How do you know when it's time to stop, change, or move on?

Take some deep breaths. You're in the right place and it's gonna be okay. How do you identify the problem? Get some more eyes on it.

Now, for the time being, take a querying break. Most likely, the problem lies in your query. Down in Share Your Work, there's a section called Query Letter Hell, password 'vista'. For now, dive in. Read the stickies, read the queries recently posted, read responses, then start commenting. From little comments of "I agree with [person]" to full line-by-lines, whichever you're comfortable with. Go hang out in your genre lounge and post in threads there. Check out some of the games in Office Party to get your mind off things. One way or another work your way up to 50 posts. Once you hit 50 posts here, you can post your own query in QLH and your first few pages in the proper SYW subforum and we'll give it a look. We've got a lot of experts here who are more than happy to share their critiques to help QLHers get past the roadblocks of rejections, and they have often.

I wrote a reply, but somehow managed to delete it instead of editing it, oops.

In short: I'm sorry to hear you're feeling dejected, and it is tough out there. Hugely competitive. But good news stories do happen! I agree with Maggie, hold off querying for a while. Querytracker also has a forum where they crit queries and opening pages, and you don't have to have racked up 50 comments to post, although they do prefer folk to be social too - and I think it's good to give back when people help out so generously. I would certainly recommend getting others to look both query and opening pages over.

It's also London Book Fair coming up, and agents are swamped with that, so things are slow right now in the query-trenches.

I love this blog post, it has really helped me when I'm feeling dejected:
http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/16373/how-to-stay-sane-while-querying-literary-agents.html

One of the things she recommends is assessing other people's work:
"Become a reader for a literary magazine. Once I started rejecting (or accepting) fiction submissions for the magazine I read for, it became easier for me to accept rejection myself. Sometimes I’ll read something that is well written, even engaging, but it doesn’t move me enough to want to see it in print. This is the equivalent of an agent saying that they didn’t “connect” to your work. Now, I’m not suggesting you start rejecting writers as some twisted form of catharsis, I’m suggesting you develop empathy for your rejector so that you can understand, and perhaps even appreciate, the thought process behind the rejection of your own work."

That has actually helped me: helping others and giving advice on queries and pages. I think it's healthy to be on both sides of the fence - putting yourself out there, and assessing other people's work.

Good luck!

Josh Sanders said:

Thank you Maggie =) I will follow that advice.

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I'm glad to see you doing this already, Josh. Good on you!

Qwest said:

I wrote a reply, but somehow managed to delete it instead of editing it, oops.

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If this happens to you again, remember that the "back" button is your friend.

If this happens to you again, remember that the "back" button is your friend.

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Thanks!

Great suggestions. I can take this information as well. Good luck I know the feeling!

Writing is not about big decisions rather than bunch of small ones that you can easily override.

Deep breaths. World is not collapsing.

Slaven said:

Deep breaths. World is not collapsing.

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Well, the world MAY be collapsing, but not due to your predicament. Are you in a writer's group?