About to find out what it's like in... A Day In the Life of a Querier
8:30 a.m. You look over your list of agents to query and choose one. You double-check their guidelines and press send. You feel pretty darn good about yourself. You are confident she’ll love it.
10:00 a.m. By now you’ve sent off queries to your top dream agents. You feel proud of yourself.
Guest column by Christina Lee, who is
currently querying for her YA novel. She writes
her own column for The Sun News and creates
hand-stamped jewelry for her on-line jewelry
business, Tags-n-Stones.
She blogs all about
it on www.write-brained.com.
currently querying for her YA novel. She writes
her own column for The Sun News and creates
hand-stamped jewelry for her on-line jewelry
business, Tags-n-Stones.
She blogs all about
it on www.write-brained.com.
10:30 a.m. You complete a blog post that says something like “Querying agents isn’t so scary after all!”
10:45 a.m. You receive your first form rejection. Basically, it says something along the lines of “While your work shows merit, I was not as drawn to it as I needed to be. I’m sure another agent will feel differently.” You feel humbled. A shroud of doubt slowly descends upon you. You reconsider your list of dream agents and wonder if what you thought was a match made in publishing heaven, may have all been one-sided. It’s not you, it’s me …
11:00 a.m. – noon. You mope around some more, and then change your blog post to include the title, “Querying Messes with Your Head.” You re-read your first ten pages, and question whether you novel is good enough. You decide not to query anymore until you see other responses from agents.
12:30 p.m. You eat gobs of chocolate for lunch and get hopped up on caffeine.
12:45 p.m. You spy another query response in your inbox, and spend an entire minute staring at it before finally taking the plunge. You cringe while reading it and brace yourself for the worst. You receive your first request for a partial and fist pump the air.
1:30 p.m. You read and re-read your partial before hitting send, afraid to make any kind of mistake. You get a second wind to work on other things, like your newest novel.
2:00 p.m. You take a break and stalk the agent who asked for the partial on Twitter. You read what they had for lunch and note that you like Chipotle, too. You participate in Twitter conversations with other authors and marvel at the support of the community. Hearing their publishing successes doesn’t make you nearly as green with envy today.
3:00 p.m. You receive another rejection. You focus in on the personalized line that reads “…your writing in the pages below was good, but…” You feel better about this one because the agent made the point to tell you your writing was decent. Which means you must not totally suck.
4:30 p.m. You receive a request for a full in your inbox. Feeling light as air, you dance around the room, considering the endless possibilities of your publishing career.
5:30 p.m. You spend time combing through your entire manuscript making sure you didn’t miss any glaring typos.
6:00 p.m. You re-read the e-mail requesting the full and freak out some more.
6:10 p.m. You finally hit send and then cross your fingers and toes.
6:15 p.m. Before closing out your manuscript, you notice that a typo (that was not there five minutes ago) magically appeared on a page. You curse yourself for not noticing.
6:30 p.m. You spend family time preoccupied by that one typo and wonder what else you missed. You pray the agent is human, too.
7 p.m. – 10 p.m. You hit refresh in your e-mail in-box about one zillion times.
11:00 p.m. You fall into bed, exhausted from all of the effort your brain has exerted.
8:00 a.m. the following day. You look in the mirror and notice something brand new. You’re developing a thicker skin!
