On Writing: Can You Do It Wrong?

The art for Issue 21 of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show has appeared on the excellent blog Sideshow Freaks of its most excellent editor, Edmund R. Schubert. The story’s title was originally Starling’s Wing – for what reason I’m not sure other than it was a phrase that occurred to me and which I liked for its 19th century flavor. I managed to work the title into the story in a somewhat laborious and contrived fashion with this passage towards the end:

When they reached the glade, they saw the twins playing beside the creek, catching minnows in the shallows. Madeleine sat on the bank on a quilt she had spread out. Hattie noticed with annoyance that it was one of her best, the one that usually sat atop her own bed, a pattern she’d invented herself called Starling’s Wing.

This story was rewritten several times in the course of the back and forth between me and Edmund, changing a) from a happy story to a sad one and b) changing villains. At one point Edmund confessed that his head was about to explode, but we straightened it all out.

The story started with a flourish of language and imagery that looks to Joyce Carol Oates’ The Bellefleur Mysteries.

On her fifteenth birthday, Hattie Fender contracted a fever that led to the loss of her hair, which until that point had been long and glossy and black as licorice. Her mother nursed her through the illness, then died herself of a fish aspic that had gone off.

Upon recovery, Hattie mourned her mother and resorted to patent hair restoratives, full of poisonous sugar of lead, sulphur, and copperas. The medicines forced a relapse, driving her back to fevered bed rest for three months more.

At seventeen and a half, she had become bantam egg bald and just as hard-shelled. At twenty-two, she daily polished her scalp with bay rum and bergamot oil, which left a perfumed trail behind her, so you could track her by smell up the stairs and out along the walk that watched the gun-metal waves lick at the clouds above the sea.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, two days after her true love’s disappearance, Hattie had her scalp tattooed with the twelve celestial houses. They marked off her head in long pie-shaped wedges, Scorpio over her left ear and Taurus over the right. When she stood still, no matter the location, she chose to stand in alignment with the sky, so the spidery black demarcations reflected the patterns of the stars.

Edmund, rightly so, made me move this from the place I had front-loaded it in to a place further in down the line in the story. He also made me chose a better title, which was fine, but more difficult that I had thought it would be. No title sprang out at me as perfect, alas, and so I went with using one of the significant objects, the mother of pearl frame around Jemmy’s picture.

I’ll be talking more about the process behind the story (and where the name Hattie Fender came from!) in an upcoming entry for Sideshow Freaks.

I’ve seen a lot of cover letters in my time. Some ramble, some describe the story, others list thirty small publications, some are misaddressed or rife with typos.

So here’s a cover letter. It’s really all you need to say. Fill in the blanks yourself (and doublecheck to make sure you got the details right.) Italics indicate commentary and should not be included. And always, always – the market guidelines trump anything I say. Read AND follow them. Note: this cover letter is intended to be used when submitting short stories to magazines. You want a different one when submitting to an agent or sending a book to a publisher.

Dear {Editor}: (do make sure you’ve got the right name if you’re addressing them by name)

Attached/enclosed* is my story, “{title}”, ({wordcount}). (“Attached” if it’s e-mail; “Enclosed” if you’re sending by snailmail. Round wordcount up to the nearest 100.)

(The following paragraph is optional if you don’t have publications.)
My work has appeared in {market1 name}, {market2 name}, and {market3 name}. (List your three biggest or most prestigious publications.) In {year}, I attended {workshop name}. (Don’t list stuff if you don’t have it. If you’ve got contest wins that are significant, like Writers of the Future, list that here as well. Again, all of this is optional. This paragraph is intended to make the slush reader pass the work up to the editor by listing reasons you stand out of the herd.)

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply. (If you’re sending by snailmail and include a SASE, mention that here.)

Sincerely, (or the tag of your choice, just make sure it sounds professional. “Peace out,” while charming, may not sound as professional as it could.)

{Your name}

That’s it — that’s all you need. No accolades, no summaries, no previews. The facts and just the facts. Good luck!

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