A query letter is the first thing an agent wants to see from you, and one of the last things you want to write. It could be on paper, it could be an email. What it cannot be is more than one page.
Agent websites have them, book and magazine publisher websites have them, anthology websites have them – a webpage dedicated to submission guidelines. Read them, understand them, follow them.
I get ideas for stories all the time. More often than not, however, I can’t stop what I’m doing and expand that thought into a couple of thousand words right then. Therefore, I have to have a way to remember the idea until I can take advantage of it.
As an author, you have to know everything about your characters; their desires, goals, ambitions, secrets, strengths and weaknesses. You have to know their history. What happened to them before they showed up on page 1?
Did you know humans can distinguish between 4,000 to 10,000 different smells? Now that you do, how can you use that fact to enhance your writing?
I just got back from five days of panels, parties, talking, and walking in Montreal, Canada at Anticipation, the 67th Worldcon. As a fan, I got books autographed by Neil Gaiman. As a writer, I got to meet new and established authors and talk with them one on one.
I recently had a coupon for Border’s and was roaming the young adult (YA) section of the store. A cover with a white silhouette of a girl with long hair against the slightly blurred backdrop of a monochromatic living room catches my eye.
