Karen Booth
Rollercoasters are for wimps
I have spent the last month on the emotional tilt-a-whirl of querying literary agents. I would say rollercoaster, but that’s way too linear. The tilt-a-whirl, with its undulating vortex of disorientation is a much better analogy.
It’s a process, I suppose I could say that it’s flawed, but I don’t have a suggestion as to how to improve it. It’s all about who you know, just like in music, and since that’s a world I’m highly acquainted with, I understand why things are the way they are.
As a novelist, you’re expected to write a query letter, which will sell your story to an agent, make them want to read it, and hopefully represent you. Those three paragraphs end up being the measure of your work, just like the first 15 seconds of an unsigned band’s demo. I wish I could take back every snide comment I ever made about unsigned bands. I’m sure this is all coming back to me somehow…
I’m supposed to get a bunch of rejections. Rejections are good. It’s one step closer to finding the right fit, a move toward the ultimate reward, which I guess is supposed to be publication. I still feel like writing the book was the ultimate reward—all of this other stuff is what you do when you’re a grown-up and you’ve put so much hard work into something. I’ve already started writing the new ultimate reward, as a means of keeping my head together during the query process. I’m happy to say that’s it’s mostly working.
I’m thinking that I will design some sort of rejection badge, first for myself, and then for my fellow writers who are going through the same process. We can all get a sash (brown, of course) and I will sew the rejection badge on everyone’s sash (because I am good at sewing) and we can wear them in public, as a sign of being a real writer. Real writers get rejected. Here’s to being a real writer…
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