It feels like a natural moment to pause and take stock. I currently stand on the edge of a precipice, ready to dive into depths that I have been working towards and preparing for the majority of my life. I am about to begin querying agents. It’s the next big step in my journey towards publication, and ironically, one I did not originally envisage myself taking.
Although I have spent the past five months or so researching and writing draft query letters, synopses, reading the works of others and interrogating my own writing as I try to find current comparisons, the fact that I may now be ready hasn’t yet sunk in. I am still preparing final details, proof-reading, checking and re-checking that I am sending the correct documents, that the salutations I am using are correct. I am yet to experience a moment of stillness before I take that final step and commit to this next stage of the path.
In many ways it is very easy to let yourself become caught up in the whirl of activity, to distract yourself from the potentially life changing step you are about to take for fear that the immensity of it engulfs you. I hope this is not what I am doing. I certainly am inclined toward good preparation, to compiling information so that it’s all at my fingertips the moment I need it. And there have been moments when I have asked myself Is this necessary? Are you delaying? The answer I have always given myself is Yes and I hope not.
The nature of querying also lends itself to endless cataracts of information gathering. When I began, I started with my 2012 copy of the Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook, and then began Googling. Names began to manifest, agencies to surface, and I started to wade through the oceans of information, cataloguing and sorting until I found my way to some semblance of organisation that allowed me to decide which to pursue. In addition to that, there is no one database that tells you when agents are or are not open to submissions. Although there are general yearly trends, you must keep checking their agency profiles to make sure you don’t send out at the wrong moment.
I have narrowed down my lists a good five or six times, looking at the agencies and agents from different perspectives. Do they represent fantasy? Do they represent the age category my novels are aimed at? What kind of agency is it? What kind of agenting style does the agent have? Would we work well together? Each question has hopefully allowed me to ensure that I only query those with whom I and my work are likely to find a good fit.
The vast majority of this was all new to me when I began. I knew after graduating each of my degrees that I did not know very much about the real work of being a writer, or author. The work of seeking publication, and after that immense milestone, of being a published author. Though there were occasionally opportunities to quiz our tutors, we knew so little of the process that we didn’t even know what questions to ask as students.
The great joy, of course, is that with the internet it is possible to educate yourself on a great many things. Googling certainly provided me with a good deal of information, and links from agency websites to particularly good blogs with advice on writing queries and synopses and how to find current comps definitely eased the way considerably.
And now I am here. After months of research and practice. I do feel ready. I dare say that the moment I send my first query out, clicking the enter button will feel somewhat anticlimactic. Or at least less so than sending off a thick wad of writing in a large envelope. That said, I fully expect some kind of adrenaline rush as the realisation finally settles in. That I have, at last, started, and have no way of knowing what will happen next.
Patience, of course, does seem to be the key element when querying. Patience and good record keeping. Many agents are generous enough to respond to every query, even those they reject. Others are so overwhelmed with work that silence after a certain number of weeks or months is your answer. Yet others request that you remind them if they haven’t given you an answer either way. I have made a literal spreadsheet to keep track of my submissions for these exact reasons.
Fortunately, with the manuscript for book two awaiting me in my digital desk drawer, just as patiently slumbering in my subconscious as I wait for it to fade enough that editing will be productive and enjoyable, I have plenty with which to occupy myself as I wait for responses. In November last year, I did finish my first complete draft of the manuscript for book two. I had meant to write a blog to commemorate the moment, and yet, despite my excitement at such an achievement, I found I couldn’t muster the energy for it.
I had gone into last year with the intention to get book two well and truly started at the very least. I only barely entertained a faint hope that I may complete it. I was starting the manuscript in late February, and it felt that little more than ten months would be a stretch to achieve it in. By the time I was halfway through the year I felt it was coming along well, but probably wouldn’t finish it until early 2022. I hit several rough patches and had to take weeks of time to find solutions, to write and think my way through the problems.
Even so, I continued to creep closer to the final chapters, and I began to feel that maybe, just maybe, I would finish the manuscript by Christmas. It was slow going, but I could make it. But then all of a sudden, one Thursday evening in November, I sat down late in the day after spending the day baking, and thought I would just write a little more, and instead the last few chapters flowed out of me and I was typing The End.
It was a surreal moment, completely unexpected. As far as the writing went, it was, of course, not the end. I later went back and added in a few more scenes that were missing, refined those final chapters to ensure they had the emotional payoff I wanted and weren’t rushed. And once it felt as though really, I could say I was finished with it for the moment, I set it aside to rest.
This was something I used to be quite sceptical of when tutors recommended leaving manuscripts in drawers for a year or two. I don’t leave them for quite that long, but now, having finished two, I can quite safely say I also ascribe to the practice. All the strings and plotlines I had been holding in my mind, weaving back and forth and adjusting grow scrambled, tangled, and there is no worse mindset to edit in. Editing requires clarity. And it does your brain good to lie fallow, I think.
Fortunately, the process of writing these novels throws up the patches of world building that I have missed, and as I rest from one manuscript, I am able to keep my momentum going as I begin the fresh work of world building. That in turn helps inspire new details and stories to weave into the subsequent novels in a wonderful moment of, not quite symbiosis, but something like it.
The world building phase was interrupted as I began work more seriously on querying. Initially my research was occurring on weekends, but between December and January I slowly began to stop my world building work as I devoted my energies fully to the preparation of querying. The creative part of my mind certainly resented it somewhat, desperate to go back to fashioning and learning and crafting details that will probably only be alluded to once in passing. But the interruption really has worked in my favour.
Book two’s manuscript is a very fat one. I see the initial writing phase as the bulking, and now when I go back and begin editing after I send out my queries, I will begin the cut – to borrow terms from bodybuilding. Going cold into editing might be good for some, but I will go back into world building after sending out my first wave of queries. I will be able to immerse myself back in the world without the plots and characters, and I think it will enable me to better edit when I pick up book two again.
As these final days of preparation count down, I do feel some degree of nervousness. I have great confidence in my writing. But you don’t know what people will think until you show them. Everyone has different tastes and preferences, and I can only hope that I am putting my best foot forward with my query letters and synopses, and that all my research has paid off in directing my manuscript to those best suited to represent it.
Who knows, perhaps the next blog will have some exciting news. We shall simply have to wait and see.
