I doing? Working on my own novel. I am almost positive I won't start querying for it until I'm fifty, which, give or take, is twenty-five years from now. I have been hopelessly engrossed with writing. I have no audience, except for my boyfriend, and he's not even around because he is reasonably busy preparing for his graduation, last exam, and last big report.

I haven't been this engrossed in writing for a couple of years, and this is probably the worst I've seen myself. I ate at 8:00am. I sat down to type. I took a break and looked at my computer clock. It was 12:30am. The sun was gone. I missed lunch and dinner. Someone who could eat five times a day and still be hungry missed lunch AND dinner, folks! This has to be some form of emotional infidelity. I spend all my waking hours with this novel when I could be, er, poring over the fourth revision of a heart-felt e-mail to my boyfriend.

Small update; literary journals.

My work pace has slowed down tremendously, but I still feel as excited about reading as when I first started. I just burned myself out by working too hard on critiques and letters.

Writers, editors, reviewers - please don't push too hard. You are big, happy oranges that can produce for years to come if you don't squeeze yourselves dry this year. You can always go back and work through your projects; perfection on a first-anything is a Sisteen Chapel waiting to happen. Don't be afraid to rest.

Through The Rejecter's blog comments, I found this amazing list of competitive literary magazines, listed in tiers of how competitive they are. This list made me so happy, and it will make you happy, too, aspiring writer.

BookFox's Ranking of Competitive Literary Journals.