Print out a talisman. When you get a rejection, reach for this nice note. Read slushpilehell. Read all the time. Read everything. Read the very beautiful and the very, very bad. But mostly, read the beautiful.
Because it is only through the joy of getting lost in a great story that you will recover that desire to burn your own way through a page again, to write something new, to set another challenge, to feel that particular form of visceral aliveness that comes from spinning stories.
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My novel was a whooping words long at the time! Basically, twice the length of a normal fantasy novel. What was I thinking? When I've previously looked back and thought about it, I have said that it took me 2 years. I never thought to question this, because that is what it felt like, so surely that was what it was.
But when I decided to write this blog, I looked at my stats again, and, in reality, it only took me 6 months to sign a contract from the time I began to query. The first few agents I contacted were agents I had been recommended or had met briefly in person.
I especially had a bit of contact back and forth with one of them who saw several attempts at an opening chapter to my novel gods bless his patience. In the end, he wasn't quite keen on this novel, but encouraged me to send future ones his way. So when my hopeful contact with that agent fell through, I began to query people with whom I had no prior contact.
My agent today was the 11th agent I contacted without any prior contact, but as stated before, by the time we signed a contract, I had submitted my story to a total of 60 other agents. I sent my submission to my current agent on the 20th of September and decided to sign with him on the 11th of December. This means that 82 days passed between the day I sent my submission to the day I signed a contract with my literary agent.
So, what happened during those 82 days? The day after I submitted, the agent who is now my awesome secret agent, responded to my query telling me that he was intrigued and asked to see the full manuscript and a synopsis.
I sent it over straight away. My manuscript was HUGE , and this might have been a determining factor for a lot of agents, so having someone ask to see the full thing was a big step.
After I sent off the manuscript, I contacted all of the agencies I had queried but not yet heard back from to tell them about the development, and say that another agent had requested to see it in full. This was done as a curtsey to help them in their process of deciding who to represent.
I continued querying, because reading my long-long—loooong manuscript could take months, and despite my usual impatience, I knew that Chances were that he might give up on it or just not be that interested, so I had to keep trying to reach out.
On the 8th of November , so 49 days after I initially submitted to my current agent, another agent asked to see the full manuscript. Since everyone else I had queried already knew that someone had asked to see the full manuscript, I did not write to them again the goal is NOT to bombard agents with e-mails, they get enough of them, it is merely to keep them informed.
There was only one agent who needed to know about this, and that was my current agent who had been the first to ask for the full manuscript. I wrote to inform him that someone else had now requested to see the manuscript. Time passed, and then on the 24th of November , a third agent asked to see the manuscript. So I wrote to the two agents who had my full manuscript in their possession that someone else had now also requested to see it.
Again, this is NOT to overwhelm them with e-mails , but to keep them in the loop. So that they will know that there are other agents currently looking at the same pages. My current-day agent wrote back immediately and said that he was half-way through remember this is a novel twice the length of a normal fantasy novel. He requested that I please don't do anything without talking to him first. Let's be completely honest, those were very encouraging words to hear. Two days later, on the 26th of November , one of the other two agents wrote to me that he was interested and would love to talk to me about the novel.
He suggested either meeting in person or if that was difficult, to talk about it over the phone. This resulted in some happy jumping around, thinking that I had finally made it! After my sofas had been disgracefully used as trampolines, I wrote back that I would love to meet and would like to do so in person. Whenever it's possible, I personally think it's important to sit face to face with a future business partner.
I learn a lot about someone from their body-language and it's easier to work together when you have sat face too face and know a little about what the other person is like.
So, this was important to me. Before writing back, I had figured out when I could make the trip and gave the agent some options for when to meet. We quickly decided on a final date.
THEN, I contacted the two other agents who still had my full manuscript.
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