It seems I’m link-challenged. 

 http://www.foliolit.com/submissions/basic-information-on-query-letters/

That’s how you post a link (I think). If you’re planning to submit something (you poor thing), you should click on it. Honestly.

So, as promised, part 2 of yesterday’s post. What? You didn’t read part 1? Now you’ve hurt my feelings. No you haven’t. You’re not reading this, either.

Here’s the deal. A lot of agents very generously, and sometimes very specifically, tell you what your query should look like. Here is a very generous and specific example. http://www.foliolit.com/submissions/basic-information-on-query-letters/

Now, you gotta read ever agent’s guidelines. Although I’m sure none of them think the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet is a comic monologue (see yesterday’s post. Hah! I tricked you into reading it. No I didn’t. You’re too smart for that.), nearly every one of them has a slightly different idea of what a good query looks like, although I’m sure including the lyrics to ‘Happy Birthday’ isn’t one of those ideas. See yesterday’s post. Indulge me.

I always try to be as specific as I can when I post an audition notice, because, well, I know what I need, and what I need you to be able to do, and whether you pay attention to what I said, because it means you take direction, a skill nobody in the troupe retains once they’ve been a member six months. By then I love them, so it doesn’t matter anymore. Here are examples of people who didn’t get cast. All from real life. Honestly.

1. The 5’4″, 40 something guy with bad teeth you thought he was a ‘young leading man’ type.

2. The actual young leading man type who thought the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet was a comic monologue.

3. The guy who auditioned with ‘Happy Birthday.’

Ok, this post is already way too long, so I will explain the query part tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll be waiting with baited breath, or at least, breath.

I don’t normally post on weekends, but this is so odd, I don’t know what to make of it. Just got an email saying my story was now online…on a website I submitted to four months ago and never heard back from. It’s the same story that’s about to be published elsewhere…big no-no. Of course, I’m not going to tell you WHICH story, and one website has a following of possibly six (or fewer) readers. The other doesn’t have a huge ‘circulation,’ but you might actually have heard of it. Through no fault of my own, I could be sent to Literary Prison, where I could end up sharing a cell with Charles’ Dickens father. Wait..it might be worth it.

I toured with the late, great Jan Peerce twice: once in Fiddler, possibly the most fun chorus parts ever written, and once in The Rothschilds, possibly the dullest. He threw a chocolate mousse and champagne engagement party for me. It lasted longer than the marriage.

I chose the image below, because people are more interested in looking at cute cats than champagne.

If you don’t know what that means, and would like to know…and if you don’t care, believe me, it’s no great loss, unless you are masochistic enough to want to submit something…it means sending the same query or manuscript two or more places at the same time. Some publications don’t accept simultaneous submissions, like the one (you didn’t really think I was going to tell you which one, did you?) that also informs authors they won’t hear from them for 30-90 days…if at all. My poor little manuscript could die of neglect in 90 days.

BTW I feel so much more professional now that I know the difference between ‘simultaneous’ and ‘multiple.’ At least, I think I do.

 

When I was a small child (no, really) the late, great, Hans Conried came to a party at our house. He did not say much to me, but he thought our cat’s new kittens were very cute.

Raise your hand if you remember who Hans Conried was. Now go clean your reading glasses.

Those who actually follow this blog (I believe that would be Nancy and Cherie) know that Word keeps reformatting my documents. After hours of maddening struggles with the possibly greatest cause of nervous breakdowns in the known world, I have discovered a Luddite and totally foolproof solution. In this case, the fool would be Word and its demonic developers. In most cases it’s probably me. Delete the offending line and retype it. Word doesn’t know what hit it. It took me four minutes to fix 100 pages. Take that, Word! 

So, here I am breaking two of my cardinal rules.

1. Only one post a day.

2. Never say anything bad about an agent.

But this agent said something so ridiculous, and, well, downright stupid, any other agent reading it would say ‘That man is an idiot.’ The gist was that he wasn’t interested in submissions from anyone who had already had a long career in something else before they started writing, because they weren’t serious authors. Here are a few of the writers he wouldn’t be interested in.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank McCourt, Raymond Chandler, Mary Wesley, Harriet Doerr, Richard Adams, James A. Michener,  

George Eliot,  Anthony Burgess. There are lots more. I rest my case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes after performing two back-to-back shows I ask myself if I’m too old for all this intellectual and physical stress. The answer is…I’m sorry. What was the question?