Query letter sample

Here's the query letter to Smithsonian that we discussed in class last night:

On July 15, 2003, residents of Phoenix who stepped outside around 6 a.m. to walk the dog had an unpleasant greeting: The morning’s low was 96 degrees. It set a record, but it wasn’t a one-day fluke: In 2003, Phoenix tied or broke 57 daily high-temperature records, 38 of them for the highest lows.

While debate rages on about the causes of global warming, no one doubts the source of Phoenix’s morning misery: the urban heat island effect. An Arizona State University study says that temperatures are rising faster in Phoenix than in any comparably sized city in the world. There’s a perfect storm of reasons: Phoenix nests in a bowl-like valley conducive to temperature inversions. It has relatively few shade trees to keep the sun from heating roads, parking lots and sidewalks, which radiate stored solar energy through the night. And the urban area keeps growing exponentially: In 1995 the Arizona Republic calculated that the metro area was expanding into the desert at the rate of an acre an hour. Most of that expansion is new subdivisions of tightly-packed houses with fashionable red concrete tile roofs—excellent collectors and radiators of solar energy.

Belatedly, Phoenix is beginning to worry that its worsening climate will affect its reputation for livability and frighten tourists away. The city is studying ideas such as lighter-colored pavement and roof materials that reflect more energy than they absorb. But mitigating measures look like way too little, too late. That ASU study predicts that Phoenix’s mean daily temperatures are likely to rise another 4.5 degrees by 2100.

I propose a Smithsonian story on the urban heat island effect, focused tightly on Phoenix. I’ll interview climatologists who are studying the worldwide phenomenon, but also literally report at ground level in Phoenix: I’ll go there in July and learn how ordinary people are coping and how it’s affecting their lives.

Although I now live in Seattle, I worked as a journalist in Tucson and Phoenix for 25 years, and much of my work as a freelance writer remains in the Southwest. I’ve successfully dodged summer assignments in Phoenix for the last several years, but this story is important enough to prompt me to volunteer for hazardous duty.

I will be happy to furnish clips and/or references at your request.

"Endings" examples

We watch in awe as from a hand moving lightly and swiftly across the drafting table there leaps into being something never seen before.

—Brendan Gill, Many Masks

And if it’s not a bluff? Well, there really isn’t any Plan B, because at this point you no longer have a problem bear. You have a bear problem.

—Lawrence W. Cheek

I love these stories because they show where we began, and therefore how far we have come, from the blame and delusions of our drinking days to the gentle illusions by which we stay sober. Now we understand that the blanket really does protect Linus and that Schroeder really does play lovely music on a toy piano, because both of them keep at it. They believe.

—Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

...Moments later, two court officers approached Madoff, who stood silently and still, and then he moved his arms a little so that his hands were behind his back. And then there was a click.

—Nancy Franklin

... “He didn’t say it was a crow, did he? Because a crow—well, you just don’t follow crows.”

—Douglas J. Kreutz

Tyler looked stricken. Lori shifted nervously in her seat. Bandit growled. Cesar turned to the dog and said “sh-h-h.” And everyone was still.

—Malcolm Gladwell

The water is blue satin, the breeze as slack as a snoozing cat. Paddling at a casual three knots, we overtake a small sloop, its owner lounging on the deck. "Great day for paddling, maybe not so great for sailing," I call out.

"No, it's a great day for sailing," he replies.

"You're not going to go very fast."

"Why would I want to go anywhere fast?"

—Lawrence W. Cheek

Your "Book Reports"

Here’s what I’d like you to be most aware of as you read your chosen nonfiction book. (Making notes or flagging passages with stickies may be helpful, since I’ll ask you to illustrate your points with a few examples from your book):

· The writer’s voice

· The research or experience behind the book: how did the writer gather and process the information? For example, in A Walk in the Woods (which no one chose), Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail, structured casual encounters along the trail into funny or dramatic scenes, researched many aspects of the trail from archives (geology, bear behavior, history of murders, etc), and so on.

· Structure of the book

· Value added: What did the writer add to the basic factual information in the book through his/her own intelligence, experience, or interpretation?

· And finally, your critique. Did the book work? Was it an enjoyable read? Did it add value to your life? Why or why not?

That’s it. Enjoy!

Portland travel story

Here's an example of a fresh and engaging approach to a familiar topic: a long weekend in Portland. It's not literary writing, just nuts and bolts, but it's packed with specific and useful how-to-do-it information.

This piece was written by the Seattle Times' travel staff writer (hard to believe they didn't lay her off along with the art critic, the music critic, etc). Most metro newspapers have a travel and/or outdoor rec section that buy a lot of freelance material; this would be an example of one kind of piece they'd be likely to accept. In all probability it will cost you more to research than they'll pay you ($200 if you're lucky), but that will at least be a dividend if you're going anyway. You can also sell the same piece to multiple newspapers as long as their circulation areas don't overlap.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2011037809_nwwportland11.html

Teacher's blog

Next week (2/16) we'll be learning how writers build platforms to help promote their articles or books. A platform is your area of specialization and expertise. One of the prime platform-building machines is blogs. In case you'd be interested in seeing my boatbuilding blog, here it is: http://www.lawrencewcheek.com/news/

Ideally, an author would update his or her blog every few days. I just don't have time; I post monthly. The latest went up today.

Lead examples

In case you want the texts of the lead examples I projected last night, here they are:

If you’re going to build a Church of Ecology, might as well do it dramatically and audaciously. Plant it smack in the devil’s sprawling front yard and rub his nose in it. Build it in Bellevue.

The new Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center is a stunning retort to the grade-it, pave-it and supersize-it ethic that has shaped Bellevue’s built environment, as it has every other affluent American suburb. This clump of five modest buildings doesn’t just suggest a different direction. It’s an alternate universe.

—Lawrence W. Cheek

The Denver Art Museum’s newly opened Daniel Libeskind wing looks as though a volcano has suddenly burped up an immense pile of ship parts, jewel-faceted boulders, and giant titanium pterodactyl beaks. It’s a profoundly alien presence in the huddle of sober, upright buildings of downtown Denver. But it’s also as beautiful as it is startling.

—Lawrence W. Cheek

---

The ground had just thawed when I drove to Wyoming in 1976. It was night. All I could see of the state was white peaks, black sky, and the zigzag promenade of rabbits unwinding in front of the car ...

—Gretel Ehrlich

I used to walk in my sleep. On clear nights when the seals barked and played in phosphorescent waves, I climbed out the window and slept in a horse stall. Those “wild-child” stories never seemed odd to me; I had the idea that I was one of them, refusing to talk, sleeping only on the floor. Having become a city dweller, the back-to-the-land fad left me cold and I had never thought of moving to Wyoming. But here I am, and unexpectedly, my noctambulist world has returned. Not in the sense that I still walk in my sleep—such restlessness has left me—but rather, the intimacy with what is animal in me has returned. To live and work on a ranch implicates me in new ways: I have blood on my hands and noises in my throat that aren’t human.

—Gretel Ehrlich

I have always been a candy-ass. A cerebral, cautious creature in love with logic, fearful of confrontation.

A hot day, the end of summer. I am playing hopscotch when I feel the pull of someone’s gaze. Across the street in a parched and cactus-strewn yard, a girl about my age is standing. Statue-still. Her frame, short and square. Her hair, edge straight, long and black. Unbelievably cool.

“Hi,” I call out in my best, high WASPy voice, “My name’s Leesa. Wanna be friends?”

Slowly, deliberately, the girl with the long black hair lifts her middle finger, centering it directly between my eyes.

—Leesa Wright

Among the cruelest tricks life plays is the way it puts the complicated part at the end, when the brain is declining into simplicity, and the simplest part at the beginning, when the brain is fresh and has memory to spare.

—Ian Frasier

“This is probably the best thing I’ve done in my whole life.”

Peter Gron, forty-two, is talking about his Arctic Tern, a twenty-three-foot sloop now taking elegant shape beside his home on Gabriola Island, British Columbia. There is no trace of irony or self-consciousness in his voice or expression—he means it.

—Lawrence W. Cheek, The Year of the Boat, chapter 13

I'll admit it upfront: I'm not the workshop type.

Being crammed into a badly lit conference room with 150 strangers, any of whom might be called upon to hold my hand or hoist me into the air as part of some humiliating trust-building exercise, pretty much makes my skin crawl. Same goes for preternaturally perky moderators with microphones and dry-erase markers.

—Diane Mapes

The mirror behind the stage is still streaked with hand prints, smudges of sweat and body oil. The girls still climb up every few dances with a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a rag, wiping it up and down, back and forth, like slutty Cinderellas in their g-strings and bras. There are still black vinyl benches strewn about the room and tucked into dim corners that stick to bare thighs when you sit down. There’s that same odor of slightly rancid perfume, of roses blooming in a pasture of cigarette butts, even though smoking was banned here a year ago.

—Student in 2007 UW Nonfiction class