I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!
Today's post is going to be a twofer in the Blog Me Maybe Blogfest. We're going to do this one about ME and YOU. And we're going to talk about queries.
What is the worst mistake you have ever made on a query? What is the worst almost mistake?
Don't be afraid...you'll feel better once you get it off your chest. Confession is good for the soul. Unless you do something illegal.
Me:
Worst Mistake-In the bio paragraph I left out a letter in SCBWI. I belong to the SCBI (like a covert southern version of the FBI? I wish).
Worst Almost Mistake-Referring to the agent as 'highly retarded', instead of 'highly regarded'. That one was so close I still have nightmares.
Your turn.
Remember we won't judge. We may laugh at you...but we won't judge.
HIGHLY RETARDED! THAT IS AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteAs for my mistakes, I'm sure I've made them, but I've blocked them out!
Highly retarded -- your fingers only typed what your mind was really thinking. Ha. :)
ReplyDeleteOne of my biggest query mistakes was referring to how much I admired an author represented by the agent. I apparently admired the author so much I spelled his name wrong. Believe I got a form reject on that one. :(
I didn't make any major mistakes other than perhaps making every mistake you can make.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I finished my first draft, I thought I wrote a book, so I sent a letter to four or five agents explaining how wonderful this piece of crap was. Years later, I must've read a blog post somewhere explaining pitfalls to avoid and I think I nailed every one. :)
Except calling my ms a fiction-novel.
OMG, that highly retarded one was horrible and hilarious, and thank goodness you caught it before it went out. Worst mistakes? Who me? You mean like comparing myself to a best selling author and saying something like 'while I don't expect to hit her sales figures, I do expect to garner a high percentage of her readership' - or something like that? I would never do anything so... :shrug: Okay fine... Let's just say I was new and profoundly stupid.
ReplyDeleteHIGHLY RETARDED! OMG laughing sooooo hard right now...
ReplyDeleteMy worst mistake was right in the subject line of the email.
To: Jenny Bent
Subject: Query for CREEEP
Yeah. Rejection came back less than an hour later. I like to tell myself she just didn't like the query, but an author who somehow manages to misspell the title of HER OWN BOOK? Which only had FIVE LETTERS TO BEGIN WITH?
LOL. Love the confessions!!! All of you are hilarious! I may have to leave this post up for a few more days...
ReplyDeleteIt's okay, I'm sure a few of them are highly retarded. Maybe you would have gotten lucky and sent it to one of these. Then all would be well.
ReplyDeleteBrandon once sent out a query with the new title in the e-mail heading and the old title in the synopsis. How's that for confusing? I still give him crap for it.
ReplyDelete"Highly retarded" made me laugh out loud.