Friends ask me where I am with the whole writing thing and lately, I’ve told them I’m in the middle of querying.
A little background: I write fiction and I’ve been a member of a local writer’s group since the Fall of 2010. I finished my first novel and started querying back in, oh, I want to say 2015. I got some sound feedback and decided my work needed a rewrite, changing it from first-person POV to third-person POV. It is now complete at 63,000 words and is written in the fantasy genre for young adults. When people ask me what it’s about, I say it’s about a girl who got bit by a dragon. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that, but I’ve had to pivot from writer to seller and I prefer to keep it simple.
When I say I’m in the middle of querying, I’m in the middle of tracking down agents who represent authors of my genre (YA Fantasy) and writing (usually by email) to tell them about my work by way of a query letter, sometimes a synopsis, and more frequently than not, sample pages (the first 5, 10, 20 pages or three chapters, depending on the agent). The ball then is in their court. And I get to wait.
Does this sound like dating? It sounds like dating. I remember when I started looking at graduate programs and someone said of finding an advisor, “It’s kind of like marriage: for better or worse.” I got lucky with my advisor, and I do not think our relationship could be characterized as anything like a marriage, thank God, but you get the idea. This is stressful. I’m married (happily, and for a while now). I break out in hives at the thought of what people go through today in search of meaningful relationships, so querying, awkward.
Unless you take the emotion out of it and look at it for what it is – business. I am looking to enter into a meaningful business relationship with someone and for that to happen they have to like what they read. But I get that dragons are not everyone’s cup of tea. So, I assume, some will see the word ‘dragon’ and pass on my work for that reason alone. I’m not going to take it personally. I’m just going to keep looking for that (special) someone who wants to read more. Someone who will geek out with me over the details as much as I do.
Yes, I could become an entrepreneur and self-publish, but I’m not ready to go that road just yet. It is nice to have that route as an option, but we’re not going there.
In the meantime, I get to work on other projects. I want to write other stories; urban fantasy, contemporary YA, Romance.
One thing at a time.
Doing the write thing,
Amber
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