A Lot Happened This Week.

After the initial excitement of SFFpit, the month of September was radio silence on queries. I did a lot of QueryTracker stalking and a fair amount of crying after I got my first full rejection...then this week happened.

On Sunday, I received a full request from an agency I had queried on a whim the previous day. It was just after midnight, and I literally screeched when the email popped up in my inbox. I sent the full manuscript immediately (by which I mean after an hour of reviewing my work, questioning every aspect of it for absolutely no reason), then proceeded not to sleep at all.

Fast forward to Wednesday, and I received two rejections, both on queries I had sent the previous day. I know, brutal, but while one was a form rejection, the other was personalized...and included a referral to two other agents!

Both of those agents are closed to queries, so I had to DM them on Twitter (which was terrifying) and ask if they currently accept referrals. That night, one of the agents said she did, and I queried her immediately. The other agent got back to me Thursday morning, saying she doesn't accept referrals, but she's reopening next month, so I can query her then, specifying the referral.

Flashing back to Wednesday, I received an agent like on my pinned Twitter pitch from one of my dream agencies...which I've been too scared to query up until now. I queried the agent that night, just after sending my referral, and I'm waiting with bated breath to hear back.

Alright, now that we've caught back up to Thursday, I woke up to another agent like on my pinned pitch. This agent also commented on my pitch saying she'd love to read my book! Frankly ecstatic, I sent my query roughly an hour later and commented back, letting her know it was in her inbox.

Later that day, my friend tweeted about my book, describing its contents, and one of the agents I've already queried commented on the post saying she'd love to see my query! I replied saying my query is already in her inbox, and she apologized for taking so long to get back to me, so I'm hoping to hear from her within the next week.

Moving on to Friday, I awoke to yet another agent like on my pinned pitch from another of my dream agencies. I was...in disbelief. I stared at the notification for a solid minute, in which I refreshed my Twitter feed multiple times, certain she had made a mistake. But the notification didn't go away, so I drove myself to my favorite coffee shop, where I sat with my friend (like we do every Friday), and sent her my query.

Minutes later, I checked my email and saw that the agent who had requested my full manuscript on Sunday had rejected me. She did give me feedback, in which she told me she had read the entire book and just didn't connect with certain aspects well enough to offer representation, which was gratifying, to some degree, but...I was pretty gutted. I teared up a little, and my friend had me do some deep breaths. Once I had accepted my grief and felt ready to move past it, I reopened my laptop and sent another query, because that's all I could do, was keep going.

A couple hours later, I came home and did a workout to clear my head, and when I checked my email...the agent who had liked my pinned pitch that morning had requested my full manuscript.

Reader, I was in hysterics. I slammed all-caps texts to my friends (especially my friend from the coffee shop, who had literally watched me cry over a full rejection hours before), then, with shaking hands, I sent the full manuscript.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from that agent, as well as all the requested/referred/cold queries I've sent this week. According to QueryTracker, I'm in a few maybe piles from previous queries as well, so here's hoping I get some good news from those agents soon. I doubt I'll be sleeping much this week, but I'd rather be too excited to sleep than too depressed to function, like I was for most of September, so I will not complain.

Part of me feels badly about sharing all of this, because it's hard to believe I deserve it, but I want to show how the good really does go hand-in-hand with the bad. Like everything in life, querying ebbs and flows, and I have to remind myself of that nearly every day, so I hope this helps someone else see that as well.

We're all in these querying trenches together (or have been in them, if you're now agented!), so wish me luck--the good kind, as always--and no matter where you are in your writing journey, I will wish the same for you.