How do you stay sane while querying agents?

[CakeRage]

I finished my first book earlier this year (after saying for years I was going to write it), and started submitting to agents 3 weeks ago.

I’ve had a couple of replies, both really encouraging, but ultimately both rejections, and I feel like I’m losing my marbles. How do you keep it together while waiting? Not sure I can take the emotional rollercoaster

The first agent replied within hours to ask for the full manuscript, emailed again the following day to say she was halfway through and absolutely blown away by it, then a few days later to say she did love it, but thought it needed a few changes making. I revised the whole thing (10,000 extra words of work), then she replied just to say it wasn’t working, and she wouldn’t be taking it further.

To be honest I’ve been pretty gutted by it. How do you stop the little judgy voice in your head which tells you you were an idiot for getting your hopes up?

The second agent replied to say she was really impressed by my writing, but didn’t feel I was a good fit for her list at the moment, and recommended another agent (different agency) who she thought would like it. I handled that one much better, even though I guess it was more of an abrupt no.

Please tell me how you cope with this stage - or come commiserate with me at its horribleness!

(Sorry for my crazed rambling - feeling all my feelings this week!)

Urgh, Captain, sounds like a pain in the arse!

I definitely couldn’t have got to the end without noise-cancelling headphones and bribing myself with food for every 1000 words I wrote. It’s definitely a slog. I found I was most productive after 10pm, weirdly. I got nowhere when I tried to write in the daytime. Too many distractions, maybe?

Noise cancelling headphones! Life-changing suggestion!

I got a rush of energy and rattled out 3,000 words. Now I feel like I might have got my momentum going again. The key was to switch off from thinking about whether or not what I was writing was any good and if an agent would like it or not! I think I’ll find editing crap easier than staring at a blank screen searching for perfection. I just feel I’ve lost my narrator’s voice a bit having had a couple of months away from the book altogether. Maybe to get swept up in it, it’s better not to take breaks - but I just found life got in the way!

Also after writing all of that, I ate most of a massive slab of Dairy Milk that I was supposed to nibble decorously during Love Island all week rather than snaffle in one sitting...

I don’t know how to do links but AmyCMason on Twitter is running a crowdfunder to help immigrant families in US detention centres reunite with their children and there are rewards for donations. Some of the rewards are literary agents offering feedback on the first x number of words/pages of a novel. Donations are about £100-250 but it’s guaranteed feedback and all for a good cause so could be worthwhile for anyone on the thread wanting some constructive criticism?

twitter.com/amycmason/status/1153356968834285572?s=21

I DO know how to link!

I’m supposed to be getting on with book two while book one is out on submission, but I had my first editor pass on it today — ‘lots to admire but I don’t like it enough’ — and am feeling ridiculously discouraged. Plus the whole ‘demanding full time job and small child’ thing gets in the way.

It's really hard, captain

I've come back under a name change, I'd just done one post much earlier in the thread but then was too depressed at total silence coming in to comment further, but been loving the thread.

Submitted to four last year, got one request for full but hadn't finished book (rookie error obviously). I actually talked to the agent about it and agreed to wait before sending it as was going to get it edited first as I knew it was too long.

So then an editor friend gave it an edit for me and loved it (I paid her as used to work in publishing and hate being asked to work for free myself - she is quite brutal but brilliant! I do trust her judgment.) I had done a Faber course and the very, very important reviewer who taught it loved it and gave me great feedback which i am using in the sub letter. It was long listed for the Lucy Cavendish, AND I have an arts council award for it, AND it's Irish which is very Hot Right Now.

Sent it out to about 8 more people. And I still can't get even a rejection from most people!

Got in total two outright rejections, the original agent who had asked for the full has had it since mid-May, has never come back to me (horror), then totally out of the blue a really great up-and-coming person has asked for the full. Oh God, fingers crossed!

I had cut a huge section out of the original to shorten it, and the editor friend said it stood very well alone and could almost be its own book. So I sent that bit to a very amazing and high-brow Irish press that only publishes two titles a year. The founder emailed me back to say that it's obvious I am a really great writer, but not right for them (in fairness they are quite daring and publish very cool and experimental stuff, I am neither of these things), but def keep trying to get an agent as there are lots of people looking for what I do. She was so nice that I'm not sure how much of it was just the World's Nicest Form Rejection, but I think it was personalised at least a bit.

So now I am just trying to crack on with a psychological thriller that I want to finish in three months. total change of direction, but am trying to really play with structure and pace as I think that's my biggest issue.

RIGHT. Just rereading up the thread. Let's ALL get on with our new books.

Honestly, I recently went to a litfest with quite a lot of amazing, successful people at it, and pretty much every single one said it was their third or fourth one and they'd failed abjectly first time out of the gate. My friend who was with me kept giving me The Eye, like 'Seeeeeee...???'

That’s a lot of very encouraging feedback, boiling! I am getting up the nerve to start getting feedback as so far I am the only person to have read any of my novel at all. I know that what I’m writing could be absolute crap though I think it’s good. I’m just not sure what negative feedback might do to me!

The litfest people - that makes me feel both uplifted and hopeless at the same time! I can’t imagine keeping on going for three or four or more novels and getting rejected every time. I worry that I would give up by then!

Hmm, it's encouraging but not actually helping me. If you see what I mean.

I feel like Polly Hampton in Love in a Cold Climate when all the heirs at the season (marriage mart) pop up and say 'hmm, very lovely' then bob off and marry someone else.

I mean, people keep saying vaguely, 'oh yes, your writing is SPLENDID' then then they just putter off.

Hence the focus on writing something completely different with a lot of PACE and STRUCTURE.

Interesting feedback, Boiling. And I wouldn’t worry about any rejections you’ve had in the past, that just seems to be the theme of this thread!

From what I’ve learned through this process, I wonder if the thing is that people’s first novels ARE good books, they’re just not necessarily easily marketable books. And then, over the course of the following two or three books they learn how to add that dimension, and suddenly they can attract interest.

I’ve heard over and over from people that they’ve had feedback along the ‘I love it but I don’t think I can sell it’ lines. And I guess agents are as risk-averse as any other salesperson. It’s all a business, after all!

Sounds like a lot of us are in the same position now, too - maybe we need a book two thread?

I wish I could motivate myself to send out some more subs - I haven't sent anything for more than a month now.

11 rejections (1 of full) now including those I have marked 'presumed expired'.
2 still out and within timescales but I've given up hope on them, really.

25 agents still on my list, but I can't bring myself to send anything else out - I'm at the stage where my novel seems utterly woeful and I feel ashamed to do anything with it - I don't even want to look at it at the moment.

Urgh, Preparing, I’m so with you. I still have a few within timescales, but I feel like I’ve given up on the whole thing. I haven’t heard anything for weeks, since I had a small flurry of rejections. The full is still out with two agents but it’s been so long that my confidence is fading with each passing day.

I’m trying to distract myself with book two, but to be honest it’s not working brilliantly. I have occasional bursts of motivation, which I’m really trying to harness, but they’re punctuated by vast swathes of blah.

Hoping for good news for all of us soon. And failing that, a fire under us for our new projects.

Yep, same for me, another day, another rejection. This one was really nice and she wrote a long email saying that she really liked my writing but that the market is 'very, very tight' at the moment so she just didn't feel she could take it on as she's essentially a one-woman agency. Do you reply to rejections like that?

I think what I'm learning through this process is that fundamentally, you need to write a book which will sell, not simply a book you're passionate about. I'm going to approach book number 2 with that premise in mind.

It is very disheartening though. Sorry to hear we're all in the same boat at the moment. The agent encouraged me to keep submitting but I really don't have it in me right now.

That’s very interesting, Boiling. Having done so well with the Lucy Cavendish award etc and yet not having sold so far must be simultaneously very encouraging but so extremely frustrating. You’d think having all of that in your query letter would have agents falling over themselves to get in touch. Maybe this is a very bad time of year for querying since no-one seems to be hearing anything...
There’s obviously a lot of right-desk-right-time luck involved so we should presumably all keep querying (although maybe not until Sept?) unless we KNOW there’s something that can be improved AND how to improve it.
And yes it’s all so disheartening and yes it does seem to be the case that a lot of it’s about concept. Maybe that’s why so many people who do sell manage to do so on book two, three or four, when they’ve gone all out for commercial hooks and concepts...

I think you’re right, lurking. It’s why I’m just focusing on something fast and furiously commercial right now (it is good for dispelling the rage!). I also want to put clear water between me and the first book so that I can feel more dispassionately about it and take anything that happens with it as a nice surprise rather than something my life/attention/self esteem depends on. Also looking at lots of short story competitions etc as once I get THIS draft finished I think I might concentrate on those for a while purely because a lot of new Irish writers are coming up via that route in the booming Irish journal culture.

Onwards, team! I wrote 3,500 words yesterday but next two days full of tedious admin then DH away for a week (I have preschoolers) so unlikely to reproduce that any time soon!

That's a really good point, Boiling - I think taking a more detached and commercial view of the next one will probably be for the best. It's less disappointing that way, but it's also difficult to get too enthusiastic about it like I would with a passion project.

So far all the rejections I've had have been on the basis of concept/commercial appeal and not writing, so I'm going to leave my manuscript as is and hope (a very small hope) someone might just take a chance on it!

Oh sorry I just reread what I said (and also wrote a reply then deleted it... what I was trying to say was that focusing on the new book makes me feel more dispassionate and detached about the FIRST book if you see what I mean. In a moving on and creating new work type of way. I do feel engaged with the new writing, and it has me managing to hit refresh on the email maybe once an hour rather than once every two minutes.

Although it would cheer me up if someone on here had some good news, it's also comforting to know I am not the only one in the doldrums at the moment.

Do you reply to rejections like that? I do, very briefly - 'Thanks for taking the time to read my novel and give feedback, Kind regards ...'

... In the vain hope that, if I submit another novel in the future, they'll think 'oh, yes, she was that nice polite person who'd be easy to work with - I'll give this my favourable consideration'.

(Highly unlikely that they would even remember me, I realise).

I managed about 1000 words of the next book and then stuck fast - that thing in my head that invents stories has jammed. Hoping when the weather cools down my brain might function better.

Don't forget the deadline for the Curtis Brown comp is next week, if anyone was planning to enter and hasn't yet!

I’ve entered the Curtis Brown competition, ever hopeful though I entered Lucy Cavendish and Blue Pencil Award and sank without trace!

I am in a funny situation whereby I got the opportunity to have an agent read my first three chapters this week to give feedback (it was a reward/prize being offered so not a normal submission) and she really liked it so has asked for the full! Only problem is that I haven’t written it all yet so am frantically working to get it done! I feel overwhelmed as I haven’t shown it to anyone else yet at all. I expected feedback that would either encourage me to carry on, give me constructive ideas to develop or tell me to give up - to get a request for a full manuscript from the first person to look at it is amazing. It’s an agent I really admire as well so...it feels kind of incredible. I know that there are of course no guarantees of it coming to anything whatsoever - but it has certainly motivated me to keep going! Struggling in the heat today, I’ve got to say though!

That’s fantastic, Captain - very encouraging! Good luck with the speedy writing...

Yes, Boiling, totally agree that getting your mind very focused on Book 2 makes it a lot easier to stop obsessing about Book 1 submissions. I’d stopped drafting Book 2 to re-submit Book 1 and then found it really difficult to get back into Book 2 but finally managed to get the words flowing (for better or worse) again yesterday and am already refreshing my emails less manically.

@CaptainBrickbeard, I was shortlisted in two fairly well-known prizes in the same year as I wasn't even longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish the whole thing is very subjective, but I have sometimes found some of the decisions of the LC judges quite odd.

Good luck with agent!

Yes, good luck captain that sounds so encouraging! When do you think you'll be able to finish? Are you the greek myth person?