How to Pronounce My Name

Got Game?

BORING HICCUPS
Between the dark matter of nothing
and the supreme light of God
a pile of dishes must be washed

One soul cries from a pit of despair
another soul cries from the glory of heaven
and I fold a pile of laundry

I wish to be neither and I wish to be everything
I wish to merge into the sublime bliss of love
but a hiccup brings me to now and I sweep the floor

Wondering why enlightenment requires the mundane

Why my journey requires toothaches and dust bunnies

I'm an odd kind of spiritual soldier who battles toothpaste spray on mirrors
Who travels to exotic places like grocery stores
Slaying the beasts with ironing boards of justice
Dousing the evil with Pinesol
Victorious in the daily battles, struggling in the nightly meditations between the sublime and the ridiculous
- Cronin Detzz

POEM: STRING & WING THEORY

Particles and strings
and crow's flapping wings
Create all the illusion of which we sing
Sunsets and golden oak trees ...
Crying babies and war and disease

Wake up and see we are all One
Wake up to the reality that ascension has begun
-Cronin Detzz

Poem: Possessions

An egg timer set to detonate in three minutes
Aromatic roses decaying in the sunshine
Pearls and flowery teacups and pinky fingers

Black and white photo of a vibrant husband
The American flag folded into a crisp triangle
Silver urn on the mantle holds what remains

Mahjong tiles and a ceramic rooster Kitchen gadgets from QVC that she never uses
A recipe card holder hermetically seals her coffee cake instructions
Tupperware lids and gravy boats set sail

Memories crocheted into afghans
Carefully
A mantra for every seam in her cross stitches, "She's going to love this"
Denying her possessions could define her
- Cronin Detzz

ALICE DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Down the rabbit hole
So dark, so dark
Cobwebs and enticements
"Drink this"
"Eat this"

And no amount of anything will fill the void
And no amount of solitude will reconnect her
She knows this, yet she goes anyway

It's all lost, she's all lost
Chasing the rabbit
He is just so damn fast
If he can sew up her shredded soul
If he can stir her up and make her whole
Then yes, she'll keep chasing him down the rabbit hole

All she really wants is to feel normal
To wrap her arms around everything that means home
And never never never let go
-Cronin Detzz

EDIT REDUNDANCIES: YOU HAVE MY WORD

Do you have favorite words that appear repeatedly in your work? There is nothing wrong with that unless it becomes a distraction to your readers.

There 211 appearances of the word "atop" in the "Game of Thrones" series. Granted, I am a fond student of words so I may be hypersensitive to word choices - but I don't believe I'm alone in this. Several occurrences of "atop" within one novel wouldn't be worthy of a blog article, but hundreds of times is a bit irritating to see in a great author's work. Why don't editors point this out?

In Dan Brown's "Lost Symbol," the word "atop" occurs 26 times. Items can certainly be perched atop objects, but Brown even uses it to explain that a character's name is "atop the letterhead" on some business stationery. In his novel "Inferno," atop appears a more respectable 11 times. I really enjoy his books so it surprises me that these redundancies exist.

More annoying was the frequent use of the expletive "My God" in Brown's "Lost Symbol." The phrase was used 29 times: 10 times in dialogue and 19 times as a character's thought. If this phrase were connected with only one character, then it could be argued that it was his catch-phrase, similar to a modern teenager's incessant use of the word "like." ("Like, son, that's like annoying.")

I did like Brown's adjective "elegant" to describe an erudite, well-groomed supporting character, but he used this word 24 times in "Lost Symbol." Hey - he also used it 24 times in "Inferno" - I've decoded Dan Brown's hidden mystical symbolism! There are 24 hours in a day, too. I'm seeing a noble pattern...

One of my favorite authors, Gregory Maguire of the word-famous Wicked series, seems to like the word "fury." He only uses it 4 times in "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" (a great book - please read it). He sprinkles some fury here and there in "Mirror Mirror," a revamping of Snow White's tale set in Italy. Lucretia Borzia is the wicked stepmother - it's a splendid read.

By the way, George R.R. Martin uses "fury" 116 times in his "Game of Thrones" series. That's 5 books and it was well-placed and not overly used. It's a great word and I plan on using it in my work in progress.

I'm trying to be cognizant of word redundancies. In my last book, as yet unpublished, my Achilles heel was "wonderful" and I have done a wonderful job obliterating its use. Well, mostly.

What words have repeatedly slipped through your work? How did you catch it? Please leave a comment below, I'd love to hear from you.

Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz

HAVE YOU WRITTEN YOUR EPITAPH?

As a writer, you may have given thought to your epitaph. If you are a poet, why don’t you write a little something to encapsulate what you are all about? Even if you don’t want a headstone, you could still write a poem and seal it in an envelope, with instructions to a trusted love one to open the mysterious envelope upon your “graduation day” to the afterlife.

Here is mine:

Life is brief and fairly fleeting
at the end, there should be no grieving
Moving on to learn all that can be known
open eyes see all that can be shown

Beautiful bliss, basking in the blue
Unstruck chord plays just for you
Sunshine bright below and above
There lies everything
in nothing but love

Please leave a comment below and share your epitaph. This poem was published in “Poetry for Our Time.” You can peek inside at Amazon: "Poetry for Our Time"

Keep writing & keep sharing – Cronin Detzz

PLOT TWISTS

PLOT TWISTS: WHAT EVERY WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW

After struggling for some time with writer’s block on my current work in progress about an uprising, I jumped ahead to playing with plot twists. Yes! It’s okay to jump ahead and write what you can.  See more about fragmented writing here.

I’m not going to reveal my twists, but I will say that I implanted a red herring. My goal is to have the reader be very angry at the corrupt villain. This particular villain deserves to be detested, but the real villain – the powerful deceiver who is pulling all the strings – is not revealed until well after the mid-point.

Think about some of your favorite movies, and you will surely get some ideas for plot twists and surprise endings. “Book of Eli,” starring Denzel Washington, has a fabulous surprise ending. My husband and I pride ourselves in picking out Hollywood’s plot twists, so we watched the movie again. We wondered how we could have missed such a vital clue about Eli. You may have felt the same sense of wonder after M. Night Shyamalan’s “Sixth Sense.”

“HOW DID I MISS THAT?”

K. M. Weiland writes a fantastic blog. I admire her because she shares my vision of helping other writers. In her post about writing killer plot twists, she states that plot twists not only need to be unique and executed cleverly, they “must also not take away from re-readability.” This is sound advice for anyone who may want to re-read your book.  Your readers should be asking themselves, “Wow, how did I miss that? I need to go back and re-read the clues. A link to Weiland’s blog is below.

You can click on a blue button to create a random plot twist by visiting pantomimepony (link below). It offers ideas like, “The sister marries the vicar,” or “The social worker unintentionally burns the note, believing it to be cursed.”

A link to an infographic can be seen by clicking the “Awesomer” link below. Many of these twists have been done before, and I wouldn’t advise literally using them, but they are definitely worth a glance because these pictures can get your brain moving in creative directions. For instance, one fun twist is the “robot reveal,” (think Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator”) but a twist you’ll want to avoid is “it was all a dream.”

As a matter of fact, if you are concerned that your twist is trite, read Huffington Post’s blog (link below). Here, you’ll find taboos such as: don’t tell us the aunt is really the mother or that Darth is Luke’s father. I cannot comment on some of this blogger’s pet peeves because I haven’t read some of the books listed, but I do agree that a twist/surprise ending should not be, “oh, never mind, that guy’s just crazy.” This kind of ending is in danger of punching all the teeth out of a story. I do offer this counterpoint: “Fight Club” pulls it off brilliantly. Read the book.

Writers should especially remember to structure the twist so that readers do not feel cheated. Sprinkle a bit of foreshadowing, water it with a few subtle clues, and have fun.

What are some of your favorite plot twists?

Keep writing & keep sharing! – Cronin Detzz

See the link to K. M. Weiland’s plot twist blog at:http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/2013/07/5-ways-to-write-killer-plot-twist.html

Random plot twist generator:  http://writers-den.pantomimepony.co.uk/writers-plot-twists.php

The awesomer infographic:  http://theawesomer.com/42-essential-plot-twists/21034/

Huffington Post’s 7 awful plot twists:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/7-awful-plot-twists-were-_n_1148717.html

POEM: FATHER'S GREEN EYES

A crumbling Spanish castle

adorning the Mediterranean Sea

a kite in my small hands

my father on bended knee

“See the world, and the beauty in it?”

My youthful nod (his reply, odd)

“Compared to heaven, it’s a pile of shit”

Why did he need to spoil that sunny day?

Why were his lessons always imparted this way?

I already knew the world and the ugliness therein,

I already wore fear and sadness as a second skin

So I released the kite into sun-drenched skies

Admired God’s work, shunning illusory lies

I shifted my view, envisioned the castle anew

Saw the world askew

through my father’s green eyes

My father said this to me when were in Spain, admiring the sea and the Spanish castles.  It was an odd way for him to burst my bubble of joy, but it was a teachable moment from his perspective.  We had been raised to honor God and learn our true purpose for being born into this worldly realm.  I have been coping with writer's block lately, mostly due to life's pressures and struggling with health issues.  I've been kinder to myself lately, and after some needed bed rest my Muse and I are back on speaking terms.  Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz

GETTING YOUR POEM ACCEPTED BY A LITERARY PRESS

Your family, friends, reading groups, writer’s circles all love your poetry.  Why is it so difficult to get your work accepted by a literary press?

Part of the problem is that literature works are art, and therefore, subjective.  I have been writing for so long that I know I have a feel for what it takes to write a stellar poem; and yes, many of my poems are not stellar in the public’s view.  I know that.  But I wrote them out of the earnest desire to express a view.  I do have a folder of unpublished poems – I cannot let go of the creative ideas birthed within those writings, but I cannot publish them, either.  They are not very good.  Most of them were written when my vocabulary and skills were nascent.

What I do when submitting poetry to contests or literary presses:  I choose the poems that have the best “hook.”  Writers know that novels require a hook – great poets know that the first three or four lines also require a hook.

I’m happy to report that this poem, “Black Velvet with Diamonds,” will be published in “Poetry Quarterly.”  As any poet can attest, it is a great feeling to know that someone else liked your poem enough to feature it in their journal. The poem came to me as I was sitting in my back yard one night, admiring the clear view of the desert sky (I live in Las Vegas, Nevada).   I began to wonder why God would create this view, and penned:

BLACK VELVET WITH DIAMONDS
The rained pummeled His roof
for days and days
When the leaden clouds parted
He was lifted from His haze

So He built an impossibly long table
draped it with black velvet
and littered it with diamonds

The newborn twinkling stars
surely never shown so bright
The nascent moon
surely never looked so kind
as they did on that first cloudless night

God reclined on his couch, satisfied
took a nap
and dreamed up man
to be a willing audience,
to appreciate His nocturnal nativity

To submit your work in “Poetry Quarterly,” follow the guidelines on their website:  http://poetryquarterly.com/


Which of your poems have the best hook?

Good luck!  Keep writing & keep sharing – Cronin Detzz

CATCHING A FEW "ZZ'S"

If you thought that we were going to discuss sleeping as an aid to better writing – well, that’s true but that’s not the type of zz’s we are going to catch.

What do these names have in common:

Eric Blair

Francois-Marie Arouet

Sam Clemens

Ah, you saw Sam Clemens and you caught on.  These are pen names.  Eric Blair wrote as George Orwell, Francois-Marie Arouet was Voltaire, and of course you know that Sam Clemens was Mark Twain.  Have you considered using a pen name?  If you use your given name but were given the option for a pen name, what name would you choose?

Cronin Detzz is my pen name.  I use it for two reasons.  First, my real name is very common and forgettable.  Second – and more importantly – my mother was a writer and she mentored me.  Cronin Detzz was her pen name.  Ironically, I am a junior so my mother and I not only share the same “real” name, we also have the same pen name.

Mom was killed by a drunk driver when I was 24.  She was only 45.  I thought it would be a fitting tribute to use her pen name.  I asked my sister if she minded, especially since she likes to write, too.  She was glad to let me use it.

My mom chose this name for very specific reason.  In her time, female writers were still trying to break barriers.  One of my favorite coming-of-age books, “The Outsiders,” was written by S.E. Hinton.  Suzy Hinton used her initials to hide the fact that she is female.  Similarly, Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot.  So my mother chose Cronin because it can be a male or a female’s name.  Detzz was her own creation, and she liked it because of the double z’s.  She felt that the “zz” combo was catchy.

Maybe using a pen name isn’t a big deal.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  But with a writer’s need to be memorable or to have a name that is easy to pronounce, some people really should use a pen name.

Now that you know my reasons, I again ask you:  If you use your given name but were given the option for a pen name, what name would you choose?  If you already use a pen name, what is it and why?

Look forward to your comments.  Keep writing & keep sharing!  Cronin Detzz

POEM: VESSELS AND WINE

VESSELS AND WINE

Sometimes I am the vessel

Sometimes, the wine

It is all a matter of His will

that I wear as a cloak of mine

Sometimes the destroyer,

or the builder,

or merely the carpenter’s tool

Now a wise, wide-open eyes crone

who many times played the young fool

Marionette tangled in her own strings

Although knowing all along

sometimes I am the heavenly choir

but sometimes I am the song

Oftentimes, I am the poet

attempting to connect all the dots

Yearning to finally close the gap

between “savior-haves” and “have-nots”

Dancing on the dark matter

swirling through the void

karmic repercussions echo on

from all actions loathed or enjoyed

At some future time

when our karmic debt is done

the earth’s dust will be purged

the many will finally converge

the vessels and the wine will merge

Some time, when we return to The One

 – Cronin Detzz

Inspiration:  One of my friends said that she was “the dark matter in the world.”  I did not know what that meant.  This poem is my interpretation of her.  Sometimes, the universe seems to use us as vessels for its divine purpose; other times, we are that magical force.  Thank you for letting me share this with you.  Keep writing and keep sharing!

EASTER'S RISING

He is not rising

Because he never fell

He gave us everlasting thirst

So that we drink from The Well

He gives us hot sunshine

To appreciate the rain

He gives us religious pillows of comfort

For all our worldly pain

The spear of Longinus

Did not kill The King

When we finally surrender to His Will

We lose our egos and receive everything

-Cronin Detzz

POEM: BE HERE NOW

In the now,
time drips like a leaky faucet
I'm pulling weeds
the sun warms my back
my family rests in the safety of inside
my mind rests in the safety of my skull

No poisoned darts of yesterday will find their mark
No future entanglements ensnare this precious moment
And when this moment slips into what was
another moment jumps in joy, blaring his trumpet of arrival

I go on pulling weeds
Thanking the sun, thanking Spring
Thanking the now for the safety it can bring
Thanking the weeds for pulling me outside
Thanking the illusion of time for pulling me aside
Grateful to grandfather clock
for showing me the why, the how,
The peaceful surrender
to be here now

-Cronin Detzz

When writing, we are often  not in the present.  We are thinking ahead to our next chapter or we are applying lessons and characters from our past.  Next time you encounter writer’s block, try living in that very moment.

Keep writing & keep sharing! – Cronin Detzz

15 BIZARRE TIPS - WRITER'S BLOCK

You attempted all the tried and true tricks to removing writer’s block, but did you soak your feet in ice water?  Did you soundproof your walls and ceiling with cork?  Hemingway is rumored to have written The Old Man and The Sea while standing up at his typewriter!  Here are some truly bizarre writing block tips according to an article at MentalFloss.com:

1. Voltaire skipped lunch. Instead of a mid-day meal, the French titan sustained himself with chocolate and up to 40 cups of coffee per day.

2. The dark, gruesome work of Edgar Allan Poe was written under the supervision of a cat. The tabby Catterina sat on the writer's lap or perched on his shoulder.

3. Sir Walter Scott preferred to write in motion, often while riding his horse.

4. Word counts work for some writers. Anthony Trollope set a goal of 250 words every 15 minutes.

5. Victor Hugo went on self-imposed house arrest to finish The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He even locked away all his clothes, so he wouldn't be tempted to get dressed and go out. But Hugo wasn't naked—he wore the same gray writing shawl for months.

6. Like many of us, Charles Dickens sometimes worked while traveling. But he couldn't do it without his five bronze animal statues, paper knife, green vase, desk calendar, blue ink, and quills. Good thing he didn't have to work at a coffee shop!

7. Dickens also insisted on writing in a specific blue ink. He wasn't attached to the color — it just dried faster, so he didn't have to waste time blotting.

8. Lewis Carroll literally wrote purple prose. He penned his manuscripts in the same violet ink required for grading his math students at Christ Church College in Oxford. This way, he could easily switch between tasks.

9. The three musketeers on Alexandre Dumas's desk were piles of color-coded paper: pink for articles, blue for fiction, and yellow for poetry. [Okay, this one isn’t too bizarre – actually a quite reasonable idea!]

10. When Herman Melville needed a break to revitalize his creative juices, he worked the fields of his 160-acre farm.

11. John Milton spent the last 20 years of his life blind, but not being able to see didn’t slow him down. He'd start writing poetry in his head around 5 a.m., and an aide would arrive at 7 a.m. to take dictation. Milton called the process "getting milked."

12. With his publisher’s deadline for The Gambler looming, Fyodor Dostoyevsky hired a stenographer named Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina in 1866. The two finished the novella within a month and married a year later. Dostoyevsky dictated his work to her for the rest of his life.

13. Proust turned his bedroom workspace into a cocoon, covering his windows with shutters and dark curtains and lining the walls and ceiling with soundproofing cork. Blotting out the sun and the noise was a necessity since he slept all day and wrote all night.

14. Nothing stimulated poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller's creatives juices like the smell of rotting apples. He kept a drawer full of them in his desk. That wasn’t his only writing quirk—Schiller also enjoyed soaking his feet in ice water to stay alert.

15. Scottish biographer James Boswell was a tremendous writer, but he wasn’t great at waking up in the morning. To solve this problem, he designed a bed that would physically lift him up and set him on the floor. He never got around to building it, so servants ended up doing the heavy lifting for him.

Source:  http://mentalfloss.com/article/55572/15-productivity-secrets-very-prolific-writers

Do you have any bizarre writing tips to share?  I’d love to hear from you.

Keep writing & keep sharing! – Cronin Detzz

POEM: WATER AVATAR'S DREAM

724,000 years ago, I stood near my lake

I longed to drink, but had no thirst to slake

I gazed at my reflection, shimmering back at me

Blue of skin, like the sky and sea

My dharma was water

My dharma was to sustain

My power: locked in the waves

My power: released in the rain

~~ Holding the cosmos together

through the gift of water ~~

In those peaceful, misty days

I grew restless in the watery haze

My dream of being human thus burst

to feel the damp!  to swim with fish!

to quench a thirst!  my only wish!

The Bringer of Light granted my desire

And I was born into a fire

A bucket of water dampened the blaze

My soul briefly few back to halcyon days

But again and again I was reborn

stuck in the wheel of earthly form

My water lords and my astral kin

dessicated the water that cleanses my sin

“I long to return to my sparkling cave,

and leave far behind earth’s watery grave”

the Lord of Lords heard my plea

threw me into a poet’s aching body

sent me away to distant, dry lands

tossed me onto Nevada’s scorching sands

Never again

will I stray from home

Always, amen

bathe in the wonderful waterfall of Om

-        Cronin Detzz

Inspiration:  during a meditation, I imagined regressing into a past life as an Avatar representing water.  I don't know where the era of 724,000 years came from, but it is best to trust your muse and write whatever surfaces without censoring thoughts too much.  One of the important tactics in overcoming writer's block is to honor the creative process and write the words that come to you.  Don't get stuck in edit mode for too long.  Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz 

HELLO, MY NAME IS LEFT BRAIN - AND YOU ARE...?

My future daughter-in-law is working on her memoir.  As a female corrections officer in a maximum security prison, she has a lot of stories to share!  Knowing that I recently finished my memoir, she emailed a list of great questions to me, and allowed me to share them with you.  I've also added a few additional questions that I have been asked in the past.

Question:  How do I go about writing my memoir?  Should I start with my birth family and then move forward?

Reply:  The story does not have to be linear and neither does your writing. It is okay to jump around, you'll piece it all together later. For instance, you might be taking your dog for a walk and a piece of the story comes to you – so jot it down after the walk. This happens to me every day, so I keep paper (and smart phone) nearby at all times so that I can jot down any portion of my story.

Any writer with a smart phone should sign up for Dropbox.  It's a great way to update your work in progress.

Question:  Sometimes I write the opening scene in a story and I get stuck, so I’ve been thinking a lot about page one of the memoir.

Reply:  Don't worry too much about page one, just get the stories down.  For my memoir, page one came to me like a scene in a movie. I knew that had to be the opening scene. But for my current work in progress, I might change the first scene - I'm trying to not get stuck on page one, though.  You'll discover that many rewrites are in your future.

Question:  All memoirs come from first person point of view.  I’ve never written in this POV before, any suggestions?

Reply:  The hard part of a memoir is to avoid writing "I" too much. But you can edit those things when you're done.   Occasionally, you may need to use a passive voice. 

Question:  So, when you start writing, do you start in I guess what could be considered “note form?” Like, a list or just jotting down ideas that you can string together later? Or do you try and get the idea down in a coherent story form? I'm always afraid that whichever way I go, I'll miss something, or miss the opportunity to write the scene to its absolute best.

Reply:   This is a great question - I have tried so many methods! The nice thing about fiction is you can do whatever you want, and the hard thing about non-fiction is you're suddenly limited. Because my memoir spanned over 20 years, I had to look at old records and jot down dates and their associated memories. What helped me the most was writing brief things that happened during that time frame.  It kept me on track as to the order of events.

It seemed to work best when I “honored my muse,” meaning that if I felt like writing about an event that was out of order, I wrote that.  Non-linear.  Everyone does this.  If you are inspired to write about an event that is out of sequence, do it. Don't worry. Chances are you will rewrite it anyway. I had rewritten parts of my story many times before I called it done. Once I find the right publisher, their editor will make me rewrite portions of it again.

I have used outlines before, and what I learned is that they are only a guide. They are just to keep you on track.  So I would say for now that you should make brief notes about events. You'll probably find that other memories will surface. If you are inspired to write it out in coherent story format, then do so (honor the muse). It is a dance of working both halves of your brain!

Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz

WHY ARE YOU BLOGGING? WHAT IS DRIVING YOU?

Before I was inspired to blog, I had to ask myself WHY.  I work full time, I’m raising a family, and I squeeze writing into spare moments.  My life is already taxing, so why would I add on more work?

I especially have to use my energy wisely because I have fibromyalgia.  It is a terribly painful disease that saps precious energy.  One day, I had an epiphany: "Forget about the fibromyalgia.  Be the change that you seek." The "change" I seek is to be published by a strong publisher with wide appeal. So how could I "be" a publisher?

I self published, and it was a good educational experience. But being self published is not aligned with the axiom of "being" the change that I seek. How could I give back to an industry that has meant so much to me?

I realized that I could blog - but not with the intent to self promote. My goal is to mentor writers and support poets. In this small way, I hope to help others overcome writer's block and let writers know that they are not alone in their trials and tribulations. Someone mentored me. It only seems right that I should return the favor. If I've helped just one person through this minor contribution, then I am thrilled!

Why do YOU blog? Many of you blog in order to grow your audience. Don't stop! But what other goals do you have in conjunction with your blog? I'd love to hear from you.


Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz

WRITER'S CONUNDRUM: GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT FRANKENSTEIN

Art versus the science of writing

I don't attend writing workshops. I don't want a book on "Writing for Dummies."

I do read author blogs and I do educate myself on writing great dialogues and the like - but not TOO much.

The reason? I have this awkward fear it will ruin my writing. Sure, learning more about plots and denouement and killer endings would improve my writing. I know this. But wouldn't it take the fun out of writing if I tried too hard? Moreover - and here is the crux of the matter - would it change my writing? Would my writing become less like one of my own flesh-and-blood children and more like a grammatically correct Frankenstein?

If I know too much about themes, antagonists, and symbolism, will the fun be sucked out of stories like the vampires that my English teachers proved to be? To put it in Hollywood terms: if I know how the special effects crew created a compelling scene, the magic of the movie is lost forever.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you, even if you are an English teacher, as long as you promise to refrain from biting my jugular.

Keep writing & keep sharing! - Cronin Detzz

SUCCESSFUL QUERY LETTERS

I'm in hot pursuit for a literary agent who wants to represent a fresh voice on women's issues.  It took six years, but my first manuscript is complete and I cannot wait to share it!  My book, "American Onion," deals with overcoming the stigma of depression.  It is a sordid tale of what I have been through, culminating in the startling accusation of being married to a child molester.  These are tough subjects, but I know that so many people have been affected by mental illness that this book must be shared. 

I've invested many hours on my query letter.  In the spirit of sharing resources, below is a link that I highly recommend regarding successful query letters to literary agents:  http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/agent-query-letters-that-actually-worked-for-nonfiction_b68937

According to Media Bistro's link (above), these are letters that actually WORKED.

Another good resource can be located at Writer's Digest:  http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/successful-queries

It’s a time consuming process to find the right agent, but with enough effort and patience I’m confident that I will succeed – and so will you.

What has worked best for you?

Keep writing & keep sharing! – Cronin Detzz