Hell vs Limbo; June 5 2024

Happy Pride month to all, and to all a queer night! It’s also National Indigenous History Month here in Canada!

This is also the month in which my kid’s birthday is, so I’m getting hyped up (or stressed? One of the two) about her birthday party. The last one went well enough, but there were a few factors that put a damper on things, so hopefully there aren’t any hitches this time.

Today I want to talk about writing industry stuff – specifically the differences I’ve found between querying your book to literary agents and being on submission to publishers. They’re both stressful, but in wildly different ways, and I’ve come to realize that the attitudes surrounding each depend on the kind of stress people prefer.

When I was querying my books, I heard time and time again from other authors – “You think querying is bad? Just wait until you go on submission. That’s worse.” Which, you can likely intuit, is very demoralizing! Querying is a hard slog. Hearing that it’s only downhill from there (until your book gets that mythical six-figure publishing deal) is enough to make many give up.

But it’s not worse. In fact, because of the kind of stress I prefer to handle, it’s been like a vacation for my brain.

There’s a helplessness to being on submission; all you, the author, can do is… sit back and wait. Your literary agent is the one doing the work now, reaching out through their networks, using connections, doing the research, monitoring how long it’s been since X editor replied (if they replied at all). There’s not much you can do but start working on the next thing, and that drives some people up the wall. It’s a loss of control. So it makes sense that this would be a miserable time for someone who needs to know everything that’s happening with their book at any given moment!

But where I’m concerned, it’s freed me. I have someone in my corner, validating that my book is worth reading. I don’t have to constantly wonder if it’s edited ‘enough’; someone’s told me when to stop. I don’t wonder which book I should be prioritizing writing next because someone’s there to give me advice on which one they think will sell next.

The submission process is long. Some people are stuck waiting for years before they get that Big Yes. But, honestly? Querying responses, since Covid hit, have slowed down so significantly that I don’t see a big difference between the querying wait and the submission wait.

The key difference is that with the querying wait, you never feel like you’ve done Enough. At least, that’s how I felt.

Have I sent enough queries? Have I sent them to the right people? Was it the right time? This query’s been open for almost a year and I want to query another agent at the same literary agency, so does that mean I withdraw the first query even though there’s a possibility that if I’m just patient enough, it’ll get me an offer?

The hope is maddening. I was never sure when or if to call it quits with any particular book, always certain that I could be doing more. Because I was my only advocate! If not me working on querying 24/7, who would?

If I wasn’t sending a query, I was researching agents. Tweaking my query letter. Revising my books for the umpteenth time because even when you think you’re done, you’re never entirely sure. Looking into pitch events. Crafting said pitches. And the waiting, the waiting, the waiting –

I used to send my most query packages out while I was having panic attacks. Scared for my future, I did the only thing I felt I could do that might result in some change, which was querying. Every one I sent had the question attached, ‘is this the email I send that could change my life?’

I hated it. It was torturous. Any time not spent pumping out words – because if that book doesn’t get me an agent, maybe another one will! – or digging through the query trenches felt like time I was wasting. And I’m not talking about downtime, like, when I was playing video games or taking a nap – no, I mean the important things, like cleaning my house. Taking care of myself. Playing with my child. I’d do those things while this insidious little whisper kept nagging at me, telling me I was dooming my child and my career by not working right now. Don’t I want to give my kid a better life? Then you’d better work, bitch.

Now it’s out of my hands. I have a direction to go in with my next writing project and I’m almost 5000 words into a new book. I can do other things without feeling intense fear and guilt.

Querying is hell, and submission is limbo. It’s just a matter of which one you tolerate better.