Miss Snark,
I have written short stories but they've never been published & I've never tried to have them published. Can I include a line in my query letter like: "this is the first novel that I have ever written, but I have previously written short stories", even if the stories were never published? Of course, if the agent were to ask in a subsuquent request for a partial, I would say that my stories were never published. But can I put it in my query, just to show that this novel isn't the first time that I've put pen to paper?
No.
13 comments:
Miss Snark: I saw yesterday that A.M. Homes' recent book THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE got a second "review" in the NYTimes. The first review hammered it. The second, a puff piece really, praised it for vague reasons. What's up with that? She must have friends at the Times, because her first review there bashed the book very hard.
Would you please bumper-sticker your answer?
The Times reviews many books twice. The first review for AM Homes was by Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic for the Times, and ran in the daily edition. It was, as you pointed out, very negative.
The second review was in the Times Book Review sunday section. That section is edited by Sam Tanenhaus.
They are two separate divisions of the newspaper and don't coordinate reviews. The BR section reviews are written by outside people, generally authors. Michiko Kakutani is an employee of Times.
To the person who posted this question: why haven't you tried to get your short stories published???
If you have had a short story published in Woman's World magazine, is that worth mentioning? Or is it apples and oranges, one really doesn't apply to the other?
LOL @ No.
:o)
I'm no expert, but from what I know Woman's World counts as a major venue for short fiction (i.e. they actually pay you, like, money) and it's pretty competitive to get published there. So, in my opinion, hell yeah.
Love this answer. No...No? Did you say no? You never just say no. You must mean no, but maybe???? So funny, you always surprise me.
I should clarify what i meant by this, I guess...I wrote a collection of short stories that I originally intended to be published as a book, but i never tried to get the book published. I have submitted several of the individual stories to literary magazines, though. Does that change anything?
Holy crap, yeah, mention Women's World! Very competitive, and some of the biggest bucks out there.
-A, who they rejected three times already
Although you intended your short story collection to be published in a book, the fact is they weren't. So people don't care. Everyone writes things intending to be published. But intentions are very different from actual publications.
If you submitted your stories to lit mags and they were not published, then you shouldn't mention them. As Miss Snark has said before, it's like telling them how many times you've been rejected (something you don't want potential dates and potential editors/agents to know).
The quality of your writing should speak for itself, of whether or not this is the first time you've put paper to pen.
>>>I have submitted several of the individual stories to literary magazines, though.
The mere fact of submitting them doesn't mean anything.
Okay, the Woman's World credit stays. But what about essays and poems that have been published in newspapers or books?
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