QUERIES!

After months (and months...and months) of being unable to look at my novel, let alone consider submitting it to anyone for further scrutiny, I've finally taken the next step. Today I began the querying process. I'm afraid I haven't done it perfectly, but I did make a concerted effort to read and follow the submission guidelines of each agent I contacted.

Before I took this step, I gathered information on a number of agents (roughly 70) (for those interested, I searched for them on agentquery.com), prioritized them by who I'd like to work with the most/who would be the best fit for me, and ranked them in an excel spreadsheet. I researched query letters and I wrote one solid draft that I could modify for each agent (again, ideally I would have written a different letter for each agent...not perfect, but good enough I hope).

This afternoon I sat down and read through the guidelines for each agent. I submitted a mixture of just query letter, query letter plus my first five to ten pages, query letter plus pages plus plot synopsis (yet another thing I had to research to make sure I did it correctly), and (for one particularly sadistic agent), query letter plus plot synopsis plus author bio plus first twenty-five pages.

I submitted to ten agents. This took me HOURS.

I think it was worth it just to get the practice in, but I hope something comes of this round of submissions. If not, there's sixty more on the list. Regardless, I'm finally starting to get back on track.