No news isn't bad news, right?

Well, the query front has been super quiet.

I currently have 14 queries out. I just sent seven out this past weekend just because I wasn't hearing back from anyone. :) I'm sure many of my older queries are to agents who have a "no response = no" policy, which is frustrating. So frustrating, in fact, that when one of my newest queries resulted in a form rejection, I immediately thanked the agent for taking time to let me know.

I was dismayed when an agent recently announced on Twitter that she's switching to responding only when she's interested because of NEGATIVE REPLIES!

Really, fellow hopeful authors? Ugh. That is so annoying to me. Though, it feels like people in general are just getting more angry and negative. But that's for another day.

It just floors me, the arrogance of some writers looking to get published. Agents post about writers saying "Here's my manuscript. It does NOT need to be changed." or responding to rejections with snarky things like, "You'll be sorry" or "Don't need the money, huh?"

(I won't even get into the writer who recently blew up Twitter with his horribly nasty account of a pitch session.)

It reminds me of this quote that I LOVE:

I cannot tell you how many times the following has been me:

I can be in love with my words and then completely loath everything I've ever written in the same night! :)

But, I love it. I'm not giving up.

As I'm querying, a new idea has started bouncing around. I have an old WF manuscript that I'm thinking about reworking into a YA.

You know the drill: Dialogue that flies into the brain while washing dishes. An entire scene plays out during a shower. Random ideas ping in and out during the work day. Thank goodness for voice memos on my phone!

I'm both looking forward to a new ms and dreading it. It's a lot of work. It's countless hours and outlines and first drafts and stakes and editing and killing your darlings. But I am looking forward to meeting these new characters.

In the meantime ... I'll continue to humbly submit queries and chapters and synopses, and tentatively - but hopefully - peek at my inbox.

First query out!

My gosh, it took me forever to get just one query out! I'm not sure why the change ... with my last ms I was a querying fool (emphasis on fool, probably), but this time around, I'm so much more ... cautious? Is that the word I want to use?

In the past few days, many times I felt like "OMGsh, my ms sucks, no one's going to want to read it, it's not going to go anywhere, what was I thinking!?!" But I finally told myself, "You can't just give up and not even try." Today was the first time I truly felt that fear of failure thing. While I'm drafting my story and editing my story and revising my story, my hopes and dreams are still alive and well, living in the "someday" in the back of my mind. But once I offer it up and get REJECTED ... sigh. That's in-your-face type stuff right there.

What's worse? I didn't succeed because I never tried (I may have made it but I'll never know), or I tried but I didn't succeed (i.e., I FAILED)?

I'll just have to do my best and see what happens.

I do think that is a major difference between this story and my first one: I feel like I've done my best. I've read and re-read and edited and revised ... and the story fell into place for me. I forced things to work with my first story, so querying never felt quite right. I pretty much threw queries to anyone with a literary agency email address but had an underlying lack of confidence. I loved the characters, but I don't think I told their story properly.

I feel like I told my new characters' stories properly. I really like this ms. I'm proud of it. And I didn't rush into querying. I edited and polished until I had it as clean as I could get it.

Though, of course, as I was doing some formatting today, I came across an errant apostrophe s ... I mean, really? How did I continuously miss that!?

And then, as I was personalizing my basic query letter for my second query, I noticed a missing "to" ... ARGH!!!! Do you know how many times I read this query copy? And my brain, thinking it was being helpful and efficient, just inserted that "to" for me every time?

Sigh.

But at least I caught it after only one query and not after I sent out five or six.

I've researched and kept seven agents on my list so far. That is definitely adding more time this time around ... narrowing down the massive "represents YA" list to those who may be interested in reading my particular manuscript.

So, first query is out.

Submission guidelines for two agents on my list include a synopsis, so that's my next undertaking.

I'll do my best.

It's out!

Whew! I finally got my full submitted. I wish I could relax, but right now I'm a nervous wreck. Because I was honest with this agent about some feedback I received, and I'm so worried that she'll change her mind.

But honesty's the best policy, right? RIGHT?

Ugh.

What I was afraid of was that I'd keep quiet about the agent feedback and send out the full and then receive the same feedback and the door would shut and that'd be that.

What I was hoping was that this agent would still read my ms, and if she ends up agreeing with the other agents, she might respond with an R&R rather than a flat-out rejection.

But what do I know!?

I'm sick to my stomach that I may have possibly given this agent an out before she's even read one word.

The nice thing is that she followed up with me regarding her initial request, and I told her I was editing based on a comment an agent just made (he had my first three chapters and synopsis). She was fine with waiting. I felt that the follow-up was a good sign. Have I just blown it now? WITH HONESTY?!

Or should I have just taken the agents' advice and simply revised the ms? Well, I might have, but I got the second feedback two days after I got the full request. I really wasn't sure how to handle it.

Obviously.

There's nothing I can do right now, so I should just sign off and get some sleep. If she passes, she passes, and I'll know there's a flaw in my ms that is going to continue to keep it from getting repped. If she still decides to give it a read, I'll do a happy dance and chill the heck out!

Oh, and those five emails that I'd been ignoring? They became 13 by the time I read them. One was the follow-up from the agent who now has my full, three were newsletters (two from agencies, one from WD), and the rest were rejections. But I must say, this was the NICEST group of rejections I think I've ever gotten. I'll share tidbits another time; right now I need to get away from the computer and breathe.

Wish me luck!!

Query irritation

Well, I haven't gotten out as many queries as I would have liked to by now ... and I'm disgruntled by the ones I've sent out recently.

I've sent queries to two agents who are renowned non-responders. If you check the comments on Query Tracker for these agents, it's one C/NR after another. In fact, one of these agents is listed in the number one spot in the top 10 non-responding agents.

I also sent a query to someone who is listed among the top 10 most rejecting agents.

(Of course, these lists are based solely on data taken from Query Tracker and may not represent the agents overall, but still ...)

I just sent a query out to an agent who was very particular in her submission guidelines regarding how the query should be formatted, etc. When I checked my sent folder, my email program changed the font for the body of the email to a sans serif font, while the salutation was left in a serif font.

!!! 

Why this happened only in the email to the agent who was very specific, I'll never know. What I do know is that it ended up looking incredibly cheesy and ridiculous, so I'm not expecting much from that one.

So, I've submitted eight queries so far and had one rejection. I sent out close to 40 queries the first time around, so I still have a lot of work ahead of me. I think I'm just in a "self-loathing" phase right now.

A year or so ago, I was doing some writing at the same time as my good friend Steph, and we would talk about how, some days, we just felt so ON, so good about what we were writing, and then other days - i.e., the self-loathing days - we'd start doubting what we were doing, wondering why we even thought we had talent.

Steph's done the whole query process thing, with the full requests and the R&Rs and the rejections and all that. I think she has three books written, but right now, she's rockin' out as a world-famous* photographer.

So anyway, yeah ... feeling a couple notches down from hopeful right now, but I know it's only a phase and I'll snap out of it soon enough.

*Okay, so maybe not WORLD-famous. Yet.