First Queries

I submitted my first query letters tonight. I hacked and edited and wrote and rewrote. I agonized over whether or not I could use the word "background" twice in the same paragraph. I decided that OF COURSE I can't use the word "background" twice in the same paragraph. Then there was a fairly fraught 10 minutes where I worried over a semicolon. I decided to go for a comma instead, because while I tend to really like semicolons, I often suspect them of grammatical pretension. And then, I hit "send" at the first query letter and was immediately filled with a chilling sense of dread and inadequacy.

My problem is that I've watched far too many terrible movies marketed to women. So, as soon as I hit "send," I imagined some sleek, svelte, sophisticated woman (did I mention svelte?) sitting in an office that has, like, a charmingly worn Persian rug and a mahogany desk on which sits one of those new, super thin Mac laptops. Her $2000 Mac DINGS alerting her that there's an email. And then she reads it and audibly (but tastefully) scoffs.

This works well since I was wearing cargo pants and my hair is kind of dirty and my desk is shamefully cluttered and my laptop is a PC that's kind of old (but to which I am, nonetheless, very attached). Also, there is nothing more intimidating to me than thinness. If I ever met Victoria Beckham I'd be summarily rendered into an idiotic stupor. I'd probably drool or fart or something. Victoria Beckham, by the way, is who I picture the literary agent who read my first query letter looks like.

But it's Saturday night. No one will be scoffing until Monday afternoon at the very earliest.

I say Monday afternoons, because I'm quite sure that literary agents (who are all sophisticated and svelte) have posh Monday morning meetings where they talk about the parties they went to where they chatted with Arthur Miller and Judi Dench (yes, I know Arthur Miller is dead and I don't know why Judi Dench is hanging out at smug parties in Chicago, but this is a figment of my neurotic fantasy, so just go with it). And I bet the one that got my email pulls it out at her posh Monday morning meeting (where no one ever eats the bagels because they are all very svelte) and says, "Listen to this, darlings, some bloggity nerd who probably EATS the bagels at Monday morning meetings thinks she can re-do Eliot. Have you ever?" And then they laugh and laugh.

This is what it's like to live in my world.

Then I sent a couple of more queries.