Querying!

I’ve read about the process being brutal, and I thought to myself, “No, it won’t be so bad. I won’t let it get to me.” But it is. It really is- and I’ve only just begun!

Querying. 

I wrote my elevator pitch, a few synopses, and a base query letter a few months ago while I was still writing the first draft of Their Eyes Were Full of Light. Which, by the way, I highly recommend. Writing those technical pieces early on gave me a lot of clarity with my plot, and it was after writing the query letter base that I went back and completely reworked chapter 7. Reworking the chapter made it so, so much better, and now that chapter is my favorite of the entire book. 

I’ve been researching agents off and on for a few months as well, and this week dove back into finding agents who might like this piece. I stayed up way too late one night formatting the manuscript, and perhaps in my dizzy state of really, desperately needing sleep, I just decided to go for it. I sent out seven queries, and I’m eager to see if any of them get back to me. 

The thing that makes this so hard is trying to retain the voice of the novel, while somehow also making it sound exciting. It’s not an exciting novel. You don’t turn the pages, devouring it, trying to get to the next part to see what happens. This one is a slow burn, it chews on the back of your mind for a while. 

And then you get to chapter 10 and it dawns on you what might be happening. And through chapter 11 you’re fairly sure. And then, there’s no way to unsee exactly what the novel is doing with its plot structure. And that is what is exciting about this story- is knowing exactly what is going to happen next, and watching it unfold inevitably, as you knew it would, as you knew it had to. 

I know the value of this story, but reading page after page of agent wishlists, and seeing that I would really have to bend my words to make an agent even remotely interested in this book, made me question the sales value of this work....Which made me question the reality of me trying to become a published author. What if I'm just abysmally bad at writing, and I can't ever do it as a living- which has been my dream job since I was a little girl?

But even though I know that not everyone is going to love this story, some will. I know that there are people out there who will read this story and just absolutely love it. And somewhere out there, there's going to be a person, who when asked, "What's your favorite book?" will say, "Their Eyes Were Full of Light."