So I’m back in the query trenches. Isn’t it funny how querying a book somehow seems to make everything more real? Your book, your ambition, and your self-perception as a writer/author.
I can see how people dread the query process and the disappointments it almost invariably brings, but it’s not something that personally fazes me. Actually I welcome querying because it means that my manuscript is done and as polished as my current skills allow. I’m neither afraid nor resentful of rejection. Sure, there’s a brief flash of disappointment, but my self-worth isn’t tied to other people’s approval. My own trepidation stems more from the fact that by sending a query, I might blow my one-and-only, never-to-return, once-in-a-lifetime chance at landing my dream agent. I know. Very rational. Especially since the alternative is to never query, just so I won’t blow that chance. Sure, that’ll leave all cards on the table and won’t limit any of my options. But it’ll also never get me an agent or published.
My solution to this particular madness is to query, and to query often. There are lots of stories of hugely successful authors who were turned down by droves of agents and publishers. I don’t fancy myself in their league (well, not openly, but doesn’t every writer harbor the thought in a dimly lit corner of their mind that they’re AT LEAST as good as famous author X?), but it goes to show that agents and publishers are fallible. Human. As fallible and human as authors. As fallible and human as the rest of humanity.
So, really, what is there to fear? A query is nothing but a conversation between two people, and a rejection isn’t a rejection of you as a person (and if it is, you wouldn’t have wanted to work with that particular agent or publisher anyway). All it is is feedback. Feedback that either that your work isn’t quite publishable or marketable yet, or that this particular agent or publisher simply didn’t much like the story you have to tell. Since we’ve already established that agents are human, they will have their tastes and opinions. And if they aren’t enthusiastic about your story, they’ll have a hard time garnering enthusiasm for it in a publisher. Ergo, you’re better off with a different agent who digs your vision and who’ll go to bat for you.
All that to say that I’m approaching the query process with an open mind and the assumption that by making querying habitual – at the speed of two queries per week – irrational fears and hang-ups will move into the background and give way to experience.