Writing tips | Cathy C. Hall Writes

Here’s a Finding Something Friday mystery for you: What does this lovely basket of fruit have to do with Cathy C. Hall?

And please don’t say that I’m a melonhead. Instead, sit back and I’ll explain how these delicious melons, grapes and strawberries connect to the Road to Publication (and Cathy C. Hall).

Think of these fruits as your wonderful pieces of writing…essays, short stories, poems. Perhaps you’ve placed these documents in a safe place, like a file on your computer. Maybe you’ve made a hard copy, too. Or zapped them onto a flash card. The point is, you’ve saved them and you think they’re safe.

But wait! Here comes a tornado! (Or some other natural disaster; I’m not that picky) Are you going to scramble around, looking for your flashcard? Laptop? The plastic crate filled to the top with your notes and manuscript? I don’t think so. My guess is that you will run for your life and lament your lost words later.

Unless you’ve already set up another email account and sent copies of all your files to said account which you use primarily as storage. Then you could access every single word you’d ever written. All those wonderful strawberries, melons and grapes will be just as fresh as ever and waiting for you.

I found that little storage tidbit in this month’s Writer’s Digest. And I found the basket of fruit in my kitchen today. It was delivered to yours truly and Mr. Hall for our anniversary.

Granted, it was a bit of a stretch connecting that basket of fruit to my tip for the day. But hey, us melonheads are smarter than we look!

When I was perusing the March Premium Green market guide (more info here) I came across an interview of freelancer Kristin, um, gee, well, I ‘ll check on that later. Anyway, the point is that Kristin had tons of great ideas. And great ideas are pretty darn important if you’re working towards Fame and Fortune in the publishing biz.

Smack dab in the middle of my perusing, it hit me. A classic What Not To Do was staring me in the face. Unfortunately, I was the one guilty of it. To wit: I hadn’t been effectively using the old “hook” in my query letters. Kristin made an excellent point about grabbing an editor’s attention. To wit: “If you haven’t got a lot of clips, you have to come up with an idea that an editor doesn’t dare pass up.” And that idea better be the very first thing in your query letter.

So listen, grasshopper. Don’t blah, blah, blah away in your query letter talking about anything and everything under the sun. Slap that editor with an idea so awesome, he or she won’t know what hit ’em. And you better get right to work on that. Because I’m telling you. Kristin had tons of great ideas.