Fantasy – Aimee Davis

Note from Aimee: Today’s post has query statistics at the end for those interested. They follow a picture (which picture and alt text was inserted by me, not the author of this post) so they can be more easily avoided for those who don’t like to see stats. The book referenced in this post is described by the author as an adult, second-world grimdark fantasy and is the first novel written by them. I have also included links to the resources listed by the author, but neither this post nor my inclusion of links is an official endorsement of either (and no one was paid to put them here) and you should always research any paid service carefully before pursuing it. Now, without further ado, today’s amazingly raw, amazingly written, amazingly brave story of realness ❤

What if You Just Wrote the Wrong Book?

By: Anonymous

I knew the book I spent 4 years writing was a no-hoper before I ever sent my first query. I knew it as soon as I looked at agent MSWLs in my genre, as soon as I followed agents on Twitter, as soon as I looked for comps. I also know the book I just shelved is the best book I will ever write.

As a child, I had vague ambitions of becoming a published writer, for the simple reason that I wanted to achieve something in life and wasn’t good at anything else. But financial stability came first, and so I devoted my teens and 20s to academics and demanding jobs, writing only a few short stories over 10 years. It wasn’t until I managed to downshift to a 40-hour-a-week job that didn’t suck up all my mental energy that I had hope of actually finishing a novel. Even then, I struggled to find a work-in-progress I loved enough to stick with–until finally I did.

Finishing that monster of a 135k first draft (later whittled down to 121k) took me almost 4 years. Coming to the end and actually being proud of what I’d written was the most joyful moment of my life to date–until I got on the internet and realized I’d written the exact book nobody wanted.

My book might have been perfect for the SFF market in, say, 2010. But by 2022, my European military fantasy was exactly what agents in this hugely oversaturated market were begging not to see (which, if I’d been reading recent debuts instead of spending years frantically trying to finish my own book, I would already have known). Readers’ tastes had long since changed, but I was still writing for the teenager I’d been.

My book was second-world and epic when everyone wanted “grounded.” It had three POVs and a heaping of military strategy when everyone wanted intimate and character-driven. It was a bloody grimdark hitting every conceivable trigger warning when a lot of readers were hungry for lightness, romance, and hope. And worst of all, it had a female villain protagonist who sought power not to protect loved ones or to fight oppression but for power’s own sake–and thus was really, truly unlikeable to everyone but me.

I decided to query my book anyway, because what did I have to lose? I left off anyone for whom my book was explicitly anti-MSWL (quite a few), but between US and UK agents, I still had a healthy list to burn.

I came prepared. I scoured r/pubtips, submitted my query to the wonderful Query Shark, and paid far too much for a manuscript assessment by a freelance editor, because I wanted an honest opinion and was worried seeking unpaid betas would take months and plunge me into social media drama. The verdict: the editor couldn’t understand why anyone would write this sort of thing, and also I needed therapy.

But by far my most valuable investments were three, 10-minute query and sample chapter consultations with literary agents through Manuscript Academy (US) and Jericho Writers (UK). This is the best $49 you as a writer will ever spend, because it is the only time a professional in your target market will tell you exactly what you did wrong, as opposed to just hitting the reject button.

The agents I spoke to were lovely individuals who put real thought into explaining why, no matter how much I revised my query package or my manuscript as a whole, a book with this premise would never sell. Then, much more difficult, they tried to give me some guidance on what would.

Now, 10 months out, I’m at the end of the query journey for the book of my heart. I’m proud of the requests I received, and not at all surprised that they ended in silence or form rejections, given that the book only gets really controversial halfway through. I’m heartened by a few one-liners praising my prose, which I was afraid was too literary and historical for the current market. I’ve also done some thinking about what I need to do to improve my craft: tighten pacing, narrow my scope, and manage word count better as I go.

But as a thirtysomething woman (seemingly ancient for a debut), I can’t figure out for the life of me what to write next. It doesn’t help that I’m the sort of person who takes years to write one book, while most agented writers appear to have churned out a first draft every few months since age 14. Every time I come up with a new premise for a novel, I stumble over the same hurdles. Is this original? Is this “hooky?” Can I imagine one of the 15 acquiring editors in my target market actually acquiring this? Is this–above all–marketable?

I don’t want this post to sound like I feel somehow aggrieved. I’m in the same position as every other casualty of the query trenches, except that I’m privileged to have money and time and not to have to cope with the additional struggles marginalized writers face. Against reason, I still dream of getting an agent and a tradpub deal someday. But writing for the market has killed the joy of writing for me.

Image of a white woman standing in a body of water. She is wearing a white strapless dress and has auburn hair and is wielding a lightning bolt. Above is a red, angry sky, and she is about to bring it down upon the shadowed image of a small island. — Image and alt text added by Aimee, query stats redacted from the post and follow. Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Query Statistics as Provided by Author:

Adult second-world grimdark fantasy

Query start date: April 2022

Queries sent: 86

Partial Requests: 1 (rejected)

Full Requests: 7 (4 form rejections, 2 pending, 1 ghost)

Rejections: 58

Closed No Response (CNR): 20

Author’s Note: For the past few days I’ve been in Tennessee at a workshop hosted by Madcap Retreats about writing cross culturally. It was an incredible, eye-opening experience, and I’m only sharing a snippet of what I learned there, so I highly recommend you participate in one of their workshops if you ever get the chance to.

There are ways to create narratives of hope that don’t feel like a lie.

~ Leigh Bardugo

To fully understand this post, you’ll need to watch this video (there’s also a transcript, but if you can watch I recommend doing that).

The idea of a single story is (obviously), not mine, but over the weekend, it was one of the concepts that hit nearest my heart. There are single stories for every marginalized group of people. In the video, you’ll hear some of them. During my workshop, I heard others. I’m not going to talk about the stories of others, because you should listen to their voices for that. What I am going to talk about is what the single story for me has been, why it’s hurtful, and why that matters to your writing (and mine).

For those who might not follow this blog regularly, I’ll start by telling you that I’m a twenty-nine year old, cisgender, female. I was raised outside of Philadelphia. I’m privileged. Most people would not think of me as part of a marginalized group. Mostly, I don’t think of myself that way.

I do, however, suffer from complex post traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, touch aversion, and agoraphobia. I have an invisible marginalization which I can usually hide, but it affects every aspect of my life.

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined as a condition that results from chronic or long-term exposure to emotional or physical trauma over which a victim has little or no control and from which there is little or no hope of escape. (Source). PTSD and CPTSD are slightly different in that PTSD can result from single events, or short-term exposure to extreme stress or trauma whereas CPTSD is generally associated with long-term trauma. That said, most people don’t know what CPTSD is, so I typically tell people I have PTSD.

When I do “out” myself, the most typical question that follows is, “What war?”

This is the single story in action. (If you haven’t watched the Chimamanda Adichie video or read the transcript yet, go ahead and do it now. Here’s another link. Seriously, it’s that important.)

PTSD is most often associated with veterans. That’s the single story literature, television, and film have created for us. And because of that single story, my experience somehow seems less valid. When I don’t play into people’s perceptions or expectations, my experience is diminished. Surely, I must be faking it. Surely, I must be overly sensitive. Surely, nothing can be as traumatizing as war. Surely, my experience doesn’t matter.

For years, I resisted fighting against this narrative because it felt like fighting against veterans who have PTSD. The single story of PTSD made me feel like I had no right to voice my own experience because by telling my story I was challenging their story. This is not, however, the case. I’m not challenging the narrative at all. There are veterans who have PTSD. But there are people who are not veterans who have PTSD as well, and their stories deserve to be told too. We can tell multiple stories without threatening others. We, as people, deserve more than a single story. We deserve more than two or three or ten stories. Every story gives us a fuller life experience.

The above example is contemporary, but the single story concept extends beyond as well. It permeates every facet of literature. In fantasy, especially young adult fantasy, there is another single story narrative pertinent to PTSD that’s repeated over and over, and it is this: Broken Girl meets The One and is fixed through the curative power of Love.

This narrative hurts me. It is a dangerous lie.

Growing up, I often escaped to fantasy worlds to help me cope with what was unraveling around me. I still do. But especially as a young reader, I internalized much of what I read. And this narrative, the “Broken Girl Cured by Love” narrative, buried itself deep. So deep I didn’t realize how much it had shaped my behavior until this weekend, and to be honest, I’m still trying to untangle a lot of it.

What I have realized, however, is that I truly believed I could be cured by love. In fact, up until recently, one of my primary criterion for a partner was that I could spend a night with them and not suffer nightmares. I was sure that somewhere out there someone existed who would save me from my nightmares. This internalized narrative that I picked up from fantasy books is harmful to me in real, tangible ways.

One of the ways my PTSD manifests itself is through touch aversion. When I’m touched (especially by a stranger), I experience physical symptoms. My heart rate rises, my breathing shallows, I become dizzy, I grind my teeth, I sweat, my pulse hammers in my ears so I can’t hear properly. Often, I freeze, completely debilitated by terror. Sometimes, I lash out, verbally or physically. This is not a comfortable feeling.

Yet, because of the Broken Girl Cured by Love narrative, I’ve put myself in this position time and time again. I’ve retraumatized myself while I search for The One To Defeat The Nightmares. I’ve spent nights with people I was revolted by hoping this time I’ll find The One. This time, the Magical Cure Love will save me from my PTSD. I’ve numbed myself with drugs and alcohol while I try to find The One Who Wields the Cure Love, hoping that when I do I’ll be able to be touched without the need for chemical alteration.

It has not and will not ever happen. Love is not a cure for PTSD. That doesn’t mean there isn’t hope; it simply means this narrative is not the “hope” people like me need. The lie of this single story has damaged me, and I don’t think it takes much extrapolation to understand it could damage other people, or to see the damage done could be more extreme than it has been in my case.

One of the main takeaways from my weekend workshop is that words are powerful, more powerful than we might realize. As writers, we have a responsibility to our readers and that is to tell the Truth as best we can. It’s not easy, and it’s not always pretty, but it is our duty to try, to put in the work, and to hopefully do no harm.

There is no such thing as a single story of the human experience, and it’s far past time we stopped trying to tell one. As Daniel José Older told me over the weekend, “It doesn’t have to be sexy.” I suppose the Truth hardly ever is.

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Tag: Fantasy

Not the Darling: What if You Just Wrote the Wrong Book?

Broken Girl Cured by Love: On Tropes and the Lies They Tell