Using your cover letter to "point in the direction"

Time for an Unschool “business” piece.

Back in the day, a writer wrote her own cover material for every story. It was a necessary part of the job. Now, often agents are doing this piece.

But more on that toward the end here—agents and cover material. *

Writers have to come up with material to win over an agent, though. And we send out short fiction and pieces intended for literary mags and such. So we need to be able to write that enticing piece.

There are the other pieces: listing published work (or not, if you don’t have any). And a bit about yourself. If it’s a novel, you’ll need a synopsis. (Another post!) Be succinct with all. This post is speaking to the line or two of description of the immediate work you are submitting. This is the challenge, and the most significant piece of the covering material.

I can be less grumbly about the task, if I try to think of it as its own art form, as an extension of the writing process instead of the “business.” Even though, for the record, I would rather write an entire novel.

I tell myself that all I need to do is to come up with one or two succinct lines that evoke, and place the reader/editor/agent where I want them to be.

In one or two lines

Create a mood, an emotion, an openness, a curiosity—preferably all four and more. Keep it short; respect the editor/agent’s time. And demonstrate what can be done with a few words. (It’s the keeping-it-short that takes time!)

One of my first published literary journal pieces was about an old—truly old—woman, anticipating the return of her also ancient spouse from an extended stay in hospital. She had designs to convince him to return to sharing a bedroom, something they had not done in well over a decade. A low-key story indeed. While in reality, the old woman was hungry for warmth and connection and memory, my opening line for the cover letter was: “I am sending along ‘Across the Hall,’ a short story about ageing and sex.” The juxtaposition—because it is seen that way—of “ageing” and “sex,” was (I think) what made the editors sit up and pay attention.

You don’t want to go too far with this, and be false, or create “click-bait.” Rather, you want to pique curiosity. And something more: you want to point in the direction from which you want them to “see.” I wanted the readers to be open to the romantic and physical in ageing people.

What you’re saying is:

“Can you please pay attention to _____________?”

Can you fill in that blank for your story? What is it that you want to point to? In this crazy-busy world, people skim. We skim everything, from novels to letters from loved ones, from IKEA instructions to legal documents. As much as we might like to imagine that everyone takes the time we wish they had, it’s just not so.

Start somewhere

Know you’re not going to get the line/s right on the first or fifth try, so just jot down ideas. You might start with key words that pop into your mind.

Or begin with “________title_______” is the story of ___________.

And fill in. Keep filling it in until you feel you’ve said what you set out to. Then trim and edit to get to the essence.

No one else is seeing this. Be blunt with what you are pointing to—you might even surprise yourself with this. Maybe you haven’t quite gotten to that place in the writing—in which case, it’s back to the drawing board. Write. Then return to the cover letter.

But get out the words, then scrutinize.

I remember wandering around NYC, and stopping at the window of a small art gallery. The painting in the window was of Paris rooftops. I had to go in.

The enthusiastic woman who greeted me told me I had to see something. And she took me into a small and dark viewing room, and showed me to a seat in the murk. I sat and it went completely dark momentarily, and then she used a dimmer switch and spotlight to show me how the sun came up over the rooftops. How the painter had achieved this effect with layers of paint. Incredible.

What is it you need to take your reader to in the dark—so you can turn on a light? What is the nature of the light you’re going to turn on? What do you want them to see?

When to write the cover material

When a story is still cooling after the heat of writing—that’s the point at which the theme is actively resonating with you. Write your cover material then, even if you are going to set aside the whole for the final re-write. Write it while you are still actively engaged with the work at hand.

I find that I begin to pick up and roll with enthusiasm for whatever the new project is, and before I know it, I’m growing removed from the “old” work. It still amazes me how this happens. When I'm into the new work, it’s harder to put together this last piece. In the past couple years, I’ve been pushing myself to do this in this more timely way. It’s always easy to put off this piece.

The other time to write the covering material can be when I’m stuck.

Yes. If I’m somewhere in early draft stage, or any stage before feeling “done,” and I’m feeling any sort of block, I have at times written the cover material then. Why? To re-focus on “what is this about?”

True, this might not end up as the final covering material. In some ways this is a different exercise! But I tell myself this is the covering material, and I write as if it is, and I do re-focus. More often than not, this has eased some “stuck” point.

And that note on writing cover material for your agent *

This is something that’s fairly recent for me. Every agent and writer team have their own way of doing this. But after a half dozen years of working together, my agent and I have reached a point at which I write the descriptive pieces, and then she takes them and does whatever she feels a need to do.

How did we get to this point? A number of reasons. She is Busy, for one. And two, I really wanted to feel that I am doing this “pointing to” piece.

In the past, I’ve felt that work should “speak for itself,” but—I’ll say again—we appear to live in a crazy-busy world that doesn’t take time to ponder. So I have a choice: to be stubborn about this. Or to work with it. Of course, the piece I am pointing out does already exist in the work. I have done my pondering, my exploring—I’ve done my work. But there is the further work of selling it.

In writing my own covering material, I am deepening this process of my creating. As much as my agent is committed, it makes sense that I am more so, and that I am the person whose task it is to evoke the work in the extra material.

Some examples

A few different writing forms, pulled from picturebook to novel. I’ve italicized what I want to “point to.”

Picturebook:

The Big Old Night-Sky Blue Couch is a story of rescue and second life.

YA novel:

There’s a thought that someday a ‘Kilroy was Here’ will be on the moon—dreams humans have. Meanwhile, here on earth, our own backyard is more likely to be in need of all that the old WWII symbol ‘Kilroy’ represents: seeking out, acknowledging, and tagging the unknown.

Middle-Grade novel:

I am enclosing two excerpts from Luck Stories, a MG novel set in snow and recession.

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Please share some examples from your work, or put some words together about a piece you’ve recently finished (and ask for feedback, if you want it!) Post in the “comments…”