INGENICIDE was also my teacher. It taught me how to revise (MS#1 couldn't and is still gathering dust in the drawer). It urged me to find critique partners. It pushed me into the critique forums, to revise, revise, revise my query. And revise again.
Yes, it forced me to write the dreaded synopsis. Post on that later, because oh do I loathe the synopsis.
Just last week, I received a rejection on a full that I was feeling sort of good on. Which is okay, because that's happened before and I was prepared. I closed the email and marched right to QueryTracker to prepare another round of queries. Apparently, I cope with rejections by sending more queries.
I can't use QueryTracker without Carissa Taylor's handy dandy compilation of YA agents, so I pulled that up, too. As I was marking down agents and heading over to websites, I suddenly realized something:
I was no longer excited to query.
That may not sound weird, but it was to me. I wouldn't say that querying is fun, exactly, but it is exciting and exhilarating and nerve-wracking to do so. I liked querying. And now I didn't.
Why wasn't I excited? I tried to find the reason.
It turns out that I'd exhausted my list of agents that I'd love to work with and was beginning to just "settle." The search process was becoming increasingly like this: Agent reps YA? Onto the list.
At first, I didn't see anything wrong with this. In fact, I was more scared of not querying every single agent that I possibly could, in case I missed some opportunity. But sitting there at my desk and staring at the agent compilation list, it dawned on me that I'm NOT just seeking representation for INGENICIDE. I'm seeking representation for myself as an author. I'm seeking representation for this work and many more to come.
I couldn't just "settle."
So now I announce my decision: I will be retreating with INGENICIDE from the querying trenches. Currently, I still have queries, partials, and fulls out, and I will wait to hear back on those. However, I will not be actively querying anymore for this manuscript. If you were curious, here are my stats:
79 queries
4 partials
5 fulls
And more rejections than I can count.
While this may seem like a sad post, it really isn't. MS#1 was my training wheels. MS#2 was the bike that took me on many adventures and taught me so many lessons. Ultimately, it didn't deposit me at my destination, but what does that matter? If anything, I'm now armed with experiences that not even rejection can take away from me.
On another positive note, I wrote IF LIFE WERE FAIR while querying INGENICIDE so that my inbox wouldn't drive me insane. Turns out that insanity prevention methods are quite rewarding because now I can prepare to dive back into the trenches soon. If I had to choose ONE piece of advice from this whole learning process, it is this: Write. And keep writing. Write when you are querying, because it'll really make the time fly by faster and at the end, you'll have a brand new MS to flourish (before getting dirty in revisions, that is). You are a writer before you are an author.
Have you ever had to "shelve" a novel and if so, what made you decide to? Thanks for reading guys! It's funny thinking back to when I first started this blog, when INGENICIDE was still fresh off my fingers. I say this again and again, but the writing community is seriously the best of the best of the creative folks.
I've sent out four different novels at this point. I've got a post called On Rejection on my blog somewhere about that, all my stats...
ReplyDeleteThe first one I gave up because I got rejected a good few times and decided that wasn't the one. The second one I gave up after being accepted by an agent and then having the agency shut down. The third I gave up because I decided the market wasn't right. Now I'm on the fourth, and for the first time in all those years sending out, the process actually terrifies me. Not pleasant, that feeling. The whole process never scared me the way it does now.
Anyway, point being, I feel you. =) Good luck to you!
I've queried and subsequently shelved two novels--DREAMCATCHER (which I really don't actually count as having queried with, because I only sent out to about four agents before deciding it wasn't ready) and, before that, FORGOTTEN. FORGOTTEN was my baby for a lot of high school; it was my training wheels for the publishing industry.
ReplyDeleteI wrote it freshman year, but didn't officially shelve the thing until last summer. 60 rejections/no responses overall; about 8 partials and 3 FMs (honestly, the only reason it got even that many was because I pitched it at WDC two years in a row).
I shelved FORGOTTEN because I was running out of people I would be willing to sign with, and I came to the same realization that I didn't want to have to settle for an agent; if an agent offered representation, I wanted it to be one who I actually REALLY wanted to work with. That plus the fact that I had outgrown the novel by a couple of years, at that point, meant there wasn't much else to do.
I think it's a brave decision to shelve a novel that you've put so much work into. It's hard, and it's brave.
You never know, though--something might still come of the queries and requests you've got out. :) And even if nothing ultimately does, IF LIFE WERE FAIR sounds super awesome. I've got faith in you, and my fingers crossed. :) Congrats on making the decision to shelve (honestly, I think it truly is a "congrats" kind of situation) and good luck!
... I apologize for the fact that I basically just wrote a whole new novel, here. It's too late in the day for me to be concise.
DeleteOh man, I wrote and queried 8 novels before landing an agent with number 9. But I never queried super long and always had another manuscript I was excited about before query-fatigue really set in. So I shelved novels by default because I was more excited by the next thing I had written. I think it's great that you're not going to "settle." You deserve a great agent!
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