Ups and Downs and Ups
(Or: Life During Querying.)
So this week has had some real highs and lows. At least it seems to be finishing on a high note.
On Monday I set a personal record that I really hope never gets broken: I got two agent rejections for my current manuscript. Ouch. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thankful that they replied at all so I could update Querytracker and stop wondering, but still. That sucked.
But on Thursday? That same manuscript got a full request from a publisher I pitched during a contest the previous week, and a partial request from an agent I’d queried the previous week. These were both results of the pitch contests I talked about in my “Burnout” entry, so I’m glad something good came of stretching myself so thin.
The partial request came in really late Thursday night, and when I saw that I had a query response in my inbox, I assumed the worst. “Well, I was in a good mood,” I thought, opening the email to see if I at least got a personalized rejection this time. It took my brain a few seconds to believe what my eyes were telling it: Hey, dummy, this is GOOD news.
And then I had to laugh. I’m someone who doesn’t cope with rejection well, and I’m also someone who likes stability. Unpredictability freaks me out.
Trying to become a published writer is arguably the worst possible thing I could have ever decided to do given my overly sensitive, change-resistant, stability-loving personality.
And yet, when I’m working on a novel or submitting a story or a query, I know that there is nothing else I’d rather be doing.
I’d ❤ a recommend heart if you enjoyed this. You can find a listing of my fiction on Medium here, and I blog occasionally over at my personal website.
