July/August ‘24: On Querying, Hating It, and General Discontent
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Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.
Recent Updates:
No major updates. There are some updates to be had on my querying journey, but, as the title suggests, we’ll save that for the main event.
Project Progress:
Still carving away at that first literary fiction long form project I mentioned back in May. I’m making good progress, and the project is enjoyable, which is about all that matters, I guess. I’m also taking a look at some last needed edits on my sci-fantasy story from feedback that I got from my full request rejection. I’ll likely soon put the lit-fic on hold to turn my attention to those edits.
Recent Fascinations: The Query Process, or Why Writers Drink
If my querying journey has done anything for me as a writer, it has shown me how naive I was when I first started this process. Coming into this with a couple solid years experience in the cycle of submitting to Lit-Mags, I thought I had ironclad defenses against the querying trenches, against the exhaustion and constant uncertainty the process is notorious for.
I was, in fact, very wrong.
Querying is a beast unlike any other I have ever seen. If I had to, under duress and poor consideration, compare it to any one experience I’ve had in my life, it would be job hunting, though even that feels incomplete in its description. Querying is opaque, individualistic, and rapidly changing in ways I never expected when I first got started. Nothing about it is explained or readily available, and there is no way to ever, regardless of research, know what lies ahead. None of this, though, is about query REJECTIONS. The rejections haven’t really done anything to bring me down, and while getting a rejection from the single full request I’ve sent out thus far was upsetting, it didn’t really hurt my morale in any tangible way. What did, though, is everything that came after.
The feedback I got from that full was great. It was real, actionable feedback, and I quickly made a plan for moving forward. My intention was to let the queries I had out at the time play out, edit according to the feedback, and then do a new wave of submissions. My primary reason for going about it this way was simple: my number one choice of agent had yet to review my initial query. I did not want to be halfway through with some substantial edits when this agent, who I thought was a great fit, decided on my query on the off chance they requested a full manuscript. I knew there was a chance that she could reject it, but that was fine. I’m fine with rejection. Turns out, rejection isn’t necessarily the worst thing that can happen.
While the agent who requested my full was a big name, and I submitted to them as a kind of “shoot your shot” sort of thing, there was always another agent that was my main choice. I queried this agent early in the process, when I first found out about them. My sci-fantasy story fit their wishlist, they had a transparent process, a strong online presence, and they seemed like a generally nice person. You’ll notice that I’m using a lot of past-tense here, and I want to be clear that this agent still has a strong online presence and still seems, by all measures, to be a thoughtful and kind person. The issue, really, is with me using the term “agent” to describe them.
The issue is that my “dream” agent is no longer an agent at all.
After over 190 days, well over six months, of waiting and hoping for a full request, the agent I had high hopes for left agenting all together. While I don’t mean to say this was a horrible thing or that I’m owed something for my time, I think it’s pretty clear how this could feel devastating in the moment. However, it wasn’t really the act of them leaving that devastated me, nor even losing progress on a query I’d invested so much time in. What haunts me, even now as I write this, is a simple thought: What if all this had happened after this agent had made me an offer?
In other words, what if I had made it past the initial query, beyond the full, and had finally become an agented author, only to have the rug pulled out from under me? I honestly am not sure how I could survive something like that. How I could, having been sent tumbling back down the mountain to restart this great Sisyphian task. I’m not sure I would even be able to find the energy to write, at least not for a long while.
As of now, I am not sure what the road forward is, what I will do, but I know that querying looks, feels, and behaves less attractive every day. I do not blame this agent, I blame the system. The boulder bearing down on the shoulders of so many writers, and the mountain that never ends.
The August Addendum: The Obvious Labors Ahead
Well, I didn’t get this thing finished before the end of July. I don’t really have any excuse for why besides procrastination and general burnout. Not necessarily burnout on this newsletter, but burnout on existence, though I don’t really intend to elaborate any further than that.
There is something, though, that lends itself to a little addendum to the end of this newsletter, making me feel at least a little better about running behind. After the proverbial fallout of the agenting issue, and my just total inability to force myself to go back to that whipping post, I have started thinking about self-publishing again. I think having control, regardless of the enormous amounts of work and personal stress it might create, will be more valuable to me than this purgatory of an unknowing end. I haven’t come to a major conclusion on this, though I think I will have by the middle of August, but I have come across, or rather, been led to, an answer to my major concern about self-publishing.
The big thing standing between me and self-publishing, besides some misplaced notions around legitimacy that even now are hard for me to shake off, has been the overhead cost involved in it. Cover design, book layout, and other various things have always felt very overwhelming. While I have some experience with graphic design training and can, theoretically, manage to fulfill these things myself, the software to do so is often prohibitively expensive. Well, a couple writer friends have recently pointed me towards a handful of open-source software which, by all measures, would make most of the process largely free. I don’t mean to say I’m a secret world-class cover designer, but I do have some long-ago training in graphic design and I am confident that I can manage a quality, minimalist-style cover, and if that is what stands between publishing and not-publishing, then I don’t see why that shouldn’t be something that I at least consider.
These pieces of software, which at the time of writing I’m actively looking at and messing around with, are certainly pushing me towards self-publishing. The idea of being an eccentric local author, even an unsuccessful one, feels more and more attractive in comparison with being Sisyphus, perpetually rolling his boulder up the mountain.
Thanks for Reading.
