Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Last time I blogged here, I described the process of querying my first novel. Now, a few months later, I have news. Has an agent requested the full manuscript? Even better, did the agent love the ms and make me an offer of representation? Even better, was the agent a good fit for me and my work? Even better, did we contract to work together? Even better, did the agent find a publisher who wanted my manuscript? Do we have a publishing contract and a launch date?
Nope. None of those happened. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But querying has gotten a little bit easier for me.
Why? Two reasons.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Just like doing laundry or playing cards or building flat-pack furniture, our skills and facility improve over time when we keep repeating the process. The first queries I sent out were overwhelmingly difficult for me. Everything about them was hard.
Getting a decent draft of the query letter, for starters, was a long-term project. I have since revised and rewritten it countless times, but just getting it to minimally presentable status took a ton of work. Describing / selling your full-length novel with 150 words? Finding comp titles recently published in the same genre? And, by the way, what is the genre? Literary fiction? Don’t you need an MFA to be eligible to write lit fic? Book club fiction? I worry that I’m not plotty enough for that. Upmarket fiction? Maybe that’s the sweet spot. Then there’s the sentence or two of author bio – where you say enough, not too much, about yourself to sound confident, not meek, and also not arrogant. Also competent and collegial, not supplicating. Also respectful, not sycophantic.
Then there’s the ongoing search for the agents who might entertain receiving your query. On their schedule. Using their preferred document formats. In the genres they declare themselves interested in. Erf. It’s enough to make a person not want to query their novel.
Image by Leopictures from Pixabay
Point is, these skills do get easier with practice. Querying still takes longer than I think it will. I can’t just expect to set aside ten minutes and knock one out (although that’s been possible once or twice). Many of the agents I’m approaching use the online QueryManager portal. In addition to supplying places to paste in (and then reformat) or upload the requisite number of pages or chapters, the bio, comps, sometimes synopsis, and other chunks of text, QueryManager allows its agents to ask questions.
So far, I am finding that no two agents’ QM forms are alike. One agent wanted a profile of the readers I think will be drawn to my book. Another wanted to know how many copies my self-published book sold in its first year. Another wanted my Twitter handle. Another – well, you get the idea. Some of those questions can take a while to answer, and you never know until you’re already mid-query what the surprise questions are going to be, or how challenging they’ll be to answer. I have learned to allow an hour, and never to query when the clock is ticking away before an upcoming appointment.
The Nice Rejection
The second reason why querying has become a little easier is that one of the agents didn’t just ghost-reject me or send a standard no-thanks message. She actually wrote to me, and said that, while my novel wasn’t the right book for her, she’d like to take a look at my next project when it’s ready.
I knew this agent’s response was different, and yet I was acutely aware of my neophyte status in the whole world of querying. Uncertain what to make of it, and cautious about celebrating something I wasn’t sure I understood, I quoted it to a friend who’s farther along in the querying / agenting / publishing journey. I asked her, “On the spectrum of rejections, that’s somewhere in the middle, I think, yes? It definitely feels better than the ghost rejections 12 weeks post-query.”
My friend sent back congratulations, saying, “This is a really good rejection! It means that even though she’s not interested in this book, she likes your writing, and if you had an idea that spoke to her, she’d likely sign you. Print this one out and use it as inspiration.”
Getting that reinforcement from a friend and colleague helped me frame the nice rejection in a way that feels validating. The agent thinks my writing is legit!
The queries I’ve sent out since receiving that nice rejection have felt lighter, easier, more straightforward.
Funny how that works: I gained confidence from being rejected. Who knew?
— A M Carley writes fiction and nonfiction, and is a founding member of BACCA. Through Anne Carley Creative she provides creative coaching and full-service editing to writers and other creative people. Decks of her 52 FLOAT Cards for Writers are available from Amazon. Anne’s writer handbook, FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers, is available for purchase from central Virginia booksellers, at Bookshop.org, and on Amazon. She’s querying her first novel, and writing her second.
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