Tag: #NotTheDarling

Not the Darling: An Almost-Darling

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Note from Aimee: The author of the following post had me weeping by the end of this poignant, perfectly timed piece. Another #PitchWars alum, the story is one that obviously strikes close to home for me personally but in today’s climate speaks loudly for us all and is a perspective I have yet to host here: a return to the trenches. That said, I do want to note (with the author’s permission) that the agency and agent discussed are not those being discussed at present.

Content/Trigger Warnings: Signing with an agent, agent ghosting, long-term querying (no stats specifically discussed)

An Almost-Darling

By: Anonymous

The beginning was thrilling enough that I thought I might be a darling.

I got into Pitch Wars with the book that was supposed to be my second attempt at querying. Thanks to a whirlwind showcase, I had an offer of rep before I’d sent a single cold query. The agent was a perfect fit—personable and enthusiastic, with a history of sales at a reputable agency. I had no doubts when I signed. Crank up the Hilary Duff, baby, because this is what dreams are made of.

We worked through revisions, made the book shine, and had one close call with an editor. But ultimately, sub went how it goes for most authors: a slow death for a desperately loved story.

Fortunately, my agent and I had picked my next project early, and I’d already sent them the revised draft. I received no response for a couple months. Worry pricked the back of my mind. Were they as enthusiastic about the idea as they’d been before? We had an encouraging check-in, followed by a few more months of silence.

I realized I was decidedly Not The Darling when I received a form letter from the agency, letting me know I’d been dropped. I had moved earlier that year, and because they didn’t confirm my address, the letter took over a month to reach me. My agent hadn’t even signed it.

I don’t know what publishing has in store for me, but I do know, without a doubt, nothing will be more shocking or humiliating than emailing to ask if it had been a clerical error, or if that was really how the only professional in my corner had chosen to part ways.

It wasn’t an error. The agent had decided not to represent my genre anymore, and I never would have gotten an explanation if I hadn’t requested one.

Several agent-siblings and I were dumped back into the querying trenches with nothing to show for our years of professional partnership. Just one little line at the end of the query. I was represented, but we parted ways amicably. Because you had to say it was amicable, or people might think you were the problem.

Months turned to years as I tried to recover emotionally and creatively from what happened. I queried another book. And another. And another.

I used to think even if publishing wasn’t a meritocracy, there was an element of forward motion. That one day, if I took my writing seriously, I could look back at the starting line, and it would be just a pinpoint in the distance. I don’t believe that anymore.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying to get published, and I haven’t been able to come up with a good answer, really. Most of the time, I have no idea if I’ll ever get a book deal. The vast majority of people don’t.

But I think somewhere deep, deep down I’m cupping my hands around a flickering candle of hope that after all this, I could still be the exception. I could be the one who gets the deal, and everything else she’s ever dreamed of. A decades-in-the-making darling.

Black and white image of a hand holding a candle. Image source: Pixabay.
Image added by Aimee, not author.

Not the Darling: Haven’t I always been giving up?

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Note from Aimee: This next author is a friend of mine I think many of you will know well. Before we were friends, she was a sort of inspiration for me, someone I actually thought was perhaps too big of a name in the writing community to even approach. Lucky me, she’s a normal person and doesn’t think that of herself and a friendship bloomed out of my first early awkward star struck days. Her querying journey has been long, her pain clear but professional. When she told me she was brainstorming a piece for this blog, I was honored beyond words. That I get to share it with you all now brings me joy and sadness. I love this series so much because I am so glad to know what it’s brought people, but seeing friends and peers here makes my heart ache because because as much as hosting this blogs makes me happy, what would make me happier would be to close it because every talented person hosted here (or reading here) got their happily ever after. And that sentiment rings harder than ever for the following author.

Content/Trigger Warnings: Brief mention of panic/anxiety.

Haven’t I always been giving up?

By: Kyra Nelson (Follow Kyra on Twitter @KyraMNelson)

I had a panic attack on Halloween. 

I had gone to a party, telling myself that I’d leave early enough to get a jump start on my NaNoWriMo novel, but like Cinderella, I was having too much fun to be home by the stroke of midnight. By that point, I was rounding out ten years of being stuck at the querying stage, with the past several years being a special kind of hell. 

The only way out of query hell was by writing through it, as I was constantly reminded by the onslaught of agent and book announcements that allowed me to watch author after author race past me. And I was (am) so desperate to escape this querying purgatory that I struggled to allow myself to do anything that wasn’t in service of that goal, even if it was celebrating my favorite holiday.

It is very hard to let yourself slow down when you only ever feel like you’re falling behind.

For a little context, the book that spurred my Halloween panic attack was the 19th I’d written. I’ve finished another since then for a nice even 20 completed manuscripts. Five of those I have queried. On paper, I have done everything right. I got beta readers, excellent ones. I went to conferences. I read craft books. I read hundreds of books in the genre I was writing. I networked. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.

I made writing my whole life.

It wasn’t enough.

People assure me it will be worth it, but the longer I am here the less I can imagine anything would be worth all this.

People also tell me I should be proud because I haven’t given up, but the truth is I have given up. I have given up so much.

Because my time is finite, spending it on writing always means I’m giving up something else. For instance, giving up a Halloween party. Even if I wasn’t giving up the time to be there physically, I certainly was giving up my joy in it.

There are so many things I have given up in the pursuit of publication. That party. Other parties. Sleep. Time with friends. Non-writing hobbies. Peace of mind.

While I knew I was making sacrifices, I don’t think I realized the extent of it until the past couple months. In February, I finished the draft of my twentieth manuscript and began what I thought would be a routine short break.

I haven’t written since. I haven’t wanted to.

For someone who has become accustomed to churning out multiple books a year, a two-month hiatus is pretty drastic. I have done so much with that time though. I’ve been spending more time with friends and family. I actually feel like I have time to pursue a romantic relationship. I’m spending my evenings actually unwinding by playing video games and watching the shows everyone is talking about. I’m more on top of chores and errands than I ever have been. I’ve picked up some new hobbies, like watching baseball and venting creative energy through a TTRPG. 

I wasn’t doing any of this stuff, or at least not doing it regularly, when I was giving all my time to writing.

Mostly, I like feeling like my time is mine and not something I owe the fickle gods of publishing. I like ending my work day and not feeling like I have to start another shift.

I don’t know when, or frankly if, I’ll get back to writing regularly. Sometimes I’m haunted by the idea that I have already given so much up for nothing. But I think I’m more afraid of giving up my future with no promises anything will come of it. 

While I don’t think I’m quitting writing permanently, it’s nice realizing that whatever writing I do give up will be replaced with another little piece of life for me to enjoy. 

The truth is, I have always given up. 

I’m finally reclaiming my ability to choose what I give up.

Bio: Kyra is a writer, editor, and recovering academic. During her linguistics graduate program, she studied children’s literature, query letters, and narrative nonfiction. Follow Kyra on Twitter @KyraMNelson or learn more about her at her website: www.kyramnelson.com.

Not the Darling: “But since something of my soul is in the thing…”

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Note from Aimee: This next Not the Darling submission comes from an author with a heartbreaking and poignant tale of not only querying but what it’s like to pour your soul into your art when darkness is coming for you. In the age of the pandemic, so many of us were burned out, and it affected the querying landscape like nothing else I can ever remember. It affected a different population in other ways, deeper ways, I would argue. This author is among that population: the COVID first line responders. I hope you’ll appreciate their story, the emotion behind it, and the bravery in telling it as much as I did.

Trigger/Content Warnings: COVID pandemic descriptions (including in a hospital setting), actual death on page, discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation, query statistics.

“But since something of my soul is in the thing…”

By: Anonymous

I write this on the day my hospital has made masking completely optional for staff, for patients, for visitors, for everyone. Why is this a meaningful day for me? Because I’ve worked as a provider for the entirety of the COVID pandemic to date. I say to date because I do not see it as over. Perhaps, in a way, for me it never will be. Perhaps to me the removal of masks within the hospitals is symbolic of how little what I and my coworkers did mattered to society, to my country, to anyone but our patients. 

Why do I bring this up on a blog post about querying? To answer that question we must go back to the beginning of the Delta wave of COVID in late 2021. I had transitioned out of the Emergency Department (“ED”) to work inpatient medicine, and found myself immersed in the dead and dying. The ED was a place that wore its COVID exposure like a badge of honor, but few people died of COVID there. They came to the floor and lingered, and suffered, and finally succumbed to the virus, and I cared for them until the end, along with a host of over-worked, incredible, forgotten healthcare providers. 

For me writing often seems to come from a place of darkness. When the world is hideous and unbearable, writing is my refuge. So I wrote. From my dresser drawer I took a book whose first draft I had written originally in similar dark times, years before, dusted it off, and rewrote it. My nights were filled with the sobs of family members through the phone when I woke them to say that despite everything we had done, their family member was actively dying. There were always two options: we could escalate things and send their loved one to the ICU, so that they could endure a more prolonged and torturous death; or we could change course, let them stop fighting, and keep them comfortable in their final hours or days. More often hours than days by the time we were having this conversation. Sometimes minutes.

With my nights embalmed in this horror, I wrote during the day, pouring my soul into those pages, finding an escape from the real-life darkness in the make-believe darkness of my characters. It was not that I had not known tragedy before, I had. As an EMT and then a paramedic for ten years I had worked in some of the most poverty-stricken places in the US, Guatemala, and Mexico. I had struggled to save men, women, and children injured by the most heinous mechanisms. But this was different. This was a more helpless feeling than in all those other horrors I had witnessed. The world was coming alive outside the hospital, insistent on going to sports events, reopening the clubs, getting back to their friends, and parties, without a thought to the thousands that were still dying every day in hospitals around the country. It was a loneliness that felt like madness. Here I was within the dying halls, while out there the world ignored the toll exacted by their merriment. COVID was already over for those not embroiled in it. On the radio on my way to work I listened to men and women of every political persuasion whining about the hardship of their long pandemic confinements, and rejoicing as they were set free at last to wreak havoc and mortality upon the vulnerable.  

They say in writing and pursuing traditional publishing that you shouldn’t take it personally. But writers don’t write from a vacuum. Like every other artist, we create our work from our hearts, our passions, our souls, our suffering, and our aching love for life, even with all its pain. How can it not be personal? 

John Kennedy Toole was an author who wrote because he had to, because it was an escape from the darkness within, the darkness that was consuming him. He was rejected, repeatedly. Once he wrote of why he had to keep looking for a publisher: “I haven’t been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of my soul is in the thing, I can’t let it rot without trying.” Eventually Toole committed suicide at the age of 31, in part due to the rejections he experienced, in part because his darkness at last engulfed him. His mother managed to find a publisher for his work and he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. 

Like Toole, something of my soul is in my work, and the reviews from the beta readers were glowing and wildly enthusiastic. So I could not let it rot, and, after extensive editing, I queried it. I queried more than a hundred agents. Why so many? Because I struggled in determining what my genre was which made it difficult to pin down who to submit to. It had a historical setting, some fantastical–though non-magical–elements, some thriller elements, and some action-adventure elements. I had eleven full requests, a wildly diverse set of agents in terms of what they represent, including some who specialize in romance, some who specialize in thriller, some who specialize in action-adventure, and some who specialize in fantasy. 

Not a single full or partial rejection mentioned the writing quality. A couple felt they couldn’t connect with one of the main characters, which, to be honest, I would have been deeply concerned if they could. Most mentioned marketing concerns. One felt it was too long for a thriller. One felt that because they were busy and were, at times, able to set the book down to do the many other things competing for their attention that meant they probably did not have the deep, overwhelming passion that they needed to represent the book. I’m not kidding. That last one was a real rejection that came in a wild, frantic, unprofessional email, a wall of stream-of-consciousness, inane, and chaotic text. Interestingly, this last rejecting agent represents an almost entirely white male list and my name is clearly Latina. That name is literally all that agent knew about me. It is neither here nor there, but I mention this only because it struck me. I had previously not put much credence in the notion that racism factored into agent rejections. Call me blind, but at least in the US agents seemed obsessed with finding writers of particular niche ethnicities and identities to virtue-signal their magnanimity and the holiness of their white-saviorhood. As if people of color were exotic butterflies they could catch and pin to their corkboard collection.  

The world of querying podcasts, workshops, twitter, discords, writing critique groups, reddit, all echoed the same toxic positivity at me as I kept querying. They said: “it only takes one yes,” “onward and upward,” “you just haven’t found the right agent yet,” “I was in your shoes exactly 3 years ago and now I’ve got an agent,” “just keep going,” “that’s just one agent closer to the one who’s going to love your book,” “just write the next thing and query that,” “that’s not what the market wants right now, just write something marketable.” All of these and thousands more quips encourage damaged people to keep playing a game in which their odds of success are truly abysmal and based more on luck than any other single factor. 

The positivity eventually burned me out. It came at me from all sides, but it didn’t ring true. The  lottery-like odds of publishing success had been laid bare to all the world by the PRH/Simon & Schuster trial. This was not an industry based on any sure science. The market was a fickle creature that even publishing executives didn’t understand. Their method, more often than not, seemed to be to pick a number of books based on what they thought people might be into, throw them at the wall, and see what stuck. 

The constant, draining affirmations I was reading were the same kind of false sunshine that was blown up my ass working at a family-owned McDonald’s franchise as a youngster. Working at McDonald’s sucks, no matter how much you try to pretend it doesn’t. You can put all the powdered sugar in the world on a turd, it’s still going to be shit underneath when you bite into it. Similarly, you can query and query and query and query and never get that mythical ‘yes’. You can write and edit the next book (and I did) and query that one, but it’s also “not what the market is looking for.”

After hearing how people slog on sub when they are accepted by an agent, and after witnessing endless bizarre and sometimes toxic interactions on the internet, I’m not sure that literary agents or publishers know what “the market” wants. And that’s ok. But I would appreciate it if everyone in the publishing industry quit pretending and admitted that they have no idea what people want to read. I would appreciate it if just one agent came out and said that something that might have tempted them yesterday at 10 AM when they had a full night’s rest and got good news about Fido’s biopsy, just didn’t hit their sweet spot today at 4 PM because they didn’t have their usual 8:17AM bowel movement and they just got some bad news about their Aunt Lithadora’s mammogram. 

I had a birthday recently, and I realized there was only one gift I wanted to give myself. I wanted to stop querying. I wanted to stop putting this work out there to agents and getting their thoughtless form rejections. I owed it to myself to stop making myself hurt. I’ve been through enough in the last few years and life is short. But I do still believe that my work is marketable, based on the feedback of beta readers, strangers on the internet who owed me nothing but still adored the world I created and my realistically irrational characters. 

I am writing this to encourage you to consider quitting as well. Has this querying journey been ugly and bleak for you? Has it made you ponder suicide like John Kennedy Toole? Don’t do it. Your life, and your work matter. You don’t have to keep going. You don’t have to keep putting yourself through this. You don’t have to play this lottery. There are other options. You could self-publish, you could just give the book to friends and family that express interest, or publish to Wattpad or Royal Road to find readers that will love your work. You can even write fanfiction if you like. There are many lovely fanfic readers out there who will enjoy your work and celebrate your prose, your story, and your delightful characters. I’m here to tell you that what you wrote is incredible, and I’m glad you did it, and I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself too. 

Gratitude. That has been the saving grace for me, the rope I used to climb out of a bitter, cynical hole. During the Delta wave, I chose to be grateful that I had that brief chance to know and care for so many people in the last days of their lives. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to meet them before they passed, and to care for their families in their passing. I looked upon my patients in those final moments and saw that they were people, that they existed, and that they mattered. Everyone of them mattered, whether or not they had written a great manuscript that got an agent and a publishing deal. They mattered because they were human, and they had lived, and it was beautiful, and I, though I didn’t deserve it, got that chance to meet them, in all their humanity, their beautiful humanity. 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the years working in the hospital, it’s that my writing matters to me, but no one lives or dies if it isn’t published by some suit in an office in New York that doesn’t care what inspired it. I’ve learned not to take my writing seriously, in a good way. I’ve learned that this is a delightful hobby, that produces work that some people will enjoy, and some won’t, like any art. But no one lives or dies because this book was or wasn’t published. It’s at my job where people’s lives are at stake, and my writing will never matter as much as those lives and those families. My book will never matter as much as all the ghosts that haunt me now as I walk the halls of the hospital and see the maskless faces of nescient people peering from those same rooms where I bore witness to so many deaths. Will I keep writing? Of course. Though I said no lives are at stake, I think sometimes that mine is if I don’t keep telling these stories. But my acceptance by some random literary agent is not what gives my life or even my writing value and meaning. 

Whether or not you quit querying too, I would encourage you to choose gratitude. Gratitude that you were able to write your work, gratitude for your skill, your knowledge, even gratitude for the ugliness and suffering you may have endured that led you to write what you did. Gratitude that you didn’t die alone on the tenth floor of a hospital during the pandemic and you get to keep writing. Choose gratitude. But don’t choose to torture yourself, and if querying is torture, choose to free yourself from it. Reread the glowing praise you got from that beta reader. Laminate it. Make a bookmark out of it. Put it in a locket and carry it around your neck. Know that your work resonated with someone out there and that is a beautiful thing. Marinate in their validation of your art. You deserve it.

Not the Darling: Why Not Me?

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Note from Aimee: Today’s post struck me right from the title. Why not me? I don’t know how many times I asked that question through my querying journey. Every time I read a published book, every time I saw an announcement, every time there was a full request announced. Happy for them. But why not me? This next post addresses that very question I believe so many of us have grappled with, and I’m so honored to have it here.

Content/Trigger Warnings: Minor mention of querying stats; mention of C-PTSD and related trauma (religious); mention of parental homophobia; RSD

Why Not Me?

By: Anonymous

I’ve been in the query trenches for three years.

To some, that’s nothing. A drop in the bucket. To others, it’s an unimaginable eternity.

My first book (YA urban fantasy) was sent to 101 agents. I received 3 requests and 100 rejections. Technically, I still have a full pending an answer.

The overwhelming feedback?

Nothing.

I entered every contest I could toss my hat into the ring for. On more than one occasion, they requested additional material.

The feedback?

Nothing.

The only personalized feedback I received (from two agents independently, and I adore them for taking the time) was that the writing was great, query was strong, but the concept wasn’t new enough.

And here’s a secret for you…

I don’t write new concepts.

I am a traumatized, C-PTSD-having, ADHD-fueled, mentally ill, perfectionist, queer mess.

And all I want in the world is to write stories for people like me. Even the familiar ones. Especially the familiar ones.

So, with my next book, I changed tactics. I laid out my marginalizations so my ‘new take on an old trope’ would be more marketable.

Yes, it’s a concept you’ve seen before, but it’s sapphic. Why does this story matter? Well, you see, I’m functioning from a base of 18 years of religious trauma. Would you like to know what my preacher was arrested for (unrelated to me and my C-PTSD, thank the spaghetti monster in the sky)? Shall I list my dead relatives? My abuses and traumas? My journey of self-discovery that resulted in a very mellow coming out at 27?

The sixteen page Facebook message from a family member the day after describing exactly how I’ll burn in hell? My father’s awkward silence and refusal to acknowledge my identity? My mother’s gentle, ‘Okay, that’s fine, but you can’t tell anyone’?

Would you like me to tally my scars, mental and physical, so you can weigh them against my content and see if my story (and therefore I) am ‘different’ enough? Unique enough?

 If I describe myself as ‘neurodivergent,’ is that enough? Will you assume I’m autistic? Will you assume I’m mentally damaged and can’t handle the pressure? Will you show compassion? Or will you reject me out of hand assuming I’m difficult?

If I claim that my work is sapphic, is that enough? It isn’t a romance. Not a traditional one. Should I tell you why? Show you my deep mental and emotional scars that have led to writing emotional intimacy without the physical?

Or is that ‘desexualizing WLW’ and unacceptable?

In the span of two weeks, I witnessed two literary agents talk about rejecting a YA fantasy because ‘we’ve seen this concept before.’

Like me, they were rejecting authors that weren’t writing something different enough.

The feedback on this latest manuscript (again, YA fantasy)? Great writing. Fantastic worldbuilding. *Chef’s kiss* voice.

And a concept we’ve seen before.

I received my first full request so fast it made my head spin. I dared to hope that flaying myself alive was finally getting me in the door. Making an agent take notice of something the same, but different.

And since that request, nothing but form rejection… after form rejection… after form rejection.

Agents are busy. Their time is valuable. They owe me nothing as a querying author. I know and accept all of this.

But the form I receive for ‘too queer’ is the same form I receive for ‘not queer enough’ is the same form I receive for ‘terrible writing’ is the same form I receive for ‘great writing, but a concept we’ve seen before.

What’s wrong with a twist on a concept we’ve seen before?

Why isn’t there space for an urban fantasy starring an ambitious-as-hell girl who can’t connect to other people? Her journey discovering that she can open up without losing herself is valuable. Her choice to turn away from ambition for the sake of people who finally gave her a home is valuable.

Why isn’t there space for a fantasy set in a world where ancient religions are the norm, with all their humor and all their horror? That run-of-the-mill teen’s story is important. Her friends who are devout and questioning and set against the gods and kind and cruel in every combination are important. Her discovery that a system can be horrible to the point of evil and still contain good people, that destroying that system may destroy some of those good people, matters. Her quiet questioning matters. She matters.

The next story I write? That will matter, too.

Duty versus love. The trauma-driven need to protect oneself versus protecting a person who is open and honest and kind. Fighting like hell for something as a neurodivergent person, achieving the same and better than competing neurotypical people, and being betrayed by those people. The choice to burn that world down. Whimsy and humor and boredom and trauma and dissociation and self-discovery.

They matter.

And when I have to reveal intimate aspects of myself with every query to answer the question ‘Why are you the person to write this story?’ when I constantly have to lay myself bare to get a foot in the door, the old advice rings hollow.

‘They aren’t rejecting you; they’re rejecting the story.’

Not anymore. Not when every story’s theme must have roots in my trauma, my marginalization, my life.

I don’t have an answer.

I’m not angry with agents, or even with the system. A form rejection is certainly better than no response. I’m grateful there’s an emphasis on marginalized voices, even if the implementation is sometimes dicey. There are thousands of wonderful writers with millions of beautiful stories all trying desperately to gain representation.

I’m proud of the stories I’ve written. Whether or not they’re important to publishing, they’re important to me.

So I’ll keep writing. I’ll cut myself open to carefully display the traumas that ‘allow’ me to write my stories in the hope that some agent will see and decide that I am enough.

That my queerness is enough. My neurodivergence is enough. My trauma and mental health issues are enough.

That my stories matter.

That my voice matters.

That I matter.

And until then, I guess I’ll just keep bleeding.

Not the Darling: When Your Brain Works Against You

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Note from Aimee: The following post has found a special place in my heart (as they all have, really) because it discusses some topics that are only now finding their way to the surface. The one that resonates most heavily with me being Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (“RSD”). For those unaware what RSD it is, it’s an extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by rejection and criticism (perceived or actual). It is commonly linked with neurodiversity. On a personal note, I had no idea what RSD was before Pitch Wars, until a fellow mentee mentioned I might be suffering from it. I vehemently denied this notion, but mentioned it to my mentor when it wouldn’t stop nagging at me, who sent me some information on it and said she thought my fellow mentee was correct. Despite being diagnosed with C-PTSD my entire adult life, and diagnosed with ADHD semi-recently, no one mentioned this. Not my therapists, not my psychiatrist. It took a fellow neurodiverse person to tell me what it even was. Because there are so many neurodiverse writers putting themselves through this process that essentially demands a near-constant onslaught of rejection, I think bringing this out of the shadows is important. I’m glad this next author was brave enough to write so candidly about it. If you’re looking for information on RSD, here’s an article to start. If ever querying gets too dark, know there’s help. If you live in the US, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Content and Trigger Warnings: Mention of suicidal ideation; struggles with mental health; discussion of effects of rejection sensitive dysphoria; dark thoughts; query statistics.

When Your Brain Works Against You

By: Anonymous

“It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.”

― Gustave Flaubert

Reader, I am struggling.

Since August 2021, I’ve been querying the book of my heart. The book I’m most proud of. The book I want more than anything to be my debut. And nothing I do seems to be working. I am really starting to think that I am never going to be what gatekeepers want. And that’s ok. Sort of.

Let’s talk about it.

92 queries. 61 form rejections. Too many CNRs to count. 13 fulls, 6 partials, and so, so much waiting. I am still waiting. Only I’m not convinced a response is ever coming.

Like many others, I’ve done everything you’re “supposed” to. I leveled up my craft. I did Pitch Wars. I read through the entire QueryShark archives. At risk of sounding arrogant, I know my shit. I’m an excellent writer with great stories to tell. 

It doesn’t matter.

Right now, it feels like book Twitter is populated entirely by people getting agented or getting book deals. Everyone except me. And I am so, so tired of waiting. I’m tired of begging for the things that I want. When will it be my turn? When will all of my efforts and suffering be enough to deserve it? 

Here, look. I’m following all of your rules. I’ve laid down my marginalizations at your feet in the prettiest package I can muster. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to. Love me. 

I need to make sense of this, but there’s no sense to be found. I go days veering my thoughts frantically away from the open wound inside my skull that is querying. Other times, I go down the rabbit hole. I search for blog post after blog post, all the while seeking an answer to the same question: why is this so much harder for me than it seems to be for everyone else? 

I struggle to drum up excitement for full requests, because they no longer seem like signs I am onto something. They end in form rejections, or even worse, ghosting, more often than not.

I struggle to engage in reading in my genre. Querying in 2022’s pandemic environment has sapped all the enjoyment out of a lifelong love of reading. While I used to gobble up book after book, enjoying each for its own merit while fantasizing about someday seeing my own book on the shelves, my time in the querying trenches with the book of my heart rendered each fantasy book I picked up proof of my own failure and inadequacy. Proof of someone else’s “yes” while all I’ve gotten is an unending string of “no. ”

I’ve become a shell of my once joyful reader-writer self.

The way that my brain works makes querying particularly difficult and traumatizing, and it wasn’t until I started to suspect I might be autistic that I fully began to understand why I seemed to struggle with this more than other people. My mind craves order and structure, clear expectations aligned to clear outcomes. If I’ve done something wrong, I need to know why and how to fix it going forward. I need clear stepping stones that outline the path to improvement. Without all of this, I’m left feeling lost, unsettled, and confused at best, and angry, depressed, and hopeless at worst. 

So much of my life has (unknowingly) revolved around trying to make sense of arbitrary social norms that everyone else seems to understand and easily endure, and querying is all of that and more boiled down into a particularly painful microcosm that stands between me and my dreams. No wonder I’ve been so miserable, for so long.

Querying offers no order, no structure. No clear stepping stones. Querying demands that you continuously bang your head against what feels like a concrete wall, while hoping that an industry gatekeeper on the other side eventually decides they like the particular rhythm of your skull on the stone and extends a hand to guide you through. Some believe that voicing (totally justified!) complaints of the system makes you “negative” or “whiny” and means you “need to grow a thicker skin.” It’s just the price you have to pay. If you can’t handle it, don’t even try, and if you do try, well, just don’t let us hear you cry too loudly. It’s not a good look.

And Twitter is chock fucking full of well-meaning but (for me at least) ultimately useless advice surrounding querying. They’ll say, write through the wait! Write something else! Reader, I wrote TWO WHOLE something elses while querying!! And I was still waiting!! Still as head over heels with my querying MS as the day I sent it out! Writing something else didn’t distract me at all or help me move on from the project. It only made me more and more aware of the fact that this timeline, this process would not be kind to my brain. 

Querying is the worst thing I’ve done for my mental health in over a decade. It has very nearly broken me. I still can’t fully articulate how difficult it is to endure. All I will say is this: the first time I seriously contemplated taking my own life, I was 14. The second time? This past year, while watching my dreams slip through my fingers, watching my number of red rejection smiley faces on QueryTracker grow. 

It hurts to be told, however indirectly, that your best wasn’t good enough. Who you are isn’t interesting or marketable enough. It hurts so much that sometimes I am jealous of my recently-dead father, because he, at least, no longer has to endure any sort of pain. 

I really was not expecting that simply trying to follow my dreams would make me hate myself this much. 

My rejection sensitivity means that each rejection, no matter how couched in well-meaning platitudes like “I’ll be cheering from the sidelines!” or “It’s a subjective industry!” feels like a slap in the face. Even worse is the lack of actionable feedback. How am I meant to move forward and move on without knowing what I did wrong? My brain NEEDS that answer. 

Why, exactly, would I put myself through that misery again?

It truly feels like a twisted game of Russian roulette. Only the gun is loaded with more live rounds than blanks. If you knew shooting your shot was more likely to hurt you than help you, would you even bother pulling the trigger?

Often, I hate how unfair this all is. I’m so angry I feel like I could spit acid. I see doors open for some people so easily, and yet here I am beating myself bloody against a closed door in the hopes of breaking through. I watch others from my Pitch Wars class get agents, sell books, and have those books near release while I am still sitting here waiting on query responses that feel like they will never come.

With nothing else concrete to point to, I am left to conclude that the problem is me.

I tell myself, this is my last try. If this book isn’t it, I’m done trying for traditional publishing. Since I started querying, my blood pressure spiked, I gained 20+ pounds from pure stress, and I experienced severe anxiety. I am just not made for this.

I hate what querying has turned me into. I hate how thoroughly that trying to claw my way into a place in this industry has warped and muddied my thoughts. I am a miserable, envious, bitter husk of a human. I’m so full of rage and jealousy and despair that it feels like I will simply explode. 

I’m not particularly interested in the business aspect of self publishing, but I tell myself I’ll learn because it can’t possibly feel worse than querying. When I contemplate a future of querying book after book over the course of years just to try and finally hit that lightning strike of luck and timing, I feel nothing but dread. I know I won’t survive this process again. I am barely surviving the current round. 

I hear stories of people who queried for 5, 10, 15, 20 years before getting an agent, stories that were meant to be inspiring. If that’s you, I admire your perseverance. But I personally fear that I cannot pour that much energy into a system that actively harms me. I worry that I don’t have it in me to endure that much suffering just for a shot at my dream. If trying to do this–the only thing I’ve ever really wanted or cared about–hurts this much and makes me this miserable, I don’t think I can try anymore. And I worry that I am not resilient enough to frequently participate in a system that very nearly killed me, and could, at any time in the future, before I manage to make any progress.

If given the choice between protecting my peace and repeatedly suffering the querying process that stands between my dreams, I don’t blame myself for dreaming smaller. I’m happy to content myself with less if the alternative is literally being suicidal.

But who knows if I can convince myself to stay away? One day, I’m done with it all. No more querying. The next, I come crawling back. I don’t know what to do, only that I can’t do this. 

I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any advice. I can see no way through that is within my control. My hope with this is that maybe I can show one person who is suffering like me that they’re not alone in that pain.

Obviously I understand that the industry is on fire. Everyone is overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid. I get it. So much of what makes querying downright unbearable for me and other neurodivergent writers is simply a business reality that is not likely to change anytime soon. 

But I wonder at what point we ask ourselves: When does perseverance and resilience turn into downright insanity? How much are we willing to endure? How much is actually ethical to ask an aspiring writer to endure? And at what point does all of this suffering for the off chance of making your dreams come true stop being worth it?

Graphic on a black background with a multi-colored brain at the center and dotted lines linking out. Text of graphic reads: RSD is common in neurodivergence with different arms that state: Acute memory of past rejection; difficulty reading tone; tired of being underestimated; intense sensory and emotional reactions; PTSD; being different means being frequently rejected.
Photo added by Aimee not author. Graphic from @NeuroClastic (along with a great article and more graphics which can be found here).

Not the Darling: The Business Case for Quitting

Published on by aimeedavisauthor2 Comments

Note from Aimee: This post right here grabbed me by the throat, punched me in the gut, then never let go. I thought about it for days. The wisdom, the business acumen, the voice, the message laid brutally honest and bare. I keep saying this, but every single one of these posts has humbled me in a new way with a new perspective. Yes, I find myself saying. Also something I wish I’d heard. Yes, also something we need to talk about more. Yes, true. So thank you all, again and always, for allowing me a window into these truths.

Disclaimer: The links in the post were added by me, not the author. Most of the sites listed are free for querying authors to use and explore. Querytracker.net does have a paid, premium version. This is not an endorsement for any paid product by either the author of this post or myself, simply a tool for folks who might not be familiar with the resources referenced.

The Business Case for Quitting

By: Regina Weaver (Follow Regina @ReginaWAuthor on Twitter)

My writing origin story is unremarkable: I’ve been writing since I was a kid but never really finished much.  I drifted away from it for a while when the obligations of work/parenting/adulthood didn’t leave enough time to sustain a writing practice. Then, about 18 months ago, the planets aligned to provide the right mix of financial security, motivation, and free time to start writing again. The end result was a 98,000-word contemporary romance that I absolutely adore.

I wrote it selfishly. It is the book I, a long-time romance reader, have been searching for but unable to find. It was so purely for myself that I didn’t even tell anyone I was writing until I was nearly done. When I did reveal I was writing my own novel to a few close friends in the context of discussions about the romance genre generally, to my surprise, they asked to read it. 

My friends are lovely people, so I worked up the nerve and shared it with the folks who asked (2 of 5 actually read it) and got some very nice feedback. It wasn’t a totally horrific experience. I started to toy with the notion of sharing it with even more people.

I Googled “I wrote a novel, now what?” and two things quickly became apparent: 

  1. I’ve got a full-time job, a kid, and I suck at self-promotion; self-publishing wasn’t for me.
  2. At 98,000 words, my book was too long for trad pub. Also, it is atypically structured and more slice-of-life than plot-y. Trad pub wasn’t for me, either.

That was where my publishing journey should have ended. But my friends were so encouraging….  As were the online writing spaces I had started lurking in, where folks with books outside the publishing norms were regularly encouraged to query anyway. The daydream of my book being out in the world, finding other people who liked it slowly grew more vivid. I kept researching how to query, feeding that dream like a feral stray, though I knew it was neither wise nor practical, until one day I saw a “how I got my agent” post from the author of a 94,000 word CR debut. I let that post confirm my bias. If other too-long books were being picked up by agents surely mine had a chance? Querying didn’t cost anything after all, so why not shoot my shot?

Thus began a month of querying prep. I read everything on r/pubtips and scoured query blogs. I agonized over comps. I drafted and redrafted query letters, synopses, and 1 and 3-sentence pitches. All of which sucked. I enjoyed none of it. I read Manuscript Wish List and made a list of potential agents on Query Tracker which I cross-checked against agency websites and social media. I made a crappy author website and signed up for all the social medias and even “engaged” on the platforms. All of the free time that, a year ago, had been devoted to writing was now devoted to making me and my book as appealing as possible to agents. I also started another WIP that I barely touched, promising myself I would work on it once the query package was done.

I sent out my first round of 10 queries. The first rejection came 4 days later. I knew almost all authors get rejected. I knew about Steven King’s railroad spike; about all the pillars of the cannon and blockbusting bestsellers that had been rejected scores of times before they were published. I had done my very best to temper my expectations and keep the fact that my book was a longshot for multiple reasons front-of-mind. That first rejection still hurt. Even with all that foreknowledge and my realistic expectations, I cried. The next day, I dutifully sent out another query because that’s what all the blogs said to do.

One month later, I had 6 more form rejections and no indication any agent had ready anything beyond “98,000 word contemporary romance.” I also knew a lot more, not about querying, but about the publishing industry. In that month, I learned that the majority of US agents are only paid when an author is paid and the amount is a) not much per book and b) usually split over YEARS. I learned how under-resourced and over-worked editors are and how much pressure they are under to prove ROI* to the finance bros who actually run the publishing houses. It’s always been this way, but due to a combination of VC** funding in publishing, houses consolidating, and agent and editors leaving during the pandemic, it’s apparently gotten worse. Multiple sources were said querying is harder now than it’s been in modern memory.

With a clearer and more nuanced picture of the publishing business, I reevaluated my book not as a piece of art but as a business proposition. If I were an agent looking through the hundreds of manuscripts in a slush pile for something that would pay my rent, would I pick my book? The answer: No.

A smart agent is going to try and find books in the slush pile that are going to be the fastest, easiest sale so they can maximize their ROI and stand a fighting chance of paying their bills. Their best bet isn’t an outlier; it is a book that has the expected word count, is easy to comp, on trend, with query materials that demonstrate the author can effectively promote themselves. My book could be the objectively best thing in the slush pile (it is not) and the smart agent is still sending me a form rejection and requesting a full on the 83k manuscript with a quirky 24-year-old FMC that lists 5 different tropes in the first paragraph of the query and comps itself to the books most beloved by the BookTok algo last spring.

[This is not a criticism of agents! I, too, like shelter and providing for my family and maximizing the money I get vs. the hours I spend on my work.]

Since I am not a once-in-a-lifetime talent, for my book to be a good business prospect, I would have to make it conform to market. I would have to cut 18,000 words and add in elements and structure that are more expected of the genre (that I consciously omitted or subverted because I am tired of them as a long-time reader). I would have to make it something other than the book I love. However, publishing offers me precious little incentive to do that.

There’s no financial incentive: I am never going to make more writing than I do at my day job. If I’m going to expend effort on something I find neutral to unpleasant for money, I’ll just log a few extra hours at work. I’ll make a lot more and it doesn’t involve hacking up my art. I don’t want to be famous. Being a recognized author would be cool because it would potentially provide opportunities to geek out with readers and other authors but otherwise fame seems like a pain. The only thing publishing offers that I desire is people who know how to make and sell books who could put my book where the readers who might like it could find it. But it wasn’t going to give me that for a cost I was interested in paying.

It also turned out that querying wasn’t free. It was costing me something. Though my query package was done, querying was still occupying large chunks of my very limited free time and mental bandwidth. When I did manage to allocate time to my WIP, the persistent, low-grade angst from the rejections and the silence and the fact that I was constantly thinking about Book 1 made getting into the right headspace to write Book 2 incredibly difficult. After a month, I was dejected, the WIP only had 6,000 new words, and writing, which had once been an absolute joy, had become a slog. 

I might not be able to make a business case for my book to publishing, but publishing wasn’t exactly making a compelling case to me.

If my book wasn’t a good business prospect for agents and changing it wasn’t a good business prospect for me, then what was the point? And why should I continue?

The answers were, of course: There is no point, and I should stop.

A proportionally brief digression about the prevailing attitudes around querying:

The refrain of the querying community is overwhelmingly “Just keep querying and you’ll get your turn one day.” A certain amount of irrational optimism is necessary to query and have the fortitude to keep going in the face of repeated rejection. Writers certainly should support and encourage each other in the query trenches. But it is a truth almost universally unacknowledged by the #amquerying world that not all of us will get there one day.

A writer can do everything right–stellar query letter, great comps, snappy synopsis, flawless manuscript–and still not get an agent for one of a dozen reasons that have nothing to do with merit and are wholly beyond their control. A writer with an amazing book who did something slightly wrong–weak query package, book too long or short, doesn’t fit neatly into a genre–has even dimmer prospects. The fact is, there are thousands of wonderful, worthy books we will never read because the system is jacked up.

“Just keep querying and you’ll get your turn one day,” is a lie; a tempting illusion. It gives writers a false sense of control: that if you just tweak your query letter/find the agent with the best Query Tracker stats/revise that log line then you can cause an agent to request a full. It also allows us to blame other writers when they fail to secure representation and differentiate ourselves, so we don’t have to acknowledge that publishing is subjective, capricious, and that worth and merit have a very small role in the process. “If they didn’t get any requests, it was because they did something wrong. I did [online query wisdom] so that won’t happen to me.” Further, it allows the publishing industry to shift the responsibility of its systemic failures to writers. I spent thousands on therapy fighting to keep my illusions of control because admitting you are powerless, that the universe isn’t just, and that good work and good people aren’t always rewarded is terrifying. But illusions help no one. You can’t make good decisions based on lies.

Back to quitting: Though quitting was eminently logical, deciding to actually do it was hard. The dream of being published, of having my book out in the world where other people might love it didn’t get any less lovely, and I didn’t want it any less once I figured out it was impossible. Also, the well-intentioned but relentless drumbeat of, “Just keep trying! You’ll get there!” from the online writing community made even considering quitting felt like cowardice. Acknowledging this might not work out felt like a personal failing, a fundamental lack of tenacity and gumption on my part that made me unworthy of being published. 

I spent many days examining quitting, weighing the pros and cons, and “sitting with my feeling” (gross) before I could bring myself to do it. I spent another few days after that figuring out whether I wanted to stop entirely or if I wanted to finish off all the open agents on my list. I opted to finish the list, though it was not strictly rational, for two reasons. 1) My deeply Type-A ass needed that feeling of “completion.” 2) So when I encounter well-meaning folks in writing spaces who try to encourage me to query again because me giving up freaks them out about their own querying prospects, I can say I gave it a legitimate try, with the numbers to back it up.

My last outstanding query closed last week with 0 requests of any kind. The evidence is in: my book was not a good business prospect.

The evidence also shows that quitting was the right decision for me. My morning pages are no longer 30% Publishing Feelings. The rejections that came in after I decided to quit were easier to take. The biggest proof, however, is in the writing. In the two months I was actively querying, I added 6,000 and 6,500 words, respectively, to my WIP.  The month after I quit, I added 10,000 even though I couldn’t write every day. The day after I resolved to quit, I wrote 1,500 words, and it didn’t feel like squeezing blood from a stone for the first time in weeks. With some distance, I’m also starting to appreciate the positives of doing this purely as a hobby, most of which boil down to not having to give a fuck about “the market” however publishing defines it at the moment. 

If I had known what I know now when I started querying, would I have still done it? I honestly can’t say. I have more than my fair share of hubris, and humans are bad at estimating risk. But I think I would have done it a bit differently. And quitting would have always been a part of the plan.

As for what’s next, I don’t know.  This whole exercise has shown me that I do want to share my writing, far more than I realized. I’ll spend some time this year exploring ways to do that and build more community. Though I worry that I’ve limited the spaces I can find community by opting out of publishing. I have no idea what that looks like yet. Whatever I end up doing though, this time I know that if it doesn’t work out, I can quit.

Photo of the corner of a laptop next to an open notebook on top of which lies a cell phone, all on a wooden desk.
Image added by Aimee, not author. Image by David Schwarzenberg from Pixabay.

Bio: Regina Weaver is a self-described “chronic overthinker” and author of contemporary romance. Occasional destroyer of worlds. You can follow her on Twitter @ReginaWAuthor or checkout more of her writing on her website: https://reginaweaverwrites.com/

Glossary:

*ROI = Return on Investment. Calculated by dividing the net profit (or loss) by cost. A publisher yields a high ROI when (a) a book sells well; or (b) it is produced cheaply; or (c) both.

**VC = Venture Capital. Private equity funding where a financer provides money to a young company with the intent the money will spur the business into rapid growth ending in an “exit” (usually a merger or acquisition where the company is bought by a larger company for a sum much higher than the investment).

Not the Darling: Confessions of a Long-Time Querier

Published on by aimeedavisauthor2 Comments

Note from Aimee: Today’s author really hit me in the gut with the story of shelving a heart book, something near and dear to my own heart because shelving my heart book was the thing that made me quit writing not once but twice, and it’s something we don’t talk about nearly enough. All of these stories are so brave, and I continue to be so humbled with everyone who shares them whether it be here or on Twitter, in comments or emails, in Discords or elsewhere. You are all leading conversations that are bringing hard topics out of the dark and into the light. A beautiful, powerful thing for your beautiful, powerful words.

Content warning: There are some (very minor) query statistics interspersed throughout this post. Emphasis on the very.

Confessions of a Long-Time Querier

By: Anonymous

When I started writing in elementary school, like many of us do, I guess I thought that becoming an author was something that just happened after you wrote a book. I was one of those “gifted kids,” constantly lauded by teachers for my incredible performance in every subject, my above-average reading and writing abilities. I see you rolling your eyes, but the point is, perfectionism and achievement were values I internalized throughout my entire childhood, and I can’t shake the feeling of failure and inadequacy even now.

Flash-forward to ten years later. I gave up on writing for a long time, because I was too focused on pursuing a career in the sciences. By the time I finished undergrad, I decided to jump back into it – 15 minutes a day to start – because literature had always been something I was passionate about. I remember talking to a fellow lab-mate, who said something along the lines of “The dream you had when you were 12 is probably your truest dream.” And for me, that was becoming an author.

I spent the next year writing a book (“New Adult Romance” – it did not have a HEA), edited it to the best of my abilities, did my research, and started sending it off to agents in 2016. I somehow ended up with two requests after a year of obstinate determination, but I’m honestly glad that first book never saw the light of day. In hindsight, it was full of telling language, the query letters (I had multiple versions) read more like synopses than an actual pitch, and every time I open the document to reread it, I cringe. On the bright side, I can certainly see my growth as a writer since then.

The next few years, I started my first professional career, and I was unwell both mentally and physically. All the while, I was working on another book, a YA Contemporary retelling of something I loved that incorporated a lot of my professional knowledge. I thought it was amazing, and for the most part, I had great beta feedback, as well as a stellar query letter. There was a big time gap between querying books one and two. I jumped into the trenches with that second book in early 2020, certain that “this was the one.” It was technically my fifth book drafted, so I fell prey to the myth of “Oh, I hear your 5th novel is usually the one that makes it!” Reader, it bombed. One request, and the feedback I received on that full made me question everything I believed about my writing. They didn’t think my craft was where it needed to be, which really hurt.

Between books two and three is where my craft really levelled up. I queried book three in 2021, a YA Contemporary with light speculative elements. Written in third past, it got a few requests, but at one point I received an R&R which suggested “this might work better in first present.” So I set off to rewrite the entire thing, and the final product sparkled. I finally found my “voice,” and ever since then, writing in first present has been my preferred POV and tense.

Here is something nobody tells you about querying. You can get close. You can have requests and significant interest from publishing professionals. You can receive encouraging emails that tell you your writing is impressive, that you have a great voice for YA, that you did an excellent job on your R&R… and then a year and a half later you can be sitting at the same desk, still unagented and unpublished.

So you think, okay, great, that one didn’t work out. I can do this again. I’m almost there. Late 2020, I quit my professional job to go back to school. During that time, I rewrote my first queried book, one I considered “the book of my heart.” I sent out a couple of queries, but it didn’t garner any interest. After getting consistent beta feedback, I decided to do another full rewrite, and this time I was confident in the final product. This is the greatest book I’ve ever written. This one will definitely make it. I put so much of myself in that book that I already suspected querying it would be tough. I started querying book 4 (Adult Contemporary) in Summer 2022. I did not expect to have zero interest. Zero. Not a single agent request after pouring time and effort and emotion into a book I thought was the most beautiful piece of art I’d ever written. Even the agents who considered my previous book told me “it wasn’t the right fit.” When I decided to shelve this book after exhausting my query list, I cried for a week straight. I couldn’t write a single word. I’m sorry if it sounds dramatic, but it really felt like my heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

So this is where I’m at now. Four trunked manuscripts later, over 200 agent rejections (I don’t count small presses or short story submissions, but there are probably ~100 of those too), and no concrete proof that I’ve ever written a book. Oh, and I forgot to mention that all the above books apart from the first were submitted to mentorship contests and I never got chosen for a single one.

Frankly, I don’t know where I’m going from here. I don’t know what will happen for me and my writing career. I lost hope a long time ago. I am actively working on two other WIPs, I have several more ideas beyond that, but there are no guarantees whatsoever. There isn’t some magical crystal ball that can say “well if you keep doing this for ten more years, you will have a book deal.”

I don’t really have any advice. I just hope this resonates with others. You’re not the only one struggling, despite what the algorithms seem to suggest. I’ve become so bitter and jaded by this whole process that sometimes I forget that my love of writing is how this journey started. I struggle to connect with other writers because professional jealousy devours me whole. I’m twiddling my thumbs at the starting line while everyone else has lapped me several times over. I’ve stepped back from twitter, I can’t check reddit, and so I sit in my isolated bubble and write my next manuscript and try to ignore all the things I can’t control.

Image of a frozen soap bubble (yellow in the sun) on a frozen ground.
Image added by Aimee, not the author. Image by rihaij from Pixabay.

Not the Darling: How I Got an Offer on My First Book… and Am Still Querying 5 Years Later

Published on by aimeedavisauthorLeave a comment

Note from Aimee: Good morning all! A content warning for this post is that it does contain query stats throughout. But this is another critical perspective that we really don’t talk about enough. The offer that ends in querying. Thank you to the author who was brave enough to submit it!

How I Got an Offer on My First Book… and Am Still Querying 5 Years Later

By: Anonymous

I hope one day this post will form the backbone of a “How I Got My Agent” or “How I Got Published” post…but today is not that day. I’ve queried 5 books since 2017, and here’s a summary of the ups and downs of that experience, from an offer on my first book to querying crickets on my most recent.

Book 1: Dual timeline vampire story (yikes)

I wrote this book without any thought of getting published, until my boyfriend at the time (now fiancé) read it and said he thought I should try to publish it. That sparked a flurry of learning about agents and queries and synopses. I paid for QueryTracker and trawled Manuscript Wish List. I signed up for Twitter and learned about pitch contests. I pulled my hair out writing a good query. I sent about 100 queries and got 3 full requests…which honestly wasn’t bad, looking back.

And then…I got an offer! Wow, an offer on my first book! I’m doing great! What could go wrong?

Well, by the time I got that offer, I was ~10 months into querying. I’d emotionally detached from that book, and moved onto writing something else I thought was better. I’d also learned a lot about the industry, and came to the conclusion that this agent was a “schmagent.” So, I declined the offer, and shelved that book. No regrets.

Book 2: Gilded Age historical fiction

This is when I started to figure out things like “genre” and “reader expectations.” I’d written something that read like a historical romance, except for the fact that the MMC was married and there was a lot of drama relating to that. When posting my query for critique, I learned that that wasn’t going to fly in romance, so I pitched it as historical fiction with romantic elements. I sent about 70 queries, and got 3 full requests.

And then…an agent called me to talk about my book! Wow, I must have done it now! It was a reputable agent with a track record of sales, but…she wasn’t sure she could sell it. She wanted to talk to some editor connections and see what they thought. She got back to me a few weeks later and said she had to pass as she didn’t think it was sellable. But, she was effusive in her praise for my writing and told me she thought I had “it.”

Book 3: Historical romance (if Lisa Kleypas wrote Pirates of the Caribbean)

By now, I’d learned a lot about genre and figured out that historical romance was where I wanted to be. So, I wrote something more “traditional” (no married protagonists), and was sure this was my best work yet. I sent about 70 queries and got 5 requests, which was the best I’d done so far. I was sure this was the one.

And then…an agent wanted to set up a call! Wow! I knew this just had to be it. I compiled a list of questions, made up an excuse to get out of work, and anxiously awaited the call.

The call opened with, “I know you probably thought I was calling you to make an offer, but…”

She was calling to nicely reject me, and that was crushing. She was only interested in representing series, and I’d written something that was firmly standalone (which I had conveyed via email before the call).

Book 4 (not queried): Ancient Roman time travel story

I love this story, but I never queried it because I learned that time travel was a tough sell, and I also recognized some issues with the story.

Book 5: Book 2 rewritten without the married MMC

I loved Book 2 so much and thought it might have better success if I rewrote it to be more in line with romance genre conventions. My writing had also improved a great deal by this time. I sent about 70 queries and got 15 requests! That was triple my best prior request rate. I was sure this book was the one.

And then…it wasn’t. None of those requests panned out. It sucked.

Book 6 (not queried): Ancient Roman historical romance

This book was a weird combination of historical fiction (involving real historical figures) and romance, with a dash of alternate history. It’s my bonkers pandemic book. I love it, but decided not to query it.

Book 7 (querying, about to shelve): Ancient Roman historical romance (yes, another one)

The idea for this book came about when I was reading a Regency romance and was like “Wouldn’t this be cooler if it was set in Ancient Rome?” You can tell from books 4 and 6 that I was really digging the Ancient Rome thing. I was enjoying showing off all the useless bits of knowledge I’d gained through 11 years of Latin classes. I love this book, and I was sure it was the one (sound familiar??).

I sent about 70 queries, and got 4 requests. After the over 20% request rate from my previous experience, this felt extra crushing. I thought things were supposed to get better, after all. I mean, my writing had only improved since 2017. Didn’t that mean I should be getting closer to my goal? Apparently not.

The handful of personalized rejections I got were along the lines of “love the premise, love the characters, but that setting is not marketable.” I guess no one but me wants to read Ancient Roman historical romance. I still have 1 full outstanding and a couple of queries, but I have mentally moved on.

Book 8 (revising): Ancient Roman historical romance (when will I learn my lesson)

I wrote this one while querying Book 7. I now know it’s not going to go anywhere, given that the setting was such a sticking point for Book 7. I’m thinking of maybe submitting to a couple of reputable small presses.

Book 9 (drafting): Gilded Age historical romance

I’m returning to the setting of books 2 and 5, but with different characters. I love this book, and like every book before it, I’m convinced it will be “the one.” Lol. We’ll see.

So, with all of the above in my rearview mirror, what have I learned?

The good:

  • My writing has gotten much better and much cleaner. My drafts require much less editing now.
  • I’ve found my genre (historical romance), and love it. I understand it more, and read almost exclusively in it, when before ~2018 I hadn’t read a single romance novel. It brings me a lot of joy.
  • I’ve come to terms with the fact that publishing is not a meritocracy. I see it as the business that it is.

The bad:

  • While I don’t get upset by rejections, I’ve emotionally numbed myself to the process so much that I can’t even celebrate the small wins. My mind jumps immediately to the next place I’ll fail.
  • I’m jealous of others’ successes. I hate seeing agent or publishing announcements. They make me feel bad about myself.

With all that said, I’m still optimistic. Looking back at this run-down (it was cathartic to write), I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished over the past few years. I know my writing and my stories are more than good enough. Even though it’s clear by now that I’m not a publishing darling, I do believe I’ll find success in this industry in some form. It just seems to be taking a while. 🙂

Photo of Roman bridge over water and amphitheater
Image added by Aimee not author. Image by Rainhard Wiesinger from Pixabay

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

Published on by aimeedavisauthorLeave a comment

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