The Process of Not Giving Up

I first started querying for publication when I was fourteen-years-old.

I'd read one of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' books and decided that if she could do it, so could I. Of course, what I didn't take into account at the time was that she had connections. Big time. But I learned some valuable publishing lessons early because of this. I learned about predatory publishers. I learned about vanity publishers. I discovered there were these things called agents.

And rewrites.

The point is, I've been at this for fifteen years. Fifteen. I've written book after book, queried hundreds of times. I've queried most of the books I've written and I was rejected over and over again. You'd think, after all of that, I'd give up.

And I have. There were a couple years where I wasn't able to do anything. Where I stopped writing but instead buried myself in reading. I spent a year living on a friend's couch after college because I couldn't get a job. I was diagnosed with a form of anemia that causes me to be fatigued very easily. I fell into depressive episodes.

It was hard. It sucked. But it was also during this time that I made my first headway into the publishing industry with an offer from a small press. Which I leapt onto, clung to and prayed would take me to greater things. Five years later I had to request rights back for failure on their part to, well, pay me. It sucked. It hurt.

But during the time that this was happening I had a string of unusual happenings. First, I reunited with my awesome CP Kaitlin after a hiatus brought on by my Grandmother's death. I tried out for #PitchWars. I didn't make it in, but I got some great feedback. Then #PitMad came up and nothing came of that. Not to be discouraged, I tried for #PitchSlam...and got in.

But before #PitchSlam, quite soon after #PitchWars, I was querying again. Researching, sending out cold queries every day. And out of the blue, I got a full request followed by a Revise and Resumbit (R&R). A couple days after I got into #PitchSlam, I got another full request.

I sent off the R&R, got it back, had a phone call, and started at it again for another resubmit. (This revision process was actually pretty awesome).

I should say, it was at this point that I was becoming pretty invested in this agent. She was enthusiastic on the phone, really seemed to understand what I was aiming for and more importantly--she could point out my weaknesses.

#PitchSlam results came out.

I ended up with ELEVEN requests. I hyperventilated a bit, bathed in congratulations, called my mother, thanked a bunch of people and...

Researched. That's right, I got out my spreadsheet, I put all of their names into the spreadsheet and found out who they were, how they wanted a submission and moreover, if I thought they were the agent for me. My full MS was still with my eager beta reader Courtney at this point. (THANK YOU!) I decided I would query Friday/Saturday and let the chips fall where they may.

Plans went a bit sideways, but I sent out requests on Sunday, and then that evening a partial request came in from a cold query. It was a deluge of requests. More than I'd ever had for any manuscript, period. 

Now we're in the waiting.  A lot of waiting. I'm still hoping to have an offer before the end of the year, but I'm not expecting it. Amongst the waiting there have been rejections, there has been another R&R and a even a few partials upgraded to fulls. None of this would have happened if I'd given up.

No matter what happens next, I know without a doubt that I have what it takes to make it the next realm of the query process. I just...have to be patient.

Querying, Tracking and Staying Organized

So, in the past I've been...less than organized with my query process. I used querytracker pretty religiously, but that didn't particularly help when it came to multiple projects over the course of time as I wasn't willing to pay for it.

Part of this is that I wanted a database I could utilize offline as well as online and part of this was just simply my own weirdness about what I should pay money for. In any case, this time around I am determined to be organized so I don't accidentally query the same agent twice for the same project. (Yes, I did this, I am still embarrassed about it)

So I came up with this spreadsheet design. Color coded, dated, with notes for guidelines, the email address, agent's name and all of that easily accessible and checkable. I've also put contests in here so I can keep track of dates and the like.

It's as detailed as I need it to be, basically. It also means that if ever switch to a new email account, I'll still have all of these tracked outside of my folder system and won't accidentally requery and agent whose rejected my project previously. (Yeah...)

The take away from this is, be consistent in your organizational method. If you need folders in your email, do it. If you need to use querytracker, do it. If you need a highly detailed, color-coded spread sheet? Do it. But make sure you are keeping track.

The Doubt

When you begin the process of querying agents, you start with a list. That list is generally long, varied and full of mistakes. You then cross people off the list, send out start query letters, get rejections, rewrite your query letter and continue on your way.

But then, what happens when you start to get...noticed? When not one, but two and then three different agents over the course of a year have requested more material. You wait anxiously for news. You wait. You wait.

You wait.

And then rejection.

I have received somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty rejection letters throughout my querying. I can chalk some up to weak query letters I suppose but the rest of them always make me question not only myself, but my voice as a writer. I find  myself asking, what am I doing wrong? Is my voice too this or too that? Should I be funnier? Should I be more serious? Should I change the focus audience? Do I even know the focus audience? Do I even know what I'm doing here at all?

The demons of doubt occupy the head of every person, but I sometimes think the creative community gets the worst of it. It's always there, at the corner of the eyes and the back of the mind: Doubt.

Picking away at what confidence you got from that rather nice and helpful rejection last week. Undermining what you are certain you know. It's hard to push past that. It's hard to pick yourself back up again and say, "I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to do this." You see a lot of people saying it's hard to make a living as a writer, or that you won't get rich doing this. I have no ambitions to "get rich" as a writer.

I want to write full time, of course, because telling stories is the thing that drives me. It's my passion. Whether through art or words, I've always found myself telling stories. I love it. It is driven by my insatiable curiosity and wonder at the world around me and it is dampened by doubt and uncertainty. Some days I go to my day job and wonder if it is all I will ever have.

But I can't give up, because I love this too much. Once, in college, I was told I couldn't do Study Abroad in spite of being accepted at the study-abroad program, because my GPA was .005 under what it was "supposed to be". I had been toying with transferring schools and this study abroad was going to be my way of taking a break from the culture of my college and coming back fresh. I was devastated. I had already gotten my VISA, I was ready to go. But without the school's rubberstamp, I would have no financial aid.

So I told them I was going anyway. I would find a way without them. I held my head up and told my adviser that not only was I going abroad, but if they refused to finance me I would be seeking a new institution for my final year of college. I would transfer to our "rival" school if that's what it took. I was done.

I got a meeting with the provost. It turned out, she was the wife of one of the professors who recommended me in glowing terms to the program. I'd no idea at the time of course. I walked into that meeting prepared to be told no, but hoping, just hoping, that I would get a yes. We talked for a bit about why I wanted to go. About what I would do if I didn't go.

My dad had driven me there and was waiting in the car outside. I was in that meeting for about ten minutes. I walked out of it, walked down to the car and looked at my dad. "I'm going to Italy."

I got to go because A) I refused to take no for answer. I didn't give in to doubt. I knew I deserved to go and B) I got a little lucky. The professor thought I was amazing and I have a feeling he talked me up to his wife.

I went to Italy and I found something there I didn't know I would find. My voice. My writer's voice. It was that elusive thing I didn't know I was really missing until it clicked. I found it because I fought to do something. I'm going to keep fighting for my voice. I'm going to keep trying to put my voice out in the world. I'm going to defeat doubt.

It doesn't matter how many no's you stack up. It doesn't matter how many rejections you pin to your wall, because it only takes one yes from the right person to set you on your way.