I Keep Doing This to Myself

I’m on my third manuscript. Third. And I’m querying literary agents. Again.

If you don’t know what querying is, let me paint you a picture. You spend months, sometimes years, writing a book. You pour your whole heart into it. You edit it. You let other people read it and tell you what’s wrong with it. You edit it again. And then, when you’re finally ready, you write a very short, very important letter called a query letter, and you send it to literary agents who will decide whether your book is worth their time.

And then you wait.

And wait.

And then most of the time, you get a very polite email that says some version of “this just isn’t for me” and you go back to waiting.

I’ve been here before. Twice, actually. My first two manuscripts were heartfelt, emotional stories; the kind I poured myself into completely. One was even a little silly, which, honestly, was probably the most “me” of all of them. Neither of them landed. I got the rejections, I felt the sting, I kept going.

So what did I do? I wrote a horror picture book. Haha.

I genuinely don’t know how I ended up here. I didn’t sit down one day and think, “you know what the world needs? A creepy children’s book that will make parents deeply uncomfortable at bedtime.” It just… happened. Somewhere between rejection number one and now, I found this lane of tension and dread, and I apparently live there now.

And I love it. That part I know for sure.

So here I am again. Querying. Refreshing my email. Feeling that little spike of anxiety every time something lands in my inbox and it isn’t what I’m hoping for.

The letters are out there now, floating in inboxes I have no control over. And the waiting…I forgot how much I hate the waiting. Every time something lands in my email that isn’t what I’m hoping for, there’s this little deflation.

I already had one experience that gave me a preview of what’s coming. I queried one agent, and she passed. Fine, okay, that’s how it goes. But her agency’s website said you could query other agents at the firm after one passed, so I did.

The guy who responded wrote back that he didn’t believe they were the “appropriate agents to represent this material” and that in “this very competitive market” they were “simply not enthusiastic enough.” Simply not enthusiastic enough. I don’t know why that phrasing got under my skin the way it did, but there’s something about being told your work didn’t generate enough enthusiasm – that hits different. It felt like being turned down for a date and having someone say they just couldn’t get excited about it. Okay! Great! Thanks for that! Haha.

That one sat with me for a minute. Not because I think he was right, but because it’s a specific kind of sting — the kind where someone makes you feel like you wasted their time just by trying.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to. I’ve written three books now. Three. And a year ago, I hadn’t finished one. Every single time I’ve sat down at that keyboard, I’ve grown, even when the outcome wasn’t what I wanted. Even when it hurts. And this manuscript, my weird, dark, I-don’t-know-how-I-got-here horror picture book,  is the best thing I’ve ever written. I believe that.

So I keep sending the letters. I keep waiting. I keep hitting refresh.

Because the alternative is stopping, and I’ve never once considered that an actual option.

If you’re in the query trenches too — hi, I see you; I love you, I’m sorry about your inbox. We’re going to be okay. Probably. Haha.