Scary Mary

Last time I posted the Shining's recut trailer. A horror movie made to look like a sweet family comedy. This time I have the beloved Mary Poppins movie recut and called "Scary Mary."




The beauty of these recut movie trailers are how misleading they are. If you watch the Shining recut and expect a happy family drama, you are going to be incredibly surprised with the real movie. Similarly, if you expect a horror film with the Scary Mary trailer, finding yourself in a Disney musical would be quite a culture shock. So how does this relate to writing?

Have you ever read a book jacket and been excited about the story only to find the book didn't live up to the promises? Or the book cover has nothing to do with the story inside? I have had this happen several times, to the point where I wonder if the people designing the book packaging actually read the book they are working on.

And I thought this could also happen in the whole query process. Think about it, writing a good query letter is incredibly hard. Trying to make it as interesting as possible so we can snag an agent's attention is our entire objective. Sometimes you want to make it sexier, more unique, maybe more so than your actual book really is. But we have to be sure that the query letter lives up to the manuscript in order to avoid being misleading. Would we even know if we are being a little misleading in an attempt to get agent's attention in the first place? And is it ok to make it a little sexier than your actual book? Perhaps the tell tale sign is in the correlation of rejections to partials or fulls read. Maybe there is a sign in there.

I think my query letter lives up to my manuscript. I feel very comfortable about it. But then again, maybe I'm pulling a Scary Mary.

The Long and Winding Weekend

We spent most of the weekend at my mother-in-law's house on the Chesapeake Bay. Here's a picture of the private pier. The figure at the end is my middle child with the family sitting around enjoying the beautiful weather while my husband fished. My husband is a fishing fanatic. He would rather fish than just about anything else in the whole world. When he night fishes, he fishes all night long. Even going so far as to pass out on the pier with his fishing rod still glued to his hands. Luckily the fishing gods were with us and so there was a whole lot of fish being caught at the pier today. Almost 90% of them caught by my 8 year old. She seems to have caught her daddy's fishing mania, and is already outfishing her daddy! The girl is a natural.

The long weekend also meant I got to read for fun. So I engulfed in one sitting Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Yeah, I know I'm late to this party but I loved this book! I was tearing and gasping and totally into this book. And when I was done, I thought to myself, "Self, your book is nowhere near as good as this book." And I felt blah for all of 30 minutes before I started kicking myself in the head trying to snap out of this morass of self-pity. This was actually a new experience and I don't know why it happened. I've read many great books while working on my book - some even similar to my book story - but they didn't cast me into a fit of depression. They didn't make me feel unworthy to have written a book. But why this particular book? Or was it maybe the timing? Was it because I was close to finished with my book and feeling particularly vulnerable? Nervous about actually being ready to start querying? I dont know what it was but it was such a particularly unpleasant sensation. As if someone told you your baby was butt ugly and then you realize they're indefensibly right.

It's been particularly hard because I've lately been editing off my husband's comments. I've asked him to be tough, and he is definitely being tough. He's caught alot of good changes and I know it will be so much better after his changes. But he is a slow reader, and he keeps falling asleep while reading my book. I get pages from him where the pen has leaked slowly into a pool of blue or black where he pressed the pen tip into the page as he dozed. Or where the pen leaves a large mark straight across the page where his hand slipped as he fell asleep. I keep getting these bits and pieces of my chapters every few days from him with visible signs of where he fell asleep and I keep thinking, boy I sure didn't write a page turner! Maybe I should remarket this as a cure for insomnia instead! I mean, he's only had it for all of 3 months now and he's given me back 4 chapters of a 17 chapter book. At this rate, I might be done next year.

Oh well, I guess I should be grateful that he is reading it at all.