I Finished My Book!

The unfortunate thing is that writing the book was the easy part, because now I have to start querying. The only reason I'm writing this post at all is because I've been finalizing my agent list for the past hour, and at this point I'm so paralyzed with fear that I simply can't stare at the spreadsheet any longer without rocking back forth in the fetal position, whimpering. Seriously, I'm sitting on my back porch in the middle of summer, despite the heat, because if I go back to my room and sit at my desk, I'll have to look at my bookshelves, and my bookshelves are filled with...comparative titles.

Dun dun dunnnn.

Only that that's the issue, actually, is that my bookshelves aren't filled with comparative titles, not good ones, anyway. (If you aren't aware, comparative titles are books that are similar to the book you're querying. You include the comparative titles in your query letter so that prospective agents can easily figure out how to pitch your book to an editor, or a publisher, and if you can't find any comparative titles, then that makes the agent's job harder, and they're less likely to take your book. It's just business, and I get it, every creative for themself and all that, but the issue is that can't find any comparative titles!)

See, my book is very paradoxical in terms of its plot/writing style, so I just have no idea how to accurately pitch it while not making the synopsis part of the query feel completely at odds with the comparative titles section. I'm sure I'll figure it out, I mean I'll have to if I want to nab an agent, but right now...let's just say that, before sitting down to write this post and procrastinate the inevitable, I was crouched on the concrete porch, legs pulled up to my chest, mouth rested on my knees, staring at literal blades of grass while ants crawled over my feet, so, right now, I'm not in the best headspace.

What I think I'm going to do is reopen my spreadsheet and finalize my "rounds" of agents that I plan on querying. My strategy is to send out batches of five queries at a time, every three months, until I get a "yes". I have to plan it carefully though, because I need to make sure I query the five agents that I want most in the first "round" of queries--hence the spreadsheet. As of now, I've locked in my top five, so I'm moving on to the next three "rounds". I think I'll start out by querying twenty agents, and if they all say no, then I'll restart the process with a fresh twenty.

I'm telling you this because it helps me stay calm, to write all this out and understand that that's all I have to do today: I just have to finalize my "rounds" of agents, and that's it. No more fiddling with the synopsis or the comparative titles. That can wait until tomorrow. The important thing is to not get overwhelmed, because if I get overwhelmed then I'll start to cut corners, I'll start to self-sabotage (I know this, because that's what happened the first time I queried), so I've got to stick to this strategy I've got, stay walking across this tightrope I've started myself out on, because I'm halfway through, I've written the book, I'm already up here, and looking down isn't going to do anything but make me wobble, and make me fall, and I really can't afford to fall, because that would break a lot of bones, metaphorically speaking, but physically speaking, it would break my heart most of all. And I'd have no one to blame but myself for falling, because I was the one who psyched myself out.

So. Spreadsheet it is. I'll probably resurface here every Saturday or so, just to give brief check-ins as to how the querying process is going. If you enjoy this sort of thing, great, at least someone's getting entertainment out of this process.

Wish me luck--the good kind, please.