Mridu Khullar

Query letters are proposals. And proposals don’t necessarily have to be made on a white sheet of paper, single-spaced with one-inch margins. They can be made via e-mail, on IM, by picking up the phone, or even while sitting opposite your editor in her office or a coffee-shop.

Over the past year, I’ve proactively tried to meet not only the editors I’ve worked with, but ones I want to work with as well. If you know you’ll be visiting a city where there’s an editor you’ve worked with, why not call her and invite her for a cup of coffee? Or go visit her in her office (with a prior appointment, of course).

Let’s say you have an article idea that is extremely time-sensitive and you need an editor to look at it immediately so that it can be published in a month or two. Relying on postal mail won’t work. E-mail could be easily ignored. Why not just get out there and talk? You could call to propose your idea or set a meeting with the editor at a time when it’s not a high-stress work period.

Another great way is to just keep in touch. I frequently chat on IM with one of my editors and we often discuss things other than work. If I have an idea for her magazine, I don’t have to go the formal query route. I could run it by her on IM, and maybe get even more ideas and insights into how she might envision it turning out.

An editor-writer relationship doesn’t need to be a boss-employee one. It should be one of colleagues, of friends. Most editors are terrific people, and all you really need to do is get to know them. While the editor is technically, giving you work, there’s no reason why you can’t have an informal relationship outside of work as well. See your editors as equals. It helps.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 1:31 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.