Surviving the Publishing Process
Come along on my publishing journey.
Querying Literary Agents, Getting Rejections (hooray!), And Finding Something To Do While I Wait
It’s a weird, in-between time. My brain is in Query-Mode, which means I’m dedicating most of my creative time to researching agents and publishing houses, writing, and sending out query letters. I sometimes wish I was using all that time I have to wait on responses. I could get a jumpstart on writing another novel. But with my brain stuck in Query-Mode, I feel like I can’t move forward with another story until this one takes another step towards publishing.
But I think I’ve found a solution to give my itchy-writing fingers something to do while we wait. I’m putting together another book—more of a handbook, filled with things I gathered and used when I was working on my novel. It started out as a collection of notes to myself and kind of mutated into a small, readble thing. At the very least, it’s giving me a low-stakes but helpful thing to work on in the meantime.
You’ll also be pleased to hear that I’ve thus far sent around 26 queries, and have received 3 rejections. I say “pleased” because a rejection means that someone read my query, my sample pages, and took the time to respond. I went into this expecting rejections, so I’m good with that. The agents were kind enough to let me know why they rejected the query: they said they liked my writing and the story sounded interesting, but the genre is niche and not within their wheelhouse. That’s to be expected, and that’s okay. We keep moving.
*I’ve been trying to draw a little, blue thing every day. They’re mostly about writing. They’re a good little ritual for me, and they make me happy. Sharing them on my instagram.
She’s Whining About Social Media Again
I like sharing my tips and tricks with you—I love offering help or advice wherever I can. But at the same time, I’m still learning. I’m a total student, and don’t want to pretend like I have all the answers. I have things that worked and things that didn’t. But I guess that’s the beautiful thing about a blog or a vlog: it’s just a glimpse into the process (there’s that word from the main title again, but it sounds less sarcastic here).
For me, social media has always been a double-edged sword. If I was being 1000% honest, I wish I didn’t have to use it. The dramatic actor in me wants the career of pre-internet writers and artists: I want to hole up in my dark room, get the pages done, and not have to do a little dance and make a video in order to get publishers or audiences to see what I’m making.
Speaking of doing a little dance, while querying agents, I see that a lot of publishing houses (not all, but a substantial amount) even prefer writers who have a large following, who create content, who are active on social media. Why? Because that’s an audience that’s likely to buy the book when it comes out. It makes sense. Business-sense. Big-man-big-suit business sense.
Ugh. Ughhhh. Whyyyyyy.
But there are some beautiful things that I actually like about the internet and social apps and all those things. They are a wonderful place for creators to get their work seen, or to connect with likeminded people and communities. I actually like making little videos, and like the inspiration I see from other artists on platforms. I sometimes forget that while I’m running on the content-making hampster wheel (you gotta post something every day in order to stay on people’s feeds, you have to have all the answers, you have to make this type of video and get this much engagement blablabla bla blaaa justletmedropmyphoneintothebathtubandbefree).
But we’ll keep going. I think if I stay myself, stay authentic, let myself rest from The Grind and know that at the end of the day, it’s about creating what’s in my heart, I’ll be very okay.
Thank you for reading this, by the way! I hope it offers some comfort in the Mad-Max-esque desolate landscape of publishing. Send me your thoughts and prayers as I battle the competition and drive my big truck through the querying hellscape. Sending love, my fury-roaders.*