Most of you have already heard me ranting about query letters. They're like a super intense form of a cover letter, except instead of trying to interest someone in hiring you, you're trying to interest someone in buying your book.
All kinds of theories abound as to how to make the query letters more attention-getting without being annoying. This includes coming up with a catchy hook, displaying your dazzling fiction credits, mentioning authors who've generously agreed to give you a blurb, any awards you've won...and famous writers that you've studied under. That's where the big "duh" on my part comes in.
My senior year at Valpo, I took a seminar in creative writing, which was more like an independent study type thing. We worked on a major piece of fiction--novella or a series of short stories--and the professor would provide feedback. My professor for the class was Walt Wangerin. Okay, I know he's a pretty famous writer, but at the time, that didn't really register with me. Then, later, when I started sending out query letters for The Silver Spoon, I considered mentioning it, but since he writes more religiously-themed works and I was writing sci-fi romance, I thought I might be stretching it a bit.
Yesterday, I read this article on CNN.com about Anne Rice's new novel about Jesus (which I've read the first few pages of and it sounds really interesting). It mentions that Professor Wangerin also has a novel about Jesus coming out. It also happens to mention that he's a National Book Award winner. The National Book Awards are like, in my opinion, the Emmys or the Oscars but for books instead. (Stephen King took home the big prize a couple of years ago, which I believe he totally deserves because no one can scare the pants off you better and still come up with amazing character-driven stories like Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, and there was a large discussion about commercial versus literary fiction and which is more worthy. Which is total bullsh*t. If it's a good story, that's all that should matter.)
Anyway, after reading this, I decided to investigate what Professor Wangerin won his National Book Award for. 1980, The Book of the Dun Cow. Category? Here's where the duh part comes in--SCIENCE FICTION!!! Technically, I think it's more fantasy than science fiction and mentioning it probably wouldn't have made a difference, but still. To say that you learned from a National Book Award winner is probably a good thing to mention.
Duh, Stacey.
The funny thing is that to me, it didn't matter one way or the other. I learned in his class just as I learned in all my other writing classes. All of my professors, in one way or another, made me a better writer. But this business aspect to the business--name dropping, etc.--that's something I'm still trying to get a handle on.
*sigh*
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I'm not sure, but I'm thinking it was probably his novelization of the Bible. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. But I remember that book was new when we were in college and I bought my dad a copy for Christmas or his birthday or something.
Yeah, I run into name-dropping at my day job too. It's dumb but I tend to forget that the business people in publishing are probably the exact same kind of business people in insurance. They just produce different products. : )
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