How To Take a Gut Punch:



Tips for Surviving the Querying Trenches

Querying is NOT for the faint of heart. It’s a process that will steal your sleep, your breath, all while tying your once calm demeanor into a knot of anxiety. It’s that bad. Days spent questioning why you ever wrote a book in the first place. Nights spent battling the urge to just burn your manuscript. 

But don’t do it.

You can survive this. The fact you wrote a book in the first place is something to be proud of, something not everyone can do. And remember, querying is not writing. It’s marketing what you wrote through a multi-layered process that requires patience, endurance, and skin as tough as leather. So be prepared.

Because you will face rejection.

We all do. And while you may get a full manuscript request, an agent offer, even a publishing contract along the way, you won’t do it without hearing: Sorry, I just don’t believe this project is a good fit for me—at least once. And it stings. No, it breaks your heart like an iron fist to the chest. But before you curl up in bed and never leave, know that there are ways to lessen the pain. Not take it away completely, but definitely knock it down a few notches. Bandaids and balms to help ease the discomfort. Not a cure. Just me, a hopeful writer, helping another hopeful writer reach their goal.

DON’T BLAME THE AGENT

This is a hard-to-swallow truth because as humans, blaming makes us feel better. It’s easier to think someone caused our demise. To point fingers at the person who ruined our chance for success or won’t give us a fair shot. But the reality is, it’s no one’s fault. Most of the time, we’re just different people looking for different things.

An agent is just one of those people.

So if you view them as some enemy blockade wedged between you and great success, or as some wall you have to break down, you’ll never make it. And I mean never. Snagging an agent is about cultivating a relationship, locking hands with a partner who’s ready to escort you into the world of publishing. 

They are not your enemy. I repeat. They are not your enemy.

And if you hope to get traditionally published one day, I’d recommend treating them like you would a friend. I know. I know. You want to hate them. It feels good to call them names and send them ugly emails. But don’t! Because later, after the anger settles, you’ll regret it. And those bridges you just doused with gasoline and set on fire will be nothing but ash.

So before you destroy your chances, look at querying like you would speed dating. You can court your awesome self around all night, but regardless of how great you are, a connection has to happen. Sparks must fly. Or neither one of you will go anywhere fast. It’s just a fact of life. You want someone special to fall in love with your manuscript, and an agent want someone’s book to love. 

Neither of you can make money or fulfill dreams without the other. 

DON’T TAKE THE PASS PERSONAL

Agents pass on great books. It happens. And why, you ask?

For several reasons. And believe it or not—it’s not always about you or your writing. You very well could be the next Dean Koontz or Stephen King, but if you queried someone looking for Debbie Macomber, then guess what? PASS. Or in this case, you might not even get a response. But I write Amish Romance and the agent said in her profile she LOVES Amish Romance. So what’s the problem? Maybe you write short and choppy sentences, and the agent you queried loves long and flowery ones. 

Either way, it’s a subjective process, and again—they have to fall in love.

And you want them to because if they don’t, your book will never get its wings. Seriously, the last thing you want as a writer is for your manuscript to be tucked away in some agents To-Be-Read drawer collecting dust. From there, the world will never see it, and your hopes for success will suffocate.

Maybe I can explain it better like this. 

My daughter LOVES literary fiction, the kind where on page 1 the author is describing, in intricate and metaphoric detail, an urn. Not the person who owns it. Not the house it’s in. Just the urn. On page 15, we’re still reading about this urn, which now has transformed into some allegoric parallel to womanhood. This is her world. She eats this stuff for breakfast. 

I’m a person who loves heartfelt—or funny—romance. I want just enough details to give me a sense of place and then pour on the story. Make me feel. Take me any place you want as long as we get to a happy ending. If you do, I’m in heaven.

How does this relate to agents? Agents are people with specific tastes, just like most readers. And they know taking on a book means they need to love the premise and the voice because they’ll be reading it more than once. 

Remember, they can only champion what they love. So be patient. Finding love takes time.

STOP OVERANALYZING AND LET IT REST

You’re getting passes, but now you’re also getting requests—or even personalized rejections. All of which propels you into hours of self-assessment and before you know it, you’re pulling out the scissors and kleenexes at the same time. 

Slow down before you do something crazy. 

Of course, it’s not the manuscript requests that are the problem, It’s those rejections, breakups in a relationship that almost was, that make you crazy. Which is why you need to ask yourself this one, simple question before you do anything else: Was it me, or was it them?

Evaluate your query letter. Is it captivating? Are your conflicts clear? Are you getting any requests? Etc… Now check your sample pages. Do they snag attention? Are you starting at the right place? Do other beta readers and critique partners—notice I didn’t say Grandma Dot—seem intrigued and eager to read more?

If you answered yes, then you’ve done your best. Now just wait for your person [agent] to love it as much as you and all your writer/reader friends do.

Here’s the flipside to that coin. Are you getting a lot of similar feedback, multiple people pointing out the same problem with either your query or writing sample? If yes, then it’s back to the drawing board to fix it. And if you need help with that, here are some great resources to check out. Keep in mind, though, alter only as needed, not every time someone offers their opinion. 

And here’s why. 

My first attempt at querying… Hold on, I’m laughing hysterically… Catching my breath now… Okay, I’m back. Yes, that first attempt to land an agent was a disaster. And my manuscript? An even bigger disaster. Sometimes, I still pull it out, wondering if it has any redeeming qualities, and the answer is always the same. Absolutely not!

But I learned from my mistakes, kind of.

The second attempt, I was onto something. I had a unique premise, comedy, love, all the makings of a great book—but I queried way too soon. A common newbie mistake. The manuscript requests (multiple ones) came in quicker than I expected and left me rushing to edit, which didn’t turn out well. 

Then on to my next mistake. I sliced and diced my manuscript to fit every piece of feedback given. I murdered my book, like chopped it up into tiny, unrecognizable pieces. 

Thankfully, I didn’t let it stay that way. I went back—after reading about plot pacing and the use of beat sheets—and rewrote it into a manuscript I was proud to put my name on. Unfortunately, I had already queried everyone, including God it seemed, and had no one left. Well, no one that was interested in representing my genre, anyway. But to my good fortune, people who believed in me and my potential encouraged me to self-publish. 

I’m glad I listened. Because even with a very meager, almost non-existent marketing budget and  time, I was able to sell almost 3,000 books in ten months and have over 69,000 pages read. No, that’s not Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele numbers, but it’s something I’m proud of because in the end—people liked my book. My hard work paid off.

Now, here I am querying another book—less than ten months later. And I’m doing that while working full time as a registered nurse (teleheath), home schooling three kids through a pandemic, and helping my twenty-year-old find her own space to finish out the college semester at home. Not to mention worrying about my twenty-two-year-old who lives in a viral hotspot. 

The point of telling you all that is to remind you it can be done. Will you be sad? Yes. Will there be days you want to give up? Absolutely. But if getting traditionally published is your goal, something you truly desire and want to see happen in your future, then keep going.

On to my next point…

ACCEPT THE PAIN

This is tough. On days when a rejection pops up in my email, a heavy sadness falls over me. I can’t stop it. I can’t wish it away. It happens, and for whatever amount of time it takes to pass, I’m stuck with it. One day, I had two passes land in my inbox back-to-back, right after I’d just been cursed out by a patient projecting their healthcare frustrations onto moi. 

What a horrible day.Two days later, though, I received a full manuscript request. Three days after that one—another. Woo hoo! And guess what? My entire mood shifted. I’m popping corks on wine bottles, dancing around the house full of hope and energy. The creative juices are flowing with a—my dreams might finally come true—attitude. Further proof that querying is like steering a boat in a hurricane. You’re all over the place. Climbing up. Crashing down. Plowing under. Riding over. Hurling forward. Dragging back. Through it all, your stomach’s just a queasy mess of nerves, and you’re gnawing fingernails like they’re candy. 

A week from now, guess what? You’ll do it all over again. 

Which is why you have to accept the emotions for what they are—feelings that can and will change. Sometimes hourly. Sometimes daily. What they shouldn’t do, though, is define you. Because you are more than a rejection or a pass. You are an author, and the sooner you start believing that, the quicker you’ll reach your goals. 

KNOW WHY YOU WRITE

Why does this matter, you ask? It matters because it gives you purpose—a reason for querying in the first place. A sprinkle of promise along the tough path to publishing. Because in reality, there are so many things no one ever tells you about the writing process, things you are left to learn as you go. 

All the more reason to know why you want to publish a book.

After my first failed attempt at querying, back when my goal was to become super rich and famous overnight [yes, you can laugh], I took time to evaluate why I really wanted to be an author. What did I hope to accomplish with my books? What I discovered is that money wasn’t the driving force behind my writing. I didn’t spend hours typing away at a computer until my fingers went numb—after charting on patients all day—just for the money. 

I made sacrifices because I love writing. 

I enjoy putting the crazy stories floating around in my head on paper. I love it even more when someone reads them—and likes them. One of the best reviews I’ve ever received was from a woman who thanked me. She’d had a lot of stressors in her life lately and wrote that my book took her mind off of those things. Her words made my day—gave my work validation.  

And that’s the reason I create goals for myself, things I hope to accomplish every time I write or query. Things I can look forward to, like having my children see my books on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles and other book stores. 

And it’s those goals that get me through the querying process, knowing that one day someone will fall in love with my books and give the world the chance to do the same. 

READ FAMOUS AUTHOR’S SUCCESS STORIES

I don’t have much to say about this, other than it seriously helps. When I read about how many novels some of these authors had to write before one actually sold, it gave me hope. As I imagine Stephen King going from papering his walls with rejection letters to becoming a millionaire author with hundreds of books under his belt—I can’t help but feel encouraged. And when I learned that Nora Roberts wrote a book while snowed in with her young boys—I’m filled with hope. Even Nicholas Sparks faced rejection. A manuscript that never sold. The Notebook, a novel that launched his career, passed over by so many before someone finally said yes. 

In the book I’m reading, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, they have a whole chapter dedicated to these types of stories. Years of rejection that end in great success. And whenever I feel like hope is lost, this is where I turn. To the stories of author’s who kept going, the writer’s who never stopped at rejection. This is the fuel that keeps me pressing forward.

NEVER GIVE UP

There are days when I want to quit, and I’d argue I’m not alone. 

The first bad review I received for A Not So Immaculate Conception broke my heart. It truly did, even though I had a lot more uplifting feedback than negative. Still, I let it break me for reasons I believe a lot of us do. We want everyone to like our work, and when they don’t, it feels like they don’t like us. Of course, that’s not true, and deep down we know it. But still, our books are our babies. We want to protect them—protect the heart we poured into them.

But, if we are to be successful, we must understand that the path to publishing, from query to agent to contract, takes more than just a good book. Or even a great one. It takes patience and a spirit that keeps going. Knowing that a pass today, isn’t a pass forever. Markets change. Agents’ tastes change. And remember this. Not every agent, reader, or publisher will love you or your story, and that’s okay. You can’t please them all. But if you surrender, if you let rejection rule over persistence, then there is a 100% chance that your manuscript will never find its home. It will remain nothing more than a haunting regret. 

So don’t let it be. 

If your dream is to become a traditionally published author, then never give up. Learn from the process, take corrective criticism with a smile on your face, and keep pushing forward. Know that many a great author has trudged through years of rejection to get where they are today. Let their stories be your motivation. Keep hammering away like every successful writer that came before you.

And above all, believe in yourself. You CAN and WILL survive the hellish querying trenches.

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For those of you who need some reasons for why agents pass, proof that it’s not always about you, here are some samples to prove it from: https://mswishlist.com/queries.

Dorian Maffei @DorianMaffei · 28 Mar 2019

Q6: I’m sure this book will hit the mark for another agent, but I don’t feel I can move forward for subjective reasons. I’m usually not the best fit for books with this subject matter. Pass. #10queries

Dorian Maffei @DorianMaffei · 28 Mar 2019

Q8: Love this premise. Always interested in seeing unique takes on ghost stories. Hooked by pitch & I can tell this author did their homework on me

Upon reading pgs, I’m just not connecting w the writing. Hard to pass but I need complete passion behind the work. Pass #10queries

Ali Herring @HerringAli · 26 Jul 2018

Q6: Too similar to something one of my clients has done. Pass #10queries

Kaitlyn Johnson – Closed to Queries @RedPenKaitlyn · 26 Apr 2018

P2 – ?? Historical [image error]