I've decided to blog about my "Adventures in Agent Land" - or in my case "No Agent Land". It's a dark little place filled with Hills of Confidence and Valleys of Self Doubt. The Lakes of Slush are in the East and the creepy Rejection Pile Woods are to the North of Completed Manuscript Castle.
Back in March I started being haunted by a plot. I was driven to write it down even though I wasn't sure I was going to end up with enough words for a novel. 80,218 words and a little over a month later I had a complete first draft. I realize how incredibly fast that is and I'm not sure it'll ever happen again.
After months of sloshing through beta readers (to whom I am eternally grateful) and revisions I felt I had something worth submitting to agents. On Sunday, August 3, 2014 I sent out my first query letter. As of Friday, August 8 I have sent out twenty query letters and have received five rejections.
Two of the rejections came two hours after the query was sent and I wasn't quite sure how to feel about those. Was it a sign that my manuscript isn't as good as I thought it might be? A sign that the intern/agent is so busy that they didn't even take the time to consider me? Or something in between? Either way it's a no from them.
Rejections are expected - especially for a first timer like me. I knew I'd get a lot of them and I was fairly mentally prepared. Still, all the insight in the world doesn't keep that little stab of disappointment from creeping in.
There's one particular agent I feel really drawn to. I follow her on twitter and felt connected to her blog/bio. I've been waffling on whether or not I should tell her that I think we could have a good working relationship. Up front and honest or slightly needy and stalkerish? There's a very fine line between the two and it's easy to fall onto the wrong side.
For now I'm still plugging away but I'm ever hopeful that someone out there will see something special in me and my work. Once that happens the sky is the limit and I promise to keep pushing that sky higher and higher.
