Writerly Tip #2: Cover Letters

To be specific, I will be discussing Cover Letters for poetry, short-fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Things to keep in mind: editors read a lot of cover letters, often all at once. Usually the editing process is done in several stages: They read the cover letters and then the manuscripts, sorting them into two (Yes/No) or three (Yes/Maybe/No) piles. Each editor will do this with a stack, and then they will all meet to discuss the merits of the Yeses and Maybes, coming to a consensus on what will be used for next months issue, what will be held for a future publication date and what will be added to the No pile.

Reading the cover letter is the first step an editor takes in deciding whether or not to publish a poem, story, or essay. It is your introduction to the work, but unlike a foreword or introductory paragraph, it doesn't need to hook, it just needs to present.

Things you will need:

-Greeting

-List of work(s) submitted

-Credentials

-Bio

Firstly, we must address the editor. An acceptable method is to use the generic "Poetry Editor" format. Often, writers believe that personally addressing the Fiction Editor or Editor-in-Chief will increase their chance of standing out, showing they know a thing or two about the journal. The problem is that editors change...frequently. You might address your submission to the Fiction Editor of 2005-07, because you read an old copy of Writers Market. This doesn't look good. Or, it could be read by a new assistant editor or GTA. Reading, "Poetry Editor," reminds this editor that he is a poetry editor now. Reading, "Mr. Bret Lott," reminds him that he is not Bret Lott. Not even close.

The first paragraph should be short and sweet. List your works and get out of the way. If you can summarize the tone in a single adjective, by all means do it! (eg. "Please consider my humorous short story, "The Land of Potato Heads, or My Summer Babysitting"). However, what shouldn't be in this paragraph, at least from my perspective, is a list of authors you read and the trip you took to Italy which inspired and shaped the five line poem the editor is about to take ten seconds reading. In some ways, an overly long cover letter can become a self-parody, especially when submitting poetry or flash fiction.

I also try to keep my credentials short, sticking to the relevant publications - for instance, when submitting fiction, I don't bring up my Creative Nonfiction award, or my year doing magazine writing.

Finally, the bio. This may seem presumptuous, but really you're just saving the editor some time in the event that your piece is accepted. I like my bio to have a joke and a little personal color to it. It emphasizes my writerness, but also presents my personality, which I am marketing just as much as my work itself. (Deny this at your own risk!)

My Cover Letter:

Fiction Editor,

Please consider my fiction submissions, "Insufficient" and "Monologue from the Womb." They're intended to be humorous.

My fiction has appeared in Elimae, Cavalier Literary Couture, Bartleby-Snopes, and Hobo Pancakes, but I hope these minor accomplishments don't discourage you from publishing my work.

I've also attached a brief bio:

Steven Miller is a graduate of Kansas State University. His fiction has appeared in the online journals Bartleby-Snopes, elimae, and Hobo Pancakes. He is currently putting his English degree to work writing ad copy for the local newspaper: "Feeling Down? Come on Down to Clown Town!"

Thank you for reading my short pieces,

Steven Miller

Writerly Tip #1: Submissions

From my few short years student-working at the illustrious Southern Review, I learned one thing above all others: What a submission looks like.

I was the evil clerk who put the "Better Luck Elsewhere" slip into the SASE to mail back to the writers. I didn't have the Sophie's Choice position of choosing which ones got the slip (I do now at LeaningHousePress), but I still felt that weight.

It did not discourage me from continuing on my path to be a writer, but it did equip me with some useful knowledge - for instance, what the first line of an unpublishable story sounds like. More to the point of today's entry, it taught me the standards of submitting work.

Here are the materials you will need:

-Cover letter

-Manuscript (we'll get into these specifics in a later entry)

-Two standard (#9) envelopes

-Paper clip

-Stamps

Place the cover letter on top of the manuscript. Place one envelope at the back of the manuscript. This envelope should have your name and address in the "to" section, and the name and address of the journal your submitting to in the "from" section (upper left corner). This is called a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. Don't forget to put a stamp in the upper right corner. Paper clip these all together and fold the bundle into thirds.

Now address the next envelope to the journal you're looking to submit to, and fill it out accordingly.

It's been my experience that all of this can be mailed with one stamp if you have a five page or less manuscript, but after that you should consider having a post office worker weigh it.

That's all for now! Good luck in the cut throat world of publishing!!

Thank You

Thanks to everyone who tuned in to hear me on the radio this week! What an experience! I can't wait to do more of the same.

It wouldn't have been nearly as fun if I didn't know I had fans out there in the world listening.

Will Be Reading on 91.9 FM

Thursday, October 28th 10:00pm

http://www.streamingthe.net/KSDB-The-Wildcat-91.9-FM-Manhattan-KS/p/8496&player=1

The Financial Lives of the Poets

Jess Walter. Harper. 2009. 304 pp.

(originally published 10/10/10 in the Manhattan Mercury)

In the great Modern tradition, Jess Walter presents at the heart of his novel not a hero but an anti-hero, a J. Alfred Prufrock character – middleaged, educated to the point of pretension, pigeon-holed and indecisive – a protagonist who is his own antagonist. However, like with Prufrock, these flaws do not make us dislike Matthew Prior. On the contrary, they fill us with a great affection, perhaps even a great pity for Matt. The plot of the novel, excepting the ending, which I won’t get into here, is essentially a story

of entropy. Walter introduces Matt not on the day he leaves the local newspaper to start an illconceived website specializing in free-verse poetry about the stock market, poetfolio.com, nor when that particular venture fails, when he crawls back to the paper, nor when he is finally fired; the novel doesn’t even open on a small but symbolic moment: discovering his wife Lisa’s infidelity on Facebook, perhaps, or opening the foreclosure notice. No, we meet Matt in an unlikely place: 7/11 at 2 a.m., contemplating the original cost of his car versus how much he still owes on it (two commensurate figures) and getting stoned with two twentysomethings he’s just met, Jamie and Skeet. So in medias res we being, not at the outset of conflict but in the thick of it. "This is what it means to come apart," our narrator tells us. "Not gently unraveling, but blowing out, a tire on the freeway."

One of the most remarkable aspects of this book is that literally every part of the protagonist's life is marching seemingly in tandem toward complete dissolution, and yet clarity of situation is never compromised. With Skeet and Jamie, he stands in a fetid apartment littered with pizza crusts; at home he doesn't sleep because he simply can't bring himself to share a bed with his unfaithful wife; when he should be working, he's reminded again and again that there's nothing in this world for him to do: "Four years earlier we had complained about too many ads in the paper (less room for our brilliance) and competed for designer beats (cultural trends reporter); now we sighed with relief when the slender paper had any ads at all and eagerly accepted pay cuts and broad, hyphenated jobs created by the loss of our colleges (courtscops-schools...)."

More tragic than this fiscal crisis is the crisis in Matt's marriage, a crisis that weighs on him at practically all points in the story. His unemployment would not be nearly as devastating if her new beau, Chuck, didn't own his own lumber business or if she didn't love the house (he's about to lose) so much. "After each bad decision, after each failure we quietly logged our blame, our petty resentments; we constructed a case against the other that we never prosecuted,” Matt explains, and our only hope is that they truly never prosecute it.

The weight of these conflicts, internal and external, are bearable because Walter writes them with such a keen sense of humor, such an eye for absurdity. From the lawyer/drug dealer – “A prospectus? What kind of drug dealers have a prospectus?” – to the industrious squirrel who’s also struggling, “doing a little last gathering for his chestnut 401K,” Walter keeps us laughing and the true gravity of these failures he keeps at bay.

If I had to summarize “The Financial Lives of the Poets” in one word, it would be “convergence," because this is the essential nature of the characters here, characters who are constantly conflating incompatible elements (poetry and stock tips, drug dealing and legal contracts, their son Franklin's actions both diffident and at times violent) for the absurd aims of money, protection, love. In this respect, at the character-level if not the plot, Walter is an utter realist, refusing the flat character at every turn, and because these conflicts are character-driven we buy their synchronization and flip the pages still faster.