Concerning Queries.

Hundreds upon hundreds of e-mail queries to sort through today, while my co-editorial assistant worked on snail mail. I am relieved that he is there because he is genuinely interested in everything that is sent in. The office space is nice, too, with a lot of flora outside. It is very quiet. I spent today peacefully looking through the queries and sending out replies.

A majority of e-mail queries are...

1) carelessly written, e.g.: queries that have grammatical errors or misspell the name of the agency.
2) queries that do not know their own genre(s)/markets or target audience.
3) queries that do not follow directions given by the literary agency's site on how to submit queries.
4) queries that do not provide clear synopses.
5) queries that have not done enough research about the literary agency's interests, e.g.: sending in a Young Adult Romance about vampires to an agency that discourages against that kind of work (though this isn't what my agency discourages against).
6) queries that take too long explaining things or do not explain enough about the work.
7) queries that expand upon irrelevant things, e.g.: talking about a person's life story or their battle with addiction and then sending a query for a Young Adult romance about vampires.

I placed The Rejector's blog and Miss Snark's blog (retired) in my recommended blogs section a while back. They are really good tools for writing proper query letters, which can increase your chances of having your work read and published. It also saves people who are genuinely interested in your fiction a lot of grief.

Jobs and other information for writers and editors.

Today is my birthday, and I would like to offer you a gift, dear reader/writer/editor. I have a treasure trove of different sites that I've trekked through, and I'm going to list a few that you might be interested here with blurbs. Let me know if these sites are helpful, so I'll know what other sites I should suggest to you, my precious readers, writers, and editors.

Duotope. I am not sure how many times I have recommended this site. It has nearly 3,000 listings for publications, nearly 90% of them fresh and operational. Duotrope is a search engine for the literary journal that you're interested in publishing in, and it doesn't matter whether you are interested in science fiction, romance, dark fantasy, literary, erotica, magic realism, or westerns or anything else under the moon and sun, because its comprehensive search boils down all the magazines in alphabetical order for your beloved genre. It also lists magazines by length requirement for submissions, whether they accept electronic or snail mail, multiple submissions, re-prints, and even whether they give out monetary rewards for accepting your piece!

Duotrope also has a handy-dandy submissions tracker, which is great if you're bulk-submitting tens or hundreds of pieces at a time. It will keep track of the date you've submitted, your acceptance-to-rejection rate, and even when it's time to send a query letter to magazines that haven't responded to your submissions yet! If you subscribe, you will get monthly e-mails updating different markets, fresh journals, dead journals, journals closed to submission and journals open to submission. This site has been growing exponentially and includes not just mainstream magazines, but university journals and more obscure journals, too, for every type of writer.

6S. Sounds a lot like "success," but "6S" really stands for "Six Sentences." This community is all about writing, or learning how to write, beautiful, provocative, enlightening thoughts in, you guessed it, six sentences. These sentences can be as terse as Ernest Hemingway or elaborate (and sometimes perplexing) as William Faulkner. Find your personal style for creating brief, powerful, poetic prose at this lively community, full of maturity and more feedback and support than you know what to do it. 6S on Ning was created by Robert McEvily (who has one of the best last names known to man), born from the labors of love on his blogspot.

Here is one entry I saved from this month, entitled "Everyone Thinks Ted's Dad is Gay" by Shavar Salinas:

Ours is a town with an easy chair's allure. A lack of urgency - and I don't mean the sort born of stupidity, I mean a calm born of discipline and respect - is recognized, enjoyed and appreciated. Suitable weather arrives each season, it's never too warm or frigid. Trust me - you'd give more than a passing thought to uprooting yourself and moving here. Time moves as it should. We all feel bad for Ted's mother - whatshername - taking care of her mother over in Sioux Falls, but truth be told, she smells like mildew (Ted's mother I mean); no one misses her.

And one more, less clever and tongue-in-cheek but more ambient, paced, and eerie, entitled "Blue Splendor" by Todd Banks:

I vaguely remember what my Dad had told me on that August day with the hot sun at our backs and the lake spread out before us in its cool, blue splendor. His exact words are fuzzy you see, I was just a tot then, not aged more than three years. But, I do recall his putting an arm around my small, bony shoulders and looking deep into my blue eyes. “I need your trust, son - do I have that much from you?” I nodded in affirmation and he smiled in a way that caused me to shrink into myself. “Don’t worry, boy, we’ll be right as rain, you’ll see,” he told me, as I watched my mother’s body drift off into the murky depths of the cool, blue splendor before us.

Jobs at Publishers' Lunch Job Board! Looking for jobs can be a dismal affair, not because there aren't any, but because finding them is like trying to look for a black stray cat in an alleyway (or, er...). For such a verbose trade, you would think there would be more information on how to find jobs in the writing/editing/publishing world. Luckily, there are sites that can help. Through Preditors & Editors, "a guide to publishers and writing services for serious writers," I have found Publishers' Lunch Job Board! It's self-explanatory. It lists jobs that are up to date, even as of today, that might be available in your area. Check it out. There are jobs that will even pitch in to help you move to whatever state they're in, if you are currently a resident of the United States. I have a lot more to say about Preditors & Editors, which is just a darn good site with a very 90's-looking interface (thumbs up to them!) - but I'll say it later.

I wish well to you and yours and all your reading/writing/editing/publishing endeavors.