It's Query Day here on the blog again, so I wanted to talk briefly about the agony of querying.
You know what I mean. The revising, and revising again, and batch querying, and then revising even more. It gets to where you're so anxious that your query isn't perfect enough that you can't bring yourself to send it out at all.
You have... Perfection Paralysis. *Dun Dun DUUUUUUNNNNN*
But here's the thing: even though you want to make your query as good as you can, an amazing query can only get you so far. If your pages are mediocre, then even an A+ query isn't going to get you published. And if the query is more of a B/B+, but is good enough to do its job and get the agent to read your pages, then amazing pages will definitely get you on the road to publication.
Pages: another "P" word. The one that really counts.
So get over that Perfection Paralysis. Get your query looked at by another writer, revise it once or maybe twice, and then send the darn thing with your amazing pages attached. When it comes to the query, there is such a thing as good enough.
Do you ever fall victim to Perfection Paralysis?
Definitely yes. I have about 40 pages of different queries. So I probably have it pretty bad. I am going to have Casey look at my 3 best ones and help me decide which one to use and then like you said, send it. After I finish my final revisions.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, and so true. Thanks for sharing.
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So far I haven't found anyone who thought my query letter was good enough. But I keep looking....
ReplyDeleteAll the time. It's maddening!
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