{"id":466,"date":"2018-01-09T16:40:44","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T21:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2019-02-12T19:30:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T00:30:50","slug":"babbys-first-query","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/09\/babbys-first-query\/","title":{"rendered":"Babby’s First Query"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been talking a lot about doing queries since last summer but I didn’t walk the walk until yesterday. I did it! I sent TWO queries to agents who seem very cool and who might like Creampuffs<\/em> (and one who might like Ashes<\/em> I made a note of for the future).<\/p>\n

Querying is hard. And scary. But not for the reasons you might think.<\/p>\n

\n

Thanks to ten years of sending out short stories (and a previous decade before that of writing fanfic and posting it on the intertubes for anyone to read\/comment on) not to mention my eleven years as a graphic designer, I’ve learned how to not read a rejection letter as a rejection of me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I get bummed out, of course I do, and I have moments where I wonder if I am good enough yet to be selling my work; but I also know that even if I never get past “mediocre” or “unsellable” that I am still a nifty person with many other fine qualities.  (In fact, I was once told by a shitty art director that I was a terrible designer and I should give up my career\/aspirations. I cried for a bit–he was really horrible–but after that I went out and worked for another 6-7 years before choosing to write instead. Screw you, asshat.)<\/p>\n

So yeah. I am not afraid of a potential agent telling me that I am no good (because screw you, potential asshat). I almost wish it was that simple; there are many, many people out there who want to sit you down and give you a heart-to-heart about how you shouldn’t fear rejection because reasons. There are fewer people, however, who are in a position to sit you down and give you a heart-to-heart discussion of the multitude of variables and possible courses of action in today’s market and how they apply to you, a 36 year old with no publishing credits.<\/p>\n

Do I query editors directly? (Old hands say yes.) Do I self-publish? (People who enjoy using Twitter say yes. People who don’t enjoy Twitter say no.) Should I query agents? Should I query agents in Canada or in the US? What about editors? What do I say to people who say an agent needs to know what my book is comparable to? Is it okay to tell them that “I wrote this book because I saw a hole I needed to fill and therefore I don’t know what it’s comparable to”? Is it okay to make up genre terms? Everyone else seems to. Wait I am supposed to read lots in my genre? But my genre doesn’t seem to exist yet? That’s why I wrote the book in the first place?<\/p>\n

Round and round and round we go.<\/p>\n

I’m not getting any younger, and that’s an added pascal of worry. Traditional publishing can take years and years. What if I screw up? What if I miss a window I don’t realize is closing? What if something something millennials something?<\/p>\n

Round and round I went. And then in October two things happened: an article crossed my path on social media, and I applied some of my own advice to myself.<\/p>\n

\n

Step back, re-frame. It’s maybe not a mantra but it should be; I’ve written about it<\/a> before as a tool in one’s problem-solving kit. Right about the time I was trying to figure out how to reframe my short-story rejection problem and<\/em> the sorting out mass of variables of querying someone posted “Why You Should Aim For 100 Rejections A Year<\/a>” and I recognized the solution that I’d been seeking.<\/p>\n

Instead of trying to collect acceptances (which depend on other people), one should look to collect rejections<\/em>, because the only thing it takes to collect a rejection is a willingness to research and gumption to send out. I have both those things. And in the modern age, you don’t even need any envelopes or a roll of international stamps.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Taking that idea I combined it with my other favourite approach: “If I achieve X, I get to treat myself with Y.” (Some people work better with a stick but I much prefer the carrot.) After talking it over with Cutie, I drew up a ‘queryometer’ to colour in for both Creampuffs and Ashes, and I taped it to my door: 50 sends and I’m treating myself to something relaxing. Maybe a massage or a mani-pedi. Because–and let’s face it–after needing to send out 50 queries I will probably need the cheering up.<\/p>\n

\n

The more astute of you will no doubt recognize that this is January, not October, and that 2 months are unaccounted for. Well done. You are correct. November I shelved all of my projects to focus on NaNo and Blackout Odyssey<\/em>; and December was a stew of holiday mayhem, family engagements, frantic\/failed editing; general Christmas stress.<\/p>\n

I was so excited for the start of the new year. A clean slate! I can dedicate myself to achieving 100 rejections, both for short stories and queries! This will be the year I fling everything out into the world like so much spaghetti, and hope something sticks. Monday the 1st was even Submission Monday, the day I set aside an afternoon for submission updates, emails, queries and placement research.<\/p>\n

What ended up sticking, of course, was plague. The week rolled by in a series of coughing fits and general moaning and malaise, and I watched writing peeps (some of whom are also doing the 100 Rejections A Year challenge) tossing their written pasta around with gay abandon and I was jealous<\/em>. I wanted to be out on the playground and getting rejections too.<\/p>\n

Monday the 8th arrived and I sat down with a list of to-dos and a hazelnut coffee and also some Halls (don’t ever mix the two, take my word for it), ready<\/em> to get<\/em> to work<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Instead I ran into my old friend, Too Many Variables To Consider, and spent several miserable hours bouncing from one potentially-out-dated article to another while sinking into a nutty, mentholated haze of despair.<\/p>\n

And that might have been the end of the story, if not for a return of a villain from act one.<\/p>\n

Different hat, same head up sphincter. While part of me recognizes that the writer of said article (no I am not going to link it to it) wasn’t talking to me<\/em> but to perhaps someone underprepared and overenthusiastic about writing for a living in today’s market, I still took it to heart. They told me that it was unlikely to find a market for my first novel, that I should prepare myself for the possibility that it will never sell. And I (caffeinated and clear of throat) said<\/p>\n

SCREW YOU, ASSHAT<\/strong><\/p>\n

And then googled “agent looking for novel about girl nerds”.<\/p>\n

Because, sometimes, you need to cut through all the shit and go with what you know.<\/p>\n

Half an hour later I’d queried two people about Creampuffs<\/em> and jotted down a couple of other leads for Ashes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

Do I think I’ll hear back from them? Probably not. It’s not that easy. But what I needed to was just to start somewhere<\/em>, and now I’ve done that. Thank you, unlinked nasty advice giver, for that unlikely burst of motivation. I hope that somehow, some day, you can manage to grow past your need to shit on people’s dreams.<\/p>\n

Happy 2018, everyone. Make this the year you go out and do the thing. Don’t let any asshats tell you otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Querying is scary. But not for the obvious reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,9],"tags":[78,60],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-personal","category-writing","tag-creampuffs","tag-querying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":936,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}