In which our hero writes a letter

So I'm trying to sell a book. Or, more accurately, I'm trying to find an agent to sell a book (as most aspiring authors can tell you, the getting an agent thing is one of life's great key-in-the-trunk dilemmas--as in, you need an agent to sell a book, but you can't sell a book until you get an agent--and the ice cream, in the interim, is getting all warm and squooshy and dripping all over the spare tire... wait... where was I?... oh yes). It's an annoying business. It involves researching the lives and tastes of perfect strangers and then writing them a nice letter saying something like "You seem like a nice person--please sell my book. It's a very good book. It has words in it and everything. Many of them are even spelled correctly."

The part I really hate is the 'tell us why it's wonderful' bit. Partly, it's just that, like a lot of people, I've always been pretty uncomfortable with most forms of self-promotion. I find it awkward. Seems conceited, somehow. I even hate it in job interviews. The poor clown behind the desk says "Now! Tell us what's great about yourself!", and I always want to say something like "Well... ummm... I am off the crack now..."

I mean, assuming I actually am at the time.

Gotta also say I'm not sure I really get the utility of it, either. I mean, doesn't everyone think their damn writing is wonderful? Especially those whose writing is far, far, far from wonderful, and often in terrifying and memorable ways? Don't you kinda need the writing itself to tell anyway?

I mean, I suppose I do see some sense in it. I suppose it's probably partly a project fitting thing, partly a preliminary screening/triage thing. That's to say: if you can't write a decent letter on the subject of why you think your book's a stunning, unprecedented literary masterpiece (or, better still, a shamelessly derivative but marvellously saleable piece of sex-and-violence saturated pulp which will send the agent's kids to as many colleges as they wish to flunk out of), I suppose you probably can't write the book either. Or, at least, not a book anyone other than a masochist would actually want to read (sorta like, say, Conrad Black's memoirs). So if you're truly a dreadful hack, we can actually tell from the letter, and we can all thus save a lot of time and postage by just returning a No. 10 envelope with a short form note in it saying something like "If you send us another such proposal, we're going to file for a restraining order. Go away. You scare us.".

Or maybe something actually mildly impolite. Like "Aaaaarrrggghhh!!! My eyes!!! My eyes!!! It burns!!! It burns!!!"

Anyway. Sensibly or not, the "tell us why it's wonderful" thing always gets my sarcasm circuits going. And so, from the letters I'm always writing in my head:

WHY MY BOOK IS WONDERFUL--TAKE ONE

Dear Sir: I am writing to request your assistance in selling a novel. It has a great deal of kinky sex in it, and I expect it will appeal to the juvenile market...

WHY MY BOOK IS WONDERFUL--TAKE TWO

... it's a powerful, thought-provoking work. Sorta like when Mel Gibson played Macbeth...

WHY MY BOOK IS WONDERFUL--TAKE THREE

... only better. This book is more like Keanu Reeves playing Lear...

WHY MY BOOK IS WONDERFUL--TAKE FOUR

... because it's about real people, and about real life. Before the book is over our protagonist will experience joy, pain, fear, love, lust, betrayal, devotion, self-loathing, rickets, shingles, pneumonia, the bends, athlete's foot, and a painfully overextended groin muscle...

WHY MY BOOK IS WONDERFUL--TAKE FOUR

... I envision the hero as a complicated amalgam of many types... sort of a Popeye meets Anna Karenina character...

Anyway.