I was looking through some of my old query letters the other day.Heck, if I’d been an agent receiving those queries I’d have rejected me.
So many of the things that agents tell us NOT to do, I did. Things like ‘fiction novel’ was a favourite of mine.
I bet you can't believe how such a wonderful word smith such as myself could have done that, right? LOL
Yeah, well, I’m afraid I did. And you just know how much agents love that phrase.
As time has gone on though, I’m happy to say that I’ve improved my query writing skills. It’s a process, and certainly one to be taken with great caution.
Here’s a bit of trivia though – many of the agents who have requested either a partial or a full from me…I’ve had mistakes in my query to them.
No not the obvious no-no one that I mentioned above, but things like:
- Getting my word count really wrong. Like missing out zeroes wrong
- Repeating the same words next to each other
- Missing letters of ends of words
So you see, agents are human, too, and can’t catch EVERY mistake we make.
That definitely makes me feel better