query letter – Cynthia D. Griffin

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Novel Submission Part 2: Writing an Effective Cover Letter

Posted on August 3, 2015July 7, 2019 by Cynthia D. Griffin

We talked about Novel Submission Part 1: The Query Package, but now let’s get more specific and discuss how to actually write a cover letter (and FYI, writing a novel cover letter is different than a short story cover letter, in fact there are some publications that don’t even require a cover letter for short story submissions).

The following post is an accumulation of what I learned from Gary A Braunbeck’s worksop on cover letters and synopses, research I’ve done, and my own observations as I wrote the cover letter for my novel.

Here are some important things to keep in mind as you begin to write the cover letter (or what some call a query letter)…

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book publishers, first publication, getting published, Jane Friedman, novel writing, Other Writing Stuff, publisher, publishers, publishing, The Writer's Toolbox, writing advice, writing books, writing workshop

Novel Submission Part 1: The Query Package

Posted on July 27, 2015July 7, 2019 by Cynthia D. Griffin

After many years, my novel is finally done, now comes the hardest part yet… it’s time to submit it. I have to admit, I’d rather write another entire novel from scratch then do what comes next, but paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt, “anything worthwhile never comes easy.”

This summer I’ve been taking the first steps in getting my novel ready for submission by writing a cover letter (or sometimes called a query letter) and a handful of synopses (because it’s not good enough to have just one synopsis, but that’s another post!).

The first step I took in writing the cover letter and synopsis was to do research and see how the professionals were doing it. And I was also lucky enough to take a workshop about cover letters and synopses from science fiction author Gray A. Braunbeck last September. After a frustrating search, I finally managed to find my notes from his workshop. Yay!

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